The Playbook
Trauma? I’ll Pass!
As I’ve written in the past on inherited trauma, we experience trauma as one of those early life adverse environmental exposures, and it can harm us to the point where our basic mental and emotional functions are hampered. If we are lucky enough to have people in our lives to care for us, perhaps offset the trauma, and help us heal, then the impact may be less stark, less permanent.
In terms of our epigenome, recurrent trauma can lead our DNA to modify itself and to hinder our present-moment functions as well as our future functions. We may even pass these modifications to our children, and they to theirs, on and on into the distant future.
The only way to reverse course is to end the trauma and replace it with nontraumatic, healthy experiences. In a sense, we need to teach our bodies and minds to do things differently. The way that I do this is to identify the traumatic behavior, whether that is direct action like abuse or indirect like lack of care, and then reverse engineer it. I pass on passing on trauma by finding the antidote and practicing that instead.
Intelligent Plays
As of last night, I’m back in Lasso land, and so I’m going to use another football metaphor. I find it useful to have a set of plays that are these very antidotes to my own inherited trauma. If my caregiver was narcissistic, then I have a playbook of anti-narcissistic behavior. If they were borderline, then my playbook is reverse-borderline. There are many great books that can provide insight into what these behaviors are, most of which give tactics for handling people in your life suffering from those disorders as well as flags for your own codependence with people who share that suffering.
Of course, one of my playbook’s biggest chapters is around my dad’s bipolar and addiction. On the one hand, both sets of traumatic behaviors were so entwined, so damaging, and so completely in my face, that I didn’t need to read up to know that these were traumatic and 100% not for me. On the other hand, I still have needed to closely examine the subtle and often subliminal root behaviors to make sure that I have it straight what all went into that trauma and what I need to do differently with my kids. I have made my own plays to hold myself accountable and to guide my action with intention and love, to ensure I’m doing things differently and healthily for us and for their future.