🙅‍♀️#8: It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn - Book Summary & Key Takeaways

Hello courageous people and welcome to the eighth edition of the newsletter! ❤️🙏

I would like to say a huuuuuuuge thank you to all of you for supporting the newsletter and subscribing so far, this week we hit the milestone of 150 subscribers (hi Abby! 😉) just 8 weeks after launching and it wouldn’t be possible without you all! 🥳

Next milestone = 200 🚀 Here we come!

This week, our featured book is 📚 It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn. It is all about how our inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how we can end the cycle.

This was a simultaneously comforting and confronting read. It has been bizarre to face facts this week that some of my own issues might not actually be anything to do with me. I really hope many of you might find comfort and answers here just like I did!

So let’s jump in! All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.

🥺 What does it mean if we can’t identify a source of our suffering?

Sometimes our traumas and our troubles are our own. They are things that have happened over the course of our lifetime, which we can identify and put words to.

But other times, there may be no discernable source for our suffering. And what a confusing, debilitating, frustrating, hopeless feeling to have. If we don’t know why we are in pain, how do we even begin to seek out help for it? If it cannot be put into words?

If that sounds like you, then fear not because the answer may well be that It Didn’t Start With You.

👵🏼 How does trauma get passed from one generation to the next?

This is a brand new area of research and understanding, really only emerging over the past fifteen years.

In a study with mice (did you know that humans and mice share 98% similar DNA?!) it has been proven that traumatic responses can be inherited across multiple generations:

🤯 Mind blowing!

❄️ Jesse’s Story: His fear of going to sleep and the cold

Now for a human example of inherited familial trauma. Jesse was a patient of Mark’s who hadn’t slept through the night in over a year, carrying dark bags underneath his eyes. He was twenty years old but looked much older.

😩 He had seen a huge number of health professionals to try and get to the bottom of his problems from doctors, to sleep specialists, to psychologists to naturopaths but none of them made a difference.

Mark listened to Jesse’s story and asked some follow up questions. Whether anyone in his family had ever been through a traumatic experience that had anything to do with being cold, being asleep or being nineteen.

🥶 It turned out that Jesse had an Uncle who froze to death when he was nineteen, while checking powerlines during a severe storm. Mark identified that Jesse was subconsciously reliving aspects of his Uncle’s death, the fear of letting go into the unconsciousness, into death.

Jesse was not suffering at the hands of his own experiences, but at the hands of inherited trauma and responses.

🔥 Gretchen’s Story: Her plan to end it all through incineration

Gretchen was a woman who had tried everything—talk therapy, medication, group sessions—to try and combat her symptoms of severe anxiety and depression.

She told Mark that she no longer wanted to live:

The same as he did with Jesse, Mark asked follow up questions, eventually leading to ask if anyone had been involved with the Holocaust.

It turned out that all of Gretchen’s grandmother’s family had perished in the ovens at Auschwitz, not that anyone in her family ever spoke about it. About this case (and many other examples in the book) Mark says:

🤯 Where do we begin in order to identify inherited family patterns?

For the rest of us, who don’t have an appointment with Mark to benefit from his expert ear and guidance there are ways we can start to figure out whether our issues stem from our families and events that happened before we were even born.

To do this, we need to examine our Core Language:

Core Language can also include physical sensations, impulses, illnesses and emotions. They are the pieces of the puzzle that link us to something that is unresolved from our family history.

In the same way that it was not by coincidence or accident that Gretchen used the words “vaporize” and “incinerate”, our own language is full of clues from our unconscious.

📝 An exercise to identify your Core Sentence

There are exercises throughout the book, but here is the question and prompt to identify your Core Sentence.

When we hit our core sentence, the words can feel alive inside us. They really resonate and hit differently.

The other sub-categories of identifying our Core Language are:

• Core Complaint

• Core Descriptors (to do with our parents)

• Core Sentence

👨‍👩‍👦 Taking a deeper look at the relationship with our parents

Throughout the book, a flow of current is referenced - or electricity that runs from our parents into us. It is the main power supply of life which we receive (or lack).

An exercise recommended to analyse the quality of the connection with our parents and the “current”, is to visualize them standing in front of you. (If you haven’t met your parents or can’t capture a visual of them, hold whatever sense of their presence you can.) Ask yourself:

The amount energy, of life-giving force we are able to receive from our parents can be interrupted by four different unconscious themes.

🌋 The 4 unconscious themes that interrupt the flow of life

Any one of these can be the cause of deep internal pain and struggling that originated with someone other than ourselves. The good news is there are things we can do to repair from these whether our parents are still alive or not, whether we have met them or not.

The first step is the acknowledgement and understanding that there is a block there.

✍️ An exercise in identifying our Core Descriptors for our Parents

This is an important exercise as it gives us a doorway into understanding ourselves. Many of our unhelpful patterns in adulthood may stem in some way from a broken or damaged bond with one or both of our parents.

This exercise gives us a window into our honest feelings, sometimes this exercise can even reveal that we are holding onto things that we haven’t been aware of until now.

Most of all, it reveals if we have rejected one or both of our parents.

🤕 Why is it important that we repair a broken relationship with a parent?

In the very first chapter of the book, Mark shares a personal story with us - the only one in the book.

He was in Indonesia, searching for answers and for a cure for the vision loss he was experiencing. After lining up all day to see a healer, he got to the front of the line and was immediately told “Go and call your parents”, to which he felt extremely frustrated.

Ignoring the advice, weeks later he lined up to see a different shaman, still seeking out healing. Again, he got to the front of the line and was told “Go and call your parents”. The second time, he listened.

About our relationship with our parents, he says:

🙏 What rituals, exercises and practices can heal intergenerational and familial trauma?

One of the exercises which was repeated again and again, through different case studies in the book was re-programming a relationship through the placement of a photograph and changing the narrative.

For example:

The beauty of this exercise is that it doesn’t require real-life interaction with the person in order to create healing. It is effective whether they are living or passed on, in our lives or no longer in our lives.

🕯 Other exercises outlined are:

• Placing a photo on your desk (similar to the photo above the bed exercise above)

• Lighting a candle in honour of a loved one and speaking to them

• Writing a letter, eg. of apology, remorse or explanation

• Developing a supporting loving image, for example a loved one as a guardian angel

• Creating a boundary, especially where someone has merged with another family member and has taken on too much of their pain

Finally, I will leave you with this quote:

I hope this has been helpful to you! As always, I am here for you and am happy to provide a willing ear if you have any thoughts or reflections bubbling up after reading.

Until next week,❤️🙏 Eleanor

This is a public post. If it has been useful to you, why not share it with a loved one 🤗

Additional links and resources:

If you are struggling, please reach out to a support service or professional:🤝 Human Rights list of Mental Health Support Services

🖥 Mark Wolynn’s Website with interviews, resources and book one on one sessions

🐥 Twitter - Follow Mark Wolynn

Next week’s book:

Coming out next Friday 25th March 2022 is edition #9, featuring:📚 The Post Traumatic Growth Guidebook: Practical Mind-Body Tools to Heal Trauma, Foster Resilience and Awaken Your Potential🖋 by Arielle Schwartz, PhD

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