This groundbreaking book offers a compelling understanding of inherited trauma and fresh
powerful tools for relieving its suffering. Mark Wolynn is a wise and trustworthy guide on the
journey toward healing. -Tara Brach PhD author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge A
groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies passed down in families over
generations by an acclaimed expert in the field Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias.
Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside
in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains-but in the lives of
our parents grandparents and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research now
making headlines supports what many have long intuited-that traumatic experience can be passed
down through generations. It Didn't Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in
post-traumatic stress including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda
and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person
who suffered the original trauma has died or the story has been forgotten or silenced memory
and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden encoded in everything from
gene expression to everyday language and they play a far greater role in our emotional and
physical health than has ever before been understood. As a pioneer in the field of inherited
family trauma Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for
over twenty years. It Didn't Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his
method the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the
fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words behaviors and physical symptoms.
Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going
back through the generations. And visualization active imagination and direct dialogue create
pathways to reconnection integration and reclaiming life and health. It Didn't Start With You
is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases
traditional therapy drugs or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.
