Our fears sometimes seem completely irrational. Why do we worry about being robbed if nothing has been stolen from us in our lives? Where does the fear of drowning come from if we are excellent swimmers? Perhaps the answers to these questions lie in the past of our family.
Everything that was not with me, I remember
“I am terribly afraid of violence. Even when it’s not too late, even when the streets are full of people, I constantly turn around. When I enter the entrance, my heart stops: I listen to any rustle and try to get to the apartment as quickly as possible. I have never been molested in public places, I have not had unpleasant moments with partners — therefore, for a long time I could not understand where this fear came from.
A couple of years ago, my mother told me about being sexually abused as a teenager. She did not tell anyone about this and did not even seem to warn me of any dangers, but it was as if the pieces of the puzzle had formed into a logical picture for me. Now I can calm myself in those moments when I used to die from horror, ”says Adelina (23 years old).
“These complex connections between generations can be seen, felt or anticipated at least in part. But most often we do not talk about them: they are experienced as elusive, unconscious, unspoken or secret,” writes psychotherapist, psychoanalyst Ann Schutzenberger in the book Ancestral Syndrome.
It is the secret — unspoken, unworked, buried somewhere in the depths of family history — that can affect us.
Her work is devoted to transgenerational transmission — a phenomenon in which the experience of ancestors is transmitted from generation to generation, and it is not at all necessary that it is spoken about out loud at all. And often we are talking about traumas, secrets and tragic events.
We grow up in a family, which means we absorb from birth the atmosphere that surrounds us. And fears as well. This context “shapes us, builds us up, blindly draws us in equal measure to the pleasant or the tragic, and sometimes even plays cruel tricks on us,” explains Ann Schutzenberger.
The psychotherapist quotes the famous child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto in his book: “In the family, children and dogs know everything, especially what they don’t talk about.” It is the secret — unspoken, unprocessed, buried somewhere in the depths of family history, that can affect us and make us covered in a cold sweat.
Each of us is the son or daughter of our father and mother. A child who carries in his mind secrets, fears, experiences of the past. Even when we grow up, create our own families and, it seems, should already live by our own mind, «the collective unconscious, transmitted in society from generation to generation, accumulates human experience.»
Grandmother’s inheritance
“I didn’t understand at all why I was so worried that everything cooked was eaten to the last crumb, and there was always a supply of cereals in the house. I always have him! But at the same time, when quarantine was announced, the first thing I rushed to the store for buckwheat. In my ears all the time it was as if my grandmother’s voice sounded: “What if there is a war?” With my mind, I perfectly understand that my actions have little to do with objective reality, ”shares Irina (50 years old).
The collective experience acquired by us and our families in the last century makes us act according to a certain algorithm. “It’s customary in our family” — that is, the basic rules exist as if by themselves and it is believed that they do not require explanation, ”explains Ann Schutzenberger.
And if earlier they were really functional and could save a real family from starvation during a war or revolution, today their implementation is not at all necessary, sometimes even redundant. We are trying with their help to overcome the fear that does not belong to us.
Ghosts of the past
Ann Schutzenberger introduces the concept of «transgenerational fear», which explains to some extent our sometimes very strange and illogical fears.
She cites the following specific chain as an example: during the retreat of Napoleon’s army from Russia, some of the soldiers experienced traumatic shock. They «felt the breeze from a cannonball that had killed or maimed a friend or comrade-in-arms who was nearby.»
At such moments, the soldiers experienced horror, froze, lost their memory, that is, they showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But the strangest thing is that “the wave of shock that hit them themselves was transmitted to some of their descendants. Sometimes, at certain times in their lives, they get cold to the bone or experience malaise, anxiety, throat cramps, nightmares, ”the psychotherapist writes.
We think about the nature of such fears when we finally see clearly that they are irrational and do not fit the context in which we are now. But many people “blow on water” all their lives, not noticing this discrepancy. And it can turn their daily existence into a nightmare.
Any secret, especially one related to difficult, traumatic events, is waiting to be recognized and burned away.
“I was terribly afraid that I might harm my son. I was not tormented by obsessive thoughts, but for some reason it seemed to me that I could do it, and therefore I should have less contact with him, not communicate, not become attached. Once I shared this fear with an elderly aunt, my mother’s sister.
She said that a tragedy occurred in their family many years ago, which was not customary to talk about. My great-grandfather, her grandfather, was a harsh man. He clashed a lot with relatives, dissolved his hands. One of his sons, a teenager, opposed his father, and he pushed him during a quarrel to a working threshing machine … My aunt’s uncle died, my great-grandfather was tried, and he ended his days in hard labor. But in our family they didn’t talk about it,” says Andrei (29 years old).
How this transgenerational transmission is carried out is still not very clear. “Everything that we know from a psychological, physiological or neurological point of view does not allow us to understand how something can be feverish for different generations of the same family,” writes Ann Schutzenberger.
However, if you are afraid of something that has never happened to you, a close look at your own family history may help. And if you manage to find parallels, even if confirmed by vague memories, stories of long-dead great-grandmothers, perhaps you will bring the secret to light.
And any secret, especially one that is associated with difficult, traumatic events, is waiting to be recognized and burned away. Then it loses its strength, and we can live easier, without passing on to our descendants the heavy burden of the past.