“I felt invaded by both sides… like Poland” Intergenerational love & intergenerational trauma Claudia Kempinska  2025

Date added: 25/11/25

“I felt invaded by both sides… like Poland”

Intergenerational love & intergenerational trauma

Claudia Kempinska  2025

Unconscious material often comes to the surface in layers—almost like matryoshka (Russian dolls), where one experience contains another inside it, and inside that another still. Sometimes what we feel in the present carries traces of something older, something we didn’t personally live, but somehow still hold within us.

In a recent analytic session, as I tried to describe a complicated emotional situation, I heard myself say:
“I felt invaded by both sides… like Poland.”
The words surprised me. I was born in the UK long after the war, yet the emotional truth of that metaphor felt strikingly real in my body. Psychoanalytic thinking helps make sense of moments like this: when something emerges that feels deeply personal but also somehow inherited—like a memory I don’t consciously possess but still carry.

What We Carry From the Generations Before Us

Research on intergenerational trauma—especially with families of Holocaust survivors—shows that experiences of fear, loss, or unprocessed grief can be passed down, not necessarily through stories, but through atmosphere, attachment, silence, or even the emotions we learn to expect from the world.

One survivor once said of his son: “He dreams my nightmares.”
That line has stayed with me. It captures the way trauma can echo through generations, even when the next generation has grown up in a completely different context.

Psychoanalytic ideas help us understand this. Trauma that wasn’t spoken about or processed doesn’t simply disappear—it can be carried in the body, in relational dynamics, or in the metaphors we reach for without realising their origins. And yet, alongside trauma, families also transmit love, resilience, creativity, and a determination to survive.

A Brutalist Building in Kraków

During a trip to Kraków, I came across a large Brutalist building that struck me immediately. It felt ominous—heavy, almost threatening. I later learned it was a surviving structure from the Communist era. The next day, when I returned, I noticed the building was still in use and partly hidden behind a newer, modern structure. The contrast softened it; the relationship between past and present shifted.

Next to it was a sign that read “Kraków” with a heart for the “O.”
Something about that juxtaposition moved me. It mirrored my own inner experience: the weight of historical trauma and the warmth of intergenerational love, side by side. Because despite the harshness of the past, my Polish grandparents—who both escaped concentration camps—also passed down care, courage, and a pride in being Polish.

How Trauma and Love Coexist in Us

Our bodies sometimes respond to situations as if we are reliving experiences that were never ours personally. A building isn’t a threat, but it might feel like one if it symbolically resembles something our family never had the chance to process. In these moments, the past can rise up as sensation, fear, or imagery—almost like a flashback without a story attached to it.

But we also inherit the capacity to heal. We can work through what previous generations could not fully express or mourn. Therapy, EMDR, and psychoanalytic work help transform inherited emotional fragments into something we can understand, name, and integrate—rather than unconsciously repeat.

The Bridge Between Past and Present

My Polish identity is shaped not just by trauma but by the love of my babcia, who made me feel profoundly safe and cared for. When I think about her, I understand how intergenerational transmission includes the emotional resources that help us face life—strength, tenderness, imagination, resilience.

Like Russian dolls, we hold many layers within us:
parts shaped by our own experiences,
parts shaped by our family’s history,
and parts shaped by love strong enough to cross generations.

The work is not to erase the past, but to understand it—so that we can live with what was inherited without being overtaken by it.
To recognise what is ours to carry, and what is ready to be put down.

#intergenerationaltrauma #psychoanalysis #polishhistory #inheritedmemory #healingthepast #clinicalreflections #intergenerationallove

REFERENCES

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