It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

the DNA responsible for transmitting physical traits, such as the color of our hair, eyes, and skin—surprisingly makes up less than 2 percent of our total DNA.14 The other 98 percent consists of what is called noncoding DNA (ncDNA), and is responsible for many of the emotional, behavioral, and personality traits we inherit.

The researchers also found that the germ cells—the precursor egg and sperm cells

Traumas, not only from war but from any event significant enough to disrupt the emotional equilibrium in our family—a crime, a suicide, an early death, a sudden or unexpected loss—can lead to our reliving trauma symptoms from the past.

Children of Holocaust survivors, for example, inherited variances in the enzyme that converts active cortisol to inactive cortisol based on whether their mothers were younger or were adults during the Holocaust.

children of fathers who had PTSD are “probably more prone to depression or chronic stress responses.”

Paternal PTSD, she discovered, increases the likelihood that the child will feel “dissociated from [his or] her memories,” whereas maternal PTSD increases the likelihood that a child will have difficulty “calming down.”

epigenetics research is finally beginning to provide substantial evidence that intergenerational trauma is a real phenomenon

“The parent’s trauma,” he says, “becomes the child’s own and [the child’s] behavioral and emotional issues can mirror those of the parent.”

“Epigenetic Mechanisms of Depression,”

“Our research demonstrates [that] genes . . . retain some memory of their past experiences,”