Face Your Demons: Stop the Cycle Before It Reaches Your Kids

“If you don’t face your demons, they’ll show up wearing your face—and they’ll speak to your children.”

We all carry scars. Some are visible. Most aren’t. For many men—especially those who’ve lived through trauma, battled depression, or survived environments that demanded silence over healing—those scars become heavy chains.

If you don’t deal with it, your family will.

Unresolved trauma doesn’t just disappear. It leaks out. In how you speak to your partner. In how quickly you lose your patience with your kids. In the silent ways you withdraw instead of connecting. And over time, it becomes not just your burden—but theirs.

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The Science of Generational Pain

Research backs what many of us already feel in our bones: trauma is passed down.
The field of epigenetics shows that stress and trauma can alter gene expression—and these changes can be passed to your children (Yehuda et al., 2016).

Children of trauma survivors often exhibit higher rates of anxiety, emotional dysregulation, and depression—even if they didn’t experience the trauma firsthand (Kellermann, 2001).

In other words: what you don’t face, they will.

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What Does “Facing Your Demons” Look Like?

It’s not a one-time event. It’s a decision—made daily—to stop running and start working.

• Therapy: Especially trauma-informed approaches like EMDR or CBT. No shame. No weakness. Just clarity and strength.

• Men’s Groups: Like the Rough Sea Sailors Club—spaces where honesty, pain, and progress are welcome.

• Fitness: Strength training, cardio, movement. Physical resilience builds mental resilience.

• Journaling: Sounds soft, but tracking your emotions and reactions creates accountability.

• Boundaries: Learn what triggers you—and start building distance from what fuels the fire.

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You Are the Dam Wall

If you’ve been through hell and made it back, you have two choices:

1. Pretend it never happened—and let it poison the ones you love.

2. Face it. Own it. Change the pattern.

Be the one in your family line who says: It ends with me.

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Final Words

You’re not doing this work just for you. You’re doing it for your son who’s watching how you treat your partner. For your daughter who needs to know what strength looks like in a man. For your partner who committed to walk beside a warrior, not a ghost.

And most of all—for the man in the mirror. The one who still has a fight left in him.

Face your demons. Or they’ll be inherited.

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🔗 Resources:

• Yehuda, R. et al. (2016). “Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation.” Biological Psychiatry, 80(5), 372–380.

• Kellermann, N. P. F. (2001). “Transmission of Holocaust trauma—An integrative view.” Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes, 64(3), 256–267.

• Van der Kolk, B. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking Press.

• National Child Traumatic Stress Network: https://www.nctsn.org