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The Language of intergenerational trauma with Mark Wolynn · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
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Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
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Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
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Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one our folks, welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have back Mark
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Speaker 1: woln Mark welcome.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me back. Guy. I know it's been
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Speaker 2: many years since we've been together and psyched.
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Speaker 1: Let's do this all right. Let me get your bio
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Speaker 1: here that I just had. Mark is a leading expert
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Speaker 1: in the field of inherited family trauma. He's a director
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Speaker 1: of the Family Constellation Institute in the US and is
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Speaker 1: renowned for his work that bridges epigenetics, neuroscience, and somatic
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Speaker 1: healing and shows how the traumas of our parents, grandparents,
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Speaker 1: and even great grandparents can live in our bodies as
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Speaker 1: an explained depression, anxiety of thoughts, and chronic health conditions.
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Speaker 1: His book, It Didn't Start with You is an international
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Speaker 1: bestseller and won the Silver Nautilist Book Award for Psychology
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Speaker 1: and has been translated into forty languages. Mark has just
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Speaker 1: released the twenty twenty twenty twenty five revised edition of
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Speaker 1: It Didn't Start with You and the official It Didn't
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Speaker 1: Start with You workbook. All right, Mark, obviously, just a
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Speaker 1: little bit about you before we get going shore with
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Speaker 1: our listeners. Where you're from originally and where you are
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Speaker 1: currently we'll dive in.
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Speaker 2: Huh Okay. I'm originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the first
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Speaker 2: fifty years of my life, and now I live in
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Speaker 2: the mountains of northern California, very close to the Oregon border.
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Speaker 1: Oh okay, so we could.
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Speaker 2: Do some spokes. I seem like that answer may have
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Speaker 2: been short, did.
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Speaker 1: You No, No, that's perfectly fine. I'm in Bend, Oregon.
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Speaker 2: Oh you are. We're like, we're three hours away. Nice.
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Speaker 1: All right, So let's start out here. We're going to
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Speaker 1: get into the book before we do how the heck
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Speaker 1: did you get into this field place? And start broadly
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Speaker 1: and then get into how did you find this specialty?
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Speaker 2: Okay, you know, I think I'm going to go with
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Speaker 2: that second question. The first answer. You know, that's in
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Speaker 2: my book, my personal story, and I'm happy to tell it.
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Speaker 2: But I've told it so many millions of time. I
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Speaker 2: think what's times. I think what's more unique is what
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Speaker 2: got me in to inherited family trauma. I'll just start
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Speaker 2: briefly on the first thing. So I have an eye condition.
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Speaker 2: It's it's idiopathic. Nobody can heal it. They tell me
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Speaker 2: it's stress. It's a chronic form of retinopathy. They tell
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Speaker 2: me that because the way it's progressing, I'm going to
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Speaker 2: lose the vision in both of my eyes. I've lost
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Speaker 2: it in one, and I'm pretty freaked out. And I
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Speaker 2: go on this quest that leads me around the world,
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Speaker 2: studying with the masters that I could find, the ones
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Speaker 2: that I thought would have the answer. And so all
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Speaker 2: of this leads me to become a therapist. I don't
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Speaker 2: realize that's what's happening, but I'm gonna go fast forward
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Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about a case, a particular
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Speaker 2: case that led me in this direction that I think
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Speaker 2: would be more illuminating. So here I am. This is
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Speaker 2: over thirty years ago, and I'm working with a lot
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Speaker 2: of self injurers. I didn't recognize at the time I
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Speaker 2: was a self injured. It never hit me until later,
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Speaker 2: but I'm working with a lot of self injurers cutters
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Speaker 2: and people who burn themselves hit themselves. And this one
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Speaker 2: woman that I'm working with a self injury. She's cutter.
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Speaker 2: She's twenty four years old. I'm gonna call her Sarah
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Speaker 2: for the sake of the interview. And she would cut
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Speaker 2: differently than the other cutters. She would cut in an
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Speaker 2: extreme way where she would cut so deeply into her
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Speaker 2: arm or her abdomen or her thighs that she would
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Speaker 2: hit a vein or an artery and have to be
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Speaker 2: rushed to the hospital because she's going to bleed out,
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Speaker 2: and parents take her. They're all freaked out, and now
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Speaker 2: they've got in a psych ward for three or four
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Speaker 2: weeks at a time. And I'm thinking to myself, why
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Speaker 2: is this. I'm working with many other cutters who cut superficially.
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Speaker 2: What was it about the way Sarah was cutting? What
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Speaker 2: was trying to be communicated? Now you have to understand,
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Speaker 2: I know nothing about any herited family trauma. I just
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Speaker 2: work with the childhood at this point and attachment, but
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Speaker 2: I don't know anything about the traumas that live behind us.
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Speaker 2: So one day after she was released, I hand her
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Speaker 2: a pen. Here, I hand her this pen. I say, Sarah,
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Speaker 2: not this pen, but apen. I go, Sarah, show me
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Speaker 2: how you cut. I really want to get into this
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Speaker 2: with you. And she puts the pen to her arm
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Speaker 2: and all of a sudden and she brings it close
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Speaker 2: to her skin. Her eyes glaze over. I could see
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Speaker 2: she's dissociating, and I go, wait a minute, right there,
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Speaker 2: right there, what's that thought, what's that feeling? What's that impulse?
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Speaker 2: And she looks at me and says, I don't deserve
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Speaker 2: to live now Here. I am working with someone who's
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Speaker 2: twenty four and her life has just begun. And my
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Speaker 2: first question is what did you do? What did you
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Speaker 2: accidentally cause someone's death? Did you take a life? Did
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Speaker 2: you break up with someone? She says, no, nothing like that.
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Speaker 2: And so again I'm looking in her childhood. She's got
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Speaker 2: a great relationship with her parents. She can lean into them,
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Speaker 2: she can receive their nurturance and support, take in their love.
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Speaker 2: I go back to the attachment. It's safe, it's strong,
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Speaker 2: it's secure, and I'm clueless and I just, out of
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Speaker 2: the blue, I get empty, and out of the blue,
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Speaker 2: I say, Sarah, tell me about your grandparents, and boom,
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Speaker 2: she drops the bomb. So the story goes like this
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Speaker 2: her father when he was about ten eleven twelve. His
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Speaker 2: mother starts drinking more, becomes an alcoholic and is driving drunk,
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Speaker 2: crashes into a pole, and the grandfather, who's in the
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Speaker 2: passenger seat, goes through the wind showed, gets cut lacerated
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Speaker 2: on the glass and bleeds out before the ambulance comes.
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Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, there's the connection.
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Speaker 1: I go.
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Speaker 2: And then I'm thinking, wait a minute, who feels she
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Speaker 2: doesn't deserve to live? Well, the grandmother for taking someone's life,
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Speaker 2: the life of her beloved. So you know, those of
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Speaker 2: you who've read my book or don't know my book,
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Speaker 2: I talk a lot about trauma language. So the verbal
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Speaker 2: trauma language here is I don't deserve to live now?
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Speaker 2: Whose sentence is that it's clearly not Sarah's. And then
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Speaker 2: the nonverbal trauma language is this sensation that's cutting so
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Speaker 2: deeply that she bleeds out, that she almost bleeds to death.
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Speaker 2: These are the two clues. And because I was a
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Speaker 2: student of psychodrama at the time, back then, I knew
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Speaker 2: what to do. I put two chairs in the middle
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Speaker 2: of the floor and I said, Sarah, see your grandfather there,
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Speaker 2: and tell him exactly what you told me, and she goes,
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Speaker 2: just tell him you cut yourself and you almost bleed
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Speaker 2: to death. And she says, Grandpa cut myself and I
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Speaker 2: almost bleed to death. And then I said, tell him
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Speaker 2: like you, Grandpa, like you bled to death. And she's
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Speaker 2: crying and she's having this conversation with her grandfather and
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Speaker 2: I say, Sarah, what's he showing you? What's he telling you?
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Speaker 2: She says, he doesn't want me to do this. He
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Speaker 2: says when I go to cut at night, to feel
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Speaker 2: him there with me supporting me. So that's the first piece.
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Speaker 2: Second piece, Sarah, look at your grandmother's sitting there and
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Speaker 2: tell her what you told me. I don't deserve to live.
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Speaker 2: And then I said, Sarah, tell her that's what you felt, Grandma.
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Speaker 2: That's your feeling, not my feeling. That's what you went through.
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Speaker 2: And she's crying and we go through it and the
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Speaker 2: grandmother says the same thing. Well, the interesting thing here, guy,
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Speaker 2: is she never cuts again because she goes home, goes
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Speaker 2: to cut that night, and as she's going to cut,
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Speaker 2: she's feeling the support in the spirit world of both
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Speaker 2: of these grandparents she's never met, and she doesn't cut.
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Speaker 2: And well, for me, you know, I realize, Okay, I
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Speaker 2: hit gold here, and now I start checking into it,
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Speaker 2: and I find Bert Ellinger, and then I go study
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Speaker 2: with Burt of Hellinger, who's as maybe your listeners know,
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Speaker 2: the father of family constellations and how inherited trauma passes forward.
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Speaker 2: Let me say one more sentence about that, and then
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Speaker 2: I'll turn it over. You know, we need to realize
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Speaker 2: that a reaction to a trauma doesn't necessarily stop with
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Speaker 2: the people who experienced it. The feelings, the sensations, specifically
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Speaker 2: the stress response, the way the genes express this can
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Speaker 2: pass forward to the children and the grandchildren, as in
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Speaker 2: Sarah's case, affecting them in a similar way even though
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Speaker 2: they didn't personally experience the trauma. My god, it was.
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Speaker 1: Incredible story chilling. I have to say, was Sarah Was
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Speaker 1: she aware? She was aware of this accident, because she
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Speaker 1: told you the story.
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Speaker 2: She was aware of the accident. But like most traumas
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Speaker 2: in the family history that are painful, they're downplayed. You know,
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Speaker 2: people either don't we shouldn't, don't talk about it, don't
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Speaker 2: bring it up, you know, if she brings that up,
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Speaker 2: if she heard about it from her mom. But of
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Speaker 2: course her dad was about twelve. He loses his father,
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Speaker 2: who he loved, and then he hates his mother, who
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Speaker 2: ends up dying when the father's twenty of alcohol related poisoning,
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Speaker 2: and so he never heals. Ah, you know, guy, this
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Speaker 2: is the next piece. I did have her bring her
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Speaker 2: father into the ear. I said, bring her dad in here,
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Speaker 2: see if he'll do a piece of work. And she does.
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Speaker 2: Guy comes into my office and Sarah's sitting over. I go, Sarah,
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Speaker 2: you sit over there in the couch over here, and
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Speaker 2: I'm working with the father, and I do the work
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Speaker 2: with the father to heal this break he has now
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Speaker 2: with his mom, because that's for me, those breaks, those
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Speaker 2: places that are jagged, defended, broken, where there's no communication
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Speaker 2: when they don't heal, traumas pass forward. So the father
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Speaker 2: could see, I'll actually share the piece of work. What
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Speaker 2: happened to your mother when she was little that led
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Speaker 2: her to being an alcoholic. And he goes, oh, she
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Speaker 2: was in foster care from age three. And I look
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Speaker 2: at him and I go, of course, she's an alcoholic.
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Speaker 2: And all of a sudden his heart opens right, and
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Speaker 2: this was so beautiful. He heals with his mother, feels
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Speaker 2: his father in the spirit world and then turns to Sarah,
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Speaker 2: literally stands up and says, Sarah, you leave this all
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Speaker 2: with me. I've got this because he now knew the
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Speaker 2: connection to the cutting. It was so beautiful. But you
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Speaker 2: know that this case really sort of gives the whole everything.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible. So how do you absorb that and
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Speaker 1: kind of in take that and think about inherited trauma
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Speaker 1: moving forward from there? What is going through your your mind,
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Speaker 1: your being when you start to personally?
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Speaker 2: For me, personally, I have always loved language. As you know,
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Speaker 2: I come at this field as being a poet. I'm
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Speaker 2: not a psychologist. I bring a fresh perspective and you know,
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Speaker 2: my invention, one of my inventions, the core Language Approach,
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Speaker 2: only feel that we as therapists need to gather language
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Speaker 2: trauma language. We need to listen carefully beyond our client
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Speaker 2: story and listen for the pieces of the puzzle that
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Speaker 2: sort of stick out as being out of context, these
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Speaker 2: story fragments, and then we're, in a way the family
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Speaker 2: hippocampus which is compromised for the client. We're the hippocampus
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Speaker 2: that makes the link and connects the dots for the client.
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Speaker 2: And so we in a sense, Guy, we bring together
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Speaker 2: what's been lost or separated. And I say this I
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Speaker 2: think in my book. I hope I said I'd better
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Speaker 2: say this in my book. You know, as clinicians, we
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Speaker 2: bring together what's been lost or separated, or we separate
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Speaker 2: out what doesn't belong to the client behaviors and feelings.
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Speaker 2: Going back to Sarah, right, that's not her feeling. I
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Speaker 2: deserve to die, and the cutting isn't her behavior. It's
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Speaker 2: the grandfather going through the windshield and dying. And then lastly,
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Speaker 2: I feel that we need to integrate what needs to
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Speaker 2: be integrated. And for the father, he needed to integrate
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Speaker 2: healing with his mother and connecting with his father, and
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Speaker 2: in a sense, that was bringing together also what's been
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Speaker 2: lost or separated. So for me, I love language. I
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Speaker 2: listen to language, and I watch, as we all do
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Speaker 2: as clinicians. I watch for the unseen. I'm listening for
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Speaker 2: the undigested. I'm watching for like with Sarah, when she
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Speaker 2: goes to cutting, Guy right, she starts to glaze over,
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Speaker 2: she starts to dissociate. I'm looking for those things because
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Speaker 2: that's our job as the clinician.
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Speaker 1: You know, it's so incredibly sad in a sense because
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Speaker 1: I can imagine so many of us respond to the cutting,
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Speaker 1: and especially when cutting is that deep, we respond to
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Speaker 1: that type of behavior in an explosive way. Something's wrong
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Speaker 1: with this person? What's wrong with this person? Without even
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Speaker 1: kind of thinking or imagining that. My god, this goes back.
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Speaker 1: My guess is a lot of clinicians don't even get
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Speaker 1: that far. And it's so easy to ascribe the behavior
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Speaker 1: to the person who's doing it. And that seems reasonable,
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Speaker 1: doesn't it.
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Speaker 2: You know, I think again. You know, I was a
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Speaker 2: self injured I didn't put it together, but I would massacre.
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Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm sharing this on a podcast. I
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Speaker 2: would massacre in my face. I would spend hours a
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Speaker 2: night just destroying it with pins. And you know, and
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Speaker 2: I had a in my own personal history, a massive
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Speaker 2: break in the attachment that took years to unravel, but
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Speaker 2: it came out in my self harm behavior. And then
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Speaker 2: all these self harmers were attracted to me to work
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Speaker 2: with me, and I didn't. I couldn't put it together.
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Speaker 2: Why are they're working with me? Until I made the
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Speaker 2: connection that I was one as well. So those places,
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Speaker 2: in a way, what I'm getting at is they don't
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Speaker 2: scare me. I'm what's it been told to me? Mark,
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Speaker 2: You're very plutonium plutonium, a lot of pluto in the chart.
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Speaker 2: But yeah, those I'm not frightened. But well, obviously I'm
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Speaker 2: not frightened by those places because I write the book.
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Speaker 2: It didn't start with you and I, you know, talk
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Speaker 2: about all these extreme cases when people have fears and
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Speaker 2: phobias and symptoms that they can't explain. And that's what
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Speaker 2: I do. I get in there and say, look, we
16:39
Speaker 2: need to look behind the curtain. You know, how do
16:42
Speaker 2: we know this autoimmune's symptom is ours? Or how do
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Speaker 2: we know that we're not just replaying a tape that's
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Speaker 2: been going on in our family for generations? And that's
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Speaker 2: really the question, you know, do we look deep our
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Speaker 2: own attachment? As you know what I did in my book.
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Speaker 2: I right, I'm half attachment and half inherited trauma because
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Speaker 2: those are the two places where I feel the deep
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Speaker 2: work is rooted. I would even go further. I would
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Speaker 2: say eighty to eighty five percent of the clients I
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Speaker 2: work with have a break in the attachment with the mom,
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Speaker 2: and only fifty percent of them realize it.
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Speaker 1: One of the things you talk about is you've mentioned
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Speaker 1: the language. You talk about it as what core core language? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: What does that mean? That's all?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, well you know, okay, trauma language. I came
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Speaker 2: up with a named core language because it is core.
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Speaker 2: And one of the tools I developed is something called
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Speaker 2: the core sentence, and I use that tool to differentiate
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Speaker 2: between those two types of trauma, generational trauma or attachment trauma.
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Speaker 2: Do you want to see how it works? Yeah, okay, okay,
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Speaker 2: let me ask the listeners. Let me ask this question.
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Speaker 2: And don't do this if you don't feel resourced, But
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Speaker 2: if you feel resourced or you have someone you're working with,
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Speaker 2: answer this question. If your life were to fall apart,
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Speaker 2: if things went terribly wrong, what's the worst thing that
18:32
Speaker 2: could happen to you? What's your worst fear? Now feel
18:37
Speaker 2: into that for a minute. I'll ask it again. If
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Speaker 2: things went south, if your life just fell apart, what's
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Speaker 2: your worst fear? What's the worst thing that could happen
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Speaker 2: to you? And then when you land on it, I'm
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Speaker 2: going to ask you this question, and if that happened,
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Speaker 2: what's the worst part of that? And then I'm going
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Speaker 2: to ask you that one more time, and if that happened,
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Speaker 2: what's the worst part of that? And then when you
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Speaker 2: get to the bottom, you have an answer that will
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Speaker 2: cause a physical reaction inside your body. You'll have an
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Speaker 2: answer that will make you shake or tremble or tighten
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Speaker 2: or want to leave your body. And I'll give you
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Speaker 2: some of these core sentences, some of the main ones. First,
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Speaker 2: I'll give you the attachment ones. Okay, I'll be alone,
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Speaker 2: I'll be abandoned, I'll be rejected, I'll be left, I'll
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Speaker 2: be powerless, i won't matter, i won't exist, mine was.
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Speaker 2: I'll be annihilated, and I can. I don't need to
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Speaker 2: get into that where that came from. It's in the
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Speaker 2: book where that one comes from. Now i'll get into
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Speaker 2: some of the generational and you hear the difference. I'll
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Speaker 2: get into some of the generational ones. I'll hurt someone,
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Speaker 2: it'll all be my fault. I'll be hated, I'll be
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Speaker 2: I'll be ostracized, I'll be sent away, I'll be forgotten.
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Speaker 2: It's not an attachment thing. That's here. I'll go crazy,
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Speaker 2: they'll lock me up here. Oh, here's a common one. Generational,
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Speaker 2: totally generational. I'll do something terrible and I won't deserve
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Speaker 2: to live like Sarah. Right, that's not hers. Right. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: So you can hear when you ask this, you can see, Hey,
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Speaker 2: is this guiding us to a generational story or is
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Speaker 2: it taking us into our break in the attachment? You know,
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Speaker 2: guide my sentence, I'll be annihilated. I see it a lot.
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Speaker 2: I'll give you two quick cases where it could be
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Speaker 2: one of each. I'll call the first person Heather. So
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Speaker 2: her mom is considering ending the pregnancy with her in
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Speaker 2: the first trimester, and so in the womb there's swirling cortisol, terrible,
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Speaker 2: a loneness that the fetus is. Remember the brain, Remember
21:26
Speaker 2: the heart comes on line within twenty days, and the
21:32
Speaker 2: neural tube in the neural groove, that which becomes our
21:34
Speaker 2: nervous system, that comes on twenty to thirty days. So
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Speaker 2: in a sense, we're not cognitive, but we're sentient, we're somatic.
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Speaker 2: So in the womb, if the mom doesn't want to
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Speaker 2: keep the pregnancy and we feel a disconnect, it's like
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Speaker 2: if we're the feetus reaching up to feel our mother,
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Speaker 2: who doesn't want to be pregnant, who doesn't want a child,
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Speaker 2: who doesn't want to keep us, who wants to end
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Speaker 2: the pregnancy, we can't feel her, and that feeling of
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Speaker 2: the abortion would create that sentence, I'll be annihilated. Now
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Speaker 2: I'll give you another story. I'll call this guy Sean.
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Speaker 2: He's Cambodian and these are true stories. And at age four,
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Speaker 2: his father's entire family was annihilated, killed by the camera
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Speaker 2: rouge and Cambodia, and so that's his sentence, I'll be annihilated,
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Speaker 2: which is what happened in his family history. So you
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Speaker 2: know these sentences. Some of them can be both, but
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Speaker 2: mostly As a clinician who works with core language trauma language,
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Speaker 2: you can get pretty good at it. Read my book.
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Speaker 2: It's all in there, and it'll teach you what I
22:45
Speaker 2: call the core language approach. Many of these questions designed
22:49
Speaker 2: to get to the heart of a case very quickly.
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Speaker 1: Just remind everyone speaking with Mark Wollan the book is
22:57
Speaker 1: called it didn't start with you. You've recently written the
23:01
Speaker 1: revised edition. What did you say? What's new? What did
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Speaker 1: you have to say?
23:09
Speaker 2: I changed the book completely. So if you did watten
23:11
Speaker 2: my book ten years ago, if you did read it,
23:14
Speaker 2: please read it again. I just went through every chapter,
23:18
Speaker 2: pulled out anything that wasn't relevant or important. And now
23:22
Speaker 2: I'm ten years older. My new insights are in there,
23:26
Speaker 2: My favorite cases are in there, and all the new
23:29
Speaker 2: here's the important part, all the new scientific research which
23:33
Speaker 2: has just come out in the last ten years with humans.
23:37
Speaker 2: Those of you who read my book, you know I
23:39
Speaker 2: was basing a lot of this on the studies done
23:42
Speaker 2: with rodents. You know, there were a few things. There
23:44
Speaker 2: were the Holocaust studies, and there was some stuff. But
23:49
Speaker 2: now there's a ton of work that's done with humans.
23:53
Speaker 2: If we have time, I'll mentioned some of the cases.
23:58
Speaker 2: We also learned that generation trauma doesn't just extend out
24:02
Speaker 2: three generations, it can extend out five generations. And then
24:08
Speaker 2: other things I do in the book is tell how
24:11
Speaker 2: if our trauma is breaking the attachment or if it's generational.
24:15
Speaker 2: I gave you one tool for that just now. And
24:18
Speaker 2: then how we integrate fight, flight, freeze responses in our body,
24:23
Speaker 2: those inner chout parts. You know what. Let me let
24:29
Speaker 2: me mention a couple of the cases done with humans.
24:33
Speaker 2: It's pretty profound. So there's this study that just came
24:39
Speaker 2: out in twenty twenty five, which is in the book.
24:44
Speaker 2: Researchers were looking at Syrian refugees that had and discovered
24:51
Speaker 2: there was an intergenerational epigenetic signature of violence that's embedded
24:58
Speaker 2: in the genome. And specifically, they looked at grandmothers, were
25:04
Speaker 2: women who were pregnant during the war, and then they
25:09
Speaker 2: were able to see that the pregnant grandmother herself has
25:14
Speaker 2: an alteration of I believe, Oh yeah, DNA methylation. So
25:21
Speaker 2: the that blocks the gene from uh from the from it.
25:31
Speaker 2: I don't want to say that it blocks. It blocks
25:35
Speaker 2: the gene hmm, come on, Mark, Oh, it blocks the protein.
25:44
Speaker 2: That's it. It blocks the protein from attaching to the
25:48
Speaker 2: DNA and then it suppresses its expression. So what they're
25:53
Speaker 2: able to figure out is they're able to look at
25:56
Speaker 2: the change of DNA methylation and the grandmother and then
26:00
Speaker 2: the daughter that she eventually is going to give birth to.
26:06
Speaker 2: But they look at her genome in the womb and
26:11
Speaker 2: they can see that she's prenatally exposed. And then because
26:16
Speaker 2: in the womb she's already carrying the eggs of the
26:19
Speaker 2: next generation, they can see that the grandchildren are germline exposed.
26:25
Speaker 2: So that's one example. There's another study that comes out
26:30
Speaker 2: of Brazil and they looked at women who were exposed
26:34
Speaker 2: to partner violence, and they could find again three generations,
26:41
Speaker 2: the grandmothers were able to pass the effects of that
26:43
Speaker 2: violence onto their grandchildren again through the effects again through
26:48
Speaker 2: the changes in the genome DNA methylation, which again blocks
26:54
Speaker 2: those proteins from attaching. That's just two of the many,
26:59
Speaker 2: many stuff I have in there.
27:02
Speaker 1: In the way that just because someone might have a
27:05
Speaker 1: gene that's not necessarily going to be expressed.
27:08
Speaker 2: So too, just as.
27:10
Speaker 1: Just as though some people are uh intergenerationally exposed to trauma,
27:18
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to experience this
27:21
Speaker 1: or express this trauma. Correct, right, Why is it that
27:24
Speaker 1: some people do experience that intergenerational trauma some don't.
27:31
Speaker 2: I love your question. So there's a couple factors here.
27:36
Speaker 2: So when we've had a healthy attachment, when we've had
27:41
Speaker 2: a strong relationship with our mom, we we almost have
27:46
Speaker 2: an immune we're an immunization, like we're almost beefed up
27:53
Speaker 2: to the point where what could be an inherited trauma
27:57
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily express. But then when I've also seen is
28:02
Speaker 2: some people who relive and others don't. What is that variable?
28:07
Speaker 2: So epigenetics is one piece of the puzzle. But there's
28:12
Speaker 2: another piece, and that's you know, I'm always asking the
28:17
Speaker 2: same question, guy, I love it because why some and
28:22
Speaker 2: not other people? What anchors these traumas, what creates these repetitions?
28:26
Speaker 2: And here's what I found. The traumas aren't talked about
28:31
Speaker 2: in the family history because either the pain or the
28:36
Speaker 2: grief hasn't been processed, the pain's too great, the embarrassment
28:42
Speaker 2: to shame, the griefs of the healings incomplete, or the
28:47
Speaker 2: people in the family system are excluded, rejected. The alcoholic grandfather,
28:55
Speaker 2: our father who had an affair. Basically there's not been
28:58
Speaker 2: any resolution. Like Sarah's dad, you know, he was broken
29:04
Speaker 2: from an angry state, angry at the mother for killing
29:07
Speaker 2: his father. So when these broken pieces, as I was
29:11
Speaker 2: saying earlier, don't heal, then aspects of these traumas show
29:17
Speaker 2: up in later generations. So unconsciously we'll repeat the pattern
29:26
Speaker 2: or share a similar unhappiness until the trauma finally has
29:31
Speaker 2: a chance to heal. And this isn't new. Freud said
29:35
Speaker 2: this one hundred years ago that in his repetition compulsion,
29:42
Speaker 2: that the trauma is merely seeking a better outcome, so
29:47
Speaker 2: it keeps repeating and repeating for a chance to heal.
29:52
Speaker 2: I say it this way that the contraction of the
29:56
Speaker 2: trauma is ultimately looking for expansion, and so it'll keep
30:02
Speaker 2: repeating in families or in us until that expansion finally happens.
30:08
Speaker 2: In other words, we'll have lots of opportunities to finally heal.
30:16
Speaker 2: All right, our time and our time in a good way.
30:20
Speaker 1: In our in our remaining time. Here there's also a workbook.
30:26
Speaker 2: Yes whos is for? Yes? All right? Thank you, thank
30:30
Speaker 2: you for letting me talk about the workbook. I'm in
30:33
Speaker 2: love with the workbook, so I designed it for people
30:37
Speaker 2: who want to take their personal work to the next level.
30:41
Speaker 2: It's like having a private session with me and I
30:44
Speaker 2: walk step by step by the reader. It's extremely experiential.
30:49
Speaker 2: It's it's very somatic. Uh So, if we do an exercise,
30:57
Speaker 2: the next exercise goes deeper into the body, and the
31:00
Speaker 2: next exercise goes deeper into the body. And for the
31:04
Speaker 2: listeners who know what family constellations are, I even guide
31:09
Speaker 2: the workbook reader to stand in his or her own
31:13
Speaker 2: family constellations. So you get to stand as your mom
31:17
Speaker 2: when she's young, or your dad, or your grandmother, your
31:21
Speaker 2: grandfather or you stand as your younger self. And then
31:26
Speaker 2: in the workbook, I also ask questions like oh my gosh,
31:33
Speaker 2: like the one we did earlier, that will help you
31:38
Speaker 2: connect the dots from what you've been experiencing to the
31:43
Speaker 2: traumas in your family history, often the traumas that people
31:47
Speaker 2: don't talk about, but also to breaks and attachments. So
31:50
Speaker 2: what I did in the workbook again, I divided at
31:53
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty how to find our own break in
31:57
Speaker 2: the attachment, how to find our own general rational trauma,
32:01
Speaker 2: and if we're clinicians, how to do this with our
32:04
Speaker 2: clients with practical exercises. I'm in love with the workbook, guy,
32:08
Speaker 2: I really put a lot into it.
32:11
Speaker 1: So I was going to ask you, so this sounds
32:13
Speaker 1: like something that a therapist can use with a client.
32:19
Speaker 2: Absolutely, okay, So you know there's they work in tandem.
32:23
Speaker 2: So the new revised book will lay out why we're
32:27
Speaker 2: doing this. It'll talk about the science, it'll talk about epigenetics.
32:31
Speaker 2: It'll also give a gazillion cases. It'll teach the core
32:34
Speaker 2: language approach. It's an amazing book and it's about thirty
32:40
Speaker 2: plus percent different, maybe even more than the original book.
32:45
Speaker 2: I mean really went in and gutted it and put
32:49
Speaker 2: all the important stuff in it. And then the workbook
32:54
Speaker 2: is okay, I want to go deeper. I want my
32:55
Speaker 2: own session, and I want to be guided through the
32:58
Speaker 2: work myself.
33:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then guide Mike Clo fascinating. How do people
33:04
Speaker 1: learn more about you? How do people get the book?
33:06
Speaker 1: It's the best way.
33:08
Speaker 2: Okay. I'm on social media Instagram at Mark will Lenn.
33:15
Speaker 2: I have a website Mark Willin dot com at A
33:18
Speaker 2: r K W O l y n n dot com
33:22
Speaker 2: and you can my books are I just learned the
33:26
Speaker 2: other day there's been three million copies of it. Didn't
33:30
Speaker 2: start with you, so sold worldwide and it just got
33:34
Speaker 2: into forty one languages. So we just sold it to
33:37
Speaker 2: the Swedes. Now forty one languages. It's translated, but it's
33:41
Speaker 2: on Amazon. And yeah, I mean, or write me on
33:47
Speaker 2: my website or I have a workshop coming up in Corfu, Corfu, Greece,
33:53
Speaker 2: May one through four. Yeah, yeah, come learn.
33:58
Speaker 1: We'll have all that link up here at the show
34:00
Speaker 1: notes page at the Trauma Therapist Podcast dot com. Mark,
34:04
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure catching up with you and the
34:07
Speaker 1: work you're doing is fascinating. Let's not make it such
34:11
Speaker 1: a long time until you're on again.
34:15
Speaker 2: Guy. I enjoyed it as usual. I will be back.
34:20
Speaker 2: I would love all right.
34:21
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Take care all
34:24
Speaker 2: Right, good, take care,