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

by Mark Wolynn

memories of trauma are imprinted in our parents’ and grandparents’ sperm and egg cells.

What I failed to realize at the time is that when we try to resist feeling something painful, we often protract the very pain we’re trying to avoid.

The great teachers understand that where we come from affects where we go, and that what sits unresolved in our past influences our present. They know that our parents are important, regardless of whether they are good at parenting or not. There’s no way around it: The family story is our story. Like it or not, it resides within us.

I was now coming to realize that my ability to receive love from others was linked to my ability to receive my mother’s love.

It didn’t matter how they could or couldn’t love me. What mattered was how I could receive what they had to give.

Traumatic reenactment, or “repetition compulsion,” as Freud called it, is an attempt of the unconscious to replay what’s unresolved, so we can “get it right.” This unconscious drive to relive past events could be one of the mechanisms at work when families repeat unresolved traumas in future generations.

we’re likely to keep repeating our unconscious patterns until we bring them into the light of awareness.

Suffering doesn’t always die when we do.

Nearly forty years later, Bill’s son Cory had sensations of burning skin. And remarkably, the symptoms appeared at the same age Bill was—ten years old—when he started the fire that killed his brother.

Sleeping inside each of them were fragments of traumas too great to be resolved in one generation.

the effects of traumas we inherit or experience firsthand can not only create a legacy of distress, but also forge a legacy of strength and resilience that can be felt for generations to come.

When your grandmother was five months pregnant with your mother, the precursor cell of the egg you developed from was already present in your mother’s ovaries.

This means that before your mother was even born, your mother, your grandmother, and the earliest traces of you were all in the same body—three generations sharing the same biological environment.[1]

The precursor cells of the sperm you developed from were present in your father when he was a fetus in his mother’s womb.[2]

Because your father’s sperm continues to develop throughout adolescence and adulthood, his sperm continues to be susceptible to traumatic imprints almost up until the point when you are conceived.[4]

“The mother’s emotions, such as fear, anger, love, hope, among others, can biochemically alter the genetic expression of her offspring.”[5] During pregnancy, nutrients in the mother’s blood nourish the fetus through the wall of the placenta. With the nutrients, she also releases a host of hormones and information signals generated by the emotions she experiences.

The findings demonstrated that babies exposed to increased cortisol in utero, as early as seventeen weeks after conception, exhibited impaired cognitive development when they were evaluated at seventeen months old.[8]

Paternal PTSD, she discovered, increases the likelihood that the child will feel “dissociated from [his or] her memories,” whereas maternal PTSD increases the likelihood that a child will have difficulty “calming down.”[55]

a father’s sperm was more likely to affect his female child.[59]

Passed down anxiety

The most intriguing aspect of the study is what occurred in the next two generations. Both the pups and grandpups, when exposed to the blossom odor, became jumpy and avoided it, despite never having experienced it before. They also exhibited the same brain changes. The mice appeared to inherit not only the sensitivity to the scent, but also the fear response associated with it.[4]

The study surmised that maternal anxiety, depression, and stress, as well as reduced interaction, stimulation, and missed educational opportunities may have impacted the children’s neurodevelopment.[24]

We can absolutely bounce back from PTSD and, as a result, experience positive responses such as resilience and post-traumatic growth.

First, if we or one of our children struggle with unexplained symptoms—depression, anxiety, OCD, a phobia, a destructive behavior—we need to shake the family tree and see what falls out.

We do this by having positive experiences, and then by taking time to relish in the positive sensations that these experiences evoke.

For better or worse, parents tend to pass on the parenting that they themselves received.

The first two to three years outside the womb function as a continuation of the neural development that occurs within the womb. Which neural circuits remain, which are discarded, and how the remaining circuits will be organized depend on how an infant experiences and interacts with the mother or caregiver. It’s through these early interactions that a child continues to establish a blueprint for managing emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.

From an infant’s perspective, a separation from the mother can be felt as “life threatening,”

the firstborn son is likely to carry what remains unresolved with the father, and the firstborn daughter is likely to carry what remains unresolved with the mother, though this is not always the case. The reverse can also be true. Later children in the family are likely to carry different aspects of their parents’ traumas, or elements of the grandparents’ traumas.

new experiences can create new neural pathways. These new neural pathways become strengthened through repetition and deepened through focused attention. Essentially, the more we practice something, the more we train our brain to change.

Simply put, each time we repeat a particular experience, it becomes more ingrained in us. With enough repetition, it can become automatic.

“practicing a new skill, under the right conditions, can change hundreds of millions and possibly billions of the connections between the nerve cells in our brain maps.”[5] Once a new brain map is established, new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can emerge organically, expanding our repertoire when old fears arise.

The more we travel the neural and visceral pathways of our new brain map, the more we identify with the good feelings that accompany that map. Over time, the good feelings start to become familiar and we begin to trust our ability to return to solid ground even when our foundation has been temporarily shaken.

Declarative memory, also called explicit or narrative memory, is the ability to consciously recall facts or events.

Nondeclarative memory, also called implicit, sensorimotor, or procedural memory, operates without conscious recall.

Beneath the unconscious barricade we have erected lies a deep desire to be loved by our parents.

our amygdala uses about two thirds of its neurons scanning for threats. As a result, painful and frightening events are more easily stored in our long-term memory than pleasant events. Scientists call this default mechanism a “negativity bias,”

It’s important to restate: not all behaviors expressed by us actually originate from us.

maybe your symptom or issue forces growth and independence from them.

Maybe you are being shown that you need to finish a task or follow a path you abandoned.

But being at peace with our parents means that we are at peace with what we did receive as well as what we did not receive.

“I felt much closer to my grandmother. She was the one who mothered me.”

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.”

pushing a parent away is akin to pushing away a part of ourselves.

We were there. Maybe not cognizant, but somatically aware of the changing experiences in her womb. What was happening to her was also happening to us.

For example, if she wasn’t planning to keep the pregnancy, considering an abortion, or planning to give us away, we would have felt the energy of the thought: “I can’t keep you.” We would have felt her turbulent emotions.

“I felt much closer to my grandmother. She was the one who mothered me.”

“She can be very calculating and manipulative. I didn’t feel safe with her.”

an infant’s wealth is a mother’s focused attention.

As Freud reminds us, a trauma seeking a positive resolution will keep repeating.

Our amygdala locks onto negative thoughts and feelings, believing that by doing so, it’s protecting us from harm. Replaying painful feelings and re-cogitating worrisome thoughts is its unconscious strategy.