Intergenerational Trauma: Breaking the Cycle Through Caregiver Partnership
Live Event

Intergenerational Trauma: Breaking the Cycle Through Caregiver Partnership

Tue, Dec 1st, 2026
3:00pm – 5:00pm US Eastern Time
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About the Event

Intergenerational trauma can influence how families communicate, respond to stress, build trust, and interact with the professionals and systems intended to support them. At times, behaviors that may be viewed as resistance, disengagement, defensiveness, or difficulty following recommendations may actually be connected to shame, past experiences with systems, or survival strategies learned and passed down across generations. When professionals focus only on the behavior they see, they can miss the experiences and patterns underneath it.

This training explores intergenerational trauma through a trauma-informed and family-systems lens, with a focus on strengthening partnerships between caregivers and the professionals who serve children and families. Designed to be applicable across behavioral health, healthcare, education, social services, and legal settings, the training explores how fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses can show up within professional-caregiver interactions and how our own systems and approaches may unintentionally activate or reinforce these responses.

The training also moves beyond focusing only on what has happened to a family by recognizing the strengths, resilience, and “protective ancestors” that exist within family systems. Participants will learn practical strategies for moving from compliance to collaboration while incorporating cultural humility, co-regulation, healthy boundaries, and relational repair into challenging interactions. The goal is to help professionals become more curious about what may be happening beneath the surface, reduce the risk of re-traumatization, and develop stronger partnerships with caregivers that support the well-being of children and families.

Live Event
This live online event will be held as a Zoom Webinar. Attendees will have the option to interact through features such as the Chat and Q&A, but cameras and microphones will not be enabled.

Live Event Instructor

Shayla Gray

Shayla Gray

Shayla Gray, LMFT, LCMFT, MA, is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, EMDR-Certified Therapist, PSI trained, relational educator, and trainer with more than a decade of experience in behavioral health. She specializes in couples and relationship therapy, trauma-informed care, and supporting individuals and couples through major life and family transitions. Grounded in a family-systems perspective, Shayla’s work focuses on helping couples recognize and interrupt recurring relational patterns that contribute to conflict, disconnection, and difficulty functioning as a team. Her clinical interests include communication and conflict, relationship repair, trauma, and the transition to parenthood, including the relational and identity changes that can accompany pregnancy, fertility challenges, and early parenthood. In addition to her clinical work, Shayla develops and facilitates professional and community education on trauma, relationships, communication, and family systems. She has designed and delivered more than 20 workshops and developed Intergenerational Trauma: Breaking Cycles Through Caregiver Partnership, a training examining how intergenerational experiences and recurring relational patterns can affect caregivers, partnerships, and family systems. Shayla is also a doctoral candidate in Marriage and Family Therapy with a concentration in Couples Therapy. Her research focuses on relationships during the transition to parenthood, specifically fathers’ experiences of psychosocial distress during the transition to parenthood and the effects of that distress on their relationships.

Target Audience

This live interactive is intended for Behavioral Health and Physical Health professionals, including psychologists, social workers, counselors, marriage & family therapists, art therapists, dietitians, school psychologists, psychoanalysts, music therapists, behavior analysts, dietetic technicians, school counselors, and teachers. It is appropriate for beginner levels of knowledge.

Learning Objectives

After taking this activity, you should be able to:

  1. 1 Define intergenerational trauma and identify how shame and survival strategies rooted in intergenerational trauma may appear in professional-caregiver interactions.
  2. 2 Apply collaborative partnership strategies with caregivers and cultural humility when working with families impacted by intergenerational trauma, including recognition of “protective ancestors” and resilience patterns within family systems.
  3. 3 Apply boundary-setting and co-regulation strategies in ways that reduce the risk of re-traumatization.

Bowe, C., Thomas, C., & Mackey, P. (2025). Perspective to practice: theoretical frameworks explaining intergenerational trauma, violence, and maltreatment and implications for the therapeutic response. International journal of environmental research and public health, 22(3), 321. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22030321

DeCou, C. R., Lynch, S. M., Weber, S., Richner, D., Mozafari, A., Huggins, H., & Perschon, B. (2023). On the association between trauma-related shame and symptoms of psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 24(3), 1193-1201. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380211053617

Goldstein, E., Chokshi, B., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Rios, A., Jelley, M., & Lewis-O’Connor, A. (2024). Effectiveness of trauma-informed care implementation in health care settings: systematic review of reviews and realist synthesis. The Permanente Journal, 28(1), 135. https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/23.127

Nguyen-Feng, V. N., Ramirez, M., Behrens, K. L., Usset, T., Claussen, A. M., Parikh, R. R., ... & Butler, M. (2025). Trauma informed care: a systematic review. https://doi.org/10.23970/AHRQEPCSRTRAUMA

Shi, C., Ren, Z., Zhao, C., Zhang, T., & Chan, S. H. W. (2021). Shame, guilt, and posttraumatic stress symptoms: A three-level meta-analysis. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 82, 102443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2021.102443

Seah, R., Dwyer, K., & Berle, D. (2025). Was it me? The role of attributions and shame in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): A systematic review. Trends in Psychology, 33(3), 783-804. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-023-00315-6

Disclosure to Learners

CE Learning Systems adheres to the ACCME's Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. Any individuals in a position to control the content of a CE activity – including faculty, planners, reviewers, or others ― are required to disclose all relevant financial relationships with ineligible entities (formerly known as commercial interests).

The following relevant financial relationships have been disclosed by this activity's planners, faculty, and the reviewer:

Planners and Reviewers

The planners of this activity have reported that they have no relevant financial relationships.

Faculty

There are no known relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Commercial support

There is no commercial support for this distance-learning course.

Virginia Board of Counseling

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National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)

2 CE credit hours
Eligible until Dec 1st, 2026
CE Learning Systems has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5951. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. CE Learning Systems is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. 2 NBCC hour(s) awarded.
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Event Agenda

Agenda times are listed in US Eastern Time. That is 3 hours later than US Pacific Time. The event starts at 12:00pm US Pacific Time.

3:00–3:10 PM: Welcome, Framing, and Brief Exploration of Intergenerational Trauma
  • What Is Intergenerational Trauma?
  • Why Caregiver–Professional Relationships Are Often Trauma-Activated


3:10–3:30 PM: Shame and Survival in Parent–Professional Interactions

  • Intergenerational Trauma as Relational Transmission
  • Shame as a Primary Organizing Emotion
  • Survival Strategies Caregivers Use: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn
  • How Systems Unintentionally Activate These Responses


3:30–3:50 PM: Identifying Protective Ancestors and Family Resilience

  • What Are “Protective Ancestors”?
  • Why Resilience Matters as Much as Trauma History
  • How Focusing Only on Trauma Reinforces Shame
  • Examples of Inherited Strengths


3:50–4:20 PM: From Compliance to Collaboration

  • What Is a Non-Blaming, Resilience-Focused Stance and Why Is It Important?
  • Why Compliance-Based Approaches Can Escalate Trauma
  • Collaboration and the Nervous System: Collaboration Model
  • Practical Tools to Apply the Collaborative Model


4:20–4:45 PM: Repair as a Therapeutic and Relational Mechanism

  • What Repair Is and What It Isn’t
  • Repair as Trust-Building, Regulation-Restoring, and Power-Balancing
  • Boundaries and Hard Conversations


4:45–5:00 PM: Questions

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