Your body may be listening to instructions that were formed during times of great struggle and adversity that your ancestors lived through. Where adaptations were made as coping mechanisms but the original trauma was not resolved these outdated programmes can linger. Those messages may sometimes be expressing in unexplained anxiety or emotional turmoil , repetitive unhealthy behaviours OCD, relationship challenges, and increased risk of mental health conditions.
The good news is that this can all be updated and changed. The first step is awareness that this is even a thing. Until relatively recently it wasn’t. There was more focus on the events in your childhood and your upbringing, which of course are also important but may just be the latest in a chain that reaches further back.
Much of the research has been on animals and plants, and may be limited to proving changes over a handful of generations, but I believe that these threads can go back much further depending on their intensity and the cumulative effect of mirrored and repeating experiences over time by each generation.
In this lesson I will share some examples of research that demonstrate ways that ancestral trauma is being passed down so that future generations respond differently to life events even though the original threat is no longer present.
How is the trauma passed down?
The passing down the generation to you happens through a combination of environmental factors and epigenetics.
The environmental factors include the psychological impact of parenting by traumatised parents who may have altered behaviours or create family dynamics ruled by anxiety or depression or by using other coping mechanisms.
The study of epigenetics reveals a biological pathway where gene expression in the cells is altered and then the changes are passed onto the children and it is a fascinating and evolving science where we don’t know all the answers.
In essence, the original trauma creates epigenetic markers, which are chemical marks on genes that alter their activity without changing the underlying DNA sequence. A simple way of imagining this is comparing the gene expression to light switches that can be on or off as indicated by the epigenetic changes. Exactly how this process works and what and how the changes are passed on, particularly past one or two generations, is a matter of much research, contention and continued learning.
However, it is generally agreed that these epigenetic changes can be passed from one generation to the next through the information contained in the sperm and egg, (gametes) or through the prenatal and early postnatal environment.
Cherry Blossom and Mice
Here is an example of research illustrating epigenetics as work over generations.
(side note - I do not like this type of experiment personally causing suffering to other creatures and am not condoning this type of research)
Researchers started with male mice and exposed them to a cherry blossom smell (acetophenone) and gave them an electric shock at the same time. As you would expect, over time the mice became sensitive to that smell and exhibited a fear response when exposed to the smell alone without the electric shock.
Then they bred the mice with females.
Both the children and grandchildren of these male mice exhibited an aversion to the cherry blossom smell without ever experiencing the electric shock the original male mice had received.
They discovered increased receptors for that smell on the offspring and concluded that an altered epigenetic pattern in the specific receptor gene in the sperm of the original mice was then passed onto the offspring so that they could detect the smell at lower concentrations and avoid it.
This type of experiment has also been carried out with nematode worms, both with smell and also with pathogenic food sources. The results- avoidance of the food that had made them sick was passed on to the next 4 generations before fading out. Interestingly the worms that died from the pathogens laid eggs before dying, therefore ensuring their continuation through offspring but they also passed on the knowledge to avoid that type of food.
(Read more here and here)
Scale of the Original Trauma in your Ancestors and examples of Transgenerational Trauma in Humans.
There are obvious ethical issues in repeating controlled experiments like those above for humans and the time scale is different. Nematode worms live for only a few days, mice reproduce multiple times a year. So research on humans has been retrospective after actual traumas that can be studied over time. Events such as war and famine for example that effect whole populations.
Although it is easier to study this at a population level the mechanism for passing on trauma responses is likely to be the same at any scale. The various scales of trauma vary from an individual event, to a wider but still individual family situation to the larger shared cultural collective experience. In addition to these layers of scale, there is a potential cumulative effect of the biological epigenetic information combined with the psychological impact altering parent behaviour as they bring up their children.
Four types of impact have been identified through studying some of the larger cultural traumas: 1 depression 2 hyper vigilance 3 traumatic bond formation and 4 re-enactment of the trauma.
You can imagine how this will further impact children even if they did not experience the original trauma as they are parented by traumatised parents and how they may then alter their parenting style in response.
This is a factor that is not present for the worms or the mice in the same way as we nurture our children for a lot longer and live longer.
In my work I take it as a given that there is a ‘physical’ pathway through which the lingering impact of these types of traumas is passed on regardless of whether we fully understand that in our modern scientific terms. It is difficult to separate out the usually multi faceted, layered impacts of trauma to isolate the epigenetics. A traumatised person will continue to be influenced by the collective stories and will have altered behaviour and care giving that will impact their children as well as the biological input. Working at the energetic layer with an understanding of some of the pathways can dissolve the imprints and change the epigenetic markers.
Which events get passed down?
Any event that threatens survival in some way and is not resolved will have the potential to be passed on. From direct work with clients I notice that the types of events that are passed down through many generations tend to involve violence and violent death, or shaming at a community or cultural level, or to have involved significant hardship and loss with impact for at least the immediate family and often the whole community.
Some Examples:
Intergenerational trauma caused by the Holocaust. During the sixties researchers began to observe large numbers of children of survivors seeking mental health help. Later on the grandchildren of the original survivors were found to be over represented by 300% among referrals to a psychiatry clinic in comparison with the general population
(Read more here)
The Dutch Hunger Winter
The Nazis blocked food supplies throughout the winder of 44-45 and caused widespread food shortages leading to over 20000 Dutch people dying of starvation. Studies of children born to women who were pregnant during the famine, found significant differences in birth weight and long term health consequences. These differences varied depending on when the famine occured in the pregnancy. For example, if the famine happened during the third trimester those children were born smaller and showed a higher susceptibility to obesity and diabetes later in life. These changes were also noted in future generations who had not lived through the famine themselves.
(Read more here)
There are lots of examples of research connected with this type of large scale event, including the African American Slaves, Refugee populations and survivors of other famines and also of domestic violence. They all show that there is an impact that lasts at least through to grandchildren.
What does this bring up for you? Time for reflection
Generally the impact of the ancestral trauma shows up in situations that energetically resemble the original trauma as you live your life now. Youmay notice your reactions and responses in certain stressful or ordinary situations will seem greater than the situation warrants. I have also found that your perception of conception and the womb as well as birth itself mirrors these earlier ancestral imprints in the energetics of the experience.
Take a few moments to reflect on any known stories about your ancestors.
Don’t worry if you do not know anything about your family. In our experiential live call we will explore what may have been passed down that needs updating without you needing to know all of your family history.
And yourself, Did my ancestors have any adverse life events or live through a particular time in history? How did this impact them and their children? How do you feel intuitively this may be affecting you now?
Do feel free to share in the facebook group.
And see you on Thursday.