We all have a “story lineage” that we tap into as a result of being born into our particular family (and culture or race, also). It’s an intergenerational lineage of thoughts and beliefs (both high and low frequency) that gets passed down from family member to family member. These beliefs, or stories are automatically inherited by everyone in that family – allowing for variation in understanding and application among individuals, of course.
For instance, you may have heard the term “poverty mentality”. This is an attitude created by fearful thoughts around not having enough … beliefs that say we cannot prosper or that abundance is difficult, even impossible for us. Such is an example of a low frequency thought stream that runs rampant in our society, as well as one that gets passed down from generation to generation in many families.
Family thought-streams, such as poverty mentality, are highly infectious. In the same way we catch a virus that is going round … we “catch” these low frequency thought streams. We are highly susceptible to the family mentality because it never occurs to us to question these ideas. When everyone around us believes a certain set of ideas about life, we assume they are right. We “catch” them from our families, adopt them as our own and then manifest them in our daily lives through all sorts of addictive behaviors.
Alcohol, drugs, work or money addictions, as well as victim and perpetrator mentality are all examples of infectious and addictive thought patterns that may come down to us from our families. We “inherit” these ideas and beliefs which then generate self-destructive behaviors that we are doomed to repeat whether we want to or not.
Addiction starts in the mind with what we are believing. Our beliefs determine our behavior. When we believe these thought-streams we are doomed to live out the behaviors that come out of them; in other words, we act compulsively. In this way, these thought streams end up destroying our esteem, our relationships and even our lives.