If you have seen Frozen II you may have just thought it was a beautiful story that entertained the kids. What you may not have noticed is that the story line is all about generational healing! There is a lot of research that has been done regarding what I call emotional DNA; the idea that you can inherit emotional traumas if those things had not gotten resolved in an ancestors lifetime. For some, this concept may be way out there but we see it with mental health conditions like depression and anxiety; why not consider the possibility that you or your family may be working out struggles of your family story? 

This topic has been coming up more and more in my sessions. There is so much power in identifying an issue as generational. I’ll take myself as an example. I have always struggled with decision making (fear of regret) and being hard on myself internally. It was just a way of thinking I was accustomed to and it wrecked havoc on my mind body and spirit in my 20’s! Literally a few months ago from the date of this post, I fully recognized the connection within my being hard on myself to my maternal grandma who LIVED HER WHOLE LIFE being hard on herself and regretting/questioning decisions she’d made early on in her life. There was a trauma over a big decision she had made and then spent so much of her life wondering about if it would have could have been different. That level of emotional stress is called trauma my friends! And I was here learing all this cool stuff to be able to help her spirit on the other side fully heal from those false beliefs and unhelpful habits, but especially from the event and its effects itself. Being kind to myself was SO MUCH EASIER once I was able to identify whose issue this really was!

Signs of something being a GENERATIONAL ISSUE:

1. You feel like its something you have always had. Examples may be money issues, weight issues, anxiety, depression, or perfectionism.
2. You can’t place WHY you may have this issue in your own life. It doesn’t fit the context of your own life… because its not from your personal life. So always having money issues when you personally have never had a traumatic experience with money points to this being a deeper generational issue that YOU CAN WORK THROUGH and help you and your ancestors heal this story.
3. It feels uncommonly emotional; often a small event will trigger an emotional response that does not fit the event. Often can be an overwhelming emotion of anger or depression or guilt but again, doesn’t fit the situation.
4. You can see a parent or grandparent who may have had a similar emotion or event happen that is triggering an uncommon emotional response.

Once we identify that something just might be generational, we can go to the roots instead of whacking at the branches of something deeper! Here are a few tips to start healing (yourself and others) on a deeper level:

1. Learn about your family history; both the good and the bad of stories or experiences your family went through. Every winter I clear a new level of my pioneer ancestors stuff about crossing the plains to Utah in covered wagons as I feel uncommonly (out of context) dreading of the winter season.
2. Become aware of the theme of your current emotional or life issues or struggles, does it sound like any who came before you? 
3. Meditate on the emotion, the struggle or the theme coming up for you. Letting yourself feel into it and get curious about if it has happened before. 
4. If it sounds like someone in the family line, take a moment to thank the emotion or experience for coming forward to be healed and for what a relief that it is to have identified its origin. 
5. Use EFT (tapping), the scribble exercise or prayer/meditation/intention to release yourself and your ancestors of this trauma or ask to speak with that ancestor and show them the truth.

This work is powerful and deep and there are many prophetic promises of getting to know your family history in this way. Be kind with yourself and your family as you do so, this isn’t about blaming anyone but about becoming aware of things they simply didn’t know or didn’t know how to deal with. And please, ask for assistance as you get more familiar with this work, it can be a lot for one person and there is support available to you.

Also keep in mind that you can’t get it wrong and you have already likely worked out some traumas without even realizing it! The book It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn may be helpful as a continual resource as well as The Emotion Code by Dr. Bradley Nelson and Feeling Buried Alive Never Die by Karol Truman. I have heard of many others but these are a great place to start!

Namaste