204. Your Guide to Generational Trauma feat. Dr. Mariel Buqué

Nov 11

listen to this episode:

Today's guest is Dr. Mariel Buqué— a first-generation Black Dominican psychologist, a world-renowned intergenerational trauma expert, and the author of the bestselling book Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Her mission is to help reduce the recurrence of Intergenerational ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) within communities of color.

In this episode, we discuss:

+ What generational trauma is & how it works

+ If generational trauma varies by sibling

+ How being born with generational trauma can affect you

+ Ways to prevent generational trauma from negatively impacting you

+ What it means to break the cycle of generational trauma

+ Breaking generational trauma cycles despite pushback from your family

+ Supporting others who are breaking their own generational trauma cycles

+ Navigating the intense emotions that come with cycle-breaking

+ How to lower stress & boost safety when doing healing work

+ Where to start when beginning to break generational trauma cycles

+ so much more!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Dr. Buqué's website

+ Break the Cycle Trauma Center

+ Break the Cycle

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

Mariel: One of the things that is most critical in the work around generational trauma, is to, first work on regulating the nervous system, with that, you are creating, , an emotional foundation of greater, , strength, to be able to then do some of the digging work into those past wounds. In a way where you don't feel like , you're trying to crawl out of your own skin because you feel so incredibly emotionally overwhelmed.

Sadie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to She Persisted. I'm so excited you guys are here today. It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Almost have grad school apps submitted, but things are busy busy, hence the the adjusted release schedule of She Persisted, but we have a really exciting conversation today that I know you guys are gonna love and learn so much from.

We have Dr. Mariel Bouquet on the podcast. She is a first generation Black Dominican psychologist, a world renowned intergenerational trauma expert, she's the author of Break the Cycle, and she is a Columbia professor. We talk about so many things in this episode,

but I really wanted to make this episode like a foundational first stop shop, everything you need to know about what generational trauma is, how that might apply to you, how you can support others navigating generational trauma, and I really hope you get that in this interview. We talk about what generational trauma is, how it works, if it varies by siblings, how being born with generational trauma can affect you, ways to prevent it from negatively impacting you, what it means to break the cycle.

others when they're navigating their own journeys. Navigating those intense emotions that can arise when you are doing the work to break the cycle. How to lower stress and boost emotional safety. And then also where to begin if you are breaking trauma cycles. So really, everything you need to know to start your journey is in this episode.

And this was just such an incredible conversation. So grateful to have had this conversation with Dr. Bouquet. And I hope you guys loved this as much as I did. We'll dive in, but as you guys know, if you enjoy the episode, share with a friend or family member, tag me at She Persists to podcast, all the things.

I hope you guys are having a good fall, and with that, let's dive in.

Thank you so much for coming on She Persisted. I'm so excited for this conversation and to pick your brain about all things intergenerational trauma.

I think it's something that young adults are starting to become aware of, but it's not something that they fully understand, so I'm really excited to get your insight and expertise in this conversation.

Mariel: And I'm so excited to join you in this conversation, especially, , you know, in, in talking about the incoming generation and ways that, , we could proactively learn about generational trauma.

So thank you for having me.

Sadie: Of course. To get things started, I would love to hear a little bit about your background and how you came to be an expert in generational trauma and work in the mental health space.

Mariel: Yeah, you know, working in the mental health space is actually something that happened a little bit more by happenstance.

I was volunteering while I was still, , an ad executive in New York for a couple years. And in that volunteer work, I actually realized that Being able to help folks from the perspective of mental health was an option, which I didn't actually know prior to, and it was something that, you know, it just became cemented in me, of wanting to do, but fast forward into when I was then getting my clinical training.

A lot of the training and a lot of the clients that I had the pleasure of working with, , was centralized around trauma and centralized around generational trauma, but we were actually not using that language, because it's such a new language within the field of mental health that we weren't necessarily like really understanding that that's what we were working with in the room.

, we in essence just thought, okay, there's this person that's been depressed for decades. , but not really realizing that there's a root to that depression. There's something that's happening that's feeding the depression and not allowing it to subside. And so that's when I started becoming really curious about what else is there that we're not naming and we're not working through that, that's going to be really essential to create sustainable healing.

Sadie: For people that are not familiar with generational trauma, can you explain to us How that works how far back it goes and we'll talk about breaking that cycle, but how do you define generational trauma?

Mariel: Yeah Generational trauma is the only type of trauma that can actually be passed down the family line As far as we know and it happens at the intersection of our biology and our psychology meaning that within our biology We can have a parent or two, grandparents, great grandparents and distant ancestors who have actually suffered traumas within their own lifetimes.

And if that trauma had not found a point of resolution to some extent, to an extent that they were able to live in greater peace than not, Then it's likely that it could have shown up in their genetic encoding, in their gene expressions. This is where we kind of like, have an understanding of the seals of epigenetics, which means that our social environments can actually drive our genes to turn on or off, , specific tags depending on, , what's happening to us.

And if all of that is happening, right, then these gene expressions transition, they change. And upon conception, the next generation then inherits gene, messaging that is reflective of the pains of the past. And now fast forward to everything that happens after we're born. This is where the psychology part comes in.

And if we're born into a home, maybe where there's emotional chaos, etc. It's rampant and relentless, or if we have a parent or two who themselves are living in trauma and aren't really attuning to us, or if we have, you know, an experience of bullying in school, or if we have a turbulent relationship that has toxic elements, or if we have a pandemic that we had to struggle through and really suffered a number of losses through it.

All of this then factors into our psychology and what now with this. You know, emotional vulnerability that is biological, it can get triggered into being a trauma response and then making us now the new bearer of generational trauma.

Sadie: For listeners that have siblings, Is generational trauma going to be consistent for each child, or is it more dependent on, like you said, that psychology and those subjective experiences of what people go through?

Mariel: What an excellent question. I really appreciate this question. And although we don't have really a ton of like sibling studies, , there's a lot of studies like in the field of psychology, which I'm sure you already know that have twin studies, especially in twin studies are used in order to really kind of, have an understanding of, What transpired that could have impacted one child versus the other?

But what you're saying is indeed true. A person's circumstances and their own capabilities will factor into how a person internalizes trauma versus not because we can have one sibling that is in a really turbulent and dysfunctional relationship that could upend their life and the other sibling have a series of healthy relationships that don't actually trigger that trauma response.

So it is contingent upon the person's social environment. But what we do know is that biologically it is likely that, you know, two individuals coming from the same womb and the same, kind of genetic makeup could have a similar, genetic, or at least like, biological, , process.

Sadie: I'm curious what this looks like if you are, like, aware that you have a history of generational trauma in your family.

When we hear trauma, we often think of, PTSD, or we think of doing, trauma work, or unlearning these belief systems. But if generational trauma is in the picture, are people more likely to be depressed or anxious? Does it show up in relationships? Maybe it's emotional sensitivity. What are you, like, predisposed for.

I guess that would be the best way to explain it if generational trauma is something that's in the equation.

Mariel: know, , when we look at generational trauma, we're not only looking at those biological vulnerabilities, , which of course, you know, could make us predisposed to a host of things. , but the, the ones that we have the more concrete research on is the predisposition to PTSD, which means that, , there is a likelihood that the, hormonal makeup that is in our bodies.

even upon birth. That that is already structured a certain way to make it so that we may experience stress more potently and therefore potentially have that transform into PTSD symptoms in our lifetime. and Now, when it comes to generational trauma, there's also, like I mentioned, that psychological aspect of it.

So we're also looking at the ways in which there's been potentially modeling within a person's home where there may have been one or two or several family members that have actually had, let's say, codependent qualities. And those codependent qualities were modeled. And because they were modeled, especially at such a young age where we're ingesting socially, you know, kind of how to be based on what we're seeing the adults do and say in our environment, then it's a greater likelihood that we'll have that, you know, PTSD symptomatology, but coupled with that, we'll also have codependent qualities.

And the same goes for a host of other kinds of interpersonal qualities that are also situated in And, you know, relational trauma, especially.

Sadie: Before we get into breaking the cycle and doing the work so that this pattern of generational trauma doesn't continue, would love to know what your thoughts are on, I guess, preventative work would be the question.

Like if you aren't necessarily experiencing similar patterns of codependency or you know, Aren't seeing symptoms of PTSD, but you're aware that there's a history of generational trauma in your family Are there certain like resilience factors that can make you less likely to experience these kind of I guess examples of generational trauma in your own life things that you can do whether it's relationships or coping skills belief systems things like that

Mariel: Excellent question.

So one of the most important and effective mitigating factors against trauma surfacing in our lives, especially when we're still, children is to have a At least one adult in our lives that is persistently there, present, and supportive. So, even if we have that experience of that bully in school, that there is someone that's there who we can have a candid conversation with.

Who can also show us that they can protect us and help us. So, , it's really important to note that because the relationship that we have with a safe person can really be helpful in us not then obtaining symptomatology for the long term. , but there are also a number of different things that we can be doing both as a society and as individuals in order to help mitigate trauma or to at least Ensure that we're getting ahead of it.

First and foremost, really kind of as a society, I think it's really critical that we start having very candid and intentional conversations about how to talk about trauma in the school system, in health ed, in other aspects of, you know, sometimes we're like in history lessons and we're not talking about the trauma that has been suffered by the individuals that were a part of that historical.

And so things like that, that, that I think can be incredibly helpful in us obtaining the language prior to even ever needing it is a part of that proactive, you know, kind of like agenda that I think is really essential.

from the perspective of, you know, an individual, one of the things that we have not been taught to do is to have Body attunement since we're little and very often you see, especially right now, I think us millennials are, are definitely in a place where we are enacting a lot of ways to actually help us to absolve the pains of the past by tuning into our bodies for the first time, because we were never taught.

In the education system within our homes, no one's ever taught us to have body awareness, body attunement and body regulation practices, , within our day to day. And I think it's such a disservice that, , , you know, I can't even call it a disservice because quite frankly, somatic psychotherapy and somatics in and of itself, , hasn't really made its way into the Western world until really very recently.

, but I think that what we can do with that information, with the understanding that that can be a helpful, , set of practices that can really help a person to gain, like, a Emotional resilience. I think that we can have greater conversations about it to intersperse it into our daily lives, make it more of a lifestyle change that we could tune in with our bodies when we're having a conversation and see how we're taking in that conversation from an emotional perspective.

, if we could do more of that, even in https: otter. ai

Sadie: Yeah, so breaking the cycle, I think this is one of the things that people are probably most aware of because it's quite a hot topic on social media. I was on TikTok yesterday you've probably seen this before, where it's like you have the three glasses and it's grandmother, mother, child, and then you're like pouring the water and it's like, this is you breaking the cycle.

Everyone is, is talking about this, but I think there isn't as much of a nuanced understanding of what this actually means and what that, that work looks like and what that impact looks like for future generations. So for people that aren't familiar, what does it mean to break the cycle? And is that possible?

Because we did talk about this biological piece.

Mariel: Yeah. You know, , breaking the cycle means that you are going through the number of patterns that are present, not only in your family, but. Many times in your community and even in the larger society and deciding to actually take On the really, really arduous and complicated task of no longer perpetuating those cycles forward.

, and that can mean a host of things, right? But cycle breakers just know that the status quo of how things have been can no longer be maintained and things need to change. So if that status quo is that, you know, . Hitting kids in the home being just a, cultural norm or, or even a family norm. , , understanding for yourself that that is no longer a norm that will be persistent within your family line because you are cutting the cord, you are breaking the cycle of hitting children and sending them into, you know, a psychological spiral.

So it can look like that and it can look like, you know, kind of in a, in a more community based, , way. It can also look like maybe educating community members on the fact that, , physical retribution upon a child can actually have very long standing effects and it isn't, you know, helpful or healing or even conducive of learning, which is usually what people want for a child to change their behavior and learn alternate behaviors and their brain is, is not actually comprehending that because their brain is in survival mode.

So, you know, there, there are ways that we can kind of enact. , break the cycle protocol within our own life, , from an interpersonal or family based perspective by looking at the patterns that we wish to disrupt within our families. But we can also extend that forward into our communities. We can do like some of the volunteer work that I did, right.

And like do psycho education to community members and community members could even be Your friends right and just like sharing details with your friends like oh, I read this book or I heard this podcast And it was really informative as to you know, the ways that I need to enact change within my own life Maybe this is something that's applicable to your life and to your family.

Let's talk about it. And that's already community work because you're extending the work forward. so it's really important for us to consider those, different layers of how we can break cycles.

Sadie: I'm really curious. It's about how this looks when you have a close relationship with your family, but you're also trying to do this work.

You've spoken to so many people about this. You have, I'm sure, supported many people through this process as well. Are there challenges that arise when one individual is trying to break a cycle, and I'm sure parents perceive it as like, you're saying I did something wrong, or you're saying that I've, you know, I'm sure there's tension that arises there, especially if maybe the child is really ready to do the work.

The parent isn't in the same headspace. How do you recommend that people navigate that?

Mariel: Yeah. You know, , this is one of the toughest parts of breaking cycles. It's like having the difficult conversations with people that we love, who we wish to maintain a relationship with. But Who we understand has also potentially perpetuated harm, even if they weren't aware of the fact that, , their own behaviors were harmful.

And one of the things that you just said is actually, guiding post in those conversations, which is us being able to say and acknowledge, I know you did the best you could. I know that you had only a limited amount of tools and I had this vast internet and the podcast world and books and language and research studies that are prominent right now in my generation and all of these hosts of tools and skills and therapy.

That actually helped to reorient me around how to behave differently in a way that isn't as harmful as it has been, , within our family. And I think that what can also be helpful is being able to, again, with that element of compassion, being able to say, I can tell that you suffered a lot in your childhood too.

I can tell that something happened that was hurtful and harmful and, not helpful. And. You know, my heart is open to listening. And I think that that's the bridge, right? Like these are the things that can actually create healthy conversation rather than the conversation feeling like it's pointing fingers in any direction because that's just going to erect walls and everybody's going to feel invalidated.

Not supported and not seen in the conversation.

Sadie: Yeah, I think one thing that can be challenging about this conversation that maybe people are less excited about having these conversations on a day to day basis. Obviously, we still have a lot of mental health stigma So we're not having these conversations in line at Starbucks or whatever it is But I also think there's that element of we all have these different families of origins and lived experiences and like you were saying there can be be that gap that needs to be bridged between, okay, I didn't necessarily have that lived experience, but I want to support you in doing this work, and I'd love to understand, and I'd love to be there as a support system.

Do you have any advice for people who are in that position, where maybe they have a friend, or an extended family member, or a significant other who is going through this work, they're trying to break generational trauma, but this person maybe doesn't have the family of origin with a similar experience or they just can't pull from their own experiences when validating and empathizing.

Mariel: Yeah, I find that, it can be incredibly helpful to create, a community. Even if the community is a one person community, meaning like another person with you, that Can actually hear you out, understand your journey, potentially walk that journey with you. I oftentimes speak to even the ways that when I entered This work as a human, as a person, as me, , as Mariel rather than Dr.

Mariel, helping others to walk through this path. When I was doing it myself, , I decided to be a cycle breaker, co cycle breaker with my sister and with my best friend. And. Separately, I would have conversations with each of them about some elements of breaking cycles, some way in which I was experiencing triggers from the people around me that perhaps weren't ready to change, and how I could then Find my way back to peace.

And I think that that was, helpful to have that support system. But the added bonus was that because they were also breaking cycles, that I was also being helpful to them. So it was very co regulating in a healthy, interdependent, and not co dependent way. , while also being very informative in, in healthy and, safe conversations with people that I love.

Love and trust who were also willing to go into the spaces of vulnerability for themselves, but even for me and with me, to be able to break cycles together. I oftentimes tell people, if you can find a co healing partner, by all means, please, you know, please do it. Walk the path with them, share the resources with them.

If you're listening to podcasts, listen to them and debrief on them. If you're reading a book, read a chapter at a time and then reconnect and, and find your way into the healing space with someone so that it doesn't feel as lonely because loneliness can be very traumatic. So we don't want to add trauma to the trauma.

We want to be able to create. places of safety, of emotional safety, in order for, , the trauma to have a safe space to be felt.

Sadie: What do you do if those challenging experiences, or traumatic, , experience, whether it's loneliness or maybe there's conflict as you're navigating this with family. Any type of mental health work can bring up lots of feelings and strong emotions.

What do you do and how do you recommend that people navigate those intense feelings that arise throughout this process of cycle breaking?

Mariel: Well, you know, it can be helpful, of course, to have, , people Trains mental health professional to work with and I understand that that's not always a point of access for folks, especially right now With the overburning of the system because the system wasn't structured well beyond the pandemic to be able to support as many folks as need support right now, but one of the things that is most critical in the work around generational trauma, and I structured not only my own therapy sessions, but also my book in this way is to, first work on regulating the nervous system, connecting to the body in a way where You and your body are, you know, kind of in unison in learning to default to safety more often than you default to stress and trauma or trauma triggers.

And with that, with that season of, Learning how to regulate. You are creating, , an emotional foundation of greater, , strength, let's call it, right? , emotional strength to be able to then do some of the digging work into those past wounds. In a way where you don't feel like you, you're trying to crawl out of your own skin because you feel so incredibly emotionally overwhelmed.

And so that is like step zero really of doing generational trauma work is like really understanding the ways and the mechanisms and the skills of how to ground and then transitioning into the work. But the beauty of then transitioning is that you now have. mastery that's been obtained of the emotion regulation skills so that when you get into that territory of my emotions are Going, you know, into 7, 8, 9 of 10, you have the skills that you'll need to regulate.

Sadie: You mentioned defaulting into safety instead of stress. I'm curious what that means to default into stress. Is it mentally? Is it emotionally? Is it like the way you're speaking to yourself? And then, what does that process look like of going to safety rather than stress?

Mariel: Yeah, I think the default is stress.

What I mean by that is, , defaulting to a nervous system state of, , alarm. So going into, I know that there's expansions that are happening even as we speak of like the different, , categories, but fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, you know, being like the standing for, , and if something happens that's in front of us, for example, , We're gonna use like a benign example Benign enough we lose our favorite pen This pen was gifted by someone that was you know Very dear to us and had our name on it was special pen lost the pen lost it at the airport Can I get it?

Of course, it's gonna bring up a lot of emotions and even emotions that are very complex one might I see it as a pen, but that pen carries an emotional connection. That pen is also bringing up loss and the loss that's been, you know, present for us for a very long time in reference to other things, loss of people, loss of community, loss of, you know, not being in our hometown and transitioning.

All the loss is coming up, right? And the trigger response is there and it's, accumulating. And that can be like the place where we. to, if anything is lost. And let's say that the same person really keeps a tight ship running on, you know, controlling all the variables around their life in order to never experience loss.

So there's a lot that's happening. from the perspective of loss around this item. And that's the place where, you know, we're defaulting to time. And again, what we're learning with the, regulation work of trauma is that we're learning then to process emotionally any loss that happens around us.

minimal or big, but we're processing it differently. So we're not going into full emotional shutdown and emotional overwhelm. Instead, we may feel it may say, man, I'm really sad. That sucks. But our body isn't like, Going into states of dissociation, going into places where we feel a lack of safety and we're really losing time and losing our connection to our present world.

So that's what I mean by going, you know, into safety versus like that stress response, which is more kind of like that nervous system response that tends to overtake us.

Sadie: Yeah. You mentioned earlier that we're in a really unique period of time because there's so many resources, whether it's podcasts or books or research.

What are your recommendations for people that are beginning to do this work and looking for more things they can consume but not sure where to start?

Mariel: Yeah, I would first start with learning more about yourself. I think it can be incredibly helpful to do things that are so easy. It almost seems like it's like a hundred years back in time.

, but sitting outside for a moment without our phones and just looking at trees and breathing in fresh air. There's so much you can learn about yourself in a moment where you sit in silence that is so incredibly critical to your mental health that because we are so over consumed with technology around us, we're not really allotting that time to really getting to know ourselves.

In those moments, someone could pass by and they could have a cologne that smells like the cologne of a really toxic ex, let's say, right? And your arms and your, chest and everything just starts tingling. And in that moment, you can have a point of recognition of the fact that there is a trigger that you can experience in reference to a smell, but you wouldn't have otherwise like had that understanding if you were, you know, hopping from one train to the next on your phone and you also had you know, music playing in your headphones and you're like moving and there's so much happening you're not Allowing yourself an opportunity to get to know yourself in a way that is actually going to inform your healing.

Because later on in the healing process, once we start doing the digging work, once we start really reconciling some of those wounds, we're going to need that data in order to understand what we need to work on.

Sadie: Gotcha. I have really enjoyed this. I think people are going to learn so much from this conversation and I think there's just so much nuance, but you explained it in a really digestible way, especially for people that are beginning this journey.

If people want to continue to read your books and consume your content, where can they do that?

Mariel: Well, they can find me at drmariellebouquet. com and my clinical practice is BreakTheCycleOfTrauma. com

Sadie: Incredible. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.

She persisted podcast.com. Thanks for supporting. Keep persisting and I'll see you next week.

© 2020 She Persisted LLC. This podcast is copyrighted subject matter owned by She Persisted LLC and She Persisted LLC reserves all rights in and to the podcast. Any use without She Persisted LLC’s express prior written consent is prohibited.