Curing Emotional Pain & Trauma Carried On From Our Ancestors
This time last year had you asked me what family constellation therapy was or what it was about I wouldn’t have had a clue. The first I heard of it was when I was to Europe in May of 2019. I caught up with a friend in Zagreb who told me they had started training to become a facilitator for the type of therapy. One night over a martini, I decided to enquire more because, with a name like “family constellations”, it was bound to be an exciting story.
“You stand in a circle, and you get placed around the room, and it helps you recover from difficult family dynamics” -
Now I’m sure it was explained to me better than that, but that’s honestly all I remember from the conversation. The more I listened to the therapy, the less interested I became as I couldn’t logically piece together what exactly happened in it. I’m not usually so closed-minded to alternate approaches like this, but for some reason, it just didn’t quite gel with me.
Sometime later, when I returned to Australia and went on a health retreat, I was surprised to see that a full-day family constellations workshop was on the weekend schedule. Feeling a sense of dread, I started to make up excuses in my head as to why I wasn’t going to attend the workshops during my stay.
German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger developed family constellation therapy in the early 1990s through working with the Zulus as a Parish Priest in Africa, his psychotherapist training, a book he read on phenomenology and his work as a family therapist. This led him to the belief in the energy, both positive and negative, found in familial bonds. Through his research and treatment of families for over 45 years, he discovered patterns of physical and mental health concerns, negative emotions and dysfunctional or destructive behaviours within families. He observed how these concerns might be adopted by individuals unconsciously as a way for them to cope. Family Constellation therapy believes three things govern a family system:
The need for belonging - We are only truly at peace when everyone in our family is included. If anyone is excluded, they will be represented by a family member; this is often the case with children of divorced parents. When there is a parent who has been criticised or excluded by the other, the child will tend to side with the parent that is excluded and criticised.
Social order - Everyone has their place. Those who come first are first in the social order. For example in a situation where this order is out of place, a child may feel burdened, be treated as a parent or take the place of a lost child, which results in an unhealthy dynamic.
Equilibrium - The balance between giving and receiving needs to be equal. We are only innocent when equilibrium is maintained; guilty if it is unbalanced; or righteous if we give too much and do not receive.
As members of a family we are symptom-bearers, usually exposing what hasn’t been resolved in the family system. The idea of family constellation therapy is that we are all subconsciously devoted to our family and connected to it out of love, ensuring the family stays balanced.
The days leading up to the first workshop I was adamant on not going. I didn’t see the purpose or understand it fully and was surprisingly closed off to the idea. I think the concept of talking about family in front of others and being vulnerable in a group situation made me extremely uncomfortable. I have a very close bond with my parents and siblings and don’t like to talk about what I classify as “family business” openly. However, throughout the week, I tried to change my mindset. On the morning of the workshop, I pulled myself out of my villa and walked down to the building where the workshop was held. Chairs were positioned in a circle, facing inwards, with the coordinator sitting on one of the chairs in the circle with us. Everyone at the retreat was there, sitting upright in comfortable clothes, hair tied back, nervously anticipating what would happen.
The workshop was facilitated by Margarete Koenning, a senior Gestalt trainer who had been working in the therapeutic field for 30 years. I think a lot of us taking part were shocked at how switched on she was during the workshop, quickly tapping into different people’s dynamics intuitively. When it became a bit too much for me, and I decided to not return after lunch break (a plan I didn’t end up going through with), Margarete approached me and talked me through some of my concerns and made the experience a lot more comfortable (even though ultimately it wasn’t comfortable at all).
Family constellation workshops use the diversity of the group in the workshop to represent the different members of your family. Participants are chosen to represent a member of the family and are placed to highlight dynamics between each other member, outlining the principles in the relationships. The facilitator looks beyond the individual and instead engages in ‘systemic thinking’ to gauge which direction the symptom points to within the family dynamic. Studies in epigenetics, such as those by cell biologist Bruce Lipton, have shown that we carry much more from our family ancestries than previously assumed. These studies have shown that trauma, disturbed emotions and patterns are linked or embedded in the DNA we receive at conception. The idea of family constellation therapy is that our’ family soul’ is consistently attempting to move towards balanced equilibrium. It moves to acknowledge those who are excluded and ensure everyone has their rightful place within the family system.
Throughout the workshop, I was called upon by many to be apart of their support constellation. It became extremely uncomfortable at times but what stood out for me was how the energy changed once you were participating in the scenarios yourself. When I allowed myself to slip into these roles, I would completely disassociate from my own problems and situations and embody the role I was playing - it sounds crazy, I know. It was great to see others get closure and healing during the process in the workshop. While I didn’t do my own family constellation, being apart of everyone else’s journeys was an experience I’ll never forget. As many of us said at the end of the day, you really had to be there to understand what had taken place.
With wellness,
Aleksandar
Painting by Vanja Zaric
