Book Review - It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn
I'm always curious about the question of "nature vs nurture". How much of who we are is inherited instinct from our family vs taught to us from our environment and community? The author of this book seems to think it's primarily nature and anything we do to change that is hard won.
I do think this book has some valuable things to say about personal trauma, generational trauma, and epigenetics, and I thought those portions were interesting HOWEVER this author is kind of selling repackaged Freudian mother-obsession "psychology" with a heavy side of woo. I listened to the audiobook and there were certain points where the author wants the reader to pause and make lists or ponder or imagine conversations with dead loved ones etc etc and I wasn't really participating in that.
After a certain point it seemed like every 10 minutes the author was basically just repeating "Don't forget to call your mom" over and over. As someone who regularly calls their mom, and knows most of our family history, I'm good. I think maybe part of my annoyance with this book is that I already knew what it was trying to tell me which is: "Your parents are flawed people who also struggled with their parents. Maybe we should all try to understand each other better."
From looking on his website he's not a doctor of anything. So if you read this book, take his "coaching" methods with a grain of salt. His master's degree is in English.
Final rating 3/5 DNA strands:
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