Why do patterns sometimes seem to repeat themselves across generations?

Perhaps anxiety runs through your family. Maybe you recognize similar relationship patterns, fears, coping strategies, or responses to stress in yourself, your parents, and even your grandparents.

Some of these patterns are learned through family relationships and the environments we grow up in. Genetics can also contribute. And an emerging area of research called epigenetics is exploring another fascinating possibility: our experiences and environments can influence how our genes function.

Understanding this doesn’t mean that trauma determines our future. Instead, it reminds us that human beings are shaped by a complex interaction between biology, relationships, environment, and experience—and that change remains possible.

What Is Epigenetics?

Epigenetics is the study of changes that influence how genes are expressed without changing the underlying DNA sequence.

You can think of DNA as containing biological instructions. Epigenetic processes help regulate which instructions are more or less active in particular cells.

These processes can be influenced by many factors, including development, aging, nutrition, environmental exposures, physical activity, illness, and stress.

This is different from changing your DNA itself.

It is also important to understand that epigenetics doesn’t mean that we can simply “turn good genes on” and “bad genes off.” Human biology is much more complicated than that.

What epigenetics does show us is that the relationship between our genes and our environment is dynamic.

Genetics Doesn’t Mean Destiny

Mental health is influenced by a complex combination of biological, psychological, social, and environmental factors.

Someone may have a genetic vulnerability toward anxiety or depression without ever developing significant symptoms. Another person without an obvious family history may experience mental health difficulties following prolonged stress, trauma, illness, loss, or other circumstances.

Genes are one part of the picture.

Our relationships, childhood experiences, socioeconomic conditions, physical health, stress levels, social support, behaviours, and many other factors also contribute to our well-being.

For me, this is one of the most hopeful messages we can take from epigenetics:

We inherit certain biological characteristics, but our lives are not completely predetermined by them.

Epigenetics, Stress and Mental Health

Researchers are particularly interested in how prolonged or severe stress may affect biological systems involved in the stress response.

When we encounter a threat, our bodies adapt. Stress hormones are released, attention becomes focused on danger, and the body prepares us to respond.

This system is incredibly useful when we need it.

Problems can arise when stress becomes chronic or when the nervous system continues responding as though danger is present long after the original experience has ended.

Researchers have found associations between adversity and epigenetic differences in genes involved in areas such as stress regulation and immune functioning.

However, finding an association does not necessarily tell us that an epigenetic change caused a particular psychological condition.

Mental health is far too complex to reduce to a single gene, experience, or biological mechanism.

What Is Generational Trauma?

Generational or intergenerational trauma describes the ways the effects of trauma experienced by one generation can influence subsequent generations.

Imagine a grandparent who survived war, displacement, abuse, extreme poverty, residential school, or another overwhelming experience.

Even if their children didn’t experience the original event, they may grow up within a family shaped by its aftermath.

Trauma can influence:

• Parenting and attachment
• Emotional expression
• Beliefs about safety and trust
• Responses to conflict
• Family roles
• Hypervigilance
• Coping strategies
• Relationships
• Silence and secrecy within families

Those children may then carry some of these patterns into their own parenting and relationships.

In this way, trauma can travel through generations without requiring a genetic explanation at all.

Can Trauma Be Inherited Through Epigenetics?

This is where we need to be careful.

Animal research provides compelling evidence that environmental exposures can sometimes produce epigenetic effects that influence subsequent generations.

Researchers have also found interesting epigenetic differences in human populations exposed to severe trauma and adversity, including survivors of war, famine, genocide, and other extreme circumstances and, in some studies, their descendants.

But human beings are enormously complicated.

Parents don’t only give their children genes. They provide environments, relationships, behaviours, beliefs, resources, culture, food, housing, and countless other influences.

For this reason, researchers cannot simply conclude that a psychological effect observed in the next generation was transmitted through epigenetic inheritance.

The science of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in humans remains an evolving field.

I find it fascinating—but I don’t believe we need to overstate the science for the concept of generational healing to be meaningful.

Breaking Generational Patterns

Whether a pattern originated biologically, psychologically, relationally, culturally, or through a combination of factors, becoming aware of it gives us an opportunity to respond differently.

You might begin noticing:

“When conflict happens, I shut down just like my father did.”

Or:

“Nobody in my family talked about feelings.”

Or:

“I learned very early that I needed to take care of everybody else.”

Perhaps anxiety, perfectionism, emotional distance, people-pleasing, anger, or fear has existed within your family for generations.

Counselling isn’t about blaming our parents or grandparents.

Often, they were responding to their own experiences with whatever resources they had available at the time.

Instead, we can become curious:

What did I learn?

What helped me survive then?

Does this pattern still serve me today?

What would I like to do differently?

That is where change can begin.

Lifestyle, Stress and Epigenetic Processes

Another interesting area of epigenetic research explores how everyday environmental and behavioural factors are associated with gene regulation.

Researchers have studied areas including:

Physical activity: Exercise is associated with numerous biological adaptations, some of which involve changes in gene expression and epigenetic regulation.

Nutrition: Nutrients and dietary patterns interact with metabolic processes that can influence epigenetic mechanisms.

Stress: Chronic stress can affect multiple biological systems, including hormonal, immune, and inflammatory processes.

Sleep: Sleep and circadian rhythms interact with gene expression and many aspects of physical and mental health.

Social connection: Supportive relationships are strongly associated with physical and psychological well-being, although the mechanisms are complex.

These findings shouldn’t become another reason to pressure ourselves to live perfectly.

You don’t need the perfect diet, meditation practice, exercise routine, or lifestyle to “fix your genes.”

Instead, we can think about supporting our bodies and nervous systems through realistic, sustainable choices.

Breathwork, Mindfulness and Nervous System Regulation

Practices such as mindfulness, gentle breathing, movement, yoga, time in nature, and meditation can help some people regulate stress and reconnect with their bodies.

Research is also beginning to examine whether stress-reduction practices are associated with changes in biological pathways and gene expression.

That is interesting, but I would be cautious about claiming that these practices reverse trauma at the genetic level.

We don’t need that claim for these practices to have value.

If breathing helps you settle during anxiety, movement helps you feel grounded, or mindfulness helps you observe your thoughts without immediately reacting to them, those are meaningful benefits in themselves.

You can read more about breathwork, trauma and nervous-system regulation.

How Counselling Can Help With Generational Patterns

I don’t use counselling to “rewrite your genes.”

What we can explore together are the emotional and relational patterns you inherited from the environment in which you grew up.

We can look at your family history with curiosity.

What happened in previous generations?

What messages did you receive about emotions, relationships, achievement, vulnerability, conflict, bodies, money, love, or safety?

Which patterns do you want to keep?

Which ones are you ready to change?

Counselling can help you develop awareness of automatic responses, process difficult experiences, build healthier boundaries, develop emotional regulation, and create different ways of relating to yourself and others.

Sometimes breaking a generational cycle simply means doing something differently than what was done before us.

You Are More Than What You Inherited

Perhaps the most meaningful lesson I take from studying epigenetics isn’t that we can control our genes.

It’s that human beings are remarkably responsive to their environments and experiences.

We are shaped by what came before us—but we continue being shaped throughout our lives.

Understanding your history can help you make sense of your present without allowing the past to dictate your future.

You may carry pieces of your parents, grandparents, culture, childhood, and experiences within you.

But you also have the capacity for awareness, learning, connection, healing, and change.

And sometimes becoming aware of a pattern is the first step toward choosing a different path.

If you’re interested in exploring trauma, family patterns, anxiety, or relationships, you can also read about healing from emotionally immature parents or my approach to holistic counselling.