Mark Wolynn: The 'Core Sentence' Behind Inherited Trauma
In this episode, John Clarke is joined by Mark Wolynn, leading expert in inherited family trauma and author of It Didn’t Start With You, to explore how trauma can be passed through generations and show up as anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, and unexplained fears. We dive into Mark’s approach to identifying trauma language, distinguishing attachment wounds from generational trauma, and using body awareness, healing sentences, and ritual to uncover and work with what may not have started with us.
Key takeaways:
How inherited trauma can show up through symptoms, sensations, and behaviors.
How “trauma language” can reveal hidden attachment and generational wounds.
Why therapists may need to look beyond childhood when a symptom doesn’t seem to fit.
Guest Info:
Mark Wolynn (accent on “lynn”) is a leading expert in the field of inherited family trauma. He’s the director of The Family Constellation Institute in the US and is renowned for his work that bridges epigenetics, neuroscience, and somatic healing, and shows how the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and even great grandparents, can live in our bodies as unexplained depression, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, and chronic health conditions.
His book It Didn't Start with You is an international bestseller, which has sold more than three million copies worldwide. It won the Silver Nautilus Book Award for Psychology and has been translated into 42 languages. Mark has just released the 2025 revised edition of ‘It Didn't Start with You’ and ‘The Official It Didn’t Start with You Workbook’.
Connect with Mark:
@markwolynn on Instagram
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Transcript:
Mark Wolynn: [00:00:00] What stories didn't get told? What traumas never healed all the way? Shake the family tree, see what falls out. It's important
John Clarke: Going Inside is a podcast on a mission to help people heal from trauma and reconnect with their authentic self. Join me, trauma therapist John Clarke, for guest interviews, real-life therapy sessions, and soothing guided meditations. Whether you're navigating your own trauma, helping others heal from trauma, or simply yearning for a deeper understanding of yourself, Going Inside is your companion on the path to healing and self-discovery.
Download free guided meditations and apply to work with me one-on-one at JohnClarkeTherapy.com. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in
Very excited to introduce my guest for today. Mark Wolynn is a leading expert in the field of inherited family trauma. He's the director of the Family Constellation Institute in the US and is renowned for his work that bridges epigenetics, neuroscience, and somatic healing, and shows how the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents can live in [00:01:00] our bodies as unexplained depression, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, and chronic health conditions.
His book, "It Didn't Start With You," is an international bestseller which has sold more than three million copies worldwide. It won the Silver Nautilus Book Award for psychology and has been translated into 42 languages. Mark has just released a 2025 revised edition, "It Didn't Start With You," and the official "It Didn't Start With You" workbook.
Um, Mark, thanks so much for being here. Um, what else should people know beyond the bio in terms of who you are- Yeah ... how you got here?
Mark Wolynn: Yeah. Thank you, John. I'm a lead, I'm a lead guitar player, if that helps. And,
uh- That helps a lot ... pro- probably my first love would be writing poetry, which in- indirectly led me here
John Clarke: Fascinating. Well, I'm a, I'm a lead drummer, if that helps. Yeah. I was just telling people in my, my new neighborhood, we, we moved recently, that I'm a musician. I have my drums set up in the garage now, and- Yeah
I've already got at least one person that's interested in playing, so maybe some music happening real soon. I wish we were local. Yeah, exactly.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: Yeah. Um, so [00:02:00] yeah. W- where should we start with this topic of intergenerational trauma? It's, uh, um, it's a big topic. It's something that I hear talked about more and more, and even clients- Yeah
come to therapy saying, "Oh my gosh, I think this stuff didn't just start with me." So yeah. Where do we start- Yeah ... this conversation?
Mark Wolynn: Okay. Let's, let's say your life is on track. You've done all the right things. You've ticked off all the boxes. Um, you've gone to a good college. Um, you've got a good job.
You've married the right partner. But every morning you wake up feeling depressed, or you struggle with panic attacks, or you have, um, difficulty trusting love. You know, the answer could lie in a trauma that happened to one of your parents or grandparents. Maybe, you know, maybe their mother or father died when they were young or- Yeah
your mom or dad, they were sent away to, uh, live with relatives or placed in foster care, or one of their siblings died tragically, or they [00:03:00] were a child born after a miscarriage. Um, you know, some- something like this, a trauma like that, it can devastate the family. But what we now know is the reaction to the trauma doesn't necessarily stop with the people who experienced it.
So the feelings, uh, the sensations, specifically the stress response, the way the genes express, this can pass forward to the children and the grandchildren, affecting them in a similar way, even though they didn't personally experience the trauma themselves.
John Clarke: So, um The, it was told to me, you know, if, if we can observe it in rats, then it's basically scientific.
So, um, they've, they've, uh, observed trauma being, uh, inherited by rats genetically, right?
Mark Wolynn: Well, you know, and that's why I revised the book because- Yeah ... 10 years ago I had all the mouse studies and, you know, because mice, rats, [00:04:00] humans, they share a similar ep- a similar genome, 91, 92, 93% of the genes- Yeah ... in mice have similarities with humans.
But I wasn't satisfied with that. So I went to my publisher about a year and a half ago and said, "Look, there's all the studies with humans have just been released, and I've gotta update the book," and I did, and now we've got amazing studies with live humans.
John Clarke: Yeah.
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Well, I, I know your work has also helped a tremendous amount of people.
I actually [00:06:00] have a family member who's, uh, used your book and, uh, just raves about it and how life-changing it's been for understanding themselves and their journey with, with trauma being passed down. Um, I, I'm curious, going back even further, how you got interested in all this and how you started developing your, um, your ideas around it.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah, so it's a two-fold answer. I think I'm gonna tell the more interesting part. Sure. Uh, the one part involves my, you know, me losing my vision with a chronic form of retinopathy. Um, but I've told that story a million times. I think, um, the more interesting story is I'm already a clinician, and I have no idea about inherited trauma.
John Clarke: Mm.
Mark Wolynn: I find it accidentally and, you know, I'm gonna share a case that illustrates that. It was- Sure ... it was the first case, um, that taught me how to look beyond, you know, the childhood and beyond, beyond attachment, and we're going back [00:07:00] over 30 years ago, and at this point I was working with many self-injurers, lots of cutters e- exactly.
And there was this particular young woman. Um, she was 24 years old. I'm gonna call her Sarah. And she cut differently, differently than the other cutters. She cut in an extreme way into her arms or her abdomen or her thighs. She'd hit a blood vessel. She'd hit a vein or an artery and almost bleed to death.
Um, she would cut that deeply, and her parents would have to rush her to the, to the hospital. They'd put her in a psych ward for three or four weeks at a time. And, you know, I was clueless as to what was happening. You know, I was thinking about, "Why is this, John?" You know, I've worked with many other cutters, and their cutting was far more superficial.
Yeah. What was it about Sarah? What was, what, [00:08:00] what was she, what was trying to be communicated here? And so she came out of the psych ward one day, and we're sitting across from each other, and I hand her a pen, and I, and I go, "Sarah, pretend this is your knife and show me what you do." And, and she puts it on her arm, and she goes to make a cut, you know, a pretend cut with a pen, and I could see her eyes glaze over, and she begins dissociating.
And I said, "Right there. Right there. What's that thought? What's that feeling?"
John Clarke: Mm-hmm. "
Mark Wolynn: What's, what's that urge, that, that impulse right there?" And she looks at me innocently and says, "I don't deserve to live." And, you know, curious, I said, "What did you do?" You know, here I am looking at a 24-year-old woman whose life has just begun.
A- a- you know, I go, "What did you do, Sarah? Did you accidentally cause an accident? Did you take someone's life? Did you break up with someone who killed themselves?" She said, "No, nothing like [00:09:00] that." So I figured I must have missed it in her childhood, so I go back in. Yeah. And everything's great. She has a really good childhood.
She's able to receive her mom's and dad's nurture, and she, she can go to them when she's feeling upset. Um, I, I figured it had to be an attachment, so I start to look at the pregnancy and the early days when she's pre-verbal. Mm. And it's great. She has a secure, safe, strong attachment. And then something in me asked the right question, you know, uh, luckily.
I said, uh, "Tell me about your grandparents." I didn't know where to go. And boom, she drops the bomb. Mm. She tells me that her grandmother was an alcoholic, her dad's mom, driving the car drunk, and Grandpa was in the passenger seat. She hits a telephone pole. He goes through the windshield, gets cut, lacerated on the glass, and bleeds to death before [00:10:00] the ambulance arrives.
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Mark Wolynn: And in that minute, you know, my jaw drops to the floor, and I go Oh, 'cause no wonder she has the feeling she doesn't deserve to live like the grandmother would have.
John Clarke: [00:11:00] Mm-hmm.
Mark Wolynn: And no wonder she cuts so deeply she almost dies like the grandfather. And thank goodness, because at that time I was a student in psychodrama with John Nolte in Boulder, and I put...
You know, I knew what to do. I put two chairs in the middle of the room and I said, "Sarah, look over there and see your grandfather and tell him exactly what you told me, how deeply you cut." She said, "Grandpa, I cut so deeply I almost bleed to death." And then I said, "Add the words, 'Like you did, Grandpa. Like you bled to death.'"
And now she's crying, and she's making the connection. And I go, "Close your eyes. What's he showing you? What's he saying? W- w-" And she said, "He says that when I go to cut, feel him there with me supporting me." And hold that for a minute because I, I have another chair in the middle of the floor. Yeah. So I said, "Sarah, look over there and tell your grandmother [00:12:00] exactly what you told me, that you don't deserve to live."
And she looks at the chair, the empty chair, and says, "Grandma, I told Mark I don't deserve to live." And then I said, "Add the words, 'And that's what you felt taking someone's life. Actually, the life of your beloved.'" Now she's crying again. And, um, "What's your grandmother telling you and showing you?" She says, "She says when I go to cut at night, um, to feel her there with me also."
And she does this and never cuts again. And I learn everything. I mean, everything reveals itself in that minute- Yeah ... that we can carry the feelings, the beliefs, the, the impulses, the urges, the trauma responses, uh, the stress respon- I learn it all. And at that point, I hear about this guy, Bert Hellinger, in Germany, and I become one of the first students in the United States.
John Clarke: Mm-hmm. So this must have transformed [00:13:00] your practice and your way of seeing things. You mentioned you were a student, so you were already in the, the midst of forming your ideas about how change happens-
Mark Wolynn: Yeah ... how
John Clarke: healing happens.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah. Sarah needed to know, I mean, you know, just logically, that these feelings of needing to die weren't hers.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: And then she also needed to know that there was something behind this impulse to cut. You know, um, there's... It's coming from somewhere. I mean, and it, and it always does. You know, al- always when we have some aberrant behavior, if we trace it, if we get very curious about it, we're, we're gonna find the origin.
And, you know, uh, I always get asked this question, you know, "Mark, do we really need to know?" No, we don't. If we can practice presence all the time, we... You know, really that's our present, that's our practice, is just being present. We don't need to know. But that's... Very few people practice presence all the time.
[00:14:00] And what I like to say is, um, for the body to, to let go, the, the m- the mind needs to know.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: Well, that's fascinating because a lot of therapy and a lot of therapists would start with the symptom and perhaps even try to manage the symptom. And they go, "Okay, well, we gotta stop the cutting or use, put ice on your arm instead or what...
You know, do distress tolerance if you're a DBT therapist or whatever." Right. And we tamp down the symptom and just hope it doesn't pop back up, and it either does or it just pops up as something else. Um, and-
Mark Wolynn: That's right ...
John Clarke: we're just trying to Get rid of it basically
Mark Wolynn: That's right. And, and not saying those techniques aren't valuable, they are.
Sure. Sure. Um, but I've learned if we can trace something, you know, one of the things you read in my book is about trauma language. Yeah. And I, I have people tracing, um, [00:15:00] specifically, um, the, the things that they say, the answers to certain questions that I pose in the book. Yeah. And they'll find that it will either lead them back to a, an attachment trauma-
John Clarke: Yeah
Mark Wolynn: or, or it'll lead them back to a trauma in the family history. Uh, childhood as well, but often childhood traumas are a r- a repeating trauma of something that often came earlier. So- Yeah ... you know, we remember things that happened at 8 or 9 or 11, but we don't remember what happened before the age of three, or when we were in the womb and our mom was stressed and-
John Clarke: Yeah
Mark Wolynn: you know, she didn't wanna have a baby, or she didn't love our father, or they were married out of wedlock, or she'd already had a miscarriage, or- Yeah ... dad was drinking, or they were splitting up. We don't remember that and, and we know, um, that's one of the most important times for [00:16:00] neurodevelopment when the brain is being wired for safety or lack of safety, for peace or hypervigilance.
So it's really important. You know, I'm, I, I'm sure your listeners know this if they're on your podcast, um, but I'll just say it again, it's so important to ask our parents if they're alive, "Mom, what were you feeling during the pregnancy? What was going on? Um, what... Tell me everything after conception. Uh, what was the labor like?
What was the delivery like? How were you and dad?" You know, "What were you feeling?" Mm. We need to know that, and then we also need to know in the first three years of life, the other most important time for neurodevelopment when our brain is, um, you know, pruning neurons, uh, based on what will create the best ca- uh, the best survival environment.
Mm-hmm. Um, you know, we, we need to ask, "Mom, what happened in those early years? Was I colicky? Did I take your [00:17:00] milk? Uh, w- did you and dad go on a vacation? Did you leave me with grandmoms?" You know, we need to ask those questions.
John Clarke: Yeah And what if you don't have access to those people or that information?
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
See, now we're getting into my work. Thank you. Um, the... I- if you find your trauma language, and I teach people how to do that in the book- Mm ... even if you're, you're adopted or your mother and father don't wanna say anything or they're deceased- Yeah ... um, you can fi- and, and there's two types of trauma language, John.
There's, um... and I make a distinction about this in the book. Mm-hmm. There's verbal trauma language, like Sarah when she says, "I don't deserve to live." That's the- Yeah ... verbal trauma language. And then there's a non-verbal trauma language, which is this cutting so deeply that she almost bleeds to death. That's another type of language.
And if we follow the clues, the breadcrumb trail, as I like to say, it'll, it'll tell us exactly what [00:18:00] happened more or less even if we don't have that information. I mean, I could, I, I could, I could do it with the listeners here. I could... If, if everybody wants to play, I mean, we- Yeah, why not? All right, let's do it.
So one of the things I use in the book, you know, and I mentioned this earlier, is trauma language. And, you know, people always ask me the question, "How do you know, Mark, if it's a generational trauma or an attachment trauma?" And you don't by the symptomology because they express the same way. Fight, flight, freeze responses, you know, uh, overstimulated vagus nerve.
I mean, they're, they're responding, um, expressing similarly. Mm-hmm. But I developed this tool called the core sentence, which is one of my questions in the book and in my workbook, um, that ca- helps people differentiate between, between the two types of traumas. Um, so if I ask this question, please don't do it if you [00:19:00] don't feel resourced.
If you don't have somebody that you're working with, if you're new to working on yourself, just listen, but don't do it. But if you have a lot of experience, you have somebody to help you process this, I'll ask you a question. Here we go. If your life were to fall apart, if things went terribly wrong-
John Clarke: Mm ...
Mark Wolynn: um, what's your worst fear?
You know, if things went south, if things just suddenly just fell apart, what's the worst thing that could happen to you? What's your worst fear? And then if you answered that, let's go down even deeper. And if that happened, if that thing happened, if that fear manifested, i- if that worst thing that could happen to you really happened to you, what's the worst part of it?
What's the worst part of that?
And then take it down even one more layer. Um, and if that happened-
John Clarke: Mm-hmm ...
Mark Wolynn: what's the worst [00:20:00] part of that? And then you're gonna get what I call the core sentence, which is three, four, five, six words that are very direct, uh, very in the now or in the future, um, and they cause a visceral reaction. You know, your body trembles or you freeze or you, you tighten or you shake when you say it.
I'll give you some examples-
John Clarke: Mm-hmm ...
Mark Wolynn: of attachment sentences. I'll be all alone. I'll be abandoned. I'll be rejected.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: I'll be left. I'll lo- I'll lose control. I'll be helpless. So you know, I won't matter. I won't be important. You know, these generally will take us through down to an early experience with our mom or early experiences with our mom and dad and grandma in the family history that filter forward.
Um, but [00:21:00] often if it happened there, it likely happened here. If our mom didn't get enough from her mother, often she's not gonna have the, the tools to give us what she didn't get.
John Clarke: Mm-hmm.
Mark Wolynn: Now, let me go the other direction. If you answered like Sarah, that I won't deserve to live, or I'll do something terrible and I'll be hated, or I'll be, I'll be ostracized, I'll be sent away, or even I'll be forgotten, or, um, I'll, I'll, I'll hurt a child.
It'll, it'll all be my fault.
John Clarke: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: These have nothing to do with attachment. These have to do with the generational story quite often. And again, even if you're adopted and you, you don't know, or your parents are gone and you don't know where to look, you now know what to look for.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: And even if you don't know who in the family did what, you know it's [00:22:00] there.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah. So, so I teach... That's one of the tools I use in my book. There's about 30 other, uh, um, but the, the tools, um-
John Clarke: Yeah ...
Mark Wolynn: you know, are designed for those of us who wanna do our own work, you know, alongside a clinician, or we've done enough therapy work- Yeah ... where we can take the rest of the journey on our own.
I-
John Clarke: is it safe to say that pretty much everyone's core wounds could be boiled down to a handful like these?
Mark Wolynn: You mean a handful of sentences?
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: I love that question, John. Or a
John Clarke: handful of, yeah, the, the same sentences, especially
Mark Wolynn: being alone. John, I love it. Yeah. Being alone. Yeah. There's, there's, like, 30 sentences you know?
There's like, you know, and basically- Yeah ... I mean, I've seen some variances, but- Yeah ... there's, there's basically, you know, I mean, for example, somebody says, "I'll lose everything." Okay. Now you can- Yeah ... look either way. Yeah. A baby who loses the mother emotionally loses [00:23:00] everything. But- Yeah ... it could also be the ancestors who lost everything in the war.
Yeah. I'll give you another one. "I'll go crazy." A baby sitting in the mother's attunement when it's off target feels like he or she's gonna go crazy. Yet it can also be grandmother's sister who was locked up, never talked about, and never got out- Yeah ... you know, because she had postpartum depression, and, you know, they put her away for life, you know?
It's terrible things happened back there. But, uh, well, terrible things are happening everywhere.
John Clarke: Everywhere all the time.
Mark Wolynn: All the time.
John Clarke: I, I do find that, um, you know, so years ago I, well, I was originally trained as a psychodynamic therapist, and then I ended up doing college counseling and thought, "Gosh, I need some, like, quote, fast-acting tools, um, that worked in a short-term setting," so I trained under a CBT therapist for years.
And of course we're looking at core beliefs and unraveling their fears. And [00:24:00] a lot of the time the fear boils to, you know, if you do and then what, and then what, and then what, the downward arrow technique, it's this fear of, um, being humiliated, being alone, um-
Mark Wolynn: Okay. Now wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yeah.
You're giving me attachment sentences.
John Clarke: Mm.
Mark Wolynn: The ba- so the baby who didn't do it right because the mother was checked out or she was, you know, stressed about her husband cheating or whatever the story is-
John Clarke: Yeah ...
Mark Wolynn: the baby t- feels shame, humiliation, ridiculed, embarrassed if it's a critical mom. So again, um, the, this can take us into attachment.
Yeah. And I think that it is y- y- yes, we can go to similar sentences, but again, the importance of following them, um, is i- in my world, uh, key.
John Clarke: Yeah. I- is it safe to say that, um, uh, I mean, all of this wounding [00:25:00] happens in the context of relationship? That it's all-
Mark Wolynn: Yes ... relational trauma- Yes ...
John Clarke: so to speak? Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: Absolutely, but not all. Some of it is the, again, generational. Okay. And, you know, so yes, attachment happen, breaks, and the attachment happen within the relationship of our mom, and they heal really well in a relationship with our partner who triggers us similarly. But if we hang in there, we can heal. Um, and or we go to a therapist, build a relationship, and again, it heals within relationship.
Yeah. But generational traumas are a funny animal because they're not always in relationship. For example, um, um, you know, I tell a story in the book. I think I'll tell it, it's so profound. Sure. Um, there, there's a boy, he's seven years old, he's Cambodian And he's identified with two energies in the family history.
So those of you who read my book, he's the boy who keeps [00:26:00] running into, um, basketball poles headfirst and getting concussions. He has seven concussions. And what the family never told him is his dad's dad was hit over the head and killed by the Khmer Rouge. Now, the other strange thing, behavior that the boy had, is he would take a hanger and he would beat the couch and he'd go, "Kill, kill, kill."
And he would actually say this, "Kill, kill," with a hanger. So looking at the boy, I saw him do it in my office, "Kill, kill," and I knew about the concussions. We traced it back and I had the family, I had the father tell him about your father and all his family members who were killed by the Khmer Rouge, and tell him, show him a picture of his granddad.
He never even knew he had this granddad because the mother married some other guy and it was hidden. Wow. Yeah. And then I said, "And then go to the pagoda, the temple, and light a [00:27:00] candle for his grandpa," have him do this, "and for the families of the murderer, because their children will also be born likely with a victim or perpetrator energy."
And this boy was born with both victim and he victimized himself like the grandfather hitting his head, and perpetrated on the couch. Uh, amazing story. And y- what's cool about it is two weeks after they went to the pagoda, he takes the hanger and gives it to his mom and says, "Mom, I don't need to play with this anymore."
John Clarke: Wow.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah. Now, relationship, I, I guess, but, but it's a little more, um-
John Clarke: Yeah ...
Mark Wolynn: it, it, it's a little more w-
John Clarke: Yeah ...
Mark Wolynn: yeah. More. S-
John Clarke: say, say more about the healing because- In this story, you have [00:28:00] some kind of ritual that you're able to suggest around it. Right. Um, with Sarah, there was this kind of empty chair gestalt technique, psychodrama technique.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: Um, you know, some corrective emotional experience that you're trying to help the, the person create. But how else do you-
Mark Wolynn: Yeah, yeah ... uh, make the healing
John Clarke: happen?
Mark Wolynn: That, that's the rare bird. Yeah. Meaning that, you know, I wrote the book about the 20% of us that, um, have generational traumas, and we heal through ritual, like family constellations.
Yeah. Um, you know, my book was used for that whole family constellation series, Another Self, on Netflix. Um, I, I've never seen it, but I hear it's pretty good. Um, but you know, what's interesting is ritual is one aspect of healing generational trauma. In my book, what I do is I give all the language, the healing sentences.
So for example, um, you could call it a ritual, but we would, you know, might [00:29:00] put a photograph up of the grandmother who we never met or the grandmother whom we're identified with and say, "Grandma, I've been, um, you know, uh, uh, fearing that I could lose my baby, and here I am pregnant, Grandma, and I think my baby's gonna die and that I could harm it.
And now that I know the story, I see that this is your story, Grandma. I have to breathe into that impulse in my viscera-" And breathe that back, grandma, 'cause this does not belong to me. I've m- merely inherited it. So there's a, there's a lot of these sentences that I'll teach people to do in the book for myriad situations.
But also, um, when we're healing attachment, which is the other 80% of us, you know, we've got to have positive experiences that can change our brain. And, and then we need to practice the new feelings a- and the new sensations associated with these positive experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Be- because when we do this, you know, we're [00:30:00] not only creating new neural pathways, we know that from all the books, but we're also stimulating the release of feelgood neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.
Um, we're actually stimulating the release of feelgood hormones in our body like estrogen or oxytocin. But the important thing is even the very genes involved in the body's stress response, these can begin to function in an, in an improved way and not pass forward to the next generation. Mm. So basically, we can change the way our DNA expresses.
Um, you know, if you want me to go deeper with that, I'm happy to. Yeah. I, I, I would tell people, a- as you would, John, I know, I can hear you're a pretty good clinician, um, w- we, to put it in a nutshell, we have to practice being with what's uncomfortable- Yeah ... the uncomfortable sensations in our body until we can reach what's beneath them, which are the [00:31:00] sensations we experience as life-giving, you know?
Yeah. Sensations such as pulsing, pulsing, or sensations like tingling. Wow, my, my chest is tingling. Or, uh, softening. Wow, there's this expanding feeling, a release or this softening, and we have our clients ride that like they're riding a wave as a surfer. Or feelings of blood flowing or waves of energy or warmth, because these sensations of life force in our core, this is what w- 'cause the core is also the, the midline is also the house of the vagus nerve.
Yeah. And this is how we calm, um, an overstimulated vagus nerve, by hanging out in our core with what is life-giving.
John Clarke: Mark, how do you understand scarcity?
Mark Wolynn: Ha ha. Well, I understand it two ways, and I'm gonna give you the generational way, and then I'm gonna give you the attachment way. [00:32:00] So if somebody comes to me with scarcity or an abundance issue, look, who is the, the, the god of abundance?
It's our mother. So when we are, um, infants, our currency, our wealth is our mother's attunement, her attention. So a baby is rich and, and full of wealth when the mother's attention is, um, durable and consistent. Mm. But a baby is bankrupt when, when, when the mother's attention is cut off. And so when the mo- when we don't get enough of our mother's attunement, it can feel like we never have enough no matter how much we have.
In other words, we show up to our therapist with a scarcity and abundance issue saying, "Oh, every time I have money, uh, I lose it," or- Yeah ... "I never get enough," or, "I get fired from every job," or, "I get money, but then I spend it." That's... The first place I go is attachment. Yeah. Second place I [00:33:00] go is, what did your father do with the family's money?
What happened to your poor Irish ancestors? What happened when your family lost their homeland and had to come... You know, because it can also be traced genera- I love the question. Or actually, John, it's great- Yeah ... because we can trace it both ways, and it really, I'm here to walk a middle ground. I'm here to say, "Look, guys, um, yes, we need to really work with attachment because eight out of 10 of us are struggling with an attachment wound, and only 50% of us realize it."
Yeah. Or less.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: Or less.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: And then the other 20, 30% of us or 50%, but it might not be the biggest fish to fry. The bigger fish to fry might be the attachment wound. Um, are struggling with the generational wound. A, a feeling of I'll lose everything, or it'll be taken from me- Yeah ... or I'll be betrayed.
John Clarke: Yeah. I'm asking in part f- due [00:34:00] to, um, selfish motivations. You know, I, I come at a lot of this from an IFS lens and use a lot of IFS in my work, and something I like about IFS that parallels with your work is we recruit the help and insight of ancestors, right? And so, um, f- for most of my life, I've really worried about not having enough, right?
And usually it means not enough money. And, um, I had the sense that maybe this wasn't fully mine, and it was only working with my IFS therapist where she intentionally invited basically anyone else who has anything to do with this sense of not having enough, this fear of not having enough, despite evidence that I'm fine.
Yeah. And, uh, it was, it was basically coming from, you know, my dad's side, my dad's dad, um, that he had taken on this burden of, of not having enough.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: Um, and- you know, we did some ritual around it in the IFS kind of way. Um, but it, it- it's still a journey for [00:35:00] me, but it gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation for how I kind of inherited this.
'Cause growing up, I'd, I couldn't put my finger on anything specifically that can, would convince me that we didn't have enough or weren't gonna have enough. Like, there was just nothing to put my finger on- Yeah ... in my own- Yeah ... my own childhood and lifetime.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: Right?
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: And so this- Good, good work,
Mark Wolynn: man.
Yeah ...
John Clarke: yeah, this was really taking me down that, um, uh, down that path. Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah. And, and for someone who, with the same issue, and yet they've done the IFS work or my work and it's still lingering, please ask your mom about the early events in your life-
John Clarke: Mm-hmm ...
Mark Wolynn: and how present she was able to be during the stressful periods, um, and any changes she noticed in you.
Um, you didn't take her milk, you were colicky. Um, you started to throw your blankie out of the crib. You started to get independent and play with [00:36:00] your toys and not even notice her when she came in the room. Please go both directions. Attachment is a really big issue.
John Clarke: That's great. What advice do you have for parents to tend-
Mark Wolynn: Ah
John Clarke: to these, these wounds before they've, uh, run, start running rampant?
Mark Wolynn: Yeah. Read my book. I, and my next book is all, it's for parents actually. So my next book is how to work with, um, our child that we know has a break in the attachment, and also how to heal it in a relationship. But, you know, I would say, um, here, I'll give you a generational answer to that.
Please do not block the gate. So if there's stuff that happened in your parent, and there's stuff that happened in your childhood, your history, your parents' history, your grandparents' history, tell the stories. Even if your kids are young, draw pictures. Like, "Oh, honey, I had [00:37:00] a brother when I was little. He was also seven your age.
Let's draw his picture." You know, things like that, um, so that the kids have, you know, access to this information. People think they're immunizing their children by staying silent about the traumas when actually it's not a great strategy for stopping the flow of inherited trauma. It actually feeds the strategy.
You know, people, people always ask me, you know, how, you know, w- what advice do I have, you know, for parents and, you know, talk about these traumas. Well- Yeah ... the fir- the first thing I would say, um If, if we or our children are struggling with unexplained symptoms, you know, depression, anxiety, a phobia, OCD, a destructive behavior, um, you know, what family secrets have [00:38:00] been hidden?
What stories didn't get told? What traumas never healed all the way? Shake the family tree, see what falls out. It's important. And then I would say talk about these traumas in the family. Get curious about them, and try to work through them as a parent yourself even before you have kids if you can- Yeah
um, so they're not passed down to future generations. Because the more we know about these traumas and the more we're able, uh, to talk about them, the more we're able to bring relief to our children and then to their children who could be suffering without a clue as to why. You know f- you know this, if we ignore the past, it comes back to haunt us.
Y- yet when we explore it, we don't have to repeat it. We can break these destructive patterns
John Clarke: Yeah. One, one of the first realizations I had when I became a parent six years ago for the first time was, gosh, I've never even thought about what was going on in my parents' lives when I was born. 'Cause you're [00:39:00] just, you're just a kid, and then some, some part of you is like- Right
they've always been a dad. That's just, like, my dad. That's just my mom. And then, of course, um- Yeah ... for my wife and I, it was the backdrop of COVID, and the world is, quote, "ending," and people are dying- Mm ... and people wearing masks for the first time, and we can't see their faces. And, um, obviously, some part of me wonders about, um, the downstream impacts of, of that time.
See, it's,
Mark Wolynn: it's in my book.
John Clarke: Yeah. I,
Mark Wolynn: I write about it. Oh, good. Yeah, I write a whole passage, a whole... actually a couple paragraphs on the effects of the traumas on our children-
John Clarke: Yeah ...
Mark Wolynn: um, from COVID in our book.
John Clarke: Yeah. Yeah, just the sense that all of a sudden we might not be okay, and the world as we know, we know it might not be okay, and I think there's still many ripples of that that people are carrying in terms of, like, things could change at any moment, and I didn't know that they could change like that, and now I do.
And for some people, it's haunting to know that, uh, life can become really unstable all of a sudden.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah. Well, you know, what can we [00:40:00] do about it is we can... The moment we notice that we're triggered, we, we can pause and take an inventory- Mm ... of what we're feeling, um, in our physical body. Where, where do we feel these sensations?
Yeah. You know, try to name the sensation. As, as we know, tight, buzzing, sinking, pulling in. Name it. You know, get the location, get the sensation, where it's physically showing up, and-
John Clarke: Yeah ...
Mark Wolynn: you know? Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on, but you know the drill.
John Clarke: Yeah. Every... Yeah, everything's... You know, again, in IFS terms, a trailhead- Mm-hmm
an invitation to, um, yeah, to, to explore. Um, M-Mark, we've covered a lot of ground. I really so much appreciate your time and wisdom and, um, yeah, just excited for, for everyone to hear more about your work. And, um, anything that feels left unsaid or that you wanted to make sure we touch on before we wrap up?
Mark Wolynn: Uh, may- maybe the importance of the workbook, [00:41:00] you know, I real- um, here's what it looks like. It's blue . It's blue, and I really love it. I just wrote it last year, and-
John Clarke: Mm-hmm ...
Mark Wolynn: um, the reason I wrote it, I mean, I can't work with the world, you know? And the ... I mean, I can. I found a way, um, to do it through the workbook.
Um, but I, I only can take so many clients, and, um, I had to figure out a way, um, that I could have my work touch as many people as possible. So I literally, um, came up with pretty extraordinary practices, um, some of which are even standing on the footprints. You know, we're using shoes and flip-flops and slippers of your mother, your father, um, you when you're an infant, um, the grandfather you never met, to actually stand on these shoes and notice what you're
To have a family constellation. Notice what shows up or what your father and mother, how they're ... how, by [00:42:00] standing on their footprints, how you as your mother or you as your father felt toward the other. And it just is a, "Oh my gosh, everything wasn't right as rain." You know? It's like, um, you ... I've ... My, "Oh, man, I
Wow, that was true. I remember those images." I mean, we can learn a lot, and, you know, I, I lead people step by step in the workbook. And, um, you know, I don't mean to make this about, uh, me or my book, but I really love this book, and I think it's worth it.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: Absolutely. We'll be sure to include links to everything in the show notes and description.
Um, for people that are interested in learning more about you and following along with your work, what's the best way for them to do that?
Mark Wolynn: Instagram or my website, um, markwolin.com, which will be in the link. Um, yeah. Um-
John Clarke: Great.
Mark Wolynn: Yeah.
John Clarke: Easy enough. Yeah. Mark, thank you again so much for doing this. Yeah, John. I'd love to have you back.
Um, I'd love to have you back any time [00:43:00] to, yeah, go deeper with this stuff. But, um, yeah. Thank you again and, uh, let's keep in touch.
Mark Wolynn: And let's make sure we play music together someday.
John Clarke: Absolutely. Thanks,
Mark Wolynn: Mark.
John Clarke: All right, brother. All right.
Mark Wolynn: Bye now.
John Clarke: Bye.
Thanks for listening to another episode of Going Inside. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching and share your favorite episode with a friend. You can follow me on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok @johnclarketherapy and apply to work with me one-on-one at johnclarketherapy.com.
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