“It Didn’t Start With You” - Mark Wolynn

[healingforward]

This is a lovely, potent, highly readable book that explores the latest research-based understandings of inherited trauma and epigenetics, and describes the "shockwaves of distress cascading from one generation to the next" on a very real and neurobiological level. (For fans of Bessel van der Kolk and Rachel Yehuda, Wolynn draws on their work, and more.)

For survivors of trauma (even more so with PDs in family systems and social networks), epigenetics can provide powerful insight into why dysfunction seems to repeat so regularly across generations. Better yet, it can help us understand our own deepened sensitivities to stress, and show us how 'internal epigenetic interventions' can help us heal.

Wolynn also offers some thoughtfully scripted psychodynamic and meditative exercises to help us release toxic patterns and heal our personal inheritances of family trauma. These techniques are designed to be performed in privacy, yet they activate the same brain regions as actual in-person conversations, and initiate the same positive neuroplastic changes in the brain. This is a Godsend for those of us working to untangle and heal trauma in NC situations, or even with deceased PD family members.

A wonderful addition to the healing library of anyone working with trauma or PDs!