Another kind of family heirloom: trauma
Depression is one of my family heirlooms; it comes in a boxed set with anxiety, and a heaping spoon(ful) of all of the Jewish mothers’ guilt in my lineage. I would have accepted a dish set… but I am learning to work with and even to transform (on good days) that which I’ve inherited.
In truth and more scientifically, what I’ve inherited through my lineage are freeze and flight responses to historical trauma and the continued trauma of anti-semitism and all the other isms. These are not unique to the Jewish people, nor to survivors of institutionalized violence and trauma. Many of the studies have been done on Black descendents of slavery and Jewish descendents of Holocaust survivors, but definitely extend to interpersonal and sexual violence, the violence of migration, colonization, and other forms of systemic violence.
Through the lens of trauma and the nervous system, Depression and anxiety can be viewed as survival responses to threats in our environment. Only in the context of my modern life as a white-bodied ciswoman with relative safety, economic security and safety net, survival looks more like trying to afford Bay Area rent, starting a business, making a living as a therapist in training (so I can cure my family of it’s generational curse, right?!), the distress of online dating, and other things that aren’t actual threats to my survival, but they are perceived threats, which activate stress and trauma responses. This is especially true when coupled with overwhelming and/or traumatic experiences in my history (a near-death car crash, an eating disorder and related health issues, etc) and current events in our socio-political field including a global pandemic, climate crisis, gun violence, racialized and gender-based violence, addiction, homelessness, anti-semitic hate crimes and legislation (i.e. Maus listed as a banned book) and onward.
My depressive episodes have come flavored by and in tandem with ADHD and/or Bipolar II—the jury is still out on the diagnosis and I don’t find the DSM particularly supportive to my own healing process. So I’ve had the added perk of hyperactivity and even some hypomanic episodes over the years, particularly when prescribed SSRIs which don’t tend to play well with people of my overactive and prone to mania constitution. I won’t go into my whole treatment history because this isn’t a psychosocial assessment, but I will say that it’s been a turbulent, messy, and also growthful and transformative past 20 years of life since adolescence hit. In just the past 7 years, up until March of 2021, I experienced approximately 12 depressive episodes and 12 hypomanic episodes, shifting through cycles about every 2-4 months with 1-2 months of euthymia (relative stability/ baseline) in between, I’ve gone from suicidal to starting a non-profit, from not returning friends phone calls for days and weeks to quitting my job and driving 20 hours to Taos, New Mexico because “Spirit” was calling me there.. I’ve been in myriad of modalities of therapy, received acupuncture, energy work, craniosacral therapy, massage, practice meditation, have a daily writing practice, go hiking, paddle boarding, dance, and recently started jiu juitsu. I’ve been on Lexapro, Cymbalta, Zoloft, and for the past 3.5 years, have been in a relatively securely attached relationship with Lamotrigine (a mood stabilizer, outside of the SSRI or SNRI class of medications) and with microdoses (and a few macrodoses) of psilocibin, which is for another article and place.
After my most recent depressive episode 1 year ago: January- March of 2021, I set out to begin tracking not just my mood cycles but also my hormone cycles, daily practices, treatments, and relational/ dating cycles. Much as the moon waxes and wanes, and the tides track high and low, we too are cyclical beings. The more I tune into my body (particularly as someone who menstruates), the more I’m aware that what had previously been more sharp peaks and dips over the course of 3-4 months, are now slightly subtler cycles within a month. Which is to say that tracking my patterns has allowed me to better anticipate and relate to my cycles (hormonal, mood, and otherwise) so that I don’t get as caught in each high and low, but rather can relate to them as phases that my body and physiology experience as the interface with our environment, culture, and my family and ancestral history . It’s allowed me to determine what kind of physical movement, practices, foods, etc I need to nourish myself through each phase with the aim of staying as balanced and in equilibrium as possible. And some phases are certainly gentler than others. And I could definitely still use some guidance with the food and supplement part, especially with sticking with my regiment.
This heirloom that has at times felt like a burden and perpetual reminder of what my mom, grandmother, and more broadly, our people have experienced, has also now shifted into a call to awaken and tune into my sensitivity, to notice my cycles, and to pause to remember that we are in fact the dreams of our ancestors: to be alive and in our aliveness, in tune with nature and with our own nature, and to shape our little pocket of the world in a way that would make them proud. Most of all, that we are working to heal some of the inherited trauma so that the next “heirloom” passed down can be a memoir, a painting, or some other precious item or quality rather than a trauma response. This is the work of breaking intergenerational cycles tuning into one cycle at a time.