Dr. Terry Real | Healing Intergenerational Trauma Through Our Relationships

Apr 29, 2025

In this discussion, Dr. Terry Real, an acclaimed family therapist and founder of The Relational Life Institute, dives deep into intergenerational trauma and its impact on family dynamics. He emphasizes the importance of 'Relational Mindfulness' to break the cycle of negative patterns and encourages a shift from individualism to collaboration. Through personal anecdotes, Terry illustrates how vulnerability fosters healing, advocating for awareness and intentionality in relationships. His insights empower listeners to confront emotional triggers as opportunities for growth.

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ADVICE

Use Relational Mindfulness

When triggered, pause and choose a mature part of yourself instead of the knee-jerk reaction.
Use relational mindfulness: breathe, step back, and return with intention to change the dynamic.

INSIGHT

Adaptive Patterns Hide The Wound

Childhood wounds become adaptive patterns like fight, flight, or fix in adult relationships.
Those adaptations feel intelligent then but are maladaptive now and shut down the prefrontal cortex during conflict.

ADVICE

Agree On Breaks To Reset

When you feel triggered, take a break and agree with your partner what a break looks like.
Return when centered to talk from the part of you that wants repair, not from self-protection.

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Thomas is joined by Terry Real, an acclaimed family therapist, bestselling author, and the founder of The Relational Life Institute. Terry shares insights from his years of work with couples and families struggling to repair their relationships, and how practicing what he calls “Relational Mindfulness” is a game-changer for anyone whose past traumas are negatively impacting their current connections.

As Terry explains, the work of relationships is not day-by-day; it’s moment-to-moment. And in each challenging moment, we have a choice: give in to our knee-jerk reactions and maladaptive trauma responses, or take a step back so that a more mature part of ourselves can emerge.

When we choose presence, collaboration, and interdependence over reactivity, conflict, and toxic individualism, we don’t just heal ourselves and our relationships—we stop the flow of intergenerational trauma in its tracks, and this dynamic shift becomes a part of our legacy.

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Dr. Terry Real has been a practicing family therapist for more than thirty years, and his work has been featured on many major news outlets, TV shows, and in numerous academic publications. His most recent book Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, is a New York Times Bestseller. Terry founded the Relational Life Institute (RLI), which is dedicated to teaching the general public how to live relational lives and to teaching mental health professionals the practice of Relational Life Therapy.

Connect with Dr. Real here: 👉 https://terryreal.com

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma.

In addition to Attuned, he is the author of Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, as a coach for CEOs and organizational leaders, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.

✨ Connect with Thomas here:

Website: https://thomashuebl.com/Facebook: https://facebook.com/Thomas.Huebl.Sangha/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thomashuebl/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ThomasHuebl YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thomashuebl

✨ Order Thomas Hübl’s new book, “Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma–And Our World” here:

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