Understanding legacy burdens in Internal Family Systems - Working with Legacy - what to keep, what to let go of

Looking at ancestral trauma using an IFS lens, helping be a cycle breaker, lifting inherited generational trauma and legacy burdens. practices for clearing legacy burdens with parts work IFS

I did another community drop in in March 2024 which was much more experiential ; we addressed our own family history making use of genograms and collectively used some IFS practices for clearing generational scarcity. https://www.stroudtherapy.com/news/2024/3/22/scarcityunburdening

Introduction – This hour together is an integration of: research and dissemination of other’s words and research and then my own lived experience both in IFS and working with ancestral burdens and gifts, my work as a UKCP and IFS therapist.  (Please do know I’m not an expert - this is aimed at my local community here in Stroud, I’m someone in the community feeding back interesting information in service to the community, it helps me learn too, nothing like teaching to embed my knowledge, I have parts that like to teach and be in community and Collective space to heal and spread Self energy). I’m also an avid family tree researcher, one of my hobbies. In all of my family lines, and those of my kids, I can trace back much trauma and lots of good stuff too. This helps me see and imagine how I came to be here, to have the patterns I have and can then be a cycle breaker.  I can ask inside, I meet my parts, meet my ancestors, ask what is mine, and I can let go what isn’t, I an unearth the legacy heirlooms and gifts, and come home.  This is an invitation for you to do some of this.  One little bit at a time.  The more we can be cycle breakers, healing our legacies, the healthier our communities can be.

Please know if I write something that you’re not ok with, please do write and tell me and we can discuss, its important that each of us knows the impact we have on each other, I’m aware I’m a white cis woman of privilege, and although my intent is good, there may be ways I inadvertently hurt others. What hurts you, hurts me as Deran Young so eloquently put it. I may amend here, I obviously can’t amend the video.  

Resources

Daniel Foor Ancestral Healing book and courses

IFS Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy Edited by Martha Sweezy and Ellen L. Ziskind -  the Chapter on Legacy Burdens by Ann L. Sinko

IFS Talks – two talks on legacy burdens:

·         Ann Sinko:   https://internalfamilysystems.pt/multimedia/webinars/legacy-burdens-ann-sinko

·         Osnat Arbel:   https://internalfamilysystems.pt/multimedia/webinars/legacy-burdens-and-heirlooms-talk-osnat-arbel

Parenting and legacy burdens  - Derek Scott, Deran Young and others https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJhlW1-Y_js

Collective Legacy Burdens – Dick Schwartz and Deran Young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Nm2lxZ1CU

Many Lives, Many Masters – Brian Weiss (past life therapy)

And I like this easy to read book:
It Didn’t start with you - how inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle. Mark Wollyn

NB. I’m not including here the intro into IFS from the Drop In  (there’s much on the internet, some great introductions on youtube – look out for Dick Schwartz, Derek Scott.  I have an introduction on my website https://youtu.be/wE5m_5RU91s and also a link to the ‘daily check in’ suggestion of Joanne Twombly.  Also notes at the beginning of other talks, notably the polyvagal one)

So Legacy Burdens, heirlooms, gifts..…

I want to talk first about how interesting it is to include legacy generally – let’s not forget the gifts from our ancestors and our original cultures.  Historically we’ve passed stories through generations, and in many cultures we revere our ancestors and elders, our villages, connection in ways of being, community. As Linda Hogan says In Mexico the ancestors are revered in the Day of the Dead. Other cultures have closer links to their ancestors.  We have forgotten to a great extent. What can we learn?    I’m going to encourage you to start getting to know your ancestors, start or continue looking at your overall legacies .. some of them will be positive, there’ll be gifts… at least the original positive intentions…  What you’ve taken in and what you’re passing on?

I like to think of all those who’ve gone before me… much hardship, yes, but also … all those thousands of couples (however briefly they knew each other) who created the next generation, each one if they hadn’t been here, neither would you (Britain is more a diamond shape than exponential - living in small communities and not much movement for most.. our ancestors used to get together with our cousins! https://news.legacyfamilytree.com/legacy_news/2016/08/how-many-ancestors-do-we-have.html ) “Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” 

 I encourage you to look at the work of Daniel Foor, Ancestral Medicine.  You don't need to have a calling to reconnect with your ancestors. You can just choose it. It's learnable.  You can initiate contact with your ancestors and be in relationship with them, find supportive ancestral guides, and can transform intergenerational patterns and reclaim the full blessings and gifts. Ancestral repair work can also catalyze healing breakthroughs among living family members and help children and future generations to live free from ancestral burdens.  (So personally I have many good things that have come through…I have legacies of fun, warmth, a love of animals, making my home cosy, a desire to adventure and try things out, of courage…and for some fun here… a love of boats and water.  Where did that come from?  Well I now know that all of my 4 grandparents all had legacies of leaving their homelands… crossing the Atlantic from Ireland to Newfoundland, Germany to New York, England to South Africa, Sri Lanka and Barbados/the Bahamas.. on boats. Some of them coming back this way too.. on boats!   (I’ll come to the burdens later!)

So What are Legacy Burdens?

Personal burdens can be something like I'm unworthy or I don't deserve, or I'm unlovable and they're developed in response to experiences, to traumatic experience experiences we've endured firsthand… the charge that is attached to a memory during our own personal lifetime.

Ann Sinko writes.. legacy usually involve family values, rules and loyalties, and involve “implicit contracts we make with our parents governing everything from how we eat to how we respond to death”. They come from our families and our cultures through narrative, cultural messages and conditioning.  They can influence everything in our lives, including choice of profession, mate, separation guilt (e.g. can we be separate and independent from our family?), self-care, health and ways of dying? Legacy Burdens are those things that reject anything deemed unacceptable or shameful in any level in past generations ie showing warmth and affection, being vulnerable, having imperfections, speaking up for yourself, deviating from the norm in sexuality and gender identification Legacy burdens are passed down because of fear. 

Also from catastrophic events that have occurred in our family’s past. These are epigentic memories through changes in gene expression.  Maybe you can look up the epigenetic experiments … Mice (male) mild foot shocks and cherry blossom … mated.. pups raised to adulthood no cherry blossom…  when introduced in adulthood they had a traumatic reaction.  Even artificially inseminated rats it followed this. 7 generations down … Its not the DNA that changes, how the sequence is read.  Brian Dias, Emory Yerkes National Primate Research Centre.  Rachel Yehuda (prof of psychiatry and neuroscience Mount Sinai School of Medicine) understanding how effects of stress and trauma transmit biologically..   She looked at the holocaust and 9/11… cortisol levels in the babies.   (To give you a personal note… On my of my families boat emigrations in the early 1940s they were bombed. The terror from that moment, of near death, has been passed down the generations - it is real to me, I have felt it in my body.  The boat continued and they survived but the legacy - the epigenetic memory - continued.   Widening to my general legacy burdens, there are many in my line of leaving and never returning, cutting off contact from family  I see now much of my legacy story is about disconnection from the land, and siblings and relatives cutting off.  For me, I have felt that trauma, I have parts that can disconnect … but I have a longing… I have a deep wish to be reconnected, to belong, to be in community - I did a PhD on origin, how ‘terroir’ is important, the specific environment before I knew all this! Amazing

Also nb.… difference between legacy gifts and heirlooms.  Gifts are the good things passed down,.  Osnat Arbel distinguishes that the heirlooms, these are the qualities that are found after the legacy burden has been released, probably the original intention that might have got warped by the burden.

I wanted to add… If you’re adopted, you may have epigentic memories from biological parents, and then as you grow up in your adopted home, the legacies from your adopted parents too.  

Cultural Legacy Burdens

We also have cultural legacy burdens.   I encourage you to look at Deran Young and Dick Schwartz’s work … Racism, patriarchy, individualism and materialism as the main cultural burdens of the USA.  Over here in the UK, I’d like to add Class.. IWhat else? Colonial/Empire/Imperialism…  Reserve/ silence / stoicism… we retain a Monarchy, an unelected house of lords, hereditary peerages etc and many have a belief in the rightness of a ‘ruling class’ of elites to form our government.  Our language seems (increasingly - or a return to ) nationalist and territorial talking of ‘immigrants’, and gender/equality/sexuality polarisations.  Individuality, division.  Many people are experiencing micro aggressions due to race, gender, class, disability and ableism, sexuality.    Consumerism vs environmentalism/conservation.  This is hard to notice maybe as its woven into our structures and systems, it’s so ingrained, this is collective trauma.  IFS gives us a great framework to look at these programmed .. how we see ourselves in these cogs so we can unburden that which no longer serves us, be cycle breakers… have more ease, flow and help heal. What hurts you, hurts me, as Deran said so eloquently

Passing down the legacy burdens… in epigenetic memories, a single trauma can be passed down 7 generations…

Several routes to finding our legacies..

1         Osnat Arbel game -  “Things my parents said, and my parts heard”   Let’s have a few minutes to brainstorm messages that are heard by our parts from our parents or from the outside world from very important figures like teachers, rabbis, priests, community leaders and each person selects a message that touches them in a deepest way possible

2         You can ask inside, asking your parts, getting in contact with your ancestors in your magic internal world..   grab a friend or a therapist, take one of Daniel Foor’s courses or do some Family Constellations.. for some outer support… and see what you find. Some stories are lost, there’s no knowledge but sometimes its come clear where and how things have originated. 

3         If your parents or grandparents are still living, maybe you might ask them what they remember? 

4         Drawing a simple genogram or family tree … generally men are in squares women are circles..  sketch out the patterns

A genogram … this one showing bipolar and addictions..

5         You can also research your family tree online using Ancestry or other sites – once you go back several generations, you might find others may have already done some research.  Connected to this is DNA testing… you can find out where your biological ancestors came from.  Then maybe go inside and then ask your parts, see if there’s anything they might tell you?  Anyone know anything about this?

6         Find a shaman or energy worker and have a soul reading, get in touch with those ancestors or previous incarnations, if you’re open to that.  Invite them to share, your guides, ancestors.  Talents, gifts, wisdom or knowledge that the soul has accumulated over lifetimes. Conversations around what did you come here to do or learn in this lifetime?  Karmic loops? What can you unlock and remember?  This isn’t an area I know much at all, about but my understanding is that the more current life and ancestral and karmic loops and burdens can be healed, the more you can live with your life’s purpose.   FYI… Frank Anderson works in this realm too now, his husband is a medium and Bob Falconer has just written a book The Others Within Us… IFS porous mind, and spirit possession  

So some questions to ponder, some starters…

·         - Who had what chronic or acute illnesses in previous generations?  If you have an illness … does the severity of your symptom fit with your life experience?   Do your symptoms make sense? 

·         Is this energy /viewpoint mine?  When did I start to believe this? (if the answer is “always”, it just might be a legacy burden). Are you hearing things like “my parents had this also”, “it’s been with me forever”, etc.   

·         Is there substance abuse in previous generations or addictive process?  .… or mental illness?

·         What were the rules your parents grew up with?  What did they teach you, what did your parts hear? Families often pass down “rules of shame” such as control, perfectionism, blame, denial, unreliability, and not talking openly about shameful, abusive or compulsive behaviors.   When should you be silent, when do you look away?  When to speak up?  Should you be devoted to family? 

·         Views of what it is to be a woman or a man?  Views on race, sexuality, individualism, materialism?  Class? Colonialism/Empire? Who was anxious? Depressed?  Where was there sexual or physical abuse?

·         Who was in the war or affected by war or other traumatic events? Where was the darkness?  

·          And of course.. on the other hand..  where was there the light?  The joy, sense of fun, humour and creativity?  Adventuring?  Community?  Connection?

So, just to give you a live example, parts of me want to self disclose, be accountable.. I let you know about my racist and ‘superior’ priviledged parts and legacy burdens.  Other parts are very sure we want to keep this secret.  I’ve talked with them and reminded them that its ok, I’m here at the centre of my system and its ok to do this.  They are mostly in a safe space, but I notice they do keep coming to check. (in the talk one came and made my nose itch throughout.. don’t share this, stop! )

So I can find my own legacy burdens of racism and classism. My dads family landed from Ireland and Germany in Newfoundland and New York…a lot of extreme poverty, sadness and pain, and loss... there from the 18 and 19C…I invite you to imagine if you will, New York in 1900.. the Melting Pot.. lots of people from all countries, coming from small towns., the Irish were considered lower class at the time. I can feel how alarming that must have been… how frightening.  Maybe also exciting.  I have discovered in the work I’ve done, the feeling of lack of belonging, with so many immigrants from all over., competing and hustling   My cousin Ned Harrigan was a Minstrel and later wrote well known satirical sketches on immigrant communities in New York –fundamentally racist theatrical entertainment.  My Dad then got brought up in the South, after his Dad died, where racism was rife. Its not surprising that these views were handed to me.

My mums side had a lot of privilege, and I’ve uncovered racist and colonial, perpetrating and superior class/priviledge legacy burdens there.  Particularly, superiority, entitlement, superiority and disdain for certain others. I feel that legacy, it affects my body, my facial muscles, the echo is there even after unloading.  I’ve traced back to colonial plantation ‘owners’, also links to the slave trade.  Ancestors who perpetrated superiority and dominance, of the British, including violence, resource appropriation and enslavement. So in my own IFS therapy I’ve been spending time going back along these lines and seeing what’s there.  I’ve got to know my own parts that perpetrate, that are racist and colonialist. I’ve travelled in my IFS work, with my parts, to far off lands, where to be dominant, dismissive and using disdain keeps others from seeing the fear of being in a land where you’re not wanted or in relationships where there is fear, rejection, powerlessness. What I’ve discovered and it feels true to me, is most of my ancestors were frightened. That they then had protectors try hard to look after them, that looked away from injustice, that perpetrated. These burdens passed down the generations., to me. Not an excuse, but an exercise in understanding.  So I’ve been consciously learning what I’ve taken on, what I have hidden in the shadows.  What I’m bringing to the light and now letting go of.  I’m learning so I can make a difference now, to stop perpetuating old patterns. To be a cycle breaker. To be ally to my friends and colleagues from the global majority.  To learn to trust and to be held in relationship, to belong, to ground.  To come back home to myself, and my adopted community. Internal Family Systems allows us to resolve the wounds that were passed down and release that which may not serve us any longer. Stop the chain.  Legacy burdens didn’t start with me but that it doesn’t mean that it must continue with me.  I don’t want to pass this on to my kids, or perpetuate it into my community

These are just some touches of my history, which I’m sharing to encourage you to have a look and see, look at those skeletons and see what has come through the generations.  Lets do this work.  We have a framework. Its just so important discovering whats real for you, whats lurking in the shadows, whats just not yours.  What can you bring to consciousness, so you can see what needs being let go of, what needs to be brought back home, to reconnect to?  You too can be a cycle breaker

Its much easier to digest when I can see my racist parts and burdens, than saying I am a racist.  I can also look at parts that want to deny that I am, or not see, look away, stop me acting when I see injustice.  Parts will tell us about these things, who they protect and also when these burdens are lifted.  Deran and Dick are very pro working in collective spaces to do this healing work, particularly clearing cultural legacy burdens.  Maybe we can consciously do some here too, in our mini IFS Stroud community, making the space.   Anyone want to join me? Lets get together to do this.

An example … If 80% of your depression is legacy, and only 20% is yours then you lift the legacy burden and the 20% suddenly becomes so much more manageable!   You might have chronic illness, or a particular viewpoint that keeps you stuck.  The more you know about your legacy from previous generations and ask ‘is this mine or has it come from before’.. the more you can let go!

Big caveat here… sometimes its just not safe to unburden a legacy burden…  if you’re living in present physical danger its not safe to take away those defenses.  Check what feels right inside.

What needs to be released?  How can we unburden

So once you’ve found what feels like a burden.. 3 visual aids:  

Ask inside what percentage of this feeling is inherited from my parents or someone else from my family.  method- draw a circle, ask the person without thinking to draw a pie piece that represents the inherited portion of your. ……… feeling – or imagine several piles in front of you, personal, family, culture… how much in each?

Seth Kopald has a lovely suggestion, if you’re working with children, but I’m good with doing this myself too… You can see if you can just open the window and let it fly out!  In therapeutic terms… if you’ve swallowed it, it can be regurgitated, spit it out, or at least have a chew and see what needs to stay or go!  Make a little bonfire and burn it!    You could send the burden to a wise ancestral person in your lineage who could transform the burden.

Ann Sinko …

-suggested to do the inherited portion before the portion from this person’s experience- often easier (protectors are willing to give up feelings they aren’t attached to)

- ask parts if they have any concerns about unloading it (sometimes they may be concerned about disloyalty, identity or disconnection- can address these in usual IFS way) and then ask them to hold space, or go to your Safe Space.  This is the only place they’re asked to stay away.  They understand I didn't create these, but you can deal with the fears and concerns. 

- Then invite the whole generational line.. inviting in all and any ancestors known and unknown, because sometimes what people, they only know back to their grandparents. But often when they do this, you might see this whole line of ancestors that you know nothing about!  Inviting everybody in Self leadership, their highest positive potential (people they would have been if they were less burdened).  This step can be skipped if parts resist).

-how do you feel toward those beings?

Does anyone have anything to say or show us?  We witness if need be. Now, the neat thing about legacy burdens is frequently they don't need witnessing because they're not our story!

-would you like to invite your children to unburden too (not in person, just in spirit usually)? - if yes, invite them, when here, to take the inherited burden of  xyz…… out of their bodies and hand it back to you.   In a container if that works for you…

-then you hand that - plus your burden - back to parents, (can ask, first, if that would be ok with the parents?!  As higher Self usually it’s a yes!  If not maybe a bit of IFS, for them to unblend)

-it keeps being handed back till the end of the generational line.

-how do you want the ancestor at the top of the line to unload the …….?

- do that, but first, honour (in whatever way makes sense to you) the hardships that created this burden

-ask ancestors if they have more to show you

- when done, dispose of the burden as previously chosen.

-now invite qualities that got pushed out by …….. To come back in”

-how is everyone? Thank them for showing up. …. don’t forget to keep revisiting your ancestors, lighting them a candle and asking inside for their support and help..

Thanks for listening and reading