Inherited Alarm: Holocaust Memory, Colitis, and the Fear I Passed Down

My first panic attack hit inside a discount department store. I was three, and the bubbly orange logo of Bonimart might as well have been a warning sign. My heart pounded at the thought of being locked inside. At day camp, my fear of water kept me doggie-paddling on the concrete deck. By kindergarten, the dread of being left behind gave me daily stomach cramps, each one a rehearsal for being stranded, alone, forever.

My father tried to reason with me. He explained the difference between possible and probable outcomes, a fine distinction for a small child. When that didn't work, he designed a twelve-step program that started outside Bonimart. Each week, I held his hand and took one more step inside. I understood the logic. Fear simply didn't care.

Inherited Alarm

Anxiety wasn't a family quirk. It was part of the inheritance. My bubbe had sniffed out danger early. Soon after the Nazis occupied Warsaw, she overheard neighbors reporting who was Jewish. She knew it was time to run, now. The parents and sisters who stayed behind were killed. That trauma moved through our bloodline like a current, and the lesson we absorbed was simple: stay on alert. Vigilance kept people alive. Stress had its uses, and we held onto it with both hands.

Years later, my college roommates cracked up at my mother's answering machine messages: Sit at the back of the plane! Cuticle cutting causes botulism! Make sure your lip gloss has no petroleum! They were funny. They were also the family vocabulary of watchfulness.

When the Gut Got Involved

So perhaps it wasn't surprising when, at twelve, I got sick on my first trip to New York City. At the Statue of Liberty, I gazed at the skyline and suddenly felt nauseous. That night, feverish, I was vomiting and running to the bathroom. The acute illness passed, but the symptoms stuck around. The diagnosis was ulcerative colitis.

Was this a "nervous stomach"? The question wasn't frivolous. Colitis was long considered psychosomatic, tied to a "neurotic psychological profile." In the 1990s, autoimmune explanations were in vogue, and my doctors insisted stress didn't cause UC. I didn't quite buy it. One current explanation involves the two-way mind-gut connection. Ninety percent of the hormone that regulates mood is produced in the GI tract. Stress triggers GI symptoms, and gut inflammation releases chemicals that trigger stress. Wonderful.

Fear Doesn't Come Out With the Colon

Steroids eventually put me into remission, until my grandfather died. The colitis flared, and medication stopped working. Doctors worried about cancer and removed my entire colon. The painful organ was gone, and I felt better. Thank God.

My anxiety, however, couldn't be excised so neatly. Sure, I could now leave the restroom at a party, but did I want to? Anxiety abhors a vacuum. Bonimart's doors became turbulence, heights became a problem, and then came health anxiety, an ultra-sensitive alarm system wired to every bodily sensation. People who live with it are sometimes called "nosophobics." We're hyperaware of our bodies and convinced any symptom signals a life-threatening disease. I panicked before doctor visits. I fainted when a test result landed a smidgen out of bounds. I was certain cancer was coming, even without a colon. I had to stay vigilant. That's how we survive.

What My Daughter Saw

I knew these thoughts seemed absurd, so I kept them to myself. Then, on a family trip for flu shots, my usually composed, graceful fourth-grader came apart. She went hysterical in a midtown CVS, and we had to hold her down. Despite my efforts to bottle it up, my anxiety had leaked into my children. They didn't feel safe.

"I get it," I told her afterward. "I once fainted trying to put in contact lenses."

"Why wouldn't I be scared?" she countered. "A stranger with a bad haircut in a dingy drugstore was going to poke me with a needle!"

She had a point. How do you teach a child, or yourself, to stay alert without tipping into panic? How do you name a threat, weigh it calmly, and act on it? Then came the thought I didn't want: what if she develops colitis? Another thing to worry about.

Rewriting the Story

Something had to change. I read about trauma and sought out therapies that treated fear as something to work through rather than obey. I started reversing the narrative, recasting weakness as endurance. My family is so strong that we survived the Holocaust! And: I've felt glass shards when I chased toddlers around the Coney Island aquarium, and I'm still going strong!

I also told my daughter: Your body is so smart it recognizes a fake virus and creates antibodies! She rolled her eyes.

These reframes haven't stopped my doom spirals or erased every visceral jolt of unease. Watching my young children's vulnerability brought back my own childhood helplessness, and with it the trepidation and anger over my illness that I'd buried in my rush to move on. I have to confront the fear caused by an illness partly caused by fear. It's a loop I didn't design, but it's mine to work through.

I may no longer sit outside Bonimart with my heart racing, but I'm still working through Dad's twelve steps. My hope is that I never have to write that program for my own kids. Bubbe's vigilance kept her alive, and I'm grateful for it. But I want the passing down of crippling anxiety to end with me.