Not everything starts with you
Depression. Anxiety. Chronic pain. Phobias. Intrusive thoughts. Very often the causes of the above conditions cannot be explained by our immediate life experience or by a chemical imbalance of the brain.
Recent scientific research confirms what many already know: traumatic experiences can be passed down from one generation to the next. The stress experienced by parents, grandparents and even a more distant relative is encoded in our genes. Generation after generation reproduces certain patterns - alcoholism, depression, aggressiveness, addictions... It's as if we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. To experience as our own foreign emotions, suffering and stress. Even if the person who experienced the trauma has died or their story has been forgotten, the memory and feelings live on in the descendants and determine their emotional and physical state.
Is there a way out? How do we cope when we are not even aware of this dark heredity? The tools Wallin developed make it possible to get to the fears and anxieties lurking behind our words, behaviors and physical symptoms. Techniques for making a genogram, or extended family tree, create a map of experiences, going back generations.
"It doesn't all start with you" is a transformative approach to solving long-standing problems and difficulties, which in many cases are not affected by traditional therapy and medication. A pioneer in the field of inherited trauma, Mark Wallin has worked as an individual and group therapist for over twenty years