Generations, Greed, and a Remedy

Environmental Inheritance, Generational Trauma, Breaking the Cycle, Steps To Faith, Greed

I.

Environmental Inheritance

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. 

Folk wisdom

The older we get, the more we recognize our parents’ qualities mirrored in our own behavior. During our younger, more rebellious years, we may go to great lengths to differentiate ourselves from them, striving to be everything they are not. But as we establish a home and family of our own, we find ourselves repeating the same patterns we noticed in our parents when we still lived with them.

We inherit our parent’s characteristics and behavior not just through our DNA but through our upbringing. Epigenetics is the study of how environmental factors can shape gene expression. We now know that it’s not just our DNA that determines who we will become in adulthood; our childhood experiences greatly influence which of our genes become more prominent. To put it simply, we’ll inherit two types of behaviors from our parents: good ones and bad ones. And while we hope to inherit our parents’ strengths and virtues, we’ll likely inherit their struggles, too.

Many of the problems our parents grapple with are, at their core, coping mechanisms. These mechanisms serve as distractions from confronting deeper emotional truths, such as past pain and trauma. For instance, a parent may turn to alcoholism to cope with childhood abuse or isolate themselves to avoid dwelling on a past financial mistake.

The thing is, our parents are/were humans, too. They’re flawed. Being human isn’t any easier for them as it is for us. Our parents experienced betrayal, trauma, loss, illness, neglect, hardship, breakdown, stress, conflict and crisis. And, like us, they don’t know how to cope with these things. So, they do the things that humans do and suppress their problems. This suppression manifests itself in coping behaviors, which we may become exposed to in childhood.

II.

Generational Trauma

If we can inherit negative traits from childhood exposure, who’s to say our parents haven’t inherited their negative traits from their own parents? After all, our parents were once children, too. 

Because experiences can alter gene expression, the generational traumas once endured by our ancestors can persist across generations. The parent who’d been abused as a child could’ve been mistreated by a parent who also endured abuse. And the parent who wagered the family farm may have been raised by a parent who also made risky decisions. It’s likely that our greatest problems didn’t start with us, and they didn’t start with our parents either. They’ve presumably persisted across generations. 

To avoid the emotional pain associated with generational trauma, people tend to repeat the coping mechanisms they’re most familiar with. When someone says, “Addiction runs in our family,” that’s because addiction is the coping mechanism that their family is most familiar with. The same can be said for any other type of inheritable coping mechanism: substance abuse, OCD, escapism (e.g., excessive screen time), controlling, binging, self-harm, denial, and withdrawal. 

III.   

Breaking the Cycle

The moment you recognize a pattern within you, it is no longer a pattern. It’s now a conscious choice. 

Jeremy Dela Rosa, life coach and author of the Poets’ Corner newsletter

There’s a significant overlap between the problems that are inherently yours and the problems you’ve inherited. It’s possible that the biggest challenges of your life are the exact same problems your parents faced. By recognizing that your problems are part of a pattern, you can navigate your way out of them. All puzzles are complex and challenging (especially human ones), but they’re solvable. People are not hopeless. They’ve simply given up hope.

When I recognized negative, inherited behaviors of mine, I began a long search to figure out how to break the cycle. I read countless books on habits, trauma, and healing. But I soon realized no single book could break these patterns for me. To transcend negative behaviors stemming from emotional pains, we can’t just replace them with new habits; we need to rise above them. To do this, we must reconnect with ourselves on a spiritual level.

We can’t break the cycles of generational trauma without the help of a higher source. When we say we want to “overcome” our problems, what we really mean is that we want to go beyond them. We want to over-come them. If we believe we can “think” our way out of our problems, we’ll fall into the rumination trap. If we try to control our emotions, we’ll find ourselves suppressing them. And if we push our problems onto our physical bodies to deal with, they’ll engage in some kind of coping mechanism (likely the one we’re most familiar with).  

IV.   

Steps To Faith

Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship aimed at helping individuals recover from alcoholism, but its lessons can be applied to any coping mechanism. The hardest part of AA is mustering the courage to show up in the first place. Showing up requires humility and surrender. It necessitates recognizing that you have a problem bigger than yourself and that you need help. AA has been instrumental in guiding millions worldwide to overcome their detrimental coping mechanism (i.e., alcoholism), but its secret sauce lies not in its people or process. It lies in the development of one’s faith.

Though I approach organized religion and structured faith with caution, the 12 Steps of AA offer profound wisdom that can help anyone break free from their entanglement. That’s because its steps guide people to surrender to a wisdom greater than themselves – whether you call that God, nature, the universe, or simply the collective support of people around you. Our most formidable challenges cannot be resolved through mere intellectual solutions. If they could, we’d just read a book for each of our problems and instantly know how to fix ourselves. Humans have tried to solve their big issues on their own throughout history, and yet, all they’ve done is create labels for them (e.g., depression, anxiety, mental health, etc.).

Having overcome various mental health issues myself, I believe that most of our problems aren’t mental; they’re spiritual. Our society has lost touch with our innate spirituality. We’ve given up on Providence and given into politics. We’ve traded in mindfulness for the pursuit of money. We’ve forgotten who we are because we’re obsessed with being someone else online.

At the heart of all faith traditions lies spirituality—the belief in a “spirit self” that endures beyond the demise of the “human self.” The reason why people take to religion is because they need to believe in an afterlife in order to live their best life. The best incentive in life is the ability to reflect upon one’s impact once departed from this world. Without the belief in a life after life, why would we try so hard? Who are we trying to prove? We’re going to die regardless. The only person we should seek validation from is our spirit that’s left behind when our bodies have passed.

V.   

Greed

Greed is not a financial issue. It’s a heart issue. 

Attributed to Andy Stanley

Greed is a cruel sickness. It holds the ability to destroy every relationship one has. But, in addition to the damage greed does to those closest to a greedy person, it does even more damage to its victim. Greed breeds a perpetual sense of inadequacy, erodes integrity and values, and robs one of the opportunities for genuine fulfillment and happiness. It’s an ailment I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

But like alcoholism, greed is yet another coping mechanism for the spiritually impoverished. The greedy have bartered their faith for the illusion that material wealth and the ceaseless pursuit of “more” can assuage their emotional turmoil and fill up their spiritual cup. Unfortunately, I’ve recently witnessed greed’s insidious grip on my own family. And through research, I’ve come to find that this is a pattern that has repeated itself for generations past. Though the turmoil feels deeply visceral and personal as it unfolds in real-time, I acknowledge that it is a pattern that has happened before. And while it’s complex and challenging, it’s solvable. Eventually.

There’s little hope that the greed contagion infecting my family will stop within this generation, though I pray for it. My prayers extend not only to those affected by the gluttonous actions of others but also to those who’ve fallen ill due to greed. However, there’s still hope for future generations. There exists but one antidote capable of thwarting greed’s contagion. That’s faith.

By taking a top-down approach, from spirituality to physicality, my generation can embody generosity. We can uphold integrity. And we can exemplify wisdom.

We can break the cycle.

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