Inherited Anxiety: When Your Fears Aren’t Just Yours

Anxiety can feel deeply personal, a relentless inner voice warning of the unknown bad thing about to happen. But what if the fears that keep you up at night aren’t just yours? What if these fears and anxieties have been passed down, shaped by the lived experiences of those who came before you? This is the reality of inherited anxiety, a way intergenerational trauma can show up in families, shaping how we react to stress, relationships, and the world around us.

Understanding Inherited Anxiety

Inherited anxiety is more than just a learned behavior; it is a complex interplay of neurology, epigenetics, and family dynamics. When previous generations endure trauma, such as war, discrimination, poverty, or abuse, their nervous systems adapt for survival. These adaptations can then be passed down, influencing how their descendants perceive and respond to threats.

In other words, your hyper-awareness, your tendency to overthink, and your fear of disappointing others might not have started with you. You may have inherited an internal alarm system that was necessary for your ancestors' survival but is now keeping you trapped in cycles of stress and self-doubt.

Signs of Inherited Anxiety

How do you know if anxiety could be part of an intergenerational pattern? Here are some common indicators:

• A Deep, Unshakable Sense of Guilt or Shame – Even when you’ve done nothing wrong, you carry an internalized burden.

• Fear of Letting People Down – A tendency to people-please, as if safety depends on approval.

• Hyper-Independence – You struggle to rely on others, fearing that vulnerability will lead to pain.

• Overactive Startle Response – A nervous system that’s always on edge, anticipating danger.

• Unexplained Fears and Worries – Anxieties that don’t seem to have a clear origin but feel deeply ingrained.

• Patterns of Emotional Suppression – A family history of avoiding emotions or dismissing feelings as “weakness.”

Breaking Free: How Therapy Can Help

You don’t have to stay stuck in these intergenerational cycles. Healing inherited anxiety means giving yourself permission to live differently than those who came before you. It is your journey to learn how to regulate your nervous system and reclaim a sense of safety, self-trust, and compassion. Here’s how therapy can help:

1. Recognizing the Patterns

Healing starts with awareness. Many people spend years believing their anxiety is a personal flaw rather than an inherited survival adaptation. Through therapy, we make space to notice and understand these patterns. Often, we find these patterns connect to family narratives and past generational experiences.

2. Processing the Emotional Weight

Intergenerational trauma often comes with unspoken grief, suppressed anger, and inherited shame. Processing these emotions in a safe space allows you to begin repairing emotional wounds from both direct and indirectly experienced traumas.

3. Releasing Trauma from the Body

Research has shown that trauma is stored in the body. For many, talk therapy alone is not effective in building a sense of felt safety. If you find yourself seeking a different approach than talk therapy, somatic therapy, internal parts work, and brainspotting can help release stored anxiety from your nervous system, creating space for different, healthier responses.

4. Challenging Generational Beliefs

Many people unconsciously carry limiting beliefs from their family systems:

• "You should be grateful—other people have it worse."

• "We don’t talk about feelings in this family."

• "If you don’t do it perfectly, don’t bother doing it at all."

These messages may have served past generations, but now they may be keeping you in a scarcity mindset instead of allowing you to embrace healing, self-compassion, and abundance. In therapy, we use curiosity to begin compassionately challenging these inherited limiting beliefs.

5. Practicing Nervous System Regulation

Anxiety isn’t just a mental experience, it lives in the body. Anxiety symptoms often manifest physically, such as a racing heart and heat flushes. Therapy can help you learn self-regulation tools such as grounding techniques, guided visualizations, and breathwork, allowing you to regulate your nervous system and cultivate a sense of safety within your body.

Please click here for more information about intergenerational trauma and therapy.

You Are Not a Prisoner of Your Past

You may have inherited your anxiety, but if you are reading this, you know it is time for a different way of living. By recognizing intergenerational patterns of anxiety, processing and releasing stored trauma with curiosity and compassion, and learning how to regulate your body, you can break free from generational cycles of fear and survival mode.

You are not alone in this journey. Therapy can provide the tools and support you need to step into the life you deserve, a life no longer controlled by the inheritance of past generations’ pain.

If you would like to speak with Kyrie Sedano, LMFT about how she may support your healing journey, you may reach out for a free virtual initial consultation here.