Some of the hardest patterns to break are the ones we grew up believing were normal.
Maybe you learned to stay quiet when someone was angry. Maybe you became the responsible one in your family, always anticipating everyone else’s needs before your own. Or maybe, no matter how much you’ve accomplished as an adult, you still find yourself searching for the approval you never quite received growing up.
We don’t always recognize these patterns as unhealthy when we’re young. They’re simply the environment we know. It’s often not until adulthood, when we begin navigating our own relationships, friendships, and emotional challenges, that we start questioning where certain behaviors came from.
Netflix’s new adaptation of “East of Eden,” based on John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, brings these complicated family dynamics into focus. Through generations of conflict, rejection, jealousy, and the desire to be loved, the story explores a question that remains relevant today:
Are we destined to repeat the patterns of the people who raised us, or can we choose a different path?
The answer is more hopeful than we might think.
What “East of Eden” Reveals About Family Dysfunction
At its core, “East of Eden” is a story about family, identity, and the emotional wounds that can follow people throughout their lives.
The story follows the Trask family across generations, exploring the complicated relationships between brothers Adam and Charles and, later, Adam’s sons, Cal and Aron.
Despite growing up in different circumstances, the brothers experience familiar struggles. There is jealousy, competition, emotional distance, and a deep desire for parental approval.
One of the most striking aspects of the story is how similar emotional patterns emerge in different generations.
Charles struggles with the belief that his father favors Adam. Years later, Cal experiences his own feelings of rejection and inadequacy in his relationship with Adam, who appears to favor Aron.
Although the characters are different, their emotional experiences echo one another.
And that’s what makes the story so relevant to conversations about generational trauma.
Families don’t necessarily pass down the exact same experiences. Sometimes they pass down the beliefs, coping mechanisms, and emotional responses that developed around those experiences.
A parent who grew up feeling emotionally neglected may struggle to express affection. Someone raised in a household where conflict was frightening may avoid difficult conversations altogether. A person who learned that love was conditional may unintentionally bring those same expectations into their own relationships.
These behaviors aren’t always intentional, and not every unhealthy family pattern is the result of trauma. But without awareness, patterns can continue long after the original circumstances have changed.
What Is Generational Trauma?
Generational trauma, sometimes called intergenerational trauma, refers to the ways traumatic experiences and their effects can influence subsequent generations.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that children experience the same traumatic events as their parents or grandparents.
Instead, trauma can affect how people communicate, manage emotions, respond to stress, form relationships, and raise their children.
For example, imagine someone who grew up in a household where expressing sadness was considered weakness.
As an adult, that person may have difficulty discussing their feelings. When their own child becomes upset, they might respond with frustration or dismissal because they were never taught how to offer emotional support.
The child may eventually learn to hide their feelings, too.
Over time, emotional suppression becomes a family pattern.
Other examples might include:
- Avoiding conflict because disagreements were associated with anger or punishment.
- Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions because you were expected to keep the peace.
- Struggling to trust others because important relationships were unpredictable.
- Believing your worth depends on achievement, obedience, or making others happy.
- Having difficulty setting boundaries because independence was treated as rejection.
- Minimizing your own needs because someone else’s problems always seemed more important.
These patterns can develop for many reasons. They don’t automatically mean someone has experienced trauma or has a mental health disorder.
However, when they begin affecting emotional well-being, relationships, or daily functioning, they may be worth exploring.
The Lasting Impact of Parental Rejection
One of the most painful themes in “East of Eden” is the desire to be loved and accepted by a parent.
Charles wants his father’s approval. Cal longs to feel accepted by Adam. Both struggle with the perception that their brothers are more deserving of affection.
For a child, parental rejection can feel deeply personal.
Children generally don’t have the perspective to recognize that a parent’s emotional limitations may have little to do with them. Instead, they may begin searching for explanations within themselves:
- Maybe I’m not good enough.
- Maybe if I behaved differently, they would love me more.
- Maybe my sibling is just easier to love.
Those beliefs can become difficult to shake, even years later.
How Childhood Rejection Can Show Up in Adulthood
Someone who grew up feeling rejected or emotionally overlooked may find themselves:
- Constantly seeking reassurance in romantic relationships.
- Feeling anxious when someone seems distant or upset.
- Struggling with perfectionism or an intense fear of failure.
- Comparing themselves to siblings, friends, or coworkers.
- Having difficulty accepting compliments or recognizing their accomplishments.
- Staying in unhealthy relationships because being chosen feels more important than being treated well.
Of course, these experiences can have many causes. Not everyone who experiences parental rejection will develop these patterns.
But recognizing a connection between childhood experiences and present-day behavior can offer an important starting point for understanding yourself.
The approval you didn’t receive growing up does not determine your worth today.
Learning to believe that, rather than simply understanding it intellectually, can take time.
Why Family Roles Can Follow Us Into Adulthood
Most families develop roles, whether anyone consciously assigns them or not.
There’s the responsible sibling, the rebellious one, the peacemaker, the high achiever, the caretaker, or the one who seems to cause all the problems.
Sometimes these roles reflect personality differences. Other times, they develop in response to family expectations, stress, or dysfunction.
In “East of Eden,” the contrast between brothers repeatedly raises questions about identity and belonging. One sibling is perceived as good, while another struggles with being seen as difficult or flawed.
When someone grows up being assigned a particular role, it can influence how they see themselves long after leaving home.
The Responsible Child: Perhaps you were praised for being mature, independent, and easy to manage. As an adult, you might struggle to ask for help because you’ve always been the person everyone depends on.
The Peacemaker: Maybe you learned to anticipate conflict and keep everyone comfortable. Today, setting a boundary or expressing disappointment might make you feel guilty, even when your needs are reasonable.
The Problem Child: Perhaps you were frequently blamed for family disagreements or labeled difficult for expressing emotions. As an adult, you might still question whether your feelings are valid or assume you’re responsible whenever a relationship becomes strained.
The High Achiever: Maybe accomplishments were the easiest way to receive attention or praise. Now, slowing down can feel uncomfortable because productivity has become closely tied to your sense of self-worth.
These roles are not permanent identities.
They may help explain how you adapted to your childhood environment, but they don’t have to dictate how you live as an adult.
Mission Connection is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
When Dysfunction Feels Normal
One of the challenges of growing up in a dysfunctional family is that you may not realize anything is unusual.
Children tend to understand relationships through what they experience at home:
- If arguments regularly end in days of silence, that may become your understanding of conflict.
- If family members criticize one another but rarely apologize, you may assume that’s simply how people communicate.
- If expressing a need leads to guilt or punishment, you may learn that keeping quiet is safer.
Not every family disagreement is a sign of dysfunction. All families experience conflict, misunderstandings, and periods of stress.
The distinction often lies in whether harmful patterns are persistent, whether family members feel emotionally or physically safe, and whether there is room for accountability and repair.
In healthier relationships, people can disagree while still respecting one another. Mistakes can be acknowledged, feelings can be discussed, and boundaries can exist without threatening the relationship.
In dysfunctional environments, those experiences may be less consistent or entirely absent.
Sometimes the realization doesn’t come until you witness a different family dynamic:
- You visit a friend’s home and notice that disagreements don’t turn into shouting matches.
- You watch someone’s parent apologize without making excuses.
- You experience a relationship where saying no doesn’t result in punishment or guilt.
And suddenly, something you believed was normal begins to look different.
That realization can be uncomfortable. It can also be the beginning of meaningful change.
Understanding Your Parents Doesn’t Mean Excusing Harmful Behavior
As adults, we sometimes gain a different perspective on our parents.
We may learn about the hardships they experienced, the relationships they grew up around, or the emotional support they never received.
Understanding those circumstances can create empathy.
A parent who struggled to express affection may have grown up without affection themselves. Someone who responded to stress with anger may never have learned healthier ways to manage difficult emotions.
But understanding why someone behaves a certain way does not mean their behavior was acceptable.
Two things can be true at once:
- Your parents may have experienced their own pain, and their behavior may still have hurt you.
- You can acknowledge the challenges they faced without minimizing your own experiences.
You can love your family while recognizing that certain relationships or behaviors are unhealthy.
And you can choose boundaries, distance, or a different kind of relationship when necessary.
Healing does not require pretending the past was better than it was.
It also doesn’t require forgiveness, reconciliation, or maintaining contact with someone who continues to cause harm.
Sometimes healing involves rebuilding a relationship. Sometimes it involves changing your expectations. And sometimes it means creating distance so you can protect your well-being.
There is no single path that works for everyone.
Timshel: The Power to Choose a Different Path
One of the most meaningful ideas in “East of Eden” is the concept of timshel.
In Steinbeck’s novel, the word is interpreted as “thou mayest,” emphasizing the possibility of choice.
Throughout the story, characters wrestle with the idea that they may be destined to repeat the mistakes of previous generations.
Are people inherently good or bad? Are we defined by our parents? Can someone who has caused harm change?
Timshel introduces a different possibility.
Our histories influence us, but they don’t have to determine every decision we make. This idea connects closely with the work of breaking unhealthy family patterns:
- You may have learned to avoid conflict, but you can practice communicating your needs.
- You may have grown up around criticism, but you can learn to speak to yourself with compassion.
- You may have witnessed unhealthy relationships, but you can begin identifying what respect, trust, and emotional safety look like.
That doesn’t mean change is simple.
Some responses become deeply ingrained over time. Recognizing a pattern doesn’t automatically make it disappear, and trauma-related reactions are not always something a person can simply choose to stop.
But awareness, support, and practice can create more opportunities to respond differently.
You may not have chosen the environment you grew up in, but you can begin making choices about the life you want to build.
How to Start Breaking Generational Patterns
Breaking unhealthy family cycles rarely happens through one conversation or realization.
More often, it’s a gradual process of understanding yourself, recognizing old responses, and practicing new behaviors.
Here are several ways to begin.
1. Notice the Patterns That Keep Showing Up
Pay attention to situations that bring out strong emotional reactions.
Do you shut down when someone raises their voice? Do you feel guilty saying no? Do you assume someone is upset with you when they become quiet?
Rather than immediately criticizing yourself, get curious.
Ask yourself:
- When did I first learn to respond this way?
- What did this behavior help me manage growing up?
- Is it still helping me today?
- What might a healthier response look like?
The goal isn’t to blame your childhood for everything. It’s to understand where certain patterns may have started.
2. Learn to Recognize Your Emotional Needs
If you grew up prioritizing other people’s feelings, identifying your own needs may feel unfamiliar.
Start with simple questions.
Am I overwhelmed? Do I need reassurance? Am I agreeing to something because I want to, or because I’m afraid of disappointing someone?
Learning to recognize your needs can make it easier to communicate them.
3. Practice Boundaries Without Expecting Everyone to Understand
Boundaries can feel especially uncomfortable when you grew up in a family where saying no was discouraged.
You may worry that setting limits will hurt someone’s feelings or create conflict.
Start small.
You might say:
- “I don’t want to discuss that right now.”
- “I need some time before I respond.”
- “I understand that you’re disappointed, but this is what works for me.”
A boundary doesn’t have to be aggressive to be effective.
And someone else’s discomfort doesn’t automatically mean you’ve done something wrong.
4. Challenge the Beliefs You Inherited
Many of us carry beliefs about ourselves that began long before we were old enough to question them.
Maybe you learned that expressing emotions makes you weak.
Maybe you believe you have to earn affection.
Maybe you feel responsible for keeping every relationship together.
Consider whether those beliefs reflect who you are today or simply what you were taught.
You don’t have to accept every message you received growing up as the truth.
5. Give Yourself Permission to Grieve
Recognizing family dysfunction can bring up complicated emotions.
You might feel sadness about the support you didn’t receive, anger about what happened, or guilt for questioning people you love.
You may also grieve the relationship you hoped to have with a parent or sibling.
Those feelings can coexist.
You don’t have to choose between acknowledging the good parts of your childhood and recognizing the painful ones.
Both can be part of your story.
6. Seek Support When Patterns Feel Difficult to Change
Some family experiences are difficult to process alone, particularly when they involve trauma, chronic stress, emotional neglect, or ongoing conflict.
Therapy can provide a space to explore these experiences without judgment.
It can also help you develop practical skills for emotional regulation, communication, boundaries, and healthier relationships.
You don’t have to wait until your relationships or mental health reach a breaking point to ask for support.
How Therapy Can Help You Break the Cycle
Understanding where a pattern came from is valuable, but knowing why you respond a certain way doesn’t always make it easier to change.
You might recognize that you’re people-pleasing and still feel anxious when you disappoint someone.
You might understand that your childhood taught you to avoid conflict but still struggle to communicate when you’re upset.
You might know that a family member’s criticism doesn’t define you, yet find yourself replaying their words for days.
This is where therapy can help bridge the gap between awareness and change.
Depending on your needs, therapy may help you:
- Explore how childhood experiences influence your current relationships.
- Recognize emotional triggers and develop healthier responses.
- Challenge negative beliefs about yourself.
- Practice setting and maintaining boundaries.
- Build confidence in communicating your feelings.
- Work through grief, anger, shame, or unresolved family conflict.
- Develop coping skills for anxiety, depression, and emotional distress.
For people experiencing more persistent mental health challenges, an intensive outpatient program (IOP) may provide a more structured level of support than traditional weekly therapy.
IOP typically involves multiple therapy sessions each week while allowing individuals to continue living at home and participating in many of their everyday responsibilities.
Group therapy can also offer opportunities to connect with others, practice communication skills, and recognize that many people struggle with similar relationship patterns.
The goal isn’t to erase your past.
It’s to help you understand how your experiences have affected you and develop healthier ways to navigate your present.
You Can Love Your Family and Still Choose to Do Things Differently
Perhaps the most relatable lesson in “East of Eden” is that family relationships are rarely simple.
People can love one another and still cause pain. Parents can have good intentions and still make harmful decisions. Siblings can grow up in the same household and experience it in completely different ways.
And sometimes, the patterns we spend years trying to understand are the very ones we find ourselves repeating.
But repeating a behavior doesn’t mean you’re destined to continue it forever.
Breaking generational cycles doesn’t require becoming a perfect person, partner, or parent.
It means becoming more aware of the patterns that no longer serve you and making an effort to respond differently:
- Sometimes that looks like apologizing when you make a mistake.
- Sometimes it means listening instead of becoming defensive.
- Sometimes it’s setting a boundary you’ve avoided for years.
- And sometimes it’s simply recognizing that you deserve relationships where you feel respected, supported, and emotionally safe.
You can appreciate the good things your family gave you while acknowledging the things you wish had been different.
You can understand your parents’ experiences without repeating their choices.
You can recognize your own mistakes without allowing them to define who you are.
As “East of Eden” reminds us, the past can shape our lives without having the final say in our future.
You are allowed to write a different story.
Find Support at Mission Connection
If you’ve been struggling with the emotional impact of family dysfunction, childhood experiences, anxiety, depression, or unhealthy relationship patterns, you don’t have to work through everything on your own.
At Mission Connection, we provide outpatient mental health treatment designed to help individuals better understand their experiences, develop healthier coping skills, and build meaningful changes in their lives.
Our intensive outpatient programming offers structured therapeutic support while allowing individuals to continue navigating their everyday responsibilities. We offer flexible treatment formats that include in-person programs at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, virtual telehealth, and a hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care.
Whether you’re learning to set boundaries, processing difficult family relationships, or working toward greater emotional well-being, support is available.
Your past is part of your story, but it doesn’t have to determine what comes next.
Mission Connection is Joint Commission-accredited. We also accept most major insurance providers, so that your recovery is not hindered due to financial issues.
Reach out to us online or call us at 866-833-1822 to find out how we can support your long-term recovery.
