If you're experiencing unexplained fears, anxiety and depression, those emotions may be residue of trauma in your family history.
It's important to know the significant events that have happened in your family history so that you can understand what makes you who you are.
Mark Wolynn, Director of The Family Constellation Institute and author of IT DIDN’T START WITH YOU: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle, works with individuals to "shake the family tree" and see what falls out.
What's been hidden? What stories didn't get told? What traumas were never healed? If you ignore the past, it can literally come back to haunt you.
Wolynn says you need to work through the traumas in your family and pull engagement away from the trauma cycle. Create a new experience, so that you're not perpetuating that cycle.
One example Wolynn gives is that of a young woman who was a severe cutter. She would cut herself so deep that she would almost bleed out. When asked why, she responded, "I deserve to die."
After digging deeper into her family history, Wolynn learnd that her grandmother was an alcoholic. One night, she was driving and caused an accident where the young woman's grandfather was sent through the windshield, cut with glass, and bled out. From that point on, her grandmother thought she deserved to die because she'd killed her true love.
Listen in as Wolynn joins Dr. Susanne to share more about what inherited family trauma is and how you can start to heal from events in your past.