About how family ghosts help you survive tough times

Zima Magazine,
March 2023

It turns out that the questions that time poses to us (why do I experience what happened this way and my colleague does not, do I decide to stay or leave, do I cut ties with those I left behind or maintain them, what is dangerous for me and what is hopeful) and the ways in which we answer these questions are largely determined by the messages of past generations, which are often unconsciously perceived.

Conscious transmission also happens - then we talk about continuing traditions or maintaining family values. But what we are conscious of is much easier to deal with. Unconscious transmission from ancestors to descendants of a certain set of reactions, behavioral patterns, decision-making methods is called transgenerational transmission. It occurs at the non-verbal level through symbols, images, gestures, intonations, manners of speech, movements, glances, unexplained manifestations.

Until recently, transgenerational transmission was considered to be a non-genetic form of inheritance. Now the genetic contribution to the nature of this phenomenon is also discussed in the context of epigenetic studies. Epigenetics investigates factors that influence the manifestation of genes that are not related to the nucleotide sequence of DNA. Such factors include, among others, various aspects of the environment. Different factors (including psychologically or physically traumatizing factors) may influence the manifestation of certain genetically determined traits. And this ability to manifest or not to manifest in certain situations is recorded at the DNA level and can be inherited.

The main mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance are three: DNA methylation (it tends to suppress gene expression, and demethylation, on the contrary), modification of nuclear proteins, and silencing by small genes. The properties due to certain genes can thus manifest themselves fully, partially, or not at all, dramatically changing the properties and behavior of a person.

Imagine a sentence in which different words appear depending on some factors. For example:

• if you are on an island and there is a threat of flooding you should sink to the bottom of the boat and (not) wait, (but, without stopping, move towards the mainland, doing everything possible) to be seen by large ships passing by;
• if you are on an island and there is a threat of flooding, you should (sink to the bottom of the boat, and) not wait, but move towards the mainland without stopping, doing everything possible to be seen by passing large ships.

As can be seen, the meanings, ways of responding, and patterns of behavior associated with such inheritance can change dramatically.

What we receive through transgenerational transmission may accompany us throughout our lives, or it may manifest itself in moments when we need to make some important choices (professional, choice of partner, etc.) or be actualized during any emergency situations (wars, epidemics, political cataclysms) that require instinctive decisions. From an evolutionary point of view, this is a justifiable adaptation, saving time considerably for the next generation, especially if we assume that the world is fairly constant. Maybe once upon a time it was. But now that it is unstable and very dynamic, unconscious patterns rather reduce the ability to make useful choices for survival and adaptation.

Unconsciousness is the main trap of transgenerational inheritance. As a rule, something is transmitted that no one intended to transmit. On the contrary, it is something that was rather silenced or hidden, something unpleasant or terrible, associated with shame, guilt, danger or grief and strongly emotionally charged (repression, suicide, adoption, crime, mental illness, poverty, etc.). It is no coincidence that when transgenerational transmission is discussed, we most often hear the word "trauma" - the transmission of traumatic experiences across generations. Such experiences are often accompanied by the unpleasant experiences characteristic of trauma, chief among them fear, anger, shame, and the experience of loneliness, detachment, and one's own "wrongness." This is what is often caught by subsequent generations.

The good news is that many aspects of these inherited traits, when brought into the conscious field, we can control by changing programmed patterns.

One of my clients contacted me about her daughter's difficulties at school. Her nine-year-old daughter refused to go to school, afraid that she would be scolded, kicked out or sent to the principal. The client talked to the teachers and there was no reason for the child to have these fears. The teachers praised her and were pleased with her. The client was also very anxious because she had something similar: all her childhood she was afraid of punishment and felt guilty for no reason, she felt that neighbors were looking at her in a bad way, and it was quite painful. Moreover, even in adulthood (and at the time of the referral the client was in her forties) she often experienced unexplained guilt and thought that she was not good at something. The client came from a family with three children, an older brother and a younger sister. During therapy, she began having intrusive dreams about a man giving her sister a cake and picking her up. In the course of the work, which I will omit here, the client decided to talk to her parents and found out that her younger sister had a different biological father. The mother had a lover. She became pregnant, told the father.... The mother's guilt turned out to be a natural pattern of behavior that she was broadcasting to her daughter.

It's certainly not that a revelation came upon her. Most likely, she heard something and displaced it as a child. But the mom guilt as a pattern of behavior she carried through her life and passed on to her daughter. Once the situation was opened up (fortunately, all family members agreed to talk openly about their past, it was not easy, they had to go to family therapy), family relationships became much less tense and the girl for whom the client sought help felt much better.

In this story, it was possible to grasp the content because there was someone to ask. Often there is no one to ask, and we have to guess or construct reality. The fourth generation is usually the most vulnerable in this sense. The first generation are the ones who have experienced some traumatic event and for various reasons (to protect the family, out of shame, or not to face painful experiences themselves) they suppress their experiences and hide what is happening to them. The second generation, despite the previous generation's attempt to hide what happened, usually guesses what happened, clearly realizing that it is something that cannot be talked about, does not ask and passes the information on. Only fragments of the content reach the third generation. However, this generation sometimes still has the opportunity to clarify something with the bearers of experience. Sometimes this is possible because the acuteness of the traumatic event and the danger associated with its disclosure has receded by this time. By the fourth generation, the bearers of the experience usually die and take the content with them. The material is displaced into the unconscious, and it is in this generation that problems of psychological functioning become most pronounced.

Unconscious and unprocessed fragments of traumas and horrors of past generations are present and affect people quite strongly, causing a lot of different experiences, including guilt, fear, shame, feelings of inappropriateness, being born at the wrong time, being stuck between worlds, feelings of some unfulfilled missions that they have to complete in order to repair, restore or take revenge. This happens with individuals, in families and in societies (states, nations, etc.).

The researchers consider injustice and ethical violations as key parameters for transgenerational traumatization at the level of families and societies. When an injustice is committed, traumatization is inevitable, and it will be transmitted from generation to generation until justice is restored.

Ann Stutzberger, author of The Ancestor Syndrome, believes that in every family there is some accounting for debt, merit, and injustice. "The laws of invisible loyalty require that justice be restored and debts be paid. Unpaid debts pass on to descendants, taking the form of one problem or another. If one brother cheated the other and took possession of the inheritance, there will be no joy for the descendants of both brothers, who will be bound by bizarre threads until justice is restored. There is nothing mystical about it, just that the suppressed guilt and shame of the one and the bitterness and resentment of the other will be the greater the more they are silenced and become a transgenerational object without substance.

The peculiarity of human experience is that we cannot complete it until it acquires a clear form, until we realize it as something understandable. The peculiarity of transhuman traumatization is that the experience is not verbalized, not named, and thus cannot be experienced, digested. It has no form. It is not a figure. But it is something that is very clearly present. Something that cannot be spoken of and yet cannot be forgotten. Something that insistently demands embodiment, although in most cases it is not realized. People have a sense of the presence of something absent, something that has no clear form, that is not a figure with which to do something - to argue, to experience, to accept, to deny - that is incomprehensible, but very clearly present. You can't kill Voldemort until he has a body.

Perel Wilgowitz refers to this phenomenon as the "vampire complex". She compares these disembodied experiences, passed from one generation to the next, to a vampire that is present but not reflected in the mirror. Present and absent at the same time. And like a vampire that exsanguinates these transgenerational objects drain energy and prevent one from living one's own life, confining one to a box of ancestral trauma. If the boxes have not been opened and dealt with, different aspects of life are affected.

The last year turned out to be a laboratory for demonstrating different transgenerational reactions. Political cataclysms and wars, as I said above, actualize transgenerational influences. It is not easy for people to understand and accept each other's meanings. Moreover, transgenerational transmission undoubtedly takes place not only at the level of family and kinship, but also at the level of groups and entire communities.

At the center of collective trauma is usually some real historical event or period (military invasion, dictatorial regime, natural disaster) experienced by a certain group (ethnos, state) of people. This affects each member of the group and becomes part of the cultural identity, intertwined with personal experience, largely determining how this group lives. Since injustice and ethical violations are considered to be the key points in transhumance inheritance, the task of society is to survive the trauma, to correct the injustice or at least recognize it.

The experience of collective trauma is hindered by distortions, silence and lies. In this case, the same transgenerational objects are formed, only their impact on people due to the scope of "songs and fables" is much larger. And then the traumatic experience will continue to be transmitted to the next generations, repeated again and again until the psychological processes are completed and justice is restored.

Sometimes vicious circles are formed. For example, if society has not coped with some experiences, say with guilt or shame, it will form situations in which such an opportunity will arise. If for one reason or another the encounter with these experiences is unbearable, they will be suppressed, compensated by others until the next attempt. The feeling of shame, for example, can be compensated by pride for the power, "getting up from the knees" or, on the contrary, by humiliation. Unexpressed feelings turn into transgenerational objects and are passed on to the next generations (whose reactions, unfortunately, are programmed to some extent), leading to new and new repetitions until someone decides to face them and recognize them.

The only way to combat this is to meet the ghost, bring it into consciousness, recognize it, experience it, and complete the circle. The transgenerational object must take on a name and form. It must be named. What cannot be named must be named and placed in its place in the context of personal history or the history of a community or state. Psychotherapy, art, literature, and history are the main ways to deal with transphobic traumatization. And also preserving the memory of injustice, and conversely, of people who have been resilient or courageous enough to retain the ability to call things by their names.

And then there is hope that humanity will learn a little more about restoring justice and passing on to posterity not only debts, but the blessing of their own full lives.