We often imagine our wounds as purely personal—born in childhood and tucked away in memory. But the older I get, and the more I sit with my own lineage, the more I understand that much of what we carry is not ours at all. We are swimming in an ocean of inherited complexes. And when one of them grips us, it feels sudden, irrational, bigger than our own story—because it is.

I remember being a free, bright child, fully in my body,when suddenly I would be swept into a feeling of dread that was not mine. Only years later did I understand: I was shaped inside a Polish family marked by war. My grandparents survived the Holocaust. Their terror lived in their cells,and then, somehow, in mine.

What Is a Complex?

Jung described a complex as an unconscious, organized system of thoughts, memories, feelings, and perceptions—an autonomous splinter of the psyche—built around an archetypal core such as Mother, Father, Child, Hero, theSelf, or the Wise Old Man. When triggered, it can seize control of a person’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in ways that feel irrational or overpowering. It reacts for us before our conscious mind has a chance to intervene.

A complex has:

·      A hook — it forms around an archetype and distorts it, fragmenting one’s understanding of that archetype.

·      A charge — it is fueled by the emotional wound.

·      A symptom — it shows up as reactivity,projection, or a sudden sense of being thrown off center, with no control over one’s emotions, thoughts, or actions.

In simple terms: A complex is a raw, emotional wound that has developed a mind of its own. When poked, it reacts for you —instantly, automatically — and you don’t even feel this reaction as an intrusion. Instead, it arrives as you: your voice, your certainty, your defensiveness, your shame.

How does it feel? Like a sudden tightening in the chest… a familiar drop in the stomach… a heat rising behind the eyes… a script you’ve spoken a hundred times before. It feels alive because it is alive — a splinter of the psyche that has broken away and begun organizing your perception from the shadows.

For example, a “mother complex” isn’t simply about one’s relationship with a personal mother. It is a powerful internalized cluster of attitudes shaping how a person relates to all forms of nurturing, relational authority,and feminine, including how they nurture themselves, others, and the world when the wound is triggered.

How Complexes Become Inherited

Jung believed the deepest layer of the psyche—the collective unconscious —is universal and impersonal. It contains primordial patterns(archetypes) in their pure form. From a systemic and Jungian perspective, when the family undergoes war, loss, famine, shame, abuse, migration, or silence, an archetype can be wounded and distorted, becoming fragmented. It begins to haunt the family psyche like a ghost—living on as an altered, unconscious pattern.

It moves through generations like an invisible script:

·     “I am never safe.”

·      “I must never stand out — stay small, and don’t speak.”

·      “I don’t deserve more. I am unlovable.”

·      “I am never enough.”

In simple terms: a family ornational complex forms when a traumatic or intensely charged event “hooks” orconstellates a universal archetype in a particular way for that group. What gets passed down is not the event but the emotional pattering, the unconscious conclusions, and the coping strategies that arose from it. The charged emotional pattern becomes an unconscious inheritance.

For example, a family devastated by war may develop a deep Poverty/Scarcity Complex, showing up generations later as hoarding, irrational financial fear, or the belief that “the world is a place of suffering and hard work that never pays off.”

Body Keeps the Score: The Biological Shadow

Inherited complexes function like psychic entities because they operate autonomously, outside conscious control. They possess an agenda(to repeat the pattern and fulfill the archetypal drama) and seek expression through thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals who become unwitting actors in an old, unresolved play repeated again and again in the family system.

This inheritance isn’t strictly genetic—it moves through:

·      Psychic atmosphere — the unspoken rules, moods,and anxieties that permeate the family field.

·      Projection and identification — parents projecttheir unresolved complexes onto their children, who internalize them to belong.

·      Loyalty and love — children, out of blind love and loyalty, may unconsciously “carry” a parent’s pain or a family’s secret shame, literally embodying the complex to keep the system balanced.

Patterns formed in the environment can produce epigenetic markers that affect gene expression. Trauma doesn’t change DNA itself, but it changes the “switches” (epigenetic markers) that regulate our stress response. Childrendo not inherit the memory of trauma, but the nervous system tuned to expect it. In short: ancestor experiences calibrate descendant stress response, creating fertile soil for complex formation.

For example:

·      A grandparent experiences war → chronic stress.

·      Stress floods the system with cortisol.

·      Epigenetic markers (like methyl groups) alter stress-regulation genes (such as the glucocorticoid receptor gene).

·      These markers are passed through sperm or egg.

·      The child is born with heightened stress reactivity (and lower threshold for fear, anxiety, and hypervigilance).

Then comes the Jungian layer where the complex forms (via the thesis-stress model):

·      The child’s sensitive nervous system meets acharged family environment.

·      Parents (themselves shaped by the unresolved trauma) project their anxiety or fear.

·      This charged emotional field hooks an archetypal core.

·      This fusion of biological predisposition + charged familial environment + archetypal core crystallizes into a full-blown, autonomous complex.

Unresolved Trauma Dims the Light

Chronic fear or hypervigilance — especially when inherited—can suppress telomerase, the enzyme that protects our chromosomes. Telomerase repairs and maintains telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes linked to youth, vitality, and cellular health. In many ways, telomerase is the “light of life”—the biochemical correlate of vitality, regeneration, and life force.

Chronic stress is scientifically proven to:

·      Shorten telomers.

·      Suppress telomerase activity.

Chronic stress blocks the light; unresolved trauma dims vitality, aging us from the inside and disturbing the body’s innate capacity for repair and rejuvenation. A powerful, active complex creates a sustained internal stress cycle. The chain looks like this: chronic stress → floods the body with cortisol and inflammatory agents → this biochemical environment directly inhibits telomerase → accelerated cellular aging and a diminished vitality follows.

Thus, an inherited complex—fueled by its epigenetic foundation—act as a governor on life force, dimming cellular “light” by keeping the body in threat mode (even in the absence of present danger).

Breaking the Chain

In this model, the epigenetic marker is not the complex—it is the biological predisposition, the fertile soil in which the complex takes root and grows. It explains why the complexes feel so intense and irrational. The person is reacting not only to their life, but with a nervous system calibrated to ancestral unresolved trauma. This calibration sustains the biochemical environment that traps the person in the chain of chronic stress and suppressed ability to rejuvenate.

This vulnerability can go two ways:

1.     The individual can be swollen by the complex,repeating the lineage pattern.

2.     The individual can heal the frozen archetype,recognizing it and liberating the family system (and sometimes the culture).

The inherited psychic cluster is frozen in time—initiated by trauma and replayed as an unconscious “script” through generations until someone becomes conscious enough to break the chain. This is the evolution of consciousness.

Inner work matters because healing inherited wounds brings peace not only to oneself but to the wider field. The work begins gently but bravely:

·      Naming the complex when it rises.

·      Feeling its pattern in the body.

·      Refusing its old script.

·      Seeking co-regulation, connection, and community.

·      Rebuilding meaning, rituals, and stories.

Choosing to act in alignment with the Self—not the wound—becomes an alchemy: a healing of the soul while healing the cell.

In summary, a complex is transmitted through:

·      Epigenetic vulnerability.

·      A stress-sustained biochemical environment (chronic stress and suppressed ability to regenerate).

·      Psychic content (stories, projections,behaviors) that fills that vulnerability with meaning.

To dissolve an inherited complex is profound work. It recalibrates not only an individual psyche, but the lineage—and, by extension, the social fabric itself.

Jung, C. G. (1981). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1966). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Princeton University Press.

Jacobi, Jolande. (1971). Complex/Archetype/Symbol in the Psychology of C. G. Jung. Princeton University Press.

Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.

Yehuda, R., & Lehmer, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry.

Blackburn, Elizabeth, and Elissa Epel. (2017). The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer. Grand Central Publishing.

Epel, E. S., et al. (2004). Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress. PNAS.

Thank you for reading! If you feel inspired, curious, or want to explore a practical application, write below or reach out.