Why Millennials are all traumatised from their childhoods, and why their parents think they did a great job...

Most of our parents are the baby boomer generation. Their parents (our grandparents) survived WWII and the depression, and some of them would've had parents who were returned servicemen/women, most likely suffering undiagnosed PTSD. Or they migrated out to Australia and built a life from nothing, working extremely hard to do so.

Our grandparents knew poverty and struggle first and foremost, forgoing meals, new clothes or anything else they had to in order to meet the kids (our parents) basic needs of survival first. Things were made, not bought, handed down where possible, and you had one good coat, not a kathmandu in 4 colours and styles.

If you had three meals, clothes on your back and a roof over head, you were luckier than some.

Most of our parents would've adopted that philosophy once they became parents, perhaps doing better than their parents did, but maybe not by much. They might have been the first generation in their families that knew middle/upper class living conditions, but not without hard work and sacrifice as well.

As parents, they might not have had to worry too much about where the next meal was coming from, and could probably afford to buy you new clothes more often than they received themselves as children. But you lived within your means and an annual holiday was a luxury most couldn't afford.

Fast forward to the turn of the century, and we started to become more aware of our emotional needs. Healing therapies began to rise in popularity, and a focus and increased awareness of mental health conditions became apparent. It was encouraged to talk about feelings, to admit you weren't ok, and that it didn't make you weak, despite what we'd been taught. We actually learnt that a lot of the things we had been experiencing through our childhoods indeed had a name; anxiety, depression, trauma, abuse.

Most of us millennials would've continued to sail on through life as best we knew, or blissfully unaware that there was an alternative. But then we started having kids, what a perception shift and transformation that is; re-evaluating all your beliefs and values. OR, realised very early on that a) we didn't want to repeat the same mistakes of our parents, and wanted better for ourselves, or b) that doing things the way we had always been taught wasn't getting us the results we wanted. Humanity was outgrowing the systems that had been in place for so long, we were evolving.

Our generation is the generation that has had to keep up in order to survive. We've grown up in a rapidly changing, evolving world.

Those of us with kids have the desire to do better for them, and not to pass on this trauma. The focus on aware/gentle parenting, and the emotional awareness we now have means that we are allowing our children to feel their feelings, instead of telling them to 'stop crying', 'don't be a sook', or 'I'll give you something to cry about in a minute'.

With this comes the triggers, trying to learn how to face/heal your own emotional trauma, whilst also holding space for the children in our lives who need help to learn how to navigate their emotions as well.

Our healing journey can find us looking to our parents for some sort of accountability, or apology, but without awareness, there can be no admittance of wrong doing. They are engrained in their beliefs, and their emotional vocabulary hasn't evolved or expanded the way ours has, so alot of the time we are then gaslit by them when we try and explain our trauma.

So we heal in silence. We heal for ourselves, for our children and future generations, without trying to seek validation or accountability from our parents. This can cause resentment or bitterness, even estrangement as we realise that they did not protect us, that the damage done is too great for us to be able to maintain a relationship where there is no remorse.

I'd also invite you to take some time to look at your generational history, sometimes it helps to gain an understanding of what your parents and grandparents endured, what makes them the way they are, what generational trauma they carry. It doesn't excuse the behaviour, but can change your perception to allow your own healing journey, and be able to come to a place of acceptance/forgiveness.