A note about the sources: An earlier version of this article connected a description of inherited trauma with a paper about antiviral antibodies. Those were different subjects, and the cited paper did not support that description. I’ve taken out that reference and brought the article into a new direction where epigenetics eventually meets neuroscience.
What is Epigenetics?
Epigenetics concerns changes in how cells use DNA without changing the underlying DNA sequence. Chemical modifications to DNA and its associated proteins help regulate gene activity.
Two commonly discussed mechanisms are DNA methylation and histone modification. DNA methylation involves chemical tags attached to DNA. Histone modifications affect the proteins around which DNA is packaged. Their effects depend on where and how they occur; the “on/off switch” description is a useful starting point, but the biology is more complicated.
Some epigenetic patterns persist as cells divide. Much of the epigenome is reset during reproduction, although some marks can pass between generations under particular circumstances. The National Human Genome Research Institute explains these processes here.
That raises an interesting question: how might the experiences of one generation affect another?
What Does Trauma Research Tell Us?
A study by Rachel Yehuda and colleagues examined Holocaust survivors, their adult children, and comparison groups. It found differences in methylation at a site within FKBP5, a gene involved in stress regulation. The direction of the difference was not identical in survivors and their children. The researchers described an association between parental trauma and epigenetic differences across the two generations. Read the study.
A separate study published in 2025 examined third- and fourth-generation descendants of Holocaust survivors. It reported methylation differences in genes associated with stress and social functioning, alongside findings involving resilience. The descendants did not show higher overall levels of psychopathology in that study. Read the newer research.
Next, we'll move along to why this topic interested me in the beginning.
Why This Personally Interested Me
During a conversation with my mother, I learned about horrific things she had experienced in childhood. That conversation gave me another way to consider what she had lived through and how our family history might have affected my own life.
As I continued my healing journey, I encountered the term epigenetic inheritance. It gave me questions to explore about patterns that seemed to extend beyond my own experiences.
I cannot identify a particular epigenetic mark in myself from that conversation. What I can describe is the importance of learning more about my mother’s story and examining the beliefs and responses I carried.
I also knew I didn’t want to approach my healing process from a position of hopelessness. My family’s history mattered, but I wanted to discover how to move forward.
Around this time, I was learning more about neuroscience, which I'll address in a future article. Many of these doctors connect neuroscience with epigenetics. That's when things get very interesting!
What Some Scientists Say Can Change
Some epigenetic modifications can change over time. That does not mean every mark can be deliberately switched on or off through a thought, or that changing a belief guarantees a particular physical outcome. NHGRI discusses changes in the epigenome here.
However, neuroscientists, such as Dr. Caroline Leaf would beg to differ with the statement that thoughts can't be reprogrammed. To learn more here, check here website HERE. It takes PRACTICE to flip epigenetic switches, just like it takes practice to learn a piece of music. No scientific study, unless done over time, is going to show the results of consistent mind transformation and how that will affect epigenetics. Therefore, although the information in the original article didn't match the title, it simply takes us down another rabbit trail that will be explored in a future article.
Where Do You Go From Here?
To begin with, it’s important to understand that epigenetics are different than genes. I don’t fully understand how that works yet. If we study what neuroscientists are saying, everything begins with our belief systems. Those can always be “switched.” I'll explore that process in a future article where I introduce work of neuroscientists who show the process of how changing a belief system can affect your physical body.
Cognitive nueroscientists believe that traumas are inherited. I believe that also includes belief systems that "piggyback" on those traumas. What your ancestors went through can be passed on to you. I didn’t understand that until having a conversation with my mother about the horrific things she suffered during her childhood. It also explained why she had mental issues and why they got worse near the time of her death. At the time, I didn’t consider that her trauma could be stored in an epigenetic switch within me. During my journey of dealing with those issues, I started hearing about epigenetic interitance and knew that might be a solution. Inner healing only goes so far because you’re only dealing with your own junk, not the junk from your ancestors.
At the same time, I didn’t want to approach a healing protocol with a negative mindset – my belief system. I had to change my way of thinking before moving forward. This is where people like Joe Dispenza and Dr. Caroline Leaf come into the picture. They both describe a process of “coming out of agreement” with life traumas by “retraining the brain” to think in a new way. It requires seeing things from a position of gratitude despite what you see, hear, sense, and feel, or the state of your body at that moment. Once we reach that point of a mindset shift, the traumatic epigenetic switch can be flipped. Or can it? Tell me what you think when reading the next two stories...
How do we know when that occurs? Let’s look at Joe Dispenza for a moment. I don’t know much about his story, but he shares that a major accident almost killed him and made it so he couldn’t function physically. Instead of marinating in self-pity, he saw himself AS already being completely healed. He meditated from a position of gratitude 24 hours, 7 days a week on healing. It took quite a while before the “manifestation” of the healing took place.
A preacher I knew about in the 1980’s, Kenneth Hagin, had a similar experience. He was given a death sentence and told by his doctors to go home and die. Just like Joe Dispenza, he meditated (using scriptures about healing) 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. He saw that he was already healed based on what he was reading. One day, he walked into the kitchen of his house, completely healed, to the shock of his family.
How many of us are that dedicated to seeing things within our body change? For both Dispenza and Hagin, healing was their sole focus IN a position of gratitude and thankfulness. After undergoing a mindset shift, healing took place. That was a switch being flipped in their epigenetics. It all began with the THOUGHT of being healed. They then INTENDED to be healed by framing a healing mindsets, and the manifestation was the ACTION of the healing process. Therefore, our thoughts, intents, and actions play a huge role in the process! What you think is what you become.
If such a thing as ancestral epigenetic switch flipping from trauma to freedom is possible, the process may differ from person to person. I just know that inner healing is often a band-aid solution and keeps the issue at bay until we deal with any negative mindsets that we may be unknowingly holding onto. I’m not saying that inner healing is a bad thing. I’ve gone through a lot of it and at the time, it got me over the major hurdles. However, lasting change only came when I went through a mindset transformation process.
Conclusion
As I’ve walked my own healing journey, I’ve learned a few things along the way. I’m living from a place now where I’m rarely sick, can be grateful in almost any situation, and enjoy life. If you’d like to learn more about my process, I encourage you to start with my book, Transforming Mindsets: A Story of Healing From Abuse. You can find it as a PDF HERE or get it on Amazon in Kindle or paperback. Those links are also below in the resources.
Next, begin a wholeness protocol that helps you reframe negative mindsets so that you’re living from a position of gratitude no matter what’s going on around you. I have a new course coming out in June of 2026 that includes lessons (both audio and written), activations, and music. It’s from a spiritual perspective and is designed to help you switch negative epigenetic switches through a mind transforming process. I have some of those materials available in two other courses. The key point is to understand your true identity and not take on what others dictate who you are or say what you should do.Enoy the journey and stay in an attitude of gratitude no matter what comes your way. I'll give you a hint from the upcoming course... begin by creating a "gratitude jar" where you write things you're grateful for each morning when you get up. Put them in a jar and read them throughout the day. Pull random ones from the jar as time goes on and be grateful for them again. This will help with the mind transformation process!
Del
March 2026 (updated in September 2026)