Some of what you carry wasn't yours to begin with. It was handed to you before you had any say in the matter. The fears, the patterns, the ways of surviving that your family learned because they had no other choice. Understanding that changes everything.
Intergenerational Trauma Therapy in Chicago — Alberto Gonzalez, LCSW
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It might show up as anxiety that has no clear origin. A hypervigilance that feels disproportionate to your actual circumstances. A sense of danger in situations that are objectively safe. A body that stays braced even when there is nothing to brace against.
It might show up in how you relate to success. The first generation pressure to achieve, to justify the sacrifices that were made, to carry the hopes of everyone who came before you. The guilt of wanting things your family never had. The loneliness of moving into spaces they couldn't follow you into. The sense that your success belongs to everyone and your struggles belong to no one.
It might show up in the family dynamics that repeat without explanation. The way conflict gets handled, or doesn't get handled. The silences that carry as much weight as the words. The roles that got assigned before you were old enough to question them. The expectations around loyalty, obligation, and what it means to be a good son, daughter, sibling, partner.
It might show up as shame that feels older than you. Beliefs about your worth, your body, your right to take up space, your right to want things for yourself, that weren't formed by your own experience but by experiences that happened before you were born. Absorbed through the atmosphere of your family, through what was modeled and what was never spoken.
For Latino families in particular intergenerational trauma often carries the specific weight of migration, displacement, and survival. The experiences of parents and grandparents who crossed borders, who rebuilt lives from nothing, who survived things they never fully processed because survival didn't leave room for processing. That unprocessed pain doesn't disappear. It gets passed forward in the nervous system patterns, the relational dynamics, and the emotional inheritance of the next generation.
You didn't choose to carry this. But you are carrying it. And you can put some of it down.
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Intergenerational trauma therapy with me starts by naming what is actually happening. A lot of people come in knowing something is off but not having a framework for understanding it. Giving the experience a name, situating it in a larger context, understanding that what you are carrying has a history that predates you, is often the first thing that shifts something.
From there we get curious about the specific ways the trauma has moved through your family. Not to assign blame. The people who handed this to you were doing the best they could with what they had. Understanding what they had, what they were surviving, what they could not process, is not about excusing harm. It is about understanding the system you came from clearly enough to make conscious choices about what you carry forward and what stops here with you.
We look at the cultural context specifically. For Latino families the sources of intergenerational pain are often multiple and layered. Migration and displacement. Economic hardship and survival. Racism and discrimination absorbed across generations. The particular dynamics of machismo and marianismo and what those cultural scripts have meant for how emotions get expressed, suppressed, and transmitted. Naming those forces directly is not political. It is accurate. And accuracy is healing.
We work with the patterns that formed around the inherited pain. The ways of relating to yourself and others that developed in response to what your family carried. The protective strategies that made sense in context and have become the thing standing between you and the life you actually want. Understanding those patterns is the foundation for changing them.
We also work with the body. Intergenerational trauma lives somatically, in the nervous system patterns that were modeled and absorbed before there were words for them. Learning to recognize those patterns and gently shift them is where the most lasting change happens.
My approach is warm, culturally informed, and genuinely present. I understand from the inside what it means to carry a family's history alongside your own. That understanding shapes everything about how I show up in this work.
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Intergenerational trauma that goes unexamined doesn't stay contained to you. It moves forward. Into your relationships, your parenting, the patterns your own children absorb before they have words for what they are taking in.
When this work gets done the transmission stops. Not perfectly, not all at once. But meaningfully. The patterns that ran for generations start to lose their grip. The shame that was never yours starts to lift. The pain that was handed to you gets to stop here, with you, rather than being handed forward to the next generation.
That is some of the most significant work a person can do. Not just for themselves but for everyone who comes after them.
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This work is personal to me. My path to this work runs through my Ecuadorian heritage, through the experience of navigating life as a first generation college student, through the particular complexity of carrying a family's history alongside your own dreams and your own life. I understand from the inside what it means to love the people who handed you something heavy and to want to put some of it down. That understanding shapes everything about how I show up here. Life brings moments of joy and connection and it also brings pain, uncertainty, and stress. Your experience is unique to you and your emotions deserve a place to be seen and understood. I believe the relationship between therapist and client is where healing actually happens. Here, we name it, understand it, and reclaim your story.
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Ready to take the next step? Schedule a free consultation with Alberto at our Logan Square and Avondale locations and see if it feels like a good fit.