Constellations make the invisible visible and manageable
Family constellations are an extremely effective method for gaining insights into the force fields at work within your family. Constellations make invisible patterns visible, which makes those patterns easier for you to manage in your day-to-day life.
CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOUR WORK AS A FAMILY CONSTELLATION FACILITATOR ENTAILS TO GIVE PEOPLE A MORE CONCRETE IDEA OF WHAT IS INVOLVED?
Family constellations are an extremely effective method for gaining insights into the force fields at work within your family. During a constellation, I—in my role as a facilitator—not only look at the client as a person but also consider the entire family system. Bound by fate, you are inextricably linked to your (biological) family of origin. This can create burdensome patterns that you then encounter in your daily life. Patterns that occur in family systems tend to keep repeating themselves, including burdensome patterns. When you can stand firmly in your own place in your family system, you will find it much easier to find your way in life. Constellations make invisible patterns visible, which makes those patterns easier for you to manage in your day-to-day life. Family constellations allow you to experience what it is like to have your own, unique place in your family system and what the effect is if this is not the case. You not only become aware of the dynamics you encounter through your rational mind, but you also feel them in your body. You frequently also feel the potential that is available within you.
HOW DO CONSTELLATIONS WORK?
The client comes with a question that serves as the starting point for the constellation. The question could be “Why can’t I hold on to relationships, and how can I change that?” or “It seems like I’ve got one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake in my life—how can I break this cycle?” or “I cannot stand authority, so I am always struggling, which drains my energy” or “I bear all kinds of responsibilities for others, but I keep overstepping my own boundaries—how can I learn to let go?”
The facilitator often asks follow-up questions and connects with the client and their system of origin through their inner stance. Strictly speaking, the question itself is not what matters; you do not even have to be able to formulate the issue in a complete sentence. What is essential is that something wants to be “seen.” The question does need to have some weight to it, however. I do not do constellations for questions that arise out of curiosity or at levels that are none of your business. For example, you do not have the right to know what is going on with your parents, but you do have the right to know how those dynamics affect you. After that, the constellation work begins. Other participants are invited to serve as representatives for someone from your family system. They represent, for example, the person asking the question, the father, the mother, the aborted child, the grandmother, one of the children of the person asking the question, etc. They position themselves in a certain way in the room. The representatives have the ability to feel very clearly what is going on in the people they represent, which reveals valuable information. The relationship between the person asking the question and others becomes clear. Blind spots become visible. After this diagnosis, we look at what kinds of interventions might help the person who asked the question and their family system to become even stronger.
Constellations offer potential paths to solutions. They give you a fresh perspective on the situation, and that will have an effect on your life. What you can do about it then becomes clear “as if by itself.” I often “subtitle” what is happening during constellations so that the client not only feels what is going on, but also “understands” it at a cognitive level, insofar as constellations can be understood at all. I often use the metaphor of “the fountain” to subtitle the constellation. I use this metaphor to clarify what each person’s unique and individual place is. See my book The Fountain: Find Your Place. In it, I describe the dynamics that can play out in a family system. When you participate in a family constellation, you feel those dynamics at a deep level and, at the same time, an inner cleansing takes place, often at a level that you cannot access through your rational mind.
HOW DO CONSTELLATIONS RELATE TO THE FAMILY SYSTEM?
You are inextricably linked to your family system. Every system has invisible laws that you can use to your advantage or disadvantage. There is no escaping this. Your family system is the system that exerts the most influence over you. An individual can leave an organization, a group of friends or a club, or even a town or village, but they cannot leave their biological family. That bond will always remain. You can break contact with your family in your daily life (be it inwardly or not), but that is exactly when systemic laws and pulling forces come into play. The more you deny where you come from, the more the family system will pull at you and remind you that you still have something to look at. In that case, any repetitive patterns you have will likely manifest themselves even more. When you try to break with your family system (which is never entirely possible in a deep sense), the systemic principles play out even more, and more specifically, in a burdensome form rather than a supportive and nurturing one.
WHAT KINDS OF “MIRACLES” CAN OCCUR DURING A CONSTELLATION?
Unfortunately, miracles do not happen during family constellations. They are not a magical cure-all. Family constellations make visible what is going on deep down. You remain responsible at all times for how you deal with those insights as well as any resulting courses of action. Every choice has its consequences, and adults accept them without complaint. The wonder of a family constellation often lies in the fact that something completely different is going on in the depths than what your rational mind has made of it. People often make up plausible stories to explain situations as a way of coming to grips with them. This is a survival mechanism. But constellations often reveal something quite different. I regularly have clients who say they cannot get along with their mother. A constellation will often reveal that they tend to take care of their father and, out of deep love, reject their mother because their father would become jealous if the child were to love their mother as much as their father. This always arises in cases where the father has experienced deficits in his family system. In order to accept their mother inwardly, they have to become “unfaithful” to their father. That price can sometimes be too high. People would sooner let themselves suffer than relinquish responsibility for their father. In essence, these people really do not find their mother as unpleasant as they think they do. A constellation also often reveals the deep love, grief, and pain felt for deceased siblings, miscarriages, and aborted children who have not been mourned in ordinary life. This unexpressed grief often draws you away from life. Constellations expose this with crystal clarity.
DOES PARTICIPATING IN A CONSTELLATION MAKE SENSE EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT WORKING ON YOUR OWN CONSTELLATION BUT ARE AVAILABLE TO BE A REPRESENTATIVE?
Absolutely. On the one hand, you are a unique human being, and on the other hand, you are not. Human themes resonate with all of us. Even while sitting in a circle around a constellation and not participating as a questioner or representative, you are touched by the issues of others that relate to your own themes. You recognize the conflict of loyalty that children experience when parents divorce, or you recognize yourself in the other person who is so angry with their father, even as you feel how much you missed your father. When you reconnect with the feeling that you missed your father (even though he was unable to be there for you), you reconnect with him. Or you feel the pull in someone else’s constellation, recognizing that your mother repeatedly claims you because she is needy. Constellations therefore ensure that (old) wounds are opened up, or revealed in any case, but at the same time, they are also healed.
HOW CAN YOU PREPARE AS WELL AS POSSIBLE FOR A FAMILY CONSTELLATION WORKSHOP?
You cannot really prepare, because you never know in advance where a constellation will lead. I faithfully follow the movement of the constellation. I assume that what is visible there must be looked at first before getting to the question you have asked. Participants often find attending a constellation day a bit nerve-racking beforehand. Experience has taught me that almost everyone always feels enriched and stronger afterward. They also feel a sense of space that they did not feel before.
HOW CAN YOU KEEP THE EFFECTS OF A FAMILY CONSTELLATION DAY GOING FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE? AND WHAT CAN YOU DO ON YOUR OWN?
Constellations are like seeds. They can grow into something very beautiful or just wither away. There is no point in trying to force things. They develop at a pace that suits the seed. So whatever follow-up actions and steps are needed will become clear once the constellation is finished. In the meantime, you can keep replaying and remembering the nurturing images of the constellation and its final image. By the way, constellations do not have to resemble a fairy tale to do their healing work. Whatever the case, I believe that reality is the ultimate healer. In my experience, people can handle harsh realities, but false hopes are devastating. It is also useful to keep scanning your body for primary emotions (see the article on primary and secondary emotions). Processing something always happens at two levels: on the one hand, at a cognitive level and by taking practical steps, and on the other hand, at an emotional level that you feel in your body. You have to “feel through” the primary emotions in your body in order to be cleansed and healed in that respect as well.
ARE CONSTELLATIONS SPIRITUAL? AFTER ALL, YOU DO WORK WITH INVISIBLE ENERGETIC FIELDS
I find the word “spiritual” complicated. During constellations, forces and laws that generally apply to family systems reveal themselves. These forces and laws are still unknown and have not been scientifically established. Is it spirituality, physics, or something else entirely? While we currently cannot explain how systemic work works, I have benefited from living by its principles. I sometimes say to my clients, “Do you want to be happy or to understand?” If you want to fully understand systemic work, you have to go to your head and the constellation will have a less profound effect on your entire body. Constellations often reveal that the client’s body knows where it wants to go (for example, to the mother), but the head stops that movement because it remembers the pain, the suffering, and the heaviness.
The magic of constellations lies in the movements that arise “as if by themselves” in the representatives.Representatives also know “things” that they could not possibly otherwise have known. How do they come by this movement and information? We genuinely have no idea. As a representative, you do not play a role, but instead you appear to have access to deep and unconscious layers of the person’s family system in which you are positioned. And that is a singular and unforgettable experience, both as a participant and an observer (as you also allow any themes that touch you to resonate).
ARE THERE ANY RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH PARTICIPATING IN A FAMILY CONSTELLATION DAY? DO YOU HAVE TO KNOW, FOR EXAMPLE, WHETHER THE PEOPLE YOU ARE DOING IT WITH ARE SAFE AND THAT IT GOES FAR BEYOND JUST “PLACING PEOPLE WITHIN A CIRCLE”
Coaching and facilitating family constellations are not protected professions, so check references. While it is said that as a facilitator, you cannot make mistakes, I do not subscribe to that point of view. Thorough training is necessary. Another note about potential risks: consult your doctor if you suffer from psychological disorders or take powerful anti-depressants.
It is a real no-no for a parent to approach their child in a constellation. That parent would be needy. A child has to reach out to their parents, not the other way around. (For readers of my book The Fountain: Find Your Place, this is essentially reversing the fountain.) From the perspective of the force field, lots of things appear to happen during a constellation. Sometimes, this can involve intense emotions, secrecy, and all kinds of (in my opinion) unnecessary rituals. I do not believe in those things. These only serve to distract from the essence of the constellation. The question is whether such constellations will carry over into daily life and whether persistent patterns will be overcome. In my opinion, constellations are too often employed as a means of therapeutic relief and not in a systemic manner, whereby something needs to be made visible: in my opinion, you have to be cruel to be kind. The art is to stand in your place in the fountain and grant everyone and everything that also belongs to the system their place, without judgment and without bearing responsibility for what is not yours.
IN CONCLUSION
I am grateful to be able to do what I do. My clients share with me the positive effects of facing what must be faced. Bear what is yours to bear and release what is not. In my own parlance: I hope you are standing firmly in your own place in the fountain and wish you a flowing fountain.