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Trauma & Healing · 5 min read

Epigenetics, Legacy Burdens and the Stories We Carry

Last week I went to an incredible CPD lecture on epigenetics by Novena-Chanel Davies, author of A Framework for Understanding Intergenerational Trauma in the Black and Brown Diaspora: The Biopsychosocial and Political Forces That Shape Us.

Her work explores how trauma does not begin and end with the individual. Our emotional lives are shaped by our relationships and personal histories, but also by migration, racism, poverty, patriarchy, displacement, political violence and the wider conditions in which generations have had to survive.

The lecture left me thinking about the burdens we inherit, the adaptations that once protected our families, and the possibility of honouring what came before without continuing to carry all of it in the same way.

What is epigenetics?

Genetics refers to the DNA sequence we inherit. Epigenetics looks at how stress, relationships, environment and life experience may influence the way certain genes are expressed.

In simple terms, it asks not only, “What have I inherited?” but also, “How has life shaped what becomes heightened, quietened, activated or suppressed in the body?”

One well-known animal study, sometimes called the “cherry blossom experiment,” trained male mice to associate a particular smell with a mild electric shock. Their offspring and grandchildren, who had never experienced the shock, also showed greater sensitivity to that smell.

Researchers have also studied Holocaust survivors and their adult children. One small study found differences in a gene involved in regulating the body’s stress response in both generations.

Epigenetics is only one part of the picture. Intergenerational trauma can also be passed on through attachment, family roles, silence, cultural expectations, social exclusion and the stories a family tells—or cannot bear to tell.

We may therefore carry experiences that did not begin with us, yet still shape how safe it feels to rest, trust, depend on others, express anger, take up space or become visible.

A central theme in Davies’ work is that trauma in Black and Brown diasporic communities cannot be separated from historical, cultural and political conditions.

Family and cultural messages might include:

These beliefs may have offered safety, dignity or belonging in circumstances where vulnerability carried genuine risk.

But over time, strength can become an inability to receive care. Vigilance can become chronic anxiety. Loyalty can make it difficult to challenge harmful patterns. Self-sacrifice can leave little room for rest, desire or a life of one’s own.

Therapy can help us approach these patterns with curiosity rather than blame. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?”, we might ask:

Internal Family Systems uses the term legacy burden for beliefs, fears and emotional burdens that may be carried through a family, culture or wider social field.

A part of someone may carry the belief:

These parts are not defective. They are often trying to keep us loyal, safe, acceptable or prepared for danger.

In therapy, we can gently explore where these messages came from, what they have protected and what the person fears might happen if they softened. A part that appears controlling, perfectionistic, distant or hypervigilant may be carrying a much older instruction about how to survive.

Epigenetics and IFS are different frameworks, but they meet around an important idea: suffering does not happen in isolation. The body and psyche are both shaped within family, cultural, economic and political systems.

Therapy can sometimes locate distress entirely within the individual. Anxiety becomes a symptom to regulate, shame a distorted belief and overworking a personal coping strategy.

But these experiences may also be responses to real conditions.

Hypervigilance may be shaped by repeated racism. Overachievement may have developed through having to prove one’s worth. Silence may reflect generations in which speaking carried consequences. Distrust of services may be grounded in personal and collective experiences of institutional harm.

A socially aware therapy does not use oppression or culture to explain everything. It simply recognises that people do not develop outside history and power.

For white therapists, this also requires an ongoing willingness to notice how whiteness, assumptions and power enter the therapeutic relationship.

Exploring intergenerational trauma does not mean blaming our families or seeing our ancestry only through suffering.

Families also pass down humour, creativity, spirituality, cultural knowledge, resistance, love and resourcefulness.

Healing may involve recognising both the wound and the wisdom.

We can honour the strength that helped previous generations survive while questioning whether we still need to live in permanent survival mode. We can respect the silence that once protected a family while creating safer places for truth. We can remain connected to our communities without carrying every expectation placed upon us.

Sometimes this work means saying:

Therapy cannot undo history or remove present-day inequality. But it can help us place our distress within a fuller and more compassionate story.

We are not broken. We may be carrying intelligent adaptations to experiences that were never fully processed, spoken about or made safe.

Healing can become not only personal work, but a quiet act of repair across generations.

across time.