Adult child relationships with their parents sometimes need hard work to stay healthy, especially if past trauma is involved. A therapist has revealed six simple phrases adult children need to hear to heal and strengthen parental bonds.
It's understood that you can inherit your grandparents' trauma, even if you've never met them. Epigenetics - the study of how behaviours and environment can cause changes to the way your genes function - suggests events influence the structure of DNA, and are passed through generations using biological processes we don't even know are happening. If difficult experiences can be inherited in this way, actually living in an unstable environment is equally likely to affect children into adulthood - internalised patterns of negative behaviour can be repeated through generations, whether consciously or unconsciously.
