Simply put, the family constellation approach
as developed by Bert Hellinger is a process by which we can access
the deepest dynamics in our family system in order to find new
sources of healing and strength. The purpose in looking at these
dynamics is to better understand forces at work in the system that
may not be known to current members, including hidden loyalties,
subliminal identifications, and embedded patterns established long
ago. Once these entanglements are revealed, they can be integrated
into a solution picture that encompasses everyone and everything
that belongs to the family, without judgment.
The following is a very general description of how a constellation
unfolds. Most facilitators work in a group setting. A client states
his or her issue before the group. The facilitator listens for
the place in the client’s description where there seems to
be energy enough to start the work. The client is asked to select
from the group a number of people to represent certain members
of his or her family. Perhaps the facilitator asks for the mother
and father, or perhaps the five siblings, including the brother
who died at birth. The facilitator will follow his or her intuition
in this.
The client, then, positions the representatives in relation to
one another. Facilitator and client wait. What are they waiting
for? They are waiting for the movements that emerge from a shared
plane of existence – what some call the knowing field, or
the morphogenic field. I am comfortable with the “gathering
field.”
As all the participants in the constellation – client, representatives,
engaged witnesses – tune into the family, essential information
emerges and the representatives begin to “receive” an
understanding of those they represent.
What the client always thought of as the “bad marriage” of
her grandparents turns out to be a complicated but loving relationship.
What another client saw as sternness in his father is actually
a holding back from life because his mother had committed suicide
and he felt guilty for going on. Still another client, who finds
she is always angry with her husband but doesn’t know why,
realizes that she cannot bear to be happier than her mother was.
But when she sees that her mother smiles on her as she stands beside
her husband, she can look toward him with new eyes. And on and
on.
What we experience in the constellations is that our symptoms
-- physical, emotional, psychological – are related to events
and to people outside of our immediate experience. They are connected
to deeper longing in the system, such as the longing to be remembered,
or acknowledged, or heard. Once we are able to identify where the
natural flow of love was diverted or blocked, perhaps many generations
back, we can become the memory, acknowledgment, or the listener.
This deep and humble movement may very well release the spell
of denial so that the whole family system can find balance. At
the very least, we find our own place and are able to experience
the humility and power of being one of many versus one alone.
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