Purpose
Why Do Women Find It
ESSENTIAL Naples
Hard to Ask for Help?
SPRING 2021
34
By Eilis Philpott
“Family tragedies can send shock waves from one generation to the next. Explore three generations to understand why trauma repeats.” —Eilis Philpott
I
was recently asked this question, “Why do women find it hard to ask for help?” I want to qualify my answer by sharing that finding it hard to ask for help is not just a difficulty for women, men also share this issue. I believe that women have additional and/or differing layers of baggage to clear in relation to this topic. Culturally, women have been taught from an early age that their role is to be the caregiver and nurturer of the family, usually at the cost of their individuality. We don’t have to go too far back in our history to see that women were considered second class citizens, with no individual rights or identity. Young women were forced into the role of striving for and making a “good” match, which benefited the family as a whole. Once married, their husband controlled them and any assets they brought to the union. Thus, asking for help probably was not even in the realm of conscious awareness for many women.
The Field of Epigenetics
More recently there have been studies in the field of Epigenetics that show that lifetimes of trauma
and belief systems are passed down through the generations in the DNA of each individual. To explain this phenomenon further, these studies have swept away the idea that having a particular gene produces a particular result. It turns out that many genes work together to influence a single outcome. Even more important, genes are not fixed. Life events can trigger biochemical messages that turn them on or off (by a process called methylation), making them sensitive to messages from the body. While life events can change the behavior of the gene, they do not alter its fundamental structure. Methylation patterns, however, can be passed on to children. This phenomenon is what is known as epigenetics. Stressful experiences affect gene expression in humans. Family tragedies can send shock waves from one generation to the next and it can be important to explore three or more generations of family history to understand the mechanism behind patterns of trauma that repeat.
Generations of Family Trauma
When members of our family have experienced unbearable traumas, or have suffered
