“If you say no to a man, he won’t marry you and you will be left alone”.
“If you say no to a man, he won’t respect you”.

Over the years, part of my work has been to untangle patterns of behaviour in my clients which they are unable to control and which also, sadly, get them into trouble. Such patterns of behaviour are always rooted in either one of two places: the childhood of my client or the parents/grandparents of my client. In terms of behaviour in relationships and in particular, in sexual relationships, the pattern is almost always inherited from a parent or grandparent.

It is not a widely known phenomenon that not only do we inherit the genetic coding and DNA of our parents when they conceive us, so that we inherit some of their physical characteristics and, if appropriate, some of their medical conditions too, but we also inherit their emotional, mental and spiritual DNA, inheriting their emotional, mental and spiritual beliefs and states too.

We can grow to behave like our parents. Not just because we learn how to behave by seeing the way they behave as we grow up with them at home but because we also inherit some of their hidden or subconscious behaviours. In the example of some of my female clients, saying no to men when it comes to sex is one such inherited, hidden, subconscious behaviour.

From experience, I have found that much of this inherited behaviour is rooted in the generations that lived through the two world wars during which times men were in shorter supply then they are now. Fuelled by the normal human fears of not wanting to be left behind or not wanting to be (left) alone, women were forced to change their behaviour towards men and to be more suppliant towards them, including developing the behaviour of never saying no sexually to a man. Because if you said no, the fear would be that he would just go and find someone else. Don’t forget that during these times of between 80-100 years ago, there was good reason to behave like this. Men were being killed in war. There were fewer of them around.

But all that happened 80 to 100 years ago.

It doesn’t apply to 21^st century western Europe.

Yet, the behaviour resulting from those times remains.

Some modern women are still unable to say no.

They don’t know why they can’t say no and not being able to say no is getting them into trouble.

I was working with one such client recently and she reasoned that the reason why she couldn’t say “no” to men was because she was trying to save them. And the men she was trying to save were troubled men. And they were causing her trouble. A lot of trouble.

Yet, when I worked with her and her ancestral line, I found the root of her inability to say no to men came from the mother of her mother who believed that if you say no to a man, he won’t respect you. And for her, respect was key. She was someone who needed to be respected. And that probably meant something to her at that time and place. It is an important need in a lot of people.

The problem was she never changed her behaviour and so, when it came to conceiving her daughter, she passed that behaviour to her daughter who then passed it to her daughter, my client. And so, something that had relevance to time and place 100 years ago was still present and alive today. Yet today, in 21^st century western Europe, it has no relevance; no time and no place. It has no use. And without time or place or relevant use, all it was now doing was causing harm. Harm to my client.

And what was most ironic of all, or most damaging of all was the original reason for the behaviour: respect.

The grandmother trained herself to not say no to men in order to gain respect but my client, in not saying no to men, was now gaining the exact opposite: no respect.

And this is how it sometimes works in inherited patterns of (sexual) behaviour: the reason for the behaviour gets twisted and produces the exact opposite effect for what it was first devised.

The other damaging aspect was that, unaware of the real reason for her behaviour, (to get respect), my client made up her own reason for her sexual behaviour: to save men. This worked to cause a deep confusion in my client because the reason she gave herself for her behaviour was not working. She wasn’t saving the men she wasn’t saying no to. The reason she gave herself for her behaviour was, unbeknownst to her, the wrong reason.

So, not only was the pattern of behaviour in her so twisted as to produce the opposite effect for what it was originally designed for but the reason for doing it was twisted too. Double trouble.

And that, sadly, is the natural pattern of human beliefs and behaviours as they are passed from one generation to the next. They get twisted. It is our DNA, which is, after all, also naturally twisted.

The good news, however, is that all this can be undone.

In the hands of a skilled energy worker, spiritual healer or ancestral healer, the origin of an inherited pattern of behaviour can be discovered and released at its point of origin, thus freeing the current holder of the pattern of behaviour.

This is achieved through the double process of what I call energetic forensics – tracing the pattern of behaviour back to its origin – and non-judgemental discussion, forgiveness and letting go – talking with the originator of the pattern in order to  understand why the pattern was developed and to show that, unbeknownst to them, they have passed that pattern to future generations in their family lineage where it no longer has any valid reason for being and then when the originator sees this, to ask them to let the pattern go as its purpose has now been fulfilled and is no longer of any service to anyone. Then when the originator lets their behaviour go, my client is set free, as the pattern has now been set free in her by the person who put it there in the first place.

This is how energy work / spiritual work / ancestral healing works to heal a person of inherited, subconscious patterns of behaviour which may be damaging to them. It is a beautiful, wonderful moment and one that I have been lucky to often witness in my daily work.