When your past becomes your present...
After struggling with anxiety since childhood, Susannah Wise discovered she was suffering from inherited trauma and had been carrying the weight of her ancestors’ distressing experiences since birth. She tells us her story
Whenever Susannah Wise looks at a faded black and white picture of her beloved dad Herbert, she can’t help but think how different her parents’ lives were from her own.
Herbert grew up in a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Austria and had to flee after his own father, Susannah’s grandfather, was sent to a concentration camp.
Meanwhile her mum, Fiona, grew up in England during the Second World War, and the family often didn’t have enough to eat.
“In one generation, everything changed and I had this very comfortable childhood in North London,” says Susannah, 48, a writer who lives with her partner John and their 11-year-old son, Kit.
“I never had to fear for my own life or worry about where my next meal would come from,” she says.
“Dad didn’t talk much about his childhood. But when he did describe what he’d been through, it was very upsetting to hear about it.”
But despite her happy childhood, Susannah suffered from severe anxiety, which continued into adulthood. Then, during therapy, she started to suspect her parents’ trauma had had a profound effect.
“All my life I had this sense I was carrying something with me. I was an anxious child. And I am an adult who worries a lot.
“Now I know that’s because grief, trauma and sadness manifest in the body, and can be passed down through the generations.”
Studies show that trauma in past generations can change our genes. People who experience extreme stress may have descendants who process the stress hormone cortisol differently. And those whose ancestors suffered extreme hunger may express hunger hormones in a different way.
Meanwhile, parents who experience trauma can unknowingly pass negative coping habits on to their children.
“Inter-generational trauma is the impact of trauma from one generation to the next. It’s about how each one processed, experienced and handled trauma up to the present day,” says Miyume McKinley, a therapist who specialises in inherited trauma (miyumemckinley.com).
“With each decade it looks different because the world is changing, but there are unhealthy traits and behaviours which have been passed down, despite them doing their best.”
Herbert grew up in an apartment in Vienna with his parents and brother. When the war broke out, the family feared for their lives.
“Dad came home from school one day and discovered his parents scrubbing the streets with toothbrushes – something the soldiers made Jewish people do as a humiliation,” says Susannah.
In 1938, her grandfather was sent to a concentration camp.
“In the early days of the
Nazi occupation in Austria,
you could buy people out of the camps,” she explains.
“I don’t know how she managed to come up with the money but my grandmother somehow got him out and they decided to send their children away.”
Herbert and his younger brother were put on a train to England, but they spoke no English, and were sent to two different families in Kent. Eventually, Herbert’s parents also fled to Brazil, keeping in touch with their sons by writing letters.
Until recently, Susannah never connected her feelings of anxiety to her family’s past.
Then in 2018, she fell ill. “Everything stopped working – different parts of my body stopped moving, and I developed rashes. Each day a different symptom would crop up. I had lots of abnormal blood tests and at first my doctor was worried I had a brain tumour or liver disease.”
Susannah’s condition was eventually identified as a series of autoimmune conditions, causing inflammation in her body – something often caused by trauma.
Tests also revealed she struggles to process stress hormones, meaning she suffers from night terrors and insomnia – something which can be caused by inherited trauma.
Then one day, during therapy, something strange happened. “I was having EMDR therapy (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) and we used a lot of visualisations.
“This time, I was explaining how I felt and said it was like wearing a cloak of very heavy silk, which was pulling me back,” she says.
“I felt like there were two people hanging on to the cloak and they were dragging me backwards, stopping me moving forwards.”
At first Susannah didn’t realise the significance of what she was saying.
But the following week something clicked. “The therapist said: ‘I’d be interested to find out who these people are hanging off your cloak’.
“I said: ‘It’s two women and one of them is older’. As I was explaining I started to cry. I realised it was my dad’s cousin and her mother.
“The cousin was in her 20s when he was about 14, and they were very close. She had a sick mother and didn’t flee Vienna when he did, but instead stayed in the apartment to nurse her until she died. Eventually she was taken away by the Nazis.”
Susannah realised she was carrying the emotional weight of her ancestors’ past with her, and it was having an impact on her life in the present. “It was like a light switched on. For me, there was almost certainly a connection between my emotional state and my physical wellbeing,” she says.
“My experience allowed me to release some of the trauma I’d been
carrying, and understand where it had come from.”
Seeing her family members meant so much to Susannah.
“Seeing them in my visualisation was bizarre, yes, but also such a beautiful experience,” she says.
Sadly, Herbert died in 2015 from prostate cancer, so Susannah never had the opportunity to talk about the vision with him.
“He was a very rational person so I’m not sure what he would think of it,” she says.
Since her visualisation, Susannah has continued with therapy, and worked to release some of the inherited trauma.
While she still suffers from autoimmune flare-ups, keeping her stress and anxiety levels in check helps to manage the condition. “I finally feel more at peace,” she says.
■■This Fragile Earth by Susannah Wise (£14.99, Gollancz) is available to buy now
Parents who experience trauma can pass negative coping habits on to children
All my life I had a sense I was carrying something with me, I worry a lot