So much of what shapes our coping strategies, patterns, and even cycles of behavior is passed down through generations. Gaining insight into their stories can help us better understand our own.

We are born with natural instincts to get our needs met and to protect ourselves. As we grow, our experiences along with the chemical and physiological responses they trigger, become hardwired into our brains. Over time, these responses form protective patterns that repeat automatically.

In simple terms, our brains learn through the release of various chemicals and hormones. When a behavior leads to feeling safe or having a need met, our brain encourages us to repeat it. When a behavior results in discomfort or a negative outcome, we tend to avoid it. These repeated responses create cyclical protective patterns that we continue to rely on until they are intentionally changed.

The Developing Mind…

Dan Siegel explains in his book “The Developing Mind” that an infants performance as a parent could be predicted even before a child is born in a phenomenon termed intergenerational transmission. 

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is the most robust predictor of an infants attachment to their parents. AAI’s that have been conducted with the parent before birth of an infant was able to forecast accurately how the infant would behave at one year of life.

At one year of age the infants were exhibiting relationship responses that would characterize their personalities and behaviors in the future.

The observations accurately indicated their behavior by adolescence in features such as emotional maturity, peer relationships, and academic performance.

IF we want to create healthier families and communities, our wounded and insecure places need care, healing, and support so we can break these cyclical protective patterns.

This is not an advocacy for victimhood or blaming. The central issue is the unintentional transmission of stress and anxiety across generations.

It is possible to rewire deeply ingrained patterns that keep us stuck in unhealthy relational cycles. Becoming aware of how easily these patterns form and taking radical responsibility for our own healing is essential for breaking generational cycles.

A person’s level of adaptiveness is shaped not only by their own emotional development but also by the degree of differentiation (healthy autonomy) in previous generations. Unmet emotional needs in earlier generations often repeat themselves and can become maladaptive traits passed down through the family line.

People and families who are more adaptive tend to experience fewer physical illnesses. In this view, physical illness can be understood as a disorder of the family emotional system – shaped by stress patterns both past and present. A child’s habitual responses to the family system form traits that eventually become part of their personality. However, it is not personality that causes disease – it is stress.  {See my previous newsletter on the stress-disease connection}

What do all stressors have in common? They signal a perceived threat to survival – usually through the fear of losing something important. The most significant stressors are emotional. Research shows three universal triggers for stress: uncertainty, lack of information, and perceived loss of control. All three are commonly present in the lives of individuals facing chronic illness.