Project Heal Generational Trauma
Mission: To foster healthy multigenerational families and communities through accessible education and research, collective dialogue, and professional mental health interventions.
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Vision: To cultivate healthy, thriving generational communities: one individual, one relationship, and one family at a time.
PHGT Goals
Increase Awareness
of how trauma is passed down from generation to generation within families and communities
Equip Individuals & Families
with tools to develop and maintain healthy, sustainable dynamics
Interrupt the Transmission
of all generational trauma through individual and collective healing spaces and interventions
PHGT in the Press
The lived experiences of eight African American women college students were explored from an interpretive phenomenological analytic framework. The researchers identified six main themes about participants and their reported family dynamics: (a) collectivistic yet disconnected, (b) avoidance, (c) functioning in dysfunction, (d) gendered differences, (e) motivation to change the family's homeostasis, and (f) talking about generational trauma as a motivator to repair communication. Implications for culturally responsive counseling and generational trauma-informed counselor training are discussed.
This dissertation study sought to further understand the GT experiences of MBW and their self-efficacy with regard to addressing GT within their families. A sequential exploratory mixed methods research design and a participatory action research framework were used to facilitate members’ (participants’) deeper understandings of GT and enhanced self-efficacy for addressing GT. Each of the twelve members (participants) engaged in a ten-week process including: (a) a pre-survey of trauma history and self-efficacy, (b) an individual interview, (c) an eight-week, weekly support group, (d) a mid-point focus group interview, and (e) a post-survey of self-efficacy. Findings were cross-analyzed using critical discourse analysis (qualitative) and dependent t-tests (quantitative) to reveal six themes: (a) deepened awareness, (b) intentional community, (c) “abnormalizing” the normal, (d) exposure to complexity, (e) turning inward, and (f) taking action (the last three themes were developed through changes in self-efficacy). Implications for individuals, communities, counseling, counselor education, and future research are discussed.
Dr. Ashlei Petion was interviewed by Counseling Today, a publication of the American Counseling Association, on her clinical work and research with generational trauma and healing.