Trauma Pathways: Ancestral & Inherited Trauma
Three common trauma pathways
Trauma is anything that disconnects or fragments us from our authentic selves and sense of wholeness. It’s typically the result of a shocking event (or a series of repeated disempowering events) that overwhelm the central nervous system, and change how we react to feelings of threat, anxiety, and overwhelm. It can fracture our sense of safety and well-being, and imprint us with vigilant states of tracking for danger, even when we’re not aware of doing so.
You can learn more about the nature of trauma in What Is Trauma? and how it affects us in 8 Common Impacts of Trauma.
There is a growing acknowledgment of our need as a society to help one another heal from personal trauma, since we are each a part of the whole. I believe that with each person’s personal healing, we become a step closer to increased harmony and integration for the whole collective of humanity.
The three pathways of trauma are:
Personal & biographical trauma
Ancestral & inherited trauma
Collective & cultural trauma
In this article, we’ll explore the second pathway, ancestral trauma.
Trauma pathway: Ancestral trauma
We’ll investigate three main categories within ancestral and inherited trauma:
DNA and epigenetics
Family and social conditioning
Eco-psychology
Let’s look at them one-by-one.
DNA and epigenetics trauma
Is it possible that our body holds memories of our own lives, but also that of our family and ancestors?
If so, how far back does this influence travel? Without investigation, it’s easy to miss the ways in which silent ancestral and inherited trauma have shaped our worldview, our life experiences, and the threats registered in our body that often perplex our mind.
The field of epigenetics suggests that we inherit memories, information, and belief systems from our lineage, which subconsciously influences our present-day experiences.
There is great controversy on this topic, as the field of epigenetics has only begun to gain momentum about a decade ago. Ongoing epigenetic studies suggest that descendants of Holocaust survivors hold the trauma of their grandparents in their DNA, and subconsciously orient to the world in similar ways.
If these studies hold up, they will confirm that we inherit some trace of our parents’, grandparents’ experiences (and likely further down the line). In particular, their suffering, which in turn will modify our own day-to-day health — and perhaps our children’s, too.
Epigenetics teaches us that trauma can leave a chemical mark on a person’s genes, which then is passed down to subsequent generations. The mark doesn’t directly damage the gene; there’s no mutation. Instead, it alters the mechanism by which the gene is expressed. The alteration isn’t genetic. It’s epigenetic.
What does ancestral trauma feel like?
Ancestral trauma can mask as vague sensory experiences that feel extremely personal but absent of concrete memory with supporting details of when, with who, how, etc.
A client shared with me how she’d spent years feeling haunted by a sense that she’d been sexually abused. She had no recall of the specific details. The lingering feelings were highly disturbing and confusing for her. As a teenager, she asked her mom about this persistent feeling, and the response she received was, “Honey, no. I think you’ve watched too many movies.”
As an adult, she periodically experienced panic during sex — she couldn’t let this inquiry go. She asked her mom the same question, two decades later, and this time her mom teared up and blurted out: “No, honey, your grandpa molested me — I don’t think anything ever happened to you. I would’ve told you sooner, but I didn’t recall this memory until just a few months ago, when I received a craniosacral bodywork session.”
Suppressed trauma lives on in the body
Trauma can turn into repressed memories that are often recalled through body wisdom and sensory data. We explored unwinding this pattern in my client’s system. Her mom continued on her healing journey, and over time, my client no longer felt haunted by this nagging sense that something bad had happened. The resolution was healing them both.
Critics may say this was a coincidence between the daughter and mother. While others may say the trauma was passed through the mother’s DNA, or perhaps it was an intuitive sense of the daughter who was open to feeling the unseen patterns of emotions and energies that were seeking attention in her family system. There isn’t an absolute truth about inherited trauma works. It’s mysterious. The way we understand this phenomenon varies based on our belief system.
Inherited trauma is another pathway for each of us to investigate based on our interest and curiosity. It’s an emerging field and I intend to explore it further by interviewing experts in this domain.
To read more about generational trauma, including research that links low-cortisol levels in descendants of holocaust survivors, and other stories like my client’s, check out this article by Mark Wolynn, Breaking the cycle of inherited family trauma.
2. Family and social conditioning trauma
As proven by epigenetics, inheriting trauma from the markings on our DNA is a direct transmission and influencing factor. However, there is also an indirect inheritance based upon a set of conditions and principles carried down through a family line called socially learned conditioning.
Is it possible that what our parents enact upon us is what we will enact upon our own children or family members?
Yes and no. It depends upon many variables and conditions. Studies have shown that children physically abused by an angry and wounded parent often grow up to perpetuate the abuse with their own children. On the other hand, an abused child may grow up to be silent and depressed, afraid to speak or act, and sink into addiction or other means of self-medicating.
An example of transforming social conditioning trauma
I want to share an example of a brave man breaking a cycle in his lineage. Recently, after a community ceremony, on our drive home, my friend shared an insight with me about his perpetuation of ancestral trauma with his son.
This is what he said:
“I’m conditioning my son with all of my own fears. I know I can’t protect him from making mistakes, because he’s on his own journey to learn what he needs to learn. So today, I’ve decided that I’m going to take ownership of the fear-based behaviors that I’ve unconsciously been imposing on him.
I want to expose my behaviors with him and share my commitment to surrender and not overlay my own conditioning on him — as my dad did to me.
I genuinely want to find it in my heart to let him be free in ways I wasn’t at his age. I’m going to break this chain in my family.”
I was moved to tears. He was in the process of breaking the chain of inherited education taught by his father, which was likely passed down by his grandfather, and back as far as it could travel to the origin point.
This is how we change social and learned conditioning. We wake up, take responsibility and make new choices. It was bold and beautiful to witness this man, as a father, redefine his desired influence on his son’s ability to self express with authenticity and safety.
3. Eco-psychology: The connection between humanity and nature
Our ancestral lineage includes our biological family, and extends to encompass all of humanity, including every living being and its contribution to the evolution of all species. One way to look at it, is that our mother earth is our oldest ancestor.
Eco-psychology is a discipline focused on the connection and relationship between humanity and nature. It includes psychological and existential questions such as who we are, how we grow, why we suffer, and how we heal, which are inseparable from our relationship with the natural world. It also includes the exploration of the healing powers and medicine received by spending time in green spaces, oceans and wild nature.
Why are we destroying the habitat that supports and sustains us as a species?
Why does spending time in green spaces, oceans, rivers and wild landscapes provide such profound healing powers and medicine without words and processing with our minds?
We are living in a unique time
The industrialization of our lands and mental states have fostered disconnection from the natural world. This impacts some people emotionally, energetically and for others, there are traumatic physical consequences.
For example, the secretive and intentional pollution of drinking water in Flint, Michigan exposed thousands of innocent children, adults, and animals to the consumption of high levels of lead. The lead poisoning damaged the children’s brains and nervous systems, which slowed down their development resulting in learning, behavior, hearing, and speech challenges.
The information age has placed us in a unique time. I see multiple exposés every day on social media related to unethical animal treatment, sex trafficking of young, innocent children, and poisons intentionally placed in our food and water sources.
In previous decades, national news and media platforms had the ability to conceal any information deemed unfit for public consumption. Now we’re privy to the mass extinctions of species occurring on a daily basis.
Social media continues to educate us with raw, unfiltered images and stories that reveal the undeniable and abhorrent mistreatment of factory-farmed animals, exploited for mass production and capitalization. The trauma caused to these animals affects an open-heart, both emotionally and energetically, each time a visual or article is taken into our awareness.
If we are also consuming these same animals who are treated with abuse and disrespect, are we potentially consuming the vibration and remnants of their traumatic treatment and deaths? I wonder if the skyrocketing increase in autoimmune diseases, digestive issues, and allergies are all a symptom of sensitive creatures being overwhelmed by the mistreatment of livestock and the increasing toxins in our soils, air, water, and foods?
I have more questions on this topic than I have answers. Stay tuned for podcast interviews and further research on the relationship and trauma that occurs between humans, other species, and the earth.
Self-inquiry: Ancestral trauma
Here is a list of questions to kickstart or deepen your investigation of personal trauma.
DNA & epigenetics
What have you inherited from your lineage that relates to your personal suffering today?
These can be harder to identify, which means we have to dig deep for patterns that don’t appear like “ours” (based on any of our conceptual history), but nevertheless, feel paralyzing.
What do you find when you explore topics like scarcity of resources such as money, love, and safety? Or fears that seem irrational to your lived experience despite the alarm bells of threats ringing in your system? For example, are you a successful person financially, but terrified of being homeless?
Family social conditioning
What have you learned from your parents or cultural environment that is outdated and keeping you stuck? How can you practice disengaging, and rewiring your operational system?
What expectations, fears, and judgments do you experience with your children, or most intimate friends and partners, that may be rooted in what you learned about love from your conditioning environment?
Eco-psychology
How are we, individually and collectively, being traumatized by what’s happening on earth and to all of her species?
In what ways are we contributing to the trauma of other life forms and the earth herself?
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE?
If you’d like to continue to explore the journey of addressing and healing trauma, I’ve written a series of articles on the topic:
Trauma Pathways: Ancestral Trauma