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

Wolynn delves into the mechanisms of trauma, highlighting how unprocessed and inherited pain from past generations can manifest in our lives in unexpected and often debilitating ways. He begins by explaining how trauma fragments memory and language, leaving scattered remnants—images, sensations, and words—that can unconsciously resurface later. This phenomenon, which Sigmund Freud described as “repetition compulsion,” compels individuals to unknowingly reenact unresolved experiences in an attempt to find resolution. Similarly, C. G. Jung believed that unaddressed trauma returns in the guise of fate, dictating patterns in our lives until brought into conscious awareness.

Modern advancements in neuroscience and epigenetics further support these observations, illustrating how trauma affects the brain and body. Wolynn references Bessel van der Kolk’s research, which reveals that during traumatic events, key areas of the brain responsible for speech and present-moment awareness shut down, creating a “speechless terror” where the experience becomes difficult to articulate. Yet, while the ability to verbalize the trauma may diminish, its fragments remain, influencing behavior and emotions. These fragments form a “secret language” of suffering that continues to shape lives until consciously addressed.

Wolynn underscores the generational aspect of trauma, emphasizing that unprocessed pain can ripple through families, often reappearing in descendants as unexplained symptoms or emotional struggles.