Long-term consequences of historical family trauma: psychological resilience of the offspring

Despite the fact that survivors of Soviet political repressions still feel the adverse long-term consequences of historical trauma (Kazlauskas, 2006), and their children notice some sort of negative impact of historical family trauma on their own psychological well-being (Vaskelienė, 2012), the results of this dissertation showed that the second and third generation offspring of politically repressed families do not differ in their post-traumatic reactions from those, who do not have such historical trauma experience in their family, but they are characterized by higher estimates of psychological well-being, subjective happiness, resiliency, optimism and hope. Significant protective factors involved in transgenerational trauma transmission in Lithuanian population are the following: more accurate knowledge of family member experiences of political repressions; greater identification with family history; more frequent expression of sadness, use of more symbols or humour, and more frequent expression of strength and pride in family communications about historical events; less frequent mother overprotection and more frequent father care in childhood; more frequent contact with family members or friends for help and praying. A model of psychological resilience to transgenerational trauma transmission was formulated and evaluated, in which the main protective factor of transgenerational trauma transmission is identification with family history. The most significant predictor of identification with family history is the expression of sadness in family conversations about historical traumas