Reviews with content warning for Death - It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

Reviews tagging 'Death'

It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn

9 reviews

patydenisse's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

It’s a great book, I feel like it’s a must for people who’ve tried it all, podcasts, books, self care articles, etc.
I like that you have to write and think about your past and your family.
I think I’ve actually became closer to my parents while and after reading this book, it helped me a lot just to change a little bit my perspective.
I don’t give it 5 stars just because I felt there were times where the book was very repetitive and used a lot of examples of patients that felt like I had read them before or very similar.
It has a lot of trigger warnings, so I would definitely suggest reading this when you feel ok to do some self exploring and revisit trauma, look out for yourself.

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anderson27paige's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

The first half of this book blew my mind and I would definitely recommend this book to just about anyone because it really challenges you to reflect on your characteristics and your family history to unveil struggles you may be having. I appreciated that studies were used to back up the authors claims and that he provided exercises for the reader to walk themselves through the process. It's like a therapy session in a self-paced book. The second half of the book was a bit boring to me, things seemed repetitive and I wasn't having as many breakthroughs, but am I still glad that I read it. I think I just scored it a little lower because it is non-fiction which can tend not to be as entertaining, so I often found myself reading quickly just so I could be done with the book. But overall, would recommend, I think it showed me a lot about myself that I was oblivious to.

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andreisa12's review

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.5

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alexirt's review

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I got 30% into this book. In the first four chapters there were some interesting concepts about nature vs nurture and epigenetics. I think some ideas were stretched too far.

Example: after finding out about grandma’s survivors guilt one girl was no longer suicidal because she realized those were not her own feelings.

Then in chapter 5 he got way too “your parents are your life force and you won’t have mental illness anymore if you pretend and feel what caused them trauma.” I looked at a couple other reviews and they said the rest of the book minimizes the responsibility of abusers in favor of “reconnecting.” Very victim-blaming vibes. Maybe if there were more qualifiers, like discussing your grandmothers survivors guilt with her might clue you into your own feelings but it is not acceptable for adults to take out their unresolved trauma on their children. However, that was not what I read in what I got through. There were too many broad sweeps where those who experience abuse at the hand of a parent should forgive and forget and suddenly will be “cured” of bad feelings.

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katharina90's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

2.5

This is a pseudoscience book that's best consumed with a healthy dose of critical thinking. Take what serves, leave the rest.

Some bits resonated and rang true for me. At other times I found the conclusions far-fetched or too simplistic, and the suggestions unhelpful.

While I believe in inherited family trauma, the ways in which trauma has been carried down in my family doesn't line up neatly with what's described in this book.

The author pushes repeatedly for a repair of strained/broken child-parent relationships which I don't think is always possible or helpful. It may even result in further harm if the parent isn't able or willing to address their own trauma and be accountable for the harm they themselves have caused.

However, if we interpret healing as finding peace and acceptance independent of our interpersonal relationship with our parent, I think there is a lot of value to be found.

Interrupting the cycle of trauma by healing yourself, accepting your parents' limitations, and adjusting your expectations and boundaries accordingly seems like a healthy path forward.

A guiding question that stood out to me in that context is:
"Can you stay open in your body when you think of them?"

Another takeaway was to use lessons learned to help break the cycle: "Can you receive something good from what they gave you?" A parent's cruelty could become the reason for your kindess.

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c100's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

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thereaderfriend's review

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informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

Was helpful but felt it repeated over and over the same notions

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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hopeful informative

4.5

In my online research about trauma, I came across the idea of intergenerational trauma – that you can inherit the trauma of your ancestors. However, the sites that talked about healing your intergenerational trauma also tended to be the type that advised rose quartz would heal your mother wound and other such less-than-scientific “treatments.” So I was excited for this book, hoping to get a more trustworthy look at intergenerational trauma and see if the idea has any scientific merit.

I was surprised to find that it actually does. The book starts with a solid scientific foundation, discussing the basics of epigenetics and how trauma not only changes our own genes, but the genes that go into our egg and sperm cells that later become our children. It traces why trauma can be shared back three generations but often isn’t passed down longer than that, and it discusses how outside of genetics, family dynamics can encourage people to take on traumas from relatives they’re not directly descended from (e.g. aunts and uncles). I was fascinated to find such a strong scientific basis for inheriting trauma.

The bulk of this book, though, is a healing program to help the reader identify the trauma, figure out who in their family system it actually belongs to, and “give it back” so they don’t have to deal with a trauma that isn’t even theirs. There’s an assortment of writing and reflection exercises, interspersed with nearly-miraculous stories of healing from people Mark has taken through these steps. You’re supposed to do each of the exercises as you read, but I was listening to this at work and couldn’t really stop doing my job and pull out a notebook. I did do one of the exercises (number 12, I think) on a break, and it was intense and enlightening. This is one of those books that I want to read again in a different format so I can follow along better and actually do the exercises.

Though I think this book can and will be very helpful, I don’t think it’s perfect. The stories of recovery Mark shares seem almost impossible in their rapidity and completeness, which makes me skeptical, but I’m going to reserve judgement on that until I actually try all the steps. What bothered me the most was towards the end, the book harped really hard on forgiving your parents, reconciling with them, and putting effort into having a relationship with them. Putting aside the fact that I’m definitely not ready to forgive my mother, I kept thinking, What if your parents aren’t safe? I don’t think my parents would be physically violent or attempt to ruin my life or anything like that when I come out to them, but I highly doubt they’ll be willing to use my real name and pronouns. Should I just live with their clear and obvious disregard for who I am just to have a relationship with my parents? And what about queer people who are in legitimate physical danger of injury or even death from parents who won’t accept them? Should they put themselves in danger to attempt a relationship with parents who would rather have a dead child than a gay or trans one? It’s all well and good when your parents still love you and the only thing between you and them is trauma, separation, and/or differences in how you give and receive love, but I have to imagine there are ways to heal that don’t involve exposing yourself to people who are dangerous to you.

That said, I still consider this a valuable book. It has a solid basis in science, and it’s full of practical steps with plenty of examples to follow. As I mentioned, this is one I want to get in physical or ebook form to actually follow along with the steps. (The audiobook is supposed to have a PDF with the exercises and diagrams, but my library apparently doesn’t include accompanying PDFs with audiobooks.) Though I’m skeptical about advising “you need a relationship with your parents” to everyone, overall I think this is a very important book.

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lookingforwonder's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

2.5

The first couple of chapters are very informative when it comes to inherited trauma. The rest of it is more of a self-help book. I had anticipated more scientific background, but the book often comes out more Freudian and there's no studies to back up his suggestions of how to help people with inherited trauma. And the author's claim that "psychopaths" (which is already a loaded term mental health professionals shouldn't be using) are created by parental neglect has been debunked. This made me question the first two chapters I'd thought were well-researched. Still, some of the self-reflection questions may help people and it does have some interesting research included on inherited trauma. The author shares his client's stories (with their permission and detailed altered) which deal with family trauma and the subsequent result of how it affected the client. These stories include various kinds of trauma, told in passing more than graphic. I've labelled the ones I've remembered, but I'm sure I'm missing a few.

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