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

This book examines how traumatic experiences can be passed down through families across generations, affecting conditions such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, phobias, and obsessive thoughts. Recent scientific research supports the idea that trauma from parents, grandparents, and earlier ancestors may influence current emotional and physical health, even when the original traumatic event occurred long ago or has been forgotten. The book draws on work by neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Emotional legacies from inherited trauma can be encoded in gene expression, language, and behavior, often remaining hidden but significantly affecting wellbeing. Mark Wolynn, who has worked therapeutically with individuals and groups on inherited family trauma for over twenty years, presents the Core Language Approach. The book provides diagnostic self-inventories to identify fears and anxieties in everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. It includes techniques for creating a genogram or extended family tree to map generational experiences, and methods using visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue to support reconnection, integration, and reclaiming health.