Michael was a healthy 10-year-old when something strange happened. His skin started burning, and doctors couldn’t figure out why. They checked everything but found nothing wrong.
However, Michael’s mom told him about an incident that happened to his dad when he was ten. His dad was playing with matches and accidentally set fire to their garage. The fire burned down their whole house and killed his brother. His dad felt so guilty and couldn’t forgive himself. This unhealed wound stayed with him, and now, years later, it seemed to express itself in Michael too.
A woman, whose name was undisclosed, suffered all her life from an intense and paralyzing claustrophobia—unable to ride in a plane or elevator. Later, she discovered that her father’s parents perished in a gas chamber.
Another woman seemingly happy with her marriage, found herself confused when she suddenly became indifferent towards her husband. But she was more confused when she learned that her grandmother had tragically lost her husband at the same age and became distant from her family until she died.
These true stories, taken from Mark Wolynn’s book “It Didn’t Start With You,” seemingly share an odd element. The stories all have in common that they explore the idea that our ancestors’ trauma can have a lasting impact on us. This concept, while controversial, is becoming increasingly popular. Even though we didn’t live through the trauma, it is saying that our genes and our family’s history can carry echoes of it. Or simply, we inherit trauma, as much as we inherit eye and hair color. But how does an inherited trauma function?
When a trauma happens, it changes us— sometimes for generations. The grief, the suffering, and the distress don’t always end with us. The feelings and sensations (specifically the stress response, the way our genes express) can pass forward to our children and grandchildren, similarly affecting them, even though they didn’t personally experience our trauma. Simply put, many of us relive the tragedies from previous generations and rarely make the link.
Wolynn shows in his book the latest research, which shows we can be born into feelings and that we don’t enter the world with a clean hard drive. Using a computer analogy, there’s an operating system already in place, one that contains the fallout from the traumas of our parents and grandparents. We are born with fears and feelings that don’t always belong to us. Why is this?
To understand this, the book proposes evidence from science. When a trauma occurs, it literally changes us. It causes a chemical change in our DNA, altering how our genes function, sometimes for generations. A chemical tag attaches to our DNA, instructing cells to use or ignore certain genes, enabling us to better cope with the trauma.
The way our genes are affected changes how we act and feel. We may become sensitive or reactive to situations similar to an original trauma, even if that trauma occurred in a past generation. This gives us a better chance of surviving similar traumas in this generation. For example, if our grandparents came from a war-torn country where bombs exploded, bullets flew, and people were taken away and shot, they might pass on skills like sharper reflexes and quicker reaction times to help us survive the violence they experienced. The problem is, that we might also inherit a stress response that is always on high alert, preparing us for a catastrophe that never arrives. We may experience anxiety, hypervigilance, or depression, often without understanding why. We may simply think we are wired this way.
More specifically, about 15 years ago, neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda found that children of Holocaust survivors often had the same stress problems as their parents and that babies in the womb of mothers experienced trauma. Yehulda also found a similar pattern in children born to mothers who were near the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks. This shows how a mother’s emotions can actually change the way her baby’s genes develop.
The implications of this research are huge. The idea that trauma can be inherited and passed down through generations like a family heirloom is a powerful and controversial one. While some dismiss it as a mere coincidence or a product of shared experiences, the evidence is growing that the impact of trauma can echo through family lines, influencing the way we think, feel, and even our physical health. Whether we choose to believe in it or not, the stories of families struggling with the echoes of past pain remind us of the interconnectedness of human experience and the enduring power of both trauma and resilience. After all, it is like the saying, like father, like son. Or is it?
BY BITANIA T.ENGIDAW
The Ethiopian Herald September 8/2024
