intergenerational trauma and eating disorders

Intergenerational trauma and eating disorders code#

great-grandparents surviving famine or war, the mother experiencing perinatal stress, the child’s school-related stresses etc.). There are rather a sequence of life events that served to activate inherited susceptibilities toward eating disorder development that stem back into previous generations (e.g. It is never a single event or action that causes an eating disorder to develop. Including epigenetics improves caregiver and clinician sensitivity to their patients’ realities, and helps make treatment more palatable and humane.Įpigenetically-informed models of eating disorder development contribute positively to efforts of clinicians and caregivers in various ways: Research is now showing us that trauma in their lifetime as well as trauma from parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have an effect on one’s epigenetic susceptibilities that get “switched on” by a lifetime of environmental exposures. Traditional models that have looked at eating disorders have suggested that an individual with an eating disorder usually has “maladaptive personality traits”, including stubbornness, character weakness, or has a superficial concern with appearance. The idea of epigenetics means that the environment in general very simply influences the way in which genes are expressed. However, it is does not have to be just trauma. This means that experiences during your grandparent’s lifetime – particularly traumatic ones – can impact subsequent generations in the family. When these tags turn genes on or off, it gives us a way to adapt to changing conditions without inflicting a more permanent shift in our genomes. Tiny chemical tags are added to or removed from our DNA in response to changes in the environment in which we are living.

Intergenerational trauma and eating disorders code#

This is the process of epigenetics where the expression of genes is modified without changing the DNA code itself.

We are living out parts of their lives not only because of genes that they have passed down to us, but also from experiences that they have lived through which have left its own kind of mark.Įvents in people’s lifetime can change the way their DNA is expressed, and these changes can be passed on to the next generation. Who we are in the world has been directly passed down through the lines of our parents, our grandparents and even our great-grandparents. Can you imagine your grandmother holding your mother? What is the quality of that holding? Can you see how your grandmother was gazing at your mother? What was reflected in her eyes?