As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, author Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn't Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. Visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health.

The latest scientific research supports what many have thought - that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains--but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents.

It Didn't Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.

It Didn't Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.