The emotional inheritance of our ancestors

Emotional inheritance is as determining as it is intransigent and imposing. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that our story began when we uttered our first cry. Thinking like this is a mistake because, just as we are the result of the union between an egg and a sperm, we are also the product of desires, fantasies, fears and a whole constellation of emotions and perceptions, which mixed to give rise to a new life. .

Currently there is talk of the concept of “family novel”. From the moment a person is born, they begin to write a story with their actions. If you observe the stories of each of the members of a family, you will find essential coincidences and common axes. It seems as if each individual is a chapter in a larger story, which has been written over different generations.

This situation was beautifully portrayed in the book “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, by Gabriel García Márquez, who shows how Through different generations the same fear is repeated, until it becomes reality and wipes out an entire race.. In particular, what is inherited from previous generations are nightmares, traumas, unelaborated experiences.

The inheritance that passes through generations

The transgenerational transmission process is unconscious. These are generally hidden or confusing situations that cause shame or fear. The descendants of someone who has suffered untreated trauma carry the weight of that lack of resolution. They feel or sense the presence of that “something strange” that gravitates like a weight, but cannot be defined.

A sexually abused great-grandmother, for example, may transmit the effects of her trauma, but not the content of it. Perhaps even her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren echo a certain intolerance towards sexuality, or a visceral mistrust towards members of the opposite sex, or a feeling of hopelessness that does not quite take shape.

This emotional inheritance can also manifest itself as an illness. The French psychoanalyst Francoise Dolto stated: “What is silent in the first generation, the second carries in the body.”

Just as it is recognized that there is a “collective unconscious”, it is also clear that there is a “family unconscious”. In that unconscious reside all those silenced experiences, which in some way have been kept silent because they constitute a taboo: suicides, abortions, mental illnesses, murders, ruins, abuses, etc. Trauma tends to repeat itself in the next generation, until it finds a way to become conscious and resolved.

Physical or emotional discomfort, which seems to have no explanation, can be “a call” to raise awareness about those secrets, or those silenced truths.which possibly are not in our own life, but in that of one of our ancestors.

The path to understanding emotional inheritance

It is natural that When faced with traumatic experiences, people react by trying to forget. Perhaps the memory is too painful and they think that they will not be able to suffer and transcend it. Or, perhaps, the situation compromises one’s own dignity, as in the case of sexual abuse and that is why, despite being a victim, it translates as shame for those who suffer it. Or, they simply want to avoid the judgments of others. That is why the fact is buried and it is considered good not to speak of it again.

This type of forgetting is artificial. In reality, one does not forget, but rather the memory is repressed.. In turn, everything repressed returns, in one way or another. The most likely thing is that it will return via repetition.

This means that a family that has experienced the suicide of one of its members is likely to experience it again with another member of a new generation. If at first the situation was not addressed and digested, It remains floating like a ghost that will be updated sooner or later. The same goes for all types of trauma.

Each of us has much to learn from our ancestors. The heritage they have left us is much broader than we imagine. Sometimes our ancestors hurt us and we don’t know why.

Perhaps it is clear that we come from a family that has gone through many vicissitudes, but perhaps we do not know what our role is in that story of which we are a chapter. It is likely that this role has been assigned to us without realizing it: we must perpetuate, repeat, save, deny or cover up the traces of those events that have become secrets.

All the information we can collect about our ancestors is the best inheritance we can take with us. Knowing where we come from, who were those people that we did not know, but who are in the genesis of who we are. It is a fascinating path that has no loss. Whenever we undertake it we will be taking an important step towards reaching a deep understanding of what our true role is in the world.

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