Have fears you can’t explain? It might be epigenetics from two generations ago!

Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence. —Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

In the book ‘It Didn’t Start With You’, Mark Wolynn quotes studies done by professor Rachel Yehuda of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Holocaust survivors, war veterans, pregnant mothers during the World Trade Center attacks with PTSD produced less cortisol. Interestingly, their children also did too. If your parents had PTSD symptoms you were three times more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. Yehuda believes generational PTSD is inherited instead of through the exposure of our parents’ stories. I believe we’re biologically made to pass down hypersensitivity to our children so they can be attuned to dangers. Similarly neurodivergents (ex: people with ADHD) are also hypersensitive and are more prone to anxiety and depression. My belief is that until you learn to hone your superpower (ex: hypersensitivity) it can create problems for you. I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing, but a gift with responsibilities.

Studies done on mice showed similar results. Mice were taught to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by zapping their feet. Their offspring who had no social exposure to their parents and never experienced the zapping also feared cherry blossom smells. Epigenetic markers showed up on the mice’s sperm specifically on the gene responsible for detecting cherry blossoms. You can read more about it here.

Your deep seeded fears may not have come from you! In the example given in the book ‘It Didn’t Start With You’, a 19 year suddenly began to suffer from insomnia fearing that if he fell asleep he would die. He later discovered that he had a uncle who died in a blizzard while installing cable wires at the age of 19! Knowing where this fear originated from, and was not a real threat enabled him to eventually overcome his conditioning. Based on the readings above, I hypothesize that his father’s traumatic experience of his brother’s death caused DNA alteration in his sperm that got passed down to his son.

All of us have deep seeded traumas. If you are curious about squashing some of your fears I recommend reading ‘It Didn’t Start With You’.

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