What is Family Constellation?
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
– Carl Jung
Family Constellation originally developed by Bert Hellinger in the 1990’s in Germany, it is an alterative therapeutic healing method by which we uncover hidden family dynamics and repressed feelings within the Family System that may originate with your parents or grandparents.
This process supports healing, reconciliation and brings about a progressive change of perspective. Difficulties experienced by people may be influenced by traumas suffered in previous generations of the family, even if those affected now are unaware of the original event. Hellinger referred to the relation between present and past problems that are not caused by direct personal experience as systemic entanglements, said to occur when unresolved trauma has afflicted a family through an event such as murder, suicide, death of a mother in childbirth, early death of a parent or sibling, war, natural disaster, emigration, or abuse. This phenomenon is referred to this as “invisible loyalties”. Therefore an important question in Family Constellation work is who belongs here in this family? Dealing with dark secrets, shadows and scandals in the family, What happened in this family that someone was excluded, rejected or forgotten? Then finding a way to lovingly include these family members is part of the constellation process. Often, we notice a pattern that if family members are excluded from the system their decedents will suffer a similar fate or a sort of subconscious atonement for the sins of our ancestors. By investigating where the origins come from we can break the energetic bond tying us to dramatic fatalistic playing out of events which, we do not want to be part of.
Why are they called “Constellations”?
The original German word was “Aufstellung ” which means “placement, assembly.” Because this word did not translate well into English, the word Constellation became widely used to indicate the setting up of people (called “representatives”) in a visual way.
