intergenerational trauma and nutrition and food

Read: Can a parent’s life experience change the genes a child inherits? In other words, it seemed like the stresses of war were getting passed down between generations. This is despite the fact that the sons were born after the war, so they couldn’t have experienced its horrors personally. They found that the sons of Union Army soldiers who endured grueling conditions as prisoners of war were more likely to die young than the sons of soldiers who were not prisoners. The most recent chapter is a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthis week by researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research. “The Jews have nothing to do with it!” I always want to say in response, as though I’m debunking some George Soros–related conspiracy.īut a growing body of evidence suggests my therapist might be right and I’m wrong. I can, however, write the perfect email to get myself out of a scrape, or find a way to stop thinking about why I didn’t get some plaudit or another.

At the same time, I can’t do anything about the fact that the Holocaust happened, so I don’t want to spend time thinking about its effects on my cortisol levels. I am, of course, grateful that my life is easier than the lives of my relatives-Jewish and otherwise-who survived World War II. Of course you’re anxious, she seems to say you’re Jewish! I think it’s meant to help me feel more at peace with my emotions, but I must admit I find this response deeply unsatisfying. “Well, like all Ashkenazi Jews, you have a lot of intergenerational trauma. Often when I complain to my therapist about how stressed out I am by a problem I’m having, she says a variation on the same thing:

Intergenerational trauma and nutrition and food