We d. W. Stamford at 88.5 w. Our allies Southampton at 91.3 and w. When p.r. . Rachel Yahoo is and neuroscientist and an epic geneticist a pioneer in understanding how experiences can imprint us at a cellular level her work demonstrates that trauma can transmit biological vulnerability to stress in future generations but it also yields knowledge as a form of power to flourish through the traumas large and small that shape all of our lives and communities when you are able to put something in a context to carry it with you but you carry it with you in a way that promotes more reflection in a way that gives you more of a context in a way that shows you where you've come from in a way that honors your past but it doesn't own you you cannot run from your past but maybe you would run farther if you carried your past with you as long as you can control it I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being Stay with us. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington Stevens Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore is facing mounting calls to leave the race because of sexual misconduct allegations a 5th woman is accusing more of making sexual advances toward her decades ago when she was a teenager and he was a prosecutor in his thirty's n.p.r. Susan Davis reports the top Republicans are exploring options for next month's special election Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby says he believes Roy Moore's accusers and that is candidacy is harming the Republican Party if this keeps up the beer reparable more than half a dozen senators including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are calling on more to abandon his campaign more denies any wrongdoing and is showing no indication he will drop out because as Republicans are exploring whether or not to try and field a write in candidate in an effort to deprive more of the votes he needs to win Sen Cory Gardner of Colorado who runs the 2800 Senate campaign operation has gone even further he says if more wins the Senate should vote to expel him Susan Davis n.p.r. News the Capitol Attorney General Jeff Sessions is directing federal prosecutors to consider the possibility of naming a 2nd special counsel to investigate alleged wrongdoing by democrats The move follows a request from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte the Virginia Republican is seeking a probe of the Clinton Foundation and an Obama era deal to buy uranium from a company backed by the Russian government the Us Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a California law that requires so-called crisis pregnancy centers to tell patients about state funded contraception and abortion services as N.P.R.'s Nina Totenberg swellings the centers which tried to dissuade women from having abortion claim the law infringes on their right to free speech the case was brought by Christian based facilities that argued the law unconstitutional it compels them to post the information. But the state contends that these facilities use deceptive advertising that confuses and even intimidates women who are lured to the clinics believing they're going to receive neutral counseling to counter that the state says it requires the facilities to inform patients whether there are medical personnel on the staff and to disclose the availability of the free contraceptive and abortion services provided elsewhere a federal appeals court panel upheld the law as a permissible state regulation of the health care industry Nina Totenberg n.p.r. News Washington Iran's state run news agency says the search for earthquake survivors has ended the magnitude 7.3 quake struck mountain villages and towns along the border with Iraq overnight Sunday killing more than 400 people and injuring thousands more aid groups are trying to restore power and water in the region and get emergency shelter to the people who are displaced this is n.p.r. News. According to new medical guidelines many more Americans have high blood pressure than current statistics suggest in the past high blood blood pressure has met a top rating of at least 140 in a bottom of 90 under the new guidelines the number would drop to 130 over 80 Dr Paul Welton of Tulane University led the panel behind the change researchers studied the risk factor in more than 100 adolescents between 11 and 13 John Van Meter of Georgetown University says in boys it was associated with an increased desire for immediate gratification interestingly in the girls the effect was the opposite they were less likely to focus on short term rewards than meters says the finding has implications for programs aimed at preventing substance abuse in adolescence what might be best for boys may not be the right approach with girls he presented his findings at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington d.c. Jon Hamilton n.p.r. News Maurice's prime minister says his government will again distribute one off Christmas payments to lower earning Greeks drawing from a budgetary surplus that was built on severe spending cuts and high taxes Alexis Tsipras says 1400000000 euro will be given to at least 3400000 Greeks this holiday season that compares to 6170000 euros that was issued to pensioners last year. On Wall Street stocks closed higher with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 17 points the Nasdaq composite index rose 6 points and the s. And p. 500 gained 2 Asian shares are mixed higher in Tokyo this is n.p.r. News in Washington. We have. Support for n.p.r. Comes from Home Advisor matching homeowners with local home improvement professionals for a variety of projects from repairs to remodels homeowners can read reviews of background checks pros book appointments at Home Advisor dot com and the Corporation for Public. We're just starting to understand that just because you're born with a certain set of genes you're not in a biologic prison as a result of the genes that changes can be made to how those genes function that can help the idea is a very simple idea and you hear it from people all the time people say when something cataclysmic happens to them I'm not the same person I've been changed I am not the same person that I was and epigenetics gives us the language and the science to be able to start unpacking. Genetics describes d.n.a. Sequencing but the new field of epigenetics sees that genes can be turned on and off and expressed differently to changes in environment and behavior and Rachel you heard it is a pioneer and understanding how the effects of stress and trauma can transmit biologically beyond cataclysmic events to the next generation she studied the children of holocaust survivors and the children of pregnant women who survived the 911 attacks but her science is a form of power for flourishing beyond the traumas large and small that mark each of our lives and those of our families and communities I'm Krista Tippett and this . Is a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and the director of the Traumatic Stress studies division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine she grew up in a neighborhood in Cleveland that was heavily populated with Holocaust survivors a fact she didn't register so much as a child but which later became pivotal to the discovery she has helped to make I spoke with her in 2015. The way I start all of my conversations where I'm talking to is is just wondering about how you would describe how you would start to describe the spirit religious or spiritual background of your childhood however you would describe that now I had a very strong spiritual background I was raised in an observant Jewish community I went to a Jewish day school. My father was a rabbi. So there was a lot of Jewish study and Jewish culture and Jewish religion in our home and also at school so I was surrounded by actually immersed in the bubble of observant Judaism. So you at b. Told me that you were the 1st graduating class where you were given the option of getting Was this your ph d. In my ph ph d. In psychology or neuroscience that this is a young field was really just coming into its own and so I just I wonder how you would start to tell the story of you know in your lifetime. The emergence of you know like the difference between what you thought you were going into when you I guess decided maybe you what was it that you want to study psychiatry and how you've watched that develop what's been fascinating to you to be part of that that what was fascinating from the very beginning my work in graduate school was focused on stress hormones and I was a great deal of interest in understanding the biologic response to stress and then is this is like around the time that stress was becoming this Mord that was in the culture Yeah I think stress as a word was in the culture or really in the forty's and fifty's also. But it wasn't until around that time that there was a biology associated with stress right and people were very interested in it and they were very interested in this idea that something that happens to you generates a biological response and people knew a lot about stress hormones from the adrenals. What started happening in the seventy's in the eighty's was a recognition that there were stress hormone receptors in the brain and what that meant was that the brain wasn't just barking orders out peripheral tissue like the adrenal gland there was a dialogue going on it wasn't just the brain regulating everything it was an ability of stress hormones to circle back and influence how the brain function and and even in the eighty's as a graduate student I was awed by that concept so that meant that things or lodging in our bodies and that that things were happening at a physiologically level and affecting all the things we saw it with the brain and that was new I think it was new because everything was new and yeah but it wasn't but it was certainly new to me and the. The work that I did in graduate school was really following up a series of findings that suggested that when you remove adrenal glands in infant rodent pups the brain begins to develop much more than usual and you get an adult rodent that has a brain that is 15 percent larger than if you hadn't removed the adrenal glands and that was really interesting because what it meant was that stress hormones play a really critical role in how the brain develops and how behavior develops. So my understanding is that you you wanted to look at this connection and people and I know I'm simplifying this but at some point you went back to your old neighborhood in Cleveland and you started studying the Holocaust survivors and I don't know if you're saying the children of holocaust survivors at that point and you found a similar cortisol profile in them that one would find in veterans who had p.t.s.d. . What happened was that I was having trouble understanding the relevance to humans Ok of that work and it was very important for me to be involved with something that was directly clinically relevant I asked to do some project in people and one thing led to another and I found myself at the Veterans Administration just a few years after the official diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder became known in the d.s.m. And. We were really among the 1st people that group to look at the biology of post-traumatic stress disorder and the observation that we made which was really very hard to understand at that time. As that the combat Vietnam veterans showed a lower court is all levels. Right and it was a surprising observation because cortisol levels as you may know are associated with stress responses and people that have depression and other kinds of mental illnesses and symptoms often show high cortisol levels so this idea that kind of veterans had low cortisol levels was really kind of almost a crisis in the field and and it was a crisis because the diagnosis of p.t.s.d. Itself was controversial Yeah and one day I said to my advisor Dr Earle Diller Yeah I said I don't know maybe you just got a packet up around this post-traumatic stress disorder and I grew up in a neighborhood of all costs arrivers and they're nothing like the patients here at the v.a. And he looked at me and he said that Rachel is a testable hypothesis. And then it went from there we decided to drive to Cleveland. A bunch of us and test the hypothesis that Holocaust survivors were similar to Vietnam veterans and essentially what we found is that there were a lot more similarities than we would have ever dreamed of and that they also had these low cortisol levels some of the same chemical markers were their biological mothers that that is what we observed her dad. In terms of the fact that Holocaust survivors notoriously were not treatment seeking in mental health. You know we asked Holocaust survivors about that and we asked them about the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder we asked about nightmares we asked about flashbacks we asked about those things they had been suffering many of them for decades with the symptoms and when. Yes Will did it ever occur to you to go and seek help. Many of them said who could understand what we had gone through and one woman said to me you know Dr you Hutto we don't have V.A.'s like your veterans do. I thought to myself whoa and went home and within 2 weeks we stabilized a holocaust clinic for Holocaust survivors at Mount Sinai. And the field that you again very near young even younger feel that you have not only stepped onto but helped are helping to shape is this this world of of epigenetics which is the idea that not only do experiences lodge physiologically but that physiological changes can actually be passed on to the next generation transmitted generationally transgenerational e. One helpful way to me that you've talked about epigenetics as you said think about genetics as the computer and epigenetics as the software the app of the program. Yes but so so again like you know in these old way some of these old ways where I'm learning we think about we would think about pylon tickle change between generations as being evolutionary as something that would take time but what you're learning is that that epigenetics it's a mechanism for short term adaptation that even genetic mutation can happen quickly and it's all around this trauma so that trauma itself gets inherited. Yeah it's not a genetic change per se but it's a change to the program and we're just starting to understand that just because you're born with a certain set of genes you're not in a biologic prison as a result of those genes that changes can be made to how those genes function that can help you know and maybe some changes that are more likely to work her than others and some genes are more flexible than other genes but the idea is a very simple idea and you hear it from people all the time people say when something cataclysmic happens to them I'm not the same person I've been changed I am not the same person that I was. And we have to start asking ourselves what do they mean by that cross or the same person they are. And. They do and what I think it means is that the environmental influence has been so overwhelming that it has forced a major constitutional change an enduring transformation and epigenetics gives us the language and the science to be able to start unpacking. Today with neuroscientist and. She's a pioneer in understanding how environmental and behavioral experiences can transmit effects at a cellular level and across generations. So it makes sense to us I think that parents who are charming ties in whatever way would exhibit things around their children right that would would affect the children but what you are showing is that it while that is true children who are in this sense to inherit trauma actually are born with less of a capacity to some of them born with less of a capacity to metabolize stress and is that an actual genetic change well let's unpack what you've said Ok if you set a lot of please leave. Me and I'm well I'm just going to clarify you know yeah whatever. There are 2 ways to influence the next generation not least. One way is to directly transmit something that you have and you transmitted in the form that you have it so let's say a change has been made on to your d.n.a. An epi genetic Mark now sits on a promoter region of your gene for example and through the magic of meiosis. That Mark gets transmitted through the act of reproduction the cell divides there's reproduction and it in the change sticks and it's present in the next generation that's one thing that's a transmitted change in time there's another kind of change that involves giving your child either at conception or in utero or post-conception a set of circumstances and the child is forced to make an adaptation to those circumstances right. And how would you talk about how that what the insides of this epigenetics adds into our understanding of those dynamics what can be an inherited passed on well let me go back to why we started looking at this in the 1st place we established a clinic for Holocaust survivors. And what we found was that our phone did ring but it was mostly children of holocaust survivors who called us. And what we began to see quite clearly was that offspring were reporting that they had been affected by the Holocaust in many different kinds of ways but it in a in a very coherent and cohesive pattern they talked about feeling traumatized by witnessing the symptoms of their parents and they talked about the expectations being traumatized by some of the expectations that the Holocaust had placed on them such as that they are the reason their parents survived and therefore there was a house that a face had take what now have to accomplish so that all the people that died or were they could give their lives meaning they had difficulty in any kind of a separation circumstance divorce those kinds of things and they described essentially this problem in separating from their parents I mean the time we started to treat Holocaust survivor offspring most of them were in their late thirty's or forty's or fifty's and their mindset was to describe themselves based on who their parents were and most people at that age are someone's parent or someone's bouse you know you're not very few people at that age are describing themselves in terms of who their parents were and I thought that in itself was very interesting when and what did you learn that was surprising and new oh a lot. Well 1st of all this idea that they felt. More vulnerable that could be supported by fact it turned out that holocaust offspring were 3 times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder if they were exposed to a traumatic event than demographically similar Jewish persons whose parents did not survive also in their lifetime they were more vulnerable to post traumatic stress in whatever experiences came their way. Right by now or whatever experiences came their way what was very very interesting was that there were some experiences that didn't register that much but all traumatic experiences that involved some kind of an interpersonal component was more likely to be difficult to holocaust offspring also showed a lot of resilience related qualities but in terms of this idea of being more vulnerable to depression or anxiety that was real we also found and this really was very surprising to us that holocaust offspring had the same neuro and a Korean or hormonal abnormalities that we were viewing in Holocaust survivors and persons with post-traumatic stress disorder and later on we refined that even more so that we realized that the specific risk for certain things like post-traumatic stress disorder was associated with having a mother that had post-traumatic stress disorder you have also taken that this inquiry to other populations like you've studied the children of women who survived the 911 attacks and where at certain points of pregnancy at that moment is that right yes. And so how it's because again I think the Holocaust such a singularly massive event so did you tell me do you have kind of similar findings in the post 911 we did we did we were able to do as extensive a work up but I want to get back to something you said there are really very important about the Holocaust being this overwhelming trauma in part why it's such an overwhelming trauma because it happened on such a large scale Mia but what we have to realize is that individuals who are traumatized maybe in a very private way. Are devastated by the things that happened to them they're just not as public they may not be as prolonged They may not be as great but for somebody to be pregnant and in the World Trade Center while those buildings are coming down that's your own personal Holocaust and I think we can understand people a lot better if we take the time to understand the impact that these events have on them personally just what what we look for when we study the impact of a trauma is how big the event is compared to what usually goes on for a person. And it's this idea of this overwhelming change that is what I think resets and recalibrate multiple biologic systems in a in an enduring way so we we have to be able to visualize that in order to understand why the body makes such major and drastic changes because of course what we've been taught in school is that you have a stress response and after a few minutes everything gets back to normal we handle it homeostasis the body sort of bounces back like a rubber band and that happens with respect to extremely circumscribed systems but not with respect to the entire person. You can listen again and share this conversation with Rachel Yehuda through our website on being died org I'm Krista Tippett on Being continues in a moment support for on being with Krista Tippett comes from the feds are Institute helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world learn more at bats or dot org. A young man named Andrew Anglin was in his teens when he began hurting himself and adults when he began hurting others online created this army thousands of angry young men all gathering together online to entice Semitic harassment campaigns before insurrection I'm Steve Inskeep the origins of an American Nazi tomorrow on Morning Edition. Joined us from 5 to 9 support comes from Richard Turlington architects Westminster School and smile Ok answer hospital at Yale New Haven. And Tom Coming up on the next on point at the u.n. Climate change conference and bone team Trump is promoting fossil fuel the u.s. Alone not in the Paris agreement where does this go on the heels of the last bank s. And Texas massacres Newtown families want gun makers held liable there in court again could this be the way that's coming up on the next on point from n.p.r. . 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I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today in conversation with neuroscientist Rachael Yehuda the young field in which she works at the genetics explores how dreams can be turned on and off and expressed differently through changes in environment and behavior she has pioneered studies with the children of trauma survivors and help demonstrate how experiences can transmit a biological vulnerability to stress in future generations it seems and I think this comes through not just in what you're saying but how are you saying it that that this knowledge that we're gaining about ourselves is a form of power and that it holds lots of promise and also very practical applications now so we will talk about that. This science also makes it possible to talk about things that are hard for us to talk about Amanda's whole notion of generationally transmitted trauma. It just a kind of a chemical basis for talking about. You know what happens to populations of refugees or you know African-Americans in this country who have this history of generational trauma or aboriginal peoples in Australia or I was reading about some work in generational trauma that Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart on the Pine Ridge Reservation you know using the term of the soul warns of the moon doing of the Native American soul. This is science that is putting something to that phenomenon that seems to me to be quite narrow it's a more holistic way of. Describing. What happens to human beings yes but it doesn't all all have to be negative I mean I think the purpose of epigenetic changes I think is them plea to increase their repertoire of possible responses. I don't think it's meant to damage or not damage people it just it expands the range of biologic responses and that is can be a very positive thing when that's needed I mean who would you rather be in a war zone with somebody that's had previous adversity knows how to defend themselves or somebody that has never had to fight for anything right so you're saying that every advantage in many other a social and cultural ways so you're saying that our that there's an intelligence in our bodies behind this adaptation so yes yes right right there is a wisdom in our body sure. But you know what I mean about saying that it opens up some conversations that we you know to be able to talk about this in terms of science and in terms of physiology it opens up a new vocabulary for talking about things that are very difficult you know yes I think that's right I think that in general. The concept of post-traumatic stress disorder has allowed us to acknowledge that trauma affects last they endure they don't all go away and now every genetics allows us to extend it to generational Yeah. I'm just suddenly aware of a lot of work going and I know you're you're so much more in the middle of this but just as an outsider aware of this to Cathars discussion and this these approaches finding their way no I I was it in California last year the Californian down meant is doing all this work on you know how the communities and putting the notion of a trauma to children being traumatized and a much more expansive understanding of what that means based on a lot of this science and trying to acknowledge that and treat that or help the children themselves become more self-aware and to model 8 themselves rather than just punishing them for bad behavior. Yeah I mean I think that how we think about legacy trauma changes if you want yes storable trauma. You know I have given that a lot of thought in the Jewish religion we do memorialize trauma we have many days we even have a Holocaust Remembrance Day We have fast days that commemorate the destruction of the temple rape we have on an individual level we memorialize the date of death of loved ones if we say yes girl which is a memorial service but what's very interesting about that is that these days occur on a specified time on the calendar they start at a certain time they end at a certain time and then so to the effect and so you set aside a certain part of your life to remember and acknowledge but it doesn't own you when you are able to put something in a context you carry it with you but you carry it with you in a way that promotes more reflection in a way that gives you more of a context in a way that shows you where you've come from in a way that honors your past but not in a way that overtakes your past and makes a future pre-determined or impossible so I think that that we have to be very careful about how we talk about generational a fact a lot of people what is a generational scars but they're merely a fact you cannot run from your past but maybe you would run farther if you carried your past with you as long as you can control it and I think that that is really what we want to understand we want to. Stand what it means to have a greater repertoire of behavior. We have a concept of being optimized to your environment right so let's say for some reason your parents transmitted to you biologic changes that are very appropriate to starvation but to help live in a culture where food is not plentiful you're just not optimized. But I think that if we develop an awareness of what the biologic changes from stress and trauma are meant to do then I think we can develop a better way of explaining to ourselves what our true capabilities and potentials are. And so with you and I I mean what you just described about how do you do as I'm in particular and I think religious ritual there's a there's always been this innate wisdom to that kind of creating a container where the pain and the trauma is acknowledged but not allowed to I mean that it has its place but it's challenging for us culturally to it also says that when we have. You know this this whole issue of race is so with us now of this legacy in African-American communities of all kind of layers of trauma across history it seems to me that one of the things this science is saying is that somehow in the process of healing and addressing that in a new way there is kind of a need to create that container of acknowledgement I don't know I mean I'm just thinking out loud I just wonder if you think about this kind of implication of this work you're telling. I think about it quite frequently because I'm very challenged by thinking how this information can be empowering and not disempowering Yeah and one of the studies that we published maybe a year ago showed that some epi genetic changes occur in response to psychotherapy you know for saying that environmental circumstances can create one kind of change a different environmental circumstance create another kind of change here that's very empowering Yeah that healing also is transmitted Exactly and you know I've been talking in some way or another to survivors of extreme trauma for I don't know more than 25 years tell who really a long time I think I have spoken to. Certainly hundreds probably closer to more than a 1000 trauma survivors and I think the message of. How you take your trauma forward and use it positively is something a lot of people really resonate with I mean there was a brief moment in our field where. Many scientists thought that if they could obliterate the memory for the trauma that would be a cure for p.t.s.d. . But I don't think that for most people that would be a cure for p.t.s.d. I don't think most people don't want to remember what happened to them. They want to not be tormented by that memory and they want to be able to take all that suffering and convert it into something positive and that's why you see a lot of trauma survivors engaged in social justice and trying to help prevent future tragedies I think at the podium of suffering provides an unparalleled opportunity not to mention the fact that what trauma does sometimes for people is that it really focuses them on the past they have a lot of trouble staying in the present and there's virtually nothing left for the for thinking about the future and really it's very important that although you can't change what has happened in the past there's this whole future that you might be able to do something about. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today with neuroscientist and. She's a pioneer in understanding how trauma lodges in our bodies and can transmit effects at a cellular level across generations. Tricked by how some of. Which is now it also turns out that we can kind of see it in terms of chemistry. Is also there and spiritual text I mean you quoted this passage from Kill the father's 8 sour grapes and the children's teeth were set on edge right it's in the Bible it's rhetorical but the idea is that it's a hard thing to imagine that if your father eats sour grapes the children's teeth will be rotted and yet. Scientists teaching us exactly that yeah and I do think it's important to to keep underlining the fact that what you're learning and what you're working on is is opening up so much nearer inside of possibility but just as you said there was skepticism about p.t.s.d. This kind of idea still has a ways to go before it's really settled in our midst I think that's right I think that what throws us off and why these ideas are often challenge is because there isn't a uniform response to stress or trauma and it throws things off when when the world isn't that ordered Yeah it throws things off when people respond differently to events so it's very hard to have somebody say this event derailed me when somebody else who experienced the same event wasn't Darrelle by the event we have to appreciate that there is quite a lot of variability and diversity in the way that we respond and some have argued that the diagnosis of p.t.s.d. Is too limiting and some of argue that it's too expansive but one thing is for certain posttraumatic stress disorder is one kind of response to trauma and there are probably many others including resilience. So let me ask the question this way because it seems to me you know what you're doing is you're contributing to this whole sense of power. Complicated prayer and it's always a dance between what comes to us physiologically and also how we behave I mean it's not I think you know what you're saying is that parents have experienced trauma do pass that on in ways that have to an attic biological force but there also are experiences their children are having that are about how their parents are with them right. So if I as a parent had a traumatic experience I mean if you were working with say of a mother who had been in a 2nd or 3rd trimester a 911 it is a people who. Who you've worked with what can a parent do to transmute you know to work with that inheritance factor knowing that it's there you know what I'm asking what how do you yeah and I'm really glad that you brought up the 911 study because resort didn't finish the loop talking about the reason that that study was so pivotal even though we were unable to do as comprehensive a biological assessment as we had been able to do in adults was that what we learned was that there was a trimester effect on cortisol levels in the babies and that was released huge for us and it opened a lot of doors for us because we began to understand that some of the differences between maternal and paternal trauma and risk might have to do with the very special in utero changes or a neutral contributions to what we call developmental programming which is really about changing the stressed system so that it can have this greater repertoire so you asked me a kind. Question of what I would say to a 2nd or 3rd trimester mother what I generally say to people that have a lot more to overcome because their biology He has given their condition a firmer reality is that you have to work harder or you have to understand that a lot of what you have is biologically driven and I find that just this information just fan from out and just naming just the information there was one time in one of the Holocaust groups one of the women was talking about something stressful that happened at work it was in a group psychotherapy it was a terrible story but then she stabbed and she said and then I remembered a doctor who just said I have poor shock absorbers at I should just let it pass because my biology is going to have extreme responses before it comes down and then I did and it really worked now I didn't say that. It wasn't back lever but what was so interesting was how she had internalized the information that her stressed system was more responsive and had to use it to actually. Calm down all by herself in response to a stressful situation so I pointed that out of course because they had nothing to do with me but but it's just the power of information is that pet not as a form of power it is the knowledge Sally and I think if we know what's going on in our bodies then it just takes a lot of the confusion and the panic away from it especially if we have this idea that this is a step on the way to having an equilibration of some sort that's what you're learning also holds for. Parents too. Let's say I'll just you know be personal here you know I've struggled with depression at times and I think when you have something like that you you know of course we know that genetically there can be predispositions for these things but I also feels like it's in this category of something that you worry about passing on to your children in every possible way I mean. There are all kinds of things that we pay I mean and that depression does you know can feel like a form of trauma and it's a way Oh absolutely depression is horrible. And it does pass to children but I think one of the things that can be very empowering is to pass a law coping strategies instead of saying things like well I have depression but that can never happen to you. You say things like I worry sometimes that you might get scared when you're down and when I'm down it's awful but I can reflect back on it and know it's an illness. Or something that can be again a tool so the worst thing that you can probably do when you have depression is to not name it and to make a lot of attributions that are not valid about your character or her about other things or that you're not trying hard enough. Think to do when you feel your depression is what you would do when you feel any illness and that is have it treated and of course not every illness is treated very easily but you deal with it for what it is so teaching somebody how they might deal with something that you might pass on. Is probably the thing that I would recommend. And we talked about that how this research speaks to the whole idea about generationally transmitted Thomas speaks to also groups of people are you do you work at all and communities is is this science being brought into to the communal level like this or is it useful at that level. I don't know I I'm not really dealing with things in that manner Yeah and ironically And interestingly. You know usually we have our religious leaders do a lot of this communal trannies saddened because you don't have a mental health professional up there front of you know many families praying because of the bad is just happened so I think that we charge our spiritual leaders with doing a lot of this work. Well you know what you said a little while ago though is that spiritual traditions have actually created these containers for during this name during the naming right and putting ritual around it so that it has its place but it also has boundaries and also I just think there's language like there's the language of the Lamb and Haitians I don't you know I mean that we don't yeah that we don't have culturally but it's so necessary to the reality of. Well Jewish tradition. Believes that the same person who wrote limitations also wrote the song of songs who. Can verify for you but the idea is that this is a moment it's an expression it's a time of your life it's not necessarily defining you always people can have periods of good functioning and periods of bad functioning and it's can be quite an event there could be triggers that make things worse there could be good environmental circumstances that make things better there could just be a natural cycle time can make things better or make things worse so there are just a lot of different ways of really approaching this I just say I was just kind of coming back to what he said to me at the beginning about. The fact that. We hear people say you know something traumatic happened to them and it it could be a veteran who came back from war it could be rape it could be you know it violent accident or a criminal attack. And they say it changed me and your this knowledge that you have now have is in fact it did change people with genetic force and that it can be genetic the genetics for still can be passed on also just I'm so struck by the fact that this knowledge itself just acknowledging the force of what has happened to us at the force of trauma itself is a piece of knowledge that I don't know if you want to say it healing but that it helps that it is that it's kind of it that it's a building block to. To heal and I think it's a necessary prerequisite for healing you have to do more than just recognize it but you have to recognize right we have a culture that goes to 2 extremes they either completely dismiss something as nothing happened don't worry or they get very hysterical. What what might have happened and really what we have to do is give ourselves a little time after an adverse event to kind of take stock and be so hard on ourselves or not set expectations and just listen to our bodies and give ourselves the space to be quiet and to heal and to see to ascertain what has been damaged and try to counteract that by putting ourselves in the most. The stressful healing environment that we possibly can have to counter act some of that in promoting a biological and molecular healing process that might forestall some of the epigenetic a molecular changes I keep having this memory of something an experience I had a couple months ago I was in the city of Louisville where they're working on from the mayor to the chief of police to the school system they're trying to figure out what it would be to be a compassionate city and they're in there and they're actually using some science and this they're bringing some contemplative methods into schools it's very interesting and very holistic and there was and actually in a pastor an African-American leader who is a lead to one of the important church there and he said that just one of the most important transformative things that this mayor had done and then that young people in his community had said this to him was to sit with their grief. To Fall be to do well with the truth and you know I'm not and they may have used the word trauma. But just to let that be in the room feel feel it yeah it instead of running to someone to give you a sleeping pill Yeah I feel it I mean if you want to have that kind of a culture it boils down to 2 words it boils down to being able to ask someone you Ok you know just the idea that York knowledge ing the possibility that something that has just happened to someone and inquiring about them is really really at the heart of how military culture throughly check up on each other and other healing cultures you release you really hear a lot of people saying hey you Ok And if you're not Ok I mean the fact that you're not Ok right but something terrible really has happened and letting that be butting that also be true. Well the 2nd stage is saying you know what else for. That that's a different problem altogether but just the idea of creating the space for that to be a possibility instead of having the assumption and in our lives we just assume everything is Ok yeah and how are you the great right we do that right reflexive How are you has become a pleasantry that is devoid of all meaning but. But just really kind of taking a 2nd to enquire. In a real way about how someone is doing and even if they don't tell you and you know they lie to you it will probably have a beneficial effect I mean what I hear from trauma survivors what I'm always struck with is how upsetting it is when other people don't help or don't acknowledge or respond very poorly to needs or distress I'm very struck by that and I'm very struck by how many Holocaust survivors got through because there was one person that became the focus of their survival or or they were the focus of that person's survival so how we behave towards one another individually and in society I think can really make a very big difference and obviously the effects of environmental of that inside our molecular biology. Here she comes could feed comes very interesting when you think about it that way but I think it's true. Today as professor of psychiatry and you're. Science and the director of the Traumatic Stress. At the Mt Sinai School of Medicine she's also director of the Mental Health Care Center at the James j. Peterson v.a. Medical Center in New York City. And. Our lovely theme music is provided in composed by Keating and the last. Final credits show artist. Was created at American Public Media or funding partners include the John Templeton Foundation supporting academic research and civil dialogue on the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind who are we here and where are we going to visit. The Fetzer Institute helping to build the spiritual foundation for. Org Callia pay a foundation working to create a future where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home. In support of public theology reimagined the foundation a catalyst for empowered healthy and fulfilled lives. Indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders interest in community development and education. Exchange Crystal. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Bolsheviks revolution in Russia and it's really live will consider the significance of this historic milestone and we'll hear from members of Connecticut's Russian American community join the conversation on the next regular. Listen tomorrow morning at 9 support comes from Columbia dental Middlesex Hospital and long war theater Here's how comedian a lie is a blessing or defines girl logic do I want pizza Ok Am I on a diet did I eat pizza already am I feeling bloated am I wearing a swimsuit here am I going to the gym later did I already go to the gym maybe have a dairy allergy I don't want my nose to run my throat or a cheese that's a hard life I don't care. Girl logic plus more news and culture of the week next time it's been a minute from n.p.r. . West on Saturday mornings at 10 this is w. When p.r. Connecticut's public media source for news and ideas w when p.r. And w. When p.r. H.d. One marriage in at 90.5.