Introduction to Family Constellations - LOVE NEEDS ORDER

Family Constellations

What does family mean?

Mum & Dad - the most important people in our lives.

Life is the greatest gift.

Trauma is the greatest obstacle. It is like a broken record that plays over and over again in cycles known as symptoms, problems, issues that are repetitive, disruptive and often destructive patterns.

Taking, "accepting" our parents as they are is the only way to becoming whole and accepting how we are.

TRANSGENERATIONAL HEALING

Your past has a powerful influence on your present. You know you inherit physical traits, but you also inherit emotional and behavioural patterns caused by unresolved trauma in your family tree. Later, traumas will manifest as destructive patterns in your life.

Guilt will withdraw love when it should acknowledge it. And the need to punish the guilty keeps the victim imprisoned in shared pain and culpability.

Faithfulness must arise from love. There is a price to be paid when one agrees to commit but also a reward of fullness. For Bert Hellinger, freedom is an empty existence when it fulfil its potential. And holding on to someone is often fueled by a child fear of losing his or her mother.  A fear of abandonment has the same effect of losing your life.

A relationship can only work when each is looking for a partner; not a mother.  And forgiving a partner means pushing the the responsibility of making things work to them.

Our first success is our own birth. As we relate to our mother, we relate to life and work life in general.

Family Constellations is the therapy of the family unconscious.

Most of us carry at least some 'residue' from our family history. And the children of the future generation easily become fertile ground for trauma resolution, as traumas don't disappear even with death.

I.e. A first born son is likely to carry what's unresolved with his father. And the first daughter is  likely to carry what's unresolved with her mother. They might marry a woman/man with the characteristics of their parent.

As they repeat the parent experience, they join them in their discontent.

Reverse can be also true.

FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS IS NOT:

• a talk therapy

• a therapy you reflect on the session you had and run it in your mind again and again

• an intellectual process

• like traditional therapy

• something you do over and over on the same subject

• a session where you complain and blame parents for you difficult life

• a religious ceremony

• a mystical experience

I interviewed Joy Manné many years ago for a channel I no longer have.

Joy wrote an easy guide to follow on Family Constellations that is the result of her own workshops and the experiences she had going to Bert Hellinger's workshops at the beginning of his career. Hellinger also wrote the preface of her book.

Here is a transcript of this interview:

So what is Constellation?

Bert Hellinger's family constellations.

Bert discovered that If you have a group of people and someone has a problem just like "My mother doesn't see me," for example, and you are someone in the group who doesn't know the person, the client, "Would you represent the mother and someone? Would you represent the client?"

An energy field forms and people start behaving in a certain way and this is quite wonderful to see.

It's people who don't know each other at all.

So and I take the example I gave you, this man or woman, my mother doesn't see me.

You put in unknown people from the group called Representatives, and you find the representative of

the mother who doesn't see is looking at the floor.

It's symbolic for looking at someone who's dead.

You lay down another representative and the mother falls on the floor weeping.

And the reoresentative of the mother will say, "I think that's my sister who died when she was two and I was four."

And so this happens.

And then you discover that it's actually true. By some extraordinary miracle people who never met

each other, never talked to each other, couldn't possibly know family backgrounds or given this information through the field, the constellated field.

And the Field for me is has a capital letter.

It is extraordinary.

WHAT ARE THEY?

The orders of love are principles that rule how we live an thrive but also how we live and die. These orders state who belongs to a family system, their order and balance. They prescribe who comes first, who belongs after that and describe the natural flow of life from ancestors to us; grandparents to children.

They are not rules in the sense of what should be done. Instead, they are natural orders. A tree grows according to a certain order; not in response to a rule.

When these orders are respected there are solutions to problems and when they are not symptoms appear. We become ill, develop destructive relationship patterns, fail to thrive financially and even achieve success.

We must respect the fate of each member of our family, including our own, no matter how burdensome it may be for the orders of love to be restored. Our fate and the responsibility for our own actions strengthens us.

Whenever children feel compelled to place themselves above or equal a parent there will be consequences as it stops the natural flow of these orders and entanglements will be created. Parents give life. Children receive life.

The orders of love rarely exist intact within an average family.

There are three orders:

1. BELONGING

Everyone has a place and this place - even the dead - is unique, fixed and must be acknowledged as such.  An exclusion creates a disruption and is the most common cause of entanglement. All must be included.

A family system requires the full inclusion of all the members. Each member must have a place with equal rights to belong as every other member.

2. HIERARCHY

Everyone who came before have precedence. The world and our parents, as well as our ancestors have been around long before we were born. They have managed to live and survive. We are no better. Understanding that sense of hierarchy and respecting what they've and achieved with their lives so we could be here now is a matter of life and death.

Criticising and trying to teach them is considered arrogance. It makes us grow 'bigger' than them and has consequences too.  When criticising a parent, all we do is repeat their behaviour and actions but also push them away.

3. BALANCE

A successful relationship with another person depends on a continuous exchange of giving and taking, bound up with love. Only with an equal give and take balance is restored. There is an exception to this rule and it's the give and take between parents and children. Parents give, children take.

The need to belong is the most important need in humans. We are willing to die so we can belong. It is contradictory but very true and very strong in us.

So being excluded is the biggest trauma a human being can go through. Exclusions happen through some type of separation:

- A child who is not recognised by a parent or both,

- An abandoned child,

- The uggly duckling of the family,

- The black sheep - someone who doesn't live accordingly to that family rules,

- The forgotten and so on.

WHO BELONGS?

- The children and their sibblings

- The parents and their sibblings

- The grandparents and their former partners

- The great-grandparents (not always)

- Victims of our family as in murdered or exploited for your family own gain.

There is a hierarchy to be followed.

Parents come first and therefore are bigger then the children. They can only give and the children can only take. If they resist recieving what they get, they stop the energy flow of life that comes from parents to children.

Parents are big, children are small before them.

Any time when this order is not respected, a system imbalance occur bringing disruptive symptoms for us to resolve it.

Balance is about equal give and take between couples and uneven give and take from parents to children.

Parents always give; children always take. In the future, when adults, the children will be able to give to their children or be of service to their community if they do not have children.

Who are you following?

Is there a family member you've heard about or were somehow interested in their fate?

Do you feel a pull, strong emotions towards that person? You might be entangled in their fate; feeling and behaving like them.

i.e.  A client who felt the need to isolate every time he'd become overwhelmed in his jobs and then leave, told me he didn't know of any trauma in his father's family, however, he remebered there've been stories of an auntie who was considered the uggly duckling by everyone and isolated herself from the rest.

When I asked him how he felt looking at this auntie by placing a doll for each one of them facing each other, he replied, "I feel like an equal."

Here is an example on how we inherit family trauma and get entangled in a family member's fate.

My client had a difficult relationship with her father where she felt abandoned and didn't trust him.

That mistrust and abandonment feeling men would leave her came, in fact, from her grandmother(father's mum) who was abandoned by her own father when she was two years old, passing on to my client the feeling that "Men you love will leave you".

THE THEME

It is the problem or issue that you bring to a Constellation workshop or session.

THE FIELD

According to biologist and scientist Rupert Sheldrake, whom I had the pleasure to meet, memory can be transferred across species(including humans) and all species have a collective memory where everything they've lived is sortedd and passes on to the next generations. It's assessed by them unconsciously.

i.e. a baby giraffe knows what it can eat without getting poisoned. Previous generations of giraffes have learned what foods are good for them and this knowledge passes on through their field to the generations to come; their field.

THE REPRESENTATIVE

It is the person who, in a workshop, will represent a family member for you.

They are chosen by you randomly or sometimes I choose if I feel like it. Yes, it's mostly by feeling it or not. However, I prefer that the client do that. It's their unconscious that is being represented after all.

SESSION WITH DOLLS

In case a Constellation session happens with dolls, they will be the representatives of the person's family member(the issue holder in a workshop, the client in a private session).

What healing phrases are and how to use them.

In this short video you will be able to have an idea how to use healing sentences and at the same time see the conclusion of a session.

The sentences used by my client were directed to her mother. She was in her place.

"Dear mother..."

Her laughter hides her nervousness and discomfort.

Simon was the second choice of the issue holder to represent a family member. The first person chosen did not accept it. This is the only time in five years that this has happened to me. No one have ever refused it before or since to be a representative.

Later, on the same day, the guy who refused it called Simon and told him, "We need to talk."

He explained that he had been abused by his own brother when a child and the role was too similar, and only by observing what had happened in that constellation he was able to find inner peace.

It may look like the choice of a representative is a ramdom one, but that is never the case. It will work like a mirror or reflect a situation someone in their family is going through.

This participant came as an issue holder to a workshop of mine. Her issue led to the connection with her absent father and the love he had for her she couldn't feel. Note she uses the word 'RELIEF' to describe how she feels.

Feeling relief, relieved and as if a burden has been taken off their back are words and sentences of resolution and when you know it's time to stop the session.

She also understood in her heart the need be grateful for the life she received from her parents, an essential part of feeling whole and able to move forward with the energy that comes from them.

You will need a minimum of number of people; five, six or seven? You will learn with practice.

It is somehow difficult to work with too little people. If you too many, everyone will profit in one way or another, but not all will be able to have a personal issue worked on.