It seems almost unfair to try to explain Family Constellation Work in one condensed chapter like this. I’ve been doing this work for the past ten years and have never experienced such deep, soul-level work. If my botched explanation touches you in any way, please do look further into this approach. It has changed the lives of hundreds of people that I have worked with. It has changed my life.
I’m tired and my son’s wedding is looming (we leave a week from today). I am excited about it but also looking forward to it being behind us. Tom and Erica are going to Hawaii for their honeymoon. Wish I was heading to the Global Passageways retreat next week myself. Instead, I’m sending a Bead Person for each attendee. I’ll be there energetically!
Jamie
CHAPTER SIX
The Art of Separating
I once heard a Lakota medicine man give a wonderful talk about how the tiny spirit finds its way from the spirit world and into the body of his or her mother. This wisp of life travels a great distance and then, at conception, is given a human body following an explosion of sperm into the fertile womb of the woman. At birth the body of the woman mobilizes for another explosion as the child enters this world and is separated from the mother. This separation is necessary if life is to continue.
Adolescence is like a second birth, perhaps even more complex and difficult than the first. In this second birth the child is not an unaware infant but a participant in the separation. A tremendous tension builds between hanging on and letting go as the child, once again, attempts to separate.
In the work of people such as Bert Hellinger, Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, and many other insightful engineers of this important event, they observed that the failure to separate from the parents and the family of origin could bring about neurosis, mental illness, physical illness, and even death. As I’ve deepened my study of this important developmental moment-of separating-I’m willing to risk saying that 98% of the clients I see are trapped in the tense pull of this separation either from their own parents or from their children or from a way of being that no longer allows for further growth. This movement away from the family and into our own universe touches some deeply fundamental force that seeks resolution.
In fact, there is a universal tension that builds within all of us between the need to belong and the need to separate. In the age of adolescence, this tension is like a guitar wire, tight and singing. We seek a firm membership in our culture and family-and simultaneously seek to wander off alone into the forest to discover the higher truth of our aloneness. This becomes a combustible mixture that, when left alone and uninitiated, will burn its own trail through the forest.
On September 11, 2001, we were all shocked by the terrorist attacks and the subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center. Strangely, just three days before this event I’d checked out a book called The Psychology of War, by Lawrence LeShan. The skinny little book was riding in my van the day of the attack so I picked it up and began reading. All around me there was the trembling energy of a nation about to either collapse, as the towers did, or to rise to something new. I wondered which it would be.
Dr. Lawrence LeShan speaks about a universal tension between the desire to belong and the desire to be an individual that is shared by all human beings. Since our country was on the edge of war, I read on, surprised at how clearly he explained this tension:
Historically and anthropologically, there are two different means (both of which appear in nearly every known human culture) available to us that promise to satisfy both of these drives, simultaneously and without contradiction . . . . A very small part of the human race turns to one of the schools of esoteric or spiritual development . . . .There is a second means of resolving this tension, between our need for singularity and our need for group identification. This means also appears in nearly every culture, and it too promises to fulfill both of these needs simultaneously, without contradiction; it promises to enhance our individuality and heighten our existence and, at the same time, increase our sense of being part of a group; to lessen our separateness at the same time it increases our individuality. Further, it pro-mises to do so with full social approval and without the arduous discipline required for meditation, which apparently can only be followed by a few. This second path is the way of armed group conflict-of war.
LeShan says we resolve the conflict in one of two ways: by seeking spirit-or by making war.
One of the largest whales our children will have to hunt is that which will insure the safety of planet Earth. If we are to survive all of us, both young and old, need to become conscious of our own belonging and the forces that drive it. I hope someday to explore the full impact of blind belonging versus conscious belonging but, for our topic here, it’s enough to say that teaching our youth about this powerful tension system is an essential part of initiating them into adulthood.
The Power of Exclusion
In ancient native cultures, the greatest punishment meted out to a member of the tribe was to be excluded. In some ways, even death was more merciful than full exclusion. We, in our archaic souls, understand the power of inclusion and exclusion, yet we also seek separateness.
Most romantic literature and poetry is about finding what the heart most desires only to lose it again. Coming and going. Essentially we are programmed genetically, biologically, and spiritually to find ourselves safe and embraced by what we love only to turn and leave it behind. It’s the driving force behind initiation-to leave the known, familiar territory and to discover something new.
The Power of Mother and Father
In adolescence, this tension between belonging and aloneness can take on mythic proportions. To let this dynamic tension unfold and allow the child to be born again into adult life, we need to understand the subtle forces at work within the family.
Many tribal societies recognized the intensely deep pull that a mother has on a child. Separating mother and child, as we have explored, was often the first part of a rite of passage ritual. It’s as if a second umbilical cord, invisible and made of steel, needs to be cut. We think of adolescence as the time when the child pulls away from the mother, but mother must also be willing to let go of the child. If, in the early years, the bond between mother and child has been fully formed, the child can move more easily away from the mother. If for some reason the bond was incomplete, both mother and child find separation difficult.
In The Magical Child, Pearce (1986) explores this mysterious bonding process in full detail. He recognizes that many innovations in our modern society have succeeded in weakening the bond between mother and infant; medical births, drugs in childbirth, mothers at work, day care centers and television are just a few of the intervening forces he examines. When I first read Pearce many years ago, I found this bleak picture of the future of the human race to be almost unbearable. All of the eroding factors he lists have been the standard for decades. Even in choosing to birth my own three children naturally, without drugs or extreme medical intervention, I still had to fight the hospital staff to allow nursing on demand, in-room care etc.
What does this mean, for our society, I wondered? Although natural childbirth is in vogue again, is it enough? Our economic structures still force women into full employment. They return home exhausted and overworked, their children warehoused in childcare centers day after day.
The Family Constellation Work of Bert Hellinger
When first introduced to the intensive family work of German psychotherapist, Bert Hellinger2, I recognized that he had, perhaps, found a solution to the incomplete bonding within families. By returning to the deep river of love and connection flowing beneath families, we can restore what has been broken. The truth is parents love their children. And children love their parents. On the level of the soul, there is no stronger force operating. Whatever negative factors have influenced the way we act in the world, this love remains true. Hellinger (2001), in summarizing his decades of experience with family systems wrote:
The most important thing I’ve seen is that love is at work behind all human behavior and, however strange this may seem, behind all our psychological symptoms. This means that it’s essential in therapy to find where the clients love.
Working energetically with the family system, Hellinger recognized the soul’s desire to complete what has been incomplete. He discovered that the obstacles to love flowing within the family could be resolved and removed by a variety of means.
Consider the young infant wanting only to reach out for mom and to be taken. When this natural movement is interrupted somehow, through sickness or separation, the infant enters childhood constantly trying to complete the movement. Hellinger observed that he could place a surrogate or representative mother in front of a client and that the client could, at last, complete the movement that the soul has longed to make for a lifetime. He calls this “a completion of the reaching out movement”3.
Hellinger developed a tool now called the family constellation as a way of working with families. The family constellation makes visible the hidden ties and connections that flow naturally out of love and loyalty within a family. He called these connections “the hidden orders of love.” According to Hellinger (1998):
The systemic orders that allow love to thrive in families are difficult to define precisely. They have far greater flexibility than social or moral laws that have been invented by societies or individuals and that must be obeyed to the letter. They are also different from the rules of a game that can be modified to suit the circumstances or according to whim. The orders are simply there.”
A family system includes children, their parents, the grandparents and great grandparents on out. Others may be considered part of the system as well, such as former spouses or partners or someone whose fate affected the system. For example, someone from whom a member of the system gained something significant either by their death, loss, or misfortune.
Within this loosely defined system, there are certain natural orders that must be maintained if the system is to thrive and flourish. Hellinger (1998) wrote,
As we have seen, love succeeds in our relationships when belonging, a balance of giving and taking, and a good order can be maintained. This is also true for the extended family, but five additional dynamics constrain the success of love in family systems: (1) honoring the right to membership, (2) maintaining the completeness of the system, (3) protecting the hierarchy according to time, (4) following the order of precedence between systems and (5) accepting the limitations of time.
Such a concise summary of these hidden orders of love can be misleading. When applied to the depths of our family systems, they become a complex web of ties and loyalties that give rise to our life experience. The suggestion is that a family system is just that, a complex system of relationships that are in a constant state of balancing, forming, and reforming while always flowing forward toward the next generation.
For our purposes here, we’ll focus primarily on the orders of belonging and precedence.
We all have a place within our system and must keep that place and be included if things are to flow in a good order. When we lose our place, a disorder or an imbalance is created and the larger system automatically begins to adjust for the imbalance. In other words, the first to enter a system takes precedence over those who enter later. For instance, Mom and Dad enter a system before the first child, and the first child enters before the second, and third, etc.
Hellinger also explains carefully that there are orders of precedence between two separate systems. For instance, when a man divorces and marries again, his second system takes precedence over the first. To complicate matters further, however, if there is a child from the first marriage, that child still holds first place before the second partner. If the new wife attempts to take first place over the child, the marriage will begin to rock and roll.
The goal of this discussion is to stress that each member of the system holds a particular place and love flows more easily when the orders of precedence are honored. In fact, everybody just feels better when all who are a part of the system are included.
Likewise, each member must carry or be responsible for their actions or feelings. When an important event causes grief, guilt, or other reactions and the responsible person doesn’t take their part, the event may begin to echo through the system. When this happens, a younger member may take on the feelings of an earlier member thus becoming entangled and unable to move forward.
Hellinger’s vast inquiry into such systemic disturbances gave me an entirely new pair of spectacles with which to view adolescent development. It’s possible that many of us can’t separate from our system of origin or our parents because, through no fault of our own, we are entangled-caught in the web of love, loyalty and strong emotions. The issues are multi-generational and thus very complex. I also want to stress at this point that Hellinger was very careful to advise us not to attempt to rigidify or formalize these orders of love. Each relationship system must be approached individually and with a willingness to see what that system has to say.
Having said this in such brief terms, we find that tracing a disorder or disturbance is not a simple task. The tool of the family constellation provides us with a way to see what may be invisible within the hidden orders of a system. A constellation uses representatives to set up an energetic picture of the family within what is called by some facilitators the knowing field. A trained facilitator learns to read the movements within the system and adjust, by trial and error, as a means to find and restore the proper order and resolve the imbalance.
Here is a simple example. A man had struggled his entire life with a deep sadness for which he can find no reason. In a constellation, he chooses representatives for himself, his mother, and his father and then intuitively moves them into the open space of the circle without thinking about it. He places mom facing away and looking far out of the circle, dad at the opposite end looking on, and himself in the middle watching mom. The facilitator then gathers a verbal report (and nonverbal) from all representatives to see what feelings or thoughts come to them as they stand in place.
We find that mom’s representative feels very sad and has a strange longing in her heart. Dad’s representative feels disconnected and helpless. The son’s representative is angry-longing to get mom to look at him. The client has provided information that mom lost a little sister to early death and so a representative for the little sister is chosen and brought into the existing picture. Immediately, Mom’s representative feels a great relief and love for the little sister. At last, she can now see her husband and her son and feel love toward them. The resolution is to make sure the place of the little sister is firmly held in the family and then mom can be more present for her family.
This is an extremely simplistic example of a very complex process, but it is intended to give you a picture of what a constellation looks like. By way of explanation, we surmise that the early death of the little sister caused a painful storm of grief in the mother’s family of origin. Her parents found it easier to not think about the loss but to set it quickly aside. The place held by the little dead sister eventually closed up and her place no longer held in the family. However, the soul of the older sister (our client’s mother) felt the loss and sought to hold a place for her little sister. This created a sadness and depression in mom that stopped her from being fully available to her new system. She was entangled in the grief and loss and had passed that burden on to our client. To resolve the entanglement, we put the little sister back where she belongs or “longs to be”.
Signs of systemic disturbances may be chronic sadness or depression, a loose anger or violence floating around the system, an inability for an individual to go forward into life, and even illness or suicidal thoughts.
The powerful suggestion of this work, and one that is consistent with many traditional native cultures, is that we do not operate alone but are intricately connected throughout our lives to those who came before us, both the living and the dead. It is possible for us to be intimately and invisibly connected to the fate of an aunt, grandfather, or even a great grandmother who suffered a difficult fate. This connection, formed out of deep love and loyalty, is the cause of our current life circumstances.
Although we did not suffer this fate, we willingly and lovingly carry the burden of it. These burdens must be passed back to whom they belong if we are to go free into our own lives. It’s the tender hearts of the young that are most vulnerable to taking on the sad fate of those who came before. I see that these heavy entanglements are often at the root of suicide, mental illness, physical distress, chronic sadness, depression, or rage. Such entanglements stop development in its tracks. Instead, we give a significant portion of our personal energy in service to the system and thus have none left for our own life struggles.
When a family member seems caught in depression or loops of anger or self destructiveness, scan the family system for any who may have died early, been pushed out, or have been otherwise excluded. Take special care if you divorce your child’s other parent because they will remain loyal in the soul. Hold firm to your place as parent and simultaneously as the child of your parents.
If, as you have read these many pages, a child (or yourself) may be entangled in this web of family, I strongly suggest you learn more about Family Constel-lation Work. I feel in my heart that when a young person does a suicide or suffers severe illness, they often serve some hidden purpose for the larger system. If a child is so entangled, we must do all we can to release them.
Likewise, look to your own entanglements. Are you caught in a web of loyalty to your family of origin? Do you feel somehow unable to be fully present to your spouse or children? Do your relationships end prematurely or seem deeply dissatisfying?
We’ve only begun to research and look into these larger, echoing effects within the family system, but to witness a family constellation is to become aware of these larger forces at work.
Search for repeating patterns as you scan your system. There can be some strange surprises. For instance, my oldest daughter was the only great grandchild to be born on her paternal grandmother’s birthday. Grandma had married on August 15, and my daughter got married on August 16. Grandma had five children by age 22, and my daughter had four children by age 22. Some of these coincidental patterns can be just plain interesting. Occasionally, they can be a warning signal that the child has taken on the fate of another.
Ultimately, our job as parents is to do all we can to prepare the child to leave us. It sounds somewhat callous but that is the truth. When systemic issues prevent that separation from happening, all will suffer. We can’t attempt to explain how or why these hidden orders of love operate as they do within families. Hellinger calls it “phenomenological” because it cannot be explained. The tribal ancestors, perhaps, understood it more clearly.
During our time with Bert Hellinger in Austria, I asked if he felt that the family was the kernel from which all else grows and he said only, “Yes, of course.” In 2002, the international conference on systemic work was on ethnic conflict. It was entitled Fields of Conflict-Fields of Wisdom. From our deepest entanglements and conflict, comes our greatest wisdom.