#epigenetics

Add this to my "weird reasons for hope" tag:

You know, the more I learn about people - about myself, society, psychology, language - the more I begin to think that a truly shocking number of conflicts - interpersonal and large scale - can be explained by some combination of:

Cognitive biases x, x

The fact that we're generally accidentally insulting each other all the time without realizing it, actually x, x, x, x

The fact that there have been a lot of different explanations for How Things Are and How Things Came to Be, believed in very strongly by different groups and people throughout history, and a hell of a lot of those explanations have now been empirically disproven (e.g., the earth is four billion years old, not six thousand) x, x, x

Trauma/intergenerational trauma and epigenetics x, x, x

50% child mortality rate for all of human history until the past 150 years, and much higher rates and younger ages of adult mortality, too x, x

All that constant heavy metal poisoning in Europe and North America from the late 1700s to like the 1970s-1990s (highly correlated with increased aggression and lower IQ*) x, x, x, x *ETA: IQ is a fundamentally flawed concept. It has a lot of issues and has been used to perpetuate a lot of bullshit and justify even more horrible bullshit. However, as the second source argues, it does look like it's a useful measure of cognitive damage and certain neuropsychological processes

Scarcity (x) and especially:

Europeans were historically pretty bad at agriculture and medicine, actually, but they decided they knew best and killed or persecuted everyone who disagreed with them and forced their shitty methods on the whole world via colonialism x, x, x, x, x, x

(Yes, and also capitalism, but everything on that list is older than capitalism, which coalesced in the mid-/late-1700s and early 1800s x, x; the first known use of the word "capitalism" is 1833 x)

Two people can take the same medication, at the same dose, for the same condition, and have completely different results.

Your body doesn’t process medication the same way as someone else’s.

Your genes influence:

- how fast a drug is broken down

- how much of it reaches your brain

- how your brain responds to it

Some people:

- break down medications quickly → effects may feel weaker

- break them down slowly → effects may feel stronger or last longer

This is controlled by enzymes, which are influenced by your genes.

Even if the same amount of a drug reaches the brain, it can still affect people differently.

This is because genes also influence:

- receptor sensitivity

- neurotransmitter levels

- overall brain chemistry

So the same medication can interact with two brains in different ways.

This is why:

- one medication works really well for one person

- does nothing for another

- causes side effects in someone else

It’s not just the drug—it’s the biology it’s interacting with.

The Simple Way™:

Medication = input

Your body/brain = system processing it

Different systems → different outputs

This is part of a field called pharmacogenetics, which studies how genes affect responses to drugs.

The goal is to eventually match people with treatments that fit their biology more precisely.

Your reaction to medication isn’t random.

Bradshaw writes that many of us were raised by parents who were emotionally children themselves, unable to offer what they never received.

The mother wound, through his lens, often manifests as toxic shame, a deep-seated belief that “I am not enough to be loved.” Healing this wound doesn’t begin with forgiveness or reconciliation, it begins with reparenting the inner child. This means offering ourselves the attunement we once lacked, creating internal safety where chaos once lived, and learning to validate our emotional experience without waiting for permission.

In the realm of somatic psychology and trauma studies, the mother wound is understood not only as emotional, but cellular. Researchers have shown that emotional imprinting begins in utero. A mother’s nervous system, her stress, fear, or disconnection, becomes the child’s first environment. That imprint can shape a lifetime. This isn’t about blame. It’s about biological empathy, the way the body echoes what it was first immersed in. From a spiritual psychological view, this isn’t a punishment, it’s a soul contract.

You come through this bloodline to interrupt the pattern, to transmute inherited pain into embodied power.

The Blood Remembers: Are You Carrying the Grief of Your Ancestors?

ou feel a sadness you cannot explain. You carry a fear of abandonment that has no root in your own life. You struggle with poverty despite working hard.

Why?

Science calls it "Epigenetics". Spirituality calls it "Ancestral Karma".

I call it The Echo.

Just as you inherited your grandmother's eyes or your grandfather's nose, you also inherited their unfinished business. The trauma they couldn't process, the wars they survived, the secrets they took to the grave—it is all encoded in your DNA.

You are not just an individual; you are the latest link in a chain that stretches back thousands of years.

But here is the good news: The chain can be broken. You were chosen by your lineage not to suffer, but to heal. When you heal yourself, you heal seven generations before you and seven generations after you.