How stress and trauma are carried from generation to generation

The following is a verbatim account of part of chapter 1 : Traumas Lost and Found in Mark Wolynn’s book It Didn’t Start With You : How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle.   I am posting it for the information of other bloggers with whom I recently shared on this subject.  Its part one of this series posts that contain latest research on epigenetics :

Scientists are now able to identify biological markers, evidence that traumas can and do pass down from one generation to the next.  Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New Your, is one of the world’s leading experts in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a true pioneer in this field.  In numerous studies, Yehuda has examined the neurobiology of PTSD in Holocaust survivors and their children.  Her research of cortisol in particular (the stress hormone that helps our body return to normal after we experience a trauma) and its effect on brain function has revolutionised the understanding and treatment of PTSD worldwide.  (… symptoms include depression, anxiety, numbness, insomnia, nightmares, frightening thoughts, and being easily startled or “on edge” (hypervigilance)).

Yehuda and her team found that children of Holocaust survivors who had PTSD were born with lower cortisol levels similar to their parents’, predisposing them to relive the PTSD symptoms of the previous generation.  Her discovery of low cortisol levels in people who experience an acute traumatic event has been controversial, going against the long held notion that stress is associated with high cortisol levels.  Specifically, in cases of chronic PTSD, cortisol production can become suppressed, contributing to low levels measured in both survivors and their children.

Yehuda discovered similar low cortisol levels in war veteran, as well as in pregnant mothers who developed PTSD after the World Trade Centre attack, and in their children. Not only did she find that the survivors in her study produces less cortisol, a characteristic they can pass onto their children, she notes that several stress related psychiatric disorders, including PTSD, chronic pain syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome, are associated with low levels of cortisol.  Interestingly, 50 to 70 percent of PTSD patients also meet the diagnostic criteria for major depression or another mood or anxiety disorder.

Yehuda’s research demonstrates that you and I are three times more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD if one of our parents had PTSD, and as a result, we’re likely to suffer from depression or anxiety.  She believes that this type of generational PTSD is inherited rather than occurring than being exposed to our parent’s stories of their ordeals.  Yehuda was one of the first researchers to show how descendants of trauma survivors carry the physical and emotional symptoms of traumas they have not directly experienced.

Gretchen told me she no longer wanted to live. For as long as she could remember, she had struggled with emotions so intense she could barely contain the surges in her body. Gretchen had been admitted several times to psychiatric hospital where she we diagnosed as bi polar with a severe anxiety disorder.  Medication brought her slight relief, but never touched the powerful suicidal urges that lived inside of her,  As a teenager, she would self injure by burning herself with a cigarette.  Now, at thirty nine, Gretchen had had enough.   Her depression and anxiety, she said, had prevented her from ever marrying and having children.  In a surprisingly matter of fact tone of voice, she told me she was planning to commit suicide before her next birthday.

Listening to Gretchen I had a strong sense that there must significant trauma in her family history  In such cases, I find it’s essential to pay close attention to the words being spoken for clues as to the traumatic event underlying a client’s symptoms.

When I asked her how she planned to kill herself, Gretchen said that she was going to “vaporise” herself.  As incomprehensible as it might sound to most of us, her plan was literally to leap into a vat of molten steel at the mill where her brother worked.  “My body will incinerate in seconds, she said staring directly into my eyes, “even before it reaches the bottom.”

I was struck by her lack of emotion as she spoke.  Whatever feeling lay beneath appeared to have been vaulted deep inside.  At the same time, the word “vaporize” and “incinerate” rattled inside me.  Having worked with many children and grandchildren whose families were affected by the Holocaust, I’ve learned to let their words lead me.  I wanted Gretchen to tell me more.

I asked if anyone in the family was Jewish or had been involved in the Holocaust.  Gretchen started to say no, but then stopped herself and recalled a story about her grandmother  She had been born into a Jewish family in Poland, but converted to Catholicism when she came to the United States in 1946 and married Gretchen’s grandfather.  Two years earlier, her grandmother’s entire family had perished in the ovens at Auschwitz.  They had literally been gassed – engulfed in poisonous vapors – and incinerated.  No one in Gretchen’s immediate family ever spoke to her grandmother about the war, or about the fate of her siblings.or her parents.  Instead, as is often the case with such extreme trauma, they avoided the subject entirely

Gretchen knew the basic facts of her family history, but had never connected it to her own anxiety and depression  It was clear to me that the words she used and the feelings she described didn’t originate with her, but had in fact originated with her grandmother and the family members who lost their lives.

As I explained the connection Gretchen listened intently.  Her eyes widened and colour rose in her cheeks.  I could tell that what I said was resonating.  For the first time, Gretchen had an explanation for her suffering that made sense to her.

To help her deepen her new understanding, I invited her to imagine standing in her grandmother’s shoes, represented by a pair of foam rubber footprints that I had placed on the carpet in the center of my office.  I asked her to imagine feeling what her grandmother might have felt after having lost all of her loved ones.  Taking it even a step further, I asked her if she could literally stand on the footprints as her grandmother and feel her grandmothers feelings in her own body. Gretchen reported sensations of overwhelming loss and grief, aloneness and isolation.  She also experienced the profound sense of  that many survivors feel, the sense of remaining alive after loved ones have been killed.

In order to process trauma, it is often helpful for clients to have a direct experience of the feelings and sensations that have been submerged in the body.  When Gretchen was able to access these sensations, she realised that her wish to annihilate herself was deeply entwined with her lost family members.  She also realised that she had taken on some element of her grandmother’s desire to die.  As Gretchen absorbed this understanding, seeing the family story in a new light, her body began to soften, as if something inside her that had long been coiled up could now relax.

As with Jesse, Gretchen’ recognition that her trauma lay buried in her family’s unspoken history was merely the first step in her healing process.  An intellectual understanding by itself is rarely enough for a lasting shift to occur.  Often, the awareness needs to be accompanied by a deeply felt visceral experience.    We’ll explore further ways in which healing becomes fully integrated so that the wounds of previous generations can finally be released.

Currently our society does not provide many options to help people like Jesse and Gretchen who carry remnants of inherited family trauma.  Typically, they might consult a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist and receive medications, therapy, or some combination of both.  But although these avenues might bring some relief, generally they don’t provide a complete solution.

Not all of us have traumas as dramatic as Gretchen’s or Jesse’s in our family history.  However, events such as the death of a parent or infant, a child given away, the loss of one’s home, or even the withdrawal of a mother’s attention can all have the effect of collapsing the walls of support and restricting the flow of love in our family.  With the origin of these traumas in view, long standing family patterns can finally be laid to rest.  In the next chapter, we’ll learn about epigentic changes – the chemical modifications that occur in our cells as a result of a traumatic event.

According to Rachel Yehuda, the purpose of an epigenetic change is to expand the range of ways we respond in stressful situations, which she says is a positive thing.  “Who would you rather be in a war zone with?” she asks.  “Somebody that’s had previous adversity (and) knows how to defend themselves? Or somebody that has never had to fight for anything?”  Once we understand what biological changes from stress and trauma are meant to do, she says “we can develop a better way of explaining to ourselves what our true capabilities and potentials are.”

Viewed in this way, the traumas we inherit or experience first hand can not only create a legacy of distress, but also forge a legacy of strength and resilience that can be felt for genrations to come.

(Note that Jesse who is mentioned in this extract was a patient of Mark’s who suffered the onset of severe insomnia, accompanied by depression at the age of 19.  He was freezing, shivering, unable to get warm, drenched in overwhelming fear.  When he consulted Mark, Mark found out that many years ago at the age of 19 Jesse’s father’s older brother died after falling face down in the snow after an accident checking power lines in Canada.  The death was such a tragic loss the family never spoke the brother’s name again.)