Indra Torsten Preiss - Heal Your Relationship (Family Constellation)
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- 1. INDRA TORSTEN PREISS Heal Your Relationship A new way of improving your relationship skills r V * i 1 V > <
- 10. 1 Foreword We can talk about courage and love and compassion until we sound like a greeting card store, but unless we’re willing to have an honest conversation about what gets in the way of putting these into practice in our daily lives, we will never change. Never, ever. —Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection[1] You could hardly disagree with me when I say that there is nothing more important that we can share with others in our lives than love. We do this in a number of ways but chiefly through relationships. For most of us, a wonderful and harmonious loving relationship is the ultimate aim of life. From puberty onward, we strive for this goal. This is a natural phenomenon that is part of being human, just like breathing, eating, and drinking. Whether or not we are married or living together, once we have reached this goal and go beyond the initial stage of being madly in love, all too often something happens in our relationships. Slowly but surely, that beautiful and special feeling we felt for our partner in the first stage of our relationship disappears. In its place, we are confronted with frustration, disagreement, and contempt. Is this due to the pressures of everyday living? Naturally, our hectic lives have a significant part to play. We want everything—preferably all at the same time. But this is only part of the problem. It is an aggravating element, a symptom, and not the real cause. The real cause of our relationship problems rests within ourselves. In our couple-love relationships, we repeat patterns, attitudes, and destructive elements that we carry unconsciously from our ancestors. This, according to my own experience in relationships and based on my experience over many years as a facilitator of family and relationship constellations, is the underlying cause of almost all relationship and marriage conflicts. Most people are barely aware of this. A real solution for their relationship problems usually remains out of reach, and divorce often becomes the powerless answer to an inner and mutual process that the people involved are unaware of and do not understand. Partners are convinced that they are right and therefore feel that fault does not lie with them. They are able to easily justify their stance. In essence, and according to my experience, in most such cases, this means that they have subconscious feelings of loyalty with one or more of their ancestors. They are repeating the difficulties, dysfunctional patterns, and destructive behaviors of these family members in their own relationships. Almost nobody is aware of how we have internalized a kind of blueprint or mind-set about life and relationships from our ancestors. This inherited blueprint or mind-set is extremely influential on whether we have successful relationships.
- 11. Sustainable solutions and permanent changes are available only once we become aware of what is contained in our mind-set concerning the themes of relationships and love. In other words, we first need to become aware of what we carry over and reenact in our relationships. Only when we look at the whole picture, the relational context of our whole family, are we able to come in contact with the causes of our relationship conflicts and truly become able to begin to process underlying issues. This allows for deep healing of relationship problems and development of our own relationship skills. Another important aspect is the role reciprocity and mutuality play as a determining part in all relationships. Many people believe that their partners are their mirrors. But a mirror is only a lifeless reflector, while every relationship involves an interactive mutual exchange between living beings. That is also the reason why I avoid using the term mirroring in my book in favor of reciprocity. Reciprocity in couple relationships goes deep—very deep. Our partners become a manifestation of our greatest dreams as well as our deepest pain and anxiety. Their comings and goings confront us with all the subconscious and unprocessed issues that we carry over from our childhood—more specifically from our ancestors. Subconsciously, our partners present to us all of life’s lessons that we need to go through on our way to a more conscious way of life. From the moment this is understood, we can view our relationships as a way of really getting to know ourselves instead of as a source of frustration and pain. As individuals and as a culture, our chance for happiness depends on our ability to decipher a hidden world that revolves—invisibly, improbably, inexorably—around love. —A General Theory of Love[2]
- 13. Acknowledgements and Thanks My gratitude goes out to my teachers, the most important of whom I nominate here: Hans Mensink and Tilke Plateel-Deur for sharing their thorough knowledge of rebirthing-breath work and bodywork; and Osho and especially Michael Barnett for helping to create a powerful, spiritual foundation within me and for showing me the dimension of just being that now underpins my work and life. Everything I learned from these people helped me become acquainted with the work of Bert Hellinger, to whom I am especially thankful. In helping me fully appreciate relevant issues, I want to acknowledge Berthold Ulsamer and the down-to- earth vision he espouses and teaches in his courses for constellation therapists. I would like to thank everyone who has allowed me to cite their constellations and those who in one way or another have assisted in the production of this book. For the practical creation of this book, I thank firstly my partner, Griet, and our children, Julia and Wolf, for their patience when I had once again disappeared behind my laptop. My gratitude also goes to Stephanie Walckiers for her editing, tips, and feedback; to Bieke Verbruggen for her support and confidence in the organization of the lectures on the theme of this book; to Lieve Cuypers for her extensive advice, tips, and help in translating texts and quotes and for her help with the translation of chapters 2, 3, and 4; to Anthony Grant for translating all of the other chapters; to Gerben Pennings for research work and feedback; and to my daughter Sarah for her scientific research work. Furthermore, my thanks to all participants of the Family and Organizational Constellations course; to Veronique and Karen for allowing me to publish their reactions and experiences after implementing the content of this book into their lives; to Kali for her support in difficult moments; to Marleen Bervoets and Joey Brown for feedback; and to Tim Musche for his beautiful, inspiring songs and medicine. My hope is that this book will help many people improve their relationships and that my insights will inspire and enrich them on their way to a more harmonious life. This certainly applies to colleagues, therapists, and coaches: I hope they will find the theory and findings explained within just as far-reaching as I do. The insights described here about how relationships and constellations work have been such an expansive and enriching boost to my ability to help others that I cannot imagine how I could possibly work as a therapist without this knowledge.
- 17. Traditional Family Constellations To be able to appreciate this book fully (and certainly to understand the examples presented), it is useful to know the basics about traditional family constellations. The following brief introduction is aimed at those not familiar with constellation work. For more information, please read chapter 7 “Constellations Methodology.” There are two ways to work with constellations: in a group setting or in an individual setting.
- 19. Individual-Setting Constellations Individual constellations work a little differently. Instead of relying on the representatives whom we know from the group setting, here the seeker himself or herself takes up one position at a time to represent family members (such as his partner or parents) and taps into feelings and perceptions in each spot. The theme or constellation question is also briefly addressed in the beginning, facts from the family history are presented, and then objects such as chairs or sheets of paper are placed on the floor to represent the partner and/or family members’ positions. The seeker sits on each chair or stands on each piece of paper in turn in order to feel and perceive for the represented person. It is therefore important that the seeker put aside his or her own ideas and judgments about the person he or she is representing. The seeker then shares perceptions with the facilitator. In this way, he or she gains access, on the various spots, to the feelings and perceptions of the family member or other person bound up in the constellation question. The facilitator works in tune with the seeker and his or her perceptions to find a good solution for the theme or question posed so that here too, the natural flow of love can resume. The seeker then takes up position in the improved constellation to let the found solution sink in and is then aware of all of the emotional entanglements and loyalties so that he or she can now let them go.
- 20. Important Information about Case Studies Cited The examples of relationship constellations presented in this book were performed in group and individual constellations from my own practice. I have abbreviated most of them to include only those elements that are relevant to the themes of this book. To improve readability, in most cases I have not attributed quotations to representatives during a group constellation nor to the seeker for his or her perceptions of representatives in individual constellations. Concretely, this means that a quote attributed to a mother as saying, for example, “I see you; you are my son,” is actually expressed by the representative of the mother; real family members are generally not present at constellations. For more information about this, refer to the relevant section on representative perceptions in chapter 7 “Constellations Methodology.”
- 21. Important Information about Relationship Constellations It is important to explain that a constellation is a conscious vicarious process, or what I prefer to call a process that is initiated in the mind-set of the seeker. It is vicarious because the family member (or members), whose pain a seeker has carried over, was (or were) not able to process that pain. The seeker can now do that in a safe manner in a constellation. This can lead to an end of the carried-over suffering and to the negative effects on the seeker’s relationships. That does not necessarily mean that the seeker can heal his or her family through this process. The actual living family members are free to stay just as they are. The change, transformation, or healing occurs in the consciousness of the seeker, in his or her mind-set, and is expressed through his or her life and relationships. This book is based on the work of Bert Hellinger, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, Martin Buber, and many others, as well as on the latest scientific findings concerning epigenetics and brain functioning or, more specifically, our emotional brain. It also naturally reflects my own life and professional experience about relationship issues. Readers familiar with certain other forms of therapy will most likely recognize elements from family therapy, system therapy, and Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy’s contextual therapy. Concepts such as systemic order and systemic phenomenology are those of Hellinger and are covered in chapter “6 A Look Behind the Scenes.” Based on these concepts, I developed a new contemporary and systemic look on all relationship and marriage issues. Where no English translations were available, the translations offered are those of the author and translators. Throughout the book, the term relationship is predominantly used, but marriage is of course included as well. Where the term husband is used, naturally the long-term male partner is also included, just like the term wife naturally encompasses the long-term female partner. Although heterosexual couple relationships are used or implied, the description of family dynamics holds equally for homosexual relationships.
- 23. Disclaimer The practices and techniques that are presented in this book are not intended as a substitute for the professional advice of accredited physicians, psychotherapists, or counselors. The author and publisher of this book cannot be held accountable for any undesirable consequences resulting from applying these practices and techniques. In this book, I rarely use the word love, because everything I write about here exclusively concerns love. This is love in its entirety, including its light and its darker side.
- 25. 2 Treat the Symptom or the Underlying Cause? Our biggest problem is system blindness. —John Sterman, head of systems dynamics at MIT Family and relationship constellations have been my chosen daily work for over twelve years now. Many of the constellations I have been privileged to facilitate deal with relationship issues, conflicts, or questions. Now that I have facilitated a few thousand constellations, one thing has become crystal clear to me: namely, that solutions to relationship and marital issues are not to be found in overcoming daily fights, arguments, blame games, or accusations. The latter are only symptoms—visual evidence of the relationship or marital conflict. If we want enduring solutions, we need to dare to look beyond the symptoms. Here, I would like to point out that most people are not yet used to looking beyond symptoms. As a result, causes of relationship difficulties are usually attributed to things like a partner’s negative character traits and bad choices. Yet none of these reasons leads to insight or to a solution to the issue or conflict. On a positive note, more and more people are becoming aware that such a limited vision does not help them in finding a permanent resolution. Especially when a second relationship or marriage fails in the same way as the first one, it may become clear to the people involved that their personal and cultural views on relationships or marriage do not provide sufficient insights or solutions to establish durable relationships.
- 27. How Bad Is It Really? Divorce statistics speak for themselves. Approximately half of all marriages end in divorce, and some of those are acrimonious. Partners involved often believe that they are the only ones in the right and are convinced that they have the necessary facts to back up their arguments. A constructive, viable solution for both partners and children is often difficult to find. To gain insight into the quality of our relationships, I have asked my many audiences—during constellation talks—to raise their hands if they knew of many good, long-lasting relationships within their circle of family and friends. Good, long-lasting relationships do not seem to be that common. In a group of thirty to forty participants, often no more than four to six hands were raised. Since I know that we are relational beings, this low number always takes me by surprise. Man is by nature a social animal; he can’t but live in society. —Aristotle Recent brain research confirms Aristotle’s findings: “Adults remain social animals: they continue to require a source of stabilization outside themselves…people cannot be stable on their own—not should or shouldn’t be, but can’t be.”[1] The limbic (emotional) part of our brain does not allow this. “Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them.” Thus, we find stability through relationships. Studies on babies show how intricately interwoven being human and being in a relationship are. In the thirteenth century, King Frederick II, ruler of southern Italy, undertook an experiment in which nursing staff were asked to provide the necessary care for infants without showing any sign of affection and without establishing an emotional bond with the infants. It ended with the death of all infants concerned. In the 1940s, psychoanalyst René Spitz reported on orphaned children caught in a repetition of Frederick’s experiment. In spite of the physical needs of the infants concerned being met, the children “inevitably became withdrawn and sickly, and lost weight. A great many died.” Spitz “rediscovered that a lack of human interaction—handling, cooing, stroking, baby talk, and play—is fatal to infants.”[2] Similarly, images of neglected Romanian orphans, which surfaced after Ceausescu was overthrown in a violent revolution, remain burned into our memories. Here too, the caregivers did not or could not build an emotional bond with the orphans. It is generally known that prisons use isolation cells for particularly hardened criminals. Long-standing solitary confinement without any form of human contact is, in fact, a method of torture. In other words, being in a relationship is a basic human need. If, as it seems, only a relative few couples manage to establish long-lasting, fulfilling relationships, something appears to be fundamentally wrong. Something must be amiss with the way we see and function in relationships. How else can we explain the battlefield that we call a relationship or marriage?
- 28. And when our own (relational) life has lost its spark, television soaps and reality TV provide us with a secondhand life—as the perfect distraction to our own. However, for most people, it seems only natural to look solely at symptoms. When people suffer from a headache, they take a pill. They don’t ask themselves questions like “Which inner or outer conflict gives me a headache?” People who are willing to look at causes rather than symptoms are not that easy to find. However, if you ask them, they speak about more serenity, well-being, and harmony in their lives. Still, it seems that the majority of the population turns a blind eye to the underlying causes that prompt the symptoms.
- 30. Looking at Symptoms or Causes? Imagine you are driving your car, and one of the dashboard warning indicators lights up.[3] What do you do? Do you ignore the light, get irritated and angry at your car, and just keep driving? This is the most common reaction to relationship conflict. Do you ignore the light by pasting a lovely sticker on it and drive on? This is what it sometimes comes down to when we do not want or dare to look at our relationship problems at all, preferring to forgive or cover everything with the cloth of love. Do you pull over and call roadside assistance to find out the cause of the problem and consequently have it fixed? This is my approach as described in this book. When our car is not running properly, we take it in to be repaired. We consult a professional to find the cause of the problem and have it fixed. Yet when something is not working in our relationship, absurdly enough, we often prefer to fight over it and—after a period of fighting —often decide to choose another partner. It is not that common for couples to separate with feelings of shared responsibility, mutual respect, and gratitude for all the wonderful moments shared. Instead, hating your ex seems like the thing to do these days. This attitude suits people who prefer to only look at symptoms: the daily conflicts, the visible signs. Similar to the question concerning symptoms and causes, we can ask ourselves if there is meaning behind our relational conflicts—there is no point in finding the cause of our relationship conflicts if we cannot find meaning in them. Only through finding meaning can we be truly affected and can change be possible.
- 32. Relationships and the Materialistic World View of Science There are still a lot of people who assume and hope that a relationship will bring them a fulfilled and secure life, just like that. Relationships are meant to be fun, keep us from feeling lonely, enable us to raise children, or sometimes just help us survive. If you are lucky, you will find yourself a good partner. If not, find a good lawyer. When we encounter relationship problems, most often we assume the other person is doing something wrong or is of bad character. Generally, we do not look beyond the surface. “Why would I dig into the past?” people ask themselves. “Why can’t it just be easy? Why all the effort? Do I have to look for and find meaning in everything?” To a great extent, this attitude mirrors the materialistic world view of most scientists. As far as regular science is concerned, everything in our lives is just a matter of random chemical reactions in our brain, without deeper meaning or cause. That there is a guiding principle in each and every one of us is considered an unscientific illusion. We are just “lumbering robots,” and our existence is determined by the “selfish gene,” according to Richard Dawkins, [4] one of the most prominent advocates of this absurd theory.
- 34. To Look for Meaning or Not? Who wants to live a life without meaning? Who wants to live in a world in which your life is governed solely by the chemical reactions in your brain? And yet that is what is put forward by scientific materialism, which holds the opinion that your behavior and your partner’s behavior are just a result of random chemical reactions between the two of you—without deeper cause or meaning. A life without a sense of meaning—such as the lives of lumbering biological robots sometimes living together wonderfully and sometimes colliding horribly—is, per definition, pointless. If there are no underlying causes of relationship conflicts, then, as I have already said, there are no solutions either. As such, we can only treat symptoms, hire a good lawyer for our divorce, or cozily doze off in front of the television, allowing the relationship to lose its spark. In his book The Science Delusion, Rupert Sheldrake,[5] who has a PhD in biochemistry, challenges the materialistic world view of science based on recent scientific studies. He clearly illustrates the existence of (human) consciousness through scientific evidence. If we have consciousness, then there is also choice, and with choice, meaning enters the stage. From this, we can conclude that we are conscious beings and that our lives have meaning. Not to take that into account—as implied by the materialistic world view of most scientists—is an outdated dogma that, moreover, cannot be proven scientifically. The prevailing tendency to approach relationship conflicts via symptoms—the visual signs— can partly be explained by the fact that the possibility of looking at the underlying causes of relationship conflicts is relatively new and, for most people, still unfamiliar territory. Seventy years ago, there was no such thing as relationship therapy. If our ancestors, or even our parents, had relationship issues, they were mostly kept private or discussed with the local doctor, minister, rabbi, or priest. Sometimes a clairvoyant was consulted. Anything more than well-intended advice was not available. Consequently, different therapies have been developed, including behavioral therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy, which is now considered to be mainstream, if we take the bestseller as a standard (see the following paragraph). Behavioral therapies are designed to assist couples in improving their thought patterns and communication skills to help prevent misunderstandings from occurring in their relationships. In other words, the focus is on adjusting behaviors. In many cases, this proves to be very useful, and it can thus help couples to a certain extent. A good example of the scientifically accepted behavioral approach is found in works like the New York Times bestseller The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work,[6] which describes clearly, and on a scientific basis, what can go wrong in marriages. In this book, John Gottman and Nan Silver offer behavioral tips on how to improve the quality of relationships. In his renowned book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman[7] does
- 35. something similar. In a more recent work, The Gifts of Imperfection, also a New York Times bestseller, Brené Brown[8] moves one step further. She says we have to enter the “swamp of our soul” (C. G. Jung). “I’m not suggesting that we wade out into the swamp and set up camp…” she writes. “What I’m proposing is that we learn how to wade through it.” In the “swamp of our soul,” we encounter the real causes of our relationship issues, which are hidden in our unconscious, and emerge from our shadow side. If someone’s relationships today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child’s mind. —A General Theory of Love[9] A lot of people are still afraid to move that one step further. Yet everyone who has done so says that, even though it is confrontational or painful, in the long run, it puts an end to long- term suffering. They come to understand that suffering is endless if they work only at the level of symptoms, but it ceases when they find and work with the underlying causes. This is illustrated by the many case studies provided in this book. If we dare to pave our own paths to more consciousness and wade through our fear of confronting painful feelings, we will be rewarded with a gift: the gift of a greater awareness, inner peace, freedom, harmony, a greater insight into our relationship riddles, and an overall improvement in the quality of our relationships. Working with relationship and family constellations, as I propose in this book, leads you— safely—through your inner “swamp” and shows that almost all possible relationship problems or conflicts have an underlying cause and that the daily quarrels and fighting are merely symptoms. My starting point in this book is systems theory, and the tool we use is relationship constellations. Systems theory states that everything is connected and that everything interacts with everything else. In other words, there are no “isolated facts.” There is only a way of seeing or not seeing that makes something appear as an “isolated fact.” In essence, everything is interconnected.[10] What is unique about relationship constellations is that not only do they reveal and help correct the cause of relationship issues, they provide us with a clear image of how relationships work, what problems arise, and, especially, why things can go awry. They reward us with new insights into the root causes of marital and relationship conflict and, at the same time, improve our relational skills and heal our relationships.
- 37. 3 Determinants of Relationship Happiness Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener. —Cliff Richard In this chapter, I will introduce an approach to relationship conflict that looks beyond the symptoms toward causes. To really heal relationships, it is essential to understand the underlying forces that determine our relational life, which usually play out unconsciously. The first and most important aspects that will be addressed are our loyalties and our unconscious, blind love toward parents and ancestors. The impact of these loyalties is seen time and time again in relationship constellations. They cause severe destruction to our relationships as long as they remain unconscious. Further on, it will become clear that we have inherited a relational blueprint from our ancestors that determines our relationship happiness. I will also demonstrate that reciprocity is intrinsic to every relationship. It is part of being human and part of being in relation(ship), just like breathing, eating, and drinking. The other aspects that greatly affect our relationships, also unconsciously, are traumas and unprocessed pain from childhood.
- 39. Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy and the Power of Loyalty The fact that we are social beings has already been pointed out in the last chapter. However, more than anything else, we are loyal beings. Our ancestors were aware of this and communicated this through folk wisdom reflected in sayings like “The apple never falls far from the tree” or “Let the cobbler stick to his last.” As far back as the late 1950s, folk-wisdom truths were recognized anew. At that time, the Hungarian-American psychiatrist and psychotherapist Boszormenyi-Nagy[1] made an important discovery: we are connected to our ancestors through a web of loyalties. Inspired by the philosopher Martin Buber and psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn, among others, Nagy developed a new methodology in family therapy. He became the founder of Contextual Family Therapy. According to Nagy, our strongest loyalty is toward our parents. He calls this existential loyalty. It results from the fact that our parents have given us life. They literally made us: our father was the begetter, and our mother carried and given birth to us. Together, they enabled our bodies to grow by providing food and giving us attention. In their own way and according to their abilities, they helped us develop feeling and reason. They taught us how to eat, walk, talk, and, arguably, to love and to hate. We owe our existence to them. Because this seems as self-evident as the daily sunrise, we do not really consider it that special and are, mostly, totally unaware of the fact that we show them our gratitude—and were also unaware of the various ways that we show this gratitude. To a large extent, we do this by resembling them and wanting to be like them—in other words, by being loyal. Secondly, we are bound to our grandparents. This bond can be very strong as well. With every generation, we move back in time, and our loyalty becomes weaker. (The exception concerns deeply traumatic experiences. I will come back to this later.) To illustrate the impact of loyalties on relationships, here are some examples taken from family constellations: Note: For those not familiar with Family and Relationship Constellations, read the “Read Me” part in the introduction to gain a better understanding of the examples presented. Barbara, age thirty-four, wants to set up a constellation to get an insight into her share of the relationship difficulties with her partner. She says, “We’re always fighting; it is as if we no longer understand each other.” In her constellation, she recognizes that her grandmother (mother’s side) was heavily traumatized as a result of neglect in a difficult upbringing. Because of these painful childhood experiences, she became hard and dismissive. The family regarded her grandmother’s husband, Barbara’s grandfather, as a renowned womanizer. This fact reinforced the grandmother’s dismissive attitude: she looked down disdainfully on her husband. There was a perceptible destructive element in their relationship. Barbara’s mother had taken over her mother’s behavior and, in turn, looked down disdainfully on her own husband, Barbara’s father. Her parents’ relationship was not so much characterized by continuous fighting but
- 40. rather by a cold, resigned distance, which Barbara always wanted to rebel against. She recognizes the dismissiveness and disdain of her mother and grandmother in her own relationship. Instead of resigning herself to the situation as her mother did, Barbara takes on the battle. In the constellation, Barbara can clearly feel how her grandmother’s attitude also plays out in her own attitude toward her partner. It seems a perfect copy. With tears in her eyes, Barbara says that she realizes that this burden does not belong to her and her partner. She also sees how it leaves her partner feeling helpless in their relationship. In an inner moving ritual, Barbara gives back the dismissiveness and disdain for men to her mother and grandmother. Neither of them wants her to continue to take this stance in her relationship anyway. They want her to have a wonderful relationship with her partner. Barbara can feel how elated they would be if she would do it differently than they did and really connect with her partner. This gives Barbara a real sense of relief. Two months later, Barbara comes to see me again and shares that she and her partner now have a much better connection but that there is still something between them. In her next constellation, Barbara takes a good look at the emotional bond with her father. Her father was twenty-one years old when he lost his father through a work-related accident. He had not been able to mourn his father’s death, which made him melancholic and introverted. In the constellation, Barbara recognizes that she carries a lot of her father’s unexpressed grief, and she realizes how strongly she feels emotionally connected to him. She comes to realize that to the extent that she was connected to her father, she was emotionally unavailable in the relationship with her partner. In the closing ritual of the constellation, she is able to give the grief back to her father and leave it with him. It has become clear to her that her father does not want her to carry his unprocessed grief and that he does not want her to be so emotionally attached to him. He wants her to free herself from this entanglement and live her own life. This comes as a great relief to Barbara, as if a burden is taken off her shoulders. She says, “I had no idea how much the behaviors of my family of origin were playing out in my life. Now I understand the underlying cause of all the fighting. If nothing else, my behavior alone made sure that my relationship was doomed to fail.” Similar dynamics and loyalties frequently surface as the underlying causes of relationship conflicts. As with Barbara, most people are insufficiently aware of the impact these loyalties have on their lives, relationships, sexuality, finances, and success in general. Susan, age twenty-nine, cannot find a suitable partner. After several failed attempts and broken relationships, she wonders whether it still makes sense to continue to look for true love and real connection. Susan tells me that her mother’s marriage to her father was a marriage of convenience rather than a love match. About her grandmother (mother’s side), Susan knows that her first lover was not accepted by her parents. The man in question practiced another religion than her family did.
- 41. I ask Susan to place four chairs in the space in front of her and to constellate them in a way that feels right for her: one chair to represent herself, one for her mother, one for her grandmother, and one for a possible ideal partner. She first sits down in her own chair. From her own place, she gauges whether all the chairs are set up correctly. The chair representing her grandmother is about three feet in front of her. The chair representing her mother is situated next to hers, on her left side, diagonally facing her grandmother’s. The chair for a possible ideal partner is about nine feet to her right, facing the same direction as hers. Next, I ask her to sit in the other chairs, feeling them out one by one. In each chair, she tries to feel what the person in question is experiencing, parking her own thoughts about those people in her own chair. In the chair representing a possible ideal partner, she feels that her attention is in no way directed toward him. Susan’s attention, as can be felt from this chair, is with her grandmother. In the chair that represents her grandmother, she feels how painful it was for her grandmother to have to give up on her “true love.” At the same time, Susan feels her own compassion for her grandmother and understands how she has been loyal to her grandmother. What her grandmother could not have, she would not allow herself to have either. So, up until now, Susan has unconsciously lived a pain similar to her grandmother’s. What she also feels on the chair representing her grandmother is that her grandmother does not want her grandchild, Susan, to have to suffer in the same way. On the contrary, her grandmother does not want anything but to see her grandchild happy. In the constellation (and afterward in her own life), Susan manages to free herself from this loyalty toward her grandmother. In the final setup of the constellation, her mother’s chair is situated behind hers, and her grandmother’s chair behind her mother’s. The chair for the possible ideal partner is about three feet in front of her. Susan can now feel how her mother and grandmother are cheering her on and wishing her the very best in her love relationships. Susan realizes, for the first time, that she can muster the (necessary) courage and strength to look a possible partner in the eyes. In the previous example, we see a loyalty toward the grandmother. When she compared her situation with the great disappointment her grandmother experienced—namely, the veto of her true love—the grandchild did not dare to allow herself the advantage of a greater happiness in love relationships. A wonderful relationship with a man she could really love was, as a result, not an option. Only by becoming aware of how her grandmother and mother looked at her and what they wished for her could she disentangle herself from this loyalty.
- 43. The Covert Game of Blind Love and Hidden Loyalty Nagy explains that being loyal is intrinsically interwoven with being human; in fact, it makes us human. From the 1990s onward, Bert Hellinger,[2] through his family constellation method, shows even more clearly how loyal we are and how far we are willing to go in this loyalty. He does not just call it loyalty; for him it is primarily about the magical, unconscious love of the child.
- 45. The Magical Love of the Child Bert Hellinger’s work makes it clear how we, as children, through our need for belonging and loyalty, try to “earn” our place in our family by taking on the burden of unprocessed emotional issues of earlier generations. In order to do so, we copy, along with the positives, their suffering, emotional burdens, and relational behaviors, as well as their views on their own and the opposite sex and even disease and death. We do this out of love—bonding love, as Hellinger[3] calls it. His view on this can be summarized as follows: bonding love operates within a family system and expresses itself through loyalties or entanglements. We are loyal when we repeat ancestral behaviors in our own lives. We talk about entanglements when a descendant copies and carries the pain, suppressed sadness, or other forms of suffering of one or more ancestors and repeats and manifests those in his or her own life. Loyalties and entanglements are strongest toward parents and between siblings. Next in line are grandparents, uncles and aunts, and sometimes even great-grandparents and anyone who left or was excluded from the family. The latter group consists of former partners or former husbands or wives of parents and grandparents. Loyalties and entanglements are stronger toward family members who suffered a heavy fate, such as a premature death, participation in war(s), suicide, or illness. The list goes on to include poverty, poor or nonexistent education, lack of room for one’s own creativity, and especially difficult or destructive relationships.
- 47. Bonding Love Bonding love is a magical, childlike love in which the child (unconsciously) assumes that through surrogate suffering—by copying and carrying the suffering of one or more ancestors—he or she can help or save this ancestor. The child assumes that the only way to be strongly connected (and thus loyal) to a family member is by sharing in the ancestor’s misfortune, relational conflicts, poverty, and even death. In this way, the child wants to become like the person whose fate he or she is entangled with. Underlying this wish to share another person’s fate is a deep need to belong to the family on the one hand and a deep gratitude toward those who have given him or her life on the other. Thus, when parents have known a difficult life with destructive relationships, children want to share in the same fate as an act of love and gratitude. They feel, as it were, obliged to do so and are not, as a rule, aware of it. In this manner, they unconsciously try to restore the balance between giving and taking. They have received life and so much more from their parents and, unconsciously, do not dare to take advantage of their greater scope for increased wealth, harmonious relationships, health, or happiness. Clearly, the childlike bonding love is not only magical but also blind. This love is magical because children hope that through vicarious suffering and by sacrificing themselves or their own potential, they can help or even save the family member and, in return, be recognized as one of the family. This love is blind because the child does not take into account the feelings and wishes of the person he or she is being loyal to. Parents or other family members, of course, do not want their descendants to sacrifice themselves through suffering, poverty, or copying difficult relationships and circumstances to serve them. On the contrary, parents generally wish for their children to be better off than themselves. In situations where the aforementioned dynamics are at play, the only way to achieve healing is to bring the blind, childlike love into awareness and to respect it. Helping professionals wanting to fully appreciate this dynamic must recognize and understand the seeker’s unconscious motivation. If not, the seeker will stay loyal and, in good conscience, cherish destructive relationships, illness, poverty, or other forms of misfortune more strongly and more secretly than before. As long as the loyalty remains unconscious, it feels like betrayal toward ancestors to achieve the successes that eluded them, such as to be happy in a relationship, to be cured of disease, or to step out of poverty. This reiterates how important it is to look at the underlying causes of relationship problems. It is only when entanglements, loyalties, and bonding love are brought to light and processed that blindness and the childlike hopes and wishes become clear to the seeker as well. Once this is felt and realized, the individual can free himself or herself from destructive loyalties and entanglements. This is when the possibility to improve becomes real. A person can now leave the experience of living difficult relationships with ancestors as an expression of their fate and develop an independent way of being in a relationship.
- 48. Mark, age forty-three, has been going through an acrimonious divorce for the past two years. His wife shamelessly exploits him, and he cannot defend himself. Neither the good advice of therapists nor assertiveness training has been able to change anything about his situation. When I finish listening to his story, my first question is “Do you know anyone in your family who also had such a hard time?” He looks at me in surprise and answers with a smile on his face. “My mother. She couldn’t stand up to my father either!” I ask him to put himself into his mother’s shoes and look at “her son.” In other words, to look at himself through his mother’s eyes. It takes him a moment to be able to do that. Then I ask him, “Do you, as the mother of your son, want him to repeat your relationship problem with his ex-partner—namely, to be unable to defend himself?” In his mother’s position, he answers in the negative. Mark spontaneously moves his upper body as if to shrug off something and says with a deep sigh, “I understand.” He then looks at me, obviously relieved. Once he understands that his mother is really not pleased with him repeating her inability to defend herself, he summons the courage to take a stronger stance toward his ex-partner. For the first time, he feels able to set boundaries. In a later session, Mark sets up his relationship in a constellation. The first session made him aware of how much his loyalty toward his mother had affected his life up until that point. It had not only played out in his divorce battle, but, to a large extent, it had also played out in his marital conflicts. In configuring his constellation, Mark sets up someone for himself, for his parents, and for his ex-partner. The representative for his mother is standing to the immediate left of his representative, and the representative for his ex-partner is standing about seven feet away and facing him. His ex-partner is furious at him. She feels abandoned and helpless. The mother feels a strong connection to her son. He was her help and support. She does not even look at her husband (Mark’s father); he is not accessible for her. Mark’s father stands at a distance, to the left of the other representatives. He is looking at the floor and does not feel much. He takes no interest in his wife. When I ask what had happened in his father’s family, Mark replies “Nothing much. He has two older brothers; his parents were together till death in old age. Two years after marrying my mother, at the age of twenty-four, my father was involved in a car accident while sleeping in the backseat. He survived with some minor bone fractures. His best friend and his best friend’s lover didn’t survive the accident.” Mark brings these two people into the constellation, and the strong bond between Mark’s father and his best friend becomes immediately clear. His father had never mourned the loss of his friend. This had traumatized him. The trauma explained his absence in his marriage, as he had turned inward and had closed himself off emotionally. As a result, he had become emotionally unavailable for his wife. Seeing that, Mark gains two important insights. Firstly, he discovers the cause of the battle between his parents, in which his father, to compensate for being closed off, had taken on the more dominant role, while his mother had taken on the victim role. Secondly, he recognizes
- 49. that he had unwittingly provided his mother with the emotional support that his father could not give her. He had filled up the emotional void in his parents’ relationship by being very close to his mother. He also discovers that he was loyal to his father too: like his father, he had been emotionally unavailable in his marriage. As such, he had repeated the relationship pattern of his parents. That turned out to be the cause of his wife’s anger and helplessness. Another important finding concerning his mother’s side of the family surfaces. For generations, the women on his mother’s side had felt dominated by their men. The women were the victims, and the men, the perpetrators. The constellation shows that this dynamic had been the cause of his mother’s stance: she was unable to defend herself against Mark’s father and felt victimized by his dominant behavior. Mark now understands even better how he had copied his mother’s behavior and played this out in his relationship and his divorce. On the one hand, this example illustrates the impact of unprocessed, traumatic ancestral events. On the other hand, we see that relationship problems—here the polarized victim- victimizer attitudes—are copied by children and are frequently the cause of relationship problems in future generations. Whether it is a victim-victimizer dynamic, a car accident, traumas sustained during a war or a natural disaster, all unprocessed experiences of our ancestors impact on our lives and result in emotional detachment.
- 51. Loyalty and Science The findings of Nagy and Hellinger have been confirmed by recent scientific research, most notably in the field known as epigenetics. Check out the link on my English blog to the BBC documentary The Ghost in Your Genes.[4] It documents research undertaken by the British professor Marcus Pembrey and the Swedish professor Lars Olov Bygen, among others, in an isolated part of Sweden. On the basis of a “broad and complete” Swedish register of births, deaths, and marriages, these scientists demonstrated that periods of relative famine in a certain generation resulted in a significant rise in the number of diabetics in the third generation after the famine. According to Pembrey, this information is transferred via an “epigenetic manual” (epi means “additional”).[5] As a practitioner of the family constellation method, this pattern of passing on information from generation to generation is very recognizable. Nonetheless, it is striking that in genetic science, connections between generations are also emerging. Until recently, I had thought that all genetic information that is passed on from our parents is stored in our DNA. According to an article in the New Scientist,[6] however, there are clear indications that, apart from our DNA, we also have a kind of genetic manual. This manual transfers the correct information to the genes that not only tells them when they have to activate but also informs the ways in which cells know which particular tissue to develop for their intended function, like in the creation of different organs in embryonic development. Without this epigenetic manual, multicellular organisms would be impossible, because every cell, be it a liver or a skin cell, carries the same genes. This epigenetic manual communicates to the cells the type of cell they are to give rise to.[7] Is it, then, logical that the information we carry in our unconscious loyalties has a place in this epigenetic manual? I have already discussed this possibility in my book Family Constellations Revealed. In the meantime, a lot has happened in the field of epigenetic research. An article published in BBC Health, “Memories Pass between Generations,”[8] demonstrates that mice pass on traumatic experiences to their “grandchildren.” This article was based on an earlier article by Dr. Brian Dias and Dr. Kerry J. Ressler, of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, which was published in Nature Neuroscience. The mice were trained to develop trauma associated with the scent of cherry blossoms. The grandchildren of these originally traumatized mice still had a strong aversion to this smell, normally innocent for mice. Their findings provide evidence of the existence of “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.” This means that traumatizing experiences can affect genetic material and that, in turn, these changes are passed on to subsequent generations. In the aforementioned BBC article, Professor Marcus Pembrey from University College, London, stated that these findings were “highly relevant for phobias, anxiety, and post- traumatic stress disorders.” They provide compelling evidence of the existence of a kind of
- 52. transgenerational memory. He commented, “It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously.” He continued that he suspects we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disruptions properly without developing a multigenerational approach toward them.
- 54. Collective Traumas Affect Our Relationships According to another recent study in behavioral epigenetics, published in Discover magazine by Dan Hurley,[9] traumatic events experienced by our close ancestors leave a molecular scar in the epigenetic manual of our DNA. “Genocide survivors (e.g., the Holocaust), survivors of wars, severe accidents, natural disasters or other traumatic experiences, as well as adults (from all ethnicities) who were raised by an alcoholic or abusive parent…all carry along something more than just the memory of the tragic event.” According to the same research, these scars never completely heal, not even when the events have long been forgotten. They become part of who we are, a molecular residue attached to our genetic material. The DNA remains the same, but psychological and behavioral tendencies are inherited. “You do not only inherit your grandmother’s knobby knees, but also her predisposition to depression caused by the neglect she suffered as a newborn.”[10] Here, we see significant scientific evidence of loyalties, which occurs due to information transfer across generations, as we know from family and relationship constellations. That the scars on our DNA will never disappear, as scientists claim, is not in alignment with my experience. They can disappear or be healed through a profound emotional healing process. Miranda, age thirty-two, has two children by two different men and lives in conflict with her current partner, the father of her second child. “This is the second time my marriage is falling apart. We fight endlessly over trivialities. It was the same with my first partner.” Miranda lives in the Netherlands and is of Surinamese descent. Her mother also has children by different men. When she was a child, Miranda did not have a lot of contact with her father. She does not know much about his family. Her grandmother (mother’s side) did not know her own father either. Miranda also shares the fact that her ancestors, going back five generations, were slaves. In a therapy session with me, she sets up representatives for herself, her current partner, and her parents. Through the representatives, it soon becomes clear that there is real distance and a slightly hostile attitude between her and her partner. This is something Miranda recognizes. The representative for her mother has only known similar relationship dynamics, as has the representative for her father. I ask her to set up two more representatives: a man and a woman representing her slave ancestors. She does this hesitantly, saying, “But that was such a long time ago…” She sets them up at a great distance from the other representatives, so far behind them that the representatives of her current family cannot see them. I ask the representatives for the slave ancestors to say the following: “You are still repeating our fate: we were systematically kept apart even while we were in a relationship and our women became pregnant. We were not allowed to develop family bonds.” Like a cloud obscuring the sun, the uttering of this sentence casts a shadow of pain and sadness over the constellation. The representatives for her mother and father confirm with teary eyes that they
- 55. have indeed repeated the pain and sorrow of their slave ancestors. Whereas with the slave ancestors, family bonding was prohibited by their masters, Miranda’s parents could not establish family bonds because of unconscious loyalties. It is only now that Miranda understands the depth of their trauma and realizes that, unconsciously, she too was carrying and repeating this trauma. In a moving ritual, Miranda gives the heavy fate back to her ancestors and is able to disconnect from her loyalty toward them. She can now look at her slave ancestors and give them a place in her heart without shame. Her ancestors give her their blessing for a long- lasting and wonderful relationship. The great distance and hostility between her and her partner disappears and makes room for joy. According to Nagy, being loyal is intrinsic to being human. His wife and long-standing collaborator, C. Ducommun-Nagy,[11] describes family loyalty as follows: “Whether we like it or not, our family is part of what defines us. Good or bad, it is the soil from which our identity grows. We need it in the same way as a painter needs his canvas in order to paint. Like the thread of an invisible and omnipresent fabric, this loyalty binds us to our family members, to those who have preceded us and those who will follow, beyond the conflicts, rifts and death.”
- 57. Different Types of Loyalty As is clear from the previous examples, there are different types of loyalties. There is direct loyalty, in which we blindly copy the behaviors and conflicts of our ancestors, and there are loyalties that come into existence when family members are traumatized because of exclusion or when someone has been forgotten. There are also split loyalties that come into being, when, for example, a child has to choose between his or her mother and father in a divorce battle. What follows is a description of the different types of loyalties and their impacts on our relationship happiness.
- 59. Direct Loyalties We very frequently see direct loyalties surface in constellations. This type of loyalty is exemplified, for instance, by Barbara, who recognized her mother’s and grandmother’s dismissive attitudes and their tendency to look down on men in Barbara’s own relationships. In fact, through direct loyalty, we repeat the life experiences of our ancestors as if they have passed on a blueprint and mind-set about relationships that we then repeat in our own lives. Whether our ancestors had wonderful and loving relationships or instead were involved in acrimonious divorces, they are our examples. When we come from low-income, hardworking families, we come with a different blueprint than those who come from wealthy families, ones in which family members made money in a creative and relaxed way. We are loyal, and mostly we are not aware of it. Despite inherited beliefs, our loyalty is no spider web in which we are caught as poor threatened flies. The discovery of the role of loyalties in our family relationships allows us to find a new key to understand our choices and behavior. —Catherine Ducommun-Nagy[12] Of course, there might be big differences in the ways different families and family members live out the loyalties within a family—often even between siblings. In our loyalties, we all represent certain aspects of both parents and their ancestors. In one family, a sister is closer to her father and carries his trauma, which resulted from the early death of his mother. A son feels closer to his mother and consequently carries her pain, which resulted from the lack of recognition in her childhood. In another family, one daughter has a good relationship with her mother and struggles with the shared issue of being overweight. Her sister, on the other hand, has married an alcoholic brute who is similar to their father. By doing this, she repeats her mother’s suffering in her own relationship. Robert, age forty-five, is in a marriage that has become devoid of all intimacy and sexuality. This is his greatest frustration. He finds it very difficult to discuss this issue with his wife. “I come from a very Catholic family,” he says. “Intimacy and sexuality were never talked about; you had to find out for yourself. I’ve never seen my parents kiss or hug, and I can’t really imagine that there was a lot of that between them.” Meanwhile, Robert is having an affair with a lover with whom he experiences wonderful intimacy. Feeling guilty, he keeps this a secret from his wife. His constellation confirms that both his parents are very inhibited, especially his father. Robert’s grandparents on his father’s side are the same. His grandfather, in particular, is very inhibited. His grandfather had initially wanted to become a priest, but was prevented from doing so because he was the only son in his family and was therefore expected to take over
- 60. his parents’ farm. Moreover, his parents got him to agree to marry a woman he did not have any feelings for. Through the representatives, it becomes clear that the sexual orientation of Robert’s grandfather was more directed toward men. In his strict Christian family, this was, of course, outright taboo. The constellation reveals that he apparently had a secret relationship with a man, though Robert cannot confirm this as fact. Robert realizes that his grandfather’s marriage never allowed him to experience the intimacy or sexuality he had wished for. The same goes for Robert’s father, who had been raised in a family that had known virtually nothing but distance in relationships. His desire for intimacy had already been nipped in the bud in his youth. He had repeated this in his own marriage, with Robert’s mother. All men in his family lived with the same longing and shared the same pain. Robert is able to free himself from this blind loyalty only after his grandfather and father have made it clear, in the constellation, that they absolutely do not want their (grand)son to repeat their frustration and pain. For Robert, it comes as a relief to hear his grandfather say that it is OK for his grandson to experience wonderful and gratifying intimacy, especially in his marriage. His grandfather could find this only outside of his marriage. He makes it clear to Robert that he no longer has to copy his own pattern of behavior. The constellation shows Robert that he was carrying an inner image that belonged to his male ancestors: an image in which marriage and gratifying intimacy and sexuality do not go together, and it is satisfying only outside of one’s marriage. Robert is able to leave this image with his ancestors, and he now dares to take the first steps to rekindle his marriage.
- 62. Loyalties toward Family Members with a Serious Disadvantage When someone in a family has experienced a serious disadvantage—like a disability or an accident—family members (in following generations) will want to be loyal toward that person, hesitating to live up to their potential. Paul, age twenty-eight, has commitment issues. Two relationships have already failed. He never obtained a higher degree, even though he has the intelligence and skills to do so. Through his constellation, he discovers that he is being loyal to his brother Carl, who has a mental disability and is not able to live an independent life. Paul sets up chairs for his parents, his brother, a possible partner, and himself. Paul “feels” out the places of his mother and father but does not feel anything significant. When he sits on the chair of the possible partner, he feels, from Paul’s side, that there is no interest in a possible long-term relationship. Only when he sits on Carl’s chair does he understand what is happening. In his brother’s place, he clearly feels the loyalty of his “healthy brother” Paul. It’s as if Paul says to his disabled brother Carl, “What you can’t do or have, I don’t want either, because otherwise you will feel your disability even more strongly.” At the same time, Paul realizes that his brother regrets that Paul is not taking full advantage of his opportunities out of loyalty to him, such as getting a degree and living a happy life. Carl prefers to carry his own fate. He wants nothing more than for Paul to have a happy, successful life. Before setting up his constellation, Paul was by no means aware of this loyalty toward his brother. Feeling how painful his unconscious loyalty is for his brother gives him the strength to radically change his life. Jane, age forty-two, is a photographer who is married and has two children, ages nine and seven. Her reason for setting up a constellation is that the “fire” has been absent from her relationship since the birth of their second child. She says she no longer has any sexual feelings toward her partner. He is always working behind his computer (as a graphic designer). She decides on a constellation in an individual setting. Instead of representatives, she uses floor markers with the names of family members. Jane sets up her partner, her mother, her grandmother (mother’s side), and her sexual desire. She puts the marker for her mother about three feet in front of her own, the grandmother two feet behind her mother’s marker, her partner’s to her own right, and the marker for her sexual desire at an angle to her left, about nine feet away from her. She moves from one marker to the next, trying to feel out each one of them. First, she stands in her own place to check whether the constellation feels right as it is. Then she stands in the place of her partner and senses that he feels as if Jane doesn’t see him. In the place of her sexual desire, she feels something similar. There is no regard for her sexual desire. In the place of her grandmother, Jane sees and feels how strongly she is connected to her mother’s mother. In her younger years, her grandmother was very much in love with and then engaged to a young man who died in war, three months
- 63. before their wedding was due to take place. For her, the shock and pain were too much to process. Years later, she married Jane’s grandfather at the insistence of the pastor. For her, the relationship was more of a duty than anything else. She bore him four children. The first two were twins who both died right after birth due to prematurity. This traumatized her even more. She could not cope with their deaths. As a result, she became bitter and hard. She became estranged from enjoying intimacy and from feeling sexual desire and lived the rest of her life “alongside” her husband, in silence and seclusion. To her own dismay, Jane recognizes the same feeling of silence, seclusion, and bitterness in her own relationship. She looks at her partner in the same way her grandmother looked at hers. After giving back the emotional load, namely the silence, seclusion, and bitterness to her grandmother, she feels physical relief, enabling her shoulders and pelvis to relax. In the place of her grandmother, Jane feels that her grandmother is also relieved when she leaves the emotional load with her. She wants nothing more than a happy granddaughter in a satisfying sexual relationship. In the place of her partner, Jane also feels a great change. She describes it as follows: “As if she can really see me, for the first time ever.” And in the place of her sexual desire, the message is also clear: “Finally I belong.” Jane understands her blind love toward her grandmother and how she has denied herself the pleasure that her grandmother had not known either.
- 65. Loyalty to the Excluded and Forgotten Exclusions almost automatically create bonds of loyalty to subsequent generations. Exclusions can be conscious (see the following example); yet in many cases, they are completely unconscious or result from a lack of systemic knowledge. Consider, for example, a family in which one of the three children has died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and the other two are alive. If you ask the parents how many children they have, they will often answer that they have two children. This response is mostly unconscious, often because they do not want to be reminded of painful memories or because they feel some lingering shame and just do not talk anymore about the child who died prematurely. The deceased child is no longer counted among the siblings. This, in fact, comes down to exclusion. Like all exclusions, this one has an impact on the siblings and subsequent descendants (see also chapter “6 A Look Behind the Scenes” on exclusion and other laws operating in families). Of course it is not necessary to talk about a deceased child with just any acquaintances, but it should be a topic that is open for discussion within the family circle, and the existence of the departed child should certainly be discussed with siblings and other close relatives. Joyce, age twenty-seven, is struggling in her marriage. Even though she really loves her partner, she feels trapped and overwhelmed and is not sure if she wants to stay in her marriage. She has come in to set up a constellation, and when I ask her about family details, she says, “Until last week, I didn’t know that I had a sister. My mother has only just told me that before me, another girl was born: my sister, who died of a heart defect three days after being born.” When I ask what effect this newly acquired information has on her, she says, “It’s very confusing for me. I don’t dare tell my mother, but I am a little angry with her. Why didn’t she ever talk about this with me before?” Joyce sets up representatives for herself, her partner, her mother, her father, and, naturally, for her sister who died prematurely. Her parents are quite some distance behind her, her sister is standing opposite her, and her partner is standing about six-and-a-half feet away from her, to her left. He looks at her expectantly. Joyce feels wonder, sorrow, and love for her sister; she is totally smitten by her. Her sister says, “Finally, someone who sees me.” Joyce is amazed by what the representatives are showing her. She suddenly witnesses what she has always felt has been missing from her life but could never put into words. Her sister moves to her right, and they lock in a long embrace. Joyce is happy with her big sister and now realizes that her ignorance about her sister’s existence was keeping her from being happy in her marriage. She understands that, unconsciously, she was very much connected to her sister, and because of that, there was not much emotional space for her husband. Her sister is happy with Joyce being married and enjoying her relationship. What she does need, though, is a place in Joyce’s heart. She wants to be a part of the family like everyone else, even though she died when she was very young.
- 66. In the final constellation configuration, Joyce stands next to her husband, to whom she now feels really connected. Her sister is behind her, and behind her sister, her parents. The parents, too, have managed to give their daughter, who died young, a place in their hearts. In Joyce’s family, the exclusion was unconscious. Her parents might have excluded the deceased child because they were afraid to feel the grief, but it could also have come from an old custom. More than a century ago, it was common for children to die at a young age. One in five children did not reach the age of five. Because they were accustomed to it, people did not pay much attention to it; life just went on. When someone is deliberately excluded from a family, even though it seems justified, particularly strong loyalties arise, characterized by a compulsion to repeat the destructiveness. Preventing a child from engaging in a romantic relationship with his or her true love also comes down to exclusion. Of course, it is a different story when a thirteen-year-old girl wants to be with a twenty-three-year-old man than when a seventeen-year-old wants to be with her Mr. Right. Daniel, age forty-three, calls me for some advice. According to him, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Sophie, is in a relationship with the wrong guy. Even after he strongly urged her to end the relationship, she would not do it. So he chased her out of the house. He thinks he has done the right thing, since Sophie’s partner is a political refugee with little prospect of getting a good job. Moreover, he is dark skinned and Islamic, while Daniel’s family is Caucasian and Catholic. We agree to meet to set up a constellation, and I ask him to bring along essential details about his family history. The first thing he shares when we meet is something he has only just found out. Apparently, his daughter Sophie is the third generation of daughters who have been evicted from home because of their involvement with “the wrong man.” He is perplexed and wonders what is going on. His grandmother (mother’s side) was in love with a man from a different religion. That was enough for her parents to veto the relationship. Daniel’s grandmother would not listen, and as a result, she was evicted and disinherited. The third daughter, Daniel’s mother, married a construction worker against her parents’ will. In their eyes, he was not good enough for her, and for the first ten years of her marriage, she was not welcome in her parental home. Later, little by little, their relationship was accepted. In his constellation, Daniel can feel how everyone is mired in their loyalties. He himself is loyal toward the parents who want the best for their daughters and do not want to consider what the daughters themselves want. In Sophie’s place, he can feel her loyalty toward her grandmother and great-grandmother, who both feel that their partners are not welcome in their family. This is a real eye-opener for Daniel. Shortly after setting up the constellation, he has a talk with Sophie and shares the family story with her. A few weeks later, he invites her and her partner for a barbecue in the backyard. He tells me that he had a good talk with his daughter’s partner and that a lot of his concerns and prejudices have since disappeared. He now accepts Sophie’s relationship.
- 68. Split Loyalties—The Ultimate Dilemma If being loyal to one parent means being disloyal to the other parent, one is seemingly caught in an unsolvable dilemma. This is the painful reality of James, age twenty-seven. His goal is to overcome his addiction to watching porn. He has already tried different strategies to try to quit to no avail. His wife considers it a real addiction and has had enough of it. She feels she is no longer seen or respected as a woman. In his introductory talk with me, James says that his father was an inveterate sex maniac and an occasional drinker. He used to hide porn magazines in secret places in the garage and garden shed. His mother was the opposite: a good woman who did not smoke or drink. She lived a healthy lifestyle and went to church on a regular basis. His parents got divorced twelve years ago. His mother does not want to have anything to do with her former husband. In her opinion, he sets an extremely bad example. James’s father has not coped well with the separation, and he is not doing well. He has nothing good to say about James’s mother either. James opts for a constellation in an individual setting. I ask him to set up three different- colored chairs: one for himself, one for his father, and one for his mother. His parents are far apart. He looks at them both, but due to the distance between them, he cannot see both at the same time. I ask him to first sit in his own chair and feel what is happening there. Next, he sits in his mother’s chair and then his father’s. His constellation shows him that, according to his own inner image, to quit watching porn equals abandoning his father and being loyal only to his mother. That he cannot do. Moreover, for him, continuing to watch porn means giving his father a place. It is his unconscious token of love and respect toward his father. Here, the unconscious, blind love of the child in him and the fact that children have to be loyal to both parents are at play. If one of the parents excludes the other, children feel the compulsion to give the excluded partner a place. In most cases, children do this by copying one or more destructive behaviors of the excluded partner. This means children are communicating to parents that they honor and love them both equally. This is “blind love,” as children do not take into account the wishes and desires of the parent they are being loyal to. For James, the resolution in his constellation surfaces when he sits in his father’s chair and, as the representative of his father, looks at his son. Here he can feel how his father looks at him and at his act of loyalty, watching porn. With that insight, he can look at “his son” and say, “You stay my son, and I will still love you even when you quit watching porn. You can leave the porn addiction with me.” I introduce another chair for James’s grandfather (father’s side) into the constellation and ask James, from his father’s place, to look at his father. What strikes him most from this place is that his grandfather has a similar problem with his wife, James’s grandmother. The grandmother cannot or does not want to satisfy his sexual desire. The grandfather feels
- 69. sexually frustrated. James cannot quite identify the reasons behind his grandparents’ behaviors. What does strike him, though, is the stiff and rigid attitude they have toward each other in their relationship. In any case, in his grandfather’s frustration, James recognizes the same frustration that he has felt all of his life. This frustration and related anger are part of his inner justification for watching porn. James is able to give back the frustration and the anger, and he gets his father’s and grandfather’s permission to have a satisfying sex life. That releases some pressure and tension from his body. Then I ask him to sit in his mother’s chair and find out how it feels to be in that place, as the representative of his mother. Here, he feels that a strong fear of sexuality affects the way his mother relates to James’s father. This fear turns out to be related to her grandmother’s death. She died of childbirth complications while giving birth to her third child. Because of this trauma, James’s mother associates sexuality with a fear of dying, and out of this fear, she rejects her own and her husband’s sexual desires. James also gives back these “burdens” to this part of his family, resulting in even more relaxation and a feeling of peace for him. Next, after James has released his mother’s entanglements, I ask him to sit in his mother’s place, look at his father, and try to feel whether the following statement fits: “What was between me and your father belongs to us; it is part of our loyalties.” James confirms that the sentence fits, and he can see that their mutual attitudes are closely linked. From this same place, I have James’s mother say to him, “You are just a child. I can take it when you love your father.” James, on the chair of his mother, confirms this and says the sentence out loud. Back in his own chair, James feels relief. I ask him if it feels right and appropriate to say to his father, “I stay your son, even when I stop watching porn and leave your sexual frustration with you. You have a place in my heart as my father.” And next, he says to his mother, “What was between you and my father, I leave with the two of you. I cannot carry your conflict. Your fears around sexuality I now leave with you.” It feels appropriate for him to make those statements. Afterward, I ask him to turn his chair around and move it so that there is a greater distance between him and his parents, who remain behind him. The space in front of him symbolizes his own life, and the space behind him, his past. He feels the difference, which is a great relief. I ask him to look back over his shoulder and say to his parents, “I will find my way to a satisfying sexuality. Your frustrations and fears I leave with you and your ancestors. I will now quit the porn addiction and do this out of love for myself and out of respect for my natural sexual desire.”
- 71. Benefit behind Destructive Behavior Nagy assumes that every behavior, no matter how destructive, makes sense in the context of family research in regard to loyalties across generations within the family of origin.[13] In other words, there is a hidden benefit and an underlying cause to all destructive behavior. This can clearly be seen in all examples in this book. Moreover, it shows up in every relationship constellation. The hidden benefit always lies in the loyalty and the carrying of emotional loads. The underlying cause can be found by looking at the unprocessed emotional suffering of ancestors. Our loyalty and the carrying over of suffering gives us, in essence, a safe place within our family and is proof of our belonging and of our gratitude and love toward our parents and sometimes even toward our grandparents or other family members. If someone in the family was excluded, had a great disadvantage, was traumatized or forgotten, a loyalty, also called an entanglement, automatically arises. This bond of loyalty connects the one who was excluded or forgotten with one or more descendants. In constellations, it becomes unmistakably clear that without recognizing the hidden benefit of a situation, one cannot set oneself free from the corresponding destructive behavior. For most people, the idea that every destructive behavior has an underlying cause and a hidden benefit is initially hard to digest. That is understandable. The widely held view on destructive behaviors in relationships is that they are bad and that they result from having a bad or weak character. But those who truly understand Hellinger’s description of the blind love of a child and the power behind loyalties will come to the conclusion that destructive behaviors result from (blind) love. What can have a disastrous impact on our relationships on the one hand is a token of love on the other, as we want to belong within our family of origin. Consequently we can state that behind every destructive behavior hides a message and a learning process. Our destructive behaviors feel as appropriate behaviors as long as we are operating from unconscious loyalties. Here is an example of how Ben and Laura play out unconscious and destructive behaviors in their marriage and why they are a good match. Ben, age thirty-nine, is not sure if his marriage can still be saved. His wife is an alcoholic, which makes for major relationship problems. His constellation confirms his perception of the situation. His wife has turned away from him and is emotionally unavailable. But what he also sees—and what surprises him at first—is that something is being repeated here. His mother was not emotionally available to him either. Her mother, Ben’s grandmother, had lost a child before his mother was born. The child was born prematurely and not viable. The grandmother had suppressed her grief and closed herself off emotionally the moment she became pregnant with Ben’s mother. This meant that Ben’s grandmother was not emotionally available to his mother. She could not provide her with motherly devotion. Ben knows that sense of unfulfillment all too well from his own childhood. His mother could not give him motherly devotion either—or at least, not enough.
- 72. His mother’s emotional isolation, of course, also impacted her marriage. Ben realizes that this is being repeated in his own marriage, where his wife does not seem to be emotionally available to him either. He also comes to understand something else that is very important to him—namely, that he frequently (and demandingly) expects Laura to fill the void he feels as a result of his lack of motherly love. That Laura is not capable of doing this—moreover, that no woman will ever be able to do so—also becomes clear to him. On his father’s side of the family, he recognizes a frustration he himself is very familiar with. In his marriage, his father had suffered from being with a wife who was emotionally unavailable. But this frustration was older. When Ben’s father was sixteen years old, he lost his mother after a long-term illness. In his marriage, Ben’s father repeated his old trauma. Back then, it was an absent mother because of long-term illness and subsequent death; later, it was a wife who was emotionally unavailable. Ben becomes aware of how loyal he was toward his father by the recognition of repeating this frustration in his own marriage. After the constellation, he learns to let go of his loyalties toward his father and mother. Moreover, Ben learns to take care of his own emotional needs, which were not met in his childhood as a result of having had an emotionally absent mother. Ben does this through healing his inner child (“Inner Child Work” will be explained on at the end of this chapter.) in the months following his constellation. All these insights lead to—first and foremost—a more relaxed relationship. After some hesitation, Laura, age thirty-seven, sets up a family constellation as well. Her theme is her relationship problems and her alcoholism. She shares the following details about her family: “I am the oldest of three girls. When I was fourteen years old, my father very unexpectedly died from a ruptured artery in his heart. I could not even say good-bye. Because of what had happened to my father, my mother had a long-term depression and started drinking, which meant that I often had to take care of my younger sisters. My mother had two older brothers. Her mother, my grandmother, had a miscarriage two years after my mother was born. I don’t know much about my father’s side other than that he had two sisters and one brother.” We start the constellation with three representatives: one for her, one for Ben, and one for her alcohol addiction. She places Ben to her left and her alcohol addiction opposite her own representative with a distance of nine feet between them. The latter two look at each other, and their mutual connection becomes clear. After a brief moment, the representative for the alcohol addiction opens his arms and says to Laura, “come here.” The representative of Laura answers the call and nestles into his arms, weeping. Laura follows the constellation and becomes visibly emotional. When I ask her whom she really needs to be comforted by, she has no immediate answer. I ask her to set up her parents. She places her mother sixteen feet away from her. Her mother is not facing her. She is
- 73. looking at Laura’s father. Laura places her father in front of herself, also at quite a distance away, but he is facing the other way. Now she can see how lonely she was as a child. This came about through her parents not being able to provide the necessary parental devotion. For Laura, this is a recognition and confirmation of what she has always felt but has never been able to express. Laura’s representative now looks at her father and feels angry with him. She feels abandoned by him and by his sudden and early death. Her father apologizes, but Laura prefers to stay angry. Her dismissive attitude disappears when I have her repeat the following sentence: “Being angry is easier than feeling the pain.” She understands that her anger is protecting her from deep grief, and only at this point is she able to really feel the grief. This allows her to say good-bye to her father. Laura does this by means of an emotional embrace and a deep bow. Afterward, she feels relieved. Her mother is still “absent.” The constellation reveals that Laura’s mother carries the pain of her mother’s miscarriage. Emotionally, her grandmother was fixed on her lost child, and, out of loyalty, Laura’s mother followed her blindly. The ability of Laura’s mother to provide emotional support was thus limited in the same way as that of her own mother. As a result, she was emotionally unavailable for both her husband and her children, including Laura. By processing these elements in the constellation one by one, Laura’s mother can now look at Laura with genuine understanding and say, “I’m very sorry I abandoned you when you were a child, especially at the time when you needed me most. More than that, you even had to take care of your sisters and me. I now understand how difficult this was for you.” This, too, has a liberating effect on Laura. For the first time in her life, she feels recognition for and confirmation of her suffering. Now she feels that she is really seen. Finally, Laura takes up her own place in the constellation, first in the arms of her parents and, then next to Ben, her husband. It is wonderful to see that they can really “see” each other again. The representative of the alcohol addiction feels he no longer has a place in the constellation. He says, “I am no longer needed here.” For Laura, a lot of puzzle pieces have fallen into place. She can finally mourn her father’s death, and she understands that she was copying her mother’s behavior by seeking comfort in alcohol. It has also become clear to her that she had expected her partner to fill her emotional void, just as Ben had expected her to fill his. Both can now see that underlying their destructive behaviors were patterns of loyalty that fit well together. There were obvious parallels, or in other words, there was a clear reciprocity: in both families, similar painful dynamics were at play. In Ben’s family, it was the suppressed grief over a child of his grandmother, on his mother’s side, who had died early. On his father’s side, it was frustration resulting from a grandmother, emotionally unavailable because of long-term illness and early death. In Laura’s family, on her mother’s side, it was her grandmother’s miscarriage, and on her father’s side, it was her father’s early death. Furthermore, Ben and Laura had both lacked the necessary affection and attention from their mothers. The reciprocity between the parents and the couple that surfaced in the previous constellation is actually part of every relationship constellation. It becomes particularly evident when both
- 74. partners set up a constellation. Reciprocity also becomes visible in constellations that are set up to explore other issues or when a constellation deals with the relationship issues of parents or ancestors. Consider these previously discussed examples, for instance: the behavior of Mark’s parents constitutes victim behavior across generations on his mother’s side, and the dominant behavior stems from emotional isolation following a tragic car accident on his father’s side. Or take the behavior of James’s parents: sexual frustration going back several fraternal generations and, on his mother’s side, the fear of sexuality resulting from her grandmother’s death in childbirth. Time and time again, we find reciprocity at play in love relationships that can be both positive as well as destructive.
- 76. Reciprocity and Loyalty as Essence of Being Human Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. —Anaïs Nin According to Nagy, being in a relationship is the essence of Self, as Self can exist only because of the other. Someone has to see, hear, and feel us, thus confirming our existence. This fact makes us fundamentally dependent on the other. Thus, in reciprocity, in the exact same way, the other is dependent on us. For this, Nagy based his ideas on the work of Martin Buber,[14] who states that relationship is reciprocity. In the fundamental reciprocity of our existential dependence, Nagy finds an ontic[15] dimension. By ontic dimension, he means “a structure, which is inherent to the Self.”[16] According to Nagy, reciprocity is thus inherent to being human, just like breathing, eating, and drinking are. Reciprocity presumes the inevitability of relationships; it is “being in relation.” It is like two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other. In our family relations, we live this reciprocity through blind and bonding love. We do this by repeating not only the good things but also the pain, the suffering, and the destructive behavior of our ancestors in our own lives. By being unconsciously or blindly loyal, we express our gratitude and “invest” in the most essential of relationships. These are, in the first place, our parents and then our siblings, ancestors, partners, and our own children.