NEW FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS

Physical illness, mental problems, autism, psychosis, panic attacks, anxiety, etc., recurrent nightmares, serious accidents, drug addictions, alcoholism, dependency on the parents at adult age…

Cancer:
“- How can a constellation help heal a physical illness, such as cancer?
– What is at the core of a serious physical illness is the inability to accept the mother. The textbook demonstration is the constellation where the person simply stands in front of her mother, until she can finally accept her. As soon as the person can accept her mother, the cancer disappears within weeks.” Interview with Brigitte Champetier de Ribes by Hector Gil (“La Filosofía de las constelaciones familiares”, Esfinge).

“I take mother into my heart … and deep inside her, I encounter God” Bert Hellinger

Through family constellations, the hidden dynamics that may hinder a company in its path to success may also be brought to light, tracing back to disorders in the family systems of those concerned (founders, managers, and so on). For example, conflicts and difficulties with co-workers often reveal conflicts and difficulties with brothers/sisters, where the person is not in her right place as son/daughter and brother/sister with regards to her siblings.

A dynamic that Hellinger has observed through his experience facilitating constellations for organizations, for instance, is that a manager who is not connected with his mother (as a son), will bring the company down.

Constellations also reveal that where a man follows his wife into her company, the business will fail, while the opposite (the wife joining her husband’s company) has greater chances of success*.

One other dynamic Hellinger highlights, for example, is that when the founder of a company gives equal status to new members or partners, the latter will undermine him and eventually seek his position in the company, getting rid of him.

The above are only some of the dynamics that affect a business. In facilitating a healing movement for the members of the company who request a constellation (which often translates in healing harmful dynamics in their family systems), a healing movement is also put in motion for the company.

Constellations for businesses may be undertaken in one-to-one sessions or group sessions, as wished by the client. 

A configuration of relevant elements (which will result in a display of the invisible dynamics that operate in the company) will provide immediate information on the actual situation of the organisation, often recognisable by the client to an extent when brought to light. 

The client, particularly in an individual constellation, may be asked to represent the different elements identified (i.e.: the company, clients, stakeholders, the product…; or the main roles of the organisation, or departments, or possible projects or new lines of business, and so on), allowing him gain a first hand experience of those elements.

This will provide an awareness of where the problem lies and a satisfactory solution (led by another force, with no interference by the facilitator). Even where the solution may be to let go of a business project which does not serve Life, emerging perhaps from entanglements with ancestors, from an unconscious desire to atone, or the non acceptance of our fate (what our family system needs from us). The project that will succeed is that which our family system will support.

*This resonates with another systemic dynamic: when the husband lives in the wife’s house, he does not feel respected and the relationship is in its way to failure (where it says husband/wife, it also means man/woman in a relationship, married or not). Relationships where the man lives in the woman’s home country -where he is not from- tend to fail also (the man gains his strength in his home country, when he lives in his wife’s home country, a relationship of dependency is established where the woman relates to him as a mother).

Constellations are helpful too when we have been trying to sell or rent a property without success, or when we want to make sure a sale will flow.

Thus, constellations show that houses have a spirit too, and when it is represented, it may be the manifestation of something that was left uncomplete in the house or relating to it, for example: an awaiting reconcilliation between the owners of the house (for example, a couple divorced in bad terms); someone who died in it and hasn´t yet been seen (an aborted child may be); an excluded person who lived there and whose pain impregnates the house, for instance.

The constellation will show that which the house needs in order for its sale or renting to flow, and will facilitate the reconcilliation needed. 

When the property is part of an inheritance that doesn´t flow, the constellation will help restablish the order in the family, for we can see that an inheritance will not flow when family members are excluded and/or out of their place, and/or do not respect the ancestors who “made” the inheritance.

House squatting is, for example, another issue constellations can help solve, by sorting out the old debt squatters, with their great love, are unknowingly, unconciously, claiming; and old debt between family systems that needs to be seen and left behind, so that the dead can have peace. The living have nothing to pay from the past.

The systemic gaze:

“All children are good, and so are their parents” (Hellinger). All act out of love.

Through their symptoms and problems, children look at the excluded parents can’t see, on their parents’ behalf, out of love (blind love). Why can’t parents see the excluded? They too do it for love, blind love. When their parents can take the excluded with love into their hearts (enlightened love), the children are then liberated.

A child who “makes up” having a sister or brother may be acknowledging a dead sister or brother the parents are ignoring (a miscarriage, an abortion), a dead child that desperately needs to be taken in with love.

A child who wants a pet is telling us that there is someone excluded that needs to be acknowledged, the pet is for the child the closest living replica of the excluded he or she is unconsciously trying to “save” from exclusion.

Academic failure: A child who fails at school, who can’t pass his/her exams, who has problems with certain subjects, who doesn’t like school work, or does not do his/her homework… A systemic approach will show where is the child’s failure looking at, at whom (a former partner that is despised, or the actual father or mother of the child perhaps, or may be some other member of the family system, whether dead or alive). In bringing this excluded into the light, the parent may take this person back in with love, so the son or daughter does not need to do it any more via his/her problem (only through love are we liberated from the ancestor or rejected person, and only through love can we also liberate them from us so they can have peace).

Only one of the parents needs to be involved in the systemic work, even if the problem relates to the partner (though both parents may attend too). In the child, parents have a common destiny, in which both of their family systems meet. Either one of the parents may take in with love the excluded of the other.

• Difficulties with maths reveal a disconnection with the father.

• Difficulties with writing, reading and spelling reveal a disconnection in relation to the mother’s line.

• Difficulties in learning a certain language: these often reveal a conflict between a member of the family system and someone from the country of that language. Reconciliation between both, facilitated by constellation work, translates in ease of learning of the foreign language.

• “Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” often reveals an unconscious identification with many excluded that demand the child’s attention, excluded who the child looks at on his/her parents’ behalf.

• Addictions generally reveal a loyalty to a man despised by a woman, generally the father, rejected by the mother.

• A person who is disconnected from her mother, does not allow herself learn.

• Bullying–a victim of bullying is often atoning on behalf of an ancestor/ancestors who caused hurt to others and did not assume their responsibility or compensate for their actions. The child, unconsciously, out of love, pays for him, on his behalf. A bully may be unconsciously avenging an ancestor who was hurt, or identifying with a perpetrator who was excluded. Underneath the bully’s anger and cruelty there is an enormous pain that needs to be acknowledged.

A resonance between the family systems of the bully and the bullied brings both together (they need each other to fulfill their mission of love, blind love). The children cannot do anything to escape these dynamics, their parents can. The constellation work will bring these dynamics into the light, putting a healing movement in motion.

When a victim and a perpetrator reconcile, the bond of love that emerges is of the strongest kind. This reconciliation is powerful and radiates across systems, healing many.

How can a teacher help systemically?:

• taking her parents and the child’s parents into her heart, with love and with respect. When we try to supplant someone’s parents, when we think we are better for the child than his/her natural parents, we are hurting the child and his entire family system. The consequences are serious, as family constellation work reveals. In supplanting someone’s mother, not only do we disconnect that person from his/her mother (from success, from love, from abundance, from physical health…) or father (from professional realisation, from strength, from the connection with the world, from accepting reality as it is, from mental health…), but we are also bringing serious consequences onto ourselves.
  • A child whose parents are not respected by the teacher, will not take from/learn with that teacher.
• A teacher can also help systemically by respecting the founders of his/her academic institution and its hierarchy (in terms of function, and seniority).
• Respecting the old teaching methods, and the purpose they served in their time, which paradoxically will allow us move into the new (respecting the ancestors).
• Respecting the priority of the student’s family values over the school’s.
• A constellation will most often consist of representing the feeling that unsettles the teacher when confronted by a student, or students (fear, impotence, frustration), and the teacher´s parents, to start with, for the problem the teacher encounters is showing him/her a disorder in his/her own family system. When this is sorted, the problem with the student/s is sorted, sometimes even the next day. We have seen an autistic child feel much better after his teacher constellated this way, for example. When in the constellation the teacher, after sorting out her issue with her parents, could honor the child´s destiny, recognise the child´s great love for his parents, and stand facing life at last, the child felt stronger. It transpired the teacher´s previous pity on him made him weaker.

For children related issues, the constellations facilitator will work with the parents (or either one of them), not with the children. The parents won’t tell the children: as Hellinger states, “the good help is silent”.