Don’t Ask Only “What’s Wrong?”: Seeing Collective History and Intergenerational Trauma in Individual Symptoms
Original Chinese title: 不要只問「你怎麼了」：從個人症狀看見集體歷史與代間創傷
When anxiety, shame, insomnia, or relationship difficulties are connected to colonialism, forced displacement, language suppression, residential schools, or family loss, counseling must consider how history enters bodies and relationships rather than locating every problem inside the individual.
王莉如
王莉如 is a counseling psychologist and supervisor whose work focuses on lived experience, relationships, trauma recovery, cultural difference, and the helping professions.
Symptoms Can Carry Echoes of History
Counseling often begins with a person’s immediate concerns: sleeplessness, an exaggerated startle response, difficulty trusting intimate partners, shame, or a constant need to remain on guard. These experiences deserve careful assessment. But when a practitioner asks only, “What is wrong with this person?”, a history spanning families and generations can be reduced to an individual defect.
Many Indigenous Peoples have endured land dispossession, forced displacement, residential schools, bans on Indigenous languages, the separation of children from their families, and the suppression of cultural and religious practices. The harm did not end with the original event; it may continue through family relationships, silence, a diminished sense of safety, mistrust of institutions, and unequal access to resources. Some people avoided discussing the past to help the next generation survive. Some taught children not to draw attention because being seen had once brought punishment. Strategies that offered protection under dangerous conditions can make intimacy, expression, and help-seeking more difficult in a different time.
Recognizing History Does Not Mean Explaining Everything Through It
Intergenerational trauma is an important concept, but it can also be overused. Colonial history does not explain every difficulty experienced by every Indigenous person, and trauma is never the only story a family carries. Families may also preserve humor, language, care, ceremony, work ethics, knowledge of land, and powerful capacities for recovery. A counselor who sees only victimhood still confines the client to a single narrative.
A better approach is to treat history as one possible context and let the client decide whether it matters. A practitioner might ask: “Has this difficulty appeared elsewhere in your family? How have family members responded to it? Which experiences feel connected to your people, land, language, or institutions—and which do not?” Such questions leave room for a layered understanding without deciding the answer in advance.
Trauma-Informed Care Restores Choice and Safety
The trauma-informed framework developed by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration highlights safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice, and choice; and attention to cultural, historical, and gender issues. In cross-cultural counseling, this means that disclosure cannot be the sole goal of the therapeutic relationship. Clients have the right to decide what to discuss, when to discuss it, which language to use, and when to pause.
Some practitioners rush to “uncover the trauma,” assuming that recounting the past is itself healing. Yet for someone whose control has repeatedly been taken away by institutions, compelled disclosure can reproduce the same power relationship. Trauma-informed practice seeks consent at each step: Do you want to discuss this today? How far should we go? Who, if anyone, should be present? What will help your body return to greater stability before the session ends?
Putting Responsibility Where It Belongs
Individuals can still learn ways to regulate emotion, establish boundaries, care for sleep, and communicate in relationships. Counseling should not imply, however, that structural harm disappears if a client simply changes their thinking. When distress is connected to discrimination, poverty, loss of land, inadequate services, or mistrust of institutions, effective support may also require referrals, rights advocacy, family support, or collaboration with the community.
Counselors should likewise avoid asking one person to stand for an entire people. Relationships to culture vary: some clients know their language and ceremonies well, others became distant because of how they were raised, and still others are in the process of reconnecting. Healing is not a demand to return to an imagined “traditional” self. It is the capacity to choose one’s own relationship with history, family, and culture.
From “What’s Wrong?” to “What Happened—and What Helped You Get Here?”
A fuller set of counseling questions might be: “What have you experienced? What has your family or community experienced? Which forces caused harm? Which relationships, forms of knowledge, and actions helped you survive?” When the questions change, the client is no longer treated as a collection of symptoms, but as a person with history, relationships, resources, and choices.
References
- SAMHSA, Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach
- Health Canada and Assembly of First Nations, First Nations Mental Wellness Continuum Framework
- United Nations, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Sources retained from the Chinese original
AI use and content-safety disclosure
Yuan Media AI assisted with organizing publicly available international sources and counseling-psychology perspectives for the Life Creation Lab column. This article provides general educational information and does not replace individual counseling, psychotherapy, psychiatric care, or crisis intervention.