Clinician’s Corner: The Transcending Trauma Project, Part II: ‎A Systemic Perspective Of Coping and Adaptation: The Inextricable Connection Between ‎Individual and Family – Bea Hollander-Goldfein, PhD

Quality of Family Dynamics Paradigm (QFDP)

Closeness ↔ Distance
Empathy ↔ Self Centeredness
Validation ↔ Criticism
Positive Emotions ↔ Negative Emotions
Open Communication ↔ Closed Communication
 

accounted for major differences among the Holocaust survivor families in terms of the impact on the second generation, which was revealed when coding families into positive, mixed, negative and mediating families. Adult children from positive families, who experienced mostly positive family dynamics, reported greater psychological, emotional and relational health. Adult children from negative families, who experienced mostly negative family dynamics, reported compromised psychological, emotional and relational health. These factors are discussed in the mental health research literature and they have been found to contribute to the development of secure and insecure attachment, affect regulation and dysregulation, self-awareness and other awareness, in addition to security and insecurity. In summary, these factors influence the development of resilience or vulnerability, adaptation or maladaptation.

As discussed in the prior article in StressPoints, the ongoing research of the TTP involves the analysis of the original interviews and the tracking of direct quotes that indicate the intergenerational transmission of communication style, worldview, self-esteem, identity, emotional functioning and interpersonal functioning.

Presenting the findings of the TTP at this time in the development of the fields of traumatic stress, Holocaust studies, developmental psychopathology and systems theory is a great advantage. The integration of TTP findings with the knowledge base of these fields helps to advance our understanding of the processes by which factors interact to yield the emotional, cognitive, behavioral and experiential outcomes that contribute to the development of human individuality, family functioning and coping with trauma. What processes enable certain individuals to be psychologically healthy and achieve successful lives, while other individuals are not psychologically healthy and therefore encounter a lifetime of challenge and struggle? How are these processes related to each other? The TTP proposed an Integrated Model of Coping and Adaptation. All the domains within this model are relevant to human development and therefore have relevance to one’s capacity for coping, adaptation and resilience.
 
Similar to the general trauma literature, TTP’s findings are in concert with the observation that the impact of trauma beyond direct life-and-death experiences is not necessarily determined by the “objective” assessment of the trauma and is often determined by the subjective attribution by the survivor of the extremity of the experience. As described above, the intergenerational impact of Holocaust survivor traumatic experiences was quite diverse in terms of its impact on the survivor and quite diverse in terms of its impact on the capacity to parent. As an overarching summary, the divergence in parenting depended on the parents’ capacity to function on the continuum of the “balance between self and other.” Many survivors, in spite of their specific posttraumatic effects after the war, were able to engage in positive parenting for the “sake of the child,” and many survivors were not able to get beyond the devastating impact on their personal functioning (i.e. the impact on self) and were therefore unable to be aware of the impact on their children. This, of course, does not speak to the possibility of traumatic impact reflecting genetic predisposition, which is beyond the scope of this investigation. What we are able to observe as revealed in our current investigation of intergenerational transmission is how survivors differed in their capacity to be self-aware vs. self-protective, to access their primary feelings vs. needing to block painful feelings, to be realistic in their attributions vs. operating from anxiety and fear, and to be focused on the needs of others vs. focused on the needs of the self. A child’s experience of these extremes in human functioning, which directly impact parenting, contributes to their psychosocial development including communication style, worldviews, self-esteem, identity, emotional functioning and relational functioning.
 
The descriptions of maladaptive and adaptive post trauma functioning in Holocaust survivors reveal clearly the “balance between self and other” described above and reveal the potential or lack of potential to engage in positive parenting – in other words, the capacity to prioritize their child’s needs over their own.
 
Contained in the following charts are descriptions of the maladaptive coping of many Holocaust survivors caused by the traumatic impact of the war and the adaptive coping that many Holocaust survivors were able to incorporate into postwar life due to the various factors that contributed to their prewar and postwar coping. As mentioned above, prewar psychosocial and qualitative family factors must have contributed to postwar coping, but there was no way to access consistent reports from survivors about the qualitative relationships with their parents, which has left the analysis process to speculation as opposed to clear findings about the connection between prewar and postwar parenting relationships.
 

Posttraumatic Maladaptation Observed in Holocaust Survivors

physiological vulnerability – physical injuries
fearful, overly cautious, protective – need for control or giving up control
emotional reactivity – emotions that come on suddenly and are not modulated by thought
shattered beliefs about the world
explanatory style – negative attributions
change in faith
focus on responsibilities in order to cope and avoid painful memories
unresolved mourning
vulnerability to anxiety, anger and depression
relationship conflict in spite of believing in importance of family
need the child to be the source of the parent’s wellbeing

Posttraumatic Adaptation Observed in Holocaust Survivors
 
establishing connection in significant relationships – family is primary
being aware of feelings and able to modulate their expression based on other’s needs
affirms oneself through the wellbeing of the family
memories are available and neither obsessive nor blocked
explanatory style – realistic attributions
partial reconstruction of belief systems
opportunity to utilize potential, talent and skills
capacity to be aware of impact on child – not wanting to burden the child

Attempting to conceptualize the reality of this complexity and developing a coherent understanding of human differences is where the field of psychology and its related disciplines are positioned today. Traumatic stress research has historically documented the negative sequelae of extreme trauma only to discover significant variability among survivors. The study of individual differences reveals a continuum of experience spanning from positive adaptation to negative adaptation with most individuals falling somewhere in between. It was not too long ago that the field of traumatic stress studies acknowledged the importance of pre-trauma experience in determining the adaptation of the individual. The investigation of pre-trauma experience illuminated the effects of risk factors and protective factors that contribute to negative adaptation and positive adaptation. Simultaneous to advances in this area of research, the field of Resilience emerged in the attempt to explain why some people survive well and others don’t, and how the phenomenon of posttraumatic growth (PTG) works differently depending on the survivor. This work has generated lists of risk factors, protective factors, resilience traits and PTG characteristics. The next challenge is to observe and describe the human processes by which these traits, characteristics and qualities develop within individuals and families and operate in response to real events. What processes enable certain individuals to be psychologically healthy and achieve successful lives, while other individuals are not psychologically healthy and therefore encounter a lifetime of challenge and struggle? How are these processes related to each other? There is a vast literature from which to explore these questions. The TTP proposed an Integrated Model of Coping and Adaptation. All the domains within this model influence human development and therefore have relevance to one’s capacity for coping, adaptation and resilience.
 
In order to conceptualize intergenerational transmission, it is important to understand the domains presented in this model for both the survivor generation and the child generation. The first chart presents the factors determining the posttraumatic responses of the survivor parent. The second chart presents the factors determining the developmental responses of the child. Keeping these domains in mind as we understand trauma’s impact on families is challenging, but it is the only way to truly understand the intergenerational impact of trauma’s aftermath. For clinicians, we cannot understand the client in front of us—the survivor or the child—without an intergenerational historical perspective that sheds light on psychosocial development. While these models of psychological development highlight the processes that contribute to the development of the “self,” the ultimate implication is for the quality of adult relationships, which are the result of “self” and contribute to the development of “self” in the next generation.
 
While these models are not specific to particular life experiences or events, all the factors in the model are affected by life experiences and events. Therefore, our engagement in the study of post-Holocaust effects involved looking at these processes and how the devastating experiences of the war affected survivor parents who then affected the development of their children. It would be a similar process to examine the impact of other traumas and how they are coped with by the victims, and in turn how the victims affect their offspring. For example: natural disasters, poverty, persecution, immigration, crime, military service, divorce, child abuse, domestic violence etc. affect the processes described on the developmental chart and influence transmission by means of influencing parent-child relationships. With the renewed focus on inequities in society that lead to racial and social injustice and the acknowledgement of the devastating impact of historical trauma—the integrated model of coping and adaptation after trauma would offer a powerful tool for an intensive examination of racism and its impact on generations of parents and children who have been confronted with the external realities of racism.
 
From the inception of the TTP in 1993, it has always been a mission of the project to promote, through its findings, a greater understanding of trauma’s impact on groups, families, and individuals and thereby greater awareness of how to promote healthy adaptation and growth so that the trauma, whatever it may be, can be left in the past without impinging on the future. Simply said, the work of TTP and the current status of trauma studies needs to go beyond contributing to treatment models; there needs to be a proactive effort to build resilience through family intervention.