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Homegoing - intergenerational trauma

In our psychotherapy training, we learn about how families develop themes that get passed through generations, usually without them even realising it.  The term intergenerational trauma gets used a lot to describe how the effects of trauma like war, poverty, colonisation and migration can be felt by all the children born thereafter in a family that experiences the original trauma. For example, some children in Christchurch suffer from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), even th...

Grief in childhood

Many children experience loss of a loved one during early childhood. Later in childhood, they can find they can’t consciously remember their loved one, which complicates their grief process.As they grow older, for each new stage of development, children may need to reprocess their grief, and this continues into adulthood.  Because they “can’t remember”, they do not escape the grieving that adults do, they just have to go through it as their development and environment enables them. ...

The new school year

It is that time of the year, in Aotearoa New Zealand, when we experience new beginnings- a new school, job, class, friends.  With them often come child-like anxieties and concerns, which are we are taught to disregard in ourselves, and in our children.  Will they like me? Will I be different?  Will I be able to do the work?  Will the teacher know me? But, far from being irrational, studies have shown that these feelings remind us of our experiences as newborn babies. &nb...