What if your deepest fears, most destructive behaviors, and worst failures aren’t your fault?
A new area of scientific research called epigenetics suggests that the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and earlier ancestors may manifest in our daily lives.
Any repeating pattern of emotion, including depression and anxiety, may be a tendency you inherited from your relatives. Traumatic memories can be transmitted through chemical changes in our DNA. For example, research suggests that children of Holocaust survivors are predisposed to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Think of your genetic blueprint as the starting point. From childhood, influences from your environment begin to shape you emotionally, psychologically, and biologically. Certain experiences or environmental triggers have the power to unlock the effects of generational trauma later in life.
The good news is that it’s possible to change our brains so that we don’t keep repeating negative patterns from our family history. Learn more with our Instaread on It Didn’t Start with You.
