TRAINING COURSE
5 stages of working with transgenerational trauma
How to recognize and work through traumatic family patterns that have intensified during the war.
Why a separate method?
Transgenerational trauma differs from other types of trauma. It involves a fear with no apparent source, a role that no one assigned, and a reaction that predates the person themselves. The source lies one or two generations back, often in something the family kept silent about. Furthermore, the symptom embodies a form of loyalty to the family line: to resolve it without affecting that loyalty means asking the client to betray their own. Hence the resistance and regression.
That is why a separate approach is needed: how to see the system, rather than an individual client with incomprehensible symptoms. How to distinguish one’s own symptom from an inherited one. How to facilitate detachment without severing the connection. And how to conclude the process so that the change remains.
The war didn’t create this—it brought it to the surface. Two layers converge in the therapy room today: what has been passed down, and what is happening now.
8 sessions
A step-by-step approach: from diagnosis through processing and reintegration to testimony and memorial rituals.
3 hours a week
Classes are held on Fridays from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (Kyiv time). Online.
5 stages of working
Each subsequent step builds on the previous one. To skip a step is to build on sand.
Hello. My name is Tetiana Stanislavska. I am a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and doctoral student at KISPP—and the founder of the Institute for War-Related Psychological Trauma.
Transgenerational trauma is the focus of my dissertation and my practice. I developed a Ukrainian adaptation of the HITT-Q questionnaire and the LCHL model—“Landscape–Boat–Person”—as a clinical framework for interpreting the intergenerational transmission of trauma.
The first three iterations of the course helped me understand where the program needs even more clinical depth. Iteration 3 is a version of the course that has already been tested with a real group twice.
I know where it will be challenging. But I also know where the breakthroughs will happen.
Reviews of Cohorts 1, 2, 3 (in Ukrainian)
Cohort 4:
September (4, 11, 18, 25), October (2, 9, 16, 23), November (6).
Cohort 5:
February (5, 12, 19, 26), March (5, 12, 19, 26).
Price: 13,500 UAH.
Registration (in Ukrainian)
This is a training course for professionals—psychologists and psychotherapists—who work with clients experiencing transgenerational trauma. If you’re looking for work that involves your own personal history, join our therapeutic group.
How does it work?
Stage 1.
Diagnostics
First, we need to understand the system. What has been passed down, from whom, and how—at the level of historical context, the family system, and the descendant themselves.
We work with HITT-Q and the LBP model, using criteria for readiness to proceed. We determine when to delve deeper and when to stop.
We collect archival sources and gather family (and childhood) photos. We study mentalization and the key unconscious mechanisms through which trauma is transmitted within the family. Maternal trauma, prenatal losses, and surrogate children. Diagnostic tools include semi-structured interviews, mapping, and projective techniques.
Stage 2.
Processing and Disconnection
Detachment is not a renunciation of one’s lineage. It is returning to the ancestor what the client carries in the ancestor’s place: unresolved grief, someone else’s guilt, someone else’s loyalty.
We’ll examine the two types of grief in TGT—personal and familial—and why they’re so often confused in the therapy room. We’ll explore detachment techniques and the signs that indicate a client is ready for them.
Detachment without loyalty is amputation. Detachment with loyalty is liberation. We’ll look at how to maintain the latter and what to do when a client is heading toward the former.
Stage 3.
Reintegration
After the client disconnects, they need to come back together. To integrate their experiences—both their own and those inherited—into a coherent memory, where the past takes its place in the past.
We’re exploring Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) and the Lifeline, the narrative approach, and schema therapy in the context of TGT. Separately, the somatic dimension: how transgenerational trauma lives in the body and how to address it in a session.
And the threshold: when reintegration is premature—and what signs to look for so you can recognize it before it’s too late.
Stage 4.
Testimony
“Trauma needs a witness to become the past.” — Dorit Laub, psychoanalyst.
Three levels of witnessing in TGT: the therapist as a witness to the client, the client as a witness to the ancestor, and witnessing for future generations. Clinical practice: what this looks like in a session, what the risks are, and how not to confuse witnessing with catharsis.
Stage 5.
Rituals of Remembrance
Rituals of remembrance do not erase transgenerational trauma. They transform its unconscious transmission into conscious preservation.
The difference between “forgetting” and “remembering so as not to carry on the burden” is significant. Rituals of commemoration, remembrance, and objects are clinical tools, not folklore.
Concluding the course: personal reflections, next steps.
What will be the outcome of the course?
After eight sessions, you’ll have more than just a set of tools.
You’ll be able to gather diagnostic information in a way that allows you to see the bigger picture—rather than just an individual client with unclear symptoms. You’ll know the difference between detachment and disengagement—and you won’t push a client into a place they’re not yet ready for. You’ll be able to facilitate both types of grief work—individual and family—and distinguish between them in the process. You’ll understand what testimony is as a clinical act and won’t confuse it with “just a story”.
And most importantly—you’ll have your own stance on this topic. An understanding of the method’s limits. Knowing where your competence ends and where you need to stop.
Profound transformations don’t happen in two months—and I don’t promise that. But clarity about the system you’ve lived in your whole life is already a lot. That’s where real change begins.
Feedback from course participants (in Ukrainian)
The three sessions of the “Transgenerational Trauma Therapy” course—– the first (October 3–December 19, 2025), the second (February 6–April 24, 2026), and the third (June 5–July 24, 2026)—have been completed.
Classes took place amid the realities of full-scale war—during rocket attacks, bombings of Ukrainian cities, and total blackouts. Despite this, not a single class was canceled or rescheduled—from the first session to the last.
Feedback from participants in both sessions is provided below.
You can find more working notes, insights, and observations about the course on the Telegram channel “War-Related Psychological Trauma”—to do so, enter the phrase “psychotherapy for transgenerational trauma” in the channel’s search bar
Or via the direct links:
on (non)coincidental coincidences, on how the unconscious surfaces through dreams, on shifts in family systems that undergo therapeutic interventions, on strong female lineages in participants’ families, on how nothing ever truly disappears, about the most profound traumas from one’s mother, about the genogram—as a self-portrait of the person who creates it, about metaphors of family loss, about working with emotional metaphors, about the synchronization among course participants, about how life’s mysteries work, about narratives, about the importance of sharing your story, because someone needs to hear it, see it, share it, about how transgenerational trauma is passed on (video metaphor with matches), about the victory of light
We are open to collaboration
Corporate training: programs for psychological services, medical facilities, and military organizations. University partnerships: integration of programs into curricula. Supervision and consulting: for organizations working with trauma.
We have been working throughout the war — and we will continue to do so afterward.
Join us.
For inquiries regarding cooperation:
war.trauma.institute@gmail.com
+380 68 95 92 911
About mental health during and after the war (in Ukrainian, but you can use Telegram’s translator):