Family Constellations Therapy
a new way to find peace in your heart and follow your path
Do you feel stuck? Do you feel you are carrying weights that don’t belong to you? Do you feel your life is unhealthily influenced by previous generations?
What is Family Constellations Therapy?
A family constellation session allows you to intentionally see your family tree. It frees you from the weight of the past. You receive gifts from your ancestors in all benevolence. You change your posture and make a new reading of your life and past experience. A family constellation session guides you to live fully your destiny.
Family constellations: a brand-new idea from the past
Bert Hellinger, psychotherapist, in the early 1990s, founded this new method. It is based on his own findings and working with the Zulu tribe in South Africa. Bert Hellinger saw that his patients unintentionally reproduced scenarios developed in previous generations. As such, he noticed, for example, repeated attitudes from generation to generation: violence, abandonment, diseases, accidents, buried truth, separation, family secrets, family blockages. He observed that his patients would repeat the same patterns of behaviours in the workplace, in relationship or in family life.
Fully living your destiny is the goal of a family constellation
By placing yourself in the right place in your family tree, you can stop traumatic repetitions and find your real identity. You discover hidden problems, secrets, trauma and sufferings. You recognize that your life is a gift from your ancestors. You are because they were.
Therapy that puts the family system in context
Each individual is seen as part of a family system. We can see that life and love were passed on with heavy weights to carry for the younger generations. Some events may have brought suffering in the system, such as suicide, wars, child/infant loss, abandonment, death, murder, rape, divorce, emotional, physical or sexual abuse. If these trauma have not been seen and recognized or remain in secrecy they may have repercussions on subsequent generations.
The three key principles of family constellation systems
According to Bert Hellinger, family systems work on three key principles: balance, hierarchical order and belonging. In family constellation, the therapist looks for the knots and intricacies (binding links) that prevent these three principles from existing.
Balance
In a family system (or an organisation), the balance of giving and receiving (love, money, energies) is an important rule to respect. Everybody in the family has a role of giving and receiving. Who gives or receives too much will imbalance the exchanges of love and abundance in the family.
Hierarchical order
Each person in the family has its own destiny and its own place. No need to take the burden of another, it weighs down the whole family. Let’s take an example of a deceased or failing parent: the first born of the children (often first-born daughter) may take on the responsibility of the parent who left, feeling that they have to take care of the siblings. But this child is no longer in her/his place. This role she/he has taken on weighs down her/his life until she frees herself from this role to fulfil her destiny.
Belonging
From its conception, each human being has his/her place in his/her family. Nothing and no one can take this place away from them. If one person is excluded by ostracization, secrecy or death, the family system will be imbalanced and the people born after this exclusion may experience “something” such as depression, mental health issues, difficulty to conceive, miscarriage, behavioural issues, until the truth is revealed and acknowledged. Every soul from the system needs to be known and recognized, even in the case miscarriage, loss of a twin in the womb or still birth.
How Does It Work?
How do I hold space for you in a family constellation?
As a facilitator I guide the client on what should be worked on based on the client’s request and a pre-session on the phone. As a trained facilitator I have developed a sensitivity to understand, feel, see and hear the important messages/moments during the session. I hold the space for healing of the client and participants, creating a safe and confidential space.
Organizing a family constellation session
Establishment of representatives
A family constellation session consists of the client, the facilitator and 2 to 8 representatives. Representatives will “role play” people from the client’s family system. They are either chosen by the client or they are drown in by feeling something in their body. Each representative receives the energy from the person they represents and wills tart acting and speaking like her/him.
Observe, listen and feel the resolution unfolding
After the family representatives have been set up, words have been spoken, wounds and pain have been revealed to the system, the facilitator seeks a resolution for the client. I may suggest gestures, movement or words to the family representatives and the representatives do them (or not), I go with the flow until a resolution for the client is found. Each member of the family can finally speak up, take his or her true position and take on his or her own responsibilities. The goal is that love flows without knots from the ascendants to the descendants and that the clients feels this love.
This article was written by Bernard Desgroppes, edited and translated by myself
Why Should You Try Family Constellations Therapy?
What predicaments can be addressed?
Burnout
Depression
Insomnia
Addictions
Stress & anxiety
Emotional related stress (Anger/Grief/Sadness)
Conflicts with friends and colleagues
Marriage/partnership issues
Family issues/entanglements
Heaviness in your heart
This therapy is useful when you feel stuck in a situation or in your healing. You may feel that behaviours or certain patterns in your life keeps on repeating.
In my practice I use Constellation therapy in 3 ways:
as part of a healing journey with a client, as part of a series of coaching/therapy session
as a one-off therapy session for someone who is already following a therapy process with another therapist or coach
In a workshop, where all participants receive a constellation
