Epigenetics and Mental Health: The Science Behind Healing from Generational Trauma
Author: Sarah Murray
One of the most difficult things to witness in life are loved ones around you continuing to live in their cycles of self denial and self harm. They are preventing themselves from finding the thing they most deserve – a healed self, a growing self and a self that is combating epigenetics through neuroplasticity and post-traumatic growth. I know that last part has some big words but I will explain this and why it is incredibly important when we think about this concept of “breaking generational cycles” or healing our generational trauma.
Epigenetics is the field of study that focuses on the “changes” or chemical modifications in DNA. (National Humane Genome Institute, 2024) In other words, epigenetics is the study of how our environments or experiences can impact our genes overtime. These epigenome or chemical markers can change within our DNA based on our environmental experiences and can influence future DNA to come. What this also means is that our ancestral experiences and environments impact our own genetic make up and can make us predisposed to certain adapted and passed on traits. Our own stress is not always just our own.
Mark Wolyn, the author of “It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle,” powerfully explores this research further. Here are some thoughts from his work that may inspire you to read his book and learn more about epigenetics.
“Remaining silent about family pain is rarely an effective strategy for healing it. The suffering will surface again at a later time, often expressing in the fears or symptoms of a later generation.”
“Perhaps your mother carried a wound from her mother and was unable to give you what she didn’t get. Her parenting skills would be limited by what she did not receive from her parents.”
“When entangled, you unconsciously carry the feelings, symptoms, behaviors, or hardships of an earlier member of your family system as if these were your own.”
Here is a video on epigenetic to simplify this important concept even more:
An example of epigenetic changes due to traumatic experiences is shown in the research done by Dr. Rachel Yehuda as she proves the impact and change that occurred by those offsprings or children of Holocaust survivors. It was shown that second generation children of these survivors of immense loss and trauma exposure had “increased vulnerability or at higher risk to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).” (Yehuda et. al. 1998)
When you think back on your own family's generational trauma, be careful not to dwell and get lost in your potential harmful predispositions. There is hope and that hope is neuroplasticity and trauma healing or post-traumatic growth.
What is neuroplasticity and why is it important?
Neuroplasticity is the process of our brain's ability to structurally or functionally change due to our nervous system's response or activity that can reorganize its structure. “It is a process that involves adaptive structural and functional changes to the brain. It is defined as the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure.” (Puderbaugh et. al, 2023) In other words, we can create new neural pathways in our brains that are healthier and can ultimately combat unhealthy or challenging epigenetic predispositions. An example of our ability to create new neural pathways is, instead of grabbing a cigarette after a stressful day, we go incorporate speaking with a close friend or family member or a walk in nature. We are creating new, healthy responses to stress which is also combatting generational patterns to the response to stress or trauma responses.
Here is a video that can further break down the definition of neuroplasticity:
What is post-traumatic growth and how can we accomplish it?
Post-traumatic growth can be defined as “positive psychological changes experienced as a result of the struggle with trauma or highly challenging situations.” (Dell’Osso L. et.al, 2022) I like to think post traumatic growth is more about the recognition of your resilience. It is the understanding of your story and your ability to rewrite it. It is nonlinear healing through the process of self awareness toward new and better choices for resilience. Despite the trauma our families or ourselves have experienced, we recognize how we continue to make healthy choices and create new neural pathways. We can make healthier choices through holistic body, mind and soul care such as:
Reflecting on and rewriting your story
Incorporating movement, mindfulness and meditation to slow the nervous system
Listen to what you put into your body - maintaining a healthy nutrient dense diet
Setting healthy boundaries with work and people
Co-regulating with trusted others, furry friends or nature
Understanding your families history – both the pain and resilience
Finding community in your healing
Why is understanding our ancestral racial and cultural trauma history so important?
“Unhealed trauma acts like a rock thrown into a pond; it causes ripples that move outward, affecting many other bodies over time. After months or years, unhealed trauma can appear to become part of someone's personality. Over even longer periods of time, as it is passed on and gets compounded through other bodies in a household, it can become a family norm. And if it gets transmitted and compounded through multiple families and generations, it can start to look like culture.
"But it isn't culture. It's a traumatic retention that has lost its context over time.”
- My Grandmother's Hands, Resmaa Menakem
Let’s further explore that stress response I mentioned before as an example — grabbing a cigarette at the end of a stressful day. What’s a culture that comes to mind when you think of this response? I’m sure many come to mind and stereotypically you might have thought of French, Italians and other European cultures. It may be a cultural attribute or stereotype but if we name it as a generational stress response, maybe we can recognize how to forgive ourselves for adapting to harmful responses and work to change our behavior or create new and healthier neural pathways.
There are far more complex things that may take a longer process of self forgiveness and understanding and that is the complexity of racial injustice in our country's history and how it has impacted both people of culture and all races over time —- most especially Black and Indigenous People of Color.
Resmaa Menakem, trauma specialist, psychotherapist and the author of “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies,” explores the important conversations around racialized trauma and how generational trauma has impacted our country overtime.
Here is a podcast that shows Menakems’s journey in becoming an imperative trauma expert and a speaker of profound truth or much needed reminder during our ongoing and current political climate:
“Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence”
Here are some reflections from Menakem on the podcast that may inspire you to have a listen:
“And so my grandmother and my mother and the Black women in my life have always been that protector and that nurturer and that person that would get at your butt and say, “Yeah, you can do it, and let’s keep moving” — and my wife. And so for me, my grandmother, and the story I talk about with her hands, is that piece around creation and emergence even in the midst of anguish and horror.”
“While we see anger and violence in the streets of our country, the real battlefield is inside our bodies” — in all of our — I mean, I’m saying this — all of our bodies, of every color. You say, “If we are to survive as a country, it is inside our bodies where this conflict needs to be resolved”; that “the vital force [behind] white supremacy is in our nervous systems.”
“I think what it means to be human is to realize that we’re ever-emerging and that — that we are not machines. We are not flesh machines. We are not robots. We come from and are part of creation, and that that cannot just be something we talk about when we go to a yoga retreat — that it has to be a lived, emergent ethos and that — one of my ancestors, Dr. King, talked about how when people who love peace have to organize as well as people who love war. And for me, what that means is that it’s about work. It’s about action. It’s about doing. It’s about pausing. It’s about allowing — the reason why we want to heal the trauma of racialization is that it thwarts the emergence. So let’s not do that. Let’s condition and create cultures that will allow that emergence to reign supreme so that the intrinsic value can supersede the structural value.”