There is a reason some experiences continue affecting people long after the original moment has passed.
The mind may understand that something happened years ago. It may recognize that life has moved forward. But the body often tells a different story. The nervous system continues reacting, relationships continue repeating familiar patterns, and emotional responses emerge in moments that seem disconnected from the original experience itself.
This is one of the reasons healing cannot always happen by simply “moving on.”
For many adults, especially adults carrying generational and cultural trauma, the past is not entirely past. It remains present in emotional patterns, survival responses, family dynamics, and the ways people learn to protect themselves long before they understand why.
The Akan principle of Sankofa offers language for this reality.
Represented by a bird looking backward while moving forward, Sankofa translates roughly to: “It is not wrong to go back for what you forgot.”
At first glance, this idea may seem symbolic or philosophical. But the longer people spend in trauma healing work, the more recognizable its truth becomes.
Healing often requires returning to experiences, emotions, and histories that were never fully processed the first time. Not to remain trapped in them but to finally understand what was carried forward unresolved.
At SHIFT Your Journey® Mental Health Counseling, PLLC, the Sankofa principle is foundational to how trauma healing is understood — especially for Black adults, adults of African descent, and communities carrying intergenerational emotional weight across Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
Going back is not regression. Sometimes it is the beginning of freedom.
What the Sankofa Principle Actually Means
The Sankofa symbol comes from the Akan people of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa. Its image is often depicted as a bird with its feet facing forward while its head turns backward carrying an egg in its beak. The symbolism is intentional. The bird moves forward while remaining connected to what came before. The message is not about living in the past.
It is about understanding that progress without reflection often leaves important parts of ourselves behind. Within Akan philosophy, time is not viewed strictly as linear. The past, present, and future are interconnected. What previous generations experienced continues influencing the generations that follow.
This understanding feels deeply familiar to many people, even before they have language for it because many adults recognize patterns in themselves that seem older than their own individual experiences.
Ways of responding to stress.
Ways of relating emotionally.
Ways of surviving.
The Sankofa principle offers a framework for understanding these patterns not as personal failures, but as inherited adaptations deserving deeper examination.
Why “Moving Forward” Alone Often Does Not Work
Western culture frequently emphasizes forward movement as the solution to pain. Move on, Stay positive, Leave the past behind but trauma does not operate according to motivational language.
The nervous system does not release pain simply because someone decides they no longer want to feel it.
When experiences remain emotionally unprocessed, they often continue appearing indirectly:
Through hypervigilance
Emotional suppression
Chronic anxiety
Relationship patterns
Difficulty trusting or resting
Persistent feelings of emotional heaviness
People often try very hard to outwork, outthink, or outrun these patterns. Many become highly successful externally while remaining emotionally overwhelmed internally. The problem is not lack of discipline. The problem is that unresolved experiences continue influencing the nervous system beneath conscious awareness. Sankofa recognizes something many trauma clinicians now understand deeply: You cannot fully heal what you have never allowed yourself to honestly examine.
The Science of Intergenerational Trauma
What makes the Sankofa principle especially powerful is how closely it aligns with modern trauma research.
For many years, trauma was understood primarily as an individual psychological experience. Today, research across psychology, neuroscience, developmental theory, and epigenetics shows that trauma can affect generations. Intergenerational trauma refers to the transmission of emotional, behavioral, relational, and physiological stress patterns across generations. This transmission happens in multiple ways.
Children absorb emotional environments long before they understand language. They learn safety, danger, emotional regulation, and relational expectations through observation, nervous system attunement, and repeated experience.
A parent carrying unresolved trauma may unintentionally communicate hypervigilance, emotional suppression, or fear through behavior, even when deeply loving their child.
Stress also affects the body biologically. Emerging epigenetic research suggests severe stress and trauma may influence gene expression connected to stress regulation and nervous system functioning across generations.
This does not mean trauma permanently damages families. It means emotional experiences leave imprints that deserve acknowledgment rather than denial and healing those patterns changes what gets passed forward.
How Historical Trauma Affects Black Communities
For Black communities throughout the African diaspora, intergenerational trauma cannot be separated from historical context. Slavery. Colonization. Forced displacement. Racial violence. Segregation. Economic exclusion. Hypervigilance required for survival within systems that repeatedly communicated danger and instability. These experiences did not simply disappear once laws changed.
Their emotional and physiological effects continued shaping families, communities, nervous systems, and survival strategies across generations.
Many adults today carry inherited patterns connected to:
Emotional self-protection
Hyper-independence
Fear of vulnerability
Overfunctioning and caretaking
Suppression of grief
Chronic vigilance and stress
These responses were often adaptive within dangerous conditions but adaptation and healing are not the same thing. Survival strategies that protected earlier generations may become emotionally costly when carried indefinitely. This is why culturally grounded therapy matters. Healing becomes more effective when therapy acknowledges the full historical and cultural context people are living inside — rather than treating emotional distress as disconnected from that context.
What Going Back Actually Looks Like in Therapy
Going back does not mean reliving trauma without support. It does not mean endlessly revisiting pain without movement. Trauma-informed therapy approaches the past carefully, intentionally, and with pacing designed to protect emotional safety.
In practice, “going back” often means:
Understanding where emotional patterns originated
Identifying inherited survival strategies
Recognizing how past experiences shaped present relationships
Allowing previously suppressed emotions to become visible safely
Helping the nervous system complete unresolved stress responses
Many people discover that they have spent years trying to solve present-day problems without understanding the emotional roots beneath them. Therapy creates space to explore those roots with support not to remain trapped there but to reduce the unconscious power they continue holding over the present.
How EMDR Connects to the Sankofa Principle
At SHIFT Your Journey®, the Sankofa Rooted™ EMDR and Trauma Healing Program integrates trauma processing with cultural grounding rooted in Akan philosophy.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) helps the brain process traumatic experiences that remain “stuck” within the nervous system.
The Sankofa framework gives this process additional meaning and context.
Clients are not simply revisiting painful experiences randomly. They are returning intentionally to retrieve what was left unresolved — emotional clarity, nervous system regulation, grief, identity, understanding, and sometimes even parts of themselves that had to disappear in order to survive.
This work is especially meaningful for Black adults and adults of African descent whose trauma often exists not only at the individual level, but also within larger historical and cultural realities.
The Sankofa Rooted™ framework recognizes that trauma healing is both personal and collective.
What you heal in yourself changes what future generations inherit.
That is part of the work.
Healing Is About More Than Pain
One of the most important parts of Sankofa is that the bird carries something forward. The symbol does not represent remaining trapped in grief or trauma. It represents retrieval and what people retrieve through healing is not only pain.
They also recover:
Identity
Emotional range
Rest
Connection
Joy
Self-understanding
Cultural continuity
The ability to experience safety differently
Many people enter therapy believing healing only involves confronting difficult emotions. Over time, they discover healing also involves reconnecting with parts of themselves that survival required them to suppress. This is especially important for adults who have spent years functioning primarily through endurance. Healing expands emotional possibility beyond survival alone.
Why Cultural Grounding Matters in Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapy becomes more effective when people feel emotionally and culturally understood.
Without cultural grounding, many Black adults spend valuable therapeutic time explaining experiences connected to race, family systems, hypervigilance, identity, or historical stress before the work can even begin. Culturally responsive therapy reduces that burden.
At SHIFT Your Journey®, cultural responsiveness is not treated as an additional service. It is foundational to care.
The Sankofa Rooted™ approach recognizes:
Historical trauma
Racialized stress
Diasporic identity
Generational emotional patterns
Cultural resilience and ancestral wisdom
Healing becomes deeper when therapy recognizes both the pain people carry and the cultural strengths they inherited alongside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
1- What is the Sankofa principle?
Sankofa is an Akan philosophical principle meaning “it is not wrong to go back for what you forgot.” It emphasizes returning to the past to retrieve wisdom, healing, and understanding necessary for moving forward.
2- What is intergenerational trauma?
Intergenerational trauma refers to the emotional, relational, and physiological transmission of unresolved trauma across generations.
3-How does trauma pass through generations?
Trauma can affect parenting patterns, emotional environments, nervous system regulation, attachment styles, and stress responses passed from one generation to the next.
4- What is culturally grounded trauma therapy?
Culturally grounded trauma therapy integrates emotional healing with cultural identity, historical context, and lived experience rather than separating them from treatment.
5- What is the Sankofa Rooted™ EMDR Program?
Sankofa Rooted™ is SHIFT Your Journey®’s culturally grounded trauma healing program integrating EMDR therapy with Akan philosophy and intergenerational healing frameworks.
6- What if my therapist doesn’t feel like the right fit?
If the initial match does not feel aligned, you can reach out to the Client Care team at SHIFT Your Journey®. The team will work collaboratively with you to identify a clinician within the practice or broader professional community who better supports your needs and wellness goals. You are not expected to navigate that process alone.
Reflection Prompts
What emotional patterns in your life feel older than your own experience?
What messages about survival or strength were passed down in your family?
What would it mean to understand your history without being trapped inside it?
If healing changed what future generations inherit, what would you want to pass forward differently?
A Note on Expectations
Therapy is a collaborative and individualized process. Experiences vary, and outcomes cannot be guaranteed.
If you are carrying emotional pain connected to trauma, family history, racial stress, or generational patterns, therapy may offer a supportive space to explore those experiences more intentionally.
When to Seek Immediate Support
If you are in crisis or experiencing thoughts of harming yourself or others:
Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline)
Call 911
Visit your nearest emergency room
Ready to Take the Next Step
Beginning therapy is less about having answers and more about allowing space for understanding to develop over time.
At SHIFT Your Journey® Mental Health Counseling, PLLC, therapy is structured to support that process — thoughtfully, collaboratively, and at a pace that respects your experience.
👉 Request an appointment here
👉 Meet our clinicians
👉 Learn what to expect in therapy
📞 (914) 221-3200
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About the Author
This article was written and reviewed by the clinical team at SHIFT Your Journey® Mental Health Counseling, PLLC — a multi-state telehealth group practice providing culturally responsive mental health care to individuals across Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
Disclaimer: The content of this article is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to serve as a substitute for professional mental health evaluation, diagnosis, or treatment. Reading this article does not establish a therapist-client relationship with SHIFT Your Journey® Mental Health Counseling, PLLC or any of its clinicians. While SHIFT Your Journey® makes reasonable efforts to ensure accuracy, this content reflects information available at the time of publication, may contain errors or omissions, and may not reflect later changes in research, guidelines, or referenced sources. No warranty is made as to its completeness or accuracy. Links to third-party websites are provided for convenience only; SHIFT Your Journey® does not control or endorse their content.
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please call or text 988 (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), call 911, or go to your nearest emergency room.