Inherited Fate

June 24, 2026

The elderly man who’s house I’m staying in in Budapest is in his late seventies.  He spends most of his days gardening unassumingly, for all intents and purposes he is your standard old man. Yet every few weeks I’ll find him in a tense argument with someone convinced that someone is trying to steal his house. Not burgle it, steal it through some bureaucratic sleight of hand or a shifty person who’s got a scheme that he cant quite pin down but is absolutely convinced exists. There’s no evidence to support this, his relationship with the neighbours is fine, there’s no lawyers knocking on his door, but still there’s this sentiment that everything could be taken away from him at any moment.

I used to think people who believe this stuff are just bizarre, and probably bordering on a stay at a mental institution. Then I learned that the Hungarian national anthem asks God for relief after centuries of suffering and describing Hungary as a nation “long torn by ill fate”¹ and it started to make sense. This is a country where people do not expect things to go well.

In the 20^th century Hungary was a wealthy nation, the second wave of the industrial revolution had brought it wealth and development. Budapest was built into one of the most architecturally stunning capitals and it was one of the largest countries in Europe. Then following WW1 and the Treaty of Trianon Hungary lost two thirds of its territory, crippling its economy. Then following WW2 the Soviet Union occupied Hungary, further oppressing it with communism for the next 45 years. Revolutions against their oppressors were crushed. Its easy to see why Hungarians would feel powerless. They had no control over these historical events and suffered for it.

If you think about the stories your family repeats, there are often cautionary tales in there. Not the light-hearted ones, but the stories about the time a grandfathers business failed, or how someone moved abroad for a different life and came back in failure. These are just some examples of intergenerational trauma.

Hungary is an example of intergenerational trauma on steroids, I would go so far as saying that if a country could experience a collective national trauma, then this would be it. Yet intergenerational trauma does not have to be as harsh as thinking the Soviet Union is back to nationalize your home. The stories passed down to us can often hold us back in subtle ways. If you got an exciting job opportunity in another country, but you’re afraid of moving abroad because of the family story of a relative who also moved abroad and it didn’t work out for them, then of course you’re going to be more hesitant than someone who doesn’t have that family history.

It’s the same with the person who was told by their parent about a messy divorce, and that they shouldn’t trust men or women for x and y reasons. The cautionary tale here will of course have a negative impact on the relationships of any future generation it is told to. How can it not when you’re being warned by those closest to you?

These stories hang around like a burden, like a dead weight. Often, they are taboo topics that don’t get spoken about, yet the scars are still visible when the issue is danced around. The re-telling of these beliefs would have you think that disaster is inevitable if you go down the same path that your family ancestor did. In psychology this is called having an external locus of control, where you believe that fate is determined by outside forces of which you have little to no impact. Hungary didn’t invent this feeling, it perfected it.

Then in 2018 Hungarian psychologist Noémi Orvos-Tóth published Inherited Fate – offering up a practical framework for examining these stories. She suggests asking the questions around family trauma a person has experienced. Questions such as what values do my family stories pass on? or What do the stories say about change? Is there opportunity for change or is it impossible?² These questions help determine clarity on why you believe what you do. Linking your family stories and your own values and beliefs can be uncomfortable but is necessary to determine where they came from and work on changing those narratives.

The chances are answering these questions of your family stories will likely lead you to recognise that many of your previously held beliefs aren’t in fact a result of your own experiences, but from the belief of previous generations’ experiences. Calling these beliefs into question will also help you shift your thinking from “your suffering is inevitable if you go down path  x” to believing more so that you are more capable of determining your fate in a certain aspect of your life.

Its important to recognise that everyone’s situation is unique. That although the common experience in Hungary was that large numbers of the Hungarian population suffered immensely throughout history and that similar stories are passed down from one generation to the next, that in most cases of the readership here that for every family narrative in support of one viewpoint arguing not to do something because of intergenerational trauma, that you could find equally as many counter stories in favour of doing that thing. In other words, the factors that determined a previous generations suffering are not necessarily going to cause you the same fate.

Shifting these capability beliefs from an external to an internal locus of control is a process of building evidence to support that you are in the drivers seat for your own future. Firstly by questioning these narratives, but then also by going out and challenging them. You go against the family’s cautionary tale, and you start to build evidence that contradicts the inherited story.  The family narrative says that moving abroad ends in failure – that’s one data point from a different person in a different era under different circumstances. The guy who’s worried his house will be seized isn’t because he made a mistake, its because the Soviet Union was brutal. The lesson and the event got fused together somewhere along the way and its been passed down as lore ever since.

Start small with generating your own data. Take the overseas job with the intention of trying six months instead of committing forever. Have the relationship instead of avoiding it because your parents marriage was a disaster. The point isn’t that everything will work out – its that your experience should be yours, not a repeat of one passed down to you. Every time you act against the inherited narrative and the world doesn’t end, you’re chipping away at the belief that your fate was decided before you were born.  

1. The Hungarian national anthem – Himnusz – is a frontrunner for the most miserable of all. It lists the tragedies that have befallen the country over history – from being enslaved by Ottomans to arrows raining down by invading Mongols. I’d hate to think how the anthem would go if it was written more recently. ↩︎
2. Inherited Fate: Family trauma and the Ways of healing – Noémi Orvos-Tóth. It shouldn’t surprise you that Inherited Fate went on to become a best seller in Hungary. As of 2025 the book has been translated and published in English ↩︎

Also on Substack here!