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
Skip to Event Registration Info

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.

Idaho Board of Alcohol/Drug Certification (IBADCC)

2 CE credit hours
Eligible until Dec 1st, 2026
This course has been approved by CE Learning Systems, service provider of Impact CE, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #192243, CE Learning Systems is responsible for all aspects of their programming.
More Info

NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC)

2 CE credit hours
Eligible until Dec 1st, 2026
This course has been approved by CE Learning Systems, service provider of Impact CE, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #192243, CE Learning Systems is responsible for all aspects of their programming.
More Info
NAADAC Approved Education Provider

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

Policies

If a grievance arises pertaining to your participation in our continuing education activities, please contact our support team immediately. See our full grievance policy for more information.

ADA accommodations will be made in accordance with the law; please indicate your special needs when you register by contacting us.

Up to 30 days prior to the event, live event registrations may be canceled for a refund via the current courses tab in your member account. Less than 30 days prior to the event, live event registration purchases are not eligible for a refund, but can be transferred to a different event. Please contact our support team for assistance with changing your registration.

  • This is a live event, hosted via Zoom Webinar. you may be prompted to download or upgrade your Zoom app if using a mobile device. A strong WiFi/internet connection will be required for best quality.

  • We recommend clicking your "Join Webinar" button early and checking that your speakers are on before the event begins. Please do not worry about being seen or heard! Attendee video feeds and mics are turned off by default when entering a webinar. You will be able to ask questions via the Q&A feature. You may test your Zoom connection prior to the event at the Zoom Test page .

  • Please respect that no copying, recording, or distribution of live session content is allowed.

We report all course and event completions to CE Broker. If your licensing board uses CE Broker for CE tracking, please be sure to enter your correct license information in your account.

If you need to cancel your registration for a webinar, please contact our support team for assistance prior to the event. Please note our refund policy, above.

If the activity must be cancelled by the provider, all attendees will receive an email notifying them of the cancellation. The email will also provide details about transferring the registration to another educational activity or receiving a refund of the registration fee. As always, you can contact our support team if you have questions or concerns.

Frequently Asked Questions

Once you register, you'll receive an email with the link and instructions to join the live event. The event will be hosted via Zoom. You may test your Zoom connection prior to the event at the Zoom Test page We recommend logging in 10-15 minutes early to be sure your connection is ready.

Most live events are recorded and made available to registered participants for a limited time after the event. Check your event materials for specific details about recording availability.

Certificates for live events are typically available within shortly after the event concludes, as soon as attendance verification is completed. You'll receive an email notification when your certificate is ready to download.

If the event is recorded, you may be able to access the recording after the live session. Contact support for information about makeup options for your specific event.

If you need to withdraw 30 or more days before the event, you can do this your self from your current courses tab.

Start your CE Journey now - complete your first course today, on us.

Try for free - no commitment required.

Start a Free Trial Course

Continuing Education

Copyright © 2026 CE Learning Systems LLC

Please Confirm