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A lot of us are running. Not from something obvious, not from danger, just running. Checking the boxes, hitting the goals, keeping up the pace. And if we slow down long enough to actually feel something, it might all catch up to us. So we keep going. We call it productivity. We call it drive. We call it ambition.

But what if it is none of those things?

That question is what pulled me into this conversation with Kirsten Davidson, and honestly, it is what I kept thinking about long after we stopped recording. The concept of intergenerational trauma gets thrown around a lot online, but this episode goes somewhere different. We talked about what happens inside the body and brain when a trauma response gets dressed up in a suit and shows up to work every single day pretending to be your personality.

Meet Kirsten Davidson

Kirsten Davidson is a Registered Psychotherapist and the founder of Mind The Gaps Psychotherapy, where she works with adults, couples, and families navigating disconnection, emotional overwhelm, and the relational patterns that keep pulling them back into the same cycles. Her approach is rooted in Internal Family Systems, relational therapy, and trauma-informed care.

She also writes for Psychology Today, exploring identity, relationships, and what genuine growth actually looks like. What makes Kirsten different from a lot of voices in this space is that she does not just look at symptoms. She goes looking for what created them.

When Your Ambition Is Actually a Trauma Response

One of the most important things Kirsten said in this conversation is something I have been sitting with ever since. When I asked her how often high achievers are running on disguised trauma responses instead of genuine ambition, she did not hesitate.

She said that protective parts of us form over time to help us survive. They help us achieve, connect, and push forward. But there is a threshold. As Kirsten put it directly: “These things in a specific dose are great. But it’s a trauma response when it’s way too much.”

The difference between healthy ambition and a biological trauma response, according to Kirsten, comes down to interference. When your drive is getting in the way of your sleep, your relationships, or your ability to just be present in your own life, that is the signal. The work is not to throw it out entirely. It is to understand it, build a relationship with it, and give it a new role.

This connects directly to something I covered in the post on why the DSM-5 misses so much context. Treating a symptom without understanding the lived experience that created it is like looking at a cut on someone’s leg and calling them broken without asking how they fell.

What Internal Family Systems Actually Means in Practice

If you have never heard of Internal Family Systems, or IFS therapy, here is the most human explanation I have ever heard. Kirsten described it this way: we are born as a sun, a natural state of curiosity and courage and light. Over time, different parts of us develop as protective responses to pain, fear, rejection, or stress. These parts are like clouds that move in front of the sun. They are not bad. They are trying to help. But sometimes they do too much, or they keep doing the same job long after the original threat is gone.

Living a self-led life means getting to know those clouds, understanding what they are protecting, and helping them step back so the sun can come through again.

IFS was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, and the research behind this model is increasingly recognized in trauma-informed clinical practice. A 2021 study published in the Journal of Rheumatology found significant improvements in pain, depression, and self-compassion among participants who received IFS-based treatment, supporting its value as a structured therapeutic framework, not just a metaphor.

The practical daily entry point Kirsten recommends is this: the next time you feel a strong emotion, do not just label it. Instead, notice where you feel it in your body. Then ask yourself: how do I feel toward this emotion right now? That one question creates a separation. The emotion is a part of you. It is not all of you.

Breaking Intergenerational Trauma: What It Feels Like in the Body

One of the things I did not expect to talk about in this episode was the physical experience of breaking a generational cycle. When I asked Kirsten if there is a recognizable sensation when it happens in real time, she said yes without hesitation.

What her clients most often report is a physical lightness. The weight they did not even know they were carrying starts to lift. She described it as a moment where someone realizes: this was never mine. It came from somewhere else. And it never belonged to me.

Kirsten calls these legacy burdens, patterns, roles, or beliefs that began with a parent or grandparent and got passed down through relationship, observation, or survival strategy, not lived experience. The distinction matters because it changes how you approach healing. You are not fixing something that is wrong with you. You are returning something that was never yours to carry.

This is also something I talked about personally in this conversation. I grew up in a community where mental health was not discussed. It was not part of the vocabulary. A late ADHD diagnosis at 34 meant years of masking behaviors I did not understand, running on patterns I did not choose. If you want to go deeper on the masking piece specifically, the Mental Health Resources Hub on this site has a growing collection of resources built around this exact territory.

For more on how identity and inner self-talk shape the way we operate, the recent episode with Rabbi Daniel Cohen on negative thoughts and identity runs parallel to what Kirsten covers here, from a very different angle but landing in the same place.

Accountability Without the Shame Spiral

One of the most practically useful parts of this conversation was about personal accountability. Taking ownership of your patterns is necessary for healing. But it can also send people into a shame spiral that makes everything worse. I asked Kirsten how she navigates that line with her clients.

Her answer came back to the IFS framework. When you can recognize that a blocking behavior is a part of you, not all of you, the shame starts to dissolve. You are not a bad person. You have a part that developed under pressure and is still doing the only job it knows. Understanding it, validating why it exists, and helping it shift is not excusing yourself. It is how change actually happens.

A study from the University of California, Berkeley found that self-compassion consistently outperforms self-criticism as a motivator for lasting behavioral change. Kirsten’s clinical approach reflects exactly this. You cannot bully yourself into healing.

She closed the episode with one sentence that stopped me: “You are not your emotions. You are consciousness experiencing your emotions. They are not you. You are experiencing them.”

That is the whole thing, right there.

Key Takeaways

  • Your ambition might be a trauma response. When drive starts interfering with sleep, relationships, and the ability to rest, that is the biology of a protective part working overtime, not a personality trait.
  • Internal Family Systems reframes healing as building a relationship with the parts of you that developed to protect you, not eliminating them.
  • Breaking intergenerational trauma has a physical sensation. Most people describe it as a weight lifting, the release of patterns that were never originally theirs.
  • You can hold yourself accountable without spiraling into shame. The key is recognizing that a blocking behavior is a part of you, not the definition of you.

People Also Ask

Q: What is intergenerational trauma and how does it affect adults?

A: Intergenerational trauma refers to patterns of emotional, behavioral, or relational stress that originate with a parent, grandparent, or earlier ancestor and get passed down through family systems without the recipient ever having experienced the original event. In adults, it can show up as repeating relationship patterns, unexamined beliefs about identity or worthiness, or protective behaviors that no longer serve a clear purpose. Therapy approaches like Internal Family Systems help people identify these legacy burdens and understand that they are not fixed features of who they are.

Q: What is Internal Family Systems therapy and how does it work?

A: Internal Family Systems, or IFS, is a therapy model developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz that views the mind as made up of multiple parts, each with its own perspective and protective role. The goal of IFS is not to eliminate these parts but to understand them, build a relationship with them, and help them release the roles they have been stuck in. This creates more access to what IFS calls the Self, a core state of clarity, curiosity, and calm that is always present beneath the parts.

Q: How can you tell if your ambition is a trauma response?

A: Healthy ambition tends to coexist with rest, relationships, and the ability to feel satisfied. A trauma response disguised as ambition usually does not. If your drive is consistently interfering with sleep, your connections with others, or your ability to be present without anxiety, that is often a signal that a protective part of your nervous system is running the show. A trauma-informed therapist can help you distinguish between the two and work with the protective part rather than fighting it.

Q: What does breaking a generational cycle actually feel like?

A: Many people describe it as a physical lightness, a release of weight they did not know they were carrying. In clinical work with Internal Family Systems, this often comes from the moment a person realizes that a pattern they have been living does not actually belong to them. It originated with someone else in their family system and was never originally theirs. That recognition alone, even before deeper work is done, tends to create noticeable emotional and physical relief.

The Conversation That Changed Something for Me

I will be honest. When Kirsten said that hiding who we are is not a personality trait, it is a trauma response, I had to sit with that for a minute. Because I spent years performing a version of myself that felt safe and calling it discipline.

This conversation gave me language for things I had felt but could not name. And I think that is exactly what Kirsten’s work does. It does not just explain the problem. It hands you something you can use the same day.

If this episode resonated with you, go find Kirsten. You can read her writing, explore her approach, and book a session directly at mindthegaps.co. If you have been thinking about therapy or if you just want to understand your own patterns better, she is someone worth your time.

And as always, if anything in this conversation brought something up that feels like more than you want to carry alone, please take it to a professional. This is a conversation, not a prescription. There are real people trained to help with exactly what we talked about today.

If this episode hit, leave a review on whatever platform you are listening on right now. It genuinely helps more people find this community. Follow along at @TheVibeWithKy on all your favorite platforms, and head to TheVibeWithKy.com for the neurodivergent blog, the ADHD store, the email list, and everything else we have built for this community.

Much love. Good vibes. – Ky