We often don’t realize how much our past haunts us. In many ways, society is like a snake eating its own tail – an ouroboros of trauma where each generation unwittingly feeds on the pain of the previous one. We barrel forward blindly down the same paths our ancestors took, chasing ideals of success or survival, often without asking why we behave this way. The truth is, much of what we consider “normal” in our culture was shaped by trauma. Understanding how deeply traumatized the world has been – and how that trauma is passed down – can help us break out of destructive cycles and make clearer, more rational decisions today.
Trauma Etched in Our DNA
Generational trauma isn’t just a poetic concept; it’s increasingly backed by science. Extreme stress and fear can actually leave physical marks on us that get passed to our children. In an infamous study, researchers found that children of Holocaust survivors had different stress hormone profiles and even subtle changes in gene expression related to stress regulation. In plain terms, the trauma their parents endured during the Holocaust was literally etched into the biology of the next generation. These kids grew up primed by history – their bodies a little more tuned to danger, even if they themselves lived peaceful lives.
It’s not just one group or one horrific event either. We often hear about the Holocaust in these discussions (rightfully so, as it was horrific), but parallel atrocities scarred countless other families around the world. Millions of Russians had their lives shattered in World War II. Millions of Chinese people were killed or brutalized by invading forces around the same time. And if we look beyond that war: enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic, families decimated in the Rwandan genocide, entire communities terrorized under colonialism or oppressive regimes. The list goes on. It stands to reason that survivors of any such massive trauma – whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or anywhere – carry lasting wounds that can echo in their children and grandchildren. Recent conflicts and atrocities, from ongoing violence in Sudan to generational strife in Palestine, continue to layer new trauma on top of the old. We’re talking about global intergenerational echo trauma. It’s not confined to one culture or event; it’s a human phenomenon.
What’s fascinating is that this passing down of trauma doesn’t require conscious storytelling or even consistent parenting. It can happen biologically through what’s known as epigenetics – chemical switches that turn genes on or off based on our experiences. If a person endures starvation, for example, their body might “learn” to hoard calories, and their children could inherit a predisposition to store fat or anxiety around food scarcity. If a parent grows up in constant fear, their stress-response genes might be dialed up, and their kids could be born with a more hair-trigger stress response. It’s like evolution’s scar tissue. Some scientists even argue this is an adaptive mechanism – a way for offspring to be better prepared for the harsh world their parents survived. And sure, on the surface that makes sense: those who survive catastrophe pass on whatever helped them survive. But it’s not some deliberate, species-wide strategy; it’s the aggregate of individual humans simply trying not to die, clutching at whatever behaviors or physiological changes kept them alive, and then unintentionally bequeathing those traits to their kids. Evolutionary “hard wiring,” in this case, is really just trauma solidified over time.
Inherited Fears and Behaviors
Not all generational trauma is as obvious as a war or genocide. Sometimes it’s woven into the fabric of everyday family life and culture. A classic example: the generation that lived through the Great Depression. When you hear stories about those folks, certain patterns stand out. They saved everything – every penny, every piece of string, every jar. Waste not, want not. They’d known real hunger and loss, so once they finally had food on the table, by god they weren’t going to risk losing it. My own family used to chuckle at how my great-grandparents would reuse aluminum foil and hoard canned goods, but looking back, it’s clear those habits were born from severe deprivation. That trauma imprint – the fear of loss, the urge to stockpile – didn’t necessarily disappear when times got better. They passed it to their kids through their attitudes and behaviors. Many of us grew up with parents or grandparents who preached frugality and emergency preparedness almost like religion, without fully explaining the nightmare of the Depression that originally forged those values.
Psychologists sometimes call this intergenerational echo – later generations feeling the aftershocks of an old earthquake they never personally experienced. Maybe you’ve noticed you have an aversion to wasting food or a compulsion to save money “for a rainy day,” even if you yourself have never gone hungry. Where does that come from? It could be an echo of your ancestors’ very real survival strategy. In a way, the emotion of loss and fear gets handed down like a family heirloom. We do as our fathers and mothers did, often without questioning it.
This goes beyond material habits. Consider emotional stoicism: how many families have a history of “strong, silent” types, especially among the men? A boy sees his father bury trauma and keep a stiff upper lip – perhaps that father learned it from his own dad who survived a war and didn’t want to talk about it. Generation after generation of men taught to swallow their pain, not cry, not seek help, because that’s what men do. It’s a survival tactic in a harsh world: don’t show vulnerability, just provide and soldier on. That mentality may have originated in situations where showing emotion could get you killed or where there simply wasn’t space for processing feelings because survival took priority. Fast forward to today, and you have men driving themselves into the ground at work, emotionally distant from their families, because they think that’s the only way to be a man. They’re captaining the ship straight into the same storm their fathers faced, blind to the fact that maybe the storm has passed or that there are other ways to navigate. It’s the snake eating its tail again – we perpetuate the pattern because it’s what we know, even if it no longer serves us or actively harms us.
And speaking of harm, these inherited behaviors can have serious collateral damage. While the men were off “being strong” and often absent, the women and children historically were left bearing the emotional burden in silence. Women have endured generations of being told to stay in their place, to accept suffering as their lot. Think about it: our grandmothers and great-grandmothers lived in societies where abuse – physical, sexual, emotional – was often swept under the rug or even normalized. They had little power to change their situation, so they coped however they could, and they taught their daughters the unspoken rules of survival in a patriarchal world. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t trust that help will come. Endure. Those lessons sink in. The trauma of one generation of women, subjugated and voiceless, can manifest in the next generation as hyper-vigilance, anxiety, or a sense of unworthiness that seems to have no clear origin. Even as society makes progress on women’s rights, those old ghosts linger in our collective behaviors. We carry fears and limitations that were etched into our families long before we were born.
When Trauma Becomes Personality
Sometimes, the echoes of trauma are so loud that they shape who we become at a very deep level. There’s a reason therapists often ask about your childhood – because traumatic experiences in our early years can literally wire our brains in particular ways. In extreme cases, what begins as a child’s adaptation to a dangerous or chaotic environment can harden into what we call a personality disorder.
Take Borderline Personality Disorder for example. People with BPD often struggle with unstable relationships, fear of abandonment, mood swings, and a shaky self-image. For years it carried a stigma of being this untreatable, mysterious thing. But as we’ve learned more, a compelling picture has emerged: a huge number of individuals with BPD have histories of significant childhood trauma – often abuse or neglect. Some studies suggest that the majority of BPD patients went through some form of abuse in their youth. In essence, the disorder might be a collection of learned survival tactics. A child who is abused by someone they depend on (say, a parent) faces an impossible dilemma: their source of safety is also the source of danger. The mind adapts. They become hypersensitive to emotional cues (to anticipate the abuser’s moods), quick to feel abandonment or betrayal (because it happened early on), prone to intense emotions that were never soothed properly. These adaptations make sense in a traumatic environment – they are ways to survive terror and emotional pain. But later in life, when the threat is gone, those adaptations don’t just vanish. They stick around and cause havoc in relationships and daily life. What was once a shield becomes a burden. In a way, BPD can be seen as an echo of childhood trauma – an old wound still shaping behavior long after the initial injury. If we know now that BPD is overwhelmingly caused by childhood and adolescent trauma and abandonment, imagine the percentage of the population prior to the 20th century that ended up with a disorder like this.
Borderline is just one example. Other patterns of thinking and behaving can also trace back to trauma. Some people respond to early trauma by dissociating – mentally checking out when things are too overwhelming – and if it’s extreme enough, it can develop into dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personalities) or other serious conditions. Others may develop an almost paranoid outlook, or become fiercely controlling, because childhood chaos taught them that the world is unsafe unless they grip the wheel hard. Even certain aggressive or antisocial behaviors in adults can stem from growing up in violence – essentially learning that “might makes right” or that you must hurt others before they hurt you. None of this excuses harmful actions, but it does shine a light on the origins. Time and again, when you dig into the background of someone struggling with these deep-seated issues, you find trauma in the story.
And here’s where the generational part comes in: if those individuals don’t get healing, the cycle continues. The person with untreated trauma (or a resulting personality disorder) might go on to inflict trauma on others – often their own children or partners – even if they don’t mean to. Hurt people hurt people. The abused child might grow up to be an abusive or emotionally unavailable parent. The cycle spins on, the snake devouring its tail.
Out of Place: The Neurodiverse Experience
There’s another layer worth examining in this big puzzle of generational trauma: the experience of neurodiverse individuals (like those with autism or ADHD) living in a society largely shaped by trauma norms. How do people who are “wired differently” fit into a culture that’s been built by generations of coping mechanisms and unwritten rules born from trauma?
For many neurodivergent folks, the answer is not comfortably. Society at large – workplaces, schools, social life – often has rigid expectations for behavior. Much of it is rooted in an assumption of “normalcy” that doesn’t account for neurological differences. Now add the trauma component: generations of social conditioning have taught people to be suspicious of anyone who doesn’t fit in, or to expect conformity (“we’ve always done it this way”). A neurodiverse person, be it someone with high-masking autism or ADHD, often grows up feeling out of place because they don’t naturally adhere to those norms. High-masking individuals in particular make a huge effort to camouflage their true selves. An autistic person might carefully study and imitate neurotypical social behaviors to avoid standing out; someone with ADHD might overcompensate and push themselves to appear ultra-organized or calm when they’re internally bouncing off the walls. This masking is a survival strategy in a world that hasn’t historically been kind to those who deviate from the norm.
But think about the toll that takes. Constantly hiding who you are is its own micro-trauma, day in and day out. Studies on autistic masking have found that it’s associated with higher rates of anxiety, depression, even PTSD-like symptoms in those individuals. It’s exhausting and demoralizing to live behind a mask, and eventually many people burn out. Now place that person in a relationship with a neurotypical partner who perhaps has their own unresolved trauma or rigid expectations inherited from their family. You can see how misunderstandings will abound. The neurotypical person might feel hurt that the neurodivergent partner isn’t emoting or responding “normally” – they might take it personally and feel unloved, not realizing their partner is literally operating with a different wiring (and possibly hiding their genuine feelings out of fear of rejection). Conversely, the neurodivergent partner might feel constantly criticized or pressured to be someone they’re not, which reinforces their lifelong sense of not being accepted. Both can end up feeling traumatized by the relationship even though neither intended harm.
In some cases, this dynamic has been informally dubbed the “Cassandra Syndrome” – often referencing neurotypical partners (commonly wives of autistic men) who feel so unseen and gaslit in the relationship that they fall into despair. The autistic partner might not realize the damage being done because they assume they’re doing everything right by providing or by following the logical rules they know, while the NT partner is emotionally starving. This isn’t to cast blame on one side or the other; it’s a tragedy of mismatch and lack of understanding. And it’s yet another way trauma can propagate: an unaddressed chasm between ways of being can leave both parties scarred, and any children they have may feel that tension or emotional distance growing up.
The neurodiverse experience in a traumatized society is a reminder that there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to healing. Some of the behaviors society labels as “weird” or “antisocial” might be perfectly harmless neurodivergent traits – but a trauma-conditioned culture can view them with fear or disdain, potentially ostracizing those individuals. On the flip side, neurodiverse folks are not immune to trauma themselves; in fact, they often experience higher rates of bullying, abuse, and mental health struggles precisely because they’re misunderstood. So their trauma gets layered on too. It’s a complicated web, but it all reinforces the same point: unseen pain perpetuates more pain.
Blindly Into the Storm
So here we are, generations deep into these self-perpetuating cycles. Picture a ship at sea, steered by one captain after another over the decades. Each captain encounters a terrible storm on the journey and barely survives. The experience traumatizes them. When it’s time to train the next captain (their son, perhaps), the older one says, “Listen, this route is dangerous. You’ll face a storm like I did. Toughen up, shut out fear, and plow ahead no matter what. It’s the only way.” The next captain does just that – heads straight into the storm because that’s what Dad did. Maybe conditions have changed, maybe there’s a safer route, but he doesn’t even look for it. He just assumes that battling hurricanes is part of life. He makes it through, battered and bruised, and later passes the same advice to his son. And on and on it goes.
That’s us. That’s society. So many of our institutions, traditions, and expectations are essentially trauma responses passed down from people long dead, whose world was very different from ours. We keep charging into the same storm because we think we’re supposed to, because “that’s how it’s done.” The snake keeps eating its own tail: a self-devouring cycle of inherited stress, fear, and behavior that no one remembers the origin of. We’re collectively running on programming written by our ancestors under duress, and sometimes we don’t even realize it’s optional to change it.
Consider the relentless pursuit of economic growth and personal wealth that defines modern life. Where did that really come from? You could argue it has roots in past scarcity. Many of our great-grandparents knew poverty intimately. Of course they wanted a better life – money meant security and survival. They taught their kids to work hard, sacrifice, and accumulate stability. Fast forward to now: we’ve taken that ethic and dialed it up to eleven, often losing sight of the original goal (a good, secure life) and just worshiping the hustle for hustle’s sake. It’s like we’re blindly chasing a bigger number because our great-grandparents feared being poor. The trauma of scarcity set us on a path of perpetual economic striving. But in the process, we often neglect our well-being, our families, our happiness – the very things all that striving was supposed to protect. We can end up sacrificing the present for a future that never arrives, because we inherited a script that said “more is never enough.” That script made sense to someone who had nothing; does it make sense to those of us who have plenty? Or does it just keep us running on a hamster wheel, stressed and unfulfilled, passing that stress to our kids? It’s worth asking.
And let’s talk about the systematic subjugation that’s been part of our social fabric: patriarchy, racism, classism – they all feed trauma back and forth in a vicious loop. Men who were traumatized by war or harsh labor or their own fathers might come home and exert control over women and children as an outlet or simply because that hierarchy was the only model they knew. Those women and children carry their own trauma forward, sometimes rebelling and sometimes re-enacting it on others. Entire classes of people have been kept down, generation after generation, through violence or poverty, and that collective trauma often fuels further conflict, crime, or despair, which then feeds stereotypes and justifications for continued oppression. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle, a societal ouroboros that keeps us all locked in patterns of pain.
Trauma, Behavior, and Everyday Relationships
All this might sound very heavy and abstract, so let me bring it back to daily life – even to something as ordinary as a real estate transaction or a day at the office. Why should a professional in 2025 care about epigenetic trauma markers or John Stuart Mill’s nervous breakdown? Because the core lesson here is that people are not purely rational, and their “irrational” behaviors often have deep roots. When you understand that, you can respond much more thoughtfully in any interpersonal situation – especially in high-stress, emotional contexts like buying a home, negotiating a deal, or managing a team.
In my work at Designed Realty, I’ve learned that being a good real estate professional often has less to do with property law or interest rates and everything to do with being a student of human nature. Clients come to us with life savings on the line, big hopes, big fears. A couple might start arguing in the middle of a showing because, say, one of them suddenly hates the house. On the surface, it might seem irrational – they picked it together last week and loved it! But dig a little, and you might find perhaps one partner grew up in poverty and has a deep-seated fear of “making a mistake” that could ruin them. Now that they’re about to commit to the biggest purchase of their life, that old ghost of scarcity is whispering in their ear, What if this goes wrong? You’ll lose everything. The resulting fear can manifest as irritability, second-guessing, or even lashing out at the person they love (or at their agent). If I respond only to the surface – the harsh tone or the seemingly nonsensical change of heart – I might either get defensive or dismissive. Neither helps. But if I recognize the possible trauma or anxiety underneath, I can shift into empathy and gently guide them through it. Maybe that means taking a pause, sitting down with them to revisit their priorities and reminding them of the safeguards in place (inspection periods, financing contingencies – basically, “you won’t lose everything, here’s why”). Often a calm conversation that validates their fear (“I understand – this is a huge decision, and it’s natural to feel scared of making the wrong move”) can defuse the situation. In a sense, I become not just a salesperson but a kind of temporary therapist – not to overstep my role, but to ensure the client feels heard and secure so they can make a clear-headed decision.
Reflecting on these themes – historical trauma, emotional inheritance, and their impact on modern behavior – has been a humbling journey for me. It started as an intellectual curiosity about why people (including myself) make seemingly irrational choices. But it has become something more personal and empowering: a reminder that everyone has a story, and that understanding those stories (or at least acknowledging they exist beneath the surface) is key to making better decisions and being a better partner, friend, or professional.
Moving Forward
At Designed Realty, we often talk about being not just transaction facilitators but true advocates for our clients. Part of that advocacy is seeing the whole person in front of us. Yes, they want to buy or sell a house – but they also might be a new parent fretting about making the right home choice for their kids’ future, or a recently divorced individual navigating the sale of the family home and all the grief tied up in that, or a retiree quietly panicking about parting with the house they’ve lived in for 50 years. By remembering the ouroboros – how past experiences feed present emotions – we make space for those feelings in the process. We encourage thoughtful decision-making by giving clients permission to voice their fears without shame. We anticipate emotional roadblocks: if we know, for example, that a seller has an autistic child who is distressed by change, we might adjust our communication style or even the timing of open houses to reduce disruption. If we sense a client has trauma around money, we take extra care in how we discuss price negotiations, framing things in a way that doesn’t trigger a panic. And when tempers flare or anxiety spikes, our team emphasizes de-escalation – we take a step back, lower our own voices, actively listen, and find a human connection rather than just firing back with facts or arguments. In practice, this might mean literally closing the laptop and saying, “I can see this issue is really important to you. Let’s talk it through,” instead of “Well, according to the contract clause on page 5…”. It’s amazing how quickly a tense atmosphere can calm down when someone feels genuinely heard.
In a broader sense, understanding the cycles of trauma helps us contribute, even if in small ways, to breaking those cycles. Every time you respond to someone’s irrational anger with curiosity instead of aggression, you’re disrupting the ouroboros. Every time you recognize that a colleague’s forgetfulness or a client’s nitpicking might be coming from a place of anxiety (perhaps handed down over generations), you have an opportunity to inject compassion into the situation rather than judgment. These are little interventions, not grand historical changes, but they ripple outward. A client who feels respected and calmed might be a little kinder to the next stressed person they meet, instead of snapping. A child who sees their parents handle a conflict with empathy might learn a healthier pattern and carry that forward. Over time, maybe the legacy we pass on can be one of emotional security rather than trauma.
I find this personally hopeful. We can’t erase the wars, abuses, and injustices of the past – they happened, and they shaped us. But we can decide what we do with that inheritance. We can become more self-aware: Why do I react so strongly to criticism? Why do I panic when plans change? Often, if we dig, we’ll find a younger version of ourselves (or an even earlier ancestor’s lesson) at the root. Acknowledging that is powerful. It means we don’t have to stay in the loop, repeating history’s mistakes. We can sympathize with our own inner child and also with the person across the table whose behavior might otherwise baffle us.
In practical terms, I’ve started incorporating a simple habit in my professional life: whenever a situation gets heated or perplexing, I silently ask, “What might be the fear behind this behavior?” That pause – that brief shift from reacting to reflecting – changes everything. It turns frustration into curiosity and judgment into care. Nine times out of ten, that diffuses my own negative emotions and often helps steer the interaction to a better place. It’s a small exercise in empathy that costs nothing except a moment of thought, yet it’s rooted in everything I’ve discussed here: the knowledge that human actions, however confounding, tend to make sense when you see the full context, the full history.
In closing, the big takeaway for me is that we’re all a product of those who came before, carrying both their trauma and their resilience. The violence and hardships of history have certainly left us with a legacy of fear, but equally, the fact that we’re still here means we also inherited strength, creativity, and the capacity to heal. The snake that eats its tail is also symbolically creating itself anew. Likewise, if past generations unintentionally passed on pain, we have the chance to transform it into wisdom. In our professional roles – as realtors, managers, teachers, what have you – and in our personal roles as friends or parents, we can be the generation that stops simply reacting and starts consciously designing healthier patterns.
I believe that when we approach others with that kind of thoughtful awareness, we not only become better at our jobs (because we truly serve our clients’ real needs), but we also model a healthier way of being for everyone around us. It’s a ripple effect of compassion. And maybe, just maybe, that’s how we begin to heal the inherited wounds of the past – one understanding conversation, one empathic decision at a time – turning the ouroboros into a symbol not of self-destruction, but of renewal.
