Understanding Nervous System Co-regulation and How Trauma is Passed down from Generation to Generation
One day we need to unpack how consistently feeling powerless and helpless impacts the nervous system and can lead to traumatic stress, which eventually overwhelms the nervous system.
How so many of us watched our parents, grandparents and other adults around us feel powerless with money, especially when there wasn't enough or because they were dependent on others for their finances.
How we learned this response with money and also feel powerless with money and how this leads to an overwhelmed nervous system (allostatic load) where money is concerned.
So whenever we deal with money we want to run, hide, procrastinate, freeze or just disassociate by pretending whatever is happening in our finances isn't happening.
And how we then model this for the next generation because everyone in our space (especially kids) are sensing and connecting with our nervous systems.
Trauma lives in the body and is passed onto the next generation in various ways
It's not just what we say or how we act around kids that makes the difference, it’s also about what’s happening in our nervous systems, children co-regulate their caregivers’ nervous systems.
So even if we’re putting on a brave face when we are dealing with money, children can sense what’s happening with us at a nervous system level and their nervous systems learn that that’s the way they should behave with money.
We will unpack this eventually, just not today because I am from my weekly acupuncture and I need to sleep for a few hours because my acupuncturist is doing the most with my womb and digestive system.
Childhood trauma impacts digestive health and even though I have done loads of work on my digestive system and acupuncture aids my process.
There was a time (in 2010) at the height of my depression, panic attacks and anxiety when I stopped digesting food but I’ve come a long long way because now my digestion is almost 100. It's also one of the reasons why I started doing the work I do around ancestral trauma, the body and money.
This is also why I am such an advocate of healing because we heal not just for ourselves but for the next generation as well.
