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Inherited Trauma Studies

Not sure if this is that credible, but sure fits. A great read if nothing else.

INHERITED TRAUMA THEORY
It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are
by Mark Wolynn
scienceandnonduality.com
"The past is never dead. It’s not even past" — William Faulkner

A well-documented feature of trauma, one familiar to many, is our inability to articulate what happens to us. We not only lose our words, but something happens with our memory as well. During a traumatic incident, our thought processes become scattered and disorganized in such a way that we no longer recognize the memories as belonging to the original event. Instead, fragments of memory, dispersed as images, body sensations, and words, are stored in our unconscious and can become activated later by anything even remotely reminiscent of the original experience. Once they are triggered, it is as if an invisible rewind button has been pressed, causing us to reenact aspects of the original trauma in our day-to-day lives. Unconsciously, we could find ourselves reacting to certain people, events, or situations in old, familiar ways that echo the past.

Sigmund Freud identified this pattern more than one hundred years ago. Traumatic reenactment, or “repetition compulsion,” as Freud coined 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.

Freud’s contemporary Carl Jung also believed that what remains unconscious does not dissolve, but rather resurfaces in our lives as fate or fortune. “Whatever does not emerge as Consciousness,” he said, “returns as Destiny.” In other words, we’re likely to keep repeating our unconscious patterns until we bring them into the light of awareness. Both Jung and Freud noted that whatever is too difficult to process does not fade away on its own, but rather is stored in our unconscious.

Freud and Jung each observed how fragments of previously blocked, suppressed, or repressed life experience would show up in the words, gestures, and behaviors of their patients. For decades to follow, therapists would see clues such as slips of the tongue, accident patterns, or dream images as messengers shining a light into the unspeakable and unthinkable regions of their clients’ lives.

Recent advances in imaging technology have allowed researchers to unravel the brain and bodily functions that “misfire” or break down during overwhelming episodes. Bessel van der Kolk is a Dutch psychiatrist known for his research on posttraumatic stress. He explains that during a trauma, the speech center shuts down, as does the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for experiencing the present moment. He describes the “speechless terror” of trauma as the experience of being at a “loss for words”, a common occurrence when brain pathways of remembering are hindered during periods of threat or danger. “When people relive their traumatic experiences,” he says, “the frontal lobes become impaired and, as result, they have trouble thinking and speaking. They are no longer capable of communicating to either themselves or to others precisely what’s going on.”

Still, all is not silent: words, images, and impulses that fragment following a traumatic event reemerge to form a secret language of our suffering we carry with us. Nothing is lost. The pieces have just been rerouted.

Emerging trends in psychotherapy are now beginning to point beyond the traumas of the individual to include traumatic events in the family and social history as a part of the whole picture. Tragedies varying in type and intensity—such as abandonment, suicide and war, or the early death of a child, parent, or sibling—can send shock waves of distress cascading from one generation to the next. Recent developments in the fields of cellular biology, neurobiology, epigenetics, and developmental psychology underscore the importance of exploring at least three generations of family history in order to understand the mechanism behind patterns of trauma and suffering that repeat. The following story offers a vivid example.

CASE STUDY - JESS


When I first met Jesse, he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in more than a year. His insomnia was evident in the dark shadows around his eyes, but the blankness of his stare suggested a deeper story. Though only twenty, Jesse looked at least ten years older. He sank onto my sofa as if his legs could no longer bear his weight.
Jesse explained that he had been a star athlete and a straight-A student, but that his persistent insomnia had initiated a downward spiral of depression and despair. As a result, he dropped out of college and had to forfeit the baseball scholarship he’d worked so hard to win. He desperately sought help to get his life back on track. Over the past year, he’d been to three doctors, two psychologists, a sleep clinic, and a naturopathic physician. Not one of them, he related in a monotone, was able to offer any real insight or help. Jesse, gazing mostly at the floor as he shared his story, told me he was at the end of his rope.
When I asked whether he had any ideas about what might have triggered his insomnia, he shook his head. Sleep had always come easily for Jesse. Then, one night just after his nineteenth birthday, he woke suddenly at 3:30 a.m. He was freezing, shivering, unable to get warm no matter what he tried. Three hours and several blankets later, Jesse was still wide awake. Not only was he cold and tired, he was seized by a strange fear he had never experienced before, a fear that something awful could happen if he let himself fall back to sleep. If I go to sleep, I’ll never wake up. Every time he felt himself drifting off, the fear would jolt him back into wakefulness. The pattern repeated itself the next night, and the night after that. Soon insomnia became a nightly ordeal. Jesse knew his fear was irrational, yet he felt helpless to put an end to it.
I listened closely as Jesse spoke. What stood out for me was one unusual detail—he’d been extremely cold, “freezing” he said, just prior to the first episode. I began to explore this with Jesse, and asked him if anyone on either side of the family suffered a trauma that involved being “cold,” or being “asleep,” or being “nineteen.”
Jesse revealed that his mother had only recently told him about the tragic death of his father’s older brother—an uncle he never knew he had. Uncle Colin was only nineteen when he froze to death checking power lines in a storm just north of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Tracks in the snow revealed that he had been struggling to hang on. Eventually, he was found facedown in a blizzard, having lost consciousness from hypothermia. His death was such a tragic loss that the family never spoke his name again. Now, three decades later, Jesse was unconsciously reliving aspects of Colin’s death—specifically, the terror of letting go into unconsciousness. For Colin, letting go meant death. For Jesse, falling asleep must have felt the same.
Making the connection was a turning point for Jesse. Once he grasped that his insomnia had its origin in an event that occurred thirty years earlier, he finally had an explanation for his fear of falling asleep. The process of healing could now begin. With tools Jesse learned in our work together, which will be detailed later in this book, he was able to disentangle himself from the trauma endured by an uncle he’d never met, but whose terror he had unconsciously taken on as his own. Not only did Jesse feel freed from the heavy fog of insomnia, he gained a deeper sense of connection to his family, present and past.
In an attempt to explain stories such as Jesse’s, scientists are now able to identify biological markers— evidence that traumas can and do pass down from one generation to the next. Rachel Yehuda, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, is one of the world’s leading experts in posttraumatic stress, a true pioneer in this field. In numerous studies, Yehuda has examined the neurobiology of PTSD in Holocaust survivors and their children. Her research on cortisol in particular (the stress hormone that helps our body return to normal after we experience a trauma) and its effects on brain function has revolutionized the understanding and treatment of PTSD worldwide. (People with PTSD relive feelings and sensations associated with a trauma despite the fact that the trauma occurred in the past. Symptoms include depression, anxiety, numbness, insomnia, nightmares, frightening thoughts, and being easily startled or “on edge.”)

LOW CORTISOL LEVELS
Yehuda and her team found that children of the holocaust survivors who had PTSD were born with low cortisol levels similar to their parents, predisposing them to relive the PTSD symptoms of the previous generation. Her discovery of low cortisol levels in people who experience an acute traumatic event has been controversial, going against the long-held notion that stress is associated with high cortisol levels. Specifically, in cases of chronic PTSD, cortisol production can become suppressed, contributing to the low levels measured in both survivors and their children.


Yehuda discovered similar low cortisol levels in war veterans, as well as in pregnant mothers who developed PTSD after being exposed to the World Trade Center attacks, and in their children. Not only did she find that the survivors in her study produced less cortisol, a characteristic they can pass on to their children, she notes that several stress-related psychiatric disorders, including PTSD, chronic pain syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome, are associated with low blood levels of cortisol. Interestingly, 50 to 70 percent of PTSD patients also meet the diagnostic criteria for major depression or another mood or anxiety disorder.
INHERITED & LEARNED TRAUMA


Yehuda’s research demonstrates that you and I are three times more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD if one of our parents had PTSD, and as a result, we’re likely to suffer from depression or anxiety. She believes that this type of generational PTSD is inherited rather than occurring from our being exposed to our parents’ stories of their ordeals. Yehuda was one of the first researchers to show how descendants of trauma survivors carry the physical and emotional symptoms of traumas they do not directly experience.
CASE STUDY - GRETCHEN


That was the case with Gretchen. After years of taking antidepressants, attending talk and group therapy sessions, and trying various cognitive approaches for mitigating the effects of stress, her symptoms of depression and anxiety remained unchanged.
Gretchen told me she no longer wanted to live. For as long as she could remember, she had struggled with emotions so intense she could barely contain the surges in her body. Gretchen had been admitted several times to a psychiatric hospital where she was diagnosed as bipolar with a severe anxiety disorder. Medication brought her slight relief, but never touched the powerful suicidal urges that lived inside her. As a teenager, she would self-injure by burning herself with the lit end of a cigarette. Now, at thirty-nine, Gretchen had had enough. Her depression and anxiety, she said, had prevented her from ever marrying and having children. In a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone of voice, she told me that she was planning to commit suicide before her next birthday.
Listening to Gretchen, I had the strong sense that there must be significant trauma in her family history. In such cases, I find it’s essential to pay close attention to the words being spoken for clues to the traumatic event underlying a client’s symptoms.
When I asked her how she planned to destroy herself, Gretchen said that she was going to vaporize herself. As incomprehensible as it might sound to most of us, her plan was literally to leap into a vat of molten steel at the mill where her brother worked. “My body will incinerate in seconds,” she said, staring directly into my eyes, “even before it reaches the bottom.”

I was struck by her lack of emotion as she spoke. Whatever feeling lay beneath appeared to have been vaulted deep inside. At the same time, the words vaporize and incinerate rattled inside me. Having worked with many children and grandchildren whose families were affected by the Holocaust, I’ve learned to let their words lead me. I wanted Gretchen to tell me more.
I asked if anyone in her family was Jewish or had been involved in the Holocaust. Gretchen started to say no, but then stopped herself and recalled a story about her grandmother. She had been born into a Jewish family in Poland, but converted to Catholicism when she came to the United States in 1946 and married Gretchen’s grandfather. Two years earlier, her grandmother’s entire family had perished in the ovens at Auschwitz. They had literally been gassed—engulfed in poisonous vapors—and incinerated. No one in Gretchen’s immediate family ever spoke to her grandmother about the war, or about the fate of her siblings or her parents. Instead, as is often the case with such extreme trauma, they avoided the subject entirely.
Gretchen knew the basic facts of her family history, but had never connected it to her own anxiety and depression. It was clear to me that the words she used and the feelings she described didn’t originate with her, but had in fact originated with her grandmother and the family members who lost their lives.
As I explained the connection, Gretchen listened intently. Her eyes widened and color rose in her cheeks. I could tell that what I said was resonating. For the first time, Gretchen had an explanation for her suffering that made sense to her.
To help her deepen her new understanding, I invited her to imagine standing in her grandmother’s shoes, represented by a pair of foam rubber footprints that I placed on the carpet in the center of my office. I asked her to imagine feeling what her grandmother might have felt after having lost all her loved ones. Taking it even a step further, I asked her if she could literally stand on the footprints as her grandmother, and feel her grandmother’s feelings in her own body. Gretchen reported sensations of overwhelming loss and grief, aloneness and isolation. She also experienced the profound sense of guilt that many survivors feel, the sense of remaining alive while loved ones have been killed.
In order to process trauma, it’s often helpful for clients to have a direct experience of the feelings and sensations that have been submerged in the body. When Gretchen was able to access these sensations, she realized that her wish to annihilate herself was deeply entwined with her lost family members. She also realized that she had taken on some element of her grandmother’s desire to die. As Gretchen absorbed this understanding, seeing the family story in a new light, her body began to soften, as if something inside her that had long been coiled up could now relax.
As with Jesse, Gretchen’s recognition that her trauma lay buried in her family’s unspoken history was merely the first step in her healing process. An intellectual understanding by itself is rarely enough for a lasting shift to occur. Often, the awareness needs to be accompanied by a deeply felt visceral experience. We’ll explore further the ways in which healing becomes fully integrated so that the wounds of previous generations can finally be released.

TRAUMA TOO GREAT FOR ONE GENERATION


An Unexpected Family Inheritance
A boy may have his grandpa’s long legs and a girl may have her mother’s nose, but Jesse had inherited his uncle’s fear of never waking, and Gretchen carried the family’s Holocaust history in her depression. Sleeping inside each of them were fragments of traumas too great to be resolved in one generation.
When those in our family have experienced unbearable traumas or have suffered with immense guilt or grief, the feelings can be overwhelming and can escalate beyond what they can manage or resolve. It’s human nature; when pain is too great, people tend to avoid it. Yet when we block the feelings, we unknowingly stunt the necessary healing process that can lead us to a natural release.
Sometimes pain submerges until it can find a pathway for expression or resolution. That expression is often found in the generations that follow and can resurface as symptoms that are difficult to explain. For Jesse, the unrelenting cold and shivering did not appear until he reached the age that his Uncle Colin was when he froze to death. For Gretchen, her grandmother’s anxious despair and suicidal urges had been with her for as long as she could remember. These feelings became so much a part of her life that no one ever thought to consider that the feelings didn’t originate with her.
Currently, our society does not provide many options to help people like Jesse and Gretchen who carry remnants of inherited family trauma. Typically they might consult a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist and receive medications, therapy, or some combination of both. But although these avenues might bring some relief, generally they don’t provide a complete solution.
Not all of us have traumas as dramatic as Gretchen’s or Jesse’s in our family history. However, events such as the death of an infant, a child given away, the loss of one’s home, or even the withdrawal of a mother’s attention can all have the effect of collapsing the walls of support and restricting the flow of love in our family. With the true origin of these traumas in view, long-standing family patterns can finally be laid to rest.
NOT ALL BAD
It’s important to note that not all effects of trauma are negative. In the next chapter we’ll learn about EPIGENETIC CHANGES —the chemical modifications that occur in our cells as a result of a traumatic event.


According to Rachel Yehuda, the purpose of an epigenetic change is to expand the range of ways we respond in stressful situations, which she says is a positive thing. “Who would you rather be in a war zone with?” she asks. “Somebody that’s had previous adversity [and] knows how to defend themselves? Or somebody that has never had to fight for anything?” Once we understand what biologic changes from stress and trauma are meant to do, she says, “We can develop a better way of explaining to ourselves what our true capabilities and potentials are.”
Viewed in this way, the traumas we inherit or experience firsthand not only can create a legacy of distress, but also can forge a legacy of strength and resilience that can be felt for generations to come.
37 REPLIES 37

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

Hi Tawney, I am new, today, yesterday now, but I want you to know I had a quick read of your post on inherited trauma & It looks very interesting, so I am going to read it again after some sleep later today. The cortisol insufficiency is very interesting, because it goes with the latest info on adrenal fatigue. I come from a line of inherited trauma in a way, my parents, their parents, then their parents which is as far back as I know of. So I can relate to your article you posted. I was going to see my doctor to talk about a test for my cortisol, because with all of the extensive counselling and medication it's a long haul back. My mother had polio as a child and science about that says children of polio sufferers can develop bone problems. So, it makes sense to me that mental health would be the same, because if you are under prolonged trauma you hormones, endocrine system must change, so I guess physically it must affect the ongoing generations. But then that's that old chestnut, nature versus nurture. I am very pleased about the changes I am seeing in the last 2years regarding mental health. Like your article, there are new discoveries and more communication now. In my lifetime I think I will see when the public will be aware of mental health and there will be better treatment for all. Bye, 1stepup🤗

Former-Member
Not applicable

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

Welcome @1stepup, hope you enjoy it here on the forums. I also think the 'inherited trauma' theory fits. For me, for many years now, i've known the pain & distress i feel is way out of proportion for my life, and suspected it might be my mothers side. I'll be doing some digging through family history now.. I asked my dr to check cortisole levels with last bloods but she said it would be a waste of time as it fluctuates. Hope u have better luck.
Enjoy today 🌞

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

Hi @Former-Member

I don't believe I have the "Inherited Trauma" this article refers to, and as such I feel a little tentative about commenting in regard to other people's experiences with this (don't want to tread on toes) but it does sound very likely that this is one of the issues affecting my husband's whole family.

It was very insightful of you to post it for all of us, and I think this is an excellent thread to continue discussion of it too.  It may be a little too confronting for some in this stage of their journey - for others it will be just what they are looking for, and I am sure the title will draw them here to it.

My husband's family were badly affected by war in only the last generation.  I believe they were impacted by unresolved grief, especially as much of what they suffered was as children.  This article helps me to put another piece of our puzzle in place, I think ...

I hope it helps others with their personal story too.

💗

Former-Member
Not applicable

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

great website @Former-Member

I will read article later. Thanks

I have been glad that the Royal Commission is taking a trauma-informed approach as best practise.

 

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

I read the article and I believe it is very credible.

I was looking at Bessel van de Kolk and nueroscience a while ago in trying to understand the intergenerational trauma I had inherited.

This article compressed a lot of valuable insight in the development of various psychological and biologically based theories.

Eg for us the salient trait that my siblings and I struggled with and to understand was "schizophrenia".

But my sense of love and loyalty for my family beyond MI issues traced each person in my family's traumas and tried to put them in context.

It is a great issue for migrants that they lose a knowing and supportive society that may help them live without pathologising their experiences.  One of the few people my mother could ever express compassion for was a Dutch man because of shared WWII experiences.

it is also an issue for blended marriages and families ... hence neither of my parents could adequately understand where the other was coming from .. not due to not trying or not caring .. but the TRAUMA was too big for one generation.

Also the mention of epigenetics is key.

Scientists are changing their understanding of genetics .. my bet is that they will never find a gene (or 5 genes) for schizophrenia ... microbiology works at different levels and the over emphasis of a gene to transmit trait information has been misleading.

Trauma informed psychology counselling and epigenetics are part of our way out of the mire.

Thanks for the article

Heart

 

 

 

 

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

Hi @Appleblossom

When you wrote:

" ... but the TRAUMA was too big for one generation."

I think that is a big part of what we are dealing with in my husband's family.  It's as if the trauma of what is parents suffered through has rolled forward and impacted our generation, in my husband and his siblings.  I think they have done really, really well, but not well enough to escape the grasp of the trauma from the generation before, and it's like they all need therapy at some level or other, as it's coming out as serious illness and mi issues.  You can see that they have all seriously struggled with relationships, but have made their way forward in a way, I hope, doesn't affect our children anywhere near as badly.

Perhaps in our situation the cultural blending has helped, at least I would like to think so .....

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

Hi @Faith-and-Hope Just saw this response

Yes I hope the blend you have works out for your family as a whole.

Der Kolk is Dutch and it is probably no coincidence that they are good at looking at trauma. The Americans are also taking trauma related approach ... it is current BEST practise.

YAY

So we might finally see a shift from people deciding that another person's POV is a delusion if it doesnt fit with some prevailing notion of the "assessor"... Schizophrenia might become a diagnosis of the past ... I am hoping ...

My mum's family is Dutch ... little village on border of Rotterdam ...they were LUCKY as the flattening of Rot in beginning of war ... missed them ... but you can never be sure ... the trauma they faced was real ... no delusions ... pure C PTSD ...family hiding under kitchen table as safest place as the house trembed and rattled as bombers flew over ... both ways ... Brits and Germans ... ... the family growing and then the next safest place was in the doorways ... the boys would go there and girls under the table ...lots of boots and marching and death machines ... did need to look at entertainment for excitement...

But as they said at her funeral my mum had attitude and courage  ... but too much stress NOT VOCALISED ... not good english ... not good education ... she did it all through piano ... AMAZING LADY

and granpa escaped the labour camp ...

I liked that she taught me not to hate Germans .. the Dutch and Germans are so close culturally and linguistically ... but she actually did not process enough to make clear decisions about her own children ... THERE is the TRAGEDY ... she meant well ... but could not understand us and was a bit FULL of her own struggle.

Ie When my brother came home (at about 12 in housing commission flats) and told us he had been hit over the head with a cricket bat and it broke ... the biggest response mum could come up with was a sigh .. not a word ... she was overwhelmed ... and I could see that.

I tried to get my brother to show me who did it ... we werent into gangs .. mostly we worked  at school or .. he was probably walking to his job 2 miles away at the petrol station. cant remeber all the details.

Mother was always overwhelmed ... when I was almost ganag raped and she had only me to care for ... just one look at her exhausted distant face ... I knew there was no use even telling her.

When the thug girls in the flats started to kick my head in and push me under at the pool ... no point telling her as she was wrapped up in the baby.... she wouldnt have known what to do .. I couldnt hate her ... there wasnt time .. or any use in it ...

SO WE SUCKED IT UP ... but the stressors accumulate.

Not as exciting as talking about beating the Germans ... which was a bit of a cultural conversation with my Dutch rellies ... Dad was well dead by then.  I had to reconstruct his life and values from learning about Australia and position him in it ... being surrounded by angry violent drunks in my adolescence did not help ... there was no way I would be drunk ... they were awful ... that was obvious to me ... but yes I did experiment with other drugs ... alcohol was never a big temptation for me ... and then after I got hep .. that was that.

 

Dad's issues were different ... mother had no clue ... could not see outside a square or walk in another persons shoes ... but she was not cruel and she tried to carry her parental load ... was a bit immature at marriage ... but so are most people.

 

BOTH PARENTS had SURVIVAL issues ... around basic FOOD, housing and safety.

 

 

Thanks again for posting this @Former-Member

 

 

 

Re: Inherited Trauma Studies

I come from a Jewish background and was non practising. We lost everyone except 5 famiy members in the Holocaust (my mother, her mother, her sister and their mother) everyone else was killed in concentration camps. Although it is never discussed it hangs over my head from time to time and has definately affected the way I see people and view the world in general.

I do not trust people at all. I don't believe my children feel the same way although they all have a healthy cynism regarding the human race. 

I have read papers concerning the original post and I do believe that for some children and grandchildren they have problems concerning what their grandparents have gone through. Whether it is imprinted on their DNA or just from looking in their grandmothers cupboard and seeing a yellow star of david after all these years.

Anyway it is an interesting thought and one I think worthy of discussion.

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