Ancestral Healing: Are You Carrying Your Grandparents’ or Parents’ Sexual Trauma?
Eight years ago, I took a road trip with my mother to visit family in Arizona. On that drive, the landscape of my life changed forever. It was during those hours on the road that I learned about our family’s hidden secret: a history of sexual abuse that spanned decades and was still causing deep hurt.
At the time, I didn’t know how to talk about it. It felt heavy and unspeakable. But that story followed me into my training as a somatic therapist at Naropa University. With the help of my professors, my cohort, and my own sex therapist, I began to find the somatic tools I needed to face our history of pain, boundary violations, and silencing.
Recently, I made that same drive to Arizona again. This time, the conversation at the dinner table was different. We spoke with curiosity and a shared desire to understand. We asked: What patterns were playing out in our family? Are we carrying our parents’ sexual trauma or even trauma from ancestors we never met?
If you have ever felt a sense of “wrongness” or sexual anxiety that doesn’t seem to match your own life experiences, you may be experiencing intergenerational trauma.
What is Ancestral or Intergenerational Trauma?
Somatic psychotherapist Livia Shapiro defines ancestral trauma as unresolved pain that gets passed down through generations. It is a “non-direct” experience. This means you didn’t go through the event yourself, but you are carrying the “unconsciously held layers” of the aftermath.
Commonly, people describe it as a nagging feeling that “something is wrong, but I don’t know what or why.” When you are carrying your parents’ sexual trauma, it can show up as:
—A sense of bracing or fear during intimacy that feels bigger than your own history.
—A baseline of sexual shame you can’t explain.
—Difficulty setting boundaries, even with safe partners.
—Feeling confused about painful patterns in your intimate relationships.
How Does This Trauma Get Passed Down?
You might wonder how a secret from two generations ago can affect your sex life today. It happens through two primary paths:
1. Behavior and Somatic Patterning
We learn how to be in our bodies by watching our caregivers. Through modeling and attunement, we pick up on our parents’ nervous system states. If a parent is constantly bracing or disconnected from their body due to their own history, the child’s nervous system learns that being in the body is unsafe.
2. Epigenetics (The Biology of Trauma)
Science shows us that trauma can actually leave markers on our genes. Researcher Rachel Yehuda has found that trauma can create a predisposition for certain stress hormones, like cortisol. You aren’t born with the memory of the trauma, but you might be born with a nervous system that is already programed to a high-alert state.
Somatic Markers: Is it Mine or My Ancestors’?
Resmaa Menakem, author and psychotherapist who specializes in the somatic impacts of racialized trauma. uses the term “Somatic Retentions” to describe what gets passed down. These are physical patterns that the body retains to keep us safe.
How do you differentiate ancestral trauma from your own developmental trauma? Usually, it’s a sense that the feeling is transpersonal. It feels older than you. It feels embedded in your culture or your lineage.
Common somatic markers include:
- The Over-Controller: Feeling a need to be perfectly tight and in control of every sexual encounter.
- The Overly Loose: A collapse in boundaries or a feeling of being untethered in your body.
- The Safety Strategy: An overreliance on specific patterns to feel safe, even when no threat is present.
How to Work With Sexual Trauma Through Ancestral Healing
The good news is that just as trauma can be passed down, so can healing. You have the power to be the “cycle breaker” in your lineage. Here are four somatic ways to begin:
1. Create a Release Ritual
Rituals are powerful because they speak the language of the subconscious. You might light a candle and name the patterns you are ready to hand back to the past. This is most potent when done in a safe group setting or with a therapist, as aloneness is often what kept the trauma alive in the first place.
2. Connect with Wise and Well Ancestors
Through meditation or dreamwork, ask for guidance. Not every ancestor carried the trauma; some carry ancestral resilience. Ask: What do you want me to know about healing? What do you want me to know about trust and pleasure?
3. Conduct a “Family Sexual History”
If it is safe to do so, interview family members. Collect stories about their relationship to sexuality. Look for the patterns of abuse or pain, but also look for the patterns of intimacy and joy. Bringing these stories into the light takes away their shadow power.
4. Envision the Shift
Envision a world where your lineage is healed. What would change in your sex life? What would change for your family or for the next generation? What would change in the world if we no longer had to brace against our history?
Healing the Lineage
This work is a huge part of why I am called to be a somatic sex therapist. I have seen in my own family how bringing curiosity to the table can transform a shameful secret into a path for connection and deeper understanding.
You do not have to keep carrying ancestral sexual trauma. You can honor your ancestors by becoming the version of them that was allowed to feel safe, free, and full of pleasure.
Want Support with Ancestral Healing?
If you’re wanting support with this, I offer somatic sex therapy for individuals and couples. Together, we can work to identify these “somatic retentions” and create a path toward a sexuality that feels truly yours.
If this resonates, you might also like Why Do I Have Dark Sexual Fantasies: Understanding Sexual Shadow Work, or Why sex is painful? Finding a Path Back to Pleasure.