The Hidden Legacy of Intergenerational Trauma at Work
Have you ever walked into a meeting feeling really anxious, even though everything looked calm on the surface? Or said “yes” to another project when a part of you really meant “no”? These little moments often carry more weight than we actually realize. They might be signals of something deeper, which is the hidden legacy of intergenerational trauma.
What is intergenerational trauma? How does it show up at work?
Intergenerational trauma is the passing down of trauma from one generation to the next. This doesn’t just mean via spoken shard stories, but as patterns and survival strategies. This will look different in different families, but it often shows up in surprising ways.
Your nervous system is primed to respond, to act, to fix. You might be hypervigilant and constantly scanning for threats or mistakes. You might feel compelled to people-please where you believe your value lies in how helpful you are. Or you might try to control your environment and try desperately to remove uncertainty and unknown.
In the workplace, this could look like being the first to arrive or the last to leave. It could look like taking on extra work without asking. It could look like not noticing your exhaustion until you’re burned out.
Common workplace manifestations: hypervigilance, people-pleasing, control
Hypervigilance: You’re always monitoring everything you can: your email inbox, your tone, your manager’s mood. You catch every small shift and anticipate what’s going to go wrong. It’s exhausting, and sometimes unseen.
People-pleasing: You’ll go above and beyond. You’ll say yes when you really can’t take on another project. You’ll take on emotional labour because you know how it feels when no one else does.
Control: You might micromanage, or you might carry so many details in your mind you’re the only one who knows everything. Control is less about power and more about safety.
These behaviours definitely served you (and your family) at some point in time. In a family where emotional needs went unmet, stepping up might have meant survival. But in a workplace that no longer demands survival mode, they become burdens.
The healing potential of awareness and connection
Awareness: When you begin to notice the pattern, you gain power. You might say to yourself, “Ah… hypervigilance. My old friend.” Or “I’m people-pleasing again, yep, that’s my invisible inheritance showing up at this 3pm meeting.” With awareness, the behaviour loosens its grip.
Connection: Healing doesn’t happen in isolation. When you talk about how you show up at work, how you carry the weight of “fixing” or “being responsible,” you release a little of the burden. A colleague, a trusted friend, a therapist can’t “fix” you, but they can witness you. And that witnessing means you don’t carry it alone.
Relational self-care: Caring for yourself isn’t just yoga and long baths (though they might help!). It’s relational: Who lets you rest? Who holds your boundaries? Who models a healthier way of being responsible, one where you are responsible to yourself as much as to others?
Systems of correction: The workplace itself can shift. You can advocate for culture shifts: boundaries honoured, emotional labour acknowledged, psychological safety built. Your lived experience can become wisdom for others.
If you’re reading this and recognize some of this in yourself just know: you’re not broken.
You’re being invited to pause, to breathe, to notice how deeply your body still wants to scan and fix. And then to ask: What would it feel like to release this hypervigilance for five minutes?
Because the hidden legacy of intergenerational trauma is not just a burden. It is a thread of strength. It means you learned early how to make sense of chaos. How to hold when no one else could. How to show up anyway. Now the question becomes: How do you show up for you?