It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

by Mark Wolynn

You can’t change your parents, but you can change the way you hold them inside you.

If your core sentence was forged in infancy, during a time when you couldn’t feel your mother’s care or support, your sentence may contain words like rejected, all alone, left, ignored, or betrayed. If your mother was too busy, or highly stressed, or disconnected emotionally or physically, you may have told yourself that you don’t matter, or that you aren’t important. You may have even felt invisible or had the feeling you simply don’t exist.

I’ll be all alone.

I’ll be abandoned.

I’ll be rejected.

I’ll be helpless.

I won’t matter.

I’ll lose everything.

I’ll lose my family.

I’ll lose everything.

I’ll be hated.

I’ll lose my family.

I invited her to close her eyes and visualize being cradled by her grandmother and all the Jewish family members she’d never known.

core sentence arises from an unresolved tragedy. If not ours, then the question is: whose?

If your parents are still alive, you might ask them what they know.

Remember, as we learned in chapter 6, many of us hold on to only those memories designed to protect us from being hurt again, memories that support our defenses, memories that the evolutionary biologists claim are part of our inborn “negativity bias.” Could any memories be missing? More important, have you asked the questions: What was behind my mom’s hurtfulness? What traumatic event lay behind my father’s frustration?

Just place your hand where you imagine or sense the feelings to be. Next, bring your breath to that area. Exhale into your body so that the entire area feels supported. You might want to visualize your exhale as a beam of light illuminating that part of your body. Next, say to yourself these words: “I’ve got you.”

Imagine that you are speaking to a young child who feels unseen and unheard. Chances are there is a child there—a child part of you that has been ignored for a very long time. Imagine that this small child has been waiting for you to recognize him or her, and today is that day.

To put all this in a nutshell, we need to practice being with the uncomfortable feelings in our body until we can reach what’s beneath them—the sensations we experience as life-giving, sensations such as pulsing, tingling, softening, expanding, blood flowing, waves of energy, light, or warmth radiating. And then we need to be able to hold those sensations for at least a minute...

It’s been shown that practicing mindfulness can actually shrink the amygdala (which often enlarges from trauma) and thicken the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain that helps us ...

What’s most important is that our brains need to know we’re safe, that there’s no impending threat. When we’re able to rest in the positive sensations, we’re signaling to our amygdala: I’ve got this. You don’t need to send out the old alarm signals to the alarm towers of our body. You can relax now.

Practice: Using Healing Sentences to Integrate Uncomfortable Sensations in Your Body The following practice can help you enter an embodied experience of ease. In it, you’ll learn how to access, rest in, and expand your body’s deepest energy sensations. First, witness what feels unsettling in your body. Where do you feel tight or contracted? Heavy or shut down? Numb or anxious? Nausea or pain? Often, the largest sensations can be felt in our throat, chest, solar plexus, belly, or womb. Wherever you feel it, place your hands on these areas of your body. Next, breathe into the sensations and visualize calming them. It’s as though you’re gently calming a small child. Energetically, it is the small child part of you that lives in those places and craves your attention. As you breathe in and out, visualize this child feeling held and comforted. Next, say one or more of the following sentences: “I’ve got you.” “I’ll hold you until you feel seen.” “I’ll breathe with you until you feel safe.” “I won’t leave you.” “I’ll breathe with you until you trust me to take care of you.” As you say these words, tune in to the energy at the core of your body. Feel the positive sensations that live there—warmth, tingling, the pulsing of your blood, waves of energy, a current flowing up and down, back and forth, in and out, spiraling round and round, swirling in the shape of a figure eight—however you feel aliveness moving inside you. Whatever sensations you feel there, visualize the uncomfortabl...

Feeling at peace with ourselves often begins with being at peace with our parents. That being said, can you receive something good from what they gave you? Can you stay open in your body when you think about them? If they’re still alive, can you remain undefended when you’re with them? If you find yourself shrinking or feeling defensive, or you go into caretaking mode, there is probably more inner work that needs to be done before you attempt to heal the relationship in person.

Is there one memory, one good intention, one tender image, one understanding, one way your parents expressed love, that you can let in? Letting yourself connect with a warm inner image can begin to change your outer relationship with your parents.

You can’t change what was, but you can change what is, as long as you don’t expect your parents to be any different from who they are. It is you who must hold the relationship differently. That’s your work. Not your parents’ work. The question is: Are you willing to do it?

As we learned in the preceding chapters, it helps to know what happened in our family that made our parents hurt so much. What sat behind the distance, criticism, or aggression in the first place?

“You’re a really good father/mother.” (Share an example with him/her.)

“I promise to stop making you prove your love to me.”

“I’ll stop expecting that your love should look...

“I promise to take in your love as you give it—not...

“Mom/Dad can we just sit here together? It feels good just sitting here.”

“You are my child, and you’re separate from me. My feelings do not have to be your feelings.”

“It must have been overwhelming with all my needs and emotions.”

“Take a step back now until you can feel your own life flowing through you. Only then will I be at peace.”

“I had not been able to face my own pain until now. What’s mine has been over there with you. It is time for it to return to me, where it belongs. Then we’re both free.”

“I’ll be abandoned.”

“I’ll be all alone.”

“I’ll have nobody.”

“I don’t matter.”

“I’m not enough.”

“They’ll leave me.”

Say one or all of these sentences to her silently. “Mom, please hold me while I’m sleeping… so we can heal the bond that broke between us.” so I can learn to feel safe in my body.” so I can feel more connected to you.” “Teach me how to trust your love, how to receive it, and how to let it in.”

You had a difficult relationship with your mother. What’s unfinished with your mother is likely to repeat with your partner.

You reject, judge, or blame a parent.

likely to live on unconsciously in you. You might project the complaints you have about that parent onto your partner. You might also attract a partner who embodies qualities similar to those of the rejected parent.

You are merged with the feelings of a parent. If one parent feels negatively toward the other, it is possible that you will continue these feelings toward your partner. Feelings of discontent toward a partner can be carried intergenerationally.

You might also experience yourself as feeling needy, clingy, jealous, or insecure.

You took care of a parent’s feelings.

Your parent’s great love broke his or her heart. You, as the child, might unconsciously join your parent in his or her brokenheartedness. You might lose your first love, or carry the lovelorn feelings of your parent, or feel imperfect or not good enough (as she or he did).

Your parent or grandparent suffered in marriage. If, for example, your grandmother was trapped in a loveless marriage, or your grandfather died, drank, gambled, or left, leaving your grandmother alone to raise the children, you, as the grandchild, could unconsciously associate these experiences with being married. You might either repeat her experience or resist committing to a partner for fear that the same thing could happen to you.