It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

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A woman with claustrophobia—unable to ride in a plane or elevator—made the connection to her father’s parents who perished in a gas chamber. While the first few chapters provide some useful information about how genetics and epigenetics play a role in our health, the author goes off into kookyville with his personal therapy. Honestly, the author focuses too much on how you need to fix and have a relationship with your parents and that if you fix this relationship then you will never be mentally ill again. Mind you that not everyone can fix or wants to "fix" the relationship with their parents, especially if there's severe abuse involved. It will be important not to expect your parents to be any different from what they are — the change will occur in you. The relationship dynamics may remain the same, but your perspective will be different.”

A través de esta lectura pude encontrar palabras para darle sentido a sentimientos e ideas atoradas o que no había sido consciente de su existencia, permitiendo que brotaran; con este ejercicio me doy cuenta que el regalo más grande para nuestra especie es el lenguaje: Igualmente como si fuera siguiendo un camino de migas de pan, descubrí el momento cuando me desconecte de mi cuerpo para no sentir dolor, entonces es allí donde debo reiniciar esta reparación, por decirlo de alguna manera. sonra ruhların var olabileceğine hiç inanmayan biri olarak kitap bu yönüyle biraz itici de geldi bana. Elimden geldiğince dikkatli okumaya devam ederek ruhçuluk barındırıp barındırmadığını düşündüm. Barındırmadığını ama okurlarına ve danışanlarına tavsiye ettiği ritüellerle psikoterapistin yanlış anlaşılabileceğine karar verdim. Bir insanın kendisine yöneltilen doğru sorularla kendi kendine çıkarabileceği teselli verici bir takım gerçekleri bu tür ritüellerle hatırlatmak da bir yol olabilir belki ama bana pek tekin gelmedi doğrusu. Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.It was through language that I entered the world of psychology. Both as a student and then as a clinician, I had little interest in tests and theories and models of behaviour. Instead, I heard language.” Another note, if I had to read one more bit overemphasizing mother as primary caregiver whose disrupted bonds ruin us I was going to throw an attachment theory book at him. Attachment literature tends to use the language of "primary caregiver" and recognize the expansive family systems that may exist. We can have different attachments to different people. It is possible that if you are not securely attached to your mom that you will be securely attached elsewhere depending on the health of the system. He often sounds like someone who read a lot of early psychodynamic work but didn't keep current with it. Psychodynamic's most important contribution, I would argue, is that what happens to you in the past and in your family's past matters. Also, some of his examples of epigenetics are not epigenetics. Based on my understanding, which is imperfect, an uncle dying at a certain point would not maybe influence genetics though it influences the family system. Maybe because of his training or experiences, Wolynn doesn't know how to differentiate these. It Didn’t Start with You takes us a big step forward, advancing the fields of trauma therapy, mindfulness applications, and human understanding. It is a bold, creative, and compassionate work.” Read "fix" as: don't blame parents for any abuse; no one is responsible or guilty for abusing you; just get over it; there is no choice; it's just an event from the past rearing its head and it's your fault if you let it get to you; you have to make amends for the past. Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score . Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.

I thought when I started the book I would be giving it more stars. I'm a school psychologist and a PREPaRE trainer (school crisis work) and do a lot of reading about trauma. My orientation tends to be more in the cognitive behavioral area however I deeply believe in the purpose of narrative in therapy and that how we tell our stories matters. That being said, a lot of this book really got under my skin and made me say "a psychologist should know better"... except Mark Wolynn is not a psychologist. He does have a lot of training in a lot of areas, but this explains why a lot of his language in the book is pretty out of touch with current research and standards. But, I'll get to that. Saying that one is afraid of, say, suddenly freezing to death starting at age 19, is genetically encoded is just kooky. Additionally, if we buy the premise that it is genetically encoded, just understanding that you only have the phobia because your great uncle froze to death when he was 19 (even though you were unaware of this occurrence) will not make your (genetically encoded) phobia disappear. This argument makes no sense at all. If it were true then one would expect that an understanding that your chronic depression is likely a result of too little serotonin your brain should be sufficient (without any other treatment) to make the depression disappear. Una compañera de trabajo y una familiar en diferentes contextos me habían recomendado este libro por situaciones relacionadas con mi salud. Después de ver la novela turca “Mi otra yo” decidí abordar el texto con todas las reservas y prevenciones por mi formación. Whether they’re dead or alive, whether they’re distant from them or our relationship is amicable, our parents — and the traumas they’ve experienced or inherited — hold the key to our healing.” Yes, it IS our responsibility to heal our trauma, including the stuff passed onto us by previous generations, so we don't pass it onto our kids. But that also doesn't mean that envisioning our ancestors and telling them we can't carry their trauma any more is a magical cure.

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Yeah, so my suspicions about this being a lot of pseudoscience the author himself doesn't seem to grasp fully, and over which he would exercise some "handwavium" to make it fit his narrative, does seem to have panned out. There are some useful pieces of information in this book, but the majority of it is pseudoscience. The author points to "empirical evidence" in support of his assertions that are either not empirical at all, or that conclude something not quite relevant for the author's assertion.

moreover, the author believes that just by him explaining that, people can heal. because if now they know that the source of their suicidal tendencies, anxiety, depression, insomnia, you name it, was their great-great-uncle, they can “make peace with their family history” and it just goes away. 🙂

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sometimes distance from an abuser and making peace within ourselves is the best thing we can do heal.

the simple SUGGESTION that you can heal bipolar disease by this method, and that medication is dispensable - just for a “slight relief”, is offensive, ignorant and i really really really don’t like it. let’s remind ourselves Mark has no medical qualifications. After reading It Didn’t Start with You,I found myself immediately able to apply Mark Wolynn’s techniques with my patients and saw incredibleresults, in a shorter time than with traditional psychotherapeutic techniques. I encourage you to read this book. It’s truly cutting edge.” Somewhere along the way, I had even stopped thinking about my eye and worrying about whether it would improve or worsen. I no longer expected to be able to see clearly again. Not long afterward, my vision returned. (...) Ironically, after scouring the distant corners of the planets for answers, I found that the greatest resources for healing were already inside me just waiting to be excavated. Ultimately, healing is an inside job.”

They had trauma and difficulties when they were growing up as well, and they probably (unintentionally) passed their crap down when raising you because they didn't know any better.