Did you know that...
About 1 in 5 American adults will have a mental health condition in any given year?
But only 41 percent of them will receive services?
About 10 percent of the American adult population will have a mood disorder, such as depression or bipolar? And 18 percent have an anxiety disorder, including post-traumatic stress disorder?
Mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety, are real, common, treatable, and in your genes.
Today, my grandmother's generation would be proud. Science is finally catching up to what old school preachers would flame down the pulpit as "Generational Curses or Wellness". As a Mental Health Advocate, Counselor, and Pastor's daughter, I share this new information with passion because I remember learning all about the power of family spiritual bondage in church. How it gets passed from one son to the next and/or one daughter to the next. As well as how it takes intentional- mental and emotional effort to notice the issue, choose to change, and make a purposeful shift your life's trajectory.
"Generational Wellness" or mental bondage is a phenomenon in spiritual circles that provides insight into why some dads have an anger problem and it seems like Junior has one too. Or why mommy has several love crisis and was a teen mom; then baby girl goes down the same road and births two children as a teen mom.
As each generation brings light to the world, they shine similarities that there's at least one person who carries on the same whit, attitude, brains, drama, and even trauma from the generation before.
Exodus 43:7 and Lamentations 5:7 both highlight how the iniquity of the father are over the son and so on. Now, in the world of Science, Behavioral Epigenetics links biology to faith. Epigenetics refers to heritable changes in gene expression. It involves genetic control by factors other than an individual’s DNA sequence. Epigenetic sequence can with genes on or off. Epigenetics is the environments external effects on genes and how some of these effects can be inherited in human beings. Behavioral Epigenetics is an experimental science that seeks to explain how nurture shapes nature. It attempts to provide a framework for understanding how the expression of genes is influenced by experiences and the environment to produce individual behavior, cognition, personality, and mental health (Miller 2010; Powledge 2011).
The new science is grounded by five principles. (1) The mind and brain are inseparable. The brain is a multifaceted biological organ of vast computational abilities that constructs our sensory experiences, regulates our thoughts and emotions, and mediates our actions. Our brain is responsible not only for our motor behaviors such as running and eating but also for the complex and multifaceted acts considered quintessentially human, such as thinking, speaking, and creating works of art. (2) Each mental function in the brain, from the simplest reflexes to the most creative acts in language, music, and art, is carried out by specialized neural circuits throughout different regions of the brain. (3) All of these circuits are composed of the same elementary signaling units, the neuron. (4) These neural circuits use specific molecules to generate signals within brain cells. (5) The specific signaling molecules have been conserved and retained through millions of years of evolution. Some of them were present in the cells of our ancestors and can be found today in our most distant and primitive evolutionary relatives (Uri Bergmann 2012).
It's fascinating to see where this experimental science will take us. How addressing your mental health can alter your behavioral symptoms and feelings.
Ways you can influence your Behavioral Epigenetics:
1.) See a Counselor
2.) Make a Behavioral Family Tree
3.) Keep a Prayer Journal
Yet, it's also great to know that it's not just you- it's literally in your genes!
Want to go deeper? Got more questions about epigenetics? Email me: dmempowers@gmail.com
Shine on,
Coach Debbie