I recently finished watching Harlan Coben’s Lazarus on Amazon Prime, a short, six-episode series that lingers long after the credits roll. While it appears to be a psychological thriller or a murder mystery on the surface, beneath it lies a deeply emotional exploration of unresolved generational trauma, memory, and the weight of what we leave unhealed.
The series is about a forensic psychiatrist, Joel Lazarus (Sam Claflin), who returns to his hometown after his father’s suicide. He is haunted by his sister’s unsolved murder 25 years prior and begins to have disturbing, inexplicable experiences that make him question reality.
Not spilling the content and spoiling it for the readers, but the series brilliantly captures how unresolved trauma could lead to generational damage. The layered storytelling through series Lazarus shows how guilt, buried pain and unprocessed emotions silently shape our relationships, choices, and sense of self. Each character becomes a reflection of what happens when grief and guilt remain unspoken how stress seeps into our daily lives, altering the way we love, trust, and connect with people around us.
The weight of generational trauma
I am reading an interesting book currently, The Body Keeps the Score in which the author psychologist Bessel Van Der Kolk explains that trauma isn’t stored as a story in our body but as sensations and reactions that replay until they are acknowledged. In Hindu yogic philosophy, it is called as ‘sanskar’ body has a memory.
Similarly, modern trauma research by Rachel Yehuda and Amy Lehrner, reveals that unresolved emotional wounds can pass down biologically and behaviourally teaching the next generation our fears instead of our resilience. When left unacknowledged, trauma morphs into inherited fear, perfectionism, avoidance, or emotional withdrawal traits that silently shape the next generation.
Towards the end, you will find a dialogue, which says, “All sons become their fathers” and it kind of is proven to be true by the end of series, also made me reflect how all the daughters become their mothers by bearing inherited generational trauma and binds to following toxic pattens of relationship where they can chose to break out and do the work for the coming generation.
Learning to reset without losing ourselves
Unlike the show’s characters, we don’t have the luxury of turning back time. But we do have the opportunity to reset patterns through through opening up, seeking therapy, mindful reflection, or compassionate self-inquiry. Practices such as journaling, mindfulness, and self-compassion-based therapy can help us release stored tension and reframe old narratives.
By recognising our triggers and responses, we stop transferring our pain to those around us. We create emotional safety for ourselves and, in turn, for the generations to come.
Lazarus may be a fictional psychological thriller, but its emotional subtext is deeply real. It’s a mirror held up to our collective struggle with underlying trauma, memory, and meaning. It challenges us to ask: what if we stopped rewinding our emotional timelines and chose to live forward with awareness, acceptance, and healing?
Understanding our unresolved trauma isn’t just an act of self-preservation it’s an act of love for the generations yet to come. The show’s emotional undercurrent reminds me that breaking the cycle of generational trauma begins with awareness. We cannot change what we refuse to confront. Healing requires the courage to look inward, to name what was once unspeakable, and to allow the mind and body to integrate past experiences into present consciousness.
To break a certain pattern, we must learn to name our pain, seek help, and rewrite the narratives we inherited. Because if we don’t, the cycles of silence and suffering will continue quietly shaping the lives of those who come after us.