The beauty of gratitude is that it gives us the freedom to let go of things that gave us much in the past but no longer correspond to the changes that have since occurred within us. This is how I feel regarding the method of Family Constellations, from which I once received a great deal. Now, having expressed my gratitude toward it, it is easier for me to also express my critical stance.
I remember the last Family Constellation group I participated in. The facilitator was Ursula Franke—a woman I knew indirectly through her book, “In My Mind’s Eye.” I had bought that book because of my thesis for my graduation as a psychodrama therapist (“My Psychodrama: Family Constellations and Psychodrama – a Comparative Analysis”). Even though I had begun to distance myself from this method over time, I still felt connected to it. This woman’s arrival was a good opportunity to answer the questions that troubled me regarding my growing criticality.
My personal impressions of her were just as good as my indirect ones. She was a woman of fine sensitivity and gentle concern—exactly the type of therapist I like. However, as time progressed, I began to feel increasingly tense. I wondered where this was coming from. Was it because this was the N-th constellation group I had attended, and knowing how things would unfold made me feel bored and annoyed? I certainly felt boredom, as the theory behind constellations is not complex, but was there something more? For instance, did I have unresolved issues with my family system that I didn’t want to see, and was my tension an expression of that resistance?
An hour before the seminar ended, I could no longer endure the tension and left with a severe headache, confused and irritated. After a long shower and some rest, I began to understand why my body and emotions reacted so strongly. I simply did not agree with what was being done with the suffering we inherited from our predecessors. There was indeed resistance, but not toward what I had initially thought. In Family Constellations, this suffering is “returned” to the person to whom it “belongs.” The therapeutic action is to close the “gestalt” by returning the suffering back to the place where it originally arose. And this is the exact opposite of my beliefs—according to which everything that happens to us and everything we have attracted as destiny belongs to us. Everything.
I realized that the climax of my tension came when yet another person sat in the chair and, when asked what theme she wanted for her constellation, replied: “I want to return my problems to whom they belong.” This statement brought a condescending smile to the facilitator’s face, but for me, such unadulterated naivety formulated the core idea of this therapeutic method very accurately. There, the primary therapeutic action consists of two parts: we recognize the systemic source of our suffering and “return” it to whom it belongs. Simultaneously, we honor the suffering of our ill-fated ancestors by telling them they will always have a place in our hearts. The expectation of this woman to seek relief by returning the burden is understandable.
I have repeatedly witnessed how such a healing “movement” indeed releases the energy of deeply hidden traumas in our family soul and heals. Such a differentiation between the two different sources of suffering in our lives—the personal and the systemic—is extremely valuable and constitutes an important contribution to the therapeutic process. However, it is not always helpful or sufficient for a certain type of people who enter the family system as Redeemers. Because that is the essence of redemption—to consciously take upon our own shoulders the “pains, insults, and temptations” of others. In this sense, redemption as a means of alchemizing the suffering we have inherited from our predecessors is a very different therapeutic action compared to the method of family constellations, where suffering that “does not belong to us” is “returned.”
Therefore, it is crucial to distinguish between these two different levels of therapeutic work with the traumas we inherit from our parents and distant ancestors. Both methods have their place in working with the psychic heritage of ancestors, but they are suitable for different people and for different stages in the healing of transgenerational trauma. Their healing actions are not just different; they are even opposite to one another. Only an attitude that accounts for the problem of duality can see this not as a contradiction, but as complementarity. The right thing for one type of person is to “return the fate”; for another type—to take the “relay baton” on their shoulders and find a solution within their own psyche for what remained unresolved by previous generations.
This distinction between the two levels of working with ancestral psychic heritage can also be seen in the writings of the creator of the family constellations method—Bert Hellinger. According to him, besides the level of Personal Conscience and the level of Systemic Conscience, there is a third level of conscience (consciousness) which he calls “The Conscience of the Greater Whole.” According to him:
“To follow this third conscience requires a great effort, perhaps even a spiritual effort, because it tears us between obedience to what our family, religion, culture, and personal identity dictate. It requires us, if we love it, to leave behind what we know and follow the Conscience of the Greater Whole. It is inexpressible and mysterious and follows none of the laws of personal or systemic conscience that we know a bit more directly and personally.”
This knowledge settled the conflict arising within me and helped me find a solution suitable for my individual psychic situation. And that is: I do not want to return the suffering of my ancestors because my beliefs and values are different—I believe that we develop the family soul with our own individual efforts, and we do this by viewing the traumas in our family history as hidden gifts for our spiritual development.
Much can be said in this regard, but I will do so in a separate article. For people who are like me, I will summarize the most important points: (1) Recognize what in the family model has come its turn to be changed or resolved, and then (2) seek that solution. The second is harder, but the first is more important, because if we do not know what it is, our efforts go in the wrong direction and are in vain.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
