Inherited? Neuroscience, Cellular Biology & My Trauma Recovery
Hi! I’m excited to be a guest blogger for my publishing company’s blog- Mental Health Education Press. As some of you may know, I wrote a memoir that was officially published earlier this year. My first one! My book, In Me We Trust: A Discovery of Self After Sexual Trauma, is about my recovery from PTSD after being raped by a friend. The healing process has been really, really hard. At times, I wanted to give up. Walk away from therapy, stop medication, go back to my old ways of avoiding, denial, numbing out, pretending that I’m normal and everything is o.k. BUT, I want to live and I want to thrive. So, I keep at it.
Over the last 4.5 years, I’ve been open to try pretty much anything and everything that promotes trauma recovery, healing and mental health. My friends and family know I’ve got a slight obsession with neuroscience, research, neuropsychology and cellular biology. I’m fascinated with how my brain, my cells, my body, my being have changed from before to after the rape, and before to after I engaged in a multi-dimensional, integrated, long-term healing plan. In Chapter 17 of my book, I included an untitled journal entry that I wrote in late 2014/early 2015 about this “cellular” change I noticed after 4 months of enacting my healing plan. The first paragraph of that journal entry reads:
I believe generations of trauma are trapped in my body. Over the course of the last 4-5 months I’ve experienced something that I want to be able to share. I just am not sure how to make it make sense. I was touched by God. My cellular being was re-birthed. I wonder if I am many generations rebirthed. I wonder if in this lifetime I was dosed with the right amount of love and brains, plus born in the right era to handle the degree of generational trauma my cells have endured. I’m not sure how to make sense of this. What I know is my body is cellularly altered. My legs are alive. My skin is showing its infections. My hips hurt. My body vibrates. Where before it was numb. I was an It. I was an object. I couldn’t even love animals because I saw myself as one- an animal devoid of emotions*. How much I’ve lived out the trauma I’ve carried with me without even knowing it. I didn’t even know I was dying, until I did die a spiritual & cellular death.
And now I’m rebirthing.
(Reprinted with permission from me and my publisher; Gulden, 2019, p. 179.)
(*For the record, I don’t actually believe that animals are devoid of emotion…later in my memoir I talk about that.)
At that time, I was just starting to delve into current neuroscience research, so I couldn’t situate my “cellular” changes within the context of intergenerational trauma. Now I know that trauma from at least 3 generations have been shown through neuroscience, cellular biology, and PTSD research to have a lasting impact on me today. In short- research supports that our cells, our non-coding DNA records and holds trauma from past generations that can alter the expression of our genes today through epigenetics. I’m not a neuroscientist or biologist, so check out the links below for more information on that.
How this relates to my on-going healing plan…In a recent Internal Family Systems therapy session, I met an Exiled Part belonging to my grandfather. It was unnerving and frightening because I knew it didn’t belong to me and I didn’t understand where it was coming from. It felt familiar, yet not mine. And, of course, I was fascinated by the expression of trauma from a past generation. Shortly after that session, I picked up a book by Mark Wolynn titled “It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We are and How to End the Cycle.” He is the founder of Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco. I’m almost done with Wolynn’s book including his writing exercises to help me learn more about the intergenerational trauma I carry with me. I plan to share my writings with my therapist in our next session. I highly recommend this book for anyone who feels like there is something going on that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you.
Mental Health Consumer Pro Tip: When therapy needs some fodder or when you’re between session time needs some therapeutic attention, pick up a book like Wolynn’s and bring it in to therapy.
For the naysayers out there, who think this type of work is hocus pocus, there are Parts of me that agree with you. It may be hocus pocus. Then again, it may not be. Science is backing it and my own healing experience tells me it is doing something good for me.
The other reason I am guest blogging right now is because April is Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month. Obviously, raising awareness of sexual trauma recovery and promoting the end of sexual violence are near and dear to my heart. I also was a guest with my therapist on a podcast called Mind Your Body. Our episode aired on April 4th and is titled “Healing from Sexual Trauma.” Check out important links below:
Purchase my memoir, In Me We Trust: A Discovery of Self After Sexual Trauma from Mental Health Education Press’s Online BookShop (https://store.bookbaby.com/book/In-Me-We-Trust)
(You may also purchase the eBook on Amazon and the print book from the Center for Self Leadership’s Online Bookstore.)
Listen to Episode 61. Healing after Sexual Trauma, Mind Your Body (http://www.mindyourbodydmt.com/healing-after-sexual-trauma/) Podcast hosted by Orit Krug.
Read & do the writing exercise’s in Mark Wolynn’s book, “It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We are and How to End the Cycle.” (http://www.markwolynn.com/)
Listen to renowned professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Rachel Yehuda, talk about her cutting edge intergenerational trauma research: http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/ingenious-rachel-yehuda or https://onbeing.org/programs/rachel-yehuda-how-trauma-and-resilience-cross-generations-nov2017/.
Learn about Internal Family Systems, an evidence-based model for psychotherapy.
Or check out https://annagulden.com/ for more resources about sexual trauma and recovery.