Our fears sometimes seem completely irrational. Why are we worried that we will be robbed if nothing was stolen in our life? Where is the fear of drowning if we swim perfectly? Perhaps the answers to these questions are in the past of our family.
Everything that was not with me, I remember
“I’m terribly afraid of violence. Even when it’s not too late, even when the people are full of people, I constantly turn around. When I go into the porch, my heart freezes: I listen to any rustle and try to quickly get to the apartment. They never molested me in public places, I had no unpleasant moments with partners – so I could not understand for a long time where this fear came from.
A couple of years ago, my mother told me that in her youth she experienced sexual violence. She did not tell anyone about this and did not even warn me about any dangers, but as if my puzzle particles were formed in a logical picture. Now I can reassure myself at those moments when I used to die with horror, ”says Adelina (23 years old).
“These complex ties of generations can be seen, felt or anticipated at least partially. But most often we are not talking about them: they live as elusive, unconscious, unspoken or secret, ”writes the psychotherapist, psychoanalyst Ann Shutsenbacherger in the book“ Ancestral Syndrome ”.
It is the secret-unprecedented, unprofitable, buried somewhere in the depths of family history-can affect us
Her work is dedicated to a transgeneration transmission – a phenomenon in which the experience of the ancestors is passed down from generation to generation, and it is completely not necessary that they generally speak out loud about it. And often we are talking about injuries, secrets and tragic events.
We grow in the family, which means that from birth we absorb the atmosphere that surrounds us. And fears including. This context “forms us, builds us, blindly entails equally pleasant or tragic, and sometimes even plays evil jokes with us,” explains Ann Schutsenberger.
The psychotherapist quotes Francoise Dolto in his book of the famous children’s psychoanalyst: “In the family, children and dogs know everything, especially what they are not talking about”. It
is the mystery-unprecedented, unprofitable, buried somewhere in the depths of family history, can affect us and forces you to be covered with cold later.
Each of us is the son or daughter of his father and mother. A child who brings secrets, fears, experiences of the past in his mind. Even when we grow up, create our own families and, it seems, should already live our own mind, “the collective unconscious, transmitted in society from generation to generation, accumulates human experience”.
Grandmother’s inheritance
“I absolutely did not understand why I was so worried about everything cooked to eat to the last crumb, and there was always a supply of cereals in the house. I always have it! But at the same time, when the quarantine was announced, I first rushed to the Buckwoman store. In my ears, my grandmother’s voice seemed to be all the time: “And if war? »I understand very well that my actions are little related to objective reality, » Irina shares (50 years).
The collective experience acquired by us and our families in the last century makes us act according to a certain algorithm. “In our family is so customary” – that is, the basic rules exist, as it were, in themselves and it is believed that they do not require an explanation, ”Ann Schutsenberger explains.
And if earlier they were really functional and could save a real family from hunger during the war or revolution, today their performance is not necessary, sometimes even excessively. We are trying to overcome the fear with their help, which belongs not to ourselves.
Ghosts of the past
Ann Schutsenberger introduces the concept of “transigenotic fear”, which to some extent explains our sometimes very strange and illogical fears.
It cites the following specific chain as an example: during the retreat of the Napoleon army from Russia, some of the soldiers experienced a traumatic shock. They “felt a breath of wind from the cannon core, who killed or crippled a friend or a fellow in arms nearby”.
At such moments, the soldiers were horrified, froze, lost their memory, that is, they demonstrated the symptoms of an exterior stressful disorder. But the strangest thing is that “the wave of shock that hit themselves was transmitted and some of their descendants. Sometimes, during certain periods of life, they cold to the bones or experience malaise, anxiety, spasms in the throat, nightmares, ”the psychotherapist writes.
We think about the nature of such fears when we finally clearly see that they are irrational and do not correspond to the context in which we are now located. But many of their lives « blow into the water », not noticing this discrepancy. And this can turn into a nightmare their everyday existence.