Inherited trauma is the transmission of unprocessed emotional experience across generations. The parent who never dealt with their own wound, who passed it forward in behavior, in silence, in the specific way they related to you. You didn't create it. It arrived fully formed and arranged itself as the architecture of your interior life.

Anonymous thoughts about inherited trauma posted here are from people tracking the origin of patterns that feel native but aren't — the honest account of carrying something backward through the family.