The Weight We Carry: Breaking Generational Cycles

🚨 Season 7 Premiere Alert! 🚨

We’re back with a powerful new season of Conversations with Coach LA, and we’re starting with a conversation that will move you!

This week’s guest, Contessa Brown, is a spoken word artist, motivational speaker, clinician, and life coach who has dedicated her life to helping others reclaim confidence, heal, and live authentically. As the CEO of Café S.O.U.L. and founder of Queen’s Closet, she’s a force in Rhode Island’s creative and wellness spaces, using art and advocacy to uplift communities.

Listen to The Weight We Carry: Breaking Generational Cycles as we explore the impact of generational wounds, the power of healing, and how we can break cycles to create a new legacy.

📻 Tune in live Sundays at 10 pm on Urban Heat 98.1FM & iHeartRadio!

#ConversationsWithCoachLA #TheWeightWeCarry #BreakingGenerationalCycles #Season7 #MentalHealth #Healing #BIPOCWellness #CreativeHealing

Learn more about Guest: Contessa Brown https://flow.page/countessb

Key Definitions & Context

What Are Generational Cycles?

Generational cycles refer to behaviors, beliefs, traumas, and coping mechanisms that are passed down within families, often unconsciously. These cycles can be both positive and negative. When we talk about "breaking generational cycles," we’re referring to the intentional effort to change harmful patterns—such as unhealthy relationships, financial instability, or emotional suppression—to create healthier outcomes for ourselves and future generations.

Dysfunctional Family Patterns & Their Impact

Unresolved Trauma: When trauma is not processed, it can manifest in future generations through emotional avoidance, hypervigilance, or toxic coping strategies.

Lack of Emotional Expression: Families that discourage discussing feelings often produce individuals who struggle with emotional regulation and communication.

Codependency & Enmeshment: Over-reliance on family members for identity or emotional stability can lead to difficulties in forming healthy, independent relationships.

Addiction & Substance Abuse: Patterns of substance dependence are often passed down due to environmental and genetic factors.

Financial Instability: Poor financial habits and beliefs about money—such as fear of wealth or scarcity mindsets—can perpetuate economic struggles across generations.

Statistics on Trauma & Generational Cycles

Trauma and Mental Health:

About 70% of U.S. adults have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. (National Council for Behavioral Health, 2020)

Individuals with unresolved trauma are 2-3 times more likely to develop anxiety, depression, or PTSD.

Generational Trauma:

Research shows that trauma can be biologically inherited through epigenetics, meaning stress responses can be passed down across generations. (Yehuda & Lehrner, 2018)

Children of Holocaust survivors and descendants of enslaved individuals have shown higher levels of stress-related disorders due to intergenerational trauma.

Dysfunctional Family Patterns:

Children who experience household dysfunction (e.g., abuse, neglect, or substance use) are at a higher risk of replicating those patterns in adulthood unless they actively work to break the cycle. (CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, 1998)

Books on Breaking Generational Cycles & Healing Trauma

It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle – Mark Wolynn

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma – Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing – Dr. Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey

All About Love: New Visions – bell hooks (on love as a tool for healing and transformation)

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents – Lindsay C. Gibson (on unlearning childhood conditioning)

Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself – Nedra Glover Tawwab

Healing the Shame That Binds You – John Bradshaw (on overcoming toxic shame)

Podcasts & Online Resources

The Trauma Therapist Podcast – Exploring mental health and healing through expert conversations.

Therapy Chat Podcast