In your clinical practice, you have likely talked to many clients about their traumatic experiences. Their stories almost always take on a private, personal nature, even when the trauma involves parental, social, or community relationships.

Over the last two years, we have all been affected by and immersed in dealing with the difficulties of the COVID pandemic. As clinicians, we initially focused our efforts on helping to relieve the individual discomfort our clients were experiencing: the anxiety, the fear of isolation, and the worry about their health and that of their loved ones. We tried to calm their sense of insecurity and feelings of uncertainty about a future with indefinite contours. And we tried to help them regulate their desire to regain control of their daily life.

However, the collective and/or intergenerational dimension of trauma is not necessarily always linked to catastrophic events such as a pandemic or a war. Racism, climate change, environmental disasters, earthquakes or floods, terrorism or high crime, poverty and marginalization, LGBTQ+, etc.—these all represent traumatic experiences that can overwhelm the adaptive capabilities of individuals and groups and minorities. This interrupts the sense of continuity we each attribute to our lives. It also strongly affects the social meanings we share and that will require re-elaboration. This is often difficult to achieve and will therefore influence people’s lives in a much more direct way than we might usually think.

With this FREE GUIDE, you will receive practical examples to use in your clinical practice that will allow you to better understand collective and/or intergenerational trauma. You will see it not as an abstract category, but as a process that affects people’s daily lives. You will discover that trauma doesn’t have to be linked only to catastrophic and circumscribed events. It can also be linked to difficult contexts, to prolonged experiences, and to direct and/or indirect exposure to catastrophes.