Helping is an honest and necessary human desire. To assist someone on the roadside who was just in an accident; helping a child learn math; listening to a family member in the midst of their illness or relationship crisis — these are normal human inclinations. Indeed, more and more, we understand it’s even a normal animal inclination!
We all know situations where helping, however, seems to go awry. When we try to help something we can’t change; when we step into situations where we aren’t wanted; when the “helping” is to feel better about ourselves rather than to actually help — these are examples of helping that isn’t really help.
Addiction Studies contributed a valuable idea when it was noticed that some people seemed to be addicted to addicts. They had a desperate need to save the lost, and to see oneself as a good person who is really trying to help — and maybe gets to be seen as a hero or a suffering victim in the process. And because the identity is so important, unconsciously the person might resist the addict’s genuine attempts to achieve sobriety. This was called co-dependence.
In constellations, we extend this awareness to other kinds of relationships. It’s a simple observation — we have certain roles in our life, and when we step out of those roles too far, we can do a lot of damage. So, if we insist on caring for an injured person, even though we have no medical skills and the emergency professionals have arrived, we’re acting out of our place, and can actually be destructive. If we treat a partner like our child, or our friend like our parent, or a parent like our patient, we are out of role, and will not be as helpful as we are trying to be.
In families, this comes up a lot for adults with their aging parents. Often, as we age, we need help. And often, adult children have the resources to be helpful — finances, time, attention, managing healthcare, etc. This is all completely normal!
Constellations reveals a potential danger, however. We can be tempted to see our parents as children, now. In fact, it can be part of our culture’s way of talking about care of elderly parents — they’ve become children again, and now we’re the parent. It’s an understandable metaphor (even Shakespeare used it!), but it can be very unhelpful — and sometimes, even destructive, if it goes too far.
In constellations, we understand that life travels one way: from the ancestors to us. They give life to us, and not the other way around. That means that the ancestors (including our parents) hold a kind of seniority in our family system — they are senior to us, as we are senior to our own children. For those of you who are parents, you would not want your children taking on life burdens in the service of your healing that is not their task. And so, there is a real limit on how we can help our parents, and we need to have a good sense of that limit when we decide it is in order to help them. Even as we help, they remain senior to us, not the other way around. They gave us life.
Sometimes in the constellations world, this is misinterpreted. Some think it means we can never help our parents, and we should never do anything that might limit us in service to them. That is not what their seniority means. The question of when and how to help our parents (if at all) is a matter of our personal discernment. Nothing can alleviate the responsibility of making these decisions — and they are often very hard indeed (especially in cultures where we’ve lost the help of extended families who can share the load, and social support nets don’t exist). We can’t look simply at our position as their children to decide for us what to do. These are very personal decisions, and it’s part of our dignity to make them.
But whatever we decide — help a lot, or not at all — it will be good for everyone if we are able to hold to our role and honor their role as the ones who came before and gave us life. In fact, the more we can do this, the stronger our discernment will be, and we’ll have better clarity about what feels truly right.
What is your experience of helping (or not) your parents? What is it like to notice that we are always junior to them, even if we help take care of them? These are tender questions! Please share on my blog below.
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