My Grandpa is a Murderer. Now What?

 

        Microwaveable French fries are so salty that to a kid they are delicious, especially in ketchup. The consistency is like wet chalk though. I remember picking them out of the food vending machine in the prison. I had never seen such a thing. Spinning cubicles of food waiting to be picked. I had looked on in confusion as we walked from one corridor to the next. My family and I were there to see my grandpa.

My grandpa was incarcerated for most of my father’s life into my teen years. According to court documents and newspaper articles he was released sometime in the 70s for murder and rearrested for smuggling heroin soon after. Bubby murdered a man, Thomas Lynch, during a bar fight. Thomas had been sleeping with a friend’s wife while the man was in prison. Bubby thought this behavior was wrong, so he killed him. All of this had been something I would hear whispers about as a kid.

My class did a get-to-know-you activity on the first day of third grade. Each step had you draw something different on your paper. A boat for yourself, a fish for each sibling, a seashell for each parent, a bird for each grandparent, etc. We hung up our finished project and I looked on with sadness and fear. Sure, none of my classmates knew that I had an imprisoned grandfather, a missing and mentally unstable grandmother, and an abusive father. But I did.

At that point, I knew nothing about intergenerational trauma. I only knew the weight of it. Intergenerational trauma happens when families experience trauma from generation to generation. The generations before never address the impacts of their trauma. This causes them to repeat, or create new, unhealthy behaviors that negatively impact their children. And so on and so on.

Trauma is incredibly difficult to define. Humans get into the habit of ranking traumas but the truth is, it all activates the same parts of the brain. What may be traumatic for one person, might not be for the other. When thinking about intergenerational trauma, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) is a good place to start understanding if you have experienced trauma (click the link to take the test).

Typically, families minimize and deny the impacts of trauma. This leads to the trauma continuing to go unaddressed and those who do recognize the trauma are gaslighted. Hey, that’s me! The main reason for doing this is people not wanting to admit to their own pain and behaviors. As a human being and clinical social worker, I understand this to my core. As a trauma survivor, I am maddened about this to my core.

Most who experience intergenerational trauma develop complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Though many have tried, there has not been a separate diagnosis added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for Complex PTSD. The PTSD diagnoses certainly overlap but complex PTSD has unique traits that should be defined independently. Through my personal experience and providing clinical services to children and adults, I have seen a pattern of symptoms that occur with Complex PTSD.

Those with Complex PTSD may experience many or all of the following:

• Finding friendships, romantic, and professional relationships difficult 

• Dissociating 

• Feelings of emptiness or hopelessness 

• Feeling different than others 

• Physical symptoms (stomach aches, ulcers, headaches, dizziness, chest pains, fast breathing, shaking, muscle spasms) 

• Self-harm and suicidal thoughts and behaviors 

• Sleep issues (difficulty falling and staying asleep, nightmares, night terrors, sleepwalking and talking) 

• Hypervigilance 

• Difficulty processing and storing information 

• Struggle to understand own emotions 

• Intense emotions and reactions that don’t always match the situation 

• Flashbacks 

• Depression 

• Anxiety (with or without panic attacks) 

• Substance Use 

• Difficulty concentrating 

• Low self-esteem 

• Avoiding triggers 

• Catastrophizing thoughts

• Labeling situations in extremes of all good or all bad

While outlining this blog post, I wanted the “Now What?” to be a complete guide on how to become the first in a family to stop intergenerational trauma (Relic One). But the truth is, after years of college, providing therapy, my own therapy, researching, and internal processing, I am still figuring it out. So, I am going to take you along with me. Sharing what I already know and what I am figuring out along the journey.

Journal Prompt:

What are the messages you have received from family and/or others that tell you your pain is “wrong” and your traumas don’t exist? These can be direct (“That didn’t happen”) or passive messages (Not talking about it or blaming “You were such a difficult baby”).