When Anxiety Isn’t Just Yours: Childhood, Generational Trauma, and Your Nervous System

I grew up frequently hearing Murphy’s Law – "If something can go wrong it will, and at the worst possible moment." I would always cringe every time I heard it. Even then, I knew it was super-negative and unhelpful. Now I realize how damaging that kind of thinking can be to little growing minds. Of course, when parents have that negative mindset, it usually shows up in many other less obvious and even more damaging ways.

In my house, before every decision, trip, job, or activity, we had to hear the worst-case scenarios including a long list of reasons it probably wouldn’t work. At the same time, we were expected to still do everything and do it well – talk about confusing!

If you grew up in a house where people were always braced for impact - expecting the ringing phone to be bad news, waiting for money to run out, for someone to get sick, or for the mood to turn, then anxiety didn’t show up in your life as a guest, but more like a part of the family and a part of you.

This post has two paths:

1. The Childhood Experience Path: how your own early life taught your body to live in fear and “what if.”
2. The Intergenerational Path: how the fear didn’t start with you or even with your parents, and how RIM can work directly with ancestral trauma when it shows up.

You don’t have to know which path is “true” for you. Your nervous system knows where to start.

Path 1: Childhood anxiety as a reasonable conclusion

We often talk about childhood experiences as if they were a collection of memories on a shelf. Something bad happened, we remember it, we feel in a certain way, we draw conclusions like a little scientist with our n=1. 

In reality, your body remembers being that clumsy little scientist – cute for sure and brilliant, but still a little clumsy. As a child, you constantly collected data and drew huge conclusions based on your experience - it’s not like there was a class in school about these things, so how else would you learn?!

As you learned the answer to “What keeps me safe and connected in this house, with these people, in this world?”

If you grew up with:

• Parents who were worried all the time about money, health, or safety.
• A home where conflict, addiction, or volatility made even the calm moments feel dangerous.
• Messages like “Don’t get your hopes up,” “Something always goes wrong,” or “We can’t afford to relax.”

Your inner little scientist mind may have concluded that:

• “Being relaxed is risky; that’s when the bad things happen.”
• “If I think through every possible disaster, maybe I can prevent it.”
• “If I don’t stay vigilant, I’ll be blindsided.”

Children are sponges and naturally sensitive. So, it makes sense that any child in an anxiety filled home would watch grown‑up bodies hold tension, feel the atmosphere, and absorb the emotional climate. Naturally, the nervous system would anchor everything from the way a parent’s face went tight when the phone rang, or the sudden silence when money came up, or a comment about  “what people will think.”

Those notes became the default setting for how your body responds to life. So now, as an adult when things are “fine” they are also suspect. Joy is accompanied by watching for the other shoe to drop. Overanalyzing is never enough to satisfy the expectation that something is still wrong.

From a childhood‑experience perspective, your anxiety is not irrational. It’s a system doing exactly what it learned to do: protect you using the rulebook it wrote when you were little.

Loving the System that’s Trying to Help You

If you’ve spent years shaming yourself for being anxious, thinking “I should be over this by now”, here’s a plot twist: Your anxiety isn’t proof you’re broken or weak. It might be proof that your system paid close attention and took its job very seriously.

I always think of fear as being like a smoke detector. We all have them in our houses – and even though it has gone off many times, so far it has not been a real fire in my house and still, I keep the smoke detectors. I always joke that it means dinner’s ready! 

So fear is like the detector that warns us to check and see if there is anything to worry about – is there something ahead that we need to prepare for or avoid or change? When I see it that way, I can usually respond by noting what I need to prepare for or change. I simply recognize it as a friend trying to be helpful – say “thank you Fear – I’ve got this”.

It is fair and reasonable to admit that in the past, you may have a history where relaxing sometimes did end badly. There is real danger out there, and we need to check and see if it is real where you are at the moment and respond accordingly. Where it gets in the way, is when the default setting is too high and we fail to check and see that we’re actually safe and can allow a little joy in.

None of that means you have to beat yourself up for what your body learned in good faith. That part of you deserves a little love and understanding too.

On this path, what often shows up in a RIM (Regenerating Images in Memory) session is specific stories from your childhood experience where the lesson was learned. We don’t need to talk about it or even know where it came from, as we allow the nervous system to reveal whatever is most useful and follow that. So, whatever shows up gets a chance for a “redo” with safety, agency and voice that wasn’t there when you were little. The nervous system recognizes and anchors the new felt sense of safety, changing the default setting.

So, it’s okay to know that your anxiety makes sense, and also your system can learn experientially that there are other ways to stay safe that don’t involve permanent bracing.

Path 2: Intergenerational: It didn’t start with you (or your parents)

Now let’s wander down the second path, because many people feel something deeper, like “This tension in my body feels older than me.” Or You feel like you grew up without any real trauma and yet – what’s with this anxiety?

Sometimes anxiety, fear, and hypervigilance are so baked into the family system that it’s hard to find a starting point. Your parents might say, “That’s just how we are.” Your grandparents might have been described as “worriers,” “stoic survivors,” or people who “went through a lot and didn’t talk about it.”

Generational trauma isn’t an abstract idea here. It’s what happens when:

• A war, displacement, famine, epidemic, or big historical event changes the nervous systems of a generation.
• Oppression, racism, poverty, or chronic danger become normal for a community.
• Abuse, secrecy, and emotional absence get passed down as the “standard” way to cope.

There’s a growing body of research about inherited trauma and epigenetics. You don’t need the technical jargon to recognize the lived reality. Maybe you feel scared in situations where nothing in your history explains why. Maybe you overreact to certain events, foods, smells, or moods that seem oddly specific. Or anxiety shows up even when your own life looks relatively stable.

On this path, just like your hair color or height, you didn’t get to opt in or out. First, you inherited the emotional and physiological echo of things that happened long before you were born. Beyond the biological inheritance, there is the “behavior inheritance” where our parents behavior reinforces the generations of being and behaving a certain way – so this complicates things as it overlaps with path 1 above. The good news is that we don’t have to figure it out.

How RIM meets generational trauma differently

Most methods talk about inherited trauma conceptually, but don’t offer much in what to do to change things in real life. RIM can meet it directly when it arises naturally in your inner imagery. This means we don’t have to know the family history – that would be impossible. Yes, you may know your four grandparents, and maybe a little family history (of what parents wanted to talk about) for your eight great grandparents. I’ve never met anyone who knew all 8 great grandparents, let alone the next generation of another sixteen parents. The point is, it took a lot of people to make you and your parents, and the experiences that made them all who they were and who you are. So, as always, we can access the non-verbal part of the brain where emotional memories are stored and simply follow whatever shows up.

In a RIM session, we never force generational themes. We don’t start by saying, “Let’s go heal your great‑grandparents.” Instead, we follow your inner experience.

A client begins with their current intention and as we follow the body and imagery, they might spontaneously find themselves in a scene that the facilitator helps them follow. Frequently, it’s like the parent getting a virtual RIM session, then something similar for an unknown ancestor in a historical context, setting or experience they’ve never consciously thought about or even new about.

The emotional charge is recognizably real, even if we don’t know whether the details are real or symbolic. The “healing” change/shift happens in what I call the “way-back” and is brought forward to current life. Your nervous system is showing us what matters, creating the needed shift, and bringing it forward to today – and remember, the nervous system treats a well-imagined events like a real event – so finding a body-memory of safety, agency and voice is a pretty big deal.

So, imagine if we could go to the ancestor or earlier generation, witness their fear, grief, or survival strategy and facilitate a “do‑over” where they have safety, voice, choice, or whatever was missing. You’re not literally traveling back in time and changing historical facts, but emotionally, your nervous system can now stop reliving inherited panic and let go of generational fear.

This is exactly where RIM shines: it works in that imaginal inner reality where both your story and your ancestors’ stories can show up and shift. It also lets your deeper mind choose what to reveal – not your facilitator imposing a storyline. Finally, it allows symbolic, spiritual, and emotional repair that your thinking mind can’t orchestrate on its own.

How the two paths support each other

You don’t have to decide whether your anxiety is “childhood” or “generational.” Most people are a mix. Some of your fear comes from specific experiences you remember: the arguments, hospital visits, late‑night fear, or sudden losses. Some of it rides in on the body language, silence, and inherited rules you never saw or heard.

Both paths honor one simple truth that your anxiety is not a moral failing. It’s a story your nervous system learned from somewhere. And both paths move toward the same goals:

• You can stay connected to your family, ancestors, and communities without being loyal to their anxiety as the only way to belong.
• You can let your body learn that “I am safe, I am loved, and I am enough.

A simple practice, now informed by both paths

Given how big this topic is, let’s keep your in‑the‑moment practice small and doable.

Next time inherited anxiety spikes—whether it feels like your own history or something older—try:

Step 1: Name what’s happening, including both possibilities

• “Something in me is scanning for danger.”
• “This might be my own history. It might also be something older than me. Either way, it’s here.”

You’re not deciding which path is “correct.” You’re simply acknowledging complexity.

Step 2: Find a sensation in your body

Ask: “Where does this anxiety live right now?”

Notice: Buzzing or tightness, stomach knots, aches, pressure, restlessness, calmness, pulsing, nothingness, etc.

Just name it:

• “There’s a swarm in my chest.”
• “My stomach feels like a clenched fist.”

Step 3: Offer one line of compassion that includes both you and those who came before

• “Of course you’re on high alert; you learned that was the safest option - for you and maybe for your ancestors.”
• “No wonder you’re bracing; fear has been a family language for a long time.”

You’re just honoring the effort.

Step 4: Invite one small physical shift

• “Would it feel okay to soften by 5%?”
• “Would it feel okay if my shoulders dropped just a little?”

No forcing. Just an invitation.

Step 5: Close with a present‑tense truth

• “Right now, in this moment, we are safe enough to take one easier breath.”
• “We can honor the past and still let this body rest for a minute.”

You haven’t solved generational trauma in five steps. But you have practiced meeting anxiety with honesty and compassion and reminded your body that it is allowed to experience even tiny moments of “safe enough” now.

A gentle next step

If your anxiety feels older than your life, you’re not imagining it. You may be carrying your own childhood experiences, your parents’ unspoken fear, and your ancestors’ survival strategies.

You don’t have to untangle all of that alone, and you certainly don’t have to convince yourself it’s “all in your head.” Work like RIM exists precisely for this kind of complexity:

• It lets your deeper mind show us the scenes – both personal and intergenerational, trusting your psyche knows what it’s doing.
• It gives you a way to emotionally update the default settings for what your nervous system has been carrying, without blaming yourself or erasing anyone’s history.
• It offers a path where loyalty to your people and freedom in your own body can finally coexist.

You’re allowed to say, “This didn’t start with me, and it doesn’t have to end with me living in fear.”

When you feel curious enough, you can:

• Book a free “phone date” with Mike to explore whether RIM is a good fit for what you’re carrying right now, or
• Learn more about RIM and how it works here. 

Either way, you’re welcome to bring all of you, and feel free to invite your ancestors to come along if they need the session more than you do.