Inherited Trauma: The Epigenetic Legacy

It Didn’t Start with You Show Notes

Mark is a leading expert in the field of inherited family trauma. He leads workshops, hospitals, conferences and teaching centers around the world.  Mark is the author of the book It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle.

Timestamped Notes

[00:37] There are fears or anxieties that strike people when they reach a certain age or an event or depression that people never get to the bottom of and symptoms that really come from nowhere. What Mark is learning is the symptoms could actually be the residues of trauma in a person's family history that was biologically inherited from parents or grandparents or even great grandparents. Epigenetics therefore gets into what going there. There are numerous examples of trauma like when a spouse cheats, parents fight or someone dies. Trauma changes people. Any kind of trauma can create an epigenetic change.

When trauma occurs it causes a chemical change in the DNA and this can change how genes function sometimes even for generations. A chemical tag will attach to the DNA and tell a cell how to use or ignore a certain gene based on the trauma the body has experienced. The way the genes are affected can change how a person reacts or feels. They can either be reactive or overly sensitive to situations that are similar to the traumas our parents experienced therefore dealing with it better. An example is if a person's grandparents were from a war ton country where there are police everywhere and people being shot. The grand parents would pass forward skill sets like sharper reflexes or quick reaction time to help us survive the trauma they experienced. A stress response can also be inherited along with the skillset.

[04:04] People are born with fears and feelings of their parents or grandparents and think that those fears they are theirs. Mark wrote the book because most people do not make the link. These traumas are passed down in gene changes. A chemical change happens to the grandparents which may silence, activate, and turn up or down a gene. It is the gene expression that is passed down. This does not change the DNA but it changes the way the genes express. This can be passed forward for three generations.

For years it was known that something like this was happening but it wasn’t until thirteen years ago when Rachel Yehuda  a neuroscientist out of Mt Sinai Medical school in New York discovered that the children of holocaust survivors share the same trauma symptoms as the children especially specifically the low levels of cortisone. Cortisone is the stress hormone that gets people back normal after a stressful event. Holocaust survivors and their children experiencing depression and anxiety. She also found the same pattern in the children born to mothers who were pregnant near the World Trade Center when it was attacked. The babies inherited compromised cortisone levels but 16 different genetic markers like being smaller for their gestation period. A couple of years ago Racheal finds that survivors and their children share the exact gene changes in the exact same region of the exact same gene technically the Fkpb five gene.

[06:50] This research suggest that traumas are heritable. People are three times more likely to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder if one of their parents had PTSD meaning that those people will struggle with anxiety and depression. The pattern can be observed for two generations in humans but further research indicates three generations is also in effect. This was done using mice and rats which 99% of a similar genetic makeup as humans. It is easy to get a generation of mice in 12-20 weeks whilst with humans it takes 12-20 years.

At Emery Medical School at Atlanta, they take male mice and they make them fear cherry blossom scent. Anytime the mice smelled the smell they would get shocked. They noticed that thy were changes in the brain, blood and sperm but specifically in their brain where there were enlarged areas where there was a greater amount of smell receptors so that the mice could protect themselves by detecting the scent  at lesser concentrations. That’s the epigenetic change or adaptation. They also saw changes in the sperms and they took some of the sperms and they impregnated female mice that were not shocked. They wanted to see what would in the next generation. They found that the mice in the 2nd and 3rd generation became jumpy and jittery just by smelling the smell. The inherited the stress response without directly experiencing the trauma.

[09:09] Traumas are very important. In the contraction of the trauma is the expansion. The traumas themselves are seeking that expansion and therefore keep repeating in sense to show us what is unhealed because ultimately people seek healing. Even after healing Mark thinks that a vestige of the trauma will remain to ensure that people are walking the path that they trust. When people hit on a practice that motivates them, it's these practices that people heal. The experience changes people towards an action and it's through taking that action continually that people heal. In the book Mark tells the story of a woman who wanted to commit suicide. She wanted to be vaporized and incinerated. After interrogation with Mark it turns out she lost most of her family members in Auschwitz.

[14:23] People can be born with a body feeling or emotion they can never wrap their heads around. That’s one aspect of knowing one has inherited a feeling. There also some tell signs when things strikes suddenly. An example is realizing a fear, anxiety or symptom that begins suddenly when people reach a certain age or hit a certain milestone like marriage or pregnancy. Mark met a lady whose anxiety problems started once she was pregnant. Her main fear was harming her baby and it turns out her grandmother harmed her child and they were never allowed to talk about it. The lady realized she was carrying her grandmother's experience in her fears and how when something is kept under covers, the traumas find a way to arise more doggedly. When traumas remain unresolved or the healing is incomplete or the people involved are rejected, aspects of the original trauma will repeat itself in the subsequent generation.

[15:25] Sometimes children in a family get different traumas. Marks says that it is like an eight cut pizza. The cut pizza represents the traumas in the family. The first boy might take two pieces of the trauma from the father' side and the first girl might take a big piece of pizza from the mother's side and later born children seem to carry trauma  that can be even further away maybe a grandparent's trauma. First boys and first girls in a family can take a larger piece of the trauma. In huge traumas like the Holocaust, different kids can carry different aspects of it. One child may carry a fear in the smell of gas while another may be scared that she could lose her children. In the book there was a case of three Lebanese women who both of their grandmothers were given away as child brides to the old men. What passed down was that one sister married a much older man like her grandmother's and the other sister didn't have anything to do with men and she did not marry. The other one shut down every time she dated.

[21:10] There are three mechanisms that scientists have illuminated. Three ways in which Trans generational trauma can be observed. The first is DNA methylation where there is methyl residue added on to the DNA and this can be observed for three generations. Another one is non-coding RNAs. Scientists see this in excess amounts for three generations. The third one is called Histone modifications which are added to the proteins. This means that scientists can look at something very physical and see it repeated in three generation. Isabel a researcher at the Brain Research Institute at the University of Zurich traumatized male mice by repeatedly separating them from their mothers. Afterward they exhibited depression like symptoms that were called inhuman. They then took the depressed mice for three generations and dropped them in a bowl of water along with the mice that was not separated from the mother. The mice that were separated from their mother would float and drown whilst the mouse that was not separated would try to get out of the bowl of water.

When they dissected the mice they found same trauma symptoms in the 2nd and 3rd generation despite only the 1st generation experiencing the trauma. The researchers found abnormally high numbers of small non coding micro RNAs. Although the mice in the 3rd generation also expressed the same symptoms as their fathers and grandfathers, they did not have the elevated numbers of the micro RNAs. This allowed researcher to speculate that there is a three generational link but perhaps not beyond that. Currently there are studies with worms where they can see generational links for 14 generations so there is still a possibility of going beyond 3 generations.

[25:27] The largest trauma that Mark has worked with is attachment. This can come in two ways, experiencing one's own break from the mother or inheriting ones fathers or mother break with his or her mother. Some of the male mice that were separated from their mothers did not express the behavioral changes themselves, they epigenetically transmitted the behavioral change to their female offspring's. Father's trauma could go into either direction.

Once a person has figured out their trauma language, they need to have a new experience that is powerful enough to override the trauma response that lives inside. This experience needs to be emotionally important. The idea is to steal traction away from the trauma cycle that is in the mid brain. The experience needs to engage the Prefrontal Cortex and change the brain because energy is being pulled out from the limbic brain, stress response or trauma. This leads to the rewiring of new pathways as well as stimulating the release of a few good neurotransmitters like Serotonin, Dopamine and Gamma-amino butyric. These hormones are necessary to get pregnant for couples. The genes express can be affected positively by doing that therefore reducing the likelihood of your child picking up trauma. When the mice were transferred in a positive environment they did not pass it down to their offspring.

[35:26] Mark's book teaches the reader how to become a detective, to uncover the clues or the behaviors that repeat. There is a trauma language that a body speaks and there is also trauma language of a repeating self-destructive behaviors that people keep making. People need to learn how to listen to such language and symptoms. The book then leads the reader to where the language originated from the family history. With all that information, breaking the cycle is possible. There are many questions in the book that help the reader unearth their language. Readers are encouraged to have support before starting the journey.

Knowing what's going on expands our knowledge and the resources to deal with our situations. Not knowing makes one live in a cloud of misery where one thinks everything bad happens to him. The book is very freeing because it allows people to shake the family tree and see what falls out. If one ignores the past, it will come and haunt them later in the future. Exploring it gives options of breaking the disruptive pattern. The trauma itself contains the seed of expansion. In the contraction lives the expansion.

Connect with Mark

https://www.markwolynn.com/mark-wolynn/- Personal website

Resources

It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How   to End the Cycle- Mark Wolynn

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