Good News: We're Not Hopelessly Fucked
What we do with the weight of our emotional inheritance
“The next generation carry not only the despair of the past, but also hope, because their mere existence is evidence that their family survived and that a future is possible.”
“Trauma is transmitted through our minds and through our bodies, but so are resilience and healing.”
“Psychological work can alter and modify the biological effects of trauma.”
~Dr. Galin Atlas
I just finished Emotional Inheritance, by psychoanalyst, Dr. Galin Atlas.
Over the last few years, I have become fascinated with the areas of epigenetics and intergenerational trauma. As Atlas explains in the book, for a long time we understood DNA and our genetic hand as entirely based on biology.
However, experts and researchers since have started to think through the ways in which trauma experienced and unprocessed is passed down to the next generation. And that, even when we are unaware of the stories, the trauma, they still reside as secrets untold, and ones that we still carry within us. This trauma, this emotional inheritance, as she calls it, still dwells within our unconscious and informs many of our anxieties, quirks, fears, phobias, how we operate, etc.
Reading her book was intense, rattling, scary, uplifting, and intriguing.
I found myself running through all the many things—the long list—that both my parents experienced, what ‘set the stage’ for me before I even appeared on the scene. And what I compiled was just what I knew and what had pieced together. But still, that list was long. Intense.
And Atlas notes that even when we think we know, that there is oh-so-much more to the whole story.
And lest we forget, we may also consider the many untold, forgotten, silenced, secret stories of our grandparents and great-grandparents, and beyond. They matter too.
Oddly, in lab mice, when tracing influences of epigenetics, apparently scientists trace them back 17 generations. Whereas, with people, we only take a look at the past 2 or 3 generations of humans. Humans are social, emotional, conscious, dynamic beings. How much more there must be to them, that we lose and do not consider.
All of that to say—we have a lot of stories, information, data about our ancestors—that we do not know. We carry a lot that we are unaware of, but still influences us, unconsciously.
All that we don’t know that influences us, that we did not choose but were simply born into; holding that can be very daunting, which is why I take heart with her claims that psychological work and ‘reprocessing’ can reverse some of that damage, trauma, emotional inheritance.
Personally, when you come from such a long line of trauma and dysfunction, it can be so easy to feel like you are hopelessly fucked. I have felt this way often and have commiserated with my best friend about this frequently.
Though I think the danger in that is it also grants us the ability to always play the victim trump card. And can be a dangerous path to avoiding accountability and doing the hard work, because we are not at fault, we are simply dealing with the shit hand that we were dealt. And therefore, the generational cycles of trauma and dysfunction, pain and alcoholism and mental illness cycle on, like a spinning record on repeat.
So, to have this knowledge, BUT with the added point that there is something that you can do with it is a glimmer of hope. Knowing that by doing that processing and psychological work can also help to undo some of the fuckery gives me a sense of ease.
Reading this, knowing this and believing it deep within my bones, I sigh with relief. Grateful that there is SOMETHING that I can do.
Yes, trauma can be passed down, but so can healing.
If there is anything that has offered me more solace, as the sole survivor in my suicide-ridden family, rife with alcoholism, and laden with depression and anxiety and mental illnesses, abandonment, abuse, and other heavy-laden trauma and dysfunction, it is this: that I can do something to change it.
And that gives me hope.
Which is a precious, precious, commodity.