Abigail Makepeace is the founder of Makepeace Therapy and a licensed therapist in California and Texas. She is a writer, speaker, and thought leader on the impact of trauma on relationships and life development. Her TEDx presentation on Parental PTSD highlighted how childhood trauma can influence parenting. Abigail is a recurring contributor to HuffPost, has been featured on BuzzFeed, and has been featured as a guest on radio shows including Channel Q and Dash Radio. She integrates clinical expertise with cultural insight to equip clinicians with practical, trauma-informed strategies.

This session explores how childhood experiences and cultural environments interact to shape the emotional blueprints we carry into adulthood. Drawing on clinical insight, developmental research, and cross-cultural perspectives, participants will learn how early trauma, family systems, and societal norms influence relational patterns, character styles, and even the development of personality traits or disorders.       

A central focus of the workshop is Parental PTSD, a term I coined to describe the phenomenon in which a parent’s unresolved childhood trauma is triggered by their child’s behavior. Participants will examine how these triggers manifest physiologically, relationally, and in parenting patterns, and how unrecognized trauma can perpetuate across generations.

The session then moves to the cultural lens, demonstrating how societal, generational, and religious norms shape the survival strategies children adopt. Hyper-independence, emotional suppression, perfectionism, and self-sacrifice may all emerge as adaptive responses to early environments, yet they can be misinterpreted clinically if viewed outside of their cultural context. Cross-cultural examples show that the same behaviors, such as intense emotional expression, prioritizing the needs of others, or acting independently, can be celebrated in some cultures and pathologized in others.

Participants will explore the integration of trauma and culture, learning to recognize how childhood wounds are reinforced or softened depending on cultural context. Through reflective exercises, discussion, and case examples, clinicians will gain practical tools for culturally informed assessment and intervention. This includes differentiating between culturally shaped character styles (adaptive survival strategies) and personality traits or disorders, and understanding how these may manifest differently across cultures.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be equipped to help clients recognize the emotional blueprints shaping their relationships, self-perception, and coping strategies, and to guide them in revising these patterns within a culturally sensitive framework. Clinicians will also reflect on their own cultural assumptions and biases, enhancing their ability to provide attuned, equitable, and effective care.

This session is designed for mental health professionals who want to deepen their understanding of the complex interplay between trauma, culture, and personality, and to develop practical strategies to support clients in breaking intergenerational patterns, fostering resilience, and building healthier relational dynamics.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:  

• Identify the ways childhood trauma manifests in adult functioning, including physiological, relational, and parental patterns, and explain the concept of parental PTSD.
• Describe how cultural, generational, and societal norms influence the development of survival strategies and character styles, including how cultural norms can normalize or perpetuate trauma.
• Apply a culturally informed lens to interpret client behaviors, distinguishing between culturally shaped character styles (adaptive survival strategies) and personality traits or disorders, including how these may manifest differently across cultures.
• Demonstrate at least one therapeutic strategies and reflective exercises that help clients understand and revise their emotional blueprints within their cultural context.