When Liz Prager O\u2019Brien was growing up in Rhode Island, the trauma her mother had endured during World War II would sneak up on both of them at unexpected moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her mom was 2 years old when she and her parents fled their small Polish town. They left a comfortable life and spent the next dozen years in dire poverty, struggling to survive.<\/p>\n
As a young refugee going from one war-torn country to the next, Prager O\u2019Brien\u2019s mom didn\u2019t have opportunities to develop friendships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So decades later, when Prager O\u2019Brien was 9 years old and sought advice on how to handle a disagreement between her friends, her mother lashed out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018I never had childhood friends. Why the hell are you asking me?\u2019\u201d Prager O\u2019Brien, who\u2019s now 60, said her mom screamed at her.<\/p>\n
This and similar interactions left Prager O\u2019Brien frightened and confused.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me feel like my feelings didn\u2019t matter, my problems didn\u2019t matter,\u201d she said, adding that the harsh responses laid the groundwork for her lifelong anxiety and depression. \u201cI really believed that I didn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a> stretches into a second month, descendants of survivors of previous conflicts say they fear the war there could leave lasting scars on Ukrainians living through it \u2014 as well as the generations that follow them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a psychological phenomenon is known as generational trauma<\/a>. Most widely studied among children of Holocaust survivors<\/a>, generational trauma, also called intergenerational or transgenerational trauma, refers to the effects of trauma that get passed down a family\u2019s lineage, changing the lives of not just those who experienced a traumatic event but subsequent generations who never had direct exposure to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like the generation before them, they may live with heightened anxiety, major depression, have trouble connecting with others and regulating their feelings, and it may negatively affect how they parent their own children.\u00a0<\/p>\n War is not its only cause. Experts say racism, domestic violence, sexual and other forms of abuse can also set the stage for generational trauma.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a style of attachment that these parents have when they are depressed, when they are trying to keep the secret and not share the horrors that they have experienced, that all comes through in the family,\u201d said Sandra Mattar, a clinical psychologist and is an assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a style of attachment that these parents have when they are depressed, when they are trying to keep the secret and not share the horrors that they have experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The detached parenting style can affect their ability to teach children how to regulate their emotions.<\/p>\n \u201cThese children may have trouble self-soothing,\u201d explained Mattar, who also directs training at the Immigrant and Refugee Health Center at Boston Medical Center.<\/p>\n The consequences can extend beyond mental health. People in a constant state of stress produce more of the hormone cortisol, which suppresses their immune system, increasing the risk for colds, viral illnesses and autoimmune diseases<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mattar said therapy, spirituality and education about the physical and cognitive effects of trauma are key to helping refugees at her clinic.\u00a0<\/p>\n For anyone with generational trauma in their families, addressing it is a first step, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to talk about it, to normalize talking about it and to seek help,\u201d Mattar said. \u201cIt becomes this big monster in the family dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n Jason Tammemagi, 47, an animation producer in Dublin, Ireland, whose paternal grandparents fled Estonia in 1944 when Soviet troops invaded, was determined not to continue that dynamic when he had his own children.<\/p>\n His grandparents stayed in Estonia during the war with their two teenage children for as long as they thought they safely could. When they left, their daughter, who was about 18, had dreams of marrying a soldier and refused to go, Tammemagi said. Their other child, a son who was about 14, became ill and died during their journey across Europe. Eventually, they arrived in the United Kingdom, armed with a photo of their son\u2019s grave and hardly anything else; Tammemagi\u2019s father was born later.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a wound he kind of inherited.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThey had to leave behind an entire life,\u201d Tammemagi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n What his grandparents went through had ramifications for his father, who Tammemagi said struggled with his emotions while growing up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a wound he kind of inherited,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can trace it back through those generations of hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n While conflict and other intensely painful experiences can result in irreplaceable losses and deep harm, experts say it\u2019s not a given that they will lead to generational trauma \u2014 or post-traumatic stress disorder.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite how common traumas are \u2014 about 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women will experience an event that qualifies as traumatic, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs\u2019 National Center for PTSD <\/a>\u2014 only about 6 percent of people develop PTSD. The mental health condition is characterized by flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety and other symptoms that interrupt daily life, and an avoidance of situations that remind a person of the event.<\/p>\n Generational trauma does increase the risk for PTSD, as well as anxiety disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia, said Dr. Gayani DeSilva, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Southern California.<\/p>\n This is \u201cpartly genetic and it\u2019s partly parenting styles,\u201d she said. While a parent who is clouded by depression or is suspicious of the world around them may not be connecting emotionally with their child, controversial research<\/a> suggests that generational trauma may potentially affect offspring on an epigenetic<\/a> level.\u00a0<\/p>\n That means that while there has been no alteration to a person\u2019s DNA as a result of the trauma, someone could pass down traits induced by the trauma that carry a heightened risk for developing mental health problems, depending on the family dynamics.<\/p>\n But it can be prevented, DeSilva said.<\/p>\n \u201cParenting plus societal awareness and intervention to decrease further traumas can help,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s humanitarian crisis has already left many in need: More than 10 million<\/a> Ukrainians, or a quarter of the nation\u2019s population, have fled their homes and are now displaced in the country or are among its more than 3 million refugees, according to the United Nations<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jasmine Chan, 34, a communications director for a consulting firm who lives in Los Angeles, worries that in addition to physical threats to their safety, Ukrainian refugees will feel severed from their culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s something that happened to her maternal grandmother, who in her late teens left her village in China. It was during the Japanese occupation of World War II, and there was not enough food at home to sustain their large family, so her grandmother and her grandmother\u2019s brother fled to Hong Kong, where Chan\u2019s grandmother eventually met Chan\u2019s grandfather.<\/p>\n In Hong Kong her grandmother had economic opportunities she would not have had in her rural village. But she never reconnected with the family she left behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing what my grandmother went through, I feel like we have lost not quite the identity, but it\u2019s more the linkages to our family, and knowing who they were,\u201d Chan, a communications director for a consulting firm, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although her grandmother lost her ties to her past, she put a strong emphasis on traditions when Chan was growing up, such as\u00a0 Sunday family gatherings, she said.<\/p>\n Prager O\u2019Brien, who still lives in Rhode Island, in Wakefield, also had special rituals with her grandmother, Tamara Sylman, whom she \u201ccould always count on for unconditional love.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0While Sylman rarely talked about the life in Poland that she and her family escaped, she would do everything she could to express how much she cared for her granddaughter. She constantly performed small acts of kindness, said Prager O\u2019Brien, as she recalled how her grandmother sewed for her, or peeled pomegranates for her, giving her the juicy seeds.<\/p>\n It was a bond that Prager O\u2019Brien never had with her mother. When Prager O\u2019Brien had her own children, she used her grandmother as a role model.<\/p>\n \u201cTo break this chain of trauma, I have poured my heart and soul into my children,\u201d Prager O\u2019Brien said. \u201cI tell them every time I speak with them, even if it\u2019s by text, that I love them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-760x428,f_auto,q_auto:best\/mpx\/2704722219\/2022_03\/tdy_ukraine_child_train_220320-ij7lc2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\nHow generational trauma gets passed down<\/h2>\n
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\u2018Break this chain of trauma\u2019<\/h2>\n
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