Contents
We are accustomed to the idea that everyone is the creator of his own happiness. And everyone is free to choose, decide, decide. But some live with emptiness inside, trying to somehow fill it. This emptiness is a legacy from close and distant ancestors, the memory of their traumas, which were inflicted by the very history of mankind.
Our country remembers many tragic events. Let’s take only the 90th century: three revolutions, two wars, Stalinist repressions, the “dashing XNUMXs” …
Large-scale historical shifts leave a mark not only in the lives of those who met them face to face. They are reflected in their descendants, that is, almost all of us. And often turn from historical to family trauma.
Conspiracy of silence
Not every tragic event in the life of a family is a psychological trauma. It can be prevented if you name and live your feelings, find your place in what happened, comprehend the consequences. But this can only be done in a safe environment. And security, trust and acceptance are exactly what our parents and ancestors were often deprived of.
Trauma breaks the flow of life, destroys the very possibility of creating a coherent story. Its bearers are silent not because they do not want to talk, but because they cannot. Our spoken language is not well adapted to convey what a person experiences under torture, what he encounters in a war zone.
Bulat Okudzhava describes this disparity between everyday and traumatic experiences in his autobiographical short story “The Girl of My Dreams”1: after ten years in the camps, the mother returns to her son, who has become an adult. He wants to arrange a holiday for her, takes her to the cinema to see her favorite film and does not understand why her mother is not happy. The only one she is able to talk to is their silent neighbor in a communal apartment, a former prisoner.
The child grows up, but the habit of living in a difficult emotional atmosphere remains
The survivor of something terrible protects himself from painful memories, and loved ones – from his story, for which they are likely not ready.
But the one who denies and suppresses pain unconsciously makes new decisions, for example: not to feel, to fight, to endure, not to show emotions, to expect the worst, to defend with aggression, not to lose control. And these decisions are “conserved” in the body and mind of the representatives of the genus, creating a traumatic family inheritance.
“In many families, the so-called “silent deal” is often concluded,” explains clinical psychologist, psychosomatologist Ekaterina Kuzhel. “This is a ban on speaking out about what happened.”
Silence is organized to preserve safety, but it also creates a certain pattern of behavior and emotions, according to which family members live for several generations. Such a scenario, inherited from our ancestors, has great power: we unconsciously act in a given way, predetermining the development of events in such a way as to come to a planned denouement.
Transactional analyst Fanita English compares this to the children’s game “Hot Potato”, where participants throw a ball at each other, trying not to hold it in their hands for too long. “Hot potato” is that uncomfortable, scary or shameful thing that is not customary to talk about or even think about in the family.
From memory to behavior and back
How does it happen? Imagine a situation that is quite typical for military families: a soldier returns from the war, where he received several wounds and saw his comrades die. For all he is a hero, but he is visited by terrible memories.
He relives the events of the past, his body reacts with the release of stress hormones (adrenaline, norepinephrine, cortisol), feelings of anger, rage, aggression appear. The veteran tries to fight them, realizing that there is no reason for them in reality, and becomes cold, distant.
His little son admires his father, but at the same time feels some emotional heaviness coming from him. He sees how severely he communicates with people, how he breaks down on his mother. Why is the father acting like this? Nobody talks about this, because the topic of the war has become taboo for all family members – “so that it does not hurt.”
As a result, the boy adopts his father’s behavior, and these emotions and the oppressive atmosphere in general become the norm for him. The injury is inherited. The child grows up, but the habit remains to live in a difficult emotional atmosphere, to keep silent about their problems and behave like their father did.
And now his children inherit the patterns of behavior that their grandfather developed after his war. These unconscious habits will prevent them from loving, making friends, communicating, and generally being happy.
To change this, they have to do work with family trauma: identify the cause, find the one who was initially affected by the tragic event, work through the problem at the level of feelings, beliefs, behavior and bodily sensations, and then finally separate from the past.
This is not my fear
“34-year-old Elena came to me with a lot of symptoms: heaviness in her arms, stiffness in her chest, a lump in her throat, a strong feeling of pressure inside her head,” says Ekaterina Kuzhel. – She also complained about psychological problems: she could not build relationships with men.
During therapy, it turned out that the girl regretted that she had not received enough love from her parents. But her parents, in turn, received less love from their parents, and those from theirs.
During the Great Patriotic War, her great-grandparents made an unconscious decision not to feel, to block the pain in order to survive and not go crazy with fear and pain of loss. It was a time when you either get involved in what is happening, experiencing hardships and pain, or you freeze, protecting yourself from shocks.
Together with a psychologist, Elena discovered negative decisions made in the family and changed them, creating her own decisions about how she wants to live and behave in the future. At the same time, somatic symptoms gradually decreased until they disappeared completely.
At the consultation, 30-year-old Olga said that she could not get pregnant, although the results of the examinations confirm her good health.
“Such requests often speak of unborn and deceased children in the family system,” emphasizes family psychotherapist Daria Sheiko. “Therefore, after discussing the situation, I suggested that there is a story that no one has ever told, and it is connected with dead children in the family. Olga spread her hands: “Who knows?” Family systems therapists often have to take a wait-and-see attitude. Clients can disappear, not come to meetings, depreciate – this is a common thing.
Three months later, Olga returned with a story.
The main technique for working with historical family trauma is respect and acceptance.
During the war, her grandmother was left without parents. The elder sister replaced both her mother and father for her and four other brothers and sisters. My sister had two twin daughters. The woman went with all the children to the forest to pick berries and mushrooms in order to feed herself.
On one of these campaigns, the Germans surrounded her village and shot all the inhabitants. Hearing the shooting at the edge of the forest, she decided to run deeper. Together they lay down in the ravine and waited. Soon they heard that the Germans with dogs were looking for the inhabitants who had hidden in the forest.
And then one of the twins cried loudly and could not calm down. The mother had a choice: either everyone would die, or one. And she drowned her daughter in the swamp in front of other children. Olga’s grandmother witnessed this murder in the name of salvation.
When all the children grew up, this woman, who saved the children, committed suicide, leaving a note in which she said that she was leaving for her daughter. Olga’s mother – the daughter of a witness to this event – did not know anything about him. Only work with a therapist and the desire of the client to solve her problem lifted the veil of the past.
“Children are the greatest value in this family,” continues Daria Sheiko. – All women of this kind “begged and begged” for children. The reason for Olga’s difficulties in conceiving was family anxiety: having children is dangerous and scary. And her acceptance of the price of her birth led to healing: if not for that murder, Olga would not have been born.
Her life is directly connected with the strongest experiences of the whole family and this secret.
Don’t be humiliated
Family Systemic Therapy is not looking for someone to blame. Facts matter, and they are neutral, psychologists emphasize. It happened, it happened, that’s exactly how it happened. In working with any trauma, resolving release phrases are used.
For example: “I killed this child, I did not find the strength to raise him. I’m sorry”. This is a liberating phrase. “I’m sorry” and “I’m sorry” are not synonymous. I am neither above nor below the one I am addressing. I’m equal, and I’m just sorry that it happened. We do not admit guilt, but we take responsibility. We can’t change what happened, so we say, I’m sorry.
The main technique for working with historical family trauma is respect and acceptance. Respect for all family members and for history: for the killers, for the victims, for the Germans, for the war, for life’s choices. No need to justify or blame. It was. Dot. Thank you for life, without you all I would not exist!
This is how historical trauma gets its resolution, and we get the freedom to live our own lives. We do not forget and do not force out an unpleasant event from consciousness – we become able to live in such a way that the past does not have a negative impact on us, does not distort perception, reactions, decisions.
There are events that we have no right to forget. These traumas still define our outlook on life, habits and values. They can make us feel fear and anxiety until we work through the experience.
If we talk about it, if we live through a catastrophic situation, we will cope with the difficult consequences and become free and open to new experiences, while learning important life lessons from the past.
Trauma manifests itself in the body
Oncologist and medical psychologist Vladimir Mikeda, based on his observations, suggests a connection between diseases of individual organs and family history.
- Hemophilia (blood clotting disorder) is inherited. One of the possible reasons is that a representative of the genus was beaten to the point of severe blood loss.
- Kidney problems may have their origin in a story where a member of the family was drowned or drowned himself.
- Problems with the spleen may be related to the bloodshed that took place in the family’s past.
- Diseases of the sphincter of the stomach may indicate that the representatives of the genus are “stuck” in some unpleasant situations and cannot find a way out of them. “Psychological work with birth trauma is shown to those who believe that information about the life of their ancestors will be difficult for him to perceive, or when hearing about the life of relatives horrifies, gives rise to panic, resentment, aggression, anger,” adds clinical psychologist Ekaterina Kuzhel. “The body can respond to this information with increased heart rate, a lump in the throat, cramps in the chest, abdomen, heaviness in the arms, and other unpleasant physical sensations.”
1 1. B. Okudzhava “The Art of Cutting and Living” (U-Factoria, 2001).