Body keeps the score, generational trauma

[djcleo]

I read a few lines and BAM. "PTSD causes mothers to become depressed, and children of depressed mothers become a different and insecure". (Somewhat paraphrased)

I am the grandchild of either antisocial personality disorder and/or violent BPD.

My mother was physically, emotionally, spiritually abused. She passed away in the last few years. I miss her dearly.

But I also have my own child and need to work on myself. I am often very anxious and insecure.

I wonder if working on this trauma will help me lose weight, etc., and make other healthy changes.

[NarcKiddo]

So many lightbulbs went on for me when I read that book. Another one I found good was When The Body Says No, by Gabor Mate.

I came to therapy via finding out, quite by chance, that exercise and healthy eating helped my psyche more than I could ever have expected. After some years, several of my health metrics were not where I would have expected given my fitness levels and lifestyle, so I started researching more and concluded it may well be to do with chronic stress and constant engagement of my fight/flight response.

Working on the trauma could well help you make other healthy changes, but I would encourage you to try working on the physical and the mental at the same time as much as you are reasonably able. In my experience the two are inextricably linked.

I wrote a blog article on this subject for our sister site, Out Of The Storm. Link below, in case you are interested. You have to scroll down past the index to see the article.

https://www.outofthestorm.website/guest-bloggers?month=04-2023

[StartingHealing]

Body keeps the score,

Finished the book a lil while ago.  There are passages in there that so perfectly capture my inner feelings, that at times I had to stop reading due to the tears streaming down my face.

Highly recommend it.  You can find a pdf on archive.org