Category: Relationship DNA

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Stopping Limiting Family Patterns & Social Patterns

Family Patterns

Stopping Limiting Family Patterns & Social Patterns

The Game of Life Is a Series of Opening and Closing Doors

We’ve been working on stopping limiting family patterns and negative patterns within our family system for a long time. Sometimes the change happens, and there are other times that it doesn’t. So, let’s talk about the times it doesn’t work and the reasons and consequences of that, especially as they affect family members and family relationships across different family type structures, whether they involve a married couple, single-parent families, or one-parent families.

If we think of patterns as being housed behind different doors, it’s logical to imagine that some of those doors open onto awareness and opportunity and other doors open onto attitudes, thoughts, and actions that don’t serve us or our family structure. Obviously, the doors we want to open are the doors that give us opportunities and growth. The doors that take us back to destructive family pattern behavior that want to rest because they’ve served their purpose are supposed to remain closed.

When a door closes, seriously, leave it closed! Quit trying to open the darn thing again!

When a pattern is done, allow it to be done. Yes, behind each pattern is a generation of previous generations that needed that pattern. It’s a little bit like having an emotional DNA library that connects us to our family history. You can borrow an old pattern for reference, but just like a library book, you don’t want that book to become the only book you ever read in your life. It is there to teach and inform and then be released to benefit future generations. 

This is true whether you’re a biological parent, adoptive parent, or single parent working to create better well-being for your children.

Take “Brenda” for example. She always must have two of everything in her pantry. The minute one bag of flour or jar of tomato sauce gets used another is purchased to replace it. Now, this might sound like sensible planning, but when you ask Brenda why she does this, her answer reveals family dynamics that are less than healthy. “I could run out of food and starve to death,” she says, eyes wide and serious, showing the emotional distress that drives her behavior.

When asked “Who starved to death in your family?” she tears up and recalls her great-grandmother who made sure her children did not go hungry during the Great Depression—a period from the first half of the 20th century that affected many american families and created lasting generational patterns—by not eating enough herself. And she died. “Mother and grandma taught me to always always always have two of everything on the shelves,” she says nervously, revealing how family roles get passed down through generations. 

This type of experience was common in american life during that era, affecting married-couple families and creating patterns that persist even today stands as evidence of how trauma impacts family life.

Of course, both Brenda’s mother and grandmother suffer from high levels of anxiety and negative emotions. Which is not surprising if you watched your mother starve herself to death as a kid during what could be considered a financial hardship of epic proportions. And her grandmother vowed that would never happen again in her family unit. Her anxiety and her promise got passed down, and now Brenda carries the anxiety and the burden of a promise that is not hers to keep, affecting her sense of identity and adult lives. 

These patterns affect many african american families, native americans, and other ethnic group communities who experienced similar hardships, creating lasting impacts on family arrangements across generations.

Despite this, Brenda dreams of owning a new pantry. In fact, she has a scrapbook full of pictures of the most elegant pantries you could imagine. And the style she admires the most is sophisticated and somewhat minimalist. A new pantry was part of the incentive that encouraged Brenda to move out of the family patterns of behavior, and she was at the point of relaxing the pattern’s hold enough to actually have one constructed. And the thought excited her. 

The door on the old pattern was closing! This desire for change is common among young adults who seek to break free from limiting patterns, regardless of their family type or whether they come from married-couple families or grew up with a single parent.

But the day the carpenters were supposed to start renovating her pantry, the reality of an emptier, more functional pantry overwhelmed her with anxiety. After all, somebody could die. So, Brenda, even knowing it was just a relationship patterns issue playing out through her, chose to stay loyal to the family and the fear and cancelled the construction project. In her mind it was selfish to want something so contrary to the need for safety that her mother and grandmother had instilled in her. 

She even feared that if she indulged her selfish whim that she might call another great depression into being. A neat, uncluttered pantry wasn’t worth that! This type of decision-making shows how deeply ingrained patterns affect our view of marriage, committed relationship choices, and overall family life, often preventing us from achieving the better well-being we seek.

Holding Pattern

If you think this sounds crazy, think again. Every single one of us has patterns that we carry around that do not serve us and no longer make sense, affecting our sense of self and family composition. “George” is another example. He was the CEO of a very large company who would come home every day, rest for an hour, and then sprint off to his second job. 

Now, working two jobs may be the unfortunate situation for a lot of people, especially parents of young children in nonfamily households or those in single-parent families, but not the wealthy CEO of a big company who had already established successful career paths and likely had a college education that provided him opportunities.

When I asked him to share his thinking on having a second job, he blurted out that one needed to work very hard and not take things for granted in order to make sure the nuclear family stayed safe. When I pointed out that he had plenty of money, investments, and two homes, he burst into tears saying, “My immigrant father and grandfather worked two to three jobs at a time to get the family on its feet. If they had to work so hard, how dare I come home after one job at the end of the day?” This response showed how personality traits and family dynamics from previous generations still controlled his behavior.

His doctor, his wife, and even his father and grandfather, who were both still alive, were all telling him to slow down before he burned-out and become ill. As we talked, he became aware that the original pattern of extremely hard work was no longer working for anyone in his family structure. He “got it.” And when he did, he quit the unneeded second job and took his whole family, including his father and grandfather, on a much-needed vacation, providing the emotional support they all needed. 

This breakthrough often requires family therapy to help individuals recognize how patterns from previous eras no longer serve modern family life, especially as divorce rates and changing family arrangements create new challenges for today’s families.

BUT, like Brenda, here’s what happens when you walk back through those doors to the old patterns. As soon as he brought work and family relationships into balance, he began to get invited to sit on corporate boards. That might have been fine, except that the old pattern of work, work, work snatched him back into the systemic trance. And, before he knew it, he was back at the doctor’s office receiving yet another very stern warning to slow down, showing how destructive family pattern behavior can persist even when we know better. 

This cycle affects people across all backgrounds and demonstrates how ethnic differences in family expectations can create similar pressures, whether in traditional American family structures or among people of different races who share common immigrant experiences.

The loyalty to the old pattern was making him ill and affecting his parents’ emotional well-being. And this time it took an equally stern warning from his father and grandfather to “stop or else,” for it to finally sink in. This situation illustrates how modern families face unique challenges that didn’t exist in World War II era families, where survival often depended on extreme work patterns that are no longer necessary in contemporary American life.

Investigation

I invite you to write down a list of patterns you keep going back to and ask yourself the following questions, considering how they affect your family members and intimate relationships, whether you’re in your first marriage, a committed relationship, or exploring new marriages after previous short-term relationships:

  • What or who am I being loyal to holding onto this pattern?
  • What is the fear driving the pattern, and how does it affect my expectations of romantic love or ideal of romantic love?
  • Where have I seen a loved one struggle and how have I perpetuated that struggle within our family system?
  • What promise did I make as a child that I would do (or not do) “X,” and how does this impact my view of marriage or passionate romantic love?
  • What is this costing me and my family unit in terms of better well-being?
  • Where have I opened a closed door?
  • Who was I being loyal to when I did that, and how does it affect future generations and the cultural importance of marriage in our family?

It takes a great deal of courage to walk through a new door and embrace a new pattern that might seem contradictory to the original, especially when it challenges established family roles and generational patterns that have shaped our sense of identity. But life demands growth. Systems need it, and you are the one called to make the change happen. Family systems or social systems, systems in general are begging for us to let closed doors stay closed so that new doors may open, allowing family members to develop healthier relationship patterns and break free from negative patterns that no longer serve them. 

This is particularly important in today’s world where we see higher rates of divorce, changing proportion of families that include same-sex marriages, interracial marriages, and diverse family arrangements that require new approaches to creating lifelong marriage and security of marriage bonds.

Systems don’t mind if we take a quick peek to learn from the past and understand our family history. But history is there to educate us, not to trap us in destructive family pattern cycles. The future has its own place and is asking us to see it and go for it. For it is only when we have the courage to open new doors that great advances in humanity occur, benefiting not just our immediate nuclear family, but future generations who will inherit the family structure and family dynamics we create today. 

Whether we examine families at the median age of years of age when major life transitions occur, or consider how american marriages end and begin anew, the important ideal remains the same: creating healthier patterns that serve both current and future generations across all family type structures in our diverse american family landscape.

A Systemic Expert & Executive Coach, Judy Wilkins-Smith assists high-performance individuals, Fortune 500 executives, and legacy families to end limiting cycles and reframe apparent challenges into lasting breakthroughs and peak performance by guiding them through and beyond hidden Emotional DNA patterns. Her books Decoding Your Emotional Blueprint and The Hidden Power in Your DNA are two exciting guides on your journey to purpose.

 

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Change Can Be Scary – With Great Change Comes Great Opportunity

Change Can Be Scary - With Great Change Comes Great Opportunity

Change can be scary for most of us. Stepping outside your comfort zone, especially during major life changes, can be downright terrifying. It tends to unlock heightened emotions as we rush to protect what we feel is familiar and right. In other words, we protect the ways in which we are accustomed to belonging. At the other end of the spectrum, we also know, or at least suspect, that being the kind of person who can embrace change provides us with great opportunities to shift, grow, and prosper. But, first, we must get out of the way of our deeply embedded, and not always helpful, beliefs and mindsets. In other words, what we perceive as right or wrong, good or bad, possible or not possible.

Change Perspective

If we stay stuck in those mindsets there is little forward momentum. But if we are willing to look at our current situation from a different angle, we find new ways to flourish in a changing world. For example, during the pandemic, when everybody was locked down, a lot of people lost their new job and a lot of opportunities went away. But for some people, even small change turned out to be a good thing. I remember hearing about one woman who didn’t have a job, whose husband got laid off. Despite her intense fear of change, she started baking because it was one of the things that she did whenever she was stressed. That morning, she baked a dozen cupcakes and frosted them beautifully. And just as she finished, one of her friends stopped by and said, “Oh, my goodness, I forgot. I need a dozen cakes, or at least cupcakes, for a bake sale. Would you mind selling me those?”

And at that moment the lightbulb switched on. These unexpected turns of fate led to a new beginning. The woman sold that first batch and made more cupcakes and sold those. She baked and baked until she had to get a commercial kitchen to handle all the orders. Finally, she decided, “What the heck,” and opened a cupcake shop. Post-pandemic, she and her husband were thriving.

Powerful Adaptation

We call this agility—a well sought-after quality a lot of companies look for in their employees. Basically, those who can adapt and change can grow. And in case you hadn’t noticed, change is the name of the game at the moment. Global shifts are happening, including wars, political divides, and environmental changes—giant pattern makers are affecting every single one of us. How you react to what is happening will decide your immediate future, affect the futures of others around you, and affect the lives of your descendants.  

For example, if we look at political situation, you may choose to dig in your heels, distance yourself from those who think differently, blame, shame, and name whatever doesn’t fit with your world view. And this may well be a viewpoint that didn’t even originate with you, but rather with some family member in your ancestral lineup. And you may pass this restrictive view on to your children. The choice lies in you. Are you going to stay running on rinse and repeat and saddle your kids with this limitation? Or will you be the difference you are looking for? 

Instead of distancing yourself from others you don’t agree with, can you find ways to connect? Can you bring people together instead of being part of the dynamic that pushes people apart? It’s very easy to be reactive. But it pays much higher dividends when we are creative! Every good businessperson understands one thing very well: Life and business are all about relationships. Relationships are far more valuable than opinions. They understand the importance of finding commonalities that will build a good stakeholder network, no matter what is happening. They literally cannot afford to find themselves stuck in one camp or another. Instead, they learn how pivot as the climate demands. 

Change Tips

When differences and challenges land in your lap, take a breath, stand back and look at your current situation around you. In times of change, assess the situation as objectively as possible. The only way forward is to ask yourself: Can you see a way forward? Are things really as bad as you first imagine? Back in the 1960s, the famous pop-group, The Beatles, were considered degenerate and morally corrupt until enough people enjoyed their music and they became legends. It’s helpful to ask ourselves what we are protecting and why. Is what we’re protecting still relevant now? Or is it asking to change?

  • Ask yourself “How does this matter to me? Is the situation triggering a family pattern?  Is this situation something I can do something creative with?” 

Historically, we tend to resist change and label it ‘bad.’ It can take decades or centuries depending on the force of resistance in response to a powerful agent of change. Sometimes change can even can feel wrong or evil. At these times, it’s really important to ask ourselves what about the change provokes such a strong reaction for us. 

Curiosity is a great antidote to dogma—it is how we grow the world. It is what allowed the flat Earth to become the round Earth. It is how we have electricity and technology. Progress happens when we get curious and start exploring instead of fighting, even in unfavorable circumstances.

  • Engage instead of argue. Try to find solutions that work for everyone.

  • Literally ask the other person, “How can I understand you? How do we approach our differences in a way that leaves us both in a good place? What is the opportunity here for both of us?”

There is always an opportunity if you are willing to look. Under new conditions, what might seem challenging at first can open new doors. Dogmatic points of view, when explored systemically and explored together, tend to be portals to possibility. When we unwind one pattern, we have the opportunity to create another, leading to what could be the most beautiful blessing.

Change, by its nature, is unsettling, and so is opportunity. For example, the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence in recent years have sparked widespread anxiety about job displacement and ethical dilemmas. Just like what happened during the Industrial Revolution, the AI revolution is triggering fears that this will bring about humanity’s downfall. Yet this technology also offers unprecedented opportunities for innovation, art and beauty, connectivity, and problem-solving—potentially creating a new future for all of us.

Once again, humanity will have to navigate how to enjoy great opportunity without destroying ourselves. Perhaps if we pause for a minute and think it through, this will pay us dividends. Rather than destruction we may be able to break this pattern and introduce balance, allowing ourselves to create rather than react. Bottomline, change is the lifeblood of the Universe. Without it we cannot grow.

Emotional DNA
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How to Break Generational Cycles Through Language

How to Break Generational Cycles Through Language

Sometimes it’s hard not to think that life is “doing it to us,” and that some people are lucky and others are not. As a generational cycle breaker, understanding the effects of generational trauma is the first place to start. When family members continually struggle with certain issues like lack of education, dysfunctional ways of relating, addiction, failure in careers, or an inability to create financial success, they’re often caught in vicious cycles that seem impossible to break.
 
What’s actually going on is more complex than a simple curse – it’s intergenerational trauma manifesting through family patterns that affect the nervous system in profound ways. These negative cycles often stem from childhood trauma that wasn’t properly addressed in previous generations, creating a lasting impact that reverberates through time.
 
Sometimes the repeating pattern in your family of origin is based upon an initial traumatic experiences that occurred in the family. It is then passed down to the rest of the family, complete with the accompanying emotional disturbances. Working with a trauma-informed therapist or attending support groups can be part of the process of understanding these generational patterns.
 
For example, I had a gentleman client come to me who fearfully reported he was sure he was going to lose a leg before he was 55 and become an amputee. This would seem to be a wildly unlikely possibility—a case of an irrational phobia showing up out of nowhere. But diving into his family history through family therapy, I learned that every oldest male in his family system for seven generations had lost their right leg one way or another.
 
It had started with a great-great-something-grandfather losing his leg while on a whaling ship in the Pacific Ocean. His son lost a leg in a logging accident somewhere up in the Pacific Northwest. Then his son lost his right leg after getting shot in a hunting accident and the wound turned gangrenous. Yet another ancestor lost a leg in World War I. The stories went on and on. Cursed, right? 
 
No! Truth is, once my client understood that he was dealing with an inheritance of Emotional DNA—in this case a hardened belief in the family “curse”—once he was able to obtain a broader view of his family’s system dynamics which led to insights and shifts that enabled him to change his thinking that losing a leg was inevitable, he shifted what had seemed like a curse. Once he grasped that the pattern showing up was not fated and didn’t belong to him unless he held onto it and made it so, he was able to change his thinking and rewire his brain and body. And he is still walking around on two legs to this day.

Self-Talk and Limiting Conversations

No matter what pattern you’ve inherited from your own parents, you can take that inheritance and work with it in a way that enhances your life and the lives of those around you. Through trauma-informed care, many family members are discovering new patterns and new things they never thought possible. In other words, everything boils down to the act and art of shaping your life the way you want it.
 
Life is a series of choices. And one of the most obvious ways we do or don’t shape our lives is how we choose our inner self-talk and our outer conversations. Except, of course, that our internal and external-talk often isn’t just ours either! Many times, that inner conversation about how stupid we are, how unattractive we are, or what a failure we are started a long time ago with an event that created those thoughts and language in an ancestor long gone—thoughts and language that still govern us today.
 
 Great-grandfather said, “Money is the root of all evil,” and to this day the whole family struggles with and fears money and doesn’t understand why. Or perhaps there was an early event in your life that started those kinds of thoughts rolling. It really doesn’t matter. The question is, “Do I want to continue to buy into my limiting thoughts and identities and pass them down to future generations? Or do I want to be the change agent in my family and learn the art of shaping my own life?”

Systemic Language

Words mold our reality on an individual, community, and also global level, creating war and peace, castes and creeds, hope and despair, joy and sorrow. As a generational cycle-breaker, you have the power to transform these inherited patterns. An entire system of thought and action can be dismantled in one short sentence. “The war is over.” Or “Your disease is gone.” Or “You have the right to vote.” One word, “Guilty,” can end a life. 
 
Examine how unhappy, unsuccessful people talk, and you hear excuses and words and sentences of doom over and over again. “I knew I couldn’t do it. Everything I touch turns to ___. There’s just no winning. It isn’t my fault. Etcetera.” Like my client, who believed he was cursed, we curse ourselves. Instead of lighting a fire of inspiration that sets us free, we constantly feed the flames that make ourselves feel all sorts of negative emotions. And sentences of doom aren’t just the typical self-derogatory examples like those just listed. Any systemic sentence that drags you down and keeps you stuck is a sentence of doom because it dooms you to more of the same. 
 
“Patience is a virtue” until it isn’t. “No pain, no gain” might get you through that business startup and those seemingly endless 18-hour days. But once the business is up and running and successful, if you keep running the same line, all you’re going to get is an apparently successful life accompanied by continued suffering. The good news is that words and sentences of doom can also serve as our liberators because they contain the seeds for identifying and stopping limiting patterns in their tracks once we see them and acknowledge them.
 
I had a highly successful female client who loved that “no pain no gain” quote from Jane Fonda the “workout queen” of the 1970s, and used it all the time. She came to me wondering why, despite all her money and accomplishments, she never seemed to be able to relax and enjoy life. As it turned out, there were other self-punishing patterns she’d picked up from her family. But it was the moment when she caught herself unconsciously using that phrase in defense of her work ethic that she “got it.”  
 
“No pain no gain” was like a torch shining a light on the foundation of her whole life. She used that key inner and outer phrase as a touchstone and way to examine her whole life and see where she was imprisoning herself and then set herself free.

Exercise

Until we see and face a limiting systemic sentence straight on, it becomes a sentence of doom and a not-so-silent saboteur. Seeing it and acknowledging its existence is unbelievably powerful, because it is a declaration of what is. It identifies the truth of what’s going on and calls it by name, allowing investigation into how it has been created, how it is running your life, and how it can be disentangled and transformed. 
 
If you are serious about shaping your own life, take the time to sit down and examine your life. Write down where you’re stuck, sad, and/or hurting. Also identify what you would like to have and experience in your life that you don’t have. This is a process of discovering “what is.”
  • In light of these insights, examine your thoughts and how you speak

  • Are there systemic “sentences of doom” running in your brain? Ideas, words, fears you can identify that might be triggering and/or supporting your stuckness and problem?

Once you’ve identified your limiting language, it’s then time to discover “what’s possible.” In order to turn this pattern you’ve established around, you want to create language that is stronger than the limiting language you’ve been using. This is called developing the language of resolution, or creating sentences of resolution. For example, my Jane Fonda fan client above helped resolved her “No pain, no gain” addiction by adopting the sentence “No pain, no strain.”

  • Write down your words or “sentences of doom.”
  • What words or sentences come to mind as powerful antidotes?

​For example, if you have a firm belief “I’ll never get ahead,” or “The cards are stacked against me,” sentences of resolution for you might be something like: “I know how to make this happen! And if not, I can figure it out!” And “The cards are stacked in my favor.” 

  • Write down your sentences of resolution.
  • Put them where you can see them.
  • Practice saying them at every opportunity until they become your new language habit.

Welcome to the art of shaping your life through language!

Emotional DNA
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Steps to Breaking the Family Cycle with Genealogy 3.0

Family tree, geneology

Steps to Breaking the Family Cycle with Genealogy 3.0

Most of us are concerned about limiting thoughts, emotions and actions—many of which are inherited—and we look for steps we can take to start breaking the family cycle. Yet, most of us don’t understand that genealogy gives us the tools to do so.

In traditional genealogy, aka Genealogy 1.0, we realize where we and the rest of our family belong in today’s world. For example, we get our DNA results back and learn that our family of origin is Norwegian Anglo Saxon with a hint of East Asian blood. Now we have a “place.” We have a history. But that is only the beginning of the story.

Unfortunately, Genealogy 1.0 tells us nothing about our emotional DNA—inherited of thoughts, feelings and actions that can sometimes end up as dysfunctional behaviors that unconsciously run our lives. It tells us nothing about our generational legacy of emotional issues and habits, our toxic patterns as well as our potentials. It fails to reveal how we can effectively deal with these issues, make positive changes to resolve inherited patterns in a healthy manner. It can’t do this because it’s all about our physical DNA, physical influences and physical relationships.

Breaking the family cycle

The good news is, by using what I call Genealogy 3.0 (Which includes what I call Genealogy 2.0—more on that step in another article) we can use genealogy and systemic work & constellations to deal with dysfunctional family issues and vicious cycles. How? Well, geneticists have discovered that traumatic events like earthquakes, floods, and other major earth changes, as well as sociopolitical events like wars, diasporas, and economic crashes, all have major emotional as well as physical impacts on the people who lived through them.

For example, the Holocaust, 9/11, Covid-19, the Great Depression, the stock market crashes of 1929 and 2008, wars, politics, women’s liberation, the tech revolution—you name it—the emotions experienced and the decisions made by our ancestors who lived through these events are often passed down to us epigenetically and culturally.

Some events can affect us for a long time—even for generations. But by using genealogical information, we can track the kinds of events that may have affected the nervous systems
of our ancestors (Genealogy 2.0) and come to an understanding about our own feelings and our positive as well as destructive behaviors, thus setting ourselves up to become a generational cycle-breaker.

In other words, genealogy can show us the emotional patterns and the dysfunctional ways our ancestors handled situations, allowing us to identify toxic behaviors. Then we use tools from systemic work & constellations to shift those bad behaviors and our mental health in the right direction

We are not victims of dysfunctional family cycles nor helpless to change them. We can take a different path and develop healthy ways of thinking, acting and living outside of our generational legacy.

Intergenerational trauma

So, let’s talk about behavior patterns and family cycles like alcoholism, abuse, criminal behavior, bankruptcy, divorce, early death, chronic ill health. How do those multigenerational dysfunctional behaviors in your family system affect you? Two ways: 1) You repeat the cycle, or 2) you decide that a different way is needed. Make no mistake, you are the decision maker. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions may be in response to an event within your family system, but you are still the one choosing the way that you will respond and devolve or evolve in the future.

You are far more capable than you imagine. Rather than being a victim of destructive habits born out of transgenerational trauma, you are in fact a co-creator of your reality and the cycles within your system. By looking at your genealogy and the events within it, you can see what is in your family system and begin to make conscious decisions about what you want to do with what’s there.

Intergenerational trauma

First off, it helps to think of yourself as a conscious, first-generation student of your family system. Be aware that this process of studying and shifting intergenerational trauma by examining your own feelings is going to take you out of your comfort zone. But pat yourself on the back and know you are taking the first step in the right direction by stopping a vicious cycle of dysfunctional ways and poor family relationships, not to mention making a difference in your own life.

The good news is that once you start establishing healthy boundaries by working with your emotional DNA, the members of your family that come after you can have an entirely different generational legacy.

Some simple steps to breaking cycles of transgenerational trauma in our family system include:

  • Being willing to look at issues without judgement
  • Being willing to shift patterns and behaviors without fear or resentment
  • Awareness that destructive habits are simply patterns waiting to be disrupted and created into something new
  • Understanding that your family system contains all the clues you need for an incredible life
  • Realizing that the only thing stopping you from enjoying a life you love may be the way you view your life and that of the rest of the family.
  • Make happiness and gratitude a part of your daily life

These simple steps begin to rewire the way you think, feel, and act. It may not happen in a single day, but the best adventures don’t. Your genealogy is your own personal adventure and it is a mighty one. You are a linchpin in all of this. Far from just inheriting an ancient history, you are the creator of the present and the future.

And please understand that not all inherited emotional DNA patterns are limiting. Some inheritable patterns—like resilience, determination, and a “can do” attitude—are extremely positive. Even if you have inherited limiting patterns of emotional DNA (and we all have!), you need to know that inherited negative emotional DNA patterns are neither destiny nor doom.

They are portals to possibility.

Dimensionalizing your family system

One of the best ways to get a handle on negative cycles, abusive behavior, and destructive habits in your family system is by creating something called a “constellation” which is a process of dimensionalizing your family of origin.

Constellations enable you to take your thoughts, issues, feelings, etc. and literally set them all out in front of you in such a way that you get to see, hear, touch, feel and walk through what goes on inside your system and inside your head by creating a physical, three-dimensional model of your family system or a particular issue within that system. So, here goes!

  • Get out a chess or checkers set and assign a family member to each piece.
  • Write down significant facts about each family member on a piece of paper and place it under the chess/checker piece you’ve assigned that person.
  • If you don’t have a game set, just use the pieces of paper with the person’s name written on it.
  • Arrange the chess piece/papers on the floor in a pattern that seems right to you, reflecting family dynamics. For example, maybe you place your parents far apart and different siblings near each parent. Or maybe “Dad” is closer to “Grandpa” (his father) than anybody else. Or maybe your parents are close, but you find yourself setting the papers for yourself and your siblings far out in left field.
  • There is no “wrong” way to arrange your family system as long the relationship spatially between the family members looks/feels right to you.
  • Step back and examine your family constellation.

Can you begin to identify patterns like emotional neglect, bad behaviors including abusive behavior and where and who these patterns flowed from?

  • Ask yourself how you are affected by each person. How are they a part of your life?
  • Don’t judge, just look.

The beauty about beginning to identify how and where negative patterns arise in a family system is that we can clearly see they didn’t start with us. We are not to blame. Nobody really is. Dysfunctional ways of acting and thinking are simply patterns that once upon a time helped an ancestor cope with a difficult situation/event. But now, three generations later, that coping pattern no longer works.

And remember, you also have inherited many empowering patterns. Don’t forget to write those down as well.

A good primer for looking at your life through a genealogical lens is my latest book, The Hidden Power in Your DNA, which takes a deep dive into Genealogy 2.0 and 3.0. Both incorporate systemic work and constellations, which are powerful tools for illuminating your genealogy and expanding your life.

For information about my November 2024 event “Vault from Fear to Freedom,” please check  click here.

Emotional DNA
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Four Principles Behind Emotional Triggers in Relationships

Triggers in Relationships

Four Principles Behind Emotional Triggers in Relationships

Systemically, if we look at emotional triggers in relationships and the accompanying emotional reactions we have, we find ourselves back at the principles that govern all systems: belonging, order, and balance of give and receive. But how do we create a healthy relationship with someone and generate positive emotional responses that support us?

Raw Spots Around Belonging

The first step is to understand our need for belonging. If we look at belonging, we often find ourselves triggered by specific events into various negative reactions and coping mechanisms when we don’t understand how to belong or figure out if we even do belong.

Fear around not belonging—often based on childhood experiences and past events—is a big emotional trigger. This major trigger takes on various shapes and forms, such as I’m not good enough, smart enough, big enough, small enough, rich enough, humble enough, etc., to belong.  

We tell ourselves stories about all the above and interpret peoples’ actions and reactions through the lens of an old traumatic event. 

For example, a classic is when we send an email or a text and receive a quick, bare-bones reply. Immediately, our subconscious mind comes into play, and our brain associates the terse reply with traumatic memories, stirring up our own triggers and defensive behaviors. We start thinking things like, “Oh, my goodness, I’m in trouble.” Or “I knew they would think that was a stupid idea. Will I get fired over this? Maybe I should just resign.” 

Only to find out 10 minutes later that the person on the other end of the email was flying out the door to the dentist and simply wanted to be sure they responded. That critical inner voice beat us up for nothing creating an intense emotional reaction, as the trauma triggers shot our cortisol levels and maybe even our blood pressure through the roof.

Good Idea

Of course, there is an antidote for this situation. But we are woefully bad at applying this good idea, which is: 

1) Quit making assumptions and assuming ill intent and 

2) Actually have the courage just to ask “Hey, what’s going on?” Don’t you know we could save ourselves a bunch of unnecessarily negative reactions and painful feelings doing that!

However, that kind of open communication in itself is a trigger with its own set of traumatic event trust issues based on past experiences. If you’ve never experienced open communication in a supportive environment before, a whole new set of fears and painful feelings show up at the very thought. “They’ll get mad if I question them!” Or “Who am I to question?” Or “They’re going to think I’m pushy. I definitely think I should leave. I just can’t handle the conflict.” 

Making a Huge Deal out of Nothing

The next step is to notice how we often think of what could be a healthy emotional discussion as “conflict” and how this kind of association (the root cause of which is often based in childhood experiences) can trigger an immediate flight response? 

Surprisingly, once we learn to have such discussions in a safe space, get beyond our trust issues, and discover we don’t die engaging in open communication, we actually begin to get closer to the people around us. We find out more about them and let them get to know us and thus build healthy relationships and support groups around us wherever we go. We begin to feel that we belong. 

Building strong and healthier relationships through open communication is especially healthy for adoptees who sometimes find themselves permanently triggered by their need to belong, thus subconsciously setting up similar situations over and over again that prove to them (in their own mind) that they’re right—that they don’t truly belong. What a setup!

Adoptees who do well know how to hold the space for and acknowledge their biological parents, even though they don’t know them. They can also turn their fear, based in their childhood experiences, into a superpower. Being so sensitive to the negative emotions around belonging, and the root cause of those negative emotions, they often turn out to be social connectors, making sure there is a place for everyone around them. They become known for their ability to give everyone a place.

Order

If we look at the principle of order, it tells us exactly where we belong in our family system. It’s literally a matter of which family members were born first, then second, then third and so on. Being born first isn’t “better” than being fourth or tenth in line. It’s simply the natural order in which people in your family “showed up” on planet Earth.

When it comes to the principle of order, our exact place in the lineup is where we are the most capable and innately feel the most comfortable. Which means if we find ourselves “out of order,” we can become emotionally triggered by the situation and other similar situations when we are asked to be too big or need to step up in a difficult situation.

For example, say your parents have serious alcohol or drug problems and you’re required to act as the adult in the family—basically taking care of them. Or perhaps both your older siblings have gone off the rails and as child number three, you feel the need to step up and act like the eldest “responsible one,” making your parents proud. In both cases, you are definitely “out of order” and may have to carry a bigger load than you should.  

Mental health professionals see children becoming overly responsible all the time, picking up a crucial role in the family that requires them to be too big. This kind of effective coping strategy can trigger feelings of being burdened or having to take care of everybody—a strategy that can easily become a habit and extend itself into similar situations in the workplace. If the trigger of always having to step up into roles larger than you is severe enough, you can easily end up collapsing when the burden(s) are removed because they have become your identity and whole purpose in life. 

The complex world of emotional triggers is…well, complex. For example, the exact same kind of dynamic can occur if you’re required to be too small. Perhaps a sibling needed a lot of attention growing up and you stepped back to take up less space. Other family members supported this action and you ended up subconsciously believing that being small and invisible was the best way to handle similar situations.

Or perhaps a teacher tells you “Nobody likes bossy people.” Or maybe a friend accuses you of being an unlikeable “know it all.”  Humiliated, you may not recover from this kind of traumatic event. And even though you know how to lead (perhaps you were born the oldest of your siblings), your nervous system may require you to stay small for safety, melting into the shadows, not wishing to be labeled unlikeable or bossy ever again. 

NOTE: In both cases the emotional triggers around order often still revert into whether we feel like we belong or not. We are so tightly wired as human beings to belong that any lack in that area can make us feel like we’re dying.

Balance of Give & Receive

In our personal relationships, the one who gives too much gets too big, and this often destroys relationships. The other person can never measure up and is emotionally triggered. Feeling small, they feel compelled by a flight response to remove themselves. On the flip side, the person who takes too much (including taking up too much energetic space) can end up feeling entitled, and end up being perceived as arrogant and selfish, triggering emotions of resentment in other people.

Relationships work best when the balance of give and receive is consistently achieved with healthy boundaries. A good balance of give and receive with a clear intent to build a relationship tends to trigger emotional health, continual growth and positive change. The relationship becomes a dynamic adventure where bumps and hiccups are worked out in a safe space due to the abundant currency of goodwill. 

Balance in the Workplace

In our jobs, most often the dynamic is “We give our work and we receive pay.” There is a balance of give and receive that is implicitly understood. Yet even here there can be echoes from previous relationships that were out of balance that can cause emotional triggers in a current situation. 

When the balance of give and receive is off at work, you commonly hear things like, “I’m overworked and under appreciated.” Or “My whole life belongs to this company.” You can see and feel the resentment. Rather than address the imbalance, people tend to revert to past avoidance behavior and arrive late and leave early and call in sick a lot. 

Many of the emotional triggers we have, either at work or at home, are also meta-patterns or multi-generational patterns. They are the result of unaddressed intentions and assumptions or unresolved events and patterns in the past that we inherit—in other words, emotional DNA. 

A Healthy Way to Achieve Personal Growth

The most important thing you can do for yourself is to explore your emotional triggers and understand where they came from. They are gold. For every emotional trigger there is an antidote and a path waiting to take you to a higher level of expression. 

The adventure is to spot them and create opportunities for new patterns. Every emotional trigger is a clue asking you to decode and recode them. Once you understand what to do with them, you can use one new thought, one new feeling, and one new action every day to rewire your brain and change the patterns of the system. Here’s how:

  • Pick an emotional trigger.
  • Write down your thoughts, feelings, and actions around it.
  • Which of the principles is does this trigger belong to?
  • When did it first begin for you?
  • What was happening in your life at that time?
  • What assumptions did you make? 
  • Did you ever check those assumptions out?
  • Do you still operate under those assumptions? (A client of mine had to rethink his entire life once he discovered an assumption he’d made was completely incorrect.)
  • What would happen if you checked those assumptions out?
  • What would happen if they weren’t true anymore?
  • If they are true, how can you think, feel, and act differently around them?
  • How can you change that emotional trigger to an emotion that serves you better?
  • Now, take action and follow through on those changes!

The most important thing about emotional triggers is to understand that you are the master, not the triggers. You are not at their mercy. You can choose to have them serve you as you finally understand their source, take charge and choose positive change. When we are mindful, we can turn triggers into transformers and create deep emotional support for ourselves!

To find out more about how to grow your emotional DNA, attend one of our events this year! For more information about my 2024 events click here.

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How to Manage Emotional Triggers in Relationships

How to Manage Emotional Triggers in Relationships

Emotional triggers in relationships and the negative reactions that result often stem from multi-generational patterns around events or events about which we have made decisions in our own lives. They are strong, hypnotic, frequently irrational, and can seem almost nonsensical until we look at them systemically, and then everything swings into focus.

To the one whose raw spots are triggered, they may make complete sense. On the other hand, their painful feelings and emotional reactions may leave them bewildered and confused, wondering why on earth they reacted to something that often seems fairly innocuous.

With intimate relationships, we quite often bond in the wounds of personal histories, past trauma and childhood experiences. In other words, we expect a spouse or current partner to make up for what we did or didn’t get growing up.

We suffer together in what should be a healthy, supportive environment, and it seems to work until one of the couples matures past the coping mechanisms, and then everything changes. Suffering is no longer attractive, and they have to move away.

Good News

The wound is a very powerful source of negative emotions and limiting patterns. But we don’t have to keep being run by these painful feelings and raw spots from our past.

Negative reactions, trust issues, and painful feelings are indicators that the negative emotional patterns are trying to stop and become the pivot point for healthy patterns trying to start.

By diving into and exploring these patterns in a healthy way, we can see where they limit our ability to connect and bond.

We can see where our lack of healthy boundaries came from, the root cause, and then what relationships could become if we use the trauma triggers to transform rather than to suffer. In other words, this is an area where you can thrive and grow if you just know how to look at the situation.

Complexities of Our Emotional Triggers

So what, really, is an emotional trigger? Why do they happen, and what can we do about them?

The origins of common emotional triggers are often a response to a decision we make about an event. It’s not the event itself. We stand up to speak at school and the teacher tells us we did a terrible job and we make that a huge deal and turn it into a traumatic event that creates a negative truth about our public speaking ability.

We eventually develop a huge emotional trigger about public speaking in general, never speak up ourselves, and wonder why we are not called upon to be leaders. Thus, we create our own jail cell. The teacher casts the spell with their critical words, and we swallow it whole, making it mean something awful, and then live our lives around the awfulness.

Emotional triggers happen because we have created a certain mindset around something. Then, when that something shows up in our lives, just like AI, we automatically start to spew out our already-cemented-in-place beliefs, judging it good, bad, scary, evil, exciting, horrific—emotionally reacting according to this fabricated truth in our minds. Only it’s not the truth, it’s just a concept we have created and labeled the truth.

Family Trauma Triggers

In families, we see this all the time. We swallow bits and pieces of sayings, beliefs, feelings, actions, events, and conclusions passed down to us that hold strong emotional responses to a particular situation—whether it’s about sex and marriage, what kind of work we should do, or religious beliefs, etc. We hold onto traumatic memories. And then think these triggering sayings, beliefs, feelings, actions, events, and conclusions are ours.

We do this unconsciously in order to belong. But here’s the thing: You can change! You, believe it or not, can play a crucial role as the antidote to these triggers. They are in your hands, waiting for you to evolve yourself—and humanity—beyond them in a healthy way. (Haven’t you wanted to help change the world for the better?)

Personal Growth: First Step

When you’re in emotional reactions to past experiences and patterns, if you can look at what’s happening and learn to be consciously aware of what you’re feeling instead of staying in the intense emotional reaction, you can make a choice about how you process emotional triggers. Instead of being at their mercy, you can use them to grow and thrive. It’s all about being conscious, aware and at choice.

I can see you shaking your head, but it’s true. How often have you heard someone say after some difficult illness or other traumatic event, “That was the best thing that ever happened to me! I learned so much! It jolted me out of my complacency and forced me to grow up!”

What’s happening is they’re doing something they were born to do—expanding and creating positive change while breaking negative cycles! And when they have done that once, they know they are no longer at the mercy of emotional triggers and that if they continue to choose wisely, they will evolve and grow.

Passing the Buck

Patterns (including emotional triggers) have a relentless way of resurfacing until you see what they are trying to show you, and do what has to be done to stop a pattern that needs to stop and start a new healthy pattern of your own that serves you and the world around you.

If we don’t step up, then we pass the buck to future generations and force our children and grandchildren to have to deal with them. Sometimes this takes generations because, as humans, we have been programmed to believe that playing and being small is sacred and wonderful. That we are helpless victims of circumstance. And we are not!

A Story of Positive Change

Emotional triggers in relationships are keys to an incredible life. Learn to use them and you will be investing in developing deep, rich and healthier relationships. You will be investing in your own life adventure. So, let’s take a look at one example together.

“Lena” attended one of my events and asked to do a constellation. As we sat together the first words out of her mouth were: “I’m about to get a divorce from my idiot of a husband.” (Her husband was in the room with her and I remember thinking, “Wow this is going to be interesting.” I even had visions of physically wrestling them apart!)

Now, early on in my career that might have thrown me or perhaps I would have rushed to make peace and restore order, but as I have evolved within my practice, I remained curious and silent, letting her proceed.

“This is the third idiot I’ve had to divorce,” she continued. Really? Now that piqued my curiosity. “We are not good at selecting good husbands,” she sighed.

“Who are ‘we’?” I asked.

“My mother and grandmother had the same problem,” She said. “I don’t know why I thought I would be any different.”

“How about your great-grandmother?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, she had three idiots too.” Lena responded.

“Tell me about them,” I asked.

“Well!” she huffed. “The original idiot was the one who took great-grandmother’s fortune and lost it all on a business venture. It was risky even back then and great-grandma had to divorce him. But she learned her lesson.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, with the other two as soon as there was even a whiff of financial stupidity, she divorced them. She didn’t marry again after the third one and wound up becoming a successful business woman in her own right. Something unheard of back then.”

I asked her if we could place representatives for each of the men and women involved in her family lineage and so began her constellation. As we placed family representatives all over the room she turned to me and asked “So, is there a pattern here or something?”

The participants in the room began to laugh while she looked plainly confused. Then we added a representative for money, and when I asked the money representative to find its place, it tested several spaces before standing right next to the representative for her great-grandmother’s first husband. Then the representative moved across to her great-grandmother before finally moving to stand between Lena and her current husband’s representatives.

“Were there any sayings about men and money in your family?” I asked.

“Oh, sure,” she replied. “A man who risks money is an idiot. Divorce him before he loses it all. Also never trust a man with your money.”

“And how does that affect you?” I asked.

“I take care of my own money,” she said. “And if I see a man putting his pwn money at risk, then it’s time to divorce him.” She looked pointedly at her husband who just shook his head.

“So, all the women in this system learned to become financially responsible?” I queried.

“We’ve all made sure our money is in the bank and not at risk,” she agreed proudly. Then she went on to share that she was so risk averse she wouldn’t even put her money in high yield savings accounts. Her money didn’t grow. But it was safe.

“So, aside from being an idiot, what’s your husband like?” I asked.

“Well, he’s kind, intelligent, funny and warm. All the things I could want in a partner. But the whole money thing outweighs all that.”

When I pointed out that these thoughts and feelings didn’t come from her and didn’t belong to her—that they had begun and belonged with her great-grandmother, she looked confused. I pointed out those words and situations from the past had triggered a flight response in her.

It took awhile, because the major trigger was so ingrained, but eventually she saw that those triggers and sayings were costing her healthy relationships and her emotional health —not to mention the possiblity of financial growth.

Suddenly, she started to laugh and looked at her husband and then at me with better understanding. “My husband is actually a very wealthy man,” she said, thoughtfully. “He knows where to invest and how. He’s offered to teach me, but I didn’t trust him not to crash it all and send me away with nothing. I had no idea my thoughts and specific actions were defensive behaviors and that a pattern was triggering them, running the show. I thought it was all real and true!”

As is so often the case, what was once a solution for the great-grandmother had become a problem for the great-grandaughter. Once solutions outlive their usefulness they often become problems or limitations that keep us stuck, going nowhere.

Personal growth exercise

Take a moment to sit down and write about a relationship or a situation where something really upsets, annoys, irritates, frustrates, frightens, or angers you. It could be a personal or professional relationship or a specific event that consistently triggers strong emotions.

Write down all your thoughts, feelings, and actions about that relationship or situation that triggers you.

Ask yourself, “Where did this reaction start or come from? Did something happen to me? Or did something happen to my family members that set this reaction in motion?

Then ask yourself what might happen if you consciously changed your reactions to those triggers.

Ask yourself what you could do differently. (This doesn’t mean you suddenly have to love what you have hated or feared. I am simply asking “What could you think, feel or do differently?)

Take steps to put those different responses into action.

It's Not About You

Seriously, I’ve had to teach myself as well as clients that “Ninety-nine percent of the time, whatever is triggering you is not about you.”

For myself, a big trigger used to be if someone gave me the cold shoulder. Even if someone didn’t respond to my emails I could quickly get sad, frustrated, nervous and put some intense negative energy into the situation. Then, over and over, I would discover they were busy or simply hadn’t received my message in the first place!

When I did the above exercise and tracked the emotional trigger back in time, I remembered a teacher who told me as a kid that I was annoying and that she didn’t like me because I smiled too much. You should have seen how fast that smile disappeared! Afterwards I became nervous about my smile and my right even to be happy for a long time.

Doing this exercise helped me have a deeper understanding and realize what had really happened. That teacher probably had had a rough day and I represented someone she really wanted to yell at!

After I reframed the situation, now, instead of thinking I’ve automatically done something wrong and am in trouble when somebody doesn’t respond or acts cold to me or is outright angry,

I remind myself that it’s most likely NOT about me. I can exhale and give them grace. That allows me to remain open and receptive, giving me emotional support and the difference is remarkable. I don’t get emotionally triggered and usually the situation is resolved in a matter of hours.

Previous relationships and future relationships are our teachers. In the next blog I will share some relationship dynamics that shape your emotional DNA and tell you how to use them wisely.

To find out more about how to deal with emotional triggers and how to grow your emotional intelligence, attend one of our events this year! For more information about my 2024 events click here.

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How Viewing Generational Patterns Through a Genealogical Lens Creates Success

Generational Patterns

How Viewing Generational Patterns Through a Genealogical Lens Creates Success

Gaining knowledge and insights about your generational patterns creates freedom and expansion. And one of the most fruitful areas to look for that knowledge from is your  ancestral heritage along with its accompanying emotional DNA.

So, what is emotional DNA? I’ve discussed it many times before, but briefly, it’s the patterns of  emotions, thoughts, actions and inactions you’ve inherited from your family lineage. You’ve probably heard of generational trauma and family patterns? That’s what I’m talking about here.

Genealogy through an Emotional DNA lens

Being able to have a direct encounter with your ancestral heritage by realizing it is embodied in you and perhaps expressing through you is a powerful and transformative experience that facilitates breakthroughs, insights, and change.  To go in search of your genealogical heritage, hold in mind specific issues and/or problems you are experiencing. Perhaps you’re experiencing a consistent lack of money. Or perhaps you have trouble holding onto intimate relationships, or you never seem to get ahead at work no matter how hard you try.

As you investigate your genealogy and discover what some of your ancestors were up to, what they experienced and went through historically, answers to your own issue (s) may begin to surface. Maybe you had a great-grandmother who lived through the 1904 earthquake in San Francisco. Or an ancestor who took part in the French revolution, or experienced the pogroms in Russia. Ancestral trauma is a very real thing. Notice your thoughts, feelings, and actions as you begin to uncover possible clues about historical events that may have triggered the expression of multigenerational family patterns in you.

Eye-opening insight into generational patterns

It’s an amazing thing to realize that choices made by those who came before you about the events that happened in their lives, have become the language, feelings, thoughts and actions that often live in you and are expressed by you. For example, Doug was stuck in a dead-end job. He knew he had the talent to be in upper-level management and make his way to the C-Suite. His line manager kept thanking him for the ways he evoked and nurtured talent in others around him, yet never gave Doug the promotion he deserved. He thought about leaving the company many times, but didn’t quite have the courage to do so. Not surprisingly, Doug felt trapped.

When we looked at his family beliefs and history, Doug realized that his father had also been undervalued and unacknowledged in the employment agency where he worked. Perennially overlooked for promotion, his father refused to complain or look for more substantive work, saying he needed to put food on the table, and he wasn’t about to jeopardize the family’s safety by leaving a steady job.

The trend went further back to his grandfather’s work as a perpetual line manager in the auto industry, and possibly back before that. Doug also recognized that employee loyalty and job longevity were highly prized in his father’s and grandfather’s generations. In fact, his father would often tell him, “Stick to one place and don’t make waves, son. Security above all.”

You are not stuck

Once Doug saw the pattern, he was determined to make a change. When I pointed out that experience in several different companies can actually add value to one’s resume, Doug was able to objectively evaluate his skills and capabilities. Realizing his value, it became a no-brainer for him to seek employment elsewhere. He was quickly snapped up at a higher salary and position.

By understanding the systemic piece that had kept him stuck—the multigenerational family pattern expressing through his emotional DNA—Doug was able to make a different choice that gave him a sense of freedom and self-confidence he had not enjoyed before. 

Take it from Doug: You are not stuck, or restricted. It’s just that an unsatisfying situation in your life may well belong to your ancestors! Ask yourself: “Is my life a reflection of another family member? Am I repeating generational patterns? What else is possible through me? What do I want? What is possible for those who come after me?”

Remember, everyone adds to the family system and family behavior patterns in some way. Change is growth. What will your gifts be?

Success and freedom are right within your grasp. Once you understand what has you feeling limited or trapped you will be able to reshape your life and career.

To learn more, join me at one of my interactive events.

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Emotional DNA and Interactive Genealogy: What It Is & Why It Matters

Emotional DNA

Emotional DNA and Interactive Genealogy: What it is & Why it Matters

Traditional genealogy can tell you where you came from and to whom you are linked. With the evolution of DNA saliva tests, you came to understand why you may look the way you do, discovered how to find your ancestors, and began to connect with people related to you who once were strangers. But when we bring together genealogy and emotional DNA–inherited patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions, including generational trauma patterns—a whole new world of personal information opens up for you.

Can you inherit heroism?

Most of us harbor secret hopes that our ancestors were incredible heroes or important figures in history. But what if you’re not directly descended from somebody famous? Does that mean you’re out of luck knowing whether you inherited any of those hero genes? Not at all! It’s actually possible to tell if someone in your family lineage was a hero.

How can that be? Well, just ask yourself a simple question: “How do I act, think, and feel in my own life?” Now tune in and think about it. Do you find yourself always standing up for the underdog? Are you unafraid to question authority? Have you surprised yourself by taking crazy dares now and then without a thought to your personal safety? If so, you probably have quite a few heroes quietly stashed away in your family line!

How is this possible? Well, we all know that we inherit our physical DNA. But studies in epigenetics now show that significant events in a person’s life can create an impact on their DNA. Strong emotions in an ancestor’s life such as extraordinary bravery, determination in the face adversity, courage overcoming terrible fear—these emotions quite literally imprint that person’s DNA, creating a blueprint for behavioral patterns that is then passed down to successive generations. These epigenetic inheritance patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions are what we refer to as our emotional DNA.

So, what else does this mean?  It means that your depression, anger, happiness, success, failure, issues with money and fear of commitment (and a lot of other issues and family behavior patterns) may well have their roots in prior generations. Stuff you’re experiencing that’s tripping you up in life may not belong to you at all! But it may be asking you to notice it. 

Generational patterns can be changed

And yet most people don’t know this. Instead, we go along through life repeating generational patterns faithfully as though they were our own. My client “Rita” is a perfect example.

Rita was embarrassed to admit it, but she always had to have a fully stocked pantry—and then some. Anything less than several overflowing closets filled with food created extreme anxiety and distress for her, and she couldn’t understand why. Paradoxically, Rita is pretty wealthy and can buy whatever she wants, whenever she wants. When I pressed her on the subject, she kept saying, “You never know what might happen. I could lose it all in an instant. If I don’t have food stores, I might not be able to survive.” 

When we looked at her family history, two generations had met with economic downturns and food shortages. Her great-great-great grandparents fled Ireland escaping the Irish Potato Famine. Her grandmother’s parents, once well-to-do, were impoverished during the Great Depression. She remembered hearing her grandmother tell her to always make sure she had enough food and money to last at least six months if not a year or more!

Again, even though Rita was well off and had a solid nest egg, she embodied the extreme trauma of starvation and loss carried in her emotional DNA from two different sets of family experiences—and possibly more going even further back in her genealogical history. On top of that, she carried the memory of her grandmother’s advice and the words of her own mother, constantly advising her to “Waste not, want not” and how she should always “Be prepared.”

“The idea of even wasting a penny just freaks me out,” Rita said. “It keeps me working long hours with my nose to the grindstone. I can’t even enjoy the success I’ve created.”

Honoring family patterns and moving on

When Rita finally got that her penny-pinching and food hoarding obsessions weren’t really hers, the lightbulb switched on. She realized it was up to her to break the generational poverty mindset. She was the person in her family who was being invited to change old negative family patterns and create something new.

When she took the next step and realized that her grandmother and mother had pinched pennies so that she didn’t have to, that gave her pause for thought. She remembered how her grandmother used to say she wished she could take her kids and grandkids on trips and have adventures. At that point, she realized that she could give her grandmother and mother a legacy by doing what they could not. She could stock one pantry in peace and take the time off to take her own children on family vacations.

Rita was breaking generational cycles by setting down the family limitations, embracing her mother’s and grandmother’s dreams as well as her own hopes and desires, setting new patterns of adventure and abundance into motion with a happy heart.

Want to learn more about emotional DNA and how it applies to you? 

Come to one of my interactive events and experience firsthand how to change the effects of behavioral genetics on your life and create new patterns of success! Click here to find out more information. 

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Gifts Don’t Always Come with Fancy Bows

When we met for the first time I could hardly hear Elaine. She alternated between whispering and crying. As a mom of 4 children, she was upset by the most recent parent teacher’s meeting she’d attended for her eldest daughter. Her daughter’s grades were great, but the teacher pointed out that her daughter’s self-confidence was not.

It was heartbreaking.

Elaine had done everything to ensure that all of her kids would be happy and bright and yet here was Jess, struggling – just like she had.

 

Worse still when she spoke to her daughter, Jess confessed that she was terribly afraid she would disappoint her parents.

That last piece had brought Elaine to see me.

It was all too familiar.

She had lived with the sadness of being a disappointment to her parents her whole life. 

 

Her brother and parents were very close.

Elaine was not. Loving and affectionate, she’d reached out for hugs her whole life only to be told that displays of affection were not something they did. It felt for her as though her brother had received all the love there was, and she had gotten just a drop here and there and now there was Jess.

Elaine had heard that patterns can be inherited, and it was clear to her that somehow her daughter was repeating the insecurity and sadness she had felt. In fact, it still hurt. 

Her mother and father had both come from broken families with distant parents. Their mothers had needed to work really hard to make ends meet. Affection hadn’t been readily available. Somehow her brother could fit in, but she could not. She had always longed to be seen and loved and her heart still ached for what she hadn’t received. 

We spoke about patterns and connections to parents and she became even more upset. There was nothing of value that she could take from them and she didn’t know how to feel good enough about herself to pass that onto her daughter.

Several times she mentioned that all she’d gotten were the odd drops of love.

 

I asked Elaine what she was like as a mother? Distant – cold? 

For the first time she lit up and her eyes twinkled. “No!” she declared firmly. “I have so much love to give and I do! I am the mom who bakes, cooks, loves even though I work a full job. I love my family and they know it.” 

And there it was. The drop of gold.

Sometimes gifts don’t come in pretty paper and our strengths aren’t always grown on easy street. And we don’t always recognize the change agents that we are or the chapters that only we can write. 

 

“Those drops of love?” I asked. “You speak about those as though they were important?” 

“I treasured every little piece I got,” Elaine said softly. “I was determined that my kids would get to know every day that were loved. I am very proud of that.”

“So, you took the drops and grew them into something wonderful.” I pointed out. It really sounds like you treasured them and grew the treasure.” 

“I’d never looked at it that way,” Elaine responded. “I guess I really did, and I give my brother and parents all the love I can. They think it’s silly, but they tolerate it I guess.” Her face fell again. “Maybe it’s all silly.”

“Or not?” I offered. “We live a large part of our lives in response to patterns. Some strong and some limiting and yet we have the ability to change them at any time. You came from a legacy of sadness and withdrawal and yet perhaps the system was looking for another way. It needed someone to bring the love and connection back in.”

“Through me?!” Elaine sat all the way up in her chair. “Oh, my goodness!”

“Someone had to be willing to do it differently.” I pointed out. “Your family was lovingly following a pattern and there’s something special about the way you have brought the love and connection in.”

“I swore I would do it differently,” Elaine said softly. “I still love them though.”

“They sparked your change,” I said. “And for that, you owe them thanks. Showing love is your gift of change to the system. You and your husband bring what they couldn’t but they started your journey.”

 

Elaine got it.

She was the change agent in the family.

She had a purpose and that she could pass onto her daughter Jess. 

 

We often grow in collusion with or reaction to the system and Elaine’s case it was in spite of the system. Sometimes in life the spark that makes us different and special may not come from a place of joy or ease and yet it is no less special. When we can see the gifts that are trying to emerge for and through us, life becomes a place of joy where we flourish. 

Systems are elegant things they are always in service of our highest good if we only look. 

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It’s Not Just About Showing Up

I know we are told that showing up in your life over and over again will get you results and while that’s true it’s not the entire secret sauce. 

When you keep showing up over and over again shift will happen but recently I’ve been struck by additional ingredients that can make all the difference.

Elevated emotion, belief that something more is possible here and self-ambition – wanting more and daring to go there.

Together these combine to open the head, heart, and gut which creates a state of increased awareness and possibility. Now what we tell ourselves has a chance to change from the tried, trusted and sometimes limiting systemic beliefs we have to a new possibility.

Once you show up in that state over and over again, you start creating new sentences and new truths. Now you are moving beyond the old family sentences and mindsets, or the ones you have created in response to an event and you are no longer trapped and living someone else’s history.   

If you increase your level of showing up and begin to add in elevated emotions like joy, kindness, love or gratitude, a knowing that something different is possible and the determination to go there, your language changes. Your thoughts and emotions change and with it your actions and self-talk change. Suddenly your world is no longer the same.     

Your Systemic Sentences

You begin to move from:

“I’m not good enough/smart enough/strong enough” to “I am learning/ I can do this/I am doing this/I belong here.”

Now you’re no longer caught in the past but are solidly positioning yourself to write your own chapter and build a future you like. We are stronger self-magic makers than we imagine.  

Love the sentences you tell yourself every day – your systemic sentences. Don’t treat them as limiters. Instead, use them to identify where you may be stuck or looking to move to a higher level.

Then notice what you really want, how you want to feel and then dare to go there. 

 

Here’s a quick exercise to jumpstart your own showing up with a sprinkle of elevated emotion, possibility, and self-ambition. I’d love to hear what happens for you all when you add these additional ingredients. 

Exercise:

  • Please write down one way you would like your life to change/ be more/ grow
  • Now write down all the things you tell yourself that limit you from getting there. 
  • Who said that first? Was it you or does that language/mindset live in your family somewhere? 
  • To whom or to what event might these sentences belong.
  • What more is possible here that you would like to see for yourself?
  • Write down how you will show up consistently
  • Add one elevated emotion that you will add that you can feel as you write it down
  • What can you tell yourself about the way you are changing your life?
  • For the next 21 days, I want you to feel and embody the way you have just designed. 

Come and Find out at the Emotional DNA Workshop