Emerging trends in psychotherapy are starting to point beyond just the traumas of the individual to include trauma from family and social history as part of larger picture (Wolynn, 2016). Trauma from the past can send shockwaves forward through the generations creating distress. Developments in various field like cellular biology and epigenetics highlight the importance of exploring at least three generations of history within the family to understands how trauma repeats.
We all resonate with hearts, mind and bodies of those around us (Cozolino, 2021). Over the course of a lifetime, we accumulate and carry what pain is there in the world and is expressed as vulnerability to emotional distress. In search for the source of trauma, we should look beyond the life of the individual to family history and culture. These can be central to someone’s struggles. These histories are in our minds, hearts and blood but can’t be found in the DSM. They are not recognised as traumas but a person cannot be understood without knowing them.
Cozolino writes that as he learned more about evolution, biology and the mind, he began to realise that we experience far more that can be accounted for by our individual history. Our brains are social organs and we attune and communicate with others at deeper levels that we think. We communicate across space and time through emotional resonance, nonverbal and epigenetic signalling. Cozolino tells the story of Gabor Maté, who, as a small child had fits of crying that lasted for hours. This took place in Hungary during the Nazi occupation. The doctor informed Maté’s mother that ‘all of my Jewish babies are crying’.
In his book, Trauma and memory, Peter Levine writes about the ‘generational transmission of trauma’. Research over past number of years has chronicled this conduction and highlighted some of the molecular, epigenetic and biochemical mechanisms that allow this to happen. In one experiment mice were exposed to the neutral/ pleasant smell of cherry blossoms which was followed by an aversive electrical shock. After pairing these on several occasions the mice began to freeze in fear when presented with the smell alone. This response was retained through at least five generations of progeny. This means the great, great, grand-children froze in fear as if they themselves had been conditioned. Rachel Yehuda has conducted research on the neurobiological effects of generational trauma – particularly on the children of holocaust survivors – which has demonstrated changes in cortisol levels and physiological markers of anxiety in this population. Levine describes how in working with children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors he has noticed symptoms of generalised anxiety and depression. They have described specific and often horrific images and emotions about events that seem real but could not have happened to them and that the parents had not told them about. Levine was able to confirm that these had happened to the parents but could not have happened to the children, but the children were experiencing these traumatic memories as their own. Native American tribes say that the suffering of the father is carried forth for four generations (some tribes say 7). Levine’s view of transmission across time and space of procedural traumatic body memories is a downside to being able to transmit and receive survival information.
References
Cozolino, L. (2021). The making of a therapist: A practical guide for the inner journey. W. W. Norton.
Levine, P. A. (2015). Trauma and memory: Brain and body in a search for the living past: A practical guide for understanding and working with traumatic memory. North Atlantic Books.
Wolynn, M. (2016). It didn’t start with you: How inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle. Penguin.