Healing family connections
Family are supposed to be those we are closest to, and, as the Latin origin of the word suggests, most familiar with. Yet family members are often the ones that we find most difficult to get along with and whose behavior poses the greatest and most challenging enigma. Recently, I participated in a workshop called Family Constellations. The purpose of this workshop is to resolve current life issues by unraveling the unhealthy family ties that lie at the root of the problem and allowing the family members to rediscover the love connections between them. The term ‘family constellation’ refers to a group of family members and the roles they take on in relation to one another – or, in other words, the collective consciousness of the family.
The method was developed by Bert Hellinger, a German psychotherapist, and works by way of a group dynamic that forms as workshop participants come together to represent the members of a particular family and reach a point of release and healing in their stead, which then somehow effects the actual people they represent and the original dilemma the person was struggling with. The members who are represented in the constellation may be immediate family members, more distant ones, and at times even ancestors that are no longer alive, but whose unresolved life issues have been adopted by one or more of their descendants. It sounds a bit like psychodrama, but it isn’t. And they don’t know how it works, but somehow it does.
Although the workshop attendees participating in a family constellation often have little or no knowledge about the family members they are representing, an energy field develops around them and they actually begin to feel what the people may have felt. The method is not a form of psychodrama because there is no playacting going on here – the group members actually allow themselves to become the people they are representing – to energetically merge with their consciousness. The emotions that come up for them are very real. Grief. Guilt. Sadness. Anger. Frustration. They are asked to verbalize these emotions by the workshop facilitator and are guided towards realizing the core issues at play. Once a core issue is recognized by the members of the constellation, they are instructed to say one or two sentences to one another which allow them to release the core trauma and reach a point of healing, which lets them discover their rightful place in the family. The shift that occurs is more than just an emotional one. Its actually at the soul level of the family.
We are connected to our stories. They may have happened when we were young, or before we were born, but they link us to our ancestors and descendants in ways that effects us, our behavior and our lives, even if we did not know the former and have not yet begat the latter. But although we play a part in our stories, we should not allow them to own us. Family constellations is a way of being a spectator of our story, seeing our own role in it, watching a healing interaction take place, and then watching it have an effect on our present day life.
