Nurture Vs Nature Shapes Who We Become

The Question That Sits Beneath Everything We Treat

Every person who walks into our practice at Energetics Institute carries a version of the same question, even if they never articulate it directly: “Why am I like this?” Why do they react with rage when their partner raises a concern? Why does anxiety grip them in situations that others navigate easily? Why do they repeat patterns they swore they would never repeat? The answer, every time, lives somewhere in the complex interplay between nature and nurture, between what was inherited and what was experienced, between the biology they were born with and the environment that shaped how that biology expressed itself.

The nature v nurture question is not an abstract academic exercise for us. It is the framework through which we understand every client’s story. When we sit with someone whose depression has resisted medication, or whose anger seems to come from nowhere, or whose relationships follow the same destructive arc regardless of the partner, we are always looking at both sides: what did their genetics load them with, and what did their life do with that loading?

Understanding how nature and nurture combine is not just intellectually interesting. It is clinically essential. It determines whether we focus on changing thought patterns, working with the body, addressing relational trauma, or combining all three. And for our clients, understanding this interplay often provides the first moment of genuine self compassion they have experienced, because it answers the question “Why am I like this?” with something other than “Because you are broken.”

What Nature And Nurture Actually Mean

Nature refers to biological factors: the genetic inheritance passed from biological parents that creates your physical structure, temperament, neurological wiring, and predispositions. Genetic factors influence everything from your eye colour and height to your sensitivity to stress, your baseline mood, and your vulnerability to mental health conditions. Genetic traits, heritable factors, and hereditary factors are encoded in DNA, shaped by millions of years of evolution, and present from conception. They include physical characteristics, behavioural traits, cognitive traits, and the broad tendencies that biological theories of human nature describe as part of our species heritage.

Nurture refers to environmental factors and external factors: everything that happens to you from the moment of conception onward. This includes prenatal conditions, birth experiences, early attachment with caregivers, parenting styles, schooling, cultural influences, peer relationships, socioeconomic conditions, adverse life events, and the countless daily interactions that teach your nervous system what to expect from the world. Nurture shapes behaviour through reinforcement, modelling, and the slow accumulation of experience that becomes belief. Behavioural theories emphasise how these external factors influence behaviour through conditioning and social learning.

The nature nurture debate centres on how much each contributes to human development. Historically, extreme nature positions argued that biology is destiny, that genetic predisposition determines who you become regardless of circumstance. Extreme nurture positions argued the opposite: that humans arrive as blank slates and environment writes the entire story. Contemporary psychological science, drawing on developmental psychology, behavioural genetics, and behaviour genetics research, has moved well beyond both positions. Research suggests that virtually all human traits emerge from genetic and environmental factors working together, and that the question “Which matters more?” is almost always the wrong question. The nurture debate centres on interaction rather than opposition. The better question is: how do genes interact with environments to produce the specific patterns we observe in this person, at this point in their life? Understanding how external factors and hereditary factors combine is the foundation of modern human research into psychological differences and psychological characteristics.

How We See This Play Out In Our Practice

The clinical reality of nature versus nurture is far more nuanced and far more human than academic papers typically convey. Let us share what we actually observe.

A woman from Wanneroo, 34, came to us with severe anxiety that had not responded to two rounds of cognitive behavioural therapy elsewhere. She was intelligent, motivated, and had done all the homework. But her anxiety persisted. When we explored her family history, a clear picture emerged: her mother had clinical anxiety, her maternal grandmother had been housebound with agoraphobia, and her sister was on medication for panic disorder. There was an obvious genetic component, a genetic predisposition toward heightened threat detection that ran through her maternal line.

But genetics was not the whole story. Her father had been emotionally volatile, prone to unpredictable anger that kept the household in a state of chronic vigilance. Her mother’s anxiety had made the home environment one where danger felt ever-present, even when nothing was actually wrong. The child who grew up in that house absorbed both the biological vulnerability and the environmental reinforcement. Her nervous system was doubly loaded: genetically primed to detect threat and environmentally trained to expect it everywhere.

In therapy, we worked with both sides. Somatically, we addressed the chronic activation patterns in her body, the shallow breathing, the tight shoulders, the hypervigilant scanning that her nervous system performed automatically. Cognitively, we examined the beliefs about safety that her upbringing had installed. And psychoeducationally, we helped her understand that her anxiety was not a personal failure but a predictable outcome of her specific genetic and environmental factors converging. That understanding alone reduced her shame by half. The therapeutic work that followed reduced her symptoms by more.

Genetic Factors And What They Actually Determine

Behavioural genetics has established that virtually all psychological traits have a genetic component. Twin studies provide the clearest evidence. Identical twins share essentially the same genes, while fraternal twins share approximately 50 percent. By comparing these groups, researchers can estimate how much of the variation in any trait is attributable to genetic differences versus environmental influences.

The nature vs nurture debate has been informed by these findings consistently across decades of research. Personality traits like extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness show heritability estimates between 40 and 60 percent. Cognitive abilities show similar genetic influence, with heritability increasing across the human lifespan as people increasingly select environments that match their genetic dispositions. Mental health conditions including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia all show significant genetic contributions, though none are fully determined by genes alone.

Studies of identical twins raised apart are particularly illuminating. These individuals share the same genes but grew up in different environments, sometimes radically different. The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart found striking similarities in personality, interests, and even mannerisms between identical twins raised separately, suggesting powerful genetic influence on behavioural traits. Yet the same studies also showed meaningful differences, confirming that environmental factors leave their mark even on genetically identical individuals.

What genetics does not do is determine destiny. A genetic predisposition is a tendency, not a certainty. A person’s genetic makeup creates a range of possible outcomes, and where within that range they actually land depends heavily on environmental influences. A child with a genetic disposition toward high sensitivity might become an anxious adult in a chaotic household or a deeply empathic therapist in a supportive one. The same genes, radically different expression.

Environmental Influences And How They Shape Expression

Nurture shapes who we become through mechanisms that begin before birth and continue throughout life. Prenatal stress, maternal nutrition, and exposure to substances all affect development. Early attachment experiences wire the infant brain for particular expectations about relationships: “Are others reliable? Is the world safe? Am I worthy of care?” These implicit beliefs, formed before conscious memory, shape human behaviour across decades.

Parenting styles exert powerful influence on child development. Warm, consistent, responsive parenting tends to produce children with secure attachment, emotional regulation, and social competence. Harsh, unpredictable, or neglectful parenting tends to produce children whose nervous systems remain on high alert, whose emotional regulation is compromised, and whose relationship templates carry expectations of rejection or danger.

Cultural influences shape which genetic tendencies are reinforced and which are suppressed. A child with high physical energy might thrive in a culture that values outdoor play and physical expression, or struggle in one that demands stillness and compliance for hours each day. Individual differences in temperament are neither good nor bad in isolation. They become adaptive or maladaptive depending on the environmental context that surrounds them.

A father from Kingsley brought his 10 year old son to us after the school suggested assessment for ADHD. The boy was bright, creative, and physically restless. He struggled in a classroom that required extended seated concentration. His father was wracked with guilt: “Is this my fault? Did I do something wrong?” We explained that ADHD traits have a strong genetic component, with heritability estimates around 70 to 80 percent. But we also explained that how those traits manifest, whether they become a disorder or simply a difference, depends significantly on environmental support. The right school structure, physical activity, sleep quality, and family understanding can transform the same genetic profile from debilitating to manageable. We helped the family build an environment that worked with the boy’s wiring rather than against it, and within a term his teacher reported marked improvement without any medication.

Gene Expression And Epigenetics: Where Nature Meets Nurture

The most important scientific development in the nature nurture debate over the past two decades is our understanding of gene expression and epigenetics. This research has fundamentally dissolved the old opposition between genes and environment by showing that they operate as a single integrated system.

Gene expression describes how genes are activated or silenced in response to environmental signals. Your DNA contains approximately 20,000 genes, but at any given time only a fraction are active. Which genes are expressed, and when, and in what tissues, is profoundly influenced by environmental factors including nutrition, stress, social connection, physical activity, and exposure to toxins. Chronic stress, for example, can alter gene expression patterns in ways that increase inflammation, reduce immune function, and heighten vulnerability to mental disorder.

Epigenetics refers to chemical modifications that affect gene expression without changing the DNA sequence itself. Methyl groups and histone modifications can effectively turn genes on or off, and these modifications can be influenced by life experiences. Research in both animal and human studies shows that early life adversity can produce epigenetic changes that persist into adulthood, affecting stress reactivity, emotional regulation, and physical health.

This means that environmental effects are not merely psychological. They are biological. Nurture literally gets under the skin, changing how the body reads its own genetic code. A child who experiences chronic stress does not just learn to be anxious. Their biology shifts in ways that make anxiety more likely at the cellular level. This finding is both sobering and hopeful: sobering because it confirms that adverse environments cause lasting biological change, and hopeful because it means that positive environments and therapeutic intervention can produce biological change in the opposite direction.

Personality Development Through Both Lenses

Personality development illustrates the nature nurture interplay with particular clarity. Research consistently shows that personality traits have meaningful genetic influences. The Big Five traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) all show heritability estimates around 40 to 60 percent. But personality is not fixed at birth. It develops across the lifespan through a continuous dialogue between inherited tendencies and lived experience.

Identical twins raised in the same household show personality differences that grow larger over time, suggesting that non-shared environmental influences, the unique experiences each person has even within the same family, play a significant role in personality development. Different teachers, friendships, romantic relationships, work experiences, and chance events all contribute to personality differences between genetically identical individuals.

In our clinical work, understanding this helps clients move beyond “This is just who I am.” A man from Woodlands, 47, came to us with a lifelong pattern of emotional withdrawal in relationships. His wife described him as “a wall.” He described himself the same way, with resignation: “I am just not an emotional person. It is how I am wired.” When we explored his history, we found a father who punished emotional expression and a mother who was emotionally unavailable. His temperament may have inclined him toward introversion (a genetic tendency), but the emotional shutdown was learned. It was a survival strategy that served him as a child and imprisoned him as an adult. Understanding this distinction, genetic temperament versus environmentally imposed defence, gave him something crucial: the knowledge that change was possible because part of what he was dealing with was not hardwired but habitual.

Mental Illness Development: The Diathesis-Stress Model

Mental illness development provides one of the clearest examples of how nature and nurture combine. The diathesis-stress model, foundational in clinical psychology, proposes that mental health conditions arise when a genetic predisposition (diathesis) interacts with environmental stressors that exceed the person’s coping resources.

A person might carry genetic vulnerability to depression, perhaps through variants affecting serotonin regulation or stress hormone pathways. In a supportive environment with strong relationships, meaningful work, and adequate resources, that vulnerability might never manifest clinically. But add chronic stress, social isolation, relationship breakdown, or financial hardship, and the same genetic profile produces a depressive episode. Neither the genes nor the environment alone caused the depression. The interaction did.

This model explains why mental illness often clusters in families without following simple inheritance patterns. It explains why identical twins do not always share mental health conditions despite sharing the same genes. And it explains why environmental interventions, including therapy, lifestyle changes, and social support, can be effective even for conditions with strong genetic components.

At Energetics Institute, we apply this understanding practically. When a client presents with depression, we assess both their biological vulnerability (family history, previous episodes, physical health) and their current environmental load (relationship quality, work stress, sleep, social connection, unprocessed trauma). Treatment addresses both dimensions simultaneously. We might recommend consultation with a GP about medication to address biological factors while providing therapy that processes trauma, rebuilds relationships, and creates environmental conditions that protect against relapse.

What This Means For Therapy And Personal Change

The practical implication of the nature nurture interplay for anyone considering therapy is profoundly hopeful: you are not trapped by your genetics, and you are not permanently damaged by your environment. Both are real. Both matter. And both can be worked with.

Genetic predispositions set ranges of possibility. Environmental influences determine where within those ranges you currently sit. Therapy works by shifting your position within that range, not by changing your DNA (which is not possible) but by changing how your genes interact with your current environment and how your nervous system responds to the conditions of your life.

We work with the body because biology matters. Somatic psychotherapy addresses the physical patterns, the chronic tension, restricted breathing, and autonomic dysregulation, that represent the body’s adaptation to past environments. These patterns can change. The nervous system retains plasticity throughout the human lifespan.

We work with beliefs and emotions because environmental learning matters. Cognitive and emotional processing addresses the rules, expectations, and relational templates installed by early experiences. These can be updated. The brain forms new neural pathways in response to new experiences, particularly experiences that disconfirm old predictions.

And we work relationally because human psychology is fundamentally social. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a corrective environment, one where old attachment patterns are activated and responded to differently, creating new implicit learning that gradually overwrites the old.

A young woman from Greenwood, 26, came to us after a psychiatric hospitalisation for severe anxiety and depression. Her family history included significant mental illness across three generations on both sides. She believed she was “genetically doomed.” What she did not understand was that while her genetic loading was real and significant, her current environment was doing nothing to buffer it: isolated living, no physical activity, poor sleep, a toxic workplace, and zero emotional support. We helped her build what we call a “nurture scaffold,” environmental conditions designed to reduce the expression of her genetic vulnerabilities. Better sleep architecture. Regular movement. One genuine friendship invested in. A workplace change. Therapy to process childhood trauma. Within eight months, she was not just stable. She was thriving. Her genes had not changed. Her environment had. And that changed everything.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Does Developmental Psychology View Nature Vs Nurture?

Developmental psychology views human nature as emerging through continuous interaction between biological theories of genetic influence and environmental shaping across the lifespan. Rather than asking which factor dominates, developmental psychologists study how the same genetic disposition produces different outcomes at different ages and in different contexts. This field has been central to demonstrating that both biological factors and how external factors combine determine psychological characteristics across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Is Mental Health More Nature Or Nurture?

Both nature and nurture play substantial roles in mental health. Genetic predisposition creates vulnerability, while environmental factors determine whether that vulnerability is activated or buffered. Research consistently shows that mental health conditions arise from the interaction between inherited biological factors and life experiences, not from either alone. This is why treatment that addresses both dimensions, medication for biological factors alongside therapy for environmental ones, typically produces better outcomes than either approach in isolation.

Can Therapy Change What Is Genetic?

Therapy cannot change your DNA. But it can change gene expression, nervous system patterns, and the environmental conditions that determine how your genetic predispositions manifest. Psychological science has demonstrated that therapeutic intervention produces measurable changes in brain structure and function, stress hormone regulation, and immune markers. You cannot choose different genes. But you can profoundly influence what those genes do in your body and your life.

Why Do Siblings Turn Out So Differently?

Despite sharing approximately 50 percent of their genes and growing up in the same household, siblings often differ markedly in personality, mental health, and life outcomes. Behavioural genetics research shows that non-shared environmental influences, the unique experiences each sibling has, account for much of this variation. Different peer groups, different teachers, different positions in the family, and different interpretations of the same events all contribute to personality differences. Even identical twins raised together show increasing divergence over time as their unique experiences accumulate.

Does Understanding Nature Vs Nurture Help In Parenting?

Enormously. Parents who understand that their child arrives with a particular temperamental profile, neither blank slate nor fixed destiny, can tailor their parenting to work with that child’s specific wiring rather than against it. A highly sensitive child needs different environmental support than a highly active one. A child with a genetic component toward anxiety benefits from warm, consistent parenting that builds security rather than harsh discipline that confirms threat. Understanding both nature and nurture allows parents to provide environments that support the best possible expression of their child’s unique genetic profile.

What Are Specific Cognitive Abilities Influenced By?

Specific cognitive abilities such as verbal reasoning, spatial processing, and working memory show significant genetic influence, with heritability estimates typically ranging from 40 to 70 percent. However, environmental factors including education quality, early language exposure, nutrition, physical characteristics like brain health, and deliberate practice substantially affect performance. Complex traits like intelligence are polygenic, meaning hundreds or thousands of genes each contribute small effects, making them particularly responsive to environmental modification.

How This Understanding Shapes Our Practice

At Energetics Institute, we do not treat people as either biologically determined or environmentally created. We treat them as complex beings whose current presentation reflects decades of interaction between what they inherited and what they experienced. This integrated understanding informs every aspect of our work, from assessment to treatment planning to the way we talk about change.

When we explain to clients that their struggles make sense given their specific combination of genetic and environmental factors, something shifts. The shame reduces. The self blame softens. And space opens for genuine curiosity about what might change if the environmental side of the equation shifts. That curiosity is where therapy begins.

We offer individual therapy at our Subiaco practice and via telehealth across Western Australia. Whether you are working through anxiety, depression, relational patterns, or simply trying to understand why you are the way you are, we bring a framework that honours both your biology and your history. We do not promise to override your genetics. We promise to help you create conditions where your genetics express themselves in ways that serve your life rather than constrain it.

You can book a session by calling 1300956227 or through our website at contact us page. Understanding how nature and nurture shaped you is the beginning. Choosing how you respond to that understanding is where your future starts.