Three Generations, Persistent Patterns
- Sanaa Chughatai
- 4 minutes ago
- 5 min read
My name is Sanaa, and I am an undergraduate Psychology student at King’s College London who is passionate about developmental and clinical psychology. As the youngest child and a South Asian woman, I have always found myself observing and dissecting the complex dynamics within my family. Lately, this awareness has become increasingly introspective, not only noticing fragments of my grandparents in my parents, but fragments of my parents within myself.
Growing up in a three-generation South Asian household alongside my paternal grandparents, parents, and siblings, I recognise many of these fragments reflected in our interactions. Patterns of thinking, values, and behaviours: a difficulty communicating openly, discomfort with emotional expression, a reluctance to accept help during times of struggle, a desire to control the uncontrollable, and a tendency towards chronic people-pleasing.
However, genuine love, care and sacrifice coexist alongside these, creating an ambiguous space where questions are raised: Why do we instinctively adopt these patterns that we disapprove of in our hearts? And why do they transfer across generations despite an intrinsic desire for change?
These questions have become increasingly difficult to ignore as I grow older. I noticed recurring similarities in the way my family members and I react, interact, and navigate everyday life, despite vast differences in our personalities and experiences. The persistence of these similarities made me wonder whether they were truly individual or part of something larger that had been quietly inherited across generations.
Setting the Scene
In 1955, my paternal grandmother migrated from Lahore, Pakistan, to Nairobi, Kenya, after marrying to conform to her parents’ expectations, selflessly upholding their societal reputation. Ten years later, both my grandparents moved to the UK, experiencing drastic hardship and accepting overbearing responsibilities at very young ages.
These experiences were not directly lived again by my parents, siblings or myself, yet they appear to have silently shaped the emotional climate in which I grew up.
In South Asian culture, the concepts of upholding izzat (honour) and avoiding sharam (shame) have been deeply ingrained, dominating pivotal decisions for relatives such as my grandmother. Sharam can be felt internally within oneself and externally by family, often accumulated through behaviours breaching gender norms, challenging authority, transgressing religion or even disregarding advice from elders. Such attitudes are considered culturally rebellious, and this shared feeling of sharam can lead to the loss of public izzat.
Behaving within the lines may create a positive community image and protect family status, respecting conventional concepts of social hierarchy. Yet, alongside these superficial benefits exists a build-up of exhaustion from obedience, restriction and seeking validation. These sociocultural concepts remain prevalent and continue to drive the more damaging tendencies I have observed, almost out of unspoken tradition.
If my grandparents and parents experienced the burden of these expectations firsthand and reflect critically upon them, why do they continue to be unintentionally reinforced within our family?
Lived Experience Meets Psychological Explanation
Listening to the generational stories of my family, which travel from one country to another, I noticed not only the role of culture and tradition, but survival, too.
It is through this new lens that I recognised intergenerational trauma does not always refer to a specific event or circumstance being passed down. Rather, it can explain how emotional and behavioural responses shaped by previous experiences of stress, migration and instability can be carried into later generations. Reactions which once provided safety and survival are inherited by following generations, who may not require such “social armour” anymore.
Viewing my family’s experiences through this perspective, I began to see our hyper-independence, discomfort with emotional vulnerability and pressure to maintain a respectable image as patterns that may have originated as ways of coping with abuse, drastic changes in lifestyle and complex attachments. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have avoided the adverse experiences my older relatives endured, but this explanation raises the prospect that my siblings and I have not escaped the longer-term consequences.
Repetition compulsion also helps to explain this strange cycle, suggesting that individuals tend to repeat past emotional reactions or behaviours, even if they have no desire to. This repetition is a subconscious attempt to resolve unresolved emotional experiences or trauma, even if it continues to perpetuate the very patterns one once wished to escape.
My initial instinct had been to view these persistent behaviours as products of pride and stubbornness, along with a lack of desire to learn. Through this perspective, I now come to realise why they continue to reappear, despite awareness of the emotional burden they often carry.
Achieving an understanding of the mechanisms behind intergenerational responses is a critical step for preserving treasured relationships, reducing resentment or confusion and increasing personal freedom. By recognising that we automatically repeat and inherit patterns, we acquire the choice to continue or end them. Yet, changing them is often more complex, particularly when learned, reinforced and normalised throughout childhood until now.
These more tenacious tendencies can be explained through social learning theory, whereby behaviours are absorbed through observation and imitation of caregivers. Over time, they become automatic, reinforced through rewards or punishments, and tied to personal and familial identity. As a result, changing them can feel emotionally unsafe, threatening a sense of belonging and identity.
This has reinforced my existing knowledge that our environments play a critical role in shaping who we are, with our minds beginning as blank slates. Nevertheless, I had failed to consider the possibility that these habits may also be reinforced by viewing my elders as role models and identifying with them, subconsciously blurring the boundaries between their identities and my own. Perhaps, through this process, we may gradually lose sight of our individual values and sense of self, contributing to a generational cycle of over-identification with others and the unconscious mirroring of beliefs, behaviours, and emotional responses.
In cultures like mine, where going against learned values such as izzat and sharam is often disapproved of, another layer of difficulty is added: social consequences. Fear of public disapproval surfaces when not conforming to these standards, often triggering an avoidance of change.
Agency within Intergenerational Patterns
It is important to recognise that culture is not a singular entity; it is made up of harmful and meaningful practices that often co-exist.
Many of the behaviours we struggle with are rooted in the ways older generations learned to express care, protection and responsibility. What seems to be control or rigidity may be their love language, shaped by their own upbringing and lived experiences. The goal may not be to separate ourselves from those who came before us, who, in my case, provide us with identity, affection and belonging. Rather, it is to become more conscious and proactive in what we choose to carry with us going forward.
We cannot choose the culture and environment we are born into, or the underlying mechanisms we end up adopting. But we can recognise that agency is the ability to act consciously and wisely within these influences – the concept of Stoicism.
We no longer drain ourselves trying to modify the circumstances beyond our control. Instead, we find a space between an experience and our reaction where choice, and therefore change, becomes possible.
With a more nuanced perspective, I have come to realise that many of the overlapping fragments I once viewed as flaws are in fact rich in situational context. Appreciating their origins in no way excuses the harm they may cause to ourselves and others, and we should not ignore the requirement for accountability. To be human is to be shaped by paths we did not choose and still find ways to slowly reshape ourselves.
Consequently, we gain the opportunity to decide which values, behaviours and ways of thinking we carry forward and prioritise in future. We begin to choose our own directions.
Generations of persistent patterns do not abolish the possibility of change.