Human beings inherit more than names, property, and physical characteristics. We also inherit stories, images, expectations, coping patterns, beliefs, and ways of understanding ourselves. Some of these inheritances strengthen us; others wound us. BE Mindful Therapy® (BE-MT) is the psychotherapy text that establishes the framework for understanding Transgenerational Pain (TP) and Transgenerational Joy (TJ) (Harp, 2025).
Families can pass down pain, but it does not have to be their sole legacy. Historical truth, mindful awareness, healing, and purposeful action allow us to transform TP into TJ. In BE-MT, I introduce the concept of Historical Imagery (HI) to explain how the past (Before & Remembered) can enter the present (Here & Now) and influence the future (Soon & Possible).
We can understand this transformation process within the context of the Maafa for African Americans and the wider African diaspora.
Anthropologist Marimba Ani introduced the term Maafa in 1988 as an Afrocentric way to name the approximately 500-year catastrophe involving the trans-Atlantic and East African slave trades, the Middle Passage, European colonialism, enslavement, cultural assault, and the continuing effects of systemic racism and inequality (Ani, 1994). The Maafa is not only a collection of events in the distant past. Its psychological and social consequences continue when miseducation, dehumanizing images, unequal institutions, and racial discrimination remain active in modern life.
Research on historical and intergenerational trauma supports the broader proposition that massive group suffering can affect generations through family, cultural, social, and possibly biological pathways (Brave Heart, 2003; Yehuda & Lehrner, 2018).
I define Transgenerational Pain as cumulative emotional, relational, racial, social, spiritual, and somatic suffering that people carry, recreate, or renew across generations. TP may include grief, humiliation, anger, fear, mistrust, identity conflict, internalized inferiority, diminished expectations, family strain, chronic stress, and disconnection from cultural purpose.
It is not a psychiatric diagnosis; it is a broader way to name suffering that emerges from the interaction of historical oppression, present discrimination, family experience, and cultural messages. Racism has been consistently associated with poorer mental and physical health, while racial discrimination can produce psychological distress and trauma-related reactions (Comas-Díaz et al., 2019; Paradies et al., 2015).
Historical Imagery (HI) is central to this process.
I created the psychological term Historical Imagery to refer to historical mental images, representations, narratives, stereotypes, and symbolic meanings passed down from previous generations and absorbed through family life, education, religion, literature, political communication, entertainment, news, social media, and everyday social interaction (Harp, 2025).
HI often enters the mind without reflection, critical examination, or historical verification. It may be accurate, incomplete, distorted, or false. Negative Historical Imagery (NHI) includes false negative stereotypes, racial insults, cultural erasure, and degrading portrayals of African people and African Americans as intellectually, morally, socially, or spiritually inferior. Discriminatory behavior and institutions may impose NHI externally, or individuals may partially internalize it after repeated exposure. In either form, NHI can enter the Inner Self (IS), increase Stress Load (the subjective difference between distresses and de-stressors), narrow perceived possibilities, and contribute to TP. Recognizing this pathway reveals the psychological damage caused by a society that repeatedly creates and circulates false negative beliefs and attitudes.
Transgenerational Joy is the positive and restorative counterpart to Transgenerational Pain.
I define TJ as the resilience, pride, hope, meaning, relational strength, spiritual vitality, and sense of great possibility that people transmit across generations when they resist, overcome, heal, and transform emotional injury, relational harm, racial discrimination, and historical adversity. TJ is more than temporary happiness. It is a durable inheritance carried through truthful family stories, cultural traditions, faith, music, humor, creativity, education, achievement, resistance, love, service, and collective care. Positive emotions can broaden thought and action and help build enduring psychological and social resources (Fredrickson, 2001). Likewise, culturally grounded racial socialization can strengthen coping, identity, and family healing in the face of racial stress (Anderson & Stevenson, 2019).
Two pathways express the relationship among these concepts.
The pain pathway is: systemic racism and the Maafa that create negative historical imagery, which subsequently causes Transgenerational Pain and harms the Inner Self (IS). The joy pathway comprises historical truth, accurate and affirming Historical Imagery (HI), cultural continuity, resilience, and healing, which together contribute to Transgenerational Joy, thereby strengthening the IS and supporting the Possible Positive Self (PPS). The goal is not to replace painful history with fantasy or deny continuing injustice. Correct HI must acknowledge suffering and injustice while also recovering African and African American civilization, knowledge, spirituality, resistance, creativity, family strength, accomplishments, and survival. Our descendants should inherit the whole truth, not an image of Black life limited to bondage, victimization, or deficiency.
We can move from TP toward TJ. With BE-MT, psychoeducation helps the individual name the Maafa, identify HI and NHI, and understand how historical and present experiences affect Stress Load.
Deep Breathing then reduces physiological arousal and can serve as a Grounding Object (GO), returning attention to the Here & Now. De-stressing techniques and Stress Analysis help the person distinguish current threats from inherited or repeatedly activated images and evaluate the balance between stressors and de-stressors. The Mindful Journal creates a place to record racial encounters, emotional responses, family messages, recurring images, and evidence of strength.
Mindfulness, Mantra, Cognitive Impact (CI), and Let’s Mindergize® deepen the BE-MT change process (Harp, 2025).
Users may select a word, number, breath, affirmation, or grounded image as a GO. CI uses color, font, movement, shape, and imagery to increase the mental impact of truthful and empowering messages. The purpose is to correct false information, weaken NHI’s influence, and repeatedly strengthen accurate HI. BE-MT signature technique, Let’s Mindergize combines mindful movement (aerobic exercise), breathing, affirmation, and CI to help people experience new messages cognitively, emotionally, and physically. Through repetition, the person can move from an inherited image of limitation toward an identity grounded in dignity, competence, belonging, and possibility.
This process produces the Positive Self (PPS), a central BE-MT construct (Harp, 2025).
The PPS is the person one can realistically become through mindful practice, corrective experience, purposeful behavior, and sustained belief. The broader psychological concept of possible selves connects present identity with hopes, fears, goals, and motivation (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Within BE-MT, TJ gives the PPS historical and cultural roots. A person does not merely imagine individual success; they recognize that ancestral resilience, family strength, community achievement, and spiritual endurance are already part of the inheritance. PPS can therefore say, “I carry the strength of those who came before me, and I can create greater possibilities for those who come after me.”
Transforming TP requires personal healing, family communication, community action, accurate education, and social change. BE-MT does not ask people to adapt quietly to injustice. It helps them de-stress, examine inherited messages, strengthen the IS, and engage the world with greater clarity, purpose, and power. Transgenerational Pain reminds us that history continues to influence the Soon & Possible. Transgenerational Joy reminds us that suffering is not the only thing history transmits. The African diaspora has also inherited courage, spirituality, creativity, love, resistance, and an extraordinary capacity to survive and build. TP does not have to define the Soon & Possible. TJ can strengthen the PPS and help us Live Life With Great Possibilities!®
References
Ani, M. (1994). Let the circle be unbroken: The implications of African spirituality in the diaspora. Red Sea Press. (Original work published 1988)
Anderson, R. E., & Stevenson, H. C. (2019). RECASTing racial stress and trauma: Theorizing the healing potential of racial socialization in families. American Psychologist, 74(1), 63-75. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000392
Brave Heart, M. Y. H. (2003). The historical trauma response among Natives and its relationship with substance abuse: A Lakota illustration. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 35(1), 7-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2003.10399988
Comas-Díaz, L., Hall, G. N., & Neville, H. A. (2019). Racial trauma: Theory, research, and healing: Introduction to the special issue. American Psychologist, 74(1), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000442
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218-226. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218
Harp, O. J., III. (2025). Brain enhancement (BE) mindful therapy: Live life with great possibilities! Independently published.
Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954-969. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.9.954
Paradies, Y., Ben, J., Denson, N., Elias, A., Priest, N., Pieterse, A., Gupta, A., Kelaher, M., & Gee, G. (2015). Racism as a determinant of health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE, 10(9), e0138511. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138511
Photos by Iwaria Inc., Adeyemi Bamtefa, and IRIS AVIon Unsplash,
Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: Putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 243-257. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20568
