"Memories of trauma are imprinted in our parents' and grandparents' sperm and egg cells. We can be born with altered brains that prepare us to cope with the traumas of the generations before us. Trauma responses like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are how animals and people escape perceived danger. Somatic therapy helps create new patterns in the nervous system."
"My grandmother was born in 1939, at the brink of World War II, when Korea was still occupied by Japan. She grew up with fighter planes flying overhead in the Korean countryside, without any running water or electricity. Her childhood was characterized by wars, colonialism, and constant fear. Concepts like "identity" and "belonging" were foreign to her, as the country kept changing."
"My mother was left behind, in the country home, because someone had to take care of my great-grandparents. My mom continued to live there, in a house with no electricity or plumbing. Her chores consisted of chopping firewood to heat the ondol floors in the winter, helping her grandmother cook, and taking care of her younger sister, whom she carried on her back to and from school every day."
Memories of trauma can become imprinted in sperm and egg cells, leading to biological transmission across generations. Prenatal development can produce altered brains that predispose descendants to cope with ancestral threats. Chronic hardship in war, occupation, poverty, and caregiving shaped the grandmother's and mother's lived environments and nervous-system adaptations. Daily survival demands pushed family members into persistent mobilization and task-driven flight responses. Trauma responses such as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn enabled perceived danger avoidance but also patterned behavior and physiology. Somatic therapy offers a pathway to create new nervous-system patterns and relearn safety through body-based interventions.
Read at Psychology Today
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