Have you ever felt like you're repeating patterns that aren't your own? Perhaps a constant struggle with money that your parents also experienced, a persistent sadness with no clear cause in your own life, or a difficulty in forming healthy relationships that seems to echo past generations.
If this resonates with you, you're not imagining things. You're feeling the weight of invisible loyalties and transgenerational wounds. The good news is that there is a powerful tool to illuminate and heal these deep dynamics: family constellations for healing.
What Exactly Is a Family Constellation?
Imagine your family system as a hanging mobile. Every family member, including those who came long before you, is one of the figures. When each figure is in its correct place and in balance, the mobile is harmonious and moves with grace. But if one figure is excluded, forgotten, or burdened with a difficult fate, the entire system becomes unbalanced. Future generations, unknowingly, will try to compensate for this imbalance, often by repeating the suffering or taking on burdens that do not belong to them.
A family constellation is a therapeutic methodology that brings these hidden dynamics in a family system to light. Created by the German philosopher and therapist Bert Hellinger, it allows us to create a "living map" of our family to see where the order was broken and how we can restore it.
The goal is not to blame the past, but to understand it. By seeing the bigger picture, we can free ourselves from entanglements that have limited us for years.
How Does a Session Work? The Knowing Field
A constellation may seem mysterious at first, but its power lies in a phenomenon known as the "morphic field" or the "knowing field." It works like this:
- The Issue: You (the client) present a problem or a goal you want to work on.
- The Representation: In a group session, you choose other participants to represent members of your family (or concepts like "money" or "success"). In an individual or online session, figurines, objects, or visualizations can be used.
- The Soul's Movement: The representatives, without any prior information, begin to experience sensations, emotions, and postures that reflect those of the real people they represent. This movement reveals the hidden dynamic: Who was excluded? Who is carrying a burden for another? Where was the flow of love interrupted?
- The Healing: The facilitator guides the process, using healing sentences and rearranging the representatives until an image of a solution is found. This new image, where everyone occupies their rightful place with dignity and the fate of others is acknowledged, is imprinted on the client's soul, initiating a profound internal healing movement.
The Orders of Love: The Invisible Laws of the System
Healing in constellations is based on restoring what Hellinger called the "Orders of Love," three fundamental principles that govern all family systems:
- Belonging: Every member of the family has an equal right to belong. No one can be excluded or forgotten, regardless of their actions or fate.
- Hierarchical Order: Those who came before have precedence. Parents come before children. This implies an order of respect that, when altered (for example, a child trying to "save" their parents), creates imbalance.
- Balance Between Giving and Receiving: There must be a balance in the exchange within relationships. Between parents and children, parents give life, and children take it and pass it forward.
When these orders are respected, love flows freely. When they are transgressed, the conflicts and entanglements we see in therapy arise.
What Can You Heal with Family Constellations?
Family constellations for healing are incredibly versatile. They can bring clarity and resolution to:
- Repetitive Patterns: Romantic failures, financial problems, or self-sabotage that repeat cycle after cycle.
- Conflictive Relationships: Especially with parents, children, or partners.
- Unexplained Feelings: Anxiety, depression, guilt, or an emptiness that has no clear origin in your biography.
- Illnesses and Physical Symptoms: When traditional medicine finds no cause or complete solution.
- Professional and Vocational Blocks: Feeling stuck or unable to achieve success.
- Unresolved Grief: Releasing the pain from the loss of loved ones.
Releasing the past does not mean forgetting it.
It means giving it its rightful place, taking strength from your ancestors, and finally, walking toward your own destiny, free from burdens that do not belong to you.
It is a profound act of love, not only for yourself but for your entire family system.
If you feel the call to begin your own journey of discovery, I am here to walk beside you.
