Mark Wolyn

'Groundbreaking' Tara Brach Depression. Anxiety. Chronic pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the root of these difficulties may reside in the traumas of our parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. The latest research affirms that traumatic experience is passed on to future generations and that this emotional inheritance, hidden in everything from our gene expression to everyday language, plays a greater role in our health than ever previously understood. Building on the work of leading experts in neuroscience and posttraumatic stress, Mark Wolynn has developed a pioneering approach to identifying and breaking these inherited family patterns. Having worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for more than twenty years, It Didn't Start With You is his accessible, pragmatic and transformative guide to a method that has helped thousands of people reclaim their lives.

How inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle

It Didn't Start With You

Kay so Queso

The constant looking outside of ourselves can keep us from knowing when we hit the target.

Cutting off may have been the only option you knew. Cutting off can make you feel free at first, but it's the false freedom of a childhood defense. Ultimately, it will limit your life experience.

Anger and numbness are much easier to feel than sadness and pain.

Not many of us, however, when faced with our difficulties, can use the difficulties as direction signs. Instead, we focus on alleviating the suffering and rarely travel to the source.

People often unconsciously choose a mate who will trigger their wounds. In this way, they have an opportunity to see, own, and heal the painful and reactive parts of themselves.

What lurked behind the façade of independence was simply an association between getting close and getting hurt.

Lindy

Parents, in the course of being parents, inadvertently cause their children pain. It's inevitable. The problem is not what our parents have done to us; the problem is how we're still holding on to it. Generally, when our parents caused us harm, it was unintentional.

The bigger secret is that a great love was just waiting to be excavated the whole time. It is the love passed forward from those who came before you, a love that insists that you live your life fully without repeating the fears and misfortunes of the past. It is a deep love. It is a quiet love, a timeless love that connects you to everything and everyone. It is potent medicine.

It Didn't Start With You quotes

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