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Healing the Family Wound

In family constellations we often use the term ‘healing the family wound’, but if we look closer it might not be obvious what the ‘family wound’ is. In this blog post we’re enquiring what it means and how to heal the family wound in a family constellation. We will then connect the dots by referring to Bert Hellinger’s ‘Orders of Love’ and look at a family constellation which demonstrates how the healing process of the family wound takes place.

A wound is by definition an injury to the physical body where the skin is damaged. But here is another meaning of the word wound: an injury or hurt to a person’s feelings or reputation.

Deep emotional turmoil often leaves a wound in our emotional body, also referred to as the Soul.

We even talk about ‘scars are left on the heart’ after the ‘heart is broken’. The expression ‘scarred for life’ is often used to describe an emotional wound or a trauma that doesn’t fully heal.

The family system one is part of by birth or through certain actions has a soul, the seat of emotions, which can be injured through physical impact or emotional trauma. Severe pain is causing a wound and leaves a scar on the family soul when it’s not fully healed. The wound we are talking about here is caused by a member of the family system which has been hurt or traumatised that in turn compromises the integrity of the family system and leaves an injury or ‘scar’ on the family soul. For example an act of violence that led to their death or a severe disadvantage to their life, or an action that results in casting out a family member, causing the individual to suffer on a deep emotional level for the rest of their life until they die.

Due to Bert Hellinger’s ‘Orders of Love’ (from German: Ordnungen der Liebe), any disruption of the natural flow of love in one’s family system is causing such a wound to the family soul. This is mostly the deliberate or accidental untimely death of a family member, caused by someone else, or creating a severe disadvantage to someone else by taking the house, land and money away without any renumeration (i.e. during ww2 in Germany), or dismissing and outcasting a family member due to their values, religion or disabilities which didn’t fit the picture of the family.

Here is an example from a family constellation (name changed):
Sam struggled his whole life with success in his professional career and with romantic relationships. In his family constellation representatives for several family members have been chosen. After a few minutes it was clear that this family members were disconnected and couldn’t relate to each other. The representative of Sam was restless and looked for someone who wasn’t represented. By adding an additional representative for the missing person the family members became agitated and relieved at the same time. Sam’s representative was very much drawn to the added person and felt very sad and sorry for him. He wanted to apologise to him, but nothing in his life has ever happened that would’ve needed an apology. The representative of his maternal great grandfather started to look at the newcomer from the side, feeling ‘awfully guilty’. The new representative was focused on him. It became clear that the great grandfather took advantage of the other person which lead to a lifelong struggle for survival. Sam suddenly remembered his grandmother mentioning a long time ago that the prosperous farm they are living from once was on tribal land and the indigenous people have been banned from the area. This was what we were looking at right here in the family constellation! I suggested to Sam’s representative to say to his great grandfather: ‘I see his pain and agony, I love him, he belongs to us’ – powerful words of truth taught by Bert Hellinger to move the souls. As a result, the representative of the great grandfather was able to connect with the missing person and take over responsibility for his actions. That was all that was needed to heal the family wound. Sam felt like a huge weight has lifted off his shoulders. Months later he got in touch and said he has a fulfilling job now and is enjoying life like never before.

By healing a family wound all family members are relieved from the burden that has caused it and can experience more freedom and happiness in their lives. Another scar on the family soul has been mended and is vanished for good. This is the power of Inter-generational Healing within the Morphogenetic Field through family constellations in the method of Bert Hellinger.

Hari Om
Maia

Jealousy or Envy?

Family Constellation, Mind & Soul, Published

How would you describe the feeling of jealousy? Is it anger or fear, inadequacy or even disgust? Does it only come up in romantic relationships or can it be experienced in other relationships as well?
In this blog post we’re going to explore the hidden dynamic behind the feeling of jealousy and how to overcome this low vibrating emotion.

First we have to find out where this feeling is originated. What is it that you want when you feel jealous? Do you want to have something that someone else has and you don’t? That sounds more like envy, where you experience the feeling of lacking something (or someone) which somebody else already possesses, which can be an object, often money or expensive things, or beauty, or accomplishments i.e. in competitions or studies.

Envy only needs two persons, the one who is envy and the other who has what is desired, either an object or an individual. And the object/individual that you envy is not in your possession, that is the point! I remember when a wise woman told me the truth behind envy that brought me down to earth in my early teenage years when I was desperate about something another girl had and I had not (I now have forgotten was it was, off course it wasn’t important in my life at all): to be envy about something means you want to have it (or him/her) without paying the price for it! If you want something or someone, do whatever is needed to create an environment that allows it into your life and don’t look in others for it! Since then I never again envied anything because I understood that what ever I want I will get if I work for it, evolve and become a person that can deal with it, create life circumstances that allows it in and so on, so it all depends on me alone to achieve my goal and no-one else is to blame. The other one already has it because they have worked for it, evolved into a person that can handle it, made sacrifices that allowed them to have, all what I haven’t done yet or never want to do anyhow. So if it doesn’t happen, I don’t get the object or person, it’s not mend to be in my life at this stage, which is a good thing because I won’t be ready to handle it! This is the simple and so relieving conclusion, that makes it obvious there’s absolutely no space for envy in anyones life.

“If you’re envying something you want to have it without paying the price for it!”

Jealousy however is quite different, it needs 3 persons to be jealous: the one who is jealous, the other person which whom he/she is in a relationship, and the third person who is intruding the relationship. When you’re jealous you fear that you are going to loose something (or someone) that you already posses as oppose to envy where do don’t have it yet. A typical example is a romantic relationship, where you already have a partner but he/she is also in another relationship with someone else, either de-facto or perceived. Now you’re not envying what the third person has, which is the romantic relationship, because you have it too, but you’re afraid to loose him/her to the other individual. This emotion is often accompanied with the feeling of inadequacy, low self esteem and blame that the third person is manipulating the partner against their will. This scenario of a ‘ménage à trois’ can trigger the fear of being alone which is often caused by an early childhood trauma of being left alone by the mother.

When in a family constellations this emotion comes up in a representative it can be observed that the thought of ‘I don’t deserve to be happy’ is what’s behind the jealousy often combined with the need to be loved. The solution here is to bring in the mother. As soon as the mother appears the focus on her, the jealousy vanishes and the little child comes out in the representative which is desperate in need of the love from the mother, her approval, nourishment and care.

If the work is done and the child is able to receive mother’s love without resentments, there is a new look on the relationship: it either is now ok that it comes to an end or the partner is now fully present and ready for for the relationship and the third person is not important to them anymore and the couple is united again. One way or the other, the relief from the low vibrating emotion of jealousy is what brings more happiness and freedom not only on an individual level, but to the family system as well.

Maia

Schizophrenia in Family Systems

Family Constellation, Published

I’ve been often ask by my trainees if clients who are suffering of a severe mental disease which causes a psychosis or who are schizophrenic, can be helped with family constellations . There is no short answer to this. In this blog post we try to explore the dynamic that causes mental diseases in the family system with the tools given by Bert Hellinger. This is off course not a discussion from the view-point of the mental health care and is not meant to replace an ongoing therapy.

Firstly, family constellation is a healing modality that looks not only at the individual, but at the whole family system. Bert Hellinger said, the cause for schizophrenia is always systemic and not individual. That being said, it doesn’t mean that a mental illness can be healed by healing the family system, so that it is completely gone, he only said that it makes no sense to only work with the person who is experiencing psychosis when the cause of it lays in the family system.

This is the different to classical psychology, where only the patient who is diagnosed with a mental illness is treated. And here it is also taken as a fact that Schizophrenia cannot be healed, only managed with medication. But does that not seems to be true for most diseases from the perceptive of the professional medicine practitioners, i.e. for heart disease, diabetic etc?

Family constellation is a modality that heals on a soul level: every disease (dis-ease) is the result of the soul not being ‘at ease’, which allows an energy blockage to manifest in the physical body that will lead eventually to what we call an illness or disease. When looking at a disease in a family constellation one can find the event that has caused this blockage (mostly a severe trauma) back 7 generations and lift it by finding the Order of Love for this family system and allow the souls to move towards it.

Is this also true in a case of schizophrenia? In one of the earlier videos (watch it on youtube here) you can see Bert Hellinger working with the parents of a schizophrenic child. Both parents are entangled in their own family system. The child is twist and torn and entangled with both, mother and father. This situation is like a cat biting its tail to go round and round without end. We can see this behaviour when a participant, representing a family member, is going in circles. There is no way out. This is how schizophrenia looks in a family constellation. What is the healing movement here when one family member is entangled with 2 different family members with opposing dynamics?

I have yet not seen a solution to this. Often a family constellation has to be broken up when it comes to this point, as everything is going in circles and no healing movement is taking place. But that being said, there is always a first time for everything. And who knows, maybe some day in a family constellation an unexpected movement will bring the relief from this dynamic, and a new field has opened: the healing field of psychosis. And through the connection with the morphogenetic field of family constellation facilitators this information will be available for all helpers.

And the good news is, there are no side effects of a family constellation that doesn’t have an impact on the family system. It just keeps on going with what has always been. Until one time..

Love, Maia

Father’s Love

Family Constellation, Mind & Soul, Published

What is the love of a father? What does it look like? Is it the same as from the mother? What is fathers love when the child never met him? These and other questions are coming up when we honour our father at ‘Father’s Day’.

When we work with the relationship to one’s father in Family Constellations, we often find that there is a distance between father and child, represented by the workshop participants, that seems to be insurmountable. Judgement towards the – often either emotionally or physically absent – father leads to struggles with substance abuse including smoking or drinking. Severe addictions like gambling or drug abuse are often a sign that one wasn’t able to receive fathers love as a child. Or as Bert Hellinger once said, ‘addictions have father’s face’ – or in other words, addictions show the absent of father’s face. Instead of looking up to the father for structure and support, it’s been looked for somewhere else: in drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, food or even in a negative emotion like depression. The rejection of the father is a result of creating a story around oneself and the father, where in the centre of it is a harsh judgement against the father: that he wasn’t there when needed, was unable to speak about his emotions or was always busy with something else rather then with his children.

We had a special workshop this month on Father’s Day where 26 participants connected with their fathers and the source of father’s love. In one of the 4 family constellations that day the dynamic between daughter and father was represented impressively well.

It’s almost as if I have given the world a gift that doesn’t want to be unwrapped

Tom (name changed) was representing the father of a participant who wanted to work on her anxieties. He expressed his feelings/observations towards the representative of his daughter like this:

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A Matter of Life and Death – Part 3

Family Constellation, Mind & Soul, Published, Wellbeing & Lifestyle

In the final blogpost of our mini series we’ll explore the concept of everlasting life through our own perception. How can we experience birth, death and life itself?
We will look here into some of the many methods of directly experiencing death and ongoing life to find the answers to our question: does death really end one’s life?

NDE – Near Death Experiences

It has been reported from individuals who found themselves suddenly dying i.e. in a car accident, on the surgeons table in the hospital, or while attempting to take their lives, that they were observing their own body ‘from above’ and detaching from it while going ‘through a tunnel’. In this so called ‘near death experience’ one was able to think and see and to come to rational conclusions, i.e. that they’re watching their own death. Some say they felt they were floating and watching the accident scene, others were seeing a silver cord connected to their bodies, and some were enjoying to go somewhere they’ve never been before, happy not to feel any pain any more. Professor Bruce Greyson, the world’s leading expert on near-death experiences, says ‘that death is not the end, and more important than that, what happens after death is not something to be afraid of.’

OBE – Out of Body Experience

In the 1980th it became a desirable goal in some new age groups to have OBE’s: an experience to leave the body and travel somewhere without dying, and then coming back into the body and remembering any detail of the journey: also called Astral-travelling.

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The Many Faces of Anger

Family Constellation, Mind & Soul, Published

Anger has many faces: for example, someone attacks you and you react with anger. This anger is necessary to defend yourself from the attack. This is a good and meaningful emotion and will be released immediately after the attack is over through shaking, crying, or heavy breathing.

And then there is anger against yourself when you make a ‘wrong’ decision, this anger is self-destructive and a substitute of letting go of the past and acknowledging what is. This emotion is sticky and will attach itself to you for a long time, maybe all your life, until you’ll be able to let it go by understanding your way and destiny, sometimes also called ‘the spiritual journey to yourself’.

Anger is ‘love-hold-back’ in disguise.

And then there is anger against someone else whom you have hurt, because you cannot admit that your action has caused their suffering, so you’re camouflaging the feeling of guilt with anger. This emotion will also stick around for a long time until you see the emotion of guilt and what is truely needed: taking over responsibility of your own actions and the result of it.

[Read more…]

Healing the Family Wound

Deep emotional turmoil often leaves a wound in our emotional body, also referred to as the Soul.

Jealousy or Envy?

“If you’re envying something you want to have it without paying the price for it!”

Schizophrenia in Family Systems

Father’s Love

It’s almost as if I have given the world a gift that doesn’t want to be unwrapped

A Matter of Life and Death – Part 3

The Many Faces of Anger

Anger is ‘love-hold-back’ in disguise.

What are participants saying

John J.

Meilinda S. – Jakarta

Rev. NamShakti

Kate S.

Kate S.

Anna I.

Virna M.

Daniel M.

Rocio G.

Gabrielle M.

Alejandra F.

Tamara T.

Virna

Tina S.

Christina Y.

James K.

Polly F.

Virna M.