by Sam Keo, Psy.D., LACDMH Retiree
“I am so thankful for your workshop this morning. My son would have still been alive if I had met you last year,” was what a woman spoke to me as I left the podium. She told me that her son died by suicide recently. She saw all the warning signs she learned in the workshop, but she did not understand how the Holocaust, that happened decades ago—before she was even born—emotionally affected her son. Her grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor, passed down his traumas to her parents, her parents passed those on to her, and she passed them on to her children. These latter three generations have never been lived or experienced the Holocaust, but yet, they are affected by these vicarious traumas.
In more than three decades as a clinician, I’ve seen the patterns of these cycles of traumas in the Cambodian population. Experts call these traumas, “Intergenerational Transmission of Traumas (ITT)”. As one of the Cambodia’s genocide survivors, I was fascinated by the development of the ITT and was curious of how I could help break these vicious cycles. I applied different therapeutic techniques to treat them and I found that the most effective treatment was attachment theory by Bowlby and Ainsworth. This technique plays a crucial role in the child’s psychological development and personality later on. It is essential to educate the client about parent-child relationships and how secure attachment can develop positive emotional health for the child.
I used my lunch break to hear her story, empathize with her, and offered my condolences. In my retirement note, I have expressed many thanks to my colleagues who have shaped my career and become who I am today. But as I am writing this article, I have realized that the biggest contribution to my career was my thousands of clients/patients. I want to thank them for trusting me and for allowing me to get to know them personally. I wish them the best.
