Inherited Family Trauma
Trauma, a universal language, yet often misunderstood. At its core lies a profound connection to family and ancestors, shaping our lives through what I term “Inherited Family Trauma” or “Transgenerational trauma,” as coined by Bert Hellinger and explored by Mark Wolynn in hisbook “It Didn’t Start With You.”
Wolynn outlines key signs of Inherited Family Trauma:
- Ages that repeat
- Event that repeat
- Trauma that repeats
- Language that repeats
- Emotions, behaviours and symptoms (physical, psychological) that repeat
He identifies four unconscious themes underlying this trauma:
1. Rejection (of a Parent)
- Have we judged, blamed, rejected ordistant from a parent?
- The language we use to describe our parents (i.e. “My mum is selfish, cruel, cold”) can mirror the quality of the relationship we have with our partners, bosses,or selves.
2. Merged (witha Parent)
- Do we repeat some aspects of our parents’ life experience, misfortune, life situation, attitude or behaviour?
- Do we struggle in a similar way?
- Do you feel you share the same pain your parent has?
3. Break in the bond (with Mother)
- Was there a trauma or early event (fromconception to approx. age 10) that strained the relationship or compromised thebond between you and your mother?
- Did something traumatic happen while your mother was pregnant with you?
- Was she highly anxious, depressed, or stressed?
- Did you experience a difficult birth? Were you born premature? Forceps?
- Wereyou adopted?
- Wereyou separated from your mother after birth or sent away to visit relatives or grandparents?
- Did your mother give away a child, or lose a child or pregnancy before/after you were born?
4. Identified (withan excluded member of the family other than your parents)
- Have you taken on a trait or behaviour or feeling from someone in the family history who’s been ignored or excluded?
- Did guilt or pain prevent a family member from grieving a loss?
- Trauma in the system (an early death of a parent, child, sibling, an abandonment, amurder, crime or suicide)
- What event was too terrible, painful or shameful to talk about?
Do you resonate with any of the themes? One of the ways to identify your unconscious themes of the inherited trauma with your parents are to ask:
Q1: Describe your mother/father when you were young.
Q2: What do you blame your mother / father for?
Here’s my answer:
Q1: She is hard working, strong, confident, not much present, attached to me
Q2: I blame her to have been absence when I was baby. She always expected me to be independent. She prioritised her work. She kept the house messy, untidy. I had to be there for her. I had to cook for her. She talks of her pain and struggle in her life and I feel them in me.
What unconscious theme/s do you think I have in my inherited trauma? My themes are Break in the bond and Merged. You may think otherwise, and that’s OK. Important thing is that we become aware of OUR story of the parent – our words when we describe our mother/father. Because healing starts from here.
To heal our inherited trauma we must be willing to lose the story. Our story. The story that we have about the parents and allow us to take in something good from what they gave us.
The more we reject our parents the more we suffer. What’s unhealed in us when we reject them continue to live on inside us.
To defuse the charge we have around our parents and our childhood let’s ask ourselves:
“What good did my mother/father bring into my life that made me who I am?”
Let go of our inherited family trauma, let go of our story, and together we embark on our healing journey.
Here’s a little audio clip I made introducing some of the core sentences that are relating to inherited family trauma and its healing sentences you could use.
(Setences to Heal)
