Thorpe-Scott — Scarlett McCabe

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

If you've ever felt like your family's patterns — the unexpressed resentment, the subconscious expectations, the way things have always been done — are contributing to and passing on unhelpful dynamics, but you struggle to know how to address it, this one's for you. As a coach who works a lot within family businesses and family offices, I see this constantly with the families I work with, and honestly, within my own family too.

It's clear to me how much unspoken rules shape the way we relate to each other at home and at work, but I've never been able to articulate it quite this clearly until my conversation with Dr. Brezing. We get into intergenerational dynamics, implicit versus explicit expectations, why uncertainty is so hard in families, and what it actually takes to shift longstanding, entrenched dynamics.

I think y'all are gonna love this one, and it'll really help you to start to name and untangle the patterns that have been [00:01:00] quietly driving the show.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

My guest, Dr. Christina Brezing, is a psychiatrist, researcher, and addiction expert at Columbia University. She has spent her career studying what drives behaviour, how patterns get passed on, and what helps people find freedom from them. Welcome, Dr. Brezing. We're so excited to have you on We Don't Have to Live Like This.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Thank you so much, Sarah. I'm so excited to be here.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

So I'm gonna just dive right into this. Today, we're here to explore the psychology of passing things along across generations. I want to ask you — when you hear the phrase, We Don't Have to Live Like This, what comes up for you in the context of your work and the families and patients that you see?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

We don't have to live like this makes me think about hope and empowerment. It also makes me imagine somebody who's being self-aware and reflective and identifying [00:02:00] something in their lives that they would like to be different or that they would like to change. So it's like, pause. We don't have to live like this. Like I'm seeing something that's happening either in myself, or in my relationships with other people, that I think needs to change. And the fact that we don't have to do this speaks to the ability to make steps to do things differently.

And I honestly think it's a universal principle that I utilise pretty much every day. A big piece of the work I do — whether it's asking new questions in research for treatment development in psychiatric and substance use disorders, or working individually with clients on their own desires to change their lives — a core underlying theme, not always explicitly said, is that they don't want to live the way they are anymore. They want to be doing something differently.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

I love that. What's sticking out for me is the hope and empowerment and belief that there's gotta be a better way, which is why we're here [00:03:00] today.

So we're gonna double click here. When we talk about passing things along psychologically, generationally, can you help unpack what that concept means?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

So when I think about passing things along, the immediate things that come to mind — and maybe it's because I am a parent — is what happens when you have your own offspring, when you have your child. Even from conception of the child, you're literally passing along your biological material to the baby. And then from the day that they're born, you're passing on the ways you interact with them. But the entire environment serves as this unbelievable, essentially moulding, shaping space that children and people are constantly absorbing and constantly picking up on.

So when we think about passing things on, it can be literal. Like, oh, you know, I struggled with asthma and [00:04:00] now my child is struggling with asthma. But it can also be how we think about the world, how we relate to ourselves, what kinds of nurturing things are in the environment, what kinds of things in the environment we're passing on that maybe we aren't as aware of, or that potentially we are aware of and see as problematic but can't help ourselves in terms of sharing with our children.

And so these are things that I think probably everybody thinks about, because even if you're not a parent, you have parents, or you have received things from the generation that came before you. And a core component of being a human being is that we remember things, we tell stories. Narrative is an incredibly powerful force within human beings' lives — to understand what came before them, and actually how we talk about those things has a huge impact on how we think about our current experience and how we understand how we got to where we are.

So when I think about passing on, [00:05:00] I mean broadly — you can take it literally, but it's a highly complex phenomenon that occurs really continually every day, because the brain of human beings is so unbelievably complex and amazing. It's always learning, it's always absorbing, whether conscious or not. It's picking up on things both in terms of what people are explicitly wanting to teach or pass along, and what's actually implicitly not said or not communicated in a clear way. That's what I think about when I think about passing on.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Thanks for sharing that. I want to ask you about something you just said there. You talked about the implicit and the explicit. What are common situations and scenarios you see that could illustrate both the implicit and the explicit passing down?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

What I see a lot is that everyone has their own very clear ideas of concrete, explicit values or teaching moments or information that they want their children or people in their family to know. And people will explicitly communicate this. You know, I want you to learn how to appropriately dribble a basketball, so we're gonna sit and we're gonna practise this — I'm gonna explicitly pass this down to you. It may be, I want to explicitly teach my high schooler how to budget money, and you may sit down and be like, okay, [00:07:00] you're gonna do X number of chores, and in exchange for those chores you'll get X percentage of your allowance, which you are now responsible for budgeting towards X, Y, and Z. And so those are explicit bits of information and things that we want to pass along to people that we are very intentional about.

The implicit piece is all the stuff that you don't necessarily make a clear and carved-out point of teaching that our brains are unbelievably adept at picking up on from a very early age. So the implicit stuff is like, oof, my mum's really anxious. She's anxious all the time, she's always worried about this and she's worried about that. And she may not be saying, I'm worried, but children may notice those types of things. And maybe those worries get more activated around particular areas or particular topics. Even if it's not said, our limbic systems are picking up on different emotional states in other people.

You know, I'll walk sometimes with one of my children and if I'm deep in thought about something, they'll be like, [00:08:00] are you distracted? Are you still here with me? And I didn't say anything. I was just walking with them and in my own lack of awareness about the moment, my mind must have wandered somewhere else. And they noticed. Now I have children that will explicitly say, hey, what's going on? But there are many moments where they don't do that.

And it can be around a wide range of very important topics that you might feel your own confusion about. Or maybe you feel complicated about it. Let's take, for example, money — which is something that a lot of people feel very emotionally charged about. We would say that it's highly affectively arousing. It just makes people feel a lot of things.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Highly affectively.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Yeah. Like, it's just very emotionally charged. We can use that example, or the example of many things. Like some parents are very private about their own health issues. There's a lot of confusing things around that. [00:09:00] Families may feel a certain way about something — sometimes guilty or ashamed, or there's a lot of sadness or pain around it. Those types of emotions tend to make explicit conversations around sometimes very important topics either uncertain or confusing or not direct at all. And that can have a lot of lasting implications within a family.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

So already I find myself as a parent thinking about what I might make explicit and what will be implicit. And it sounds like what you're saying is sometimes there just may not be a consciousness, a self-awareness that I have that allows me to make something explicit. And it sounds like sometimes there may be a self-awareness around a particular topic, but there's a blocker — some kind of discomfort that keeps me from making that explicit, which also affects how I pass things on.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Absolutely. In the psychological world, there are core behaviourists who are basically like, everything is a behaviour. Thinking is a behaviour. So [00:10:00] actions — which we tend to pay more attention to and think of as active behaviours — are just as equally a behaviour as not talking about something or not saying something. People then learn too: well, if we're not talking about this and it seems important, what's there? Do people feel uncomfortable? Even if you can't quite get your brain totally around that, everyone sort of senses it. Not saying things is as noticeable sometimes, particularly if it's a big issue, as saying something.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

The elephant in the room, psychologically.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

I would say one real basic assumption I have about families is that they all have a deep connection and attachment to each other. I really do believe all parents love their children, even if they can't always manifest it in an aligned way.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

My underlying assumption is also that all families have a deep attachment to each other and love each other, and that what gets hard sometimes is a lack of transparency around complicated issues [00:11:00] that gets communicated in confusing ways. Or if someone feels — I said usually — guilty or ashamed or very sad or protective of a certain topic, those kinds of emotions tend to create space between families. And it's very hard. It's quite an unbelievable skill to sit and say, I feel really weird about this, or I feel really uncomfortable about this, and because of that I may not be expressing myself very clearly 'cause I feel confused or conflicted. That doesn't usually happen. What happens is that there are mixed messages, or it's not transparent at all. There's some secrecy around certain topics, or what is explicitly communicated doesn't align with other implicit communication or how the family may be interacting around it.

And so one thing that I think can be incredibly helpful is [00:12:00] that people don't have to be certain, and they don't have to communicate something very clearly that they themselves may feel confused about. What might be more helpful than giving an explicit statement that doesn't actually align with what they feel is actually just saying that. Like, I'm confused about this. Let's take the example — I know, Sarah, you work obviously in generational transfers and in family organisations and corporate organisations. One thing that happens is when there's either a big problem or a big event that's going to happen and people don't really know how they feel about it, they frequently will communicate one thing that doesn't tie up necessarily to how they act going forward. And all that does is create confusion in the people they're hoping to — you know, either take over if there's a succession plan, or lead a new project at work.

And maybe there are some feelings like, well, I kind of want to do this, and I want this other [00:13:00] thing, or I want to really have an influence on this and I want you to be able to run it on your own. But because I also really want an influence, I don't know how to manage that. And so things can get really complicated in terms of what's actually communicated explicitly and what the other person is understanding based on all the confusion around it. An easier thing would be to say, I feel really mixed about this. I'm having a hard time with it. I'm not sure what's going to happen because I'm still working out my own feelings around it. Sometimes it's better for people to understand that there's uncertainty than to lay out something explicit and certain when that's not actually where the process is at.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

You're saying that people would actually be more effective and wiser to admit when they perhaps feel uncertain, or when something is uncomfortable.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

That's correct. My genuine sense is that it's better to communicate what's [00:14:00] actually happening than to just communicate something 'cause you feel the pressure of giving a response and being certain or clear. Sometimes the answer is, I don't really know how I feel about this and it's going to take me a while to figure it out.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

And we frequently create this false sense of urgency in our lives. I mean, it can apply to anything from big decisions to whether or not to respond to an email now or tomorrow. But my general belief is: if you have the luxury of moving through something more slowly, taking your time, being reflective — take the luxury of moving slowly through giving your actual stance on something or putting into place an operational plan that could take years to manifest. My general sense is that it's better to communicate where you're actually at. So if you feel confused or uncertain about something, don't give a direct response that you may change later — just say, I'm not sure. [00:15:00] This is what I think I want to do. But I may not be able to do that.

Because what happens is — and families do this all the time, and you'll see this too, Sarah — you said, I could go, you said I was going to take this over and now you're telling me I can't. And sometimes it's very hard to say the things that we actually think and actually feel, particularly when we love somebody very deeply. Like, well, actually I don't totally trust you. I don't trust that you can handle this responsibility right now.

The other thing I would say is that we frequently see in families that a parent, or a sibling, can have that role of parent or sibling but they can also have dual relationships — or even sometimes triple relationships. It could be parent and boss, it could be child and employee, or child and boss, depending on how complex things are. [00:16:00] That dual relationship can make things quite complicated because what you might do or say as a parent may be different than what you might do or say as a boss or as a coworker.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

So practically speaking there, the advice is: it's okay not to have all the answers. And it's okay to say, I'm not sure, I need to go think about that — that would be an okay answer that's clear and true, rather than trying to get the right answer out of the gates and then having to walk it back.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

And then backtracking on it or changing your — yeah. And like, that's gonna happen. And my sense is that getting that right is really hard to do. People don't like to say, I'm not sure.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Yeah. I want to ask, on that front, what do you think keeps people from just saying, I'm not sure, I need to think about that a little bit more?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

I don't think we're conditioned to do it. I really do think it's a learned behaviour, to pause and to say, I don't [00:17:00] know that I can answer that right now, and I don't know how I feel about it, and I need to take some time to think about it. From the time we're young we're kind of conditioned, for the most part, to be asked a question and to have an answer. And that works when you're learning multiplication or when you're learning the capitals of certain countries, but it doesn't work as well when you start talking about more complex values or experiences or processes within a family or within larger systems.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Absolutely. It's something that comes up all the time with leaders I coach, and I don't think I've made the explicit connection here before, but there's often this idea that we need to know the right answer and we need to know it right now in order to lead. But actually what we often need to do is to be able to take a minute and help the group think and organise better — for what is almost certainly too complex of a situation to answer in the moment without proper thinking. [00:18:00]

And it's interesting to see how that applies both in our family lives and in our professional lives. I do want to also double click into the thing that you mentioned about working within family systems. There's a fair amount of work that I do in family enterprise systems, coaching systems leaders and NextGen within multi-generational family businesses or family offices or philanthropic institutions that have been created by families. These are the specific kinds of organisations you're referencing when you talk about people wearing multiple hats. An obvious one is if you're working in a multi-generational family business and the CEO is also your mum or your aunt or a cousin. Or if you have to be co-CEO with your sibling. What do you see commonly happening in those systems that seems particularly painful, and what are the common places where people get tripped up?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Well, those kinds of systems are highly complex for the reasons you just laid out. There are multiple dual [00:19:00] relationships. There are a lot of values being passed down through generations that may feel differently, or may not necessarily always fully share all of the values that were laid out from the beginning. Sometimes they do, but like, they may not have perfect overlap. The other piece that I think probably needs to be explicit is how complicated it is when you're in a system like that where someone you love very dearly, who has a different relationship with you, may need to make decisions around the organisation. Who are you making decisions for, and who are your stakeholders at any given time — I think that's a really important issue.

So the more explicit people can be about that — like, right now I'm not your aunt, or right now I'm not your mum. I love you. And I'll always love you. And that's just gotta, I'm just gonna say it, not into play right now. And we're gonna have some tough conversations about some complicated things. [00:20:00] 'Cause right now — and people don't say this — I'm wearing the hat of CEO of this organisation, and I have to make some decisions about who's going to be leading what, that are in the best interest of all family members, not just you, even though you and I have this really close relationship because you're my child, or you're my favourite niece or nephew.

And I think the more explicit people can be about that — acknowledging that yes, I am this, and right now I'm serving in this role — the better. And also understanding that it may be very complicated for people to just go sit and have family holiday dinner after something in the organisation went down that may make that person feel really isolated or ostracised or upset or disappointed. Like, all of it can be true. And I think the more individuals can talk about that, if they're in that situation, the better.

And that's true in any family, because parents do have to take on multiple roles. Like, you [00:21:00] know, my husband coaches a team that my children are on. He's coaching his own child, but he's also coaching 11 other children. We laugh because we're in this sports league and at the end of every single game — and it's all volunteer parent coaches — at the end of every game, all of the children on each team want to fire their dad coach. They want to fire them. They literally, it's every single game. They're like, dad's making terrible calls. You wanna know why that ball got intercepted? Dad made a bad call.

It's always hard for the walk home from the field where the dad coach should get fired. But then you have to go and it's still your dad. And so the more we acknowledge that and talk about it and we laugh about it, I think the easier it is.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

It's so relatable. It's so relatable. Um, we're not yet at that phase, but I can imagine [00:22:00] it's coming. How do y'all handle that?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

I think just saying what it is. So we just say, in this moment Dad is actually not being your dad. He is being a coach for the team. He has to take into account not just you as his child, but also all the other 11 children on the team who also want to play, want to get a pass, need a role, need to come together as a team to win together. And so we just explicitly say it. You're probably gonna be disappointed. We kind of know this. You can't get the ball every single drive just 'cause the coach is your dad. By the way, there are some coaches that do do that. And that doesn't always work out so well.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Probably doesn't work out best for the team or ultimately for their child down the line.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Depends. If your son or daughter is the rockstar athlete who can outrun and outshine and outperform everyone and you're coaching that team, maybe you should give them the ball every time. [00:23:00] But it's like, in the moment as the coach, you have to behave a certain way and this is what it is. And then later as their parent, I'm gonna give you a big hug and say, I know you're disappointed in me. And I still love you at all the moments. And just explicitly saying that I think can be really helpful. I also think the more families can be aware of this and anticipate what's going to be hard and just say it — this is going to be hard.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Yeah. So many things that you just said resonate and I want to underscore from my own work. One is just naming that it's going to be hard. Like, it's okay for things to be hard. You're not necessarily doing it wrong if it's hard. And also: we will get through it.

And then also the thing you said about, I'm gonna love you still. Because I see this all the time where I think when families are not explicit enough about how a certain level of feeling or connection is unconditional — like how [00:24:00] affection and love will always be there — it can become confusing for people. Or they can take other things that don't have to do with that, like assets in the business, and it becomes a proxy for love. So again, say the thing. Be explicit. Communicate about your feelings and about the hard stuff that's tough. That has to get dealt with.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Yes, although Sarah, you said something kind of interesting that I do think can get really complicated, which comes from how we learn about how we feel loved or valued and what that means. And for some individuals, they do express their love through gifts or through positions of power or the passing along of those things. [00:25:00] And when that happens, I mean, that's something to be aware of. This is how I manifest my love or my approval. And to be explicit about it can really hurt and feel really bad. But if that's what's happening, I think the more transparent people are about it, maybe the better.

But it can also get them to reflect: oh, okay, so I communicate to my children or my family members that I love them by giving them things. Is that what I want to be doing? And if it is, I should probably just be explicit about that.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

So along that line, I'm interested professionally and personally in how to not mess it up. Are there common areas that you see come up again and again with your patients and families where we could just be doing a better job?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

In general, I actually think people do a relatively good job. Like, life is hard. Life is really, really hard. It's incredibly unfair. Sometimes people go through tremendously [00:26:00] significant struggles and challenges. And for the most part, I genuinely see families work really hard to be there for each other and try to support each other in the best ways that they know how.

The other thing is that you get so many chances. Barring any final event that takes someone from you, you get a lot of at bats to try to get things right. So if you have a really tough conversation or you're not feeling good about how something went down — a lot of times when we feel really bad, we get aggressive. Our armour comes out. And sometimes that makes sense when you're feeling threatened. But sometimes when we're feeling threatened it's just 'cause we emotionally feel bad about something. And so in those moments being tender and gentle, as opposed to the initial reflex of maybe being defensive or aggressive or getting angry, can honestly make way for a lot more [00:27:00] repair than the protective stance. Especially if it's somebody you think you can trust, who you love. And we're talking about families. So generally speaking, you hope that these are individuals you feel you love and trust. Trying to take it to a softer place can go a really long way.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Yeah. I love the concept of at bats because it is good. We do get a lot of them, and it leaves space for the idea that there's no way we're gonna get this done perfectly. There's no parent on earth doing that. And you alluded to the term repair, which can sound like a really psychological, therapy-speak term. I'd love for you to explain what repair means, and also how do we do that. Like when you say to be softer, maybe more vulnerable — that sounds simple, and I will literally coach people on [00:28:00] this pretty effectively most of the time. And I really struggle to do it myself.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

How do we help ourselves to be vulnerable and soft? So the image that comes to mind when I think about repair — 'cause it is, it's like, it's so interesting, it's such a basic idea that because it goes through psychological therapy-speak becomes this complicated thing — I literally think of a pair of jeans when I was little that ripped at the knees. And it's like, okay, well I can just leave the hole in the jeans, but I could also get a patch. I could try to sew it or iron it on, and it won't be exactly the same as it was before. It'll look different. It might even feel different when you wear them and you might even notice that something happened there. But in the case of the patch or the repair — I think of my mum doing it, or like a parent doing it — they tried to come and make it better, [00:29:00] so it doesn't have this hole. And it's not gonna be the same. That's the thing.

All conflict isn't a bad thing. Like it's necessary. I actually don't think you can have a meaningful relationship without conflict. The things that are least meaningful to me, I don't care about enough to get into it or have an argument about. So conflict is not something to be afraid of. And this is what we're talking about — conflict, and then how do you move forward, and that repair is how you move forward with the conflict.

Some things are easy to repair. You take a tide pen and the stain is gone. Some issues are so minor you can't even tell it happened, and you can move past it pretty easily. [00:30:00] And some conflicts are bigger, and it's gonna leave that patch. Or you may not fully be able to fix it, or the way it got done wasn't the best in terms of repairing it, so the stitching looks weird.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

But it still works.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

But it's still moving it forward. And then you can learn and build new things from it. You know, really, conflict is an opportunity for growth, if you can learn from it in a way that helps you move forward more effectively.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Totally agree. And I'm obsessed with this notion of conflict as being a requirement for [00:31:00] true, sustained connection. I have a theory that we have to become better at dealing with conflict more effectively in order to have true connection. And so much of what you're talking about has to do with both of those things.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Yes. And I think about this even with my patients or my clients. We don't always get along. There will be some tough days where we're kind of in a conflict with each other because I've said something to them that's hard to hear, or isn't what they wanted to hear, or wasn't what they were expecting. [00:32:00]

And I acknowledge that they may have had a long day at work and they came here maybe to try to feel better. But feeling better in the short term isn't always a way to really actually feel better in your life over time. And if I didn't care — and if you didn't care, Sarah, in the work that you do — you wouldn't have tough conversations. You'd say, oh, everything's great, you're doing great, you don't need to change anything. But that's not caring. And I think that's an important concept in parenting too. Or in leadership. It's not caring or careful just to make sure everyone is feeling good. That's not usually the outcome that's desired. Maybe it is in certain moments at a positive event you want to celebrate. But the goal is not that. So you have to be very clear about what your goals are, and that can help guide some of the conflicts you take on.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Yeah. And that's actually a great segue for a different question. If the goal isn't for everyone to always feel good, when we think about passing down effectively and basically raising competent, resilient children, what do you think the goal should be? What should be our guiding light or north star?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

I think it's what you just said: raising competent, effective people in our organisations, [00:33:00] or nurturing and raising competent, effective people in our families. And to do that — I was listening to something recently and it resonated with me so much. To really be honest with yourself in a given day: you should be going through the full range of emotions. You are going to be irritated and annoyed. You are going to be sad. You are going to be over-the-moon happy 'cause you just got a workout in, or ashamed that you sent that email and included the person you weren't supposed to include.

Those things are going to happen. And so the goal in life is not to feel good. I think it's to be proud of how you handle yourself across a range of different experiences. It's basically to do the best that you can, to learn, and to try to have an impact on the things that are most important to you. I think that's really the [00:34:00] goal.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Yeah. I love what you're saying about the goal not being to be happy all the time. Like, it's a fool's errand — no one's happy all the time. And how boring would life be if we were all happy all the time, we'd all be...

Dr. Christina Brezing:

On my best day, I'm not happy the whole day.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Yeah. What's coming for me is like, we're preparing our kids — and also, if you think about it as a leader, we're preparing our teams — to meet the road. To meet what comes to them and face it the best they can. And I think you're also saying with the most self-awareness that you can, and to know that — I love this concept too. I'm mixing metaphors, but to think about at your next at bat, how do you get to do that even better? [00:35:00] Like, everything is an at bat, a learning opportunity.

And I'm also feeling a sense of relief about the normalcy of the range of emotions we feel in a day. I think that's such a helpful reminder. People aren't getting it wrong. They're actually getting it right when they can face all of that and know that that's just a moment and something else is coming. And the great thing that's coming is also just a moment, and something difficult is going to come too. But we're resilient and we'll figure it out.

I cannot help but think of another term that I'm shocked hasn't come up yet, which is generational trauma. That is talked about all the time right now. How would you define generational trauma?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

So human beings are really remarkable in their storytelling. Generational trauma could exist in little animal clans too, but what we don't think exists in the same way is our ability to tell our family lore, to pass down the ideas, the values, and how that affects us. [00:36:00]

We learn about our families through the stories that our other living family members tell, and they learned about it from their families. And those stories have an impact on how people think about their families and think about the world. The things that happened in the past that affected grandma affected how grandma probably parented your mum or your dad. And now you may be two or three generations removed. But the way that your parent learned from their parent has an impact in a number of different ways. We internalise some of the things and take them with us. And some of it we go, oh my God, I hated that. I don't want to be anything like that. I'm going to be really intentional about it.

And then there's all the other stuff that we just absorbed that we're either not aware of, or don't consciously think [00:37:00] about, that are also just a part of us and that affects how we parent. And so if you want to talk about a traumatic event, an intergenerational trauma — you can actually see this, I hear stories about this all the time. Grandparents who lived through a horrific historical event, or who had such a different upbringing than their grandchildren — those experiences shape how they think about themselves, how they think about each other, what values they have, how they relate to these new world experiences based on previous traumatic events.

And it comes in multiple different ways. I was reading a book the other day and I was crying 'cause it was really sad. And it's like those types of stories in our families that have these deep emotional impacts on us — they make us pause, they make us stop, [00:38:00] they make us reflect, particularly when it's somebody we're connected to. Those experiences can live on.

And so the intergenerational trauma, the generational trauma, can manifest itself in a number of different ways. Not always negatively, by the way. We can learn a lot and use it to be kinder, more thoughtful, more reflective, more intentional people, based on some of the hardships other members of our family lived through.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

I find that fascinating. Thank you for explaining that, because epigenetics and generational trauma are terms that are thrown around a lot, and I think you've just distilled them in a pretty easy-to-understand way for a lot of people. I find myself really curious about the stories we tell [00:39:00] and the narratives that we pass down.

And I'm sure we can all think of things that we've heard. I was actually just watching an interview that my uncle did with my grandmother in the nineties, referencing the 1940s when she met my grandfather in the jungle of the Philippines during World War II. She was half Filipino and moved to Virginia and raised these kids. And there was a lot of cultural shift that happened, and challenges, and also really beautiful stories of resilience. And it's interesting — the meaning that we make from these stories is what really matters.

I'm curious — when we're thinking about the stories we tell our children, it sounds like there's tremendous power in that, even if there's pain and difficulty. Do you have practical tips or tools for how we approach that or leverage this thing that I think we collectively as a society are starting to understand better? How do we actually engage with that in our own homes and our own families? And for all the executives out there too, I'm sure there's something here around how we talk about our [00:40:00] organisation or the stories of the tradition we come from.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Absolutely. I mean, I would say — at least with families, and maybe this is true also in organisations — don't overthink it. I think family stories are amazing and remarkable. I love hearing all of them. Any story my mother or father never told me, I really remember. Things I was never there for, or things I was too young to remember on my own. A lot of core memories that we have aren't even necessarily our own memory as much as they are the story that families tell about each other. Oh, remember that — and they say it again, and it becomes just part of the lore of who you are and who the people in your life are.

So I would say don't overthink and share them. I think it's amazing. I actually think a lot of families keep secrets, [00:41:00] or do a lot of editing 'cause that's what they feel comfortable with. And it sort of changes what's said, but not a lot of times what's actually felt or experienced, or what's passed on in these other non-explicit ways. So I'm a big fan of narrative as a means of learning, but also understanding and connecting. I'm a big fan of family.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

That makes sense. All right. I know we don't have tons of time left, so we're going to get into wrapping this up into something that people can really take away. If someone is listening to this now who wants to start doing it differently — to either build a healthy relationship with what they're giving or passing down, or what they're inheriting from their parents — [00:42:00] where do we begin? As both the people who pass things down and the people who receive them, where's a good starting point?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

I mean, I think honestly if you don't like the way you've been doing things, it's never too late to change. You can just say that explicitly: I don't like the way we've been handling this. If it's patterns or habits or something that's been going on for a long time, it might be hard to change quickly. So I think the first step is always awareness and acknowledgement. That's it. You can start with that. And as soon as people do that — when we think about change-based processes, you are already one step closer towards that happening, because you can't actually change something that you're not identifying or acknowledging you want to change. Particularly when you talk about these complex dynamics and relationships between parents and children and how they're passing on certain things. So the first thing is a conversation.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Yeah. I mean, it's so [00:43:00] simple, but just to become aware of the thing that you want to change and to acknowledge it and say it out loud. It's so simple and so elegant. And we often don't say it 'cause we think we have to know how we're going to do it, or we have to feel assured that we're going to be able to do it. But the one obvious way it's never going to happen is if you just ignore it, the elephant in the room, and let it keep going.

Also, we talked earlier about how the goal shouldn't be happiness every moment of every day, and how it's really much more about resilience and competence. I'm wondering for parents: what's one small, practical way to start building trust, resilience, and emotional independence in your kids today?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

I think a big way to do that is actually to trust your children. To trust their experiences, to trust what they say, and to give them lots of opportunities to be independent and [00:44:00] autonomous and owning what they decide to do, and the consequences as a result of it.

We can keep our children in a perpetual childlike state if we make all their decisions for them, if we do the things for them, if we get them through the hard things without their input, without them owning what they're going to do. We get to be powerful and they get to be dependent on us. Now, there are very appropriate developmental periods where that makes sense, where the parent is the decision maker because the child doesn't have the ability yet. But like, you can see this sometimes happening with full-grown adults, and the parents are upset because they have an adult who doesn't independently make their own decisions and own their own consequences. But if you rewind, you're looking at [00:45:00] an entire life where that was actually what the parent did — they basically made the decisions, or influenced the decisions, or told the child what they were going to do, what research project they were going to do in seventh grade, what paper they were going to write.

And so if you don't give these opportunities throughout one's life to make independent decisions and choices, you get to these big events and they're worried they're not going to know how to handle it — but you might be right, because we didn't set it up for them to be independent, to trust themselves, to make their own decisions.

And the other thing that I think is really important sometimes in families — and particularly for the families you work with, Sarah — is that we frequently see a final outcome. We see our parents successful or leading a business, at a final outcome. But because they [00:46:00] can't possibly tell us everything, they can't actually share their every failure or mistake. Although they could, and by the way, this can be helpful. How they second-guessed themselves. How they struggled with uncertainty. How it took sleepless nights and hours of work. We might just see them at this phase where they're fully formed, financially independent and stable and passing on this thing. And a lot of times children think they also need to be this finalised, finished form.

So the more you can share this process, you are actually teaching: this isn't always going to be easy, you are going to make some mistakes, this is how you get through them, it's not going to be perfect. But you have to really foster that in your own process and in how you are raising and teaching your families, [00:47:00] or raising and leading your organisation and your employees.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

There are so many crossovers to how we teach leaders to lead here, and we can so often think that that's the normal way to be at work, but it's really hard to do for our children, I think. But what I'm hearing in that too is that you're trusting them to mess it up, and trusting that they will be okay and will learn from it. We need to give them their at bats, and probably a lot younger than we think. I'm not saying we need to set my one-and-a-half-year-old off to the supermarket by himself. But at an appropriate time, allowing them to get their at bats and giving them as many opportunities as possible to learn rather than leaving it too late is a key thing.

Alright. So I'm wondering, if you had to leave us with one single takeaway — and one takeaway only — when we think about what we pass down as parents and what we are passed down from our parents, what would that one takeaway be?

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Well, [00:48:00] there are a lot of things you don't have control over. You kind of need to accept those things. And take ownership of the things that you do have control over, and have fun with it. Make peace with the things you love about yourself and really embrace. And the things you want to be different — for yourself and in your own family — be intentional about it. Because if you are not, and you're pretty passive, as painful as it may be, some of those things are more automatic. Easier to do the way they've always been done than to do the thing that would be different.

When we've done something a certain way, or seen something a certain way, or watched something go down a certain way for decades, it's a little easier to do that than to do the thing that would be different. So you have to be pretty intentional about it if you want that to be something that changes.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Love that. Thank you so much, Christina. That's so helpful. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Thank you, Sarah. I loved it. Such a great conversation.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

I'm sure there's going to be so much that people take away from this. I'll be thinking about this for many days to come. Thank you and hopefully see you soon.

Dr. Christina Brezing:

Yes, definitely.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott:

Thanks for being here. If this resonated, follow the show and please leave a rating. It helps more people like you find it. And if you want to stay in touch with me or keep exploring, I share more in Field Notes, a monthly-ish newsletter that offers observations, questions, and tools for navigating leadership, work, and life with more clarity and intention. You can sign up through the link in the show notes.