Therapy for Intergenerational Trauma
IN-PERSON IN BRAMPTON, VIRTUAL ACROSS ONTARIO
A grounded therapy approach that helps you understand inherited emotional patterns, explore unresolved trauma, and build healthier emotional and relational patterns.
Trauma-Informed Care
Culturally-Sensitive Approach
Personalized Therapist Matching
Not every wound begins in your own story.
Sometimes the impact of intergenerational trauma shows up less through memory and more through pattern. Fear, guilt, emotional distance, hypervigilance, and deeply ingrained family roles can all reflect what has been carried across generations.
These patterns can feel so familiar that their impact is not always clear right away.
At Here and Now Therapy, we create space to explore these patterns and the impact they may still have on your emotions, relationships, and inner life.
What is Intergenerational Trauma?
We Meet You Where You Are
Intergenerational trauma refers to trauma that does not end with the people who lived through it directly. Its effects can move through families and communities, then shape later generations through stress responses, attachment patterns, family roles, silence, fear, and beliefs about safety, trust, and survival.
This kind of trauma often begins in large scale or prolonged harm, such as residential schools, colonial violence, genocide, war, forced displacement, the Holocaust, and racial discrimination.
Since these patterns shape personality, a person may come across as guarded, overly independent, reactive, perfectionistic, or emotionally shut down, when in reality these responses developed as forms of survival.
Therapists at Here and Now Therapy draw from Somatic Experiencing, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and Internal Family Systems (IFS). These approaches help you understand how trauma lives in the body and mind, explore patterns within your internal system, and build more regulated, flexible ways of responding over time.
If any of these feel familiar:
Emotional reactions feel stronger than the situation calls for
Guilt shows up when setting boundaries or choosing yourself
Trouble feeling safe, even when nothing is wrong
Feel responsible for other people’s emotions
Overthink conversations, decisions, or interactions
We begin by matching you with a therapist experienced in family systems, intergenerational trauma, and relational dynamics, so the support feels safe, thoughtful, and culturally aware.
Our therapists use evidence-based, trauma-informed approaches in sessions. Work focuses on helping you feel more steady in daily life.
Meet Our Therapists
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Rajdeep Deol
Anxiety, Self-Esteem, Communication Challenges
Currently Accepting New Clients
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Sonya Mahil
Stress, Trauma, Anxiety, Life Transitions
Currently Accepting New Clients
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Lizzie Lake
Non-Monogamy Affirming, Trauma, Life Transitions
Currently Accepting New Clients
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Carly Dukaczewski
Trauma, PTSD, Life Transitions
Currently Accepting New Clients
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Harsimran Kaur
Anxiety, Trauma, BPD, Relationship Issues
Currently Accepting New Clients
Why Choose Here and Now Therapy?
Therapy makes space for what has been carried across generations, including experiences that were never fully understood, expressed, or resolved. What gets passed down is not your whole story, and therapy can help you begin shaping what comes next.
We also bring experience working with South Asian individuals and families, where intergenerational patterns often intersect with culture, migration, and family expectations.
Sign Up For A Complimentary 20-Minute Consultation
Questions About Intergenerational Trauma Therapy
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Yes, it is often passed down generations through family systems, attachment patterns, learned behaviours, and emotional environments. As children, you may have internalized unprocessed stress responses and coping strategies from your caregivers.
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Signs often show up as emotional or relationship patterns that feel hard to explain or stronger than expected. This can include chronic guilt, hypervigilance, emotional detachment, over responsibility, or repeated patterns in relationships.
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Trauma does not change your DNA sequence, but it can affect how certain genes function through processes like DNA methylation. DNA methylation adds chemical markers to genes that can turn stress related responses up or down. Research suggests trauma may influence these patterns across generations, though evidence in humans is still developing.
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Therapy helps you identify patterns shaped by family history and understand how they still affect your emotions, relationships, and sense of self. Approaches such as Somatic Experiencing, ACT, CBT, and Internal Family Systems can support regulation, insight, and more flexible ways of responding.
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A therapist who understands intergenerational trauma looks beyond surface symptoms and considers family systems, attachment patterns, and survival responses. They guide you through the deeper context of these patterns instead of viewing them as isolated issues.