EMDR and transgenerational trauma

Transgenerational transmission of trauma is today well recognized. People who haven’t experienced adverse events nevertheless feel the wounds of what happened as if trauma had occurred to them. They show clinical signs of trauma and dissociation, attachment to ascendants is disrupted or trapped in non-constructive behaviour. In the same time they can report contents which occurred to parents and grand-parents in a detached way, reporting about not talking in the family, secrets, drama and catastrophes in repetition.

How to deal with such transmitted suffering ? How to diagnose, to find appropriate targets ? Is it possible to get rid of those strange events the person didn’t experience ? How to keep the effectiveness of the standard EMDR protocol while addressing these kind of trauma ? How to integrate those targets in the targeting sequencing plan ? Are there soft procedures existing, which can be implemented in case of complex trauma ?

We will show how to set targets of transgenerational trauma through genogram and the assessment of the quality of relationships. We will explain how to integrate these targets in the targeting sequencing plan and set a hierarchy of interventions, through the distinction of individual trauma and relational wounds. An approach through the « letters protocol » and the use of « the double protocol » will be discussed.

Conference

English

Hélène Dellucci

Dellucci, H. (2019, June). EMDR and transgenerational trauma. Presentation at the 20th EMDR Europe Association Conference, Krakow, Poland