It Didn't Start with You Quotes

“When suffering confounds us, we need to ask ourselves: whose feelings am I actually living?”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Until we uncover the actual triggering event in our family history, we can relive fears and feelings that don’t belong to us—unconscious fragments of a trauma—and we will think they’re ours.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Cutting off can make you feel free at first, but it’s the false freedom of a childhood defense. Ultimately, it will limit your life experience.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Everything that happens to us has merit, whether we recognize the surface significance of it or not.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“I had always craved a close relationship with my father, yet neither he nor I knew how to make it happen.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“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.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“When a parent is rejected or disrespected, one of the children will often
represent that parent by sharing the rejected behaviors. In this way, the child
makes himself or herself equal to the parent by suffering in a similar way. It is as
though the child is saying, “I’ll go through it, too, so that you don’t have to go
through it alone.” Loyal in this way, the child continues the suffering into the
next generation.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“I was finally beginning to understand that no experience is ever wasted. Everything that happens to us has merit, whether we recognize the surface significance of it or not. Everything in our lives ultimately lead us somewhere.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Annie Rogers: «El inconsciente insiste, se repite y casi tira la puerta abajo con tal de hacerse oír. La única manera que tienes de oírlo, de invitarlo a pasar, es dejar de echarle cosas encima (que suelen ser tus propias ideas) y, en vez de ello, escuchar lo impronunciable, que está en todas partes, en el habla, en las representaciones, en los sueños y en el cuerpo»93. Lenguaje”
― Mark Wolynn, Este dolor no es mío

“A veces, el corazón debe romperse para poder abrirse”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You

“Even children born of the same parents, in the same family home, who share a similar upbringing, are likely to inherit different traumas and experience different fates. For example, 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.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“the 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.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“In a study involving the offspring of stressed male mice conducted at Emory University School of Medicine in 2013, researchers discovered that traumatic memories could be passed down to subsequent generations through epigenetic changes that occur in DNA. Mice in one generation were trained to fear a cherry blossom–like scent called acetophenone. Each time they were exposed to the smell, they simultaneously received an electric shock. After a while, the shocked mice had a greater amount of smell receptors associated with that particular scent, enabling them to detect it at lower concentrations. They also had enlarged brain areas devoted to those receptors. Researchers were also able to identify changes in the mice’s sperm. 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.64”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Specifically, participants were asked to describe their relationship with each parent using the following scale: “very close,” “warm and friendly,” “tolerant,” or “strained and cold.” Ninety-one percent of participants who stated that their relationship with their mother was tolerant or strained were diagnosed with a significant health issue (such as cancer, coronary artery disease, hypertension, etc.) in midlife, compared with 45 percent of participants—less than half—who reported that their relationship with their mothers was warm or close. Similar numbers were reported for participants who described their relationship with their fathers. Eighty-two percent of the participants who reported tolerant or strained relationships with their fathers had significant health issues in midlife, compared with 50 percent of those who had warm or close relationships with their fathers. If participants had a strained relationship with both parents, the results were startling: 100 percent had significant health issues, versus 47 percent of those who described their relationships with their parents as being warm and close.1”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“More than a hundred years ago, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote that “wisdom first speaks through images,” and that if we just allow ourselves to be guided by the image that lives inside us, our souls will become “simple as flame” and our bodies will become “quiet as an agate lamp.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“the Bible, in Numbers 14:18, appears to corroborate the claims of modern science—or vice versa—that the sins, iniquities, or consequences (depending on which translation you read) of the parents can affect the children up to the third and fourth generations. Specifically, the New Living Translation states: “The LORD is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. But he does not excuse the guilty. He lays the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“scientists have discovered that chromosomal DNA—the DNA responsible for transmitting physical traits, such as the color of our hair, eyes, and skin—surprisingly makes up less than 2 percent of our total DNA.14 The other 98 percent consists of what is called noncoding DNA (ncDNA), and is responsible for many of the emotional, behavioral, and personality traits we inherit.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“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. Doing so is a prescription for continued suffering.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“In chapter 5, we learned how our vitality—the life force that comes to us from our parents—can become blocked when our connection to them is compromised.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“That Generate Core Language What was taking place in your life when your symptom or problem first appeared? What was going on right before it started? What age were you when the symptom or problem first appeared? Did something traumatic happen to someone in your family at a similar age? What exactly happens in the problem? What does it feel like in its worst moments? What happens right before you feel this way or have the symptom? What makes it better or worse? What does the problem or symptom keep you from being able to do? What does it force you to do? If the feeling or symptom were never to go away, what would be the worst”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Write it down as it comes to you. For example, you may carry a fear of something terrible happening to you in the future. It doesn’t matter what comes out; just keep writing. If nothing comes, answer this one question: If the feeling or symptom or condition you have never goes away, what would you be afraid could happen to you? Don’t continue reading until you’ve written down your most pressing concern.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Written Exercise #1: Investigating Your Core Complaint Focus on a problem that’s most pressing in your life right now. It might be an issue with your health, your job, your relationship—any issue that disrupts your sense of safety, peace, security, or well-being. What is the deepest issue you want to heal? Maybe it’s a problem that feels overwhelming to you. Maybe it’s a symptom or a feeling you’ve had all your life. What do you want to see shift? Don’t edit yourself. Write down what feels important to you.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“It’s important to restate: not all behaviors expressed by us actually originate from us. They can easily belong to family members who came before us. We can merely be carrying the feelings for them or sharing them. We call these “identification feelings.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“I’ve noticed that if several siblings have breaks in the mother-child bond, they’ll often express anger or jealousy, or feel disconnected from one another.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“The notion that we inherit and “relive” aspects of family trauma has been the subject of many books by the renowned German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger.”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Uncannily, the Bible, in Numbers 14:18, appears to corroborate the claims of modern science—or vice versa—that the sins, iniquities, or consequences (depending on which translation you read) of the parents can affect the children up to the third and fourth generations. Specifically,”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“epigenetics—the study of heritable changes in gene function that occur without a change in the sequence of the DNA.13”
― Mark Wolynn, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

“Esto es tan importante que merece la pena repetirlo: no todas las conductas que expresamos surgen en realidad de dentro de nosotros. Es fácil que pertenezcan a miembros de nuestra familia que nos precedieron. Puede que no hagamos más que portar los sentimientos de ellos o que compartirlos. A estos los llamamos «sentimientos de identificación».”
― Mark Wolynn, Este dolor no es mío

“El ser humano forma parte de un todo (...) aunque se vive a sí mismo y vive sus pensamientos y sus sentimientos como si estuvieran separados de todo lo demás; es como una especie de espejismo de su conciencia. ALBERT EINSTEIN a Robert S. Marcus, 12 de febrero de 1950”
― Mark Wolynn, Este dolor no es mío

“Podemos reaccionar inconscientemente ante determinadas personas, hechos o situaciones de maneras antiguas y familiares que son un eco del pasado.”
― Mark Wolynn, Este dolor no es mío