My book The Anxiety Conversation: an excerpt on DNA, epigenetics and the family blueprint

W: We’ve got to think about genetics, and epigenetics is looking at how things are passed from one generation to the next. Experts are saying now that there are parts of the cell that will actually rewrite your DNA in your response to life. So how the generations lived before us is going to condition the health and wellbeing of the children we have.

D: So something hereditary, an illness, a bad heart for example, could be caused by your great great great grandfather because he was angry all the time.

W: Yes, their interaction with the environment, their DNA. Cells do two things – they protect or they grow, and so if your cells are constantly switched on to protect all the time because you’re tense or anxious, then your cells are not growing, they are not regenerating as they should. Cell structure is so complex – they’re all like little humans, like little beings on their own. They have a respiratory system and digestive system and defecation system and they are so complex – and there’s a trillion of them making you up.

D: So if enough of them are affected badly it’s going to cause an effect?

W: If you look at what they’re doing for a cure for cancer now, they’re taking cells out of the body, increasing their ability to fight cancer cells and then they’re putting them inside a virus because the virus can penetrate the cells better. So how we deal with our cells is hugely important. That’s why stem cells work: they become whatever culture you put them in, which totally blew the whole idea of genetics.

D: Is this anything to do with it all? In the Bible it says: “I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected – even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me.”

I mean, even for someone who doesn’t think much of the Bible, isn’t it simply saying here that if you have a lack of love in your heart and soul, that you will pass that on and teach it to your children, and that it can take generations – surely even more than three or four, let’s go right back to humankind’s cave-dwelling days – for the cycle to break.

To my mind, it is only going to get broken when someone comes along who probably suffers so much pain, anguish and trouble in their life that they are actually given that gift of desperation to make a change, to be able to realise that what they know isn’t the best way of living, in fact that it’s a disastrous way of living and they are just making the same mistakes as their parents and grandparents. I mean, how often do you hear about someone who marries the carbon copy of one of their parents, even when that parent was an abusive drunk.

So anyway, once that person is given the humiliation that brings on enough humility for them to say they have got it wrong, that they need help, then they are able to start work on ripping up that family blueprint that’s been passed down for generations on how to think, behave and react. As they start to rip that one up and shred it, they can start to gain and then have a new blueprint for life.

The hugely important thing here is then that can help their children and go on for generations. A loving blueprint will work for as long as a blueprint of fear and anger. This is true for mental, emotional, spiritual and physical aspects. What do you think?

W: One person who turns their own personal trauma from a liability to an asset, from a curse to a blessing, will affect positively the generations that come after them, provided the nurture as well as nature sides are dealt with too.

Read more and get The Anxiety Conversation here.