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Tag: Family Constellations

  • Systemic Constellation Facilitator Training Part I: Foundations for Working With People

    Systemic Constellation Facilitator Training Part I: Foundations for Working With People

    This dynamic Systemic Constellation Facilitator Training program demystifies systemic constellation work in applying it to many sectors. This highly interactive and experiential program ensures students learn how to read the client’s body, have a working knowledge of Systemic Principles presenting themselves and what each system needs to initiate a primary movement towards openness, support and love again and inline with the clients intention.

    6 Part Program (ONLINE) Available Now

    • Systems Thinking & Systemic Principles
      • What Is Systems Theory?
      • Systems Thinking vs Client Focused
      • Systemic Principles and Different Consciences
      • Violations of Systemic Principles
      • Learning Activities
    • Belonging: Systemic Principles Overview
      • Belonging as a basis for other systemic orders
      • Biological vs Social constructed systems
      • Could you survive poverty, wealth?
      • The Art of Helping
      • Learning Activities
    • Attachment and Bonding
      • Whats Your Attachment Style? Regulating the Regulator!
      • Early Attachment Patterns
        • How Developmental Trauma effects our brain
        • How we adapt to our environment
      • Adult Attachment interview
      • Healing Attachment Injuries
      • The Attuned Therapist
      • Learning Activities
    • Trauma and Human Development
      • Why understanding trauma is important for constellation facilitators
      • The Main Elements of Trauma – Trauma Equation
      • Causes of Trauma and the Physiological Responses to Threat
      • ACEs and Resilience
      • Symptoms of Trauma – Wounded by Reality
        • Neuroscience of Trauma memory
        • Trauma and Addictions
      • Working with Trauma in Constellation Work (in Chairwork and Floorwork)
      • Window of Tolerance
      • Learning Activities
    • Reading People: Bodies in Space, Pemission and Rapport
      • Facial Action Coding System
      • FACS in contact or SPAFF
      • Somatic Imaging by Dr Jane Peterson
      • The Stage Show!
    • Language & Sentences: Words are Worlds
      • Words are Worlds
      • The Answer is in the Narrative – Expressions of Systemic Principles
        • Attachment Styles tell a systemic story
      • Speech Acts – What do sentences do?
      • The Core Language Approach
        • Verbal and non-verbal core languages
        • The Four Unconscious Themes
      • Healing Sentences
      • Learning Activities
  • Longing

    Longing

    LONGING

     What is your heart’s deepest longing?

    Over the last couple of years many of us have longed to connect with friends, to have the freedom to visit them, to travel overseas and resume a natural rhythm and autonomy. Our longing has many faces. It tries to get our attention, and yet we often push it to the recesses of our heart, trying to rationalise it away. Yet the more we try to banish it from our hearts the more it returns.

    What You Want, Wants You.

    Have you ever contemplated why we long for something in particular, why it doesn’t let go of you?

    Our deepest longing comes from a movement in the soul beyond the ego, often an unconscious invite from our psyche, and if denied one’s soul finds a myriad of ways to get our attention. It can be a systemic longing, whereby the family soul longs for resolution or acknowledgement. Or it can be an unfulfilled part of ourselves longing to come into fruition more in our life. Longing for the truth, understanding, to be seen, heard or have a particular need being fully met. Or it could be a longing to connect with someone in particular as a way of soothing that part in oneself.

    However our longing, it simply connects us from what has been banished.

    One might ask oneself:

    • What are the barriers I have built up against longing to avoid disappointment, hurt, grief, heartbreak?
    • What story have I employed to protect myself from connecting?
    • How have I packaged up my longing and stored it away?
    • What won’t I give myself permission to live?
    • What kind of life am I living keeping this deep longing at bay?

    Our Longing Connects Us

    What if our difficult behaviour was trying to get a need met?

    I recently found myself dealing with values collisions conflict when reconnecting with family again after years of separation. My longing to connect with family after such a long time apart was immense, yet disguised as independence, sadness, lack of motivation, depression, exhaustion and the like. I needed the nourishment of family connection.

    Longing for connection can be packaged up in challenging behaviour, strategies, a myriad of bids for connection, which can be hard to decipher. At times these behaviours trigger nervous systems, old wounds, beliefs that are loyal to sub-groups in families, yet the need for connection is fundamental in the behaviour.

    Even our judgements about one another keep us connected!.

    For example ‘in my hatred I remain connected to you’. It takes a lot of energy to keep another at a distance, to recycle the same disdainful story of hurt about the other, which in turn keeps us connected. We all have a need trying to be met in challenging behaviour.

    Resistance empowers what is being resisted.

    Feelings of disappointment point to longing unfulfilled, often appearing as a result of our connection cues not being decoded in a way that meets our needs. Our old attachment injuries become mobilised. We reject, isolate, withdraw and/or punish displaying ambivalent-anxiously attached traits. We are quite creative in our responses!

    Our unmet longing can be painful, yet the key is to find the fundamental underlying need that is trying to be met, and in turn a new way of communicating that need to ourself and then others. There is never a conflict of needs, only a conflict of solutions!

    Stories About Each Other Cause Suffering

    Over time the inability to identify our needs trying to be met and to communicate these to ourself and others creates stories about others that support our inability to reach out, to ask for what we need, to discuss heart break. Our unquestioned beliefs cause suffering and more longing. To simply ask the questions: Is it true? Can I absolutely know this thought about the other to be true? Whilst answering from your heart.

    Stories about each other can be created from generations of disappointment. Take a moment to look at the disappointment you carry for your gender in your family towards the opposite sex.

    • What did your mother long for? Was she disappointed and enraged with your father? If so, what stories were adopted from her about the opposite sex?
    • What did your father long for? Was he disappointed and enraged towards your mother? If so, what stories were adopted from him about the opposite sex?
    • Who are you loyal to? How does this play out in your relationships?
    • What sub-groups were formed in your family? Whose longing did they fulfil? What was the unfulfilled need that was trying to be met?

    Who would you be without these stressful stories? What connections would you make without them?

    We Inherent Our Nervous System

    Whose longing is it?

    Not only do we at times inherit our longing but we also inherit our nervous system. Imagine our parents being brought up in war times, food scarcity, and the anxiety created from those experiences they carried that we responded to as children. Systemic trauma alters how we parent. What happened to our parents and what happened to their parents is told in our body. Our bodies are the family story. In turn how we were parented creates survival strategies, known as attachment styles endeavouring to get our needs met, yet each comes with a longing embedded deeply within it.

    Attachment styles are created many generations back.

    For an ambivalent-anxiously attached person, systemic trauma is often the theme in the family lineage. For someone who is more avoidant-anxiously attached, loss, grief appears in the family lineage.

    Ambivalent-anxiously attached, are external regulators, ie ‘you do me’, yet will reject the other, blame and punish. Their greatest fear is they will be rejected and abandoned so they get in before anyone else does, yet their greatest longing is for the needy part to be fully met and held, to be completely got. Getting those needs met for a ‘wave’ as we colloquially address these styles, can be quite dramatic at times. They fear there needs are ‘too much’ for others to hold. The longing is simply to be held and met in the depth of the need.

    An Avoidant-anxious person are internal regulators, ie ‘you do you’ and I do me’. They separate, withdraw and isolate themself as they long for space, fearing being swamped by other’s needs, yet cannot fully regulate themself independently. Yet in truth longing for connection and someone to come and get them by gently inviting them off their self-imposed island.

    Securely attached individuals have enough secure interactions with parents where their needs were met that they are capable of going and getting their needs met, by talking about it, inviting the other into connection having developed an intrapersonal intelligence that can be communicated easily with themselves and others.

    Looking Longing in the Eyes

    “The bigger the judgement, the bigger the longing” Bertold Ulsamer

    Contemplating Bertold Ulsamer’s quote whilst reflecting on a Family Constellation workshop I took a couple of months ago, I was reminded how we are strengthened by looking at longing in the eyes, inviting it in, opening to it, surrendering to the feelings, rather than quashing them. Workshop participants were invited to look deeply in the eyes of longing. Longing revealed its true nature, it came alive in them, strengthened them as they stopped running from it and expanded their hearts. We build walls around our longing and judge anything, or anyone that comes close at times.

    • What would happen if you stopped running away from your longing to connect?
    • What if you were honest with yourself about all the strategies you have employed to keep yourself safe from connecting?

    As Richard Schwartz highlights in Internal Family Systems Therapy, we have an internal ecology of parts, each doing different jobs, some of these are overly protective and get in the way of our longing and of reaching out.

    In acknowledging this, the invite is to look where the most judgement is and look at it in the eyes.

    • How does that protective strategy work within you?
    • What happens within you when you thank those parts who have guarded you from getting disappointed in unmet longing?
    • What does this part protect you from?

    What happens when you give that part, that was being protected room space within you, to feel, breathe, be seen, be understood, come alive in oneself. Let it tell its story through your own body. Opening to the feelings, yearning, hurt, fears simply letting your whole being experience the array of feelings inherent in this moment in your life revealed.

    • What does it need from you now that it didn’t get back then?
    • What happens to that part of you that was being protected, when that need is offered?
    • What changes in your being in relation to the world? 
    • What quietens and opens in you when you soothe that part calling?

    Our longing is a pull to connect to parts of ourself calling, to life in its fullness and to each other.

    What would happen if you fully opened to your longing?

  • I’ll do it for you, even if it costs me my happiness

    I’ll do it for you, even if it costs me my happiness

    An insight into Family Constellations 

    Maria was distraught. For two weeks now she had been having panic attacks and didn’t know why. She was desperate for them to stop, as they were worsening. This was the reason she had found her way to counselling. Two weeks prior her partner of five years had asked her to marry him and she had said ‘yes’ and with such excitement she told her family he had proposed. The next day though she found herself getting extremely anxious, doubting whether he would be a good husband or father, not trusting his ability, questioning who she had been living with over the last five years. As the days went by her anxiety grew, until she found herself experiencing full-blown panic attacks. What had happened?

    Maria’s panic attacks are not unlike many symptoms that appear that are connected to the family lineage, as we are part of the family soul.

    What is the Family Soul?

    We all are connected to a family system or soul that reaches many generations past. We are limited by this history as well as strengthened by our ancestors. A family system is governed by:

    • the need to belong; those who are born into a family (whether survived or thrived), brought into a family through marriage, or who have taken a life from this family, in other words, ‘those who belong’, belong. If anyone is excluded they will be represented by a family member. This is often seen in children of divorced parents, whereby a parent has been criticized by the other, out of hidden loyalty the child will side with the parent excluded and criticized. We are only at peace when everyone is included.

    • the need for social order; This ensures everyone is given their rightful place. In a literal sense, this means those who come first, come first. For example, partners take precedence before children unless in a blended family then each others children come before the new partner. We are born into a special place in our family, that is the first born’s place is before the next child and so on. If out of place, a child will feel burdened, be treated as a parent, or may take the place of a lost child or previous partner resulting in strange dynamics.

    • the need for equilibrium; that is the balance of giving and taking governs the sharing of resources, but also ensures that which has been taken is given back to maintain equilibrium. We feel innocent only when equilibrium is maintained and guilty if it is imbalanced or righteous and embittered if we give too much and do not receive.

    Systems Thinking

    The majority of therapists look at issues presenting within a client on a personal basis, such as ‘what does the client need to change, integrate, realign within themselves for this issue to be resolved?’.

    A Family Constellation facilitator looks beyond the individual or person engaging systemic thinking to look in the direction the symptom (in this case panic attacks) points to within the family system to bring to light the entanglement.

    As members of a family we are symptom bearers pointing to what has not been resolved in the family system. We are all connected, and our soma, behaviors, reactions, emotional patterns or struggles often tell a story of what beckons to be acknowledged in the family that was unable to be resolved, or seen back many generations. We are in subconscious devotion to the family system and all who are connected to this out of love and to ensure the family system stays balanced.

    An indicator that a client’s presenting issue is systemic is that the symptom or issue persists no matter what interventions are applied. The dynamic is: ‘I have this symptom and I don’t want it’, and the family soul says ‘that is how it is’ until this is acknowledged.

    Words are Worlds

    Back to Maria’s panic attacks. My question on hearing her story would be: “who in the family (lineage) would be panicking about marriage?” In Maria’s case, together we looked in the direction of the panic, tracking it using a genogram, noticing hotspots such as accentuated words. She explained that her grandmother (mother’s mother) was Italian and grew up in a little village in Italy, was Roman Catholic and on her honeymoon her newly wed husband announced that he had a mistress, who was pregnant. So ‘who would be panicking around marriage?’ Grandmother!

    This highlighted the systemic principle belonging (as the mistress had to be included in the family as well as the child born of this affair) and the guilt and innocence governing belonging. As a symptom bearer Maria was reliving Grandmother’s panic. Clients have access to the entire family system therefore a simple visualization to include everyone and the panic attacks disappeared. She married her partner and now has a child.

    Your body tells the family story

    Family or Systemic Constellations gives the client a new somatic experience of what they know in their gut to be true. The format this can be done within is

    a) a group whereby participants are chosen to represent a member of the family and are placed to highlight the dynamics between each and the governing principles in play, or

    b) in ones minds eye as a visualization whereby the facilitator gains all necessary information from the client, words, their soma such as eye gaze, breath, how a client holds their body, attachment styles and the clients intention or

    c) using props such a figurines, stones, shells, or seeds that represent family members. How these are placed in relation to each other and the feelings invoked by each allows the facilitator to gather a picture and prove a new healing picture.

    I will do it for you

    Many years ago a client came to see me, she frustratingly spoke about having spent thousands of dollars trying to cure her chronic fatigue to no avail. I asked if she was an only child of divorced parents and with complete astonishment she said ‘yes’    My question was: “who is she holding the burden for?”

    Wanting to see if my hypothesis was correct I asked her to close her eyes and picture her parents in relation to herself, where would they be standing, she said “either side of me and I am standing in the middle!”

    A child out of their absolute love for both parents will do anything to bring about balance in the family by holding the burden. As hubris as this maybe it is not their job, each child is the little one with a need to take their rightful place, their social order in the family, i.e. those who come first come first. The client leaves their parents with their fate. Holding such a burden or taking a position in between parents holding the burden is too much for a child to hold causing chronic fatigue.

    The healing picture or remedy in this case was to ask the client, ‘what is one movement she could do to change this?’ In her minds eye she took one step back so the parents could look at each other and address what had yet to be dealt with between them and in most cases see the love that remains.

    A week later she very excitedly rang to say that she had no chronic fatigue symptoms and hadn’t for a week. She is symptom free still to this day.

    We all come from perfect families

    The family soul continually, as does nature, moves to bring about balance, to acknowledge those who are excluded, to ensure everyone has their rightful place in the family, and the balance of giving and taking is equal.

    The Awakening Group offers weekend workshops in Family Constellations, webinars with international facilitators and Facilitator training programs throughout Australia www.student.awakening.com.au/courses Brenda Sutherland is available for individual sessions.