Member Article

Personality Disordered Nation: Intergenerational Trauma and Systemic Cultural Dysregulation

Pamela Rosin, LMFT

Let’s talk about volatility and the contagion of dysregulation. Globally, collectively, our survival fear is activated. The stakes are high and the urgency is great. How can we best respond to all of this volatility? How can we help ourselves, each other and our clients?

As someone who supports family members of people with Borderline Personality Disorder, I see how BPD exists systemically, on vertical and horizontal axes. By vertical axis I mean how and why the disorder gets passed down generationally. By horizontal axis I mean how the disorder plays out culturally in society. The interplay of the macro and micro spheres exacerbates the phenomenon and makes healing extra challenging. 

Vertical Axis- Intergenerational Transmission:

To summarize why the disorder is intergenerationally transmitted: for a person who grows up in a household with patterns of BPD there are many factors which contribute to their internalized core beliefs, somatic shape, capacity to self-regulate, and ways of moving in the world. Rather than have a carefree childhood, the child is parentified and understands their role is to prioritize the parent’s well being, including not to do anything that would threaten the relational bond. Rather than be soothed, they must soothe the parent. Rather than be held, they must hold their parent, in essence.

The lack of containment and soothing can result in important developmental milestones getting skipped, the child growing up with affective deficits and a decreased capacity to regulate.

When they have a family of their own, their unexpressed anger may have snowballed over time. Having children of their own may be a probe for their own grief for all that they didn’t get. They may be envious of their children’s innocence, youth, and possibilities.

Even as they do their best to parent their children, the weight of these deficits plus a lifetime of blame and shame cannot help but get woven into the relational bond. Sadly, the intergenerational perpetuation of this pattern is almost guaranteed. 

Horizontal Axis- Cultural Dysregulation

Dysregulation is contagious and I see it happening on epidemic proportions with very little that supports healing in our culture at large. Some examples of volatility that mirror Borderline Personality Disorder include: polarizing view points, cancel culture, splitting, emotional swings, unpredictability, deindividualization and lack of social responsibility in social media communication, the media and how it’s utilized, not to mention conflicts that escalate to a deadly scale. Even the climate is volatile. With the pace and intensity of life, there is very little opportunity to respond rather than react. Volatile behavior is celebrated and encouraged, (or liked and shared). Taking an extreme stance and blocking out others’ points of view earns a sort of badge of righteousness.

How this affects us

As sensitive humans, we therapists are personally impacted by collective dysregulation. Add to that, the possibility that our impetus to become therapists had something to do growing up with developmental trauma, with threats to our Self development or in invalidating environments. This makes us best suited to serve clients with developmental trauma, but also makes us susceptible to getting caught in reenactments with them. Ay, there’s the rub. 

It’s hard to stay conscious of this because the interplay of our clients’ material with our own often results in: us feeling trapped, checking out, referring out, burning out, armoring ourselves, dialing it in, etc. How can we notice something that makes us go numb? Plus, it’s huge work that we do, we use our heart all day long. Why would we want to lean in more when there’s volatility present? Our urge is to protect ourselves, naturally. 

What is required? 

I think it’s key to ask: what intrapersonal work is required that would support us to show up for relational repair? This is a deeply personal invitation to heal ourselves. 

Some of what is required is personal inquiry in the form of countertransference work, boundary work, and deep self care. Knowing our boundaries and our personal material allows us to sense what is ours and what belongs to the client. Equipped with that clarity, we can seek to sense subtle undercurrents in the relational field. If we courageously name what we sense is happening relationally, then we can potentially access and leverage obstacles in the client’s relational dynamics. Plus, we can sense what they never received relationally and start to offer that to them.

When we heal our own nervous system, and cultivate mindfulness and genuine self-love, then we can offer co-regulation to our clients. To say, “it starts with the self,” just begins to scratch the surface. This is a deeply personal journey. As much as dysregulation is contagious, so too is co-regulation. This is an important reason to cultivate regulation personally. Healing our own nervous system on a cellular level not only gets us closer to wholeness and integration, it allows us to offer our clients more of what is needed because we have it inside. It’s a win win. 

What is possible as a result

I would assert that it’s proportional: with great investment comes great potential reward. There can even be a circuit of reciprocal healing. 

Left unexamined, our clients with developmental trauma or dysregulation may evoke subconscious patterns in us. Our version of fight, flight or flee may look like many things including armoring ourselves, dissociating, holding rigid boundaries, extreme appeasement, etc. 

If instead we do the personal work around countertransference, our own trauma work, greater self-care, boundary work, etc., the potential for relational repair is great. Then we can relate to the client in ways unlike anyone else in their world has ever before.

As a result, we may notice an increased capacity to serve our most “challenging” clients, we become more engaged and satisfied by our work. As our work becomes more impactful, we feel better about ourselves and our practice. This in turn generates more energy and more capacity, and on and on. 

None of this is easy, and requires support, inquiry, tools, community, and a high degree of self-care. But we are worth it and so are our clients. 

Please feel free to reach out to me with reflections on any of what I have written here. 

Yours in solidarity in important healing work.

Pamela Rosin, LMFT is the founder of ReParentive® Therapy. www.ReParentiveTherapy.com A graduate of Integral Counseling Psychology program at California Institute for Integral Studies, and a certified Hakomi Therapist, she integrates her professional acting background, a decade as a bodyworker, and years of teaching Shakespeare in prison. Pamela brings relational, loving presence, creativity, an ability to personalize the material, an emphasis on nervous system regulation, which supports integration and learning in her trainings.