Many people know that Family Constellations work can lead to deep healing today by addressing the unaddressed wounds of the past. But constellations doesn’t just address traumas of the far past.
Many of my clients come to me suffering from current family conflict and challenges. Family Constellations turns out to be a very powerful approach to understanding these present-day issues, and finding elegant and life-changing resolutions.
One recent client was suffering from ongoing family conflict arising from the tragic death of his brother in childhood. The family had no resources for dealing with the blow the family experienced, and since then, everyone had been carrying the deep grief, anger, and blame that accompanied this death. By seeing how utterly overwhelmed his family was, and acknowledging the brother that was lost, the client got deep relief from honoring everyone for the part they played, and grieve his own loss properly.
Another client was dealing with a complex inheritance situation with fellow adult siblings. What a mess! Anger, avoidance, shame: so many feelings were part of the family stew, and instead of a blessing, the inheritance was feeling like a curse. With constellation work, we discovered the invisible reasons for the layers of misunderstanding that were causing everyone to hurt each other, and the client could find their good place in what is a complex situation.
Finally, another recent client experienced multiple deaths of important family members in a short time in the last few months, and was reeling from the experience. Our culture is famously terrible at acknowledging death and communal mourning, and when we have multiple losses, the lack of shared grieving can become untenable. Our constellation work basically ended up functioning as a long-delayed funeral, allowing the client to make contact with the larger circles of those who also invisibly grieved these losses, so that they could feel seen, supported and honored.
We’re not always looking at ancestors when we do constellations work. We examine our work context, our neighborhoods, cultural institutions, recent events, and much more. We are embedded in so many systems! And many of them are barely visible to us in their impacts.
My Advanced Constellations Training begins soon, and part of the training includes increasing our capacity to be aware of what systems are most relevant to the suffering our clients bring to us, and to our own problems. If you are a facilitator, or have participated in enough constellations work that you have the equivalent learning, then now is the time to check out the details and reach out to me for questions. You can save $250 through January 10th. We always gather a rich array of practitioners who are thinking at deep levels about how systems hold and affect us. You are welcome to join in!
When have you become aware of the importance of larger circles of influence impacting you? What are you wrestling with that seems individual, but might not be just yours alone? Share your stories and questions on my blog, below.
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