177. Ancestral Trauma, Inner Child Wounds, and Healing with Evelyn Huynh
Inner Child Wounds and Ancestral Trauma
Every one of us has an inner child, where our subconscious minds store emotional experiences from childhood. And those experiences and emotions shape the lens we bring into the present.
The wounds we experience as children don’t just melt away into the past. And for members of the BIPOC community, inner child wounds often intersect with the ancestral and generational traumas of the community.
Healing is not easy work and there are often many layers to work through, especially when healing hasn’t always been accessible or normalized in the community. But it is possible, and there is beauty on the other side.
Evelyn Huynh and Erica discuss inner child wounds, ancestral trauma, and possibilities for healing.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
Why comparing, downplaying, and minimizing your inner child wounds impedes healing
How inner child wounds intersect with ancestral trauma, especially in the BIPOC community
Where inner child wounds and generational trauma most often show up in our lives
How inner child wounds impact our Imperfect Ally® journeys
Breaking Free from Generational Trauma
Evelyn Huynh is an inner child life coach specializing in generational trauma healing. She is also a master practitioner and trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Life and Success Coaching, Clinical Hypnotherapy, Emotional Freedom Techniques (Tapping), and TIME Techniques. She helps her clients break free from the fears and limiting beliefs that hold them back from the life, relationships, and careers they desire. Her mission is to help as many people as possible tap into their fullest potential by making healing fun!
Validating Trauma Experiences and Inner Child Wounds
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Evelyn Hunyh (she/her) says that everyone not only has an inner child, but we actually have many.
“We have the inner child when we were two, the inner child when we were seven…They essentially become parts of us, the wounded parts, that are still contributing to the things that we do on a daily basis.”
Those wounds come from experiences like mental, physical, or emotional abuse, social rejection, or caregivers who were disapproving or who withheld praise, among others.
With that in mind, Erica cautions that, “We can give ourselves parameters around what trauma is or isn’t…And I think the inner child wound should not be something that people quantify as, ‘oh no, mine wasn’t that bad, so it’s not a wound’...Only you can decide what your trauma is. It’s not a big ‘T’ or a little ‘t,’ it’s just your trauma.”
Evelyn agrees and says she frequently notices the impulse to downplay trauma in her work with members of the BIPOC community, or in communities where certain kinds of trauma are normalized. For example, in her own experience as an Asian Canadian, she says the physical abuse of her childhood was considered normal. But she says downplaying those experiences impedes healing.
“I’m such a huge advocate for helping people validate their experiences…Trauma is trauma…The one thing I feel like we all can agree upon is that we all have wounds and we all have hurts.”
Erica adds that the first step toward healing is acknowledging that an experience has impacted the way you think, feel, or process as an adult. But comparing your wounds or your trauma against another person’s, not only minimizes your experience, but also allows you to avoid dealing with it.
Evelyn says she notices this often when people discuss their relationships with their parents, particularly if they have a reasonably good relationship with them as adults. “When we admit that we have childhood trauma, there’s a part of us that almost feels like it’s a slap to our parents’ face because they did provide so much for us.”
Coming from a family where she says there is “deep trauma on both my maternal and paternal side, there’s this guilt of, your life was not that bad compared to your ancestors, like, what do you need to heal from?”
She continues, “It’s not mutually exclusive. You can have a great childhood and also have childhood wounds. One doesn’t minimize the other.”
The Relationship Between Inner Child Wounds and Ancestral Trauma
Erica says that the wounds we receive from our caregivers are often complicated by an understanding of what they went through. “I think that that’s where we start hitting that place of ancestral trauma a little bit. Because this is what you went through and you either tried to do better, or maybe were still trying to figure out what is better.”
This is especially true for members of the BIPOC community because, “there were a lot of things that our ancestors had to do just to survive, let alone consider thriving and being able to not constantly have the threat of violence upon them on a daily basis.”
Evelyn says the emotions around caregivers are often feelings of fear, mixed with shame and guilt. There’s guilt that your life wasn’t bad compared to your ancestors, and that your caregivers provided so much for you.
“The intersection, I think, between the inner child and the generational trauma is that the generational trauma is the root…I think a really big missing link to inner child healing is that a lot of people don’t talk about, or are not qualified to talk about the generational trauma.”
Erica says that with generational trauma, it can be difficult to tease out what anxieties, fears, or mistrust belong to you and your experiences, and what has been passed down.
Evelyn explains that genetically, only 2% of our DNA accounts for visible, physical traits like your skin, hair, or eye color. The other 98% of “non-coding” DNA is responsible for your personality, behaviors, and emotions.
“There’s a large part of you in your programming, in you already, in your mind, in your cells, and in your DNA that are pre-programmed with emotions and belief systems and personality traits that aren’t even yours.”
She says when people are struggling to understand if their current challenges can be ascribed to generational trauma, “There’s not a single client that I have worked with where the challenges and problems that they’ve shared with me have been their own. Which means that these things have been traced back.”
She continues, “We are going through life with these attachments to our ancestral lineage and we don’t even realize it. And so we’re suffering and we’re struggling in this present day with problems and challenges that weren’t even ours to begin with.”
Erica says it can be a scary and difficult thing to begin to pull apart the stories around challenges and trace them back to their roots. And people avoid it “because what does that mean about me?...What does that mean about those that matter to me?”
Evelyn says that doing the work of unraveling ancestral trauma often requires a perspective shift.
“For the first time, [you] get to choose who you want to be, free from these masks and these molds that have been painted for you…Most of us are following a path that has been paved for us through our ancestors, through our culture, through our religion, through society…And now it’s like, okay, well, what does fulfill me? And for one, it might be really debilitating and terrifying. And then for the other, it might be freeing and liberating.”
Navigating Wounds and Generational Trauma
Evelyn says that the three most common areas of our lives where inner child wounds show up are in our relationships, in our careers, and in our mindset and relationships with our bodies.
And most people haven’t learned about ancestral trauma or been taught the tools for navigating these struggles.
“A lot of people just think, I’m messed up. I’m broken…It’s like no, honey, you actually experienced all these things that led up to this point that you don’t even realize.”
Erica adds that it’s rare for most people to take the time to pause and consider where their challenges are really coming from.
Evelyn agrees and says, “I had to reprogram my mind to be able to think this way, but the majority of people are on that autopilot…And unfortunately, a lot of people have never been given the safe space to pause. Because a lot of us, especially in the BIPOC community, have just lived our entire lives in this fight or flight. Everything has been based off survival, so that pausing can actually be very, very hard.”
Erica notes that being able to pause is a privilege, in and of itself, both in the aspect of having the physical safety to pause, and being able emotionally to take that pause away from social and cultural pressures to always be doing something.
Inner Child Wounds, Perfectionism, and Allyship
Evelyn says that one of the core wounds that shows up is the feeling of not being good enough, and this impacts the way that people are able to receive support and Imperfect Allyship® from others through lack of trust or feeling undeserving.
“Sometimes it’s just this feeling in our body that’s like, why are you doing this? There has to be something that you want out of this. So then we block ourselves off to receiving.”
Erica says this dynamic can be complicated when we apply standards of purity to others’ intentions.
“We are all doing things from a certain sense of self…Obviously there are definitely pieces that are full-blown selfish or full-blown self-serving. But we do things because it makes us feel good to support others…but that doesn’t all of the sudden mean that because it’s not 100% altruistic…that it’s not valid either.”
Evelyn adds that she has also noticed inner child wounds of not being good enough holding people back from giving allyship, particularly among white people.
“Their own inner child wound was holding them back and almost, in a way, preventing them from being able to be an ally, because they didn’t even know how to.”
Erica says this is why it’s so important to emphasize Imperfect Allyship®.
“It has always felt like if you’re not doing this right, if you’re not doing this ideally and perfectly, don’t do it…But there is absolutely nowhere in our lives that we do anything perfectly, nothing…If you allow that imperfection, or opportunity for growth…to be the reason that you no longer continue, then nothing changes. And if that isn’t white supremacy, I don’t know what is.”
Getting to Know Your Family History
Evelyn suggests that anyone who is interested in delving into the relationship between their challenges and generational trauma is to begin by collecting more information about their family history.
“A lot of us try to go through life achieving our goals. And we try to move forward and then we wonder why we keep being held back, almost like a rubber band…and the key is in our family history.”
It can take the form of meditation, journaling, or speaking to someone, but she advises, “Just start asking questions. What did my parents go through? What did my grandparents go through? And then if you want to take this one step further, start thinking about the things you are currently experiencing, challenges in your life right now, and see if you can make those connections.”
She continues, “What I’ve noticed that this has done for a lot of people, is it helps you harness a deeper level of compassion, as well as forgiveness and love for your family history, your story, as well as for you.”
Ready to Dive Deeper?
Healing is no small feat. It requires time and effort, but it also requires that you allow your body, mind, spirit, and soul to rest. Giving your nervous system a break allows you to be able to continue doing the work of healing.
Members of Pause on the Play® The Community have evergreen access to our Allyship Sound Meditation Concert, created by Natasha Freeman of Lucid Living RVA. A sound meditation helps your nervous system relax and supports you in being able to access restorative rest.
Get access to the Meditation Concert and our entire library of evergreen resources by joining at pauseontheplay.com/community