Episode 19: Parenting and the Nervous System – How Our Unhealed Wounds Shape the Next Generation

In Episode 19 of Beyond the Spot, Tracy Gantlin-Monroy explores parenting through the nervous system, revealing how unprocessed trauma shows up in family life across BIPOC and dominant-culture contexts.

Drawing on intergenerational trauma, race-based stress, the weathering hypothesis, and allostatic load, Tracy unpacks how vigilance, silence, and avoidance shape children’s inheritance.

With historical context and invitational reflections, this episode reframes parenting patterns not as pathology but as survival strategies—and calls parents and clinicians to heal their nervous systems as a gift to the next generation.