Indra Torsten Preiss - Heal Your Relationship (Family Constellation)

INDRA TORSTEN PREISS

Heal Your Relationship A new way of improving your relationship skills

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Heal Your Relationship A new way of improving your relationship skills

A compelling and often persuasive exploration of an illuminating self-improvement tool. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Kirkus Reviews

Indra Torsten Preiss The Systemic View Series

To all of the women I have been in love with

Marriage remains the most important exploration that a person can undertake. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Søren Kierkegaard

Table of Contents 1 Foreword Acknowledgments and Thanks Read Me Traditional Family Constellations Group-Setting Constellations Individual-Setting Constellations Important Information about Case Studies Cited Important Information about Relationship Constellations Disclaimer 2 Treat the Symptom or the Underlying Cause?

How Bad Is It Really?

Looking at Symptoms or Causes?

Relationships and the Materialistic World View of Science To Look for Meaning or Not? 3 Determinants of Relationship Happiness Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy and the Power of Loyalty The Covert Game of Blind Love and Hidden Loyalty The Magical Love of the Child Bonding Love Loyalty and Science Collective Traumas Affect Our Relationships Different Types of Loyalty Direct Loyalties Loyalties toward Family Members with a Serious Disadvantage Loyalty to the Excluded and Forgotten Split Loyaltiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;The Ultimate Dilemma Benefit behind Destructive Behavior Reciprocity and Loyalty as Essence of Being Human Reciprocity and Science Your Mind-Set Mind-Set and Science What Feels Right The Blame Game, or Dancing around Symptoms Partners Cater to Each Other â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mind-Sets Our Own Unprocessed Pain

Where Is Our Pain Situated?

Healing Your Inner Child 4 Why Do We Enter Relationships?

Relationships as an Evolutionary Process Relationships, a Personal Path to Enlightenment and Awareness Marie and Johnny Till Death Do Us Part Summary 5 What Burdens Relationships, and What Makes Them Flourish?

Men and Women Are Equal Connections Remain All Former Partners Deserve Respect You Marry the Family of Your Partner as Well Mummy’s Boy and Daddy’s Little Princess Mummy’s Boys Daddy’s Little Princess Children Who Stay in Their Parents’ House Intimacy and Sexuality Women’s Dilemma Men Have to Prove Themselves Reconciliation between Men and Women Forgiving Balance of Giving and Taking in Relationships Communication and Feelings in Relationships Primary Feelings Secondary Emotions Systemic Emotions Metafeelings Inequities in Former Relationships Return Relationships between People of Different Cultural Groups The Parental Relationship Takes Precedence over Children Blaming Parents To Marry or Not to Marry?

Relationship Breakup or Divorce Relationships and Abortion Experimental Relationships 6 A Look Behind the Scenes The Conscience The Personal Conscience

The Bonding Facet of Our Personal Conscience The Facet of Balance between Giving and Receiving The Facet of Order The Collective, or Family, Conscience The Bonding Facet of Our Collective Conscience The Facet of Balance between Giving and Receiving in the Collective Conscience The Facet of Order in the Collective Conscience The Transcendental, or Spiritual, Conscience Systemic Family and Relationship Laws Systemic Order and Laws The Family System What Are Entanglements?

What Causes Entanglements?

Parentification The Early Death of a Child Death of a Parent 7 Constellations Methodology Why Is It So Effective?

The Knowing Field The Constellation Representatives The Interrupted Constellation Emotions in Constellations Language Use in Constellations Being a Representative Constellations in the Individual Setting Can Family Constellations Save a Relationship?

Control Thwarts Love 8 What Can I Do Myself?

Table Seating Arrangements The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rightâ&#x20AC;? Table Positions Inner Child Meditation Getting to Know Your Mind-Set Questionnaires Your Mind-Set 9 Preparing for Your Own Constellation Questionnaire and Preparation After Your Constellation Testimonials

Indra Torsten Preiss Appendix: Rebirthing Notes Recommended Literature Recommended Websites

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.

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]

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-toearth 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.

Read Me In this book, I use the concept of family as well as the concept of a family system. With family, I mean parents, siblings, and their own families, as we know it. By the term family system, I am referring to the family as a whole, with all living and deceased relatives included. All excluded and forgotten relatives count as well, accompanied by all of their relationships. To get the entire family system view, we often have to look back three generations or sometimes even further.

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 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Constellations Methodology.â&#x20AC;?

There are two ways to work with constellations: in a group setting or in an individual setting.

Group-Setting Constellations In a traditional family constellation (one that usually takes place during a weekend seminar), the client/seeker (the person undertaking the constellation) poses a question about something in life with which he or she is struggling (e.g., regarding relationships, raising children, or illness). To begin with, the theme or the question being posed is addressed, and relevant facts from the family history are presented. The seeker then chooses a representative for himself or herself and for all others who are involved; this might be his or her mother, father, or partner.

The seeker then places the representatives within the space being used in relationship to each other, according to an inner image and by feel. What is so special is that the representatives, in turn and on their given positions, have access to the feelings and perceptions of the people they are representing. The facilitator (coach/therapist) works in tune with the representatives to find a good solution to the problem so that the natural flow of love can resume. At the end, the seeker is placed in the improved constellation to let the found solution sink in. That way, he or she can become conscious of all the emotional entanglements and loyalties in order to be able to let them go.

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 membersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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 longterm 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.

3 Determinants of Relationship Happiness Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 victimvictimizer 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.

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 posttraumatic stress disorders.” They provide compelling evidence of the existence of a kind of

transgenerational memory. He commented, â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously.â&#x20AC;? 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.

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

have indeed repeated the pain and sorrow of their slave ancestors. Whereas with the slave ancestors, family bonding was prohibited by their masters, Mirandaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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 longlasting 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: â&#x20AC;&#x153;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.â&#x20AC;?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 differentcolored 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

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.”

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Reciprocity and Science Modern brain research shows that our brain is composed of three main parts. The first and oldest part is the reptilian brain, which regulates our basic bodily functions such as breathing and heartbeat as well as reflexes like fight-or-flight responses. The second oldest part is the limbic brain, which regulates our emotional world. The third and newest part is the neocortex, which controls conscious and logical thinking, language, planning, and action. The limbic brain, also called “the emotional brain,” is essential for relationship skills. We have this brain in common with all mammals, yet in people it is exceptionally big and complex. The limbic part of our brain regulates, among other things, emotions and attachment. Whereas reptilians do not take care of their young, as they are survival skilled the moment they emerge from their eggs, we humans have had to develop a very complex emotional interaction with our children, as human babies cannot survive without care and emotional devotion. “The limbic brain is not only the seat of dreams, but also the center of advanced emotionality.” It “collects sensory information, filters it for emotional relevance, and sends outputs to other brain areas thousands of times a day.”[17] It is the limbic brain through which we feel and create reciprocity. “The limbic brain is an emotional magnet. Attractors activate compatible aspects of relatedness and emotionality in others, leaving dormant the incompatible pebbles. We all embody an emotional force field that acts on the people we love, evoking the relationship attributes we know best. Our minds are in turn pulled by the emotional magnets of those close to us, transforming any landscape we happen to contemplate and painting it with the colors and textures they see.”[18] (* By “attractors,” we mean all of the emotional and mental patterns that we have internalized since birth and, as such, include all our loyalties and entanglements.)

What a beautiful description of reciprocity. Somewhere else, in the same book, the authors of A General Theory of Love state this even more clearly and beautifully: “All of us, when we engage in relatedness, fall under the gravitational influence of another ’s emotional world, at the same time that we are bending his emotional mind with ours. Each relationship is a binary star, a burning flux of exchanged force fields, the deep and ancient influences emanating and felt, felt and emanating.”[19] To illustrate their theory, they give an example of a young man who was raised by a fiery, critical mother: “As an adult, he faces a binary universe. If he connects with a woman, she turns out to be his mother ’s younger clone. But a supportive woman leaves him exasperatingly empty of feeling—no spark, no chemistry, no fireworks.”[20] They then elaborate on the example: “The young man with a fondness for fault finding lovers is in even more trouble than he thinks. First he must contend with the mental mechanism that leads him with uncanny precision to a woman who is herself critical. Second, his presence will magnify whatever minatory tendencies his current paramour may possess. Ditto for her: she has chosen her man because he matches an attractor of hers, and she will enhance the matching virtues and vices.”[21] We can conclude that being in relation and, thus, reciprocity is characteristic of human beings.

How do we recognize reciprocity in couple relationships? To illustrate where the answer will lead us, I will give a highly simplified example. Later I will elaborate on this theme.

Imagine a child growing up in a family in which, across generations, children have been raised with little motherly devotion. In turn, the child will look at his mother with the same lack of devotion, as is normal within his family. It is a pattern transmitted across generations.

Later, in his own marriage, there will be the same limited devotion between him and his partner, because that is what he is used to. That is how attractors work. It is his inner image— his mind-set, as I call it—about relationships. As a rule, it is a perfect reciprocal fit to the need of his partner (resulting from the lack of devotion in her childhood). Otherwise, there is no resonance between them, and without resonance, the relationship is not possible. Partners need to mutually recognize themselves in their mind-set; it has to fit for both. If one received a lot of devotion and the other very little, they are not a good match. The partner who is used to receiving a lot of devotion will not feel seen or respected by the partner who is used to receiving a lot less devotion. The first will end the relationship because it does not feel right to him or her.

The following is a condensed example of a constellation with typical reactions when reciprocity is uncovered. Two representatives, a man and a woman, stand facing each other. It is obvious that there is a lot of tension between them. When I ask how he feels, the man responds thusly: “She drives me crazy. I am really angry with her.” I suggest that he follow with “I feel really angry with you.” The man does this and confirms that it feels right. The woman also nods in agreement. Then I ask the man to say “I am helpless.” That also feels right for him. The woman begins to smile. She then says to me, “I am also so angry, and I just can’t and won’t allow him into my heart anymore.” I ask her to say “I am angry and close myself off out of revenge.” She confirms that this feels right, and then the man replies, “That makes me so mad.” While the man is saying this, a triumphant smile breaks out on the face of the woman.

In the further course of the constellation, it is clear that the woman carries a feeling of anger toward men that has been a theme in her family over several generations. The man was loyal to his father, who had suffered badly by his exclusion as a consequence of the divorce from his wife. After these entanglements have been resolved and are given back, I ask the man first and then the woman to say to one another “We are on equal footing in our perpetrator and victim game.” Both say this and look each other in the eye. Then I ask the man to say “I wanted you as my wife, I chose you to be my wife, and I have committed myself to you.” The woman is asked to repeat a similar statement. After saying these statements, they look at each other in astonishment. They both nod and say, “That’s right.” They smile at each other. The woman says, “Actually, he is a darling.” The man says, “I just love this woman.” They move closer to each other and stand together, clearly happily reunited.

Your Mind-Set Unresolved dissonances in the relation of the character and disposition of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child, and constitute his inner sufferings.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Every relationship and family constellation shows that we carry an inner image of our family.

This inner image is generally hidden from our conscious thinking and has to be understood as both an emotional and a mental image. The basis of this internalized image is formed by all positive and negative ancestral life experiences, in addition to our own childhood experiences and traumas. Very frequently, our own childhood experiences and traumas reflect the life experiences of our ancestors. It is a kind of mind-set that we inherit from our family. We need this as a blueprint to navigate through our social and relational lives.

Imagine you are looking at your nuclear family and the direct line of ancestors with a healthy inner distance: your brothers and sisters, your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and the generations before them. The further back you go, the more likely it is that you know them less. Many of them will already have died. One thing you can be sure of, though, is that they all had their own lives and experiences, no matter how long or short their lives were. Try to see the life of each and every family member as a compilation of life stories, like in a movie. Over different generations, you see a great number of lives pass by. Understand fully that the lives of your parents and ancestors were necessary to make your life possible. Your existence here on earth is therefore inextricably bound up with theirs.

All of these lives, with their ups and downs, successes and failures, euphoria and despair, make for a unique dimension of experiences. So much shared love, so much suffering, so much guilt felt, and so much pain carried. See this enormous volume of life experiences, both the suffering and the good fortune, for the body of information it is. This is the information that your ancestors were able to pass on to you and that forms the basis of your own blueprint, your mind-set for this life. This treasure trove of experiences, deeply hidden and, for most people, operating on an unconscious level, makes up our world view. It provides us with basic notions about all aspects of life: what relationships are supposed to look like, how to behave and feel toward one’s own and the other sex, how easy or difficult life is, and how much happiness, creativity, and success are part of life. If we look at the dimension of experiences our ancestors lived, we can see the context in which our loyalties operate. The degree of happiness, love, and success they experienced shows us what is considered “normal” for us and defines what we can or dare allow ourselves to have. What they knew, we know and feel familiar with. (Re)living this dimension of experience, in other words, manifesting more of the same in our own lives and relationships, is our deepest expression of gratitude toward our parents and ancestors.

At best, we continue and build upon their successes, and we take the next step toward a more

loving, more conscious, and more authentic life. Yet, since we also have traumatized, unhappy, fearful, and frustrated ancestors and are equally loyal to their suffering, relationship conflicts, and limited happiness, we choose to also share in their unhappiness, fears, and frustrations. We do this out of blind love and with a good conscience. Unconsciously, all of this seems so self-evident that we do not generally question any of it, as it is part of our blueprint, our inherited mind-set. It is this dimension that we really refer to when we say “Such is life!”

In short, the destructive elements in the lives of our ancestors also live on in us. Repeating their destructivity in our own lives is both an act of loyalty (blind love) and an act of gratitude.

It is precisely the self-evidence that we feel when we are being loyal that makes it difficult to see whose suffering, grief, fear, or whatever we are carrying and repeating in our own lives.

When we say “I am like this,” what we are really saying is “I am living out my loyalties; I am part of my family story.” Underlying the “like this” of the previous phrase is our mind-set.

Through logical deduction, we can thus assume that most of our destructive behaviors stem from our loyalties. The example constellations provided in this book show us how this works in everyday life.

Mind-Set and Science The authors of A General Theory of Love do not refer to it as “mind-set”; they explain it as follows: “In the first years of his life, as his brain passes from the generous scaffold to the narrow template, a child extracts patterns from his relationships. Before any glimmerings of event memory appear, he stores an impression of what love feels like. Neural memory compresses these qualities into a few powerful Attractors—any single instance a featherweight, but accumulated experience leaves a dense imprint. That concentrated knowledge whispers to a child from beneath the veil of consciousness, telling him what relationships are, how they function, what to anticipate, how to conduct them.”[22] Here I see obvious parallels with my view on what defines a mind-set, with the only difference being that the authors apparently are not (yet) aware of unconscious loyalties and entanglements and their impact on our lives. For example, an emotionally unavailable mother passes her emotional unavailability on to her baby via his or her limbic brain. That is clear to the authors. But if the mother is (unconsciously) emotionally unavailable for her baby—thus, when she has little to give to her child—then where is she (unconsciously) “emotionally present”? Perhaps she is emotionally present with her grandfather by carrying his war trauma.

Perhaps she is connected with and loyal to her mother, who was also emotionally unavailable as a result of not being able to mourn her older sister ’s death. Whatever the reason for being (unconsciously) emotionally unavailable, it has an impact on children and becomes part of their mind-set.

What Feels Right Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

—Carl Gustav Jung

As long as we do not know about loyalty and entanglement dynamics, whatever our mind-set considers appropriate is what feels right to us. Unconsciously, we act from our loyalties (blind love) and therefore reason in the following way: “If that is the way my ancestors conducted their marriage or relationship affairs, then that is appropriate for me as well.”

Through this unconscious reasoning, we repeat their destructive behaviors and do so in good conscience.

“The last thing a fish discovers is the water in which it swims,” says Piet Winkelaar in Zingeving en Wereldbeschouwing (Meaning and World View). He explains, “The things that define you, you do not usually see. Your mind-set is the invisible pair of glasses you wear. It’s also called a paradigm. It determines your world view and you as a human being and it is so familiar that you know nothing else.”[23] It is important to realize that destructive behaviors, which your partner lives out for you as the result of loyalties, in your name and in the name of love, are unconscious. Without serious conscious effort, they are not easy to detect. Moreover, the self-evidence we feel when manifesting our loyalties and entanglements leaves most people clueless about the powerful impact these have on their (relational) lives. Also, the law of reciprocity, which makes our partner confront us with our own destructive aspects, can cause confusion as long as we are not conscious of its functioning. It therefore comes as no surprise that our own destructive aspects feel as if they come from outside ourselves rather than from within. We reason that it is the other who acts so strangely or destructively. Or as Jean-Paul Sartre so aptly put it, “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (Hell, that is other people).

Sometimes our loyalties make us or our partners act in ways that we consider incompatible with our conscious reasoning. Manifesting unconscious, destructive entanglements or loyalties can even make us feel possessed. In such cases, we say things like “I don’t know what came over me.” In extreme cases, it can feel as if a demon has taken hold of us.

Understandably, people are inclined to fight it, but fighting demons only makes them stronger.

A resolution or liberation from destructiveness cannot be achieved by fighting it.[24] It is precisely because we intuitively feel that our destructive behaviors are not our own that it becomes easy and seems logical to project them onto others. This seems, indeed, to be the most obvious response. It is, however, the start of the blame game: the issue of guilt then enters the picture. We feel that this guilt, of course, belongs to the other, and we are mere victims. This makes us feel powerless, and a resolution or change seems unlikely or even impossible.

Helen, age thirty-three, has been married for eleven years. She is faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to file for divorce. She does not feel seen or respected by her partner. They have endless arguments, each blaming the other. This she knows all too well from her parents’ relationship. They too had and still have endless discussions full of blame and accusations. She knows that her mother does not feel understood by her husband. It is clear to her that she is repeating her parents’ relationship conflicts in her own marriage, but she wants to know how she can stop this.

The representatives for her mother and father stand opposite each other in the constellation.

The tension between them is tangible. Helen’s mother grew up with an older sister who suffered from leukemia for years and eventually died from the disease. For Helen’s mother, this meant that, from the age of five, her parents’ attention was completely taken up with her ill sister. Helen feels how difficult this was for her mother when she was a child. Because of the lack of attention, her mother became angry and felt she was not seen. After her sister ’s death, her parents started to blame each other, both saying the other had not done enough to save her sister.

Helen now sees that blaming each other prevented her parents from really mourning the death of their child. Blaming was a way to avoid the powerlessness they felt over the death of their daughter. The death of her sister did nothing to alleviate the lack of attention her mother received from her parents. Out of loyalty toward her mother, Helen carried her mother ’s load and, in turn, also felt she was not really seen or respected. She realizes that her husband does not stand a chance as long as she remains loyal toward her mother. At the same time, she sees her own role in their mutual struggle. This surprises her, as she really thought that she was in the right.

Helen’s father was an illegitimate child and was raised solely by his mother in the first years of his life, until his mother married another man. The mother blamed her son (Helen’s father) for having ruined her life. Because of her illegitimate child, she had to leave school early and could not further her education. From his earliest childhood recollections, Helen’s father did not know anything but reproach and accusation. In his marriage to Helen’s mother, he continued his childhood experiences.

Helen recognizes her father ’s deep pain, resulting from his mother ’s unjust accusations. Of course a baby can never be blamed for a woman becoming pregnant. Helen understands that she has carried all of these “emotional loads” and that they have played a definitive role in her relationship conflicts, as she too felt like a victim of reproach and felt she was neither seen nor respected. Helen can let go of these loyalties by seeing clearly that her parents do not want her to bring their “loads” into her marriage. That comes as a great relief to her and gives her the peace and courage to stay in her marriage, but now without the “load” of reproach and accusation.

We play the blame game as long as we do not face up to our own loyalties. All

accusations are seeded in our familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s past.

The Blame Game, or Dancing around Symptoms That’s the problem with truth. The truth is relentless. It won’t leave you alone.

It keeps creeping up on you from every side, showing you what’s really so.

That can be annoying.

—Neal Donald Walsch, Conversations with God

You could go through all of the examples in this book and determine the guilty one in each relationship. But if you take a close look, you will find only people who are unconsciously loyal toward the destructive behaviors of their ancestors. Mutual blaming occurs on the level of symptoms. Getting bogged down in allegations and accusations is more likely to result in an acrimonious divorce than in any improvement to the relationship. It never leads to real conflict resolution. Mostly, accusations are part of the loyalties that make up your mind-set, and similar reproaches and accusations are likely to be found in your family of origin.

For example, if it is part of your mind-set that men or women (or partners in general) are unreliable, it is only normal to attract a partner who fits that mind-set. Moreover, your partner will confirm your inner image of unreliability. Your partner loves you and out of love, of course, wants to support your inner (unconscious) mind-set. He or she wants to live up to the image you carry. In other words, your partner cannot but act in a way that fits your belief and, out of love, manifest the necessary unreliability, such as being unfaithful. Who is the guilty one in that case? Who is the wrongdoer or the victim, and moreover, who has the right to blame the other? This is reciprocity in action.

Partners Cater to Each Other’s Mind-Sets It might be painful for many to realize (but it does not make it less true) that their partners (including exes) always fit their mind-sets. It is important to understand that a potential partner can only be perceived as such if he or she fits your mind-set. The greater the resemblance to your inner image, the stronger the attraction will be. That is the power of reciprocity. In constellations we see, time and time again, that destructive behaviors fit together seamlessly, like ultraprecise gears in an expensive Swiss watch. It can also be explained through the law of resonance. When two strings are tuned and you hit only one, the other one vibrates along.

When two people are in tune with each other, they are in resonance and thus in reciprocity.

The feeling that we experience in such moments is something most of us know well. It is what we call being in love.

Because both people voluntarily commit to each other and have mind-sets that resonate, they both have the same level of responsibility. This is also the case when responsibility takes on the disguise of the victim-perpetrator game. When someone carries a strong victim loyalty and wants to be truly loyal toward his ancestors, that person needs a perpetrator. Without a partner who takes on that role, this person cannot manifest his or her loyalties. So again, who is the perpetrator, and who is the victim?

Justifying one’s destructive behavior or apologizing by means of family loyalties does not work of course. We are and remain at all times responsible for our own destructive behaviors and also for not being able or not wanting to take on our responsibilities. In any case, our behavior becomes part of our descendants’ mind-set. We do not have any control over that.

We can do whatever we want, but we have no control over the consequences.

—Bert Hellinger

So get to know your mind-set and recognize the ancestral dramas and destructive behaviors you are repeating in your own life. This is the key to living a more loving, conscious, authentic life and having positively reciprocal relationships. The most efficient way to take mindful control of your life and to get to know your mind-set is to find out to whom you are being loyal in the situations in which you feel victimized or in which you blame your partner.

Which of your ancestors experienced similar feelings of being victimized? Were there ancestors who similarly accused their partners or those who felt just as powerless, not respected, or not understood as you?

What about any ancestors who got stuck in similar situations and experienced infidelity, felt they were unable to express themselves creatively, lived in fear or poverty, or were also traumatized? How many of their difficulties are you repeating in your own life? Do not forget that everyone you relate to is part of your mind-set. Being in a relationship implies reciprocity (Buber). Valuable tips to map out your own mind-set can be found in chapter eight, “What Can I Do Myself?”

Lynn, age thirty-two, is subject to occasional domestic violence but cannot get herself to disconnect from her partner. While exploring her loyalties, she recognizes that her mother also suffered at the hands of a violent and drunken husband. Lynn had not known anything else when growing up. Lynn’s mother had similar stories to share about the relationship difficulties of her parents. It turned out that Lynn had copied her mothers’ and grandmothers’ mind-sets concerning men: relationships with men were bound to be troubled.

When Lynn can see and feel how loyal she was to her mother and grandmother by copying their mind-sets about men in her own marriage, she gains an important insight. She recognizes that she had copied their relationship conflicts by being as miserable in her own marriage as they had been in theirs. And she recognizes that her husband’s behavior is a perfect match to her own. Moreover, he also mirrors her relationship with her father. Her attitude toward her husband was the result of the prejudice she carried against men. Only by recognizing and giving back this “load” can she see her husband for who he really is. She comes to understand how her own bitchy behavior had added to the conflicts.

Her husband, Michael, age thirty-six, was raised without having his father around. His parents divorced when he was three years old. He had heard nothing but negative things about his father from his mother. Michael had not seen his father for years.

In his constellation, Michael recognizes that he was carrying not only his mother ’s emotional load toward his father but also the frustrations, anger, and powerlessness of his father toward his mother. Moreover, he comes to understand that he played out the latter in relation to his wife, Lynn. The fact that this “load” he carried toward women was much older than he realized became clear to him when he saw the effect that his grandmother ’s departure had had on his father when his father was thirteen years old. Michael’s father had not been able to come to terms with the absence of his mother. He had become stuck in an emotional space of anger and powerlessness and felt abandoned by his mother.

His father, Michael’s grandfather, could not help him cope with his mother ’s absence. On the contrary, he had nothing good to say about women. “You have to rule women with a rod of iron” and “Women will not give you what you want from them, so you might as well use violence to get it” were among his creeds. With these insights, Michael is able to leave the pain and feelings of powerlessness and anger with his father and the oppressive attitude toward women with his grandfather. He also lets go of the mutual destructiveness of his parents. The biggest eye-opener for him is that his wife really loves him and that she wants to give her love to him freely. This she can only do when he leaves the old attitudes of anger and distrust with his ancestors.

Both Lynn and Michael had repeated what they knew—their ancestral mind-sets on relationships—in their own relationship. In other words, it was something that was considered normal across generations in their families on the level of relationships. By recognizing this, they could let go of their loyalties one step at a time and learn to live together more harmoniously. They also became aware of the fact that their mind-sets were indeed a perfect

match. This insight was very liberating for both of them. Realizing that they were equals in their struggles meant a lot to them. It had always been fifty-fifty, or as they can now say with a smile, “We are worthy of each other.” With these insights, they have arrived in the “new land” of reciprocity. This land is free (from the load) of guilt, accusations, and, especially, from the duality of good and evil. It is a land brimful of insights, learning processes, and pleasant surprises, where love can flow between people, unhindered and in a more sustainable way. In this land of reciprocity, responsibility for the self is the rule of thumb. Self-awareness is really just that: becoming aware of the Self through proper self-examination and healing the unresolved conflicts our ancestors have passed on to us. This has a decisively positive impact on the quality of our attitudes in relationships. It provides us with insights about our own further evolutionary development. To reach this stage, we have already come a long way in my new vision on relationships, and this is where we have a real chance to remedy our relationship patterns in order to heal our relationships.

Our Own Unprocessed Pain Love starts with self-love; only when one has an excess of love can one give love away—just as a stove can only give off warmth once it has been heated up.

—Louis Paul Boon, Flemish writer and journalist, 1912–1979

The second aspect having a decisive impact on the happiness and harmony of our relationships concerns our own childhood experiences. A lot of people carry unprocessed pain or traumas from their childhood into adulthood. These originate, for example, in a lack of parental devotion, recognition, or support. If the parents themselves were traumatized, addicted, or psychologically unwell, or if they abused their children, it is very likely that their children will have been traumatized as well. Our own childhood experiences always mirror the entanglements and loyalties that are present in our family. As such, a lack of devotion or possible traumatic events we experienced as a child result from ancestral entanglements and loyalties.

For most people, the powerful impact that these ancestral loyalties and entanglements have on our lives is new. That also goes for most psychotherapeutic ideologies. They start from the old paradigm that it is only our upbringing—or more specifically, the first years of our lives—that have an impact. Those who are familiar with constellations immediately understand the limitations of this view.

We can free ourselves from loyalties and entanglements by working through them ourselves through setting up our relationship or family constellations. We are then, of course, still left with our own experiences and traumas, such as the painful memory of the lack of devotion from our mother or father. Take, for example, the emotionally unavailable mother in Ben’s story (link). From this constellation, Ben learned to let go of the destructive loyalties toward his mother and father. His own longing, resulting from a lack of devotion, was not resolved, however, through his constellation. People like Ben, who did not get enough parental devotion, often look to relationships to fill this void. Frequently, they demand from their partners what their parents—in Ben’s case, his mother—could not provide or at least could not sufficiently provide. Expecting their relationships to take on that task will never work. In Ben’s case, he carried an internalized image of his absent mother in his mind-set. That obliged him to choose a partner who was just as absent as his mother was in her relationship toward him. Even if the partner of his choice was not really that absent as a person, by being in a relationship with Ben, she could not but comply with his internalized image. Of course, the power of reciprocity is at play here as well. Inevitably, his partner will confront him with the sense of unfulfillment and lack he experienced as a child. That will prompt a lot of emotions in Ben—emotions he felt as a child from the period in which he experienced the sense of unfulfillment and lack. These emotions can range from sadness to despair and anger

to fury. The little Ben, or his “inner child,” who experienced the original sense of lack, then took over for the adult Ben, and his sadness, despair, anger, and fury were aimed at his partner instead of at his mother. This is something that frequently happens in relationships, and as a rule of thumb, no matter how loving the partner is, he or she will never be able to set right what went wrong in the partner ’s childhood.

To reiterate, a partner cannot but confront you with the unprocessed emotions from your childhood. If part of your mind-set concerns lack of devotion or recognition, it goes without saying that you will attract a partner who matches your mind-set. Your partner loves you and feels that he or she has to meet your mind-set to be in a relationship with you. By doing so, he or she will confirm your unconscious internalized mind-set out of love. He or she will comply with the belief you carry. Claiming that the other person doesn’t care about you, doesn’t see you, or something similar is, of course, useless when reciprocity is considered.

If the (reciprocal) confrontation with your own sense of lack in a relationship is not recognized as a prompt to consciously process and heal your old pain, grave consequences for the relationship are likely.

If a partner nonetheless tries to provide what one of the parents could not, a shift in the relationship occurs. The partner who gives ends up in a place not conducive to love in a couple relationship. He or she becomes a kind of substitute parent instead of a partner.

Meanwhile, the partner on the receiving end winds up in a subordinate position. This means the partner relationship shifts into a parent-child relationship. If the couple does not realize this in due time, the partner who ends up in the position of the child “enters puberty” and will eventually leave the parent-child relationship. See also, “Balance of Giving and Taking in Relationships,”(link).

Through his constellation, Ben (link) has become aware of his own sense of lack and subsequently takes steps in order to heal himself. In his sessions, he lives through different key moments from his childhood that were especially painful for him. By connecting to his inner child, he feels how much he lacked warmth and devotion as a child. From the moment he dares to feel the suppressed pain of his inner child, he learns how important it is to stick up for his inner child and give him a place within. Feeling the pain that resulted from the lack of devotion opens the way for him to get in touch with the anger he felt toward his mother. Step by step, it becomes clear that he deeply suppressed this anger as a child (as often happens with suppressed emotions, they later surface in relationships). This anger was subsequently redirected toward Ben’s partner and not at his mother, because, as an adult, he feels sympathy for his mother, thinking, “The poor woman has already had such a hard time…”

He then understands that having internalized the unavailability of his mother resulted in him ignoring his own inner child all those years, just like his mother had done to him. In other words, he repeated his mother ’s attitude in relation to his own inner child. By feeling his pain and giving space to his childhood anger and by expressing it fully in a safe space (during a

session on cushions), he feels more self-respect.

Ben learns to listen attentively to his inner child—his needs and vulnerabilities. As a result, the “little Ben” inside himself (his inner child) feels understood, respected, and seen for the first time ever. The adult Ben can finally meet the needs and longings of the little Ben. Step by step and with great patience, the adult Ben gives little Ben what he needs. The heavy feeling of “I never get what I want anyway” disappears from his mind-set, together with corresponding muscle tension in his neck and chest area, making room for a peaceful joy. By taking responsibility for satisfying the needs of his inner child, his demanding demeanor toward his partner, Laura, disappears. The disharmony in their relationship largely disappears as well as a result.

Where Is Our Pain Situated?

As mentioned earlier, our limbic brain is the center of our emotions. It constantly collects sensory perceptions, filters them for emotional relevance, and continuously sends outputs to the other parts of the brain.[25] From the outset, every child forms patterns based on relational experiences via the limbic brain. All impressions leave traces in the limbic brain; [26] painful experiences, like a lack of devotion, leave behind powerful ones. Together, all these emotional experiences provide the child with an image (in his or her mind-set) of how much love, devotion, or recognition is available for him or her. The child’s own relational experiences communicate how relationships should be, how they work, and how much love and attention is to be expected. Even before the child has acquired a conscious memory, he or she already has a clear impression about what love feels like. This is how our emotional image of the world of love and relationships is formed.

Our neocortex, the part of our brain responsible for conscious, rational thinking, interprets and translates our emotional world view in terms of thoughts and (mental) convictions. This creates fixed thought patterns. These thought patterns are unconscious and part of our mindset and world view. We are firmly of the opinion that this thought pattern, based on our mental and emotional world view, is our reality. If, for example, there was a lack of devotion, we might form convictions such as “They don’t want me” or “They don’t see me.” In our early days, it might concern only our parents, but later, via our mind-set, we project our convictions onto the world, our social environment, and most definitely our relationships.

In response to the pain felt by not receiving enough attention, dedication, or recognition, for example, the child comes up with a makeshift solution, pulling up an inner emotional wall to protect him or herself from further pain. The child does not want to feel the loss anymore; the pain was too much. It is as if a decision has been made along the lines of “I never want to feel this pain again. Never again do I want to be this vulnerable.” The inner wall and resulting inner decision also become part of our mind-set.

On a physical level, we manifest this emotional world view in the form of chronic muscle tension, with its thought patterns and inner convictions. Over the years, we build up a “character armor,” as Wilhelm Reich[27] calls it. This armor becomes visible in our bodies.

Prone shoulders show a fear to open up, while inflated chests, showing macho posturing, are some examples evidencing a wall around the heart. In the pelvis area, we collect tensions around sexuality, while a stiff neck is mostly a sign of suppressed anger. All of these chronic muscle tensions make us rigid. For the experienced therapist, the body, with its chronic tensions, is an open book, telling us a lot about unprocessed emotions and fears.

Through all of these chronic muscle tensions, we try (as mentioned earlier) to protect ourselves from the world out of fear of repeating pain or loss. When a partner then enters our life, we are unable to open up (fully) for fear of repeating old pain. At the same time, we certainly want our partner to give us what we have been longing for since our childhood days.

However, as we carry old experiences into adulthood, we become suspicious. We prefer to hide behind our safe wall. We reason that by opening up to the love and attention of our true love, we open up the old loss and pain associated with that. As a baby or child, it was too painful, so we want to keep it away by staying behind our safe wall. Our partner loves us and would love to share this love with us, but he or she runs into this wall, which cannot be penetrated from outside. He or she is, in fact, kept at a safe distance. As a rule, we cannot allow more of a partner ’s love and attention than we were used to receiving in our childhood.

This means we keep our beloved partner at a distance and repeat our childhood experience.

This is the vicious circle wherein most people are more or less stuck. But there is a way out, and that is to allow old, suppressed feelings to surface and to really feel and process them. In other words, to wade through the “swamp of our soul.”

In fact, a lot of people suffer from an attachment disorder. It is a widespread social problem.

Our natural desire for attachment and connection, affection, attention, and recognition has been damaged to a large extent. This is because our parents could not meet our needs for one reason or another. It was not done out of ill will but rather as a result of their own traumas and unawareness, as we often see in constellations. This lack of awareness as to what babies and small children really need is commonplace in our society. We usually make sure we give our children the best bottle feeding, excellent medical care, a beautiful nursery, and, to show how proud we are of our little princes or princesses, we take them for a walk in the park in a fancy pram. Materially, they are usually very well taken care of, but we often dump them, shortly after birth, in a childcare center and give them only half an hour of quality time daily. We are convinced that we are doing a good job and that we are giving the best of ourselves. We are caught in the rat race and enjoying technological progress with all of its gadgets, social media, and faraway holiday destinations. Babies do not need any of that. Millions of years of human development have imprinted a fixed pattern in our brains, as has been scientifically proven. Yet this pattern is hardly being respected in our current way of raising children. The consequences for our society, especially in terms of relationship happiness, are equally disastrous, but they are not really recognized due to the fact that they are so widespread.

When a society foils limbic mechanisms, it unleashes a string of afflictions whose pathognomonic patterns are part of daily American life.

—A General Theory of Love[28]

The British psychiatrist John Bowlby[29] was the first to note that a loving connection is as important as physical food.[30] This was during a time when psychiatrists, educators, and pediatricians (most notably, Dr. Spock[31]) held the general belief that providing children with emotional devotion or hugs or having them sleep with their parents at night would turn them into weak, incompetent, and emotionally dependent adults. As a result, Bowlby was ridiculed and mocked by his fellow psychiatrists. In the meanwhile, we have learned, from hundreds of scientific research efforts, that Bowlby was right about his attachment theory.

Strangely enough, none of these research findings have profoundly impacted our cultural,

social, or psychological patterns on nurturing and upbringing. Here, too, loyalties seem to play a determining role. Parents who, as babies, did not receive the devotion and attention necessary for a babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emotional (limbic) brain to properly develop cannot pass it on to their descendants. This means we keep passing down deficits across generations. The only way out of this vicious circle is a deep coming-into-awareness process so that we can let go of our lack of attachment, affection, attention, and recognition. This can be achieved through therapies that allow us to process old emotions and fill the voids originating in childhood.

Therapies such as relationship and family constellations, primal therapy, voice dialogue, rebirthing, inner child work, or the like (see further down) help us to safely let go of old pain.

These therapies allow suppressed emotions to surface, one layer at a time. Expressing and sometimes physically living out these feelings relaxes our body. This has a liberating effect, as chronic muscle tensions disappear. Moreover, our limiting thought patterns become conscious. We relive certain key moments that have left deep impressions on us or have traumatized us. This can be a lack of attention or warmth, such as nights where we, as babies, were left lying utterly aloneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and lonelyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in our cots or perhaps a time when we were bullied at school. This coming-into-awareness process can put old convictions into perspective. We understand and see that our beliefs resulted from our early childhood years and from our family loyalties. When we learn to let go of these loyalties or entanglements and heal the wounds of our inner child, different experiences are possible. Step by step, we learn that it is now safe to open up emotionally in relationships. An immediate result is that the reciprocity in our relationship or our marriage changes for the better. As I see it, a very important aspect is the healing of our inner child.

Healing Your Inner Child The fact that many people live with unfulfilled desires from childhood is clear. At that time, we were completely dependent, not only in terms of our survival but also with regard to receiving attention, dedication, and love. It is during our early years that most unfulfilled needs arise. We try to fulfill these later in our lives. We often do this by the demands we make on our surroundings, especially our partners. Childhood is the stage at which our personality and mind-set are formed. In this phase, everything that we are “offered,” via loyalties and upbringing, determines our future, including the nature of our future relationships. It is in this phase of our lives that our parents have given us everything they were able to—relative to what they themselves received when growing up, subject to their loyalties and entanglements.

Blaming your parents for coming up short turns you into a victim. People who accuse their parents generally use such accusations as an excuse for not taking responsibility for their own failures in life. Sometimes this is tied up with revenge, and people say, “You have not given me what I needed, and therefore, I am now going to screw up my life, and you’re to blame!”

People with such revengeful feelings are likely to themselves end up with “screwed-up” or “failed” lives.

For a lot of people, it seems easier to project unfulfilled needs onto the outer world, such as partners and friends. In other words, they prefer to blame others for their own emotional shortcomings. Millions of people do this, resulting in the pandemic nature of relationship conflicts.

If you want to improve your relationships and keep your life on track, thank your parents for what they were able to give you. Despite failing in some ways, they were successful in their gift of life, and you will now take care of the rest yourself. This attitude empowers. A good way to take care of yourself is to take responsibility for your inner child.

When I refer to the inner child, I mean the children we once were, from birth into adulthood.

This child is still very much alive in us, even if we are not always aware of it. In fact, most of the time, it is very repressed, ignored, and abandoned. Basically, this child represents our vulnerabilities. All of our unfulfilled desires can be found within our inner child.

I have developed an inner child meditation for you, which provides all that is missing or unfulfilled in your inner child and thus in yourself. You can find the Inner Child Meditation here.

When you give yourself what you need, you fill your emotional void with self-love and cultivate true self-responsibility. By doing so, you are bound to improve your ability to be more successful in relationships. You start creating your own path in life, instead of being the victim of your circumstances (your family, parents, upbringing, partner, and so forth).

I will summarize here what, in my experience, is determinative for happiness in relationships: Loyalties and entanglements are intrinsic to being human.

Loyalties and entanglements are mostly unconscious and also include the destructive behaviors of our ancestors.

Our loyalties and entanglements with family members have a profound impact on our relationships.

For the proportion of our emotions that are tied up in entanglements, we are emotionally unavailable in our relationships.

Destructive behaviors in our couple relationships are, in fact, a token of love toward our ancestors.

Destructive behaviors in our relationships carry meaning. They lead us to unprocessed life experiences—those from our ancestors and those from our own childhood.

Our love relationships are characterized by reciprocity.

Our parents provide us with a mind-set. This mind-set reflects ancestral life experiences (across generations), plus our own experiences.

The mind-set of our partner, in a couple relationship, has to match our own.

Reciprocity is a prerequisite for falling in love with others.

Because a partner in a love relationship has to meet the other person’s mind-set, he or she also has to manifest the destructive aspects of the other’s mind-set.

The other partner does the same for him or her, in perfect reciprocity.

Accusations and blame games are useless, as they do not lead to solutions. Frequently, they are part of our mind-set.

We are conscious beings, and as such, we have and make choices. This implies that we are at all times responsible for our choices, whether we choose to accept this or not.

Partners in love relationships are each other’s equals. This means that each is 50 percent accountable for what happens in the relationship, including all destructive aspects.

In every love relationship or marriage, partners will confront us with the lack of love, dedication, or recognition that we experienced in our childhood and that is stored in our mind-set.

Our partner can never complete our emotional shortfall, no matter how much he or she would like to do so.

When the confrontation with one’s own emotional shortcomings in a relationship is not recognized and taken as a sign to process and heal old pain and frustrations, serious damage to the relationship is likely.

4 Why Do We Enter Relationships?

Planet earth blue pearly paradise love, relationships & marriage one big drama in eight billion variations All tastes are catered for —Indra

As I already pointed out, for most people, relationships are meant to be a source of pleasure, to keep us from feeling lonely and enable us to raise children in order to safeguard the continuity of our human species. Of course, we also follow general social rules, such as by getting married. Moreover, getting married proves our loyalty toward our ancestors. Another important aspect is our own survival. According to the “two heads are better than one” approach, it is better to divide the work necessary for our survival by two. Technological progress, however, has relegated this aspect of relationships into the background over the last seventy years or so, allowing us to safeguard our survival relatively easily these days. Due to the high rate of divorce, we have adjusted to single-parent families that succeed in raising children. This was not the situation in our ancestors’ time. Back then, single-parent families came about only through the early death of one parent from disease, a work accident, war, or death in childbirth. A new partner was chosen as soon as possible. Sometimes, unwritten rules regarding such choices persisted, such as when a younger sister was expected to replace a married sister who had died as a mother of young children.

A century ago, divorce was still very much stigmatized, resulting in social ostracizing. Back then, the majority of people still lived in villages and small towns, with strong social and especially religious control mechanisms. In addition, a woman with three children could not have survived on her own economically. As a result, many couples lived in relationship hell without seeing any way out. They closed themselves off emotionally and were often traumatized by violence and abuse in their relationships. It should also be kept in mind that survival usually meant hard work for our ancestors. There was little room for the processing of emotionally challenging events, such as child deaths, the early death of a parent, or war trauma, to name a few.

Because of our loyalty toward our ancestors, we are confronted with their great, unprocessed grief. The impact of this, time and time again, surfaces in relationship constellations. In our mind-set, we all still carry a great deal of

this unprocessed grief, which has destructive consequences for our current relationships.

Back in those days, it was unusual for a young adult to choose his or her own partner.

Arranged marriages and agreements between families were considered normal. Entering a relationship was based much more on the appropriateness of the potential partner ’s social class, religion, and wealth than it is today. Now that our survival is relatively well safeguarded, another aspect has come more to the foreground. These days, relationships are much more frequently based on falling in love. Love has taken over from the need to survive.

With love now in the picture, a lot of other elements that were previously sidelined have entered our relational life. In the past, a man had to be a hard worker to provide for his family; a woman had to be equally hardworking as well as attend to household chores and child-rearing duties. Nowadays, we perceive this quite differently. We now expect our partner to be concerned much less with our survival than in former times. Yet that has given rise to a whole new range of expectations and demands. In a nutshell, our partner has to be perfect. We expect him or her to always be attentive to our needs, loving, caring, and a good listener, among other things. Essentially, we are thus confronted with a luxury problem—but a problem nevertheless.

Considering the divorce rates, we can posit that we, both individually and collectively, know little about how to succeed in relationships based on love, compared with agreed-upon or survival models of marriage. Having said that, I do not, of course, want to claim that agreedupon or survival marriages were that much better.

Our dreams of harmonious and loving relationships frequently end in frustration, mutually inflicted pain, and sometimes even hatred. We are all familiar with this from one perspective or another: women who sit around together, sharing their frustrations about their partners, saying things like “I also have one of those…” or drunken men in their local pub who look at each other in disillusionment, and without saying a word, convey to their drinking buddy, “I also have one of those at home.” They all have the same thing in common: their dreams of happiness and love with the person they once were genuinely in love with have been shattered and now replaced with despair, pain, and frustration. Because they are experiencing the same frustration as their parents and ancestors, it often feels normal (albeit completely unconscious), and they hardly dare expect any more than what might they surmise as their ancestors’ relationship happiness. In their eyes, it all seems useless.

But is this really so? Or is it just that they cannot grasp the meaning behind all the suffering and, therefore, cannot find any solutions? This is really the biggest obstacle in entering into an awareness process. We experience frustrations similar to those of our parents and ancestors. Often this makes it seem like our relationship problems are quite normal. They are part of our world view or mind-set, and it is exactly because of this that everyone around us confirms our world view. It is only when we end up in a relationship crisis or divorce that it becomes clear that other issues are at play, and we are offered a chance to awaken.

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

In that sense, crises are wake-up calls. By their very nature, they provide us with a chance to gain awareness. They provide the opportunity to heal. When we dare take this chance and see it as a way to personal growth instead of fighting it and blaming everything on our partners, we create the opportunity to start a new chapter in our lives. Step by step, we can learn to become aware of the underlying causes of our relationship conflicts. Next, we can let go of what determined our life up until that moment. With every step, we become more ourselves.

And with that, we become active participants in a necessary evolutionary process.

Relationships as an Evolutionary Process I am convinced that our relationship struggles serve human evolution.

—Indra

No matter how superficial or intense a relationship is, it can exist only because your partner ’s mind-set and your mind-set slot and work together in perfect reciprocity. This is also true for your friends and colleagues, albeit to a lesser extent. As discussed earlier, your partner ’s mind-set holds similar or complementary elements to your own. A partner cannot help but to enact the destructive elements that you carry from your family or childhood. Moreover, your partner does this out of love. Through reenacting and repeating these destructive elements, your partner confronts you with your unprocessed emotional issues. And you do exactly the same thing for him or her. The fact that this process is completely unconscious for most people has already been revealed, but why does it occur? What is the purpose of reciprocity, loyalty, and entanglement? What is the purpose of carrying all of these emotional burdens? I assume that everything that happens on earth—and most definitely everything that is played out between men and women—has a purpose. Apparently we are contributing to an evolutionary process, individually and collectively.

Whether we like it or not, and whether we want this or not, we become part of a process of continuous development from birth onward. Even though we cannot cry our ancestors’ tears, we can learn from them. We can find out why the women in our family have a certain attitude toward men, just as we can learn to understand why the men in our family look at women in a certain way. By doing this, all destructive behaviors encountered in our (relational) life carry a potential learning or awareness process. When we can find sense and meaning in these destructive behaviors, we can free ourselves from the “emotional burdens” of our ancestors.

We are given the opportunity to learn how we can live together with our partners in an authentic, harmonious, and loving way. We learn how relationships work and about the laws that determine relational life and happiness. Through such a process, we become conscious of what works and what doesn’t in relationships in a way that was unthinkable even for our parents, let alone for ancestors further down the line. Hence, relationships become a path to more awareness and enlightenment, literally and spiritually.

Relationships, a Personal Path to Enlightenment and Awareness The idea of lifelong learning has been around for quite some time and is generally regarded as an integral part of modern life, along with laptops, mobile phones, and cars. However, when it comes to relationships, we expect things to flow naturally; we assume that our dreams will turn into reality and that our relationships will automatically turn out well without any effort or learning involved. It is high time that we wake up from this dream state and take a good look at the reality of our attitudes and behaviors associated with relationship and marriage.

When we see our relationships as a means to a greater awareness, we give ourselves the opportunity to start a whole new way of being in a relationship. With this approach, it is easy to understand that our own relational skills mainly determine the quality of our relationships.

This insight provides us with the necessary keys to start a learning process necessary to fulfill our dreams of a harmonious relationship or marriage. Instead of putting demands on our partner to change, we can start where we have the greatest chance of success: with ourselves.

We are now on the path to greater self-awareness.

Since relationships are inherently reciprocal, our own process of change will automatically impact our partner. We do not have to wait for our partner to take action or blame him or her for not changing. The key and the responsibility are in our own hands. This allows us to wake from the nightmare of reciprocal destructiveness, leave unprocessed emotional charges with our ancestors one step at a time, and fulfill the rightful longing of our inner child. Everything that we process, let go of, and heal dissolves, as it were, from the reciprocity in our relationships. This means our partner â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s need to confront us with our own destructive issues disappears, along with the associated accusations and recriminations. This is the most important and positive effect of reciprocity. We improve the quality of our relationships through everything we process, leaving with our ancestors all of the destructive loyalties and entanglements that we effectively and consciously make visible for ourselves. It is important, though, that making these destructive loyalties conscious does not remain purely intellectual.

We have to be prepared and dare to wade through the emotional swamp connected to these loyalties and entanglements to be able to become detached from our parental and/or ancestral identifications. By doing this, we take real responsibility for the happiness and harmony we long for in our relationships. Happiness no longer needs to come from outside ourselves, in the form of rather childish dream images, such as the knight in shining armor or the female partner who is a perfect caring mom as well as a princess in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom.

The idea or desire to leave it up to another person to take care of your happiness is one of the most destructive notions about relationships.

In regard to relationships, it is also clear that we are all in the same boat, as we all interrelate with each other. With the courage to look beyond the symptoms and dig deep, we become

pioneers in an awareness process, which is an evolutionary movement at the same time. I believe that this movement is part of the New Age, the Age of Aquarius.

Marie and Johnny To give you an idea of the process, here is the story of a couple who decided to look for answers and, step by step, brought their unconscious mind-set about relationships into their conscious awareness. This allowed them to let go of old loyalties and entanglements while learning to take full responsibility for their marital happiness.

The seven-year marriage of Mary, age twenty-nine, and Johnny, age thirty-four, is about to explode. Marie does not feel understood by Johnny, and she feels he is not doing his bit in raising their children. Moreover, she does not feel respected in their intimate life. Johnny cheating on her was the last straw for Marie. For Johnny, it was the feeling of not being seen or respected with regard to his input in the raising of their children and in his desire for a beautiful, intimate sexual union. He considers Marie bossy and detached. Wanting to understand what is going on between them, they start a journey to find out the underlying causes of their marital conflicts.

In her first constellation, Marie sees how loyal she has been toward her mother and grandmother; she had always been convinced that she was doing a better job in her relationship than her mother had done in hers. It therefore came as a shock to her to realize that emotionally—especially regarding the raising of their children—she felt just as forsaken as her mother and grandmother. By seeing the painful events at play, she becomes aware of her “impossible” demand that Johnny be a “real father” to their children.

Marie’s grandmother had felt forsaken by her husband, Marie’s grandfather, both in her marriage and in raising their four children. Marie’s grandfather was emotionally detached as a result of a heavy war trauma (World War II). While he had been a successful salesman before the war, things went seriously wrong after the war. As a result, Marie’s grandmother begrudgingly took charge of the family and bore the brunt of the load on her own shoulders.

On one hand, she became very frustrated, felt emotionally abandoned, and looked down on her “weak” husband. On the other hand, she went on to develop her own self-assuredness and eventually became the director of an orphanage. This made her the first woman in the family to have a career. Marie recognizes that she was carrying her grandmother ’s “looking down on her husband” attitude and projecting this onto Johnny. She had the feeling of “having to carry the load” as the woman in the family combined with the suppressed pain and a feeling of having been abandoned. Nevertheless, Marie is happy to see that she had also taken on her grandmother ’s strength in being able to take charge, as well as her perseverance.

It becomes very clear to Marie that by demanding that Johnny be a “real father” to their children, she was perfectly copying her grandmother ’s attitude toward her grandfather. In her loyalty toward her grandmother, Marie could not see nor value Johnny’s input, as she had unconsciously identified him with her grandfather. It was only by leaving the relationship conflicts of her grandparents with them that she could clearly see that there was indeed a difference in her grandfather ’s and Johnny’s behavior as far as raising children was

concerned. This insight helps her to appreciate Johnny’s input in the upbringing of their children for the first time. Marie can now understand his powerlessness and frustration resulting from her demanding attitude.

Marie also comes to see Johnny’s accusation of bossiness in a different light. She realizes that she had been copying her grandmother ’s frustration about her weak husband, who had left her carrying the load, and that she had also projected this image onto Johnny. To her amazement, Marie discovers the evidence within herself of this copied attitude, as well as how little it actually had to do with Johnny, considering that he had a well-paid job as an architect. In this respect, she understands Johnny’s reaction of despair and frustration. Blinded by her own loyalty, she was not able to see his contribution to their marriage. All of these insights, together with letting go of the described loyalties, lead to a big change in Marie’s attitude toward Johnny.

Noticing her changed attitude, Johnny wants to give their marriage another chance after all.

He also wants to find out what a constellation could mean for him. In his two constellations, Johnny comes to appreciate the difficult position he had ended up in during his youth due to his parents’ conflictual relationship. He feels strongly connected to his mother, who was the eldest of eight children. Despite the fact that her mother suffered from diabetes, she was the eldest daughter, which meant that she had to take on a lot of household chores at an early age.

Her mother, Johnny’s grandmother, was not capable of giving her daughter the necessary recognition for her efforts. On the contrary, she made her daughter feel that she actually did not do enough. Johnny’s grandmother had not known her own parents; she had been adopted shortly after birth. For Johnny, it is an important insight that “his” question about recognition went back generations. He recognizes his mother ’s frustration at never being appreciated for what she had done for her mother as the perfect copy of his own; namely, that his contributions to his marriage were not being seen or appreciated by his wife.

What also becomes clear to Johnny is that, through his strong connection with his mother, he had adopted her way of looking at men, particularly the way she had looked at his father. He found out that, when he was a child and an adolescent, he had voiced his mother ’s frustrations to him, just like her pawn or accomplice. This strained his relationship with his father. They were always fighting. Johnny’s father was away much of the time, working as a representative for an international company, and did not bother enough about his family, according to his mother. Amazed, Johnny recognizes this accusation as identical to his wife’s accusation of his behavior and herein recognizes his own loyalty toward his father. Just like his father, he experienced his wife as bossy and detached, and he complained of a meager intimate and sex life. He found out that he was repeating in his own marriage the life and suffering of his father, including having an occasional affair.

Johnny’s father was the eldest of three children and had two sisters. His parents, Johnny’s grandparents, were hardworking people who were proud of the fact that all of their children could further their studies. Johnny’s grandparents lived side by side; there was hardly any intimacy in their relationship. Johnny could not remember ever seeing his grandparents hug

or kiss each other. Johnny’s father was just as strongly connected to his mother as Johnny is to his. Both had filled their mother ’s emotional void. In this regard, too, Johnny can see how he was copying his father—even his father ’s sore lack of intimacy. Letting go of his loyalties one by one, Johnny becomes painfully aware of the fact that he had seen his wife, Marie, through the eyes of his father and, as such, had perceived her rather erroneously as very distant. Now, for the first time in years, he can really “see” his wife. Suddenly, he sees the Marie with whom he had fallen in love back in the time when there had been no lack of intimacy between them. Back then, it had been wonderful.

By establishing some emotional distance from his mother and leaving her view on men with her, he can look his father in the eye for the first time in his life. It touches him deeply to be able to feel the power and love of his father. It has a grounding effect on him and gives him a hitherto unknown feeling of power and self-confidence. Later on, he becomes much more “visible” as a worthy partner and husband to Marie. Johnny realizes that previously, he had always wanted to prove himself a man, but with his newly acquired self-confidence, this is no longer necessary.

Their constellations bring about a lot of changes in their relationship. They have now put a halt to their accusation-ridden discussions, and they have learned to avoid letting their conflicts escalate. Both are now very much aware of the emotional charges behind their accusations. They discuss their relationship with a sense of calmness by sitting next to each other instead of opposite each other, as was the case in the past (see Table Seating Arrangements). Their conversations are now mainly about their loyalties and how they mirror each other in them. Step by step, they are learning to name their feelings, desires, and expectations. This way, Marie has found out that she suffered from a lack of recognition from her father, which became the theme for her next constellation.

In this follow-up constellation, it strikes Marie how the relationship problems of her grandmother, which Marie had learned about in her first constellation, had also been repeated by her mother and father. Marie’s mother had also looked down on her husband and had found him emotionally unavailable. Moreover, Marie found out that there was little to no intimacy between them and that their sex life was practically nonexistent. Because of her husband being emotionally unavailable, Marie’s mother did not really feel like meeting her husband’s needs. She herself was rather detached regarding intimacy. Through her upbringing, she had learned that a woman does not let herself go, especially not as far as her sexual desires were concerned. Otherwise, her family would have perceived her as a slut. This is something that Marie also identifies with. She had always wanted to be a “good” woman, not daring to surrender to her own sexual desires.

Something else Marie finds out is that she was strongly connected to her father and his experience of pain and inadequacy. Marie’s father was the fourth of six children. Just before he was born, his mother had had a miscarriage in the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy. In the constellation, it could clearly be felt that her father was carrying his mother ’s grief over her miscarriage. His mother was not available for him. He did not feel seen by her, and his

longing for her dedication remained unsatisfied. That feeling—of not being seen and the lack of dedication—he had repeated in his marriage to Marie’s mother.

Marie is amazed to find out that she has tried to make up for her father ’s unfulfilled needs.

Unconsciously, she had wanted to give her father the attention and warmth that her mother had not been able to give him. Emotionally, she had been standing next to her father as a mainstay.

Only when, in the constellation, an alternate grieving process for the miscarriage has taken place and her father takes responsibility for his own experienced lack of attention is Marie able to let go of her father and connect with her mother. This gives her a whole new sense of what it is like to be a woman. For Marie, it becomes apparent, for a big part, why she has not been emotionally available in her marriage to Johnny—more specifically, for the part of her that had connected her to her father. She now sees her accusations aimed at Johnny for what they really were: the feeling of not being seen or recognized by him due to loyalty. She now leaves that feeling with her father. Her mother had also suffered, of course, owing to her absent husband, just as Marie had suffered by copying this in her own relationship. Step by step, Marie is able to give this all back and return from being cut off from her own sexual desires. Her connection with her mother is very important for her, and after a long and relaxing embrace between the two of them, she now feels like a real woman.

To conclude, in the previous example, we have seen the following destructive convictions and loyalties that are part of Marie’s and Johnny’s mind-sets.

The destructive convictions in Marie’s mind-set about men and relationships were as follows: Men abandon their women when it comes to raising children (here linked to Marie’s unfulfilled demand on her husband to be a “real father” for their children).

Women are left to carry the load (here linked to Marie’s looking down on her husband).

Husbands are emotionally absent, giving way to the painful feeling of having been abandoned.

Women are not supposed to let themselves go, especially where their own sexual desires are concerned.

In these convictions, Marie was loyal toward her mother and grandmother. From her father, she carried a feeling of inadequacy, the feeling of not being seen or getting the desired recognition.

The destructive convictions in Johnny’s mind-set about women and relationships were as follows: There is no recognition to be found in relationships (linked to his mother’s frustration that whatever one does, it is never good enough).

Women are emotionally detached and bossy.

Men have a rather poor intimate sex life with their wives and, as such, wonderful, intimate sexual connections are possible only outside of one’s marriage.

Johnny carried the previous convictions from his father ’s side. From his mother, he carried her emotional void.

If we then look at how their destructive convictions impact each other, we see what a good match they really are.

Marie’s carried conviction that men abandon their wives when it comes to raising children was connected to her unfulfilled demand of wanting her husband to be a “real father” for their children. That corresponds perfectly to Johnny’s emotional detachment, resulting from his connection to his mother and his carried conviction that there is no recognition in relationships and that whatever he does, it will never be good enough.

Because of her blind loyalty, Marie cannot see Johnny’s contribution to their marriage and consequently cannot give him the appropriate recognition for it. For the amount of attention and warmth she gives to her father, she is emotionally unavailable for Johnny. For Johnny, this corresponds directly with his copied conviction that women are emotionally detached and bossy. For Marie, this resonates with her copied conviction that women are left to carry the load, which is linked to her looking down on her husband. This way, Johnny’s demand for recognition, which he carries from his father, remains unanswered in his marriage to Marie.

A wonderful, intimate sex life is not possible for him either since, in his blind love, he is loyal to his ancestors, who had poor intimate sex lives. Therefore, Marie cannot answer his demand for a richer intimate sex life. This perfectly fits Marie’s entanglements. She cannot fully surrender to her sexual desires because opening up to her sexual desires is tantamount to being a “whore,” which her conscience will not allow due to the negative connotation in her family about such women.

While on the surface level—the level of the symptoms—both are in the right concerning their mutual accusations and unfulfilled desires, at the level of the underlying causes, we see how their mind-sets are a perfect fit. They mirror each other ’s unconscious loyalties in flawless reciprocity. As long as their loyalties and entanglements remained unconscious, they fueled their conflicts, arguments, and reciprocal accusations.

After four constellations over a period of eighteen months, Marie and Johnny’s marriage has fundamentally changed. Both now see each other again in a very different light. This is simply the result of their open and courageous attitudes. Seeing their marital crisis as a chance for inner growth, they have become more conscious and wise. Issues that had a destructive impact before have been transformed and have led them to marital happiness. This they have achieved through their constellation work and subsequent processing of emotional issues.

Where before their blind love toward their ancestors (and the resulting loyalties) had had a strong negative impact on the love in their relationship, they now feel supported and strengthened by their ancestors. This is a modern interpretation of an ancient alchemical process: turning lead into gold. Both were willing to learn from their relational conflicts and see their partnership as a personal path to awareness and enlightenment. Moreover, both were

committed to their own personal awareness processes.

Till Death Do Us Part This commitment—the determination to stay together through thick and thin and to live through difficult times together—is necessary if a couple wants to go through a transformation process. How much easier is it to simply unplug in truly challenging situations, when the pain is most excruciating? How much easier is it to blame the other for the relationship failure and to think that with a new partner, it will be better? Or that a new partner will be more loving? The self-evidence that we feel through our loyalties gives us the illusion that we are right and that our partner is the reason for our relationship failing. This makes it so easy to be convinced of our own right and to assume we have reason to say “enough is enough.” Most of the time, this is exactly the point at which the strongest reciprocity is being played out. It is at this point that the chance for a deep learning process is greatest. The biggest step a human being can take is to be able to be daring enough at such a time to say “I want to look at how it has come about that I have ended up in this relationship mess, and I want to know what this has to do with me and what my responsibility in all of this is.”

Of course, there are relationships that no longer work, where the mutual pain and the damaging of trust have been too great. In that case, it is meaningful to separate. Each partner can then go through an individual learning process in order not to repeat the same behaviors in a subsequent relationship.

The willingness and determination to discover everything about yourself and your loyalties in the event of a relational conflict show courage and strength. You can find this strength by understanding that your partner is unable to do otherwise than to confront you with your own unprocessed pain, the lack of fulfillment that you experienced in your childhood and adolescence, or the destructive part of your loyalties and entanglements. Your love has brought you together in a deep resonance, and you reflect each other ’s unprocessed issues in perfect reciprocity. This happens with such perfection and synchronicity that it is not surprising that people are convinced that God has brought them together. Personally, I do not believe in a god doing such things, but the whole process of love and reciprocity can indeed be called divine. Partners are always a perfect fit and reflect each other in their greatest love but also in their greatest pain. Staying together in our innermost pain is the deepest commitment we can make. Through this commitment, we give each other the chance and the safety that is necessary to become conscious of and then work through unprocessed pain and loyalties.

Knowledge of reciprocity, loyalties, and modern systemic therapies, like family and relationship constellations, gives a whole new meaning to our relationship or marriage.

Summary Whereas our ancestors had relationships based on survival, tradition, and loyalty, we now have relationships based on love. Considering the divorce rate, we can say that, both individually and collectively, we are mostly at a loss about how love-based relationships can be lived harmoniously. We all carry a great deal of unprocessed ancestral suffering in our mind-sets, with destructive consequences for our current relationships. It is mostly through a relationship crisis or divorce that it becomes clear that there are still other issues at play and that there is a genuine chance of awakening and healing.

Relationships serve to broaden our consciousness as part of an evolutionary process. All destructive behaviors that we encounter in our (relational) lives provide us with a chance to learn. Relationships can be seen as a personal path to awareness and enlightenment. This path can be traveled alone, or it can be traveled together as a couple, provided that both are truly committed to the relationship.

5 What Burdens Relationships, and What Makes Them Flourish?

Uncovering the logic of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own life story is perhaps the only way that we can give meaning to our existence. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Connie Palmen

In countless family and relationship constellations all over the world, we know that entanglements and loyalties cause relationship conflicts. A number of rules about loving relationships become apparent through consciously experiencing how tensions and conflicts between people are resolved during constellations and through witnessing how love can flow again. From such experiences, we can see what gets in the way of a good relationship and what helps a relationship to bloom.

These rules must not be imposed in a moralizing way. Consider them, rather, as a natural phenomenon resulting from an individual, awareness-raising process. The following rules reflect the truth as it is at present, reflecting our current social standards and beliefs. They may be different in other circumstances and with other social beliefs. These rules also apply to same-sex relationships, although obviously, interpretations have to be made. The following is an expanded explanation of what I wrote about on this theme in my book Family Constellations Revealed.

Men and Women Are Equal Equality between men and women forms the basis of my vision on relationships and my approach to working with relationships in family constellations. Men and women complement each other like yin and yang. There is a natural mutual attraction. A man seeks partnership with a woman because she represents what he lacks as a man and a woman seeks partnership with a man because he represents what is missing with her as a woman. In this regard, they are equal in their relationship.

Hellinger[1] states that relationships are the fulfillment of life. The essence of our development from childhood through to adolescence and then on to adulthood is about learning to form a successful relationship with a partner. Our whole development proceeds in a series of steps; once over the threshold of each new stage, we must leave the old behind.

There is no turning back. A baby cannot return to the womb after his or her birth; an adolescent cannot go back to childhood, and as soon as we mature and eventually become parents ourselves, we cannot go back to our youth.

Connections Remain A special connectedness is established when a man and a woman consummate a relationship in which they give themselves to each other in love and also take each other in love. Having sex is the deepest form of connection one can have with another person. It creates an indelible connection between souls. From that moment on, we are never free from one another. It is sexuality that accomplishes this connection, not the marriage. We grow up with a negative perception of sexuality in our society, and many religions regard sexuality in a negative light.

Yet sex is an expression of lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s natural force, which can be doubly pleasurable when love is involved.

Constellations show that every sexual act creates a connection between partners, one that is strengthened by mutual love. The connection is further reinforced through reproduction; it becomes a permanent one by way of bearing children. We can leave our children, but they always remain our children. Similarly, we may well try to cast away our parents, but they remain our parents forever. In this sense, most people are not aware of the power of sexual connections.

Constellations allow us to witness how this power can last for generations and help determine our lives. Bonds brought about by sexual unions say nothing about the depth of love, though.

For example, love in a later relationship may be stronger than that in an earlier one. In superficial or short-term relationships, bonds are slightly weaker. A strong bond is formed with our first sexual partner, however, despite the duration of the relationship. There is no need to fear sexual connections. Sexuality is part of life, like breathing, eating, and drinking.

It is certainly not my intention to preach a new moralityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;far from it. But I do plead for respect and awareness. See the chapter on intimacy and sexuality for more information.

All Former Partners Deserve Respect When there have been multiple sexual relationships, the chances of a new relationship being a deep, happy, and long-lasting one are greatly increased when all former partners have been honored. That is, when a person looks with respect and gratitude toward all former partner(s), and acknowledges the love that was present between them. Through such an attitude, a relationship ends in peace.

To look with respect and gratitude toward a former partner is difficult for many people.

People often cling to their resentment or blame toward their former partners and look back with pain, contempt, and anger. This is a clear sign that the real cause and responsibility of the relationship conflict, which led to the relationship breakdown, remains unconscious and unprocessed. This is exacerbated by a new partner ’s expectation that we put down our former partners or, better still, despise them and shut them out. Feeling respect and gratitude toward a former partner sometimes makes us anxious, as if the old partner could still play a role in our current relationship. Although this sometimes happens—people sometimes do have flings with former partners, which is another disturbance—it has nothing to do with honoring or respecting former partners.

Many relationship constellations have shown that relationships that do not end in peace have a negative effect on subsequent relationships. This is logical because conflicts within a former relationship will not have been addressed consciously or processed appropriately. They hover, as it were, over future relationship happiness like the sword of Damocles.

Ending a relationship “in peace” cannot happen through simply and unilaterally hoping or believing that everything has been processed; by easily glossing over old grudges, pain, and anger; or by dumping all of the blame on a former partner. We show genuine respect by facing up to and processing our share of the responsibility of relationship conflicts. As a result of a real process, we are able to speak with our ex-partners in an ordinary way, look each other squarely in the eyes with honesty and, if there are children involved, make necessary arrangements for them in a respectful and righteous manner. The power of reciprocity also plays a decisive role here. We cannot demand that an ex-partner process his or her share in a relationship conflict; we are responsible for doing what we can without concern for what our former partner can or is willing to do.

A former partner not being honored will eventually have a negative impact on a new relationship, usually as subconscious distrust. The new partner will feel, totally subconsciously, that he or she might be next to be confronted with the same unresolved problem.

Elly, age fifty-four, struggles in her relationship, citing conflict and derision as the main problems. In her constellation, there is obviously a lot of tension between her and her current partner. When I ask her to work with me to select and place a representative for her former

partner, it becomes clear that there has been a similar unresolved conflict in that relationship.

During the constellation, Elly recognizes that she is seriously bound up with her father and his attitude toward her mother. She realizes that she has copied this attitude over into her own relationships.

Elly’s father was badly ignored by his mother (Elly’s grandmother) due to her illness. This painful experience had serious consequences for his marriage to Elly’s mother and expressed as antagonism between them. Even though Elly’s parents remained together, her father continually reproached his wife due to the lack of recognition and respect he received. In the course of his marriage, her father developed a victim complex. Elly was all too familiar with the underlying scorn due to the lack of recognition and respect. She now sees the role she adopted in the relationship conflict with her ex-partner and how this unresolved conflict passed on to her next relationship. Once Elly realizes this, I ask the representative of her expartner to say to Elly, “I take full responsibility for my part in our relationship difficulties. I’ll leave you with your share of the responsibility. I honor you for the love and care we shared. I let you go now.” Elly’s representative also says this to her former partner. Both representatives are clearly more relaxed and begin to smile. Then Elly steps in and takes over the place of her representative. She faces her current partner ’s representative, who has also relaxed considerably, and says, “I carry the burden of whatever happened between me and my ex-partner. You honor me by leaving it with me.” The current partner ’s representative is glad to hear this. They look lovingly at each other. Elly says that a huge burden has been lifted from her shoulders.

Our unresolved relationship conflicts do not just vanish by embarking on a new relationship. They are temporarily sidelined but ready to return in all their power once the romance phase has subsided.

Whether we can truly honor a former partner becomes clear from any doubts and scorn that we may have about a new partner. Sometimes we still think we are the better match. We may not want to concede that the new partner is a more suitable partner, even though this might be obvious. In any case, this new partner is an important part of our ex-partner ’s next stage in life and that of our children, if any. That we cast aspersions over the relationship and look upon it judgmentally makes it clear that we do not accept the change and thus remain bound up and entangled, a clear sign of unprocessed elements. We therefore remain constrained, and these unprocessed elements will have a negative influence on our lives and on any future relationships. Conversely, you could say that the level of freedom and happiness in our future relationships increases with the degree to which we accept and sincerely wish good fortune on new relationships of our ex-partner.

Children often take on unresolved conflicts from their parents’ previous relationships; they go on to develop the same feelings and attitudes as those of a former partner with the parent who has not processed the relationship conflict. Incidentally, this applies to all unprocessed intense relationships with parents. It is just as important for our new partner to honor and find

a place for all our former partners.

Rita, age forty-two, first resolves her connection and loyalty to her mother and to her brother, who died young in her constellation. Rita feels how the pain she carried over stood in the way of success in her relationships. At the end of the constellation, she finds herself standing next to three representatives: one for her first true love, one for her first husband, and the third for her current partner, her second husband. I ask the latter to say to the representative of her first true love, “You’re my wife’s first partner. I honor you and thank you for making room for me.” And then to the first husband, he says, “You’re the second partner, the first husband of my wife. I honor you and thank you for also being accommodating.” All former partners unwind. Next, I ask the representative of the current partner to bow to them and say, “Look kindly on us as we seek happiness together.” Both former partners do that as well and nod with smiles on their faces. They say, “We wish you both much happiness.” Rita herself and the representative of her current partner both feel uplifted and experience the positive loving wishes that the previous partners have passed on.

You Marry the Family of Your Partner as Well So you thought, just like I once did, that your partner was the only other person in your relationship? —No way!

—Indra

When two people begin a couple relationship and bond deeply, two family systems come together. The primary loyalty of each partner remains toward his or her own family system, and as we will see in chapter six, this is a manifestation of our conscience. The emotional burdens and damage that we carry over from our family of origin are—just as in the many examples shown—the primary cause of relationship problems or even breakdowns. It is impossible to work through these and be in a position to let them go as long as they are not brought into the conscious level. They mess up all of our relationships. By being loyal, we subconsciously follow our mind-sets and inevitably create a supposed reality from those mind-sets, leaving us vulnerable to a rich array of relationship frustration and damage disguises.

Gaby, thirty-nine, ended a ten-year relationship with a man five years ago because he could not keep his eyes off other women. Her next relationship ended after two years when that partner had an affair. The relationship after that ended when her partner at the time got another woman pregnant. In her constellation, it surfaced that both her mother and grandmother (and most probably women further back in the family) had a strong distrust of men. Out of love and loyalty, Gaby subconsciously carried over this distrust in her mind-set and, in perfect reciprocity and love, she attracted the appropriate partners. Her partners confirmed, out of love, the belief that she carried with her.

Mark, age thirty-two, has not been able to hold down a relationship for any length of time. He has recently met a woman he likes but realizes that he has a problem opening up to her. In his constellation, it is revealed that his grandmother died giving birth to his mother. Through his mother ’s trauma, he has carried on a fear of losing someone close, prohibiting him from opening up in relationships.

Constellations continue to show clearly how much emotional burden and loyalty we carry over from our families and how important it is that we become conscious of them. It is important to be able to recognize the enormous impact they have on our lives and determine the role they play in limiting our happiness in relationships.

Much of what I write about here does not apply to the first phase of a relationship. It is only after the rose-colored glasses come off and a couple decides to stay together on a long-term basis that the manifestations of loyalties come into play.

Mummy’s Boy and Daddy’s Little Princess The bonds that we develop with our parents are very important. Eventually sons have to let go of the special bonds, both negative and positive, they have with their mothers, just as daughters have to let go of the special bonds they have with their fathers. Parents have to give their children the necessary emotional room to allow this breakaway to happen to prepare them for successful relationships. If this process of letting go is not properly done, unsuccessful relationships are the price that will be paid.

In her book Mummy’s Boys, Daddy’s Girls, Anna Zanardi Cappon explains as follows: “When a son is encouraged to remain under the influence of the mother, female energy ‘floods’ his soul. It prevents him from assuming the masculinity of his father. The same is true for a daughter who remains under the influence of her father: her soul is ‘flooded’ by male energy.

It makes it difficult for her to accept her mother and limits the development of her femininity.

Carl Gustav Jung calls the femininity of a man’s soul Anima and the masculinity of a woman, Animus. Anima grows more strongly in a son who remains under the influence of his mother.

Surprisingly, this means that a man who remains under the influence of his mother is less understanding and compassionate towards women and is not easily accepted by either men or women. Animus in a woman grows more strongly when a daughter remains under the influence of her father. Also she will appear less interesting to men and women, and will be less compassionate and understanding towards men.”[2]

Mummy’s Boys You might well think that men who remain under the influence of their mothers make good lovers and partners. This is hardly the case, as they are typically unprepared to enter deep, long-term relationships. These men are often “machos” or, in the other extreme, real “softies.” Both are mummy’s boys. Due to the fact that they identify too closely with their mothers, these men often feel that they are in competition with their fathers (Oedipus complex) and develop problems with (masculine) authority. Boys are often their mother ’s substitute husbands. As it happens, a mother in this situation attempts to make a better “man” of her son compared with her husband, whom she looks down upon.

Mummy’s boys fill an emotional deficiency in their mothers. Such a mother frequently shares her complaints with her son and sometimes even confides intimate details of her relationship with the boy’s father. In other cases, the mother uses her son as a pawn against his father. The boy is pampered and protected and feel forced to meet his mother ’s needy demands. Of course, that never succeeds; he will never succeed to please her despite the lengths he goes to.

Such a man will only discover his real masculinity when he learns to operate in his father ’s sphere of influence.

Kevin, age twenty-seven, has chosen to have an individual consultation. He formulates his theme clearly: “I am currently in my third serious relationship, and it’s on the verge of collapse.” I ask him to select plastic figures from my basket and place them on the table, just as representatives are placed in a group constellation, one for himself and one for each partner. He places the token figure representing himself in the middle of the table, encircled by the figures of three women. A few inches separate him from each female figure. Straight away, I am prompted to ask him to include another figure in the constellation: one to represent his mother. According to his “view,” he goes and places her next to the figure of himself. We look together at the constellation for a moment. It does not take long for him to say, “I must let my mother go. I’ve got to be more independent of her.” In confirming this, I add, “Yes, the position your mother holds now is actually the best place for a partner. If you can’t or won’t let your mother go, a successful relationship with a woman just won’t happen.” It is a revelatory shock for Kevin, and it took us only fifteen minutes for him to clearly realize what had gone wrong in the past.

Later on in his constellations, he discovers how strong his bond with his mother really was.

His mother idealized him and exerted a strong emotional influence over him. All of the things she missed in her husband, Kevin’s father, such as attention, sensitivity, and dedication, she saw or identified in her son. Clearly, Kevin felt the burden she had imposed on him and how much he felt he had to please her, but he also felt how little he could be himself.

The constellation enabled him to see how his mother was caught in a similar situation with her father, Kevin’s grandfather, as a child. His grandfather was an orphan and, unsurprisingly, suffered from attachment trauma. When the representative of Kevin’s mother lets go of and

gives back the attachment trauma with her father, Kevin is able to take a step back and see the heavy parentification with his mother for what it is. He feels free for the first time in his life.

Up to this point, Kevin had always considered his father to be an alien from another world, but now he looks him squarely in the face and feels at ease in his presence. He is not afraid to visit that strange planet and discover how much he resembles his father and how good that feels. With his father behind him, he relaxes, and for the first time in his life, he is not afraid of the prospect of letting a woman other than his mother get close. Recall a similar theme in Mark’s constellation in chapter three, (link).

Deep down, or unconsciously, for mummy’s boys, only one woman ever really exists. Only their own mother; a presence so strong and sizeable that every other woman is obscured, so preventing them from ever truly conquesting him.

They rarely talk about their own needs. Their focal point is always the mother.

Whether loved or hated (also this reaction can happen) it’s not important. In the end she will always win: the mother, for whom, the biggest part of their hearts will always be reserved.

—Anna Zanardi Cappon[3]

This unnatural and unbalanced bond can have grave consequences. The most common consequence is a disturbance in relationships with women, but hidden depression and aggressive behavior may also result.[4] Mummy’s boys are all too often closet woman haters.

The causes for this inappropriate mother-son bond, as the examples show, are the entanglements of the mother and loyalties she carries if deep pain or sorrow is involved.

When entanglements and loyalties of both parents are implicated, as is not unusual, their son subconsciously fills in the emotional vacuum between his parents and gives unto his mother that which his father cannot or will not provide by way of the loyalties and entanglements he has with his family.

Gerald, age thirty-four, explains his marriage problem. He has not been able to keep a relationship alive for more than three years. As with his previous relationships, he has the feeling in his current relationship that he has to do everything for his partner. In the beginning, he was happy about it. But over time, it has become extremely difficult.

He, his wife, and his three main partners are constellated. There is a quite a distance between all of the representatives. His wife and the three former partners all feel unrecognized.

Gerald’s representative stands helpless in the middle. Then I decide to add a representative for his mother into the constellation. Gerald places her close to his representative, right in the middle. His wife and former partners now want more distance. After questioning, his mother says, “This is my son, who has no need for these women.” Further questioning reveals that Gerald’s mother used her son to fill an inner emptiness. He leaves this void with her once he realizes the reason behind it; one of her sisters died when she was only ten. Her parents,

Gerald’s grandparents, and his mother had been unable to handle the death of his mother ’s sister. This death was never talked about. A vicarious mourning process then takes place in the constellation, which enables Gerald to leave the deep pain with his mother. This insight gives him the necessary space to slide more over to his father ’s side. Being closer to his father gives him a feeling of safety and understanding that he never experienced with his mother.

Now he feels more open toward his wife and realizes the potential to develop a deeper bond with her.

As a rule, a mother inherits a more powerful position than her husband through her nurturing role. According to Anna Zanardi Cappon, “The bad news is that in many families the mother considers herself to be the only one responsible for child-rearing and excludes the father, causing damage that everyone will pay for in future.”[5] There are reasons why a mother does this. Here, too, unconscious loyalties and entanglements play a determining role. Of course, by allowing himself to be excluded, which is a reciprocal pattern, the father is repeating old dramas of his ancestors in blind love and loyalty, just as his wife is doing. The good news is that constellations are now allowing us to become aware of the causes of the destructive attitudes of our parents and ancestors.

Sons are emotionally abused by their mothers, and people don’t seem to care, or they even find it cute.

Daughters are physically abused by their fathers, and society responds with legal and therapeutic consequences.

Both are equally badly damaged in their ability to form successful relationships.

Daddy’s Little Princess Daughters who remain under the influence of their fathers can experience difficulty in forming stable relationships. They are insecure about their femininity and continue to seek confirmation with their father in this regard and, later on, with men in general. They therefore constantly expect their partners to tell them how special, beautiful, or whatever they are. By fathers treating them as “special girls” or “princesses” and not respecting healthy boundaries in their upbringings, these women are often capricious, spoiled, and pampered.

The daughter feels the need to be a better woman for her father than his wife, her mother and tries to address the loss her father feels in his relationship with her mother as best she can. If he judges his wife, like thinking she is silly, his daughter tries to compensate by demonstrating her intelligence. If the father considers his wife to be unattractive or sexually unappealing, his ever-loving daughter will indulge him by being particularly beautiful or attractive (femme fatale). If her father gets too close emotionally or physically, there is a real danger of incest. If, however, the father is aware of this danger and represses his sexual feelings, he gives a signal to his daughter that sexuality is something to be repressed. Whether it comes to incest or not, the daughter ’s sexuality will be damaged, and any resulting trauma will wreak havoc on all her future relationships.

Even if it does not go so far, dad overprotects and pampers his little princess. And his daughter is doing everything she can to meet his high expectations. But, of course, no matter how hard she tries to please, she will eventually fail, because the task itself is unattainable, in the same way that a mummy’s boy can never please his mother. If her father ’s expectations are the driving force behind her career ambitions, she will inevitably collide with the glass ceiling. Daddy’s girls are generally too weakly rooted in their womanhood; the resulting insecurity prohibits them from overcoming career obstacles. They connect with their strengths as women only when they are in the sphere of influence of their mother.

Marcy, age thirty-two, has been having major conflicts with her husband for years. She lives with her partner in an atmosphere of mutual recrimination. During her constellation, she understands how strongly she is connected to her father. She was always the apple of her father ’s eye. Her father had a difficult childhood, due partly to poverty and partly to the chronic illness of his father, Marcy’s grandfather. Marcy’s representative says that she would have done anything to fill her father ’s emotional void. Marcy is suddenly aware that her father —not her husband—has been the focus of all of her attention. She realizes that this is the major reason for most of the arguments and recriminations between her and her husband; he felt her emotional absence and was angry. Marcy sees that his struggle about her emotional absence was his part of their reciprocity. She also becomes aware that her father no longer needs her attention; the representative of her father expresses deep regret that he had relied on her for emotional support all of those years. He also says he does not want to see her marriage ruined. A little at a time, Marcy breaks loose from her father and turns toward her husband. She explains that it was like waking from a dream as a six-year-old, feeling so eager

to make her dad happy.

Nancy, age twenty-eight, cannot find a partner. She still lives at home with her parents, has a promising career, and is developing herself spiritually with help from her father. In the constellation, Nancy’s representative stands between her mother and her father, although her mother is a little farther away. Her father says to Nancy, “You are my ideal spiritual companion. I can’t relate to your mother on this level. She isn’t interested in the slightest.” In response to my question about his daughter having a relationship, he says, “She doesn’t need a relationship. She belongs with me.”

The cause of her strong connection with her father soon becomes transparent in her constellation. Nancy’s father carries his mother ’s pain of two miscarriages. The miscarriages —one in the sixth and the other in the seventh month of pregnancy—came before the birth of her father. Her father is strongly connected with his mother and also with the two stillborn children who came before him. In the vicarious grieving process that ensues, her father uncouples from his mother, and the two stillborn siblings assume their rightful place in the father ’s family. Nancy feels clearly that she is now in a position to break away from her father.

Furthermore, Nancy realizes that she subconsciously carries a fear of being a real woman once she discovers that she has been carrying the trauma of her grandmother. It’s so evident to her now that she has been fearing a similar fate to her grandmother: the painful prospect of going through almost full-term pregnancy without delivering live babies. Along with this fear, she has carried over her grandmother ’s pain and sorrow.

When it becomes obvious to Nancy that she has her grandmother ’s permission and that she is free to give birth to healthy and happy children, her fear disappears, and she feels game to socialize more fully with other women. She feels such an enormous relief. For the first time, she is able to feel the strength of the women in her family flowing within her and the associated physical sensations that follow. Six months later, Nancy moves into her own apartment. Her life begins anew.

The daddy’s girl, though demonstrating influence over the father (and men in general) remains in conflict and is fragile internally. She suffers from the high expectations that her father has of her and themes of delusion. She is a woman “compelled” to succeed. But she also wants to free herself from him (even if she often does not know this) and for this reason she makes a token gesture of fighting against men in general.

—Anna Zanardi Cappon[6]

Just as sons cannot save their mothers, daughters have absolutely no hope of saving their fathers by filling their emptiness or compensating for the imbalance in their parents’ relationship. Especially in cases where a parent has relied on them for emotional support,

these children know deep down that they have been abused. This sometimes results in concealed rage or hatred for the opposite sex. This anger or hatred comes back later on in their life and unleashes its destructive potential on their relationship or marriage. In the known reciprocity, we frequently see that the mummyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boy develops a relationship with a daddyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s princess, as in the case of Ben and Laura (link). If they become parents themselves, they will more than likely do just the same as their parents did to them and rely emotionally on their children: the mother to one of her sons and the father to one of his daughters. This keeps such disturbances in families alive across generations. Every generation shares a similar suffering in the hidden game of blind love and loyalty.

I have discovered something important about men and women: if a woman loves and respects her mother and has a bond with her mother, she is more attractive to men than a woman that has a bond with her father and rejects her mother. This is just the same the other way around. A man that gets on well with his father and is connected in heart and soul, is more attractive to women than a man that has a solidary relationship with his mother and rejects his father. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Bert Hellinger[7]

Children Who Stay in Their Parents’ House An extreme version of a mummy’s boy or daddy’s princess is seen when children remain living with their parents longer than is necessary. This often leads to serious entanglements.

Practical reasons are usually given as to why children remain at home with their parents after they have graduated from college or begun to work. As is often seen in constellations, these people, however, are too strongly bonded with one or both parents. They live in the grip or sphere of influence of one parent, which makes it impossible for them to lead independent lives and develop relationships of their own. A dominating parent, labeling all attempts by his or her children to shape lives of their own as useless and unnecessary, thwarts potential friendships. In any case, the problematic relationship must be addressed by bringing it into the conscious realm before change can take place. Therefore, we see that the parent who claims the child emotionally is frequently traumatized or carries over a particularly heavy emotional burden of his or her ancestors. It is essential that the entanglements of the parent(s) come to light so that the child can be freed from the spell. Such a process can be initiated during a constellation. As a result of experiencing many constellations, it is clear that a “child” can withdraw only once he or she is certain that his parent(s) will cope with the child taking charge of his or her own life and that it will not precipitate sickness, serious accident, or suicide.

Another reason to keep living at home may be that a child feels that his or her parents can no longer live together harmoniously, and he or she feels compelled to continue to stay at home as an act of love, to mediate between them or function as a buffer. What was said previously holds here as well: the “child” can deal with taking distance and begin to establish his or her own life only once he or she is sure that no major “disasters” will happen between the parents, like serious fights that could lead to violence or divorce.

On their way to maturity, children must let go of their parents both inwardly and outwardly in order to build up their own family system. They have to be aware of the adopted values and burdens they carry with them and be prepared to let them go and leave them with the family. If this does not happen, the patterns of their parents will continue to have a strong influence over them, making the chances of having a happy and sustained relationship with another person slim. Divorce statistics speak for themselves.

In any event, both families of origin have to be honored equally. Valuing the family of one’s partner less than his or her own adds a poisonous ingredient to a relationship. Love can succeed only when both partners value and love both their own and their partner ’s families.

After all, a family is the font of a person’s existence. The same applies to cultural, political, and religious beliefs: interfering aspects of these beliefs also have to be let go so that a couple can find their own values.

Intimacy and Sexuality Making love is the greatest human act. No other human endeavor is more in harmony with the order and richness of life. Nothing in this world demands greater responsibility. No other human act gives so much pleasure to our soul and arouses so much suffering.

—Anna Zanardi Cappon[8]

The major difference between a friendship and a romantic relationship is the deep bond that both partners are willing to allow to develop. This manifests itself in intimacy and sexuality.

Recognition and respect of the deeper meaning of sexual bonding is required from both partners. If one has a desire for intimacy and sexuality, and the other just allows it to happen without the same longing, then the balance of give and take between them is upset. The partner who merely allows intimacy and sexual contact to happen takes on a superior position because he or she only receives and does not desire. The partner who desires assumes a subordinate position, because the expression of his or her longing renders him or her vulnerable. Love between them is disrupted by this shift of balance.

Constellations have consistently shown that those who allow intimacy and sexuality simply to happen to them, without desire, are usually entangled. They are either connected to a family member with similar restrictions, or they are entangled to a member with a heavy load. In reciprocity, the partner bears a complimentary load, which means they both have to go through a process to be free of their loyalties. The example of Johnny and Marie (link) is very typical of the disruptions we see in relationship constellations around the theme of sexuality.

Marie’s mother made only a token effort to satisfy the sexual needs of her husband, Marie’s father. Marie’s mother had been sexually closed off before this relationship. Her upbringing had taught her that a woman had to keep her feelings and emotions in check, certainly when it came to sexual desire. Women who did not keep their emotions in check were considered sluts and risked being excluded from their families. Marie knew only too well that to be the “good wife,” she could not surrender to her sexual desires.

This attitude somewhat mirrors the general social perception of men and women: men are more sexually active than women, men are the conquerors, and women are more passive and submissive. It is considered masculine for men to have intercourse with many women, while women who have sex with many men are labeled sluts.

Women’s Dilemma A man who fucks five women in a week practically gets a trophy and is welcomed with a confetti cannon.

A woman who does just the same however, is lucky not to be dragged out of town after being tarred and feathered.

—Sunny Bergman[9]

This notion is as old as the Old Testament. Eve, the first woman, was the epitome of “feminine weakness”; she was responsible for the original sin by seducing Adam.[10] Even in Greek and Roman cultures, women were seen as sexually insatiable and considered to driven by lust and, like children, greedy and hedonistic. Women were treated as weak and irrational beings, and it was the job of the rational man to set limits.[11] In comparison, the New Testament portrayed Mary as a pure virgin. She is a very important role model, the mother of the Church, and therefore someone who is supposed to be completely sexually pure.[12] Two thousand years of Christianity have left their mark on our mind-set. The natural desire for sex and enjoyment of sexuality is in direct competition with our image of a good and God-graceful woman, the one promoted by Christian faiths.

Véronique Mottier, a Cambridge professor of sociology specializing in the history of sexuality, says, “Christianity saw sex as sinful. Even within marriage sex was only accepted for the purpose of reproduction. Virginity and abstinence were seen as the highest religious ideals; for only without sexual distraction could one be completely devoted to God.”[13] Jeanette, age thirty-three, struggles in her relationship to open up to her sexuality and meet the sexual expectations of her partner. She comes from a Calvinist family where sexuality is never discussed. During her constellation, her dilemma becomes clear: by opening up and exploring intimacy and sexuality, she goes against everything her family and their religion stand for. The representatives of her parents indicate that they had to live with the very same dilemma. This was also particularly frustrating for her mother, who endured it in silence. To stoke the constellation, I added two more representatives to the constellation: one for her pastor and one for God. The pastor ’s representative respects and fears God. He wants to do well in the eyes of God, and so he’s committed to following the commandments and getting others to do the same, in the hope of gaining God’s approval. The representative of God feels that he looks with love on all people, even upon Jeanette with her sexual desires. God considers the pastor ’s fears unfounded. He indicates that he actually needs no intermediary to speak for him and that the sacred writings to which the pastor adheres so strongly are obsolete and merely a human construct; they do not represent his divine will.

It is difficult for Jeanette to accept the observations of the representatives. To help her, I get

her to assume the positions of the representatives for God and the pastor, one at a time, and I ask her to express her own perceptions. As the pastor ’s representative, Jeanette decries his strict adherence to the ancient scriptures and the standards of the church. For her, it is now unmistakably clear that his dogmatic attitude on sexuality is driven by his fears, especially his fear of God. Representing God, she feels something completely different; here she feels love and tolerance. One thing stands out: she feels here that sexuality is just as divine as any other human expression. She notes that the pastor ’s fearful judgments over sexuality do not have divine qualities or values. On the contrary, to her surprise, she feels that her sexuality and the associated chance to experience ecstasy are a gateway to love and therefore to God. This is a liberating revelation for Jeanette, and the chronic tension in her body clearly eases. She now leaves the old dilemma that she has carried from her parents with them and feels an openness to her partner that she was not previously able to feel.

Our Perception of sex is not a biological, universal experience, but is primarily determined culturally and our Western context is dominated by religious history.

—Véronique Mottier[14]

This judgmental attitude toward female sexual desire is old but still alive. Women who were open to their sexual desires were considered sick and abnormal one hundred years ago. They were treated by doctors for hysteria and provided with vibrators to rid them of their “nervous tension.”

Even today, we still see a distinction between male and female sexuality, partly based on science but more importantly, promulgated extensively by the media. Male sexuality is described as aggressive and promiscuous by nature. According to widely accepted theories on evolution, men are driven to impregnate as many women as possible to spread their genes.

Women on the other hand, are negatively cast as naturally passive and chaste; according to this norm, their sexuality is strictly a means of reproduction.[15] As Georg Feuerstein, a German Canadian indologist specializing in yoga and tantra, sees it, this is connected to the need men have for power and control over women. The need for control is very old; it goes way back to the end of the Paleolithic culture, which was matriarchal. The people of that time were mainly hunters and gatherers who did not have private property and whose religion was based on worshiping the Great Mother. This changed around 11,000 BC with the development of the agrarian society in the Neolithic period, which saw the origins of land ownership. This evolution went hand in hand with the beginning of patriarchy—the moment when women lost their privileged place in society.

Whereas women were once the living symbol of the sacred Great Mother, they now had to systematically sacrifice their power and were increasingly regarded as being owned by the tribe. Their main task now was to provide future workers for agricultural initiatives.[16] Now

that ownership of fertile land and domestic animals formed the basis of power and wealth, the masculine owners wanted to be sure that their possessions were passed down only to their offspring. To secure a man’s legacy and the paternity of his son, women were forced to keep their sexual desire and sexual activities in check.

Such a general loss of power for women was bound to lead to a deterioration of the relationship between men and women. This shift in balance was the cause of a deep distrust between the two sexes and led to male domination and to women’s sexual lives being determined by regulations and sometimes even, to a complete suppression of female sexual needs.

—Georg Feuerstein[17]

Apparently, the need for control is still alive today if we look at the behavior and expectations that men in general impose on women. Men want as many experiences with women as they can muster; this they consider fitting and masculine. Women who behave in a similar promiscuous way are labeled as sluts or whores. When a man then chooses a permanent partner as a wife, he then prefers a virgin, a blank slate. A man expects his virgin wife to be always chaste, except in their bedroom, where he prefers a woman who will freely indulge in her sexual desires, just for him. If she diverges from this course, she is labeled a slut. This whole dynamic leaves women in a quandary.

Karen, age twenty-seven, has been married for three years. She sees herself as a modern liberated woman and subsequently considers that she is in a good relationship. It’s only when it comes to intimacy that problems arise; it just does not seem to work for her. I ask her to pull up four chairs: one for her, one for her husband, one for her sexual desire, and one for his sexual desire. She places the chairs in the room so that her chair is opposite the chair of her partner, with his sexual desire between them, facing her. The chair of her own sexual desire is situated behind hers and facing the other way.

On her own chair, she clearly feels a slight aversion and an intense feeling of tension toward the sexual desires of her partner. On the chair for the sexual desires of her partner, she feels a strong and loving feeling about her. From this chair, she notes that Karen is not really present.

On the chair for her partner, she feels his love for her. On the chair of her own sexual desires, she feels something different. She stares into the distance; she no longer feels a connection with Karen nor with her partner or his sexual desires. “It’s as if I’m not there or shouldn’t be there,” she says. Karen and I then try to ascertain the focus of her sexual desires. It quickly becomes clear to Karen that her sexual desires are directed toward a range of women: her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. According to her, the feeling goes back much further in the line of her female ancestors. By tuning into the feelings of all of those women who lived before her, one at a time, it is obvious what great anxiety and frustration her female sexual desires have been burdened with. She goes back a few generations and realizes that none of the women in her family have dared open up to their sexual desires. It makes her sad.

She now understands where the pain and sadness come from, which had overwhelmed her

during or after the very rare occasions that she lost control and had an orgasm. She feels particularly pained on the chair of her grandmother. Karen does not know so much about this woman and her fate. But in answer to my question about whether it feels appropriate to her grandmother that her granddaughter still has to carry the pain and frustration, she utters palpably, “No, that should stop.”

Karen goes from one chair to another representing a long line of her female ancestors and feels that all of those women give her their consent to let go of the old pain and frustration.

They cross their fingers for her and all wish her well in learning to open up and allow her sexual desire to blossom. In the chair representing her grandmother, she feels just how much this woman supports her granddaughter. She expresses her perceptions by saying, “If she can take this step, then I’ll be happy, because there will be hope of the situation improving. If she isn’t game enough to take this step, she will carry the pain endlessly. That’s not what I want as a grandmother.”

At the end of the constellation, Karen sits back in her chair with all of the women of her family behind her. She feels their strength, their good wishes, and their support. Her sexual desire is now to her left, and it feels so good. She takes the time to let the new constellation sink in. First, through a bowing ritual, she gives back the old pain and frustration to all of the women who came before her. She then puts the chair of her sexual desire before her, opposite the seat of the sexual desire of her partner. She feels good having taken this step. On the chair of her sexual desires, she now feels very different than she did in the beginning. Where there was once an absence of feeling, she now draws strength and a feeling of mischievous playfulness. She smiles and feels really happy.

Like Karen, many women carry over the social image, attitudes, frustrations, and pain of female sexuality and desire of all women in their families, going back generations. It is internalized in their mind-sets. This is a position that cannot easily be shrugged off. It determines their behavior, attitudes, and the space that they can give themselves to let go, enjoy, and surrender to their sexual desires. At least, that is what we see in constellations: only when they consciously feel the consent of the women who lived before them and open up to the emotional charge surrounding the sexual desires of their female ancestors will an opening form, allowing change to occur. Then they will become pioneers in a “domain” that, over generations, few women have dared or been able to enter and explore.

Men Have to Prove Themselves The Christian faith and the general role models that it has given us are just as destructive for men as for women; it affects men, however, in a different way. The Christian belief system that forms the foundation of our Western culture upholds the conviction or tenet that Mary conceived Jesus immaculately, through intervention from God, not man. An ordinary man with normal sexual needs does not come into the picture.

We have become accustomed to say (and think) that children are “God’s creations” and, therefore, also do not emanate from man. Men with their ordinary powers of procreation have been tarnished and given a bad reputation. If women are to remain loyal to their prescribed belief, which means to be morally sound female citizens, they have to reject the man who has tainted them, according to the (ever-present) binding religious and societal norms. This is a deep subconscious belief that causes the effective exclusion of men.

Since it is only the woman who is in a position to bear the heavenly child (through God as it is purported), she feels in a superior position to the profane man. Her husband, along with his natural sexual desires and the natural love and physical desires she feels toward him, cannot be good by definition. To give in to these desires means she would relinquish her “Mary status.” That would mean she cannot acknowledge or accept her feelings of love and lust and thus has to take distance from her husband, especially if she has children. Through her unconscious negative attitude to her husband, the relationship becomes difficult and even destructive. Her husband gets more and more frustrated and manifests this frustration in arguments. That increases frustration among women and strengthens their dislike of men even more.

Women happily want to make better men out of their sons. Therefore, their boys feel, more or less unconsciously, manipulated by their mothers. They feel forced to side with the “better one” and disapprove of their father ’s normal, soiled sexuality. As a result, they become either weak or aggressive toward women; in both cases, this makes them villains in the eyes of their future wives (see the earlier section on mummy’s boys).

Through these convictions, men subconsciously feel that they are competing with God, and they continue to strive for recognition of their sexuality. They feel they have to prove themselves, but compared with the high ideals with which they are forced to compete, their chances are all but zero, being ordinary men with all of their human shortcomings. God in heaven remains the eternal unattainable ideal. They remain stuck in an endless but, more significantly, hopeless battle. The pressure to prove something that is impossible makes men weak and helpless. Because they do not like feeling this vulnerability, men have a tendency to close off and become aggressive. In general, this results in men having a revengeful feeling toward women, since man’s sexuality and vulnerability are not acknowledged. This vengeance, I believe, is one of the strongest driving forces behind the oppression of women.

Through these subconscious beliefs, men have been made to feel guilty, generation after

generation. They also falsely confirm for women that men are villains and not worthy of respect and recognition. A man and a woman can come together only when both become conscious of and cast away these romantic and holy notions. They can then become aware of the godly procreative powers of men as well as the godly bearing powers of women, without which children cannot be brought into existence. This is how they will find balance.

If we keep in mind that Christian beliefs are actually patriarchal, with predominantly masculine idols, it is clear how men have brought all this misery upon themselves.

Freud asserted that the search for God is actually the search for a father figure. Through having to reject their own fathers, as has been described, god-fearing people are looking for the â&#x20AC;&#x153;benevolent father.â&#x20AC;? Many fanatical believers hang on desperately to this belief: the weaker they feel toward women, the more fanatical they grasp onto their dogmas.

As we discussed before, love in a relationship can be disturbed if one of the partners is sexually open while the other cannot or will not open up sexually or has a block of some kind preventing him or her from freely expressing his or her own lusts and desires. As mentioned, a religious or moral view disapproving of sexuality is disruptive in one way or another.

Those who uphold such a moral standpoint place themselves in a higher moral position, meaning that the other partner, with natural sexual desires, is seen as less principled. Partners with normal sexual desires will eventually want to leave the relationship or, as happens most frequently, make victims of themselves. The latter can be done in several ways: by inwardly withdrawing, by compulsively watching porn (usually a male solution), by drowning their sorrows with alcohol or other drugs, by having an affair, or by seeking sexual satisfaction with prostitutes. The intention is actually to avoid conflict, which is an evasive act borne out of loyalty to ancestors.

A heavy distortion arises from what may have been a lovely intimate relationship when people use their sexuality as a means of filling or satisfying an emotional emptiness or lack of attention from infancy or childhood. They are, in fact, using their sexuality for something that sexuality cannot possibly provide. The same applies when sexuality is used to gain recognition and attention or to prove oneself. The underlying, ultimately demanding stance makes a beautiful and harmonious intimacy and sexuality impossible. Because of the underlying demanding attitude, too much is being asked of the partner. People who try to do this, whether consciously or unconsciously, always feel cheated in the end. In my experience, this is one of the biggest mistakes made concerning sexuality. Sexuality can, in this sense, never give fulfillment to anything other than sexuality.

Another disturbance that occurs frequently has to do with the unbridgeable images of motherhood and sexuality. In a long-term relationship with children involved, it can be difficult for the man to foster active sexual feelings for his wife. Being a mother and a sexually active woman does not gel with the noble Virgin Mary image for the man involved.

Freud called it the mother-whore complex. This causes many men to lose sexual interest in their wives because they see them more as mothers. Through never getting any notion that his

parents enjoyed an active sex life, a boy becomes a man without a road map to find and maintain his own vibrant sexuality in the postchildbirth stage of a relationship. Something similar also applies to the type of woman who sees her sexuality merely as a means of reproduction. Once kids are around, she loses her sexual desire, and all of her attention is taken up in raising children. Happiness and love in the relationship come under intense pressure in both cases.

The thing that burdens our intimacy and sexuality most heavily, meanwhile, is so pervasive that it feels normal: our unconscious loyalty to our parents. As a rule, by being loyal, we take on an intimacy and sexuality similar to our ancestors. If they were subject to a negative or taboo-ridden sexuality, then it is very likely that this attitude colors the way we feel about our own sexuality. Our sexuality becomes dirty or painful if that was the belief of our ancestors and, as a result, their experiences. If our ancestors could not or did not dare to enjoy their sexuality, enjoying sexuality violates our blind love and loyalty. Enjoying sex, therefore, is difficult because there is no connection between enjoyment and sexuality stored in our mindset. So for affected descendants, that feels almost normal, given that sexuality and enjoyment do not go together. Worse still is when our ancestors associated sexuality with physical pain, humiliation, or even trauma. For people who are loyal to such traumatized parents, it may feel appropriate and even normal to let an equally painful or humiliating sexuality take form in their lives. Through reciprocity in relationships, this gets reflected by the partner, as everything our partner can give us, generally speaking, springs from our internalized pattern.

As long as we remain unaware of our loyalties, we automatically carry with us tensions and blockages from our ancestors. Equally automatically, these determine our own capacity and ability to enjoy our sexuality.

John, age twenty-three, comes into my practice and questions whether it is possible to do something about his premature ejaculation. I ask him first to clearly feel the pressure or tension that makes him come prematurely. He describes it as a pressure. When I asked whether this pressure comes from within him —or more from the front —or behind him, he says, “It’s coming from behind me. It’s on my back.” I ask him to nominate a chair to represent himself and a chair for the pressure and place the chairs in such a way that feels right for him. He puts the chair for the pressure so closely behind his chair that they are almost touching. Sitting on his chair, he says the arrangement feels right. When he sits on the chair for the pressure, in the role of pressure, he feels a sense of fear and discomfort again. When I asked whether this feeling belongs to John, who is sitting in front of him, he says, representing the pressure, that this is not the case. I put two chairs behind the chair of pressure, one for John’s father and one for his mother. Then I ask John, on the chair that represents the pressure, to look at John’s parents to see whether the pressure belongs there, to which he replies in the affirmative, pointing to the chair of John’s mother. He says, “I belong actually here with his mother.” I ask John to change chairs and sit on the chair of his mother and to feel in his mother ’s place. His perceptions on the chair of his mother are clear. He puts it as follows: “The pressure and discomfort belong to me. I can’t relax when it comes to intimacy or sexuality. I was always relieved when it was over. It felt so embarrassing.”

My next question to John on the chair representing his mother is “As a mother, do you want your son John to continue to carry this tension?” followed by “Does it help that your son carries this tension?” In the role of his mother, John clearly feels that his mother does not want him to continue carrying her burden and that it also does not help. Representing his mother, it becomes clear to him that he, John, has copied her tensions and that to carry over her attitude does not change the difficulty that his mother had with intimacy and sexuality.

I ask again, “Do you want your son to leave these tensions with you?” Then I ask, “Do you consent to John having a relaxed sexuality and enjoying intimacy in his life?” On the chair of his mother and taking on her role, John can clearly feel that his mother consents and wishes him a happy sex life. To feel this is a great relief for him. At the end of his constellation, the chair representing the pressure is behind the chair of his mother, and John’s chair is now at an appropriate distance in front of his mother. With his parents behind him, John feels that his mother now carries her own tensions and pressure. He feels liberated of this burden.

Anyone who has worked for some time with constellations would certainly come to the same conclusion as me; namely, that all the issues around intimacy and sexuality in most people are heavily burdened. It seems to me that we, individually as well as collectively, are rather far removed from having healthy, respectful, and natural intimacy and sexuality. Anyway, there is no doubt that both partners lay down the foundation for a beautiful and lasting relationship by taking equal responsibility for an open and satisfying sexuality.

Reconciliation between Men and Women As we have seen, men and women are driven by their loyalties. Loyalty strongly binds us to our families and also to our genders. Women are connected to all other women in their families. It seems that just about all women carry with them this intense suppression from the past. These loyalties are sometimes expressed in deep, subconscious ways, such as an aversion to men, deep vengeful feelings, or mistrust. Just as subconsciously, men often feel guilty because they are portrayed as villains and perpetrators. They find it difficult to evade the guilt and responsibility, and their resultant helplessness tends to be expressed as aggression. In both sexes, the loyalty to one’s own gender is almost completely subconscious, despite the negative consequences for relationships. This only perpetuates the war between the sexes that has been waging for generations.

The “Mother Mary” status and the associated passive and submissive attitude gives women “freedom” and power being the victims. Men are always the perpetrators. By closing themselves off, women endlessly avenge their oppressors: men. By their aggressive response, it is clear to all who the villains are here. And so it runs endlessly.

Bert Hellinger[18] uncovered a particular dynamic at play with his work among perpetrators and victims. Reconciliation is possible only when the perpetrator can look the victim in the eye and acknowledge sadness about his guilt. Only then can the victim detach himself or herself from the perpetrator. It is then clear for all concerned that they are enmeshed in a much bigger movement, and this realization gives them the chance to resolve the victimperpetrator interdependence. This reconciliation can happen only through the individual.

When men talk about women disparagingly and vice versa, loyalty connects group members to the underlying burdens, which makes reconciliation difficult.

Balance of Giving and Taking in Relationships In the contextual approach, just as in constellation work, a good balance between giving and taking is seen as the key to a well-functioning relationship: Ensuring relational balance is the key to keeping viable close relationships and is the cornerstone of the contextual approach.

Contextual therapists work from the conviction that all family members benefit from reliable relationships that result from giving due credit; reacting responsibly; ensuring equal share of both relationship benefits and burdens.[19] Therefore, each of us has to give our partner suitable recognition and allow him or her sufficient room to be able to receive recognition. We each have the same responsibility as our partner for the quality of the relationship, and we have to take equal responsibility for relationship problems. By mutual agreement, all burdens and obligations that are part of the relationship must be shared.

A relationship is certainly not a static affair but rather a dynamic mutual engagement that succeeds through maintaining continual balance between giving and taking and being united in love.

The following example from Hellinger is a case in point: a man gives a woman something because he loves her. At the point of giving, he assumes a superior position because he is the giver and the woman is the receiver. She feels obligated because she has received. She tries to reestablish balance by giving him something in return, and because she loves him, she gives, in return, a little more, to be certain. Now the man is in a position of obligation. He tries to find balance once more by giving to his partner, because he loves her, a little more again. In this way, a broader sharing is achieved because of the need for balance combined with love.

This major exchange of giving and taking binds the couple ever more strongly together.

Their happiness grows. This harmonious exchange is the bedrock of a good relationship.

There are, of course, relationships in which one partner inflicts hurt or causes the other pain.

In this case, the partner who has been hurt feels the need to reestablish balance as well. He or she wants revenge. This partner responds by causing the other pain and, because the partner is convinced of his or her own virtue, gives back a little more pain. This creates the same intense exchange as described previously regarding love but now with pain; this binds the couple negatively.

Bert Hellinger[20] gives good advice in this regard: â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is a simple rule to be able to step out of this vicious circle. Just like when one partner gives the other a little more in return, out of love, in finding balance, in painful or negative balancing, people can give their partner a little less pain in return. This marks the start of a positive exchange.â&#x20AC;?

It is important to understand that the whole process of balancing for most people usually happens unconsciously. Disturbances in balance are reciprocal and are caused by entanglements and loyalties. Every disturbance indicates unresolved tension or emotional charge that actually stems from our ancestors or from childhood.

Forgiving Through my own experience with constellations as a representative and facilitator, backed by Hellinger ’s work, I have had to let go of an important so-called spiritual principle. I used to be convinced of the rectitude and nobility of forgiving, but family and relationship constellations have allowed me to appreciate a deeper truth. The principle of forgiving that I once considered so noble has fallen away. In fact, it appears in many cases to be disrespectful toward both the victim and perpetrator.

That is why no one is ever asked to forgive or be forgiven in a family constellation. When a perpetrator asks a victim for forgiveness, the victim is once again being asked to do something for the perpetrator (on top of all that the perpetrator has done to the victim): namely to forgive him or her. That is too much to ask. Apart from being the victim, this person is also being asked to carry the responsibility of forgiving.

In addition, it makes it harder for the perpetrator to come to terms with himself, his deeds, and his guilt. Being forgiven deprives him of the necessity to accept his guilt and the accompanying responsibility. Moreover, the person who forgives is automatically placed in a superior position compared with the person being forgiven, which seriously upsets the relationship balance of give and take. Hellinger uses the following aphorism for this:

“Whatever I forgive others for goes into my own emotional backpack.”

How would you feel if a perpetrator said—and truly meant—“I’m sorry” to you? If you compare this with “Excuse me, please” or “Please forgive me,” the difference is obvious.[21] The person who is asked to excuse or forgive has to do something. The expression “I’m sorry” is recognition of the fact that someone has done something and has regretted it. This regret enables connection so that the other can experience being seen as a victim. This recognition is necessary for reconciliation.

Furthermore, the desire to look for the underlying causes is necessary, of course, if two people want to heal their relationship and attain mutual love. When forgiving obstructs this awareness process or when forgiving is a way of avoiding wading through the “swamp of the soul,” we risk certain disappointment in the end, which also means that the necessary awareness process just shifts to the next generation.

Imagine that your partner has cheated on you, and you forgive him or her. In that case, you do not have to consider reciprocity in the following sense: “What does this tell me about my mind-set and about my loyalties that I am experiencing this in my relationship?” Your underlying pattern, which your partner is trying to bring to light by his or her cheating, remains obscured. Of course, your partner does not have to reflect on his or her own part in the problem either, because you have forgiven him or her. Therefore, there is also no reason for the person being forgiven to look for possible entanglements or loyalties driving him or her to cheat. Everything neatly remains at the level of symptoms, covered with the cloth of

love. Cheating on your partner is a symptom and has, of course, an equal origination in both partners.

By looking at causes, both partners can accept their responsibilities and become aware of the role that loyalties and entanglements play for them. The one-sided and often very accusatory approach we normally take on cheating in relationships helps neither the victim nor the perpetrator. On the contrary, it obscures every opportunity to learn something from a given situation. Whatever happens in a relationship, no matter how terrible or painful, both parties are always implicated to the same degree. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always fifty-fifty.

As soon as you understand that all destructive attitudes or events your partner confronts you with are just a reflection of whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in your own mind-set, forgiving becomes superfluous.

In other words, we forgive because the context in which the destructiveness makes sense has not or cannot be appreciated. From the moment we face the context of destructive attitudes and actions, by identifying and understanding to whom we were loyal as well as what form of trauma or pain has been propelling these destructive attitudes, our family system will teach us a lesson. Thanks to the courage and effort required to look further than symptoms, we can finally let go of those destructive attitudes. This is the greatest gift that we can give our partners and ourselves.

Frequent Disturbances to Balance Every disruption to the balance of give and take nibbles away at the strength and depth of love in a relationship; this undermines the very nature of having a remarkable and exciting connection to another person.

When Partners Are Too Demanding It is only when partnership and love are voluntary that love can really flow. Behind a demanding attitude, we usually find serious parent identification (parentification), a lack of commitment, or an attachment disorder. Parentification means that one or both parents have relied emotionally on the child. It is one of the most frequent entanglements that we see in constellations. (See the section on parentification). Attachment disorders arise when a child in his or her first years is separated from parents for an extended period. This can happen when a prematurely born baby is required to spend lengthy periods in an incubator or when, for one reason or another, lengthy hospitalization is necessary without the parents being present, or they are prevented from being present on a daily basis. Other scenarios leading to attachment disorder are the death of one or both parents, adoption, and psychiatric illness.

Problematic relationships with parents or attachment disorders are sources of many unfulfilled desires and needs in childhood, which can later on be projected onto future partners who cannot possibly set right these unsatisfied needs from childhood. By repeating unprocessed childhood drama, the overdemanding partner risks driving away his or her partner. Almost automatically, he or she chases his or her partner away through this process.

(For more on this, see the sections “Our Own Unprocessed Pain” and “Inner Child Meditation”)

The first arguments between couples almost always come from the abandonment of desires for the original mother or father. It comes from delusion but we can also use it to take a leap forward in awareness.

—Anna Zanardi Cappon[22]

Jealousy is a good example. A jealous person has a subconscious fear that his or her partner will have an affair or leave the relationship. Through this separation anxiety, the jealous person exercises control over his or her partner. The partner being controlled in this way experiences this as a lack of trust, since his or her partner remains ostensibly suspicious. If he or she eventually does what is suspected—and what is actually subconsciously expected—like having an affair, the demanding (jealous) partner has his or her fears confirmed and plays out a dramatic victim role. He or she thereby repeats an unprocessed experience from childhood, like often being left alone by his or her mother. A childlike, demanding attitude actually underscores such “romantic” sentiments like “I can’t live without you” or “stay with me forever.” Such behavior only burdens love in a relationship.

Here are some more important causes of distortion to the balance of give and take that can have a big impact on relationship happiness.

Having to Give Up Too Much A relationship becomes dysfunctional when one partner demands that the other give up a job, friends, or a social life. Accordingly, dysfunction is indicated when one partner goes about sabotaging these life aspects by constant ridicule and derision. Giving up friends, a job, or other important aspects of life because your partner demands it is going too far. Relationships like this often end up dormant.

Playing the Social Worker or Rescuer When one partner plays the helping-hand role and happily gives far more than he or she receives, this ensures imbalance in the relationship. The partner who receives without the chance to give back will feel more and more guilty until finally wanting to end the relationship. This counts for relationship stereotypes as well: the strong man takes care of the weak and helpless woman, or the caring woman gets involved with an alcoholic or a criminal.

Both do this out of love as well as an inner longing to help and rescue. Helpers or rescuers take on a superior position through the stance taken, while partners become weaker and inferior, causing serious disruption to the balance of giving and taking.

Playing the Victim The balance is also upset when one of the partners plays the victim role and feels responsible for everything. The other partner will be made to feel bad and sooner or later will want to leave the relationship. Sentiments echoed by statements like “I was always too good and too nice…” camouflage victim behavior.

Taking on a Parental Role When men or women behave as if they have the right to criticize, educate, or change their partners, they are assuming rights that belong only in a parent-child relationship. In order to release themselves from this pressure, recipients will often look for freedom and equilibrium outside the relationship.[23] Sentiments such as “I have told you a hundred times…” show a parental attitude toward a partner.

For a relationship between a man and a woman to succeed, the husband must remain a man, and the wife, a woman. If it is disturbed, like when one of the two makes childish demands or plays the victim, the other is forced to take the role of parent or perpetrator, which has dire consequences for the relationship.

Being Overly Responsible One partner having an excessive feeling of responsibility can also disrupt a relationship. This is recognized through reasoning such as “She or he will be happier if I give more love.”

Behind such statements hides the idea that we can exercise control over another person’s feelings by our demeanor. The person who thinks he or she has this power will become superior and make the other subordinate.

Exaggerated Idealism Another disruption happens when one of the partners is overly idealistic, especially in a religious way, which compels such a person to strive to meet ideals, such as never being late or always being careful not to say or do the wrong thing. This behavior naturally only serves to make the other partner feel inadequate.

Wanting to Have Children or Not In the situation where one partner comes to a relationship with children but does not want to have more, while the partner without children would still like to have children of his or her own, an imbalance is created. A relationship can work only if the partner with children specially honors the partner who gives up a wish for children. A partner with children can never demand that the other partner remain childless. A relationship cannot be successful if one partner does not want children while the other strongly desires them.

Financial Imbalance A relationship can be harmed when one partner pays for or allows the other to take time to study for a qualification or follow a training program at his or her expense. Balance is disrupted because the partner being offered money or time to gain qualifications feels guilty due to the extent of the offer he or she has received. The relationship may well break up once the qualifications have been attained. Giving time or money for gaining qualifications is the responsibility of parents. If one partner gives the other the opportunity to gain qualifications, the continuation of the relationship is possible only when the giver is specially honored in a fully conscious manner. Upon doing this, the couple can find a way to recompensate together to restore balance. The same applies when one partner gives too many or excessively expensive gifts while the other partner is unable to recompensate sufficiently to restore relationship equilibrium.

Here is another case study: Lisa, age twenty-eight, constellates her relationship concerning her difficult marriage and her impression that her husband buries himself in his work as an escape. The representatives of her and her husband initially face away from each other. Lisa feels dejected, and her husband feels the need to keep a distance. He says, “It’s all too heavy for me.” As the constellation progresses, it becomes apparent that Lisa carries a heavy burden from her family of origin. This naturally has impacted her relationship, since her husband has lovingly tried all he could to help ease his wife’s load. It never helped, however, leaving him confronted with a constant feeling of powerlessness. Through frustration, he focused more

and more on his work. The balance between giving and taking is obviously disturbed. In the constellation, her husband says, “I leave all your heavy stuff with you.” She replies, “I carry my own fate. I take responsibility for my own heavy load; I can handle it. You honor me by leaving it all with me.” Her husband is visibly relieved on hearing this and lightens up. He says to his wife, “I honor you. I respect your strength and your fate.” Both are able to move closer to each other and look each other in the eye.

In her next constellation, Lisa constellates her family of origin. Now it is apparent that she has been carrying unprocessed pain that has flowed down from the premature death of her grandmother. Once she works through this, she is in a position to dedicate all of her strength to her husband and her children.

Just as explained in chapter three “Determinants of Relationship Happiness,” many couples split up because they carry—totally subconsciously within their mind-set—unprocessed burdens and emotional damage from their ancestors. It could be any number of unprocessed issues, like a grandfather ’s war trauma, feelings of oppression, a bad mother-child relationship, or a little brother who died prematurely.

Addiction and the emotional mess that lies behind it are also things that can interfere in a relationship. All of these burdens spoil relationships with our loved ones without us realizing or wanting it to happen. We continue to follow our family conscience until we are awakened to the underlying dynamic. Everyone has to carry his or her own fate, no matter how heavy.

This is the only respectful stance to take. In addition to the balance of give and take, I now draw attention to other important aspects that could have adverse effects on relationships.

Communication and Feelings in Relationships Apart from the balance of give and take, there are other important aspects that can have negative influences on our relationships.

Good communication with our partner is one of the keys to a happy and harmonious relationship. However, all too frequently, communication in a relationship is lacking. That, of course, is just a symptom; there is always a reason behind a communication breakdown. If we look at the cause and can adequately address it, communication often naturally improves.

Everything that happens in a love relationship happens “between” two people (Buber).

Both people are equally responsible for their communication and actions.

When we communicate with our partner during a relationship conflict, we mainly use language. With words, we formulate what we want to say, and we form arguments and recriminations. But the real problem is beyond words, of course. It is essentially all about feelings. The feeling or emotional charge that lurks behind what is being said in a relationship discussion is often more important than what is said. The emotional charges behind our arguments and recriminations largely determine (and are capable of souring) our communications. As long as we are unsuspecting of the important role played by the emotional charges or their sources, we remain ignorant, unaware of what determines our communication and, thus, how to communicate effectively.

Most people assume that their feelings are just feelings, period. The majority of people are not aware that feelings can come from somewhere else and that they may not be solely their own. To become aware of this is a new way of seeing for them. Equally new is the concept that emotional charges exist, that we carry them over from family members, and that they affect our relationships. It was no different for me before I knew about Bert Hellinger ’s constellations and his vision about feelings or emotions. He divides feelings or emotions into four types, or categories: primary feelings, secondary emotions, systemic or assumed emotions, and metafeelings.[24]

Primary Feelings These are feelings of the here and now that can therefore be solved in the here and now. They can be severe, but they have a clear beginning, climax, and end. Take, for example, a child who falls and cries out in pain. The child runs to his or her parents, is comforted and cared for, and in a few minutes is back at play again. Or take the example of yourself on a crowded bus. Someone steps on your toes and politely says, “Sorry.” It hurts for a moment, but you know that these things happen, and the apology is sincere, so it’s OK, and in no time, it’s forgotten.

An important feature of primary feelings is that they disappear or dissolve when there is an appropriate expression given to them. Primary feelings do not linger and leave no trace. They are a manifestation of power and authenticity and are, in general, regarded by others with respect. Consider the deep pain of parents when they lose a child. If they completely surrender to it by allowing themselves to experience all of their feelings and giving appropriate expression to them, they can handle their deep pain. They go through a process of mourning and, afterward, are free of pain again. The deceased child is given a place in their hearts and in their memories. When the child and his or her death can be spoken about without hesitation or shame, the child may rest peacefully with his or her fate.

Secondary Emotions These are feelings that we carry over from our past. By carrying them over, they turn into emotions. In fact, all unresolved painful feelings that we carry and later express in our couple relationships are secondary emotions. Let us take as an example the emotions we carry as a result of a lack of attention or affection occurring in our childhood. A secondary sense is, thus, no more than a symptom that points to a cause in our past. Secondary emotions, unlike primary emotions, linger on; they are endless. Even though they are triggered here and now, they are from the past. This means they cannot be resolved in the here and now. It is therefore very important to understand that others cannot be expected to respond properly to them. To be able to feel secondary emotions, people often close their eyes. People frequently express their secondary emotions—without being aware of it—in the form of reproach during their relationship hassles. The partner who cops reproach with secondary loading is unable to do anything with it, making him or her feel powerless. There is a tendency for this powerlessness to be experienced as irritation. This irritation, of course, exacerbates the conflict, leaving the couple in an endless battle.

Expressing secondary emotions cannot lead to a solution, because the cause of these feelings is a thing of the past. Only when a connection is made back to the original situation and the emotional charge attached has been felt can adequate processing take place toward an eventual solution. This may be done in a safe therapeutic setting. Until a solution is found, the emotional charge hangs on. That is why expressing secondary emotions makes no sense and cannot possibly result in an improvement or transformation. Playing the victim, self-pity, and complaining are all frequent examples and expressions of secondary emotions.

Looking again at the deep pain parents feel when they lose a child, if they don’t surrender to their pain and sorrow and instead keep their feelings in check out of fear of the depth and strength of their primary emotions, then they prohibit the mourning process. This leaves them unable to cope with the death of their child. They remain trapped in their endless pain. The strength of the original, primary feeling has not dissipated but is looking for another means of expression. It manifests itself, for example, in guilt or blame: “If only I/you had done… then our child’s death could have been avoided.” Expressing such guilt feelings or indulging in mutual recriminations ultimately serves only as a distraction for not having to feel the pain of loss. The child does not secure a place in the hearts of his or her parents, leaving the

parents with only their own pain or blame or whatever else it is. The parents are left unable to talk openly about the child or his or her death, so the child is not seen.

This example clearly shows that secondary emotions arise when primary feelings are not given expression or felt through. A secondary emotion replaces the intensity of the primary feeling and makes a long-term drama of it. And as I said, others—especially partners—are left powerless by this drama and the associated secondary emotions—just as your partner is powerless about your secondary emotions stemming from lack of attention when you were a baby, for example. This shortage is being carried in your mind-set, and if your partner, out of deep love, caters to your mind-set, by providing just as little attention you were used to in your childhood, you reproach him or her for that. No partner, however loving, can respond appropriately to such reproach, just as no partner can ever respond appropriately to secondary emotions.

Back to the example of the bus. Imagine you’re in the crowded bus, and five different people have now trodden on your toes. Now you will most likely react differently to the apology of the sixth person who steps on your toes. There will most likely be an element of irritation in your response. This irritation is yours, so reacting with irritation to the sixth person who steps on your toes is illogical, because that person had nothing to do with the other five times or with the fact that your toes copped such a pounding.

Systemic Emotions All emotional charges we carry from our ancestors, through the various forms of loyalties and entanglements, are carried-over emotions. They are also called systemic emotions because they have their origins in our family system and have not originated in our own lives.

If, for example, the men in our family have been angry toward women for generations, then as men, we carry over that emotion with us; it is thus an acquired sense. It comes from our family system. The same applies if, for example, the women in our family have been contemptuous of men. We take on and carry over this disdain as women by wanting to be loyal with the women who came before us in the family. We copy this stance and play it out in our own lives.

Since we carry all emotional charges in our mind-set, along with all corresponding family beliefs, it is particularly important to be aware of all of these acquired emotions. Whether we like them or not and whether we are aware of them or not, we inevitably come up against them in our couple relationships. A systemic or assumed emotion is a symptom that has its origin in our family. As with secondary emotions, a partner cannot respond adequately to being blamed, for example, when blaming is propelled by acquired emotions. Again, the partner responds with irritation as a consequence of his or her powerlessness. We see similar effects in relationship conflicts with secondary emotions.

The parents who did not properly process the death of their child back in the past, as in the previous example, might well be our grandparents, leading to one of our parents carrying

over their endless pain. Through our loyalty, we are emotionally attached to that parent and copy his or her grief in our own lives with similar restrictive consequences. That is to say, this systemic emotion gnaws away at our relationship happiness.

Back to our example of the bus. You’re still on the crowded bus, and six people have now trodden on your toes. Imagine you come from a family where, over generations, there have been different members who have frequently had their toes trodden on. You are more likely to react with an old victim feeling: “Yeah that’s life; people are constantly stepping on our toes.

That’s just the way life is.” Another scenario is that you explode in anger and react by hitting back at the sixth person who steps on your toes. This is a way of “unloading” your own anger on top of the anger related to this issue that has been stored up for generations in your family.

When people with such a background explode in this way, they often say “I did not know what possessed me” or “I did not know what happened to me.” They may be feeling subconsciously justified, but of course they remain accountable for their actions.

Metafeelings The fourth type stands above the other three and has a very different quality. Metafeelings are impersonal in nature, such as compassion, courage, humility, and unconditional love. We have these feelings if we are touched by something deep in our hearts or when we are moved.

These feelings make us open and free. They are the feelings of wisdom and appear after our entanglements and destructive loyalties are healed.

Conflict exists in many relationships; it seems inevitable. When conflict between partners remains at the level of primary feelings, they are usually able to find a solution that’s right for both. They resolve their differences just as the sun shines again after a storm. If, however, they frequently express secondary or systemic emotions during their arguments, they remain enshrouded within a sense of powerlessness, incomprehension, pain, or the like almost automatically. Even the most beautiful of relationships erode away like this.

Communication at the level of primary emotions: “Honey, you forgot to empty the dishwasher again.”

Communication at the level of secondary or acquired emotions: “You always forget to empty the dishwasher; you are so unreliable.”

Those who study Hellinger ’s insights about feelings and emotions understand that all accusations expressed in relationship conflicts essentially consist of two kinds of emotions: secondary emotions and acquired, systemic emotions. What we have seen is that the expression of these feelings toward our partners cannot bring about resolution. On the contrary, our partners can react only with impotence and eventually will become frustrated and irritated. So by expressing secondary emotions and acquired, systemic emotions, without wanting to do so consciously, we damage relationships with the people we love the most.

Instead of saying “You’re hurting me!” it is fairer and more appropriate to say “You touch my old pain!”

Inequities in Former Relationships Return In our mind-set, we carry over unprocessed injustices that took place in previous generations.

They typify a common cause of disturbances in relationships, which constellations can make us aware of. We see here so clearly how emotional charges shift along generations and damage our relationship happiness.

If an injustice was perpetrated between a man and a woman in a previous relationship without being compensated for or processed, it will rise up again in a following generation. The feelings that were not expressed or not accepted are carried over by family members in following generations until they are eventually expressed. The injustice and emotional charge that go with it will shift from grandfather to grandson, for example. The grandson will carry over the unprocessed spousal frustrations of his grandfather and express them toward his partner. The following is a brief account of a constellation showing this dynamic.

Steven, age thirty-seven, is experiencing problems in his relationship. Every time he begins a new relationship, he is soon beset by distrust that causes the relationship to run off the rails. In the course of his constellation, we learn that his great-grandfather had been humiliated and hurt by his wife. He hid his suffering as a means of keeping the peace. Steven, his grandson, feels strongly connected to his grandfather, and it is obvious he bears the burden for his grandfather and (subconsciously) defends him. He does that toward his partners.

Steven feels relieved once he hears his grandparents say, one at a time, “We carry our own relationship problems. We are the adults; you are but a grandchild.” Steven replies, “I leave it with you. I honor you and your relationship.” He says to his grandfather, “I honor you and your relationship with your wife, my grandmother.” He follows this up by bowing down deeply before his grandfather. His grandfather says, “You have wanted to do a lot and carry a lot for me. That’s special, and I feel your love. You may stop carrying it now. You honor me by developing a wonderful relationship.” Steven resolves the identification with his grandfather by expressing and integrating these sentiments into his life. Six months after the constellation, Steven tells how he feels calmer and safer in his relationship; the distrust is practically gone.

After years of arguing, Sarah, age thirty-five, is divorced, although she still loves her exhusband. Her constellation reveals how unhappy her mother was with her husband. Her mother did not dare divorce her husband, which according to her mother was out of consideration for her children. Sarah discovers that this reasoning was used by her mother to camouflage her fear of going out on her own. From a deep sense of loyalty and love, Sarah repeated her mother ’s unhappy relationship in her own life and divorced her husband in the place of her mother.

The way unprocessed emotional issues are taken up by subsequent generations and expressed in their lives, out of love, is demonstrated time and time again in constellations similar to this.

As a rule, this happens without the people involved being conscious of what is going on, even

though the consequences are often damaging. It always seems that the people who had the real problems in the first instance, like the grandfather or the mother in the previous cases, were not able to or could not cope with them. In no way at all did they want their children or grandchildren to chip in for them or ruin their own lives or relationships. Our ancestors feel better when they see us prosper.

Relationships between People of Different Cultural Groups With intimate relationships between people of different nationalities, cultures, or religions, both partners are also connected to the religion or nationality of their own civilization and cultural group as well as to their family of origin, so these aspects can become part of the dynamics of the relationship.

Children who come from such relationships have to resonate with both cultures, nationalities, or religions. Both cultures are part of the childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mind-set. It is not always easy, especially if the communities or religions are poles apart. But it is a step toward a common future if it does work.

Not all people are prepared to realize that we are already more mixed than we care to acknowledge; however, we can narrow the gap between different races, cultures, and religions so that we stand a chance to achieve lasting peace, as this will mean mutual recognition, a feeling of equality, and respect among the collective.

For example, Belgian and British people have a similar culture, yet both countries are different nations with different religions. Both of these nations and religions live in peace and in mutual recognition and respect, so there is little tension between these collectives. As a result, you can expect no major difficulties in the relationship between a Belgian and a British person. This also means that people largely accept mixed Belgian and British relationships.

This is different when there is tension between the collectives, for example, through the unresolved history of the world wars. We therefore see these collective tensions return in the relationships of members of different collectives. Sometimes, this has a larger impact on one relationship than on another, but it always plays a role. Imagine a relationship between a German and an Israeli, an American and a Japanese person, or an Australian and an Aboriginal person; you can immediately sense the tensions that may burden such relationships, even though this may happen only subconsciously.

Robert, age thirty-eight, comes from Suriname. His marriage problems with his Dutch wife are the reasons for his constellation. He is not sure if he should end the marriage or not. One of the most important facts that he mentioned in the introductory talk is that his ancestors were slaves forced to work on Dutch plantations (see also Mirandaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s constellation (link).

Laws that forced family members to be separated intentionally severed family ties among slaves. If a child was born, the father was transferred or sold, and he would be sent to another plantation far away from his wife and child. The pain of this cruelty is clearly visible in Robertâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s constellation. His ancestors are positioned far apart and do not dare look at each other for fear of painful repercussions. Robert carries this pain, and it is difficult for him to leave this burden with his ancestors. He feels a strong urge to share their fate and, thus, also not cultivate his own family ties.

The representatives for his ancestors do not want him to carry their “forced separation” fate, which he repeats in his marriage by leaving his wife. The real solution comes via the representative for the Dutch slave keepers. They take responsibility for having torn apart the family.

Robert’s ancestors further clarify that in their eyes his Dutch wife is not guilty. They point to the representative for the Dutch slave keepers and say that the blame belongs with them. The representative for the Dutch slave keepers confirms this and shows regret for the slave keepers’ deeds. He adds that, in their time, equal relations between Dutch people and slaves was unthinkable, but now slavery has long been abolished so this idea no longer has relevance. Robert frees himself by bowing deeply and allowing the responsibility and blame to remain with the Dutch slaveholders. His ancestors can now truly sanction the continuation of his marriage; they wish him a stable and happy family life.

The Parental Relationship Takes Precedence over Children Those who make the child the sole purpose of their marriage, make this child a symbol of a joyless resignation.

—Dirk Coster, Dutch writer, 1887–1956

It is commonly understood that raising children involves an enormous amount of energy and commitment and that children take priority over one’s partner in a relationship. Parents are sometimes convinced that this is the way it should be and feel they are doing the right thing by considering their children first. This is, however, a common misconception and a common cause of destabilization in relationships. Partners often lose sight of the fact that children are an expression of their love for one another.

Chronologically speaking, the parental relationship comes first, because having children is conditional on the existence of their relationship (even if the relationship is short-lived, it still came first).[25]

A loving parental relationship is the best sustenance for children.

Children usually become more important than a partner when one of the parents has emotional shortcomings or when the relationship is already disturbed. Many parents try to fill in their emotional shortcomings with their children, but this burdens children emotionally and can lead to parentification (link). This causes a distortion in the balance of give and take in the relationship between parents and their children.

Children pitch in to share the load when they see that one or both parents are chronically unhappy. They become substitute partners, which also creates imbalance. Children can become more important and even be considered a better “partner” when parents seek support and comfort from their children. See the previous sections “Mummy’s Boy” and “Daddy’s Little Princess.” If these disturbances are to be avoided, parents have to put their relationship first and take on the responsibility to maintain a happy and liberating relationship with each other. Children who see their parents getting on well and being happy together can relax and be free to be happy children.

Blaming Parents Many people harbor blame and resentment toward their parents and distance themselves from them. They do not want to have anything to do with one or both parents, and they try (inwardly and/or outwardly) to live as far away as possible from them. This is a clear indication of unprocessed issues between children and parents.

No matter how far away you move or how hard you try to rid yourself of your parents, you always take them with you—internalized in your mind-set.

It comes as no surprise to see that this blame returns in a boomerang fashion and manifests as trouble in future relationships. Common reproaching in relationships takes on forms like “You’re just like my mother/father.” This and similar accusations point to unresolved conflicts that are carried on from the family. People who express this kind of reproach to their partners usually have yet to process an issue with their own parents and their loyalties and entanglements. In reciprocity, the partner cannot help but manifest these conflicts in the relationship or marriage and thus confronts his or her partner with his or her own unresolved familial past. The clear message here is that if we want harmony in our relationships, these conflicts need to be processed for one simple reason: parents bestow upon their children all they have, including their shortcomings. This means they are just the way they are. That is why emotionally and materially challenged parents are in no state to give emotional or material wealth to their children. Violent parents or those with an addiction cannot always prevent passing on these heavy afflictions to their children. That is just the long and short of it. As they say, you can’t rob a naked man of his clothes. Of course, there are circumstances where it is very understandable that children are furious and angry. The best thing they can do is process all of the emotional scars they carry and heal their inner child as I describe in chapter three. This is just to make sure they do not get stuck in the emotional turmoil of their parents and, therefore, pass the emotional load to their offspring.

Please take this as a sign of unresolved conflicts that you carry on from your family: if what is written here makes you sad, angry, or furious, do yourself a favor and process it.

When children do not accept their parents as they are, they place themselves above them and mess with both the hierarchical order as well as the balance of give and take. Some people find this reasoning difficult to fathom. A question that is often posed is “Do children place themselves above their parents if they expect more from them?” The idea behind this logic is that we would have been better off if only our parents would have been more aware, more loving, richer, or whatever else. As if there could be an alternative for the way our parents behaved or who they are. We reason, “If only they were…” or “If only they had…I would now be happier, more successful, and just better off in general.” Engaging in this kind of rationalization only makes us more dependent and more caught up in a victim role, giving us

the perfect excuse for our botched-up lives. That creates fertile ground for our reproaching ways, which is a surefire way to mess up our couple relationships.

There is an exception to this rule: parents lose their rights as parents when they step over parental boundaries like engaging in sexual or physical abuse.

In such situations, children have the right to take an appropriate emotional and physical distance.

Experience shows us that we can only be reunited with our strength and be in a state of happiness, with the ability to have sustained, mutually beneficial relationships, once we accept our parents as they are, with all their faults and shortcomings. This implies that we have to return all the burdens we have carried over from them, as well as honor them and their lives, as they are. We will then be in a position to thank them for the greatest gift of all: our lives.

If we do not accept our parents as they are, the family conscience will automatically ensure that we will be confronted in our relationships with unprocessed aspects from our parents that destabilize our relationships or, perhaps worse still, make us incapable of having relationships at all.

To Marry or Not to Marry?

In the chapter “Why Do We Enter Into Relationships?” I write that relationships that survive severe crises and, consequently, a most painful period foster the deepest form of commitment that we can give each other. With this commitment, we give each other the freedom, security, and opportunity to become aware of and come to terms with all unprocessed pain and loyalties. That’s what the vow “till death do us part” during a wedding ceremony is all about.

Without really being aware of this, many couples marry out of tradition or because that is just the way it should be.

A traditional marriage is nothing for Charles, age thirty-two. He sees marriage as too bourgeois and restrictive. He has no need at all to demonstrate his love for his wife to the community, nor does he need approval from the community to be able to live with the woman of his choice. The way he sees it, he lives with his partner out of love and not because he has to. He does not want to get some public servant to put a stamp on a document and certainly is not interested in the blessing of a priest. He believes in none of that. When he comes into my practice, his relationship problem persists in the form of profound detachment between him and his partner. He is familiar with Hellinger ’s ideas about people living together for an extended period without marrying, but he has his doubts. Charles is not one to accept anything without giving it a lot of thought, and he still does not believe in all of Hellinger ’s ideas.

Hellinger says that long-term relationships not eventually turning into marriage are signs of not wanting to grow up. He sees it as an ongoing mutual injury. According to Hellinger, when partners continue to live together in the long term without getting married, they are actually saying to each other, “I’m still looking for a better partner.” This, of course, happens unconsciously.

Through thorough self-examination by way of a constellation and Inner Child Meditation, Charles gradually comes to the realization that he, indeed, still has another woman in the back of his mind. This woman represents his dream: the one woman who is willing to give him what he longs for and what he lacks in his current relationship. What he also becomes aware of is that this dream woman is an idealized image of his mother: the dream image of a wife and mother who would give him the necessary attention and love he had missed so much with his real mother in childhood. He realizes that this dream image and his unprocessed loss underpin the distance between him and his wife. In fact, he has been repeating painful childhood experiences with his aloof mother in his relationship with his wife. Married or not, in perfect reciprocity, his partner has been confronting him with his unprocessed pain by being just like his mother was in his formative early years.

Something similar takes place with people who cannot or do not want to bond because they “need their freedom.” They usually have someone else in mind demanding their attention.

Even when you ask them to describe or define why they need this freedom they are seeking, they struggle to come up with a clear response. Constellation after constellation reveals that

they need this freedom because they are entangled to a member of their family. That could be a parent (frequently the mother) or a sibling with a heavy fate. In blind love, they try to carry over his or her heavy fate. This is so demanding on their emotional powers that little remains for real commitment in a relationship. As long as they are unaware of the entanglement, they are unable to let go of their tie to the family member with whom they are so strongly connected. Their conscience does not allow it. In blind love, these people and their helpless partners pay a high price.

Relationship Breakup or Divorce When a relationship between two people ends, sometimes the intensity of their former love toward each other is seemingly replaced with reproach and blame of an equal intensity. A good example appears in the movie The War of the Roses, wherein a man goes to a lawyer to arrange his divorce and is told a story about a couple of the lawyer â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s friends. The lawyer tells of a happy couple, full of love and admiration for one another in the beginning. After getting married and settling down with children, their love sours, and they became alienated from one another. This leads to arguments that continue to escalate into a full-blown war between them, eventually culminating in death. Instead of coming to grips with the situation, they lose themselves in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;blame game,â&#x20AC;? assuming that if one or both of them would have reacted differently, everything would have been different. By reacting in the way they do, they push the pain of separation away.

Constellations show us that sometimes divorce is inevitable. The mutual damage to the relationship that occurs over a long period of conflict or alienation is sometimes too great to be healed. As long as the partners are not aware of their entanglements and how reciprocity acts upon their relationship, they will find it very difficult to understand and accept what happens. The only way they can begin to peacefully dissolve such a relationship with honor and eventually be free to begin anew is for both partners to open up to their pain and accept their feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness.

Relationships and Abortion What has been written with respect to former partners applies even more pertinently to relationships in which children were conceived. The bond between partners is intensified through children, whether they are alive or dead (e.g., miscarriage or abortion). An abortion almost always serves to end a relationship, especially when it concerns a possible first child.

If a couple wants to continue their relationship, it is important that an aborted child is specially honored by both parents and finds a place in both of their hearts; an appropriate grieving process significantly helps the chances of the relationship surviving and prospering.

In my practice, I often come across people who think they have worked through an abortion, while really all they have done is push the issue aside. They say, “I closed that chapter of my life years ago.” My automatic response is, “What happens if you look back into that chapter?”

When an abortion has not been fully worked through—that is, if no grieving process has taken place, and the child has not been seen and has not been honored—consequences are to be expected in subsequent relationships.

Julie, age thirty-four, constellates her current relationship. All representatives feel absent, and there is tangible tension. The moment that her aborted child enters the constellation, a number of representatives show obvious signs of relief. Julie feels a deep pain and is barely able to look at the aborted child. Her former partner (the father of the child) turns away and wants to leave. Both parents are relieved (experiencing love flowing again) only when they both recognize the child as their common child and give him or her a place in their hearts. Julie says, “You are my child, I am your mother. I have asked a lot of you. That is my responsibility. I take you now and for always in my heart as my child.” I ask the former partner to say the same. They both feel a deep pain and sadness and say to each other, “We bear this together.”

In constellations with abortion as the theme, we often see that partners remain connected even after the relationship has ended, which is usually the case with abortions. This can create difficulties for both of them in building up new long-term relationships. The difficulties disappear only when both have felt the issue through, have accepted and let go of it, and fully understand what they have been actually asking of the child.

Another dynamic, commonly surfacing in constellations, concerns women who harbor a deep, often subconscious, longing to atone for an abortion. With a feeling of deep guilt, some women do not allow themselves to have successful relationships or, in extreme cases, are subject to developing uterine or ovarian cancer. In constellations around this theme, it comes to light that aborted children do not want their parents to blame themselves or suffer from feelings of guilt. They only want to be seen, to be honored, and to live on in the hearts of their parents. When both parents go through such a “learning” process, a positive strength comes into being.

I want to emphasize that constellation work is free of values or judgments and is without moral position, concerning abortion or anything else. It is an instrument that enables people to process things that happened in life as deeply and effectively as possible.

Except when there are compelling medical reasons for them, late abortions (after the fourth month of pregnancy) have a very different effect on the family system. According to what we see in constellations, late abortions wreak havoc for generations and can even lead to psychoses in entangled family members.

Experimental Relationships We see more and more different kinds of relationships in our society, such as LAT relationships, open relationships, and triangular relationships. Experimentation is naturally healthy and necessary. However, many problems will ensue whenever sexual relationships and bonds between people who belong to a community are not clearly defined and understood, consciously or otherwise, and when former partners are not honored. If children are brought into the mix, and underlying relationships are unclear for the child, they will carry over the entanglements. The following is one such constellation example in which I was a representative.

Helen, forty-four, has a nineteen-year-old daughter with serious psychological problems as well as a serious drug habit. Helen lived for many years in a triangular relationship within an alternative community group, and various community members raised her daughter. In her constellation, it is soon obvious that Helen’s daughter carries over the confusion of her mother ’s triangular relationship. She has neither a real sense of belonging nor a sense of place of her own and is entangled with the other woman in her mother ’s relationship. It is only once this woman is honored, when everyone is given his or her rightful place, when clarity over whom her father is and, especially, who the real biological mother is, that the daughter is able to find peace. “For the first time,” says the representative of the daughter, “I have the feeling of having a mum and dad and know where I belong.” It is therefore essential that clarity about fatherhood and motherhood prevails for the children and that they are allowed to bond with their biological parents.

6 A Look Behind the Scenes You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Galileo Galilei

How do all those disturbances find their way into our families and our relationships? In the chapter â&#x20AC;&#x153;Determinants of Relationship Happiness,â&#x20AC;? we have seen just how loyal we are to our ancestors. This frequently has destructive implications for our relationships and our lives in general. Apparently, there exists within every human being a very decisive force that acts on our lives. While Nagy sees this force as a composite of various forms of loyalty and the balance of giving and receiving, Hellinger calls it blind, childlike, or bonding love. Through the many examples presented, we see that we unconsciously have a great need for vicarious atonement, although most people remain unaware of this. We copy the suffering and trauma of one or more ancestors, carry them with us, and remanifest them in our lives. Thus, all too often, we shy away from seeking happiness and the accompanying harmonious relationships afforded by living a pleasant life. This fact seems very strange at first. Why do we do it, how does it come about, and how do all these entanglements hinder relational happiness? Let us take a look behind the scenes and delve into our subconscious to appreciate the forces at play.

According to Hellinger, the working of the conscience plays a very important role here. We are also going to learn in this chapter that all of our relationships are subject to certain laws and that an organizing principle is present in our mind-set. This concerns systemic laws and systemic order.

The Conscience All disturbances in our relational happiness originate in destructive loyalties and entanglements, unconsciously and out of ignorance, though usually with the best of intentions.

Hellinger ’s analysis of the operation of our conscience clearly outlines the basis of the process. We will get to know our conscience in a very new light. It is actually the engine behind loyalties and entanglements and affects all of our relationships. It is thus the power behind our evolutionary development.

Hellinger[1] suggests that everyone has an inner sense or instinct watching over his or her interpersonal relationships. It is present in everyone and resides in our mind-set: the conscience. It works like the organ of equilibrium in our ears: if we veer too far one way, we get an impulse that seeks to bring us back into balance. Usually this impulse takes us too far the other way, so there is a countermovement necessary. This constant process, whether conscious or unconscious, is how balance in our relationships is maintained.

This sense makes it possible for us to instinctively and precisely perceive two states: belonging or not belonging to a reference group. The most important reference group is the family, followed by social environment, and, thirdly, the ethnic group, religion, and culture we grow up in. In this context, these are the only important questions: “What do I have to do to belong?” and “What do I avoid doing to prevent myself from being excluded?” A good conscience means nothing else than saying “I am sure that I belong.” A bad conscience means saying “I fear being excluded.”

The desire to belong subconsciously regulates how we behave in all of our relationships, both in our social environment as well as with our partner. According to Hellinger, our conscience works like a subconscious reflex and can be distinguished in three different dimensions: 1. The personal conscience 2. The collective conscience 3. The transcendental conscience Three facets, according to Hellinger, determine the personal and collective dimensions: 1. Bonding 2. Balance 3. Order

The Personal Conscience The bonding facet in our personal conscience sensitively regulates our need to bond within the family, in our relationship with a mate (partner/husband/wife), and in our social life. The second facet of our personal conscience is the need for balance between giving, taking, and compensation. When we receive something, a guilt feeling arises. We have the idea that we are indebted to the other and, therefore, have a guilty conscience. Subsequently, we want to give something back to redress the imbalance (refer to â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Balance of Giving and Takingâ&#x20AC;? in chapter five (link). The search for order is the third facet of our personal conscience.

Through order, social rules, and predictability, we know where we stand, and so we feel safe.

The Bonding Facet of Our Personal Conscience Here, the strongest need is to belong to our family. When a child does something in his or her family that is considered virtuous and useful, he or she feels worthy and innocent. The child feels that he or she belongs and so has a clear conscience. If the child does something that is not accepted, he or she feels bad or guilty. He or she risks exclusion and so has a bad conscience. The fear of being excluded sits deep within us and is a particularly powerful and motivating force. Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California conducted brainimaging research to demonstrate that rejection and exclusion activate the same circuits in our brains as physical pain.[2] It is not surprising, then, that in earlier times, living in a group was a necessary condition for survival. Those who were banished had their lives put at risk.

Therefore, the fear of exclusion is directly linked to terror, hence its compelling force.

It is important to be aware that a clear or guilty conscience always relates to a reference group. Precisely for that reason, a good or bad conscience has nothing to do with general principles of good and bad, contrary to what most people believe.

If we want to belong to our family, then we have to conform to the accepted norms and rules.

What is considered good in one family might not be considered so in another. Or what is acceptable behavior in the family might be frowned upon in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social life. The same applies to partnerships and relationships. Conflicts arise when different value systems come together. We are therefore constantly forced to find a new balance. If we aim to be good in one sphere, we might be doing badly in another. That is why our conscience is never at rest, and we are not able to stay in an innocent state. The only way to resolve this conflict of conscience is to try to please everyone, which of course is impossible.

This is easy to do while we are children because there is no need to diverge from what is considered good in the family. The fear of being excluded prevents us from deviating from what is considered decent and right. So, with few exceptions, we play it safe and behave well.

That is why it is often said that childhood is an innocent phase. The problems only start in puberty when, for example, we bring our first boyfriend or girlfriend home. Dad raises his eyebrows, and mom looks disapprovingly at our new, treasured first love. Mom finds her exposed midriff indecent, and he has too many tattoos for dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s liking!

The bonding facet requires us to stand behind our parents and be loyal to them. This same conscience is telling us, at the same time, to back our partner in order to make the relationship work; for example, that tattoo might be an important symbol of identification, helping the young man in question to belong to his desired social group. No matter how we manage to wend our way through these situations, we are bound to lose our innocence toward one party or the other. This is a natural process and one that everyone has to go through in order to develop his or her own personality.

Apparent exceptions for being well behaved, playing it safe, and doing whatever leaves one’s conscience clear come from the collective conscience through entanglements with ancestors.

The causes of these entanglements emerge in constellations. Consider the following case study.

John is nine years old and has attention and concentration problems that cause an enormous amount of stress for his parents. Mom and dad constellate their problematic child-rearing situation. In the constellation, it is revealed that John is entangled with family members on his mother ’s side. He carries the trauma of his grandmother and her brother, who as children spent three years in a Japanese concentration camp in Indochina during World War II. Traumatized by the scenes they witnessed in the camp, they carried a large emotional burden.

They were unable to process these experiences to let go of the trauma. It became especially dramatic when a little friend of the grandmother, who had died in the camp, was brought into the constellation. The constellation made it clear that John carries the unresolved pain of his family members with dire consequences, as evidenced in his difficult upbringing.

In all constellations where child-raising problems are present, it becomes apparent how strongly the family conscience interacts with the conscience of the child. The child can have a clear conscience only if he or she follows the family conscience and takes on the emotional charge of unprocessed ancestral traumas. Naturally, the same applies to all relational problems. A good personal conscience demands that men behave just like their fathers and other males in the family. If it is considered normal for a father to be able to control his feelings (just as his father did), then his sons will do the same in order to avoid being excluded. Another aspect of “being the same” is having the same convictions or inner statements, like “You just can’t trust women” or “Women just don’t give you what you really want.” Through wanting to belong, a man cannot but be loyal to the men in his family from the generations before him. With a good personal conscience, he emulates these and similar beliefs and consequently burdens his own life with the misery of earlier generations. In doing so, he is so sure about his own understanding of the situation yet blinded by the feeling of his own “good conscience,” which prevents him from appreciating his own destructiveness. This is an essential point in understanding why our relationships are sometimes so destructive.

We carry destructive loyalties and entanglements of our ancestors with us and remanifest them in our relationships. And we do so with a clear conscience!

An example is Peter, age forty-six, in whose constellation we see clear repetition of this over many generations. The couple relationship between his grandparents on both sides was far from harmonious; there was a “frozen” attitude on the female side and a sense of powerlessness on the male side. Both of his grandfathers were unhappy: one of them sometimes resorted to violence, while the other was known to visit prostitutes. Peter ’s father was equally disillusioned and aimlessly passed away his leisure time drinking in bars. His wife was not capable of grooming a harmonious relationship in perfect reciprocity. Peter experienced his wife just as frozen as his father had experienced his wife and his grandfathers

had experienced their wives before that. After the constellation, Peter is able to let go of his loyalty toward his ancestors; he is able to give his wife more “room,” ensuring that they are on their way to having a more loving relationship, one step at a time.

If a daughter wants to belong and have a clear conscience, then she has to cherish the same beliefs and judgments as all of the other women in her family. If all of these women had difficult birth deliveries, then she would not be able to “accept” a nice and easy one: in her perception of reality, she risks exclusion by doing so. So with a clear conscience, she has difficult deliveries.

Lisa, age thirty-eight, complains about regular episodes of domestic violence but cannot free herself from the relationship with her partner. In her constellation, it is revealed that along with some evident entanglements with other family members, she has loyalty issues with her mother and grandmother. Both had maintained, with conviction, that men and aggression go hand in hand: “They [men] are just like that [sometimes violent], there is nothing you can do about it, you just have to put up with it,” was grandmother ’s credo. It becomes evident that out of loyalty, Lisa looked for and recreated for herself a situation similar to the women in her family who came before her. At the end of the constellation, all of the women carry their own emotional burdens, and both the mother and grandmother give Lisa permission to improve her relationship or leave if the domestic violence does not subside. This is an enormous relief for her.

We often hear adages like “life wasn’t meant to be easy” or “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” These expressions are actually used to reproach us. On a subconscious level, they are really saying, “If you want to belong, then you have to live (and suffer) as we do; if not, we will exclude you and look down upon you with contempt.” Our personal conscience will not allow such a risk, because that would lead to strong feelings of anxiety or, more precisely, a fear of death. Only when we become conscious of these loyalties and let them go with respect and love will we be able to find our own way. Accordingly, only then will we have sufficient inner strength to let go of the unwritten laws of our family due to the threat of exclusion.

We should not lose sight of the fact that we are bound to family members through existential loyalties; that is part of our birthright. Our parents have given us the gift of life and have done a lot for us, so we do what we can in return. We allow ourselves to feel, for example, just about the right amount of happiness or unhappiness that is “normal” in our family. The level of happiness that was “normal” for our ancestors is stored in our mind-set and determines the “margin of happiness” that we have in our lives.

We not only develop and experience loyalties to our parents and family via our personal conscience but also toward other reference groups like: school friends, a football club, Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, and certainly our ethnic group, nationality, and religion. Our personal conscience gives us the same signals in these groups in the form of feelings of guilt and innocence; thus, a guilty or clear conscience. These feelings, as such, have nothing to do with

good and bad.

If we belong to a group that is damaging and scornful to another group, then we bear the resultant contempt with a clear conscience. We have only to look at recent historical events for clear evidence of this. If we belong to a fundamentalist Muslim group, then we are permitted and are prepared to get involved in terrorist attacks with a clear conscience. Being American, for example, leaves us with the same clear conscience when we retaliate much greater and cause the deaths of even more innocent victims. Many more innocent civilians were killed in Afghanistan and later in Iraq than those who lost their lives in the attacks on the World Trade Center towers.[3] The fact that members of a group commit atrocities with a clear conscience does not protect them, however, from the consequences of their deeds and the subsequent effects on their family consciences.

Let us not forget that we have been given much that is good through loyalties and our personal consciences that will be beneficial in our lives and that we can proudly and gratefully pass on to future generations. But real personal effort is required to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Facet of Balance between Giving and Receiving The balance of giving and taking is another part of our personal conscience. Our personal conscience tries to seek balance for us by giving us a good or bad feeling. We feel guilty and have a guilty conscience whenever we receive something. By giving something back, our conscience becomes clear, and we feel free of guilt. That means becoming balanced again.

In societies where giving is more highly valued than receiving, becoming balanced is not so easy. Through an attitude that values giving more highly than receiving, all relationships become burdened. It is much healthier to find a balanced understanding to allow for a rich exchange. That is beneficial for everyone. The old conviction that giving is better than receiving is also questioned in contextual therapy. â&#x20AC;&#x153;According to Nagy the paradigm of continuous one-sided giving is unrealistic and potentially destructive because there is the danger of exhaustion and guilt generating control.â&#x20AC;?[4]

The Facet of Order Our personal conscience has a natural need for order, social rules, and predictability.

Therefore, clear limits have to be set in raising children in order to help create a framework for the development of their personal conscience. Children seek out these limits. It becomes more difficult when children are not given limits. They are unable to create such a framework when an “anything goes” attitude is prevalent, such as when no consequences are imposed on children when they break things or are rude to their parents. They will also have difficulties finding their place in the family. If parents do not set limits, children are left in a vacuum.

Naturally, when a guilty conscience is not faced, having a clear conscience will also not be experienced. A child needs structure to experience both polarities. A clear and consistent “no” at the appropriate moment gives a child his or her place in the family, and that is just as necessary as all other expressions of love from parents.

Serious conflicts arise when following our personal conscience leads to a distortion in the systemic order. This happens, for example, when a person contributes to another family member ’s exclusion because he or she has drifted too far from what is accepted. If homosexuality is a taboo subject, and a homosexual family member is avoided, this is an example of exclusion. This family member is not honored equally. Such a disturbance to the systemic order has repercussions.

There are also consequences when we cannot grieve the premature death of a family member properly because expressing feelings is not accepted in the family. By being loyal to the family, we get caught up in serious entanglements despite our best intentions and despite having a clear conscience. (More on this conflict later.)

The Collective, or Family, Conscience In contrast to the personal conscience, the collective conscience, or family conscience, is not directly tangible or perceptible. It works in secret in the subconscious. We can only see and remark upon its effects. It is the family conscience that brings unresolved family situations to the surface in subsequent generations, and it is this same family conscience that becomes visible in family and relationship constellations. Time after time, we see in constellations that family members are not only connected by blood ties but by the family conscience as well, and this remains the case even when family members live far apart and even when they do not know or want to know anything about each other.

Just like the personal conscience, the collective conscience has three facets:[5] The facet or need for bonding.

This is reflected in the collective conscience as the equal right of every family member to belong.

The facet or need for balance between giving and taking.

The collective conscience demands this balance in the form of compensation, equalization, and similarity in the family collective.

The facet or need for order.

This order is hierarchical in time. Those who come earlier in the family have more rights than those who come later. Everyone bears his or her own fate.

The family conscience is invisible and as a rule cannot be felt. It comes to light only in a constellation. The systemic order together with our family, or collective, conscience, is stored in our mind-set. All disturbances to this order also stay present in the family conscience until they are brought to the conscious level. Naturally, these are stored in our mind-set as well.

Everything that one generation leaves unprocessed or unresolved has to be picked up again by the following generations. Children take various aspects upon themselves in different degrees.

One child may be more connected to a grandmother who had serious relationship problems, while another is connected to an uncle who ended up in a psychiatric ward. A third child might be very strongly connected to the unprocessed miscarriage that preceded him. We say then that these children are “entangled.” This happens totally subconsciously and out of love.

The motor driving all of this is apparently human evolution. It is stated in the Bible that “children atone for the sins of their ancestors.” I don’t like the incriminating connotation of the words “atone” and “sin.” I believe people express their destructiveness out of ignorance and not because they are bad. What I do see is that children take on the guilt of their ancestors.

An example of this occurs when a family member takes on the guilty feeling of a previous generation’s family member who had been unable to process the guilt that he or she had created. If the early death of a child has not been worked through, then one or more of the siblings who follow will take on this pain and not allow themselves to be happy in life. This

goes on from generation to generation.

Everything carried and entangled arises out of blind love. A solution can be found only when blind love is individually brought to the conscious level. It does not help just to say â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is no need to continue on with this.â&#x20AC;? When the blind love for ancestors becomes conscious and heartfelt in a constellation, the pain is felt. It becomes obvious where the pain is coming from, which means that whatever has been copied and carried over can be returned. This is how a constellation initiates a vicarious process in the mind-set of a seeker (it is vicarious because the family member was not able to handle or work through the pain or trauma alone). In a constellation, the seeker can now do that in a safe way by identifying the family member from whom the carried-over pain or such really belongs. At that moment, it becomes obvious that the ancestor in question does not want the descendant to copy and carry on his or her load and, moreover, that he or she is not helped or saved by this. Grasping this concept allows carried burdens, suffering, and the corresponding effects on the relationship of the seeker to be halted. At the same time during the constellation, the damage or disorder that the seeker carries in his or her mind-set through the collective conscience can be brought back into order.

The Bonding Facet of Our Collective Conscience Unlike the personal conscience, the collective conscience cares for the community and not for the individual. The community or collective conscience, therefore, is above the individual and uses the individual for the fulfillment of its three facets: bonding, balance, and order. When a disturbance arises in one or more facets, the collective conscience uses members from the following generation to restore balance.

The working and the power of the collective conscience are archaic. Therefore, the collective conscience operates independently of ideas, views, and fashion. Only the evolution of the collective is important. The collective conscience works most strongly in the family, followed by the social environment, within religion, and, finally, within cultures and nations. While the personal conscience takes care of the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bond with a group, the collective conscience makes sure that all members of the group or collective are kept together and have their place and that there is equality between members. This applies to all family members, including former partners, the sick, those who died young, perpetrators of crimes, and all those who were excluded, forgotten, or not considered and respected (e.g., black sheep and ex-partners).

For example, when parents cannot work through the pain of having had a stillborn child and instead try to forget and continue on in life (i.e., they do not complete the mourning process), they are in fact excluding this child. The collective conscience will react by automatically seeking balance to compensate for the collective guilt that has arisen, and at least one member of the collective has to represent the person who was excluded. The collective makes no distinction whether this happens consciously or subconsciously; it does not distinguish between good and bad. You can easily imagine the serious consequences this has for happiness in our relationships and in our lives.

If someone in a family is excluded because he or she was a criminal or because he or she sexually abused another, the collective conscience forces innocent members of the following generation to manifest anew the fates of the excluded family members until the they have regained their places and received their due respect.

This example clarifies that the personal and collective consciences sometimes contradict each other. While the personal conscience, through indignation over what has happened, usually requires that we help with the exclusion of the perpetrator, the collective conscience still requires that this person retain the right to belong and be treated equally. In this way, a clear personal conscience interferes with the laws of the collective conscience.

Some exceptions follow: When someone commits murder, his or her bond with the victim becomes stronger than his or her bond with the collective.

When a parent commits serious physical or emotional abuse, he or she will lose his or

her place as mother or father.

When someone prohibits another personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legitimate access to the family. For example, this happens when a father does not accept his future son-in-law by prohibiting marriage to his adult daughter.

In these cases, the family member forfeits his or her right to belong. He or she must leave the collective in love and respect, and the collective must also release him or her.

The Facet of Balance between Giving and Receiving in the Collective Conscience The need for balance between giving and taking works in a different way in the collective conscience. The balance in the personal conscience is between people, while the collective conscience attempts to find balance within the collective, the family. If a family member does not carry his or her own guilt, then somebody from a subsequent generation will have to do that for him or her.

Eric, age fifty-two, has experienced a divorce and a string of failed relationships. “It’s like I don’t deserve to be happy,” he says. In his constellation, he sees that he is connected with his father and carries an “emotional charge” from him. His father fought in World War II under the Nazis, initially as a common soldier and later as a member of the SS (Hitler ’s special force, “Schutzstaffel,”). As an SS member, he took part in the executions of civilians. During the constellation, it becomes clear that he is guilty of serious misdemeanors that he has never wanted to face up to. “War is always dirty,” he laconically comments. Eric can clearly feel that he has taken over his father ’s guilt and that he has manifested this guilt in his life by disallowing himself to be happy. Emotionally, he was bound to his father ’s victims. Only when it becomes clear to him that he was powerless concerning the guilt of his father and that the victims were not angry at him and didn’t want him to expiate for them was he able to let go of his father ’s guilt.

The Facet of Order in the Collective Conscience A hierarchical order of time prevails in the family system. Those born earlier have more rights than those who come later. It is also very important to note that the facet of order of the collective conscience says that everyone carries his or her own destiny. Only those who have lived it have entitlement. Disturbances arise when a person carries the heavy burden of another who previously lived in the collective. It follows then that a child who carries the emotional burden of his mother or father disturbs the order by carrying on the fate of another family member. Moreover, the child rises above the person for whom he wants to carry the heavy burden because he or she is actually saying, “I can bear this burden better than my parent.” In time, that disrupts the hierarchical order. Therefore, the child cannot succeed in this plan. That is why we talk about “blind” love. It is immediately clear that what we do or what we take upon ourselves through blind love can never lead to a satisfactory solution. See the previous example of Eric, who carried the guilt that actually belonged to his father.

In the constellation of Diana, age thirty-four, it is revealed that she had a really bad relationship with her father. He was emotionally absent. Further on in the constellation, Diana sees how strongly her father is connected to his father, Diana’s grandfather, who lost comrades in the war. Through the horror of war and the pain of losing comrades, he became emotionally closed off. He also had guilt feelings toward his comrades because he had survived. This heavy, unprocessed “load” prevented him from functioning properly as a father. His son (Diana’s father) began a family of his own, but was not able to fulfill his role adequately because he was so strongly connected to his father. In turn, his daughter, Diana, who carries the pain of her father and grandfather, is not able to grant herself a happy life.

She is also available for her partner and children only in a limited way.

We see many entanglements in this example, which originates with Diana’s grandfather.

Through his intense wartime experiences, he wanted to take on the fates of his comrades.

Since everyone bears his or her own fate according to systemic order, it was the fate of his comrades to die and his fate to survive. His son, Diana’s father, carried these burdens over.

This went too far, because the heavy war past was part of his father ’s fate. His daughter also did this for her father by taking ownership of something that did not belong in her life.

Members that have come later in the family can be compelled to take on the heavy fate of an ancestor, as the previous example of someone with terrible war experiences shows. Even though this descendant is innocent and grew up in peacetime, he or she abides by the collective conscience, fully unaware and with a clear conscience. A member that comes into the family later and carries and lives out some unresolved issue from an earlier generation is on a mission that is doomed to fail. Even though the person does this with a clear conscience, it interferes with the third facet of the collective conscience, which is the need for order. This order requires that everyone bear the burden of his or her own fate.

That is how the collective conscience forces later generations to do something

in one of the facets but prohibits them in another facet and makes them pay for something that is not part of their personal fate. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Bert Hellinger[6]

It is clear, then, that the collective conscience gives us no choice: whatever we do, we make ourselves guilty. It indeed seems contradictory: one part of our conscience asks us to suffer for our ancestors with a clear conscience, while the other part of the same conscience forbids us to do so and makes sure this action will not succeed.

It becomes clearer if we imagine that our children bear some of our burden for us by, for example, sharing the sadness of an event that predates their birth. This is a not desirable occurrence, of course. We find it strange that a child does this and, since it is our sadness, a child can never process it adequately anyway. It is our responsibility to take care of our own sadness. Even if we suppress the sadness, we still object to our children enduring this pain.

Even so, because we suppress the sadness, our children feel obligated to carry it over in blind love and to incorporate it into their own lives.

The fact that our partners and, of course, our kids confront us with the unprocessed conflicts of our families leaves us with no other choice than to investigate discordant aspects in order to become healed. Thus, we are forced to learn what disturbs our relationships and what makes our relationships harmonious. The contradiction within our conscience compels us and contributes to an evolutionary learning process.

The Transcendental, or Spiritual, Conscience The transcendent aspect of our conscience strives to bring us into a greater whole. It reveals its qualities to those who want to find real understanding. I also call it the spiritual conscience, because it encourages us to continue in our search to resolve dilemma and overcome limitations that our personal and collective consciences pose. It includes both and at the same time wants us to transform both. Through this transformation process, we transcend the duality and guilt, which our personal and collective consciences inevitably impose on us. The following case will clarify the issue.

James, age thirty-nine, has strong feelings of guilt and does not know why. He knows that this feeling affects his relationships and his career choices. The transcendent conscience made him feel that something had to be done with that guilt. His constellation makes him aware that he has been carrying the guilt for his father, who had lost his best playmate at the age of nine.

They were building an enormous sandcastle on the beach when suddenly a wall caved in and buried his friend. All help came too late; his friend suffocated. Since then, his father has felt guilty about the fact that he survived while his friend died and that he was not able to save him.

Only when the constellation makes clear that his friend is not angry with his father and actually thought it inappropriate that the father felt guilty, could James recognize the inappropriateness of his carried guilt. This enabled him to let it all go.

This transcendental conscience makes sure that we pose questions about our own lives and about the loyalties we have to our families and others. It asks us to purify ourselves, to let go of the known, to shed whatever limits our happiness and investigate who we really are. As long as we are caught up in entanglements and consequent imposed limitations, we can never be certain whether our actions truly reflect our inner nature or whether our lives, preferences, and choices are genuinely ours. These limitations are expressed in our thoughts, our behaviors, the choices we make, our judgments, the things we avoid doing, our actions and inactions, and certainly our relationships.

The personal and collective consciences bring conflict into our lives, and there come times when we doubt ourselves and all of our achievements: relationship conflicts and midlife crises belong to this phenomenon. If we can become aware of this process and its potential for growth and creativity, we are offered a new direction, new ideas, and new insights. We may return to our senses and are able to direct our attention to matters of real substance. We broaden our mind-set this way. We start to live in the present moment and come into contact with deep inner truths. Family and relationship constellations, in particular, can assist tremendously in this process.

Such an awareness process allows us to let go of the old loyalties and burdens that we have carried for others and heal the pain of our inner child. The connection with the family and social environment is loosened, and we create room for a life that feels right and proper for us. According to Bert Hellinger, this is the biggest step of all, and it is one that requires a

determined conscious effort from us. In one way, taking this step makes us feel alone. We have to leave our family and village, so to speak, where we know all the streets and everyone who lives there. It is our home, but if we want to â&#x20AC;&#x153;climb the mountain,â&#x20AC;? we have to leave the known behind. The route upward offers us a much larger view in which we discover that the village is only a small part of the world. When we leave our village with love and gratitude, we can open up to a larger and more encompassing view of life.

Systemic Family and Relationship Laws People who do not understand or respect the natural laws of motion and balance, break their bones; those who do not understand the laws of love, waste their lives and have their hearts broken. The proof lies in the form of failed marriages, abusive relationships, neglected children, unfulfilled ambitions and thwarted dreams.

—A General Theory of Love[7]

Now that we have seen how the functioning of our conscience is so decisive in our relationships, another important aspect of Hellinger ’s work will be introduced in this chapter: the laws he uncovered that underpin family relationships. We call them the systemic laws— systemic because we include the entire family, including those family members who have been forgotten or left out for one reason or another. So the family as a complete living and relational entity across generations is taken into account. We call it the family system. There is apparently an organizing principle, with its own set of laws at work, called the systemic order, which influences all members of a family and their partners. Every person has his or her family system, with the knowledge of systemic order and its laws stored in his or her mindset.

The terms “family” and “family system” should not be confused with one another. By family, I mean parents, siblings, and their own family, as we know it. The term family system refers to the family as a whole, including all living and deceased relatives, with excluded and forgotten relatives included as well, accompanied by all their relationships. To grasp the whole family system, we need to look back often across three generations and sometimes even more.

What makes the systemic order and its laws so special and so innovative is that they were not just thought up by someone. They were uncovered during the execution of family and relationship constellations. Worldwide, more than 100,000 constellations have been performed by a few thousand facilitators, and in all instances, the same solutions to problems and traumas have emerged over and over again. In all these constellations, representatives have independently perceived systemic laws, as well as certain positions and constellation sequences, as particularly remedial and loving.

There is an inner orientation towards the truth that you cannot deviate from without harming yourself. With respect to the truth no one is free.

—Bert Hellinger[8]

When we live in harmony with these systemic laws, we feel power, love, and freedom.

Disturbing this order, though, consciously or unconsciously, results in suffering, problems, and unfreedom in our lives.

The systemic patterns described here may seem to be mainly written about heterosexual relationships; however, upon closer inspection it will become clear that most of what is said about heterosexual relationships also applies to gay and lesbian relationships.

The systemic patterns we carry in our mind-sets in the form of inner soul images have an archaic depth and a timeless quality. They are part of our human evolution from prehistoric man to Gay sapiens. The Fashion trends, opinions, and ideas of today have no influence on them. Yet we must assume that they can change and evolve, and that they may be different in different cultures. It is, therefore, important to be alert in every constellation to see what is right.

Systemic Order and Laws As indicated previously, many years of experience with constellations have crystallized the systemic order and its laws. They also confirm systems theory[9] and the work of Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy. His contextual approach refers to the understanding of a relational, ethical dimension concerning families and family relationships. “This is not about external or church imposed moral and cultural norms but rather an intrinsic justice of existential relationships.” According to Nagy, this understanding means that “an ‘invisible ledger ’ exists, in which all the ‘balances’ between the family members are recorded. If something falls out of balance in one generation, the following generation attempts to redress this imbalance.”[10] The systemic order is present, consciously or subconsciously, in all families and in each and every member ’s mind-set. It is “managed” and lived out via our consciences as described previously.

Consider the following elements: The right to belong Every family member has the equal right to belong. This applies even when a member is an invalid, died young, committed suicide, or ended up in a psychiatric institution. Even those who were criminals, of “bad” character, addicted to drugs, or suffered from depression have the right to belong like anyone else.

The right to their own fate Every family member bears his or her own fate, which belongs exclusively to the individual.

However short, difficult, or problematic somebody’s life is, it can be lived only by that person. The accompanying feelings of pain, guilt, or trauma belong only to him or her.

Everybody has to face up to his or her own responsibilities, including the responsibility for being irresponsible. He or she has to bear the consequences of irresponsible behavior.

Parent’s give—children receive The balance of giving and taking in a family is as follows: parents, as they are, give to their children what they can, while children take what is given to them. Children do not have any right to demand anything from their parents. They have to accept their parents just as they are.

Children can help restore the balance of giving and taking by having children of their own, to whom they give themselves as they are. If they never have children, they can do some other good deed to restore the balance.

The hierarchy is set in time The order of rank in a system like a family is chronological. Whoever arrives first takes up the first place. Logically, the grandfather takes priority over the father and the first daughter over the second son. The first important partner has priority over the second. In a constellation, representatives are set up clockwise according to their chronological ranking.

The new system takes priority over the old The order of ranking between systems states that the newer takes precedence over the former.

It follows logically, therefore, that the relationship between partners is more important than the relationship with members of the family of origin. A new relationship after a divorce is more important than the previous one. Chronological order determines the priority for children from first and second relationships, which means that children from a first relationship come before both the new partner and children from a second relationship.

Stepparentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; own children come before their stepchildren.

Men and women are complimentary and equal The ranking between parents is defined according to the function they have. The one that is most active in the world comes first. This parent serves the parent in second place, who serves the family. Therefore, it is the parent in second place who has the more important role, because this parent tends to the children. This makes it clear how complimentary men and women are. They are always worthy of each other, even when a perpetrator-victim dynamic exists.

Relationships are reciprocal All relationships are reciprocal. The force with which this reciprocity manifests itself is proportional to the depth of the bond and the extent of love in a relationship.

Respecting these principles allows love between two people in a relationship to flow. In this way, their children can be just thatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and have enough energy for their own developing lives. If this order is disturbed, which often happens subconsciously or out of ignorance, painful and tragic consequences ensue.

It is not surprising then that participating in family or relationship constellations leads to the conclusion that a disruption of this order goes hand in hand with any relationship or personal problems. Whether it concerns divorce, accidents, suicide, illness, or addiction, whenever a family tragedy is constellated, the causing disturbances are exposed. It is, therefore, not presumptuous to say that we bring the underlying causes of relationship problems to light.

According to Hellinger,[11] the feeling of fulfillment occurs when everyone associated with our family system has a place in our heart. If there is one member missing, we feel incomplete.

With systemic laws, we have seen that every family member has the right to his or her own place and the right to belong on equal footing with other members. But who belongs in the family system, what are entanglements, and what are the events that lead to entanglements?

Using a few examples of entanglements, we will see the impact that heavy, unprocessed events, such as parentification, a parent who dies early, or the early death of a sibling, have on relationship happiness and over multiple generations.

The Family System A family system[12] is composed of all living and deceased members. In terms of constellations, we sometimes have to look back at least three generations or even further.

The following people are involved: The first level: children This level consists of biological children, half brothers and sisters, children who died in infancy, stillborn children, and miscarried fetuses from around the fifth month of pregnancy.

Unrecognized extramarital children are naturally also included, as well as children born (anonymously) through a sperm donation.

The second level: parents This level consists of parents and their brothers and sisters, including those who died prematurely, their half siblings, and children from stillbirths and miscarriages. Abortions and miscarriages before the fifth month have a strong influence on the relationship between parents and on each parent individually, especially women.

The third level: grandparents Grandparents and their brothers, sisters, and half siblings belong as well and can be especially influential where there is indication of heavy fates.

The fourth level: great-grandparents Naturally, great-grandparents belong to the family system and still exert influence when there have been heavy fates, like maternal death, wartime experiences, serious accidents, or disease.

Less important and further along, but sometimes exerting a significant influence on the family system, are all the members who have been replaced by others from outside the family, like former partners of parents and grandparents and the parents of half siblings.

Anyone who has ever had a significant positive or negative impact on the family also belongs to the family system: this could be somebody who has done a lot for a particular family member in some way or another and later on has been unjustly treated. An example would be a worker in a family business who has helped to generate a great deal of profit through hard work, only to be summarily dismissed without good reason at a later stage. Others who may have influence on the family system are people who have made huge profits from the misfortune of others or through treating others unjustly. An example is someone who has usurped possessions from a Jewish family deported during World War II. Some circumstances reveal a significant influence on the family that implicates nonfamily members into the family system. This could be a family member who has had a favorable outcome through another personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s misfortune, like with an insurance payout after a fatal accident or even strangers who have either helped or aggravated a family by way of saving a family member â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life or committing murder. It also means that a perpetrator belongs to the system of his or her victim just as a victim belong to the family system of the perpetrator of a

crime that has traumatized them (e.g., wartime criminals).

What Are Entanglements?

We talk about entanglements or connected fates when a family member takes over feelings or attitudes from another family member and embodies them in his or her life. All entanglements that a person carries shape an emotional and mental image in his or her mind-set. This often concerns traumatic events and the resultant conscious or subconscious feelings or attitudes that remain unprocessed, as well as conflicts that were not resolved by those involved.

Entanglements can also result from a person either relinquishing responsibilities or not being capable of accepting them. Of course, influences from previous generations are often positive and for that, we can be thankful. An entanglement ensues when an influence becomes burdensome or makes our life difficult.

In this context, it is important to understand that family members can be entangled with each other without even knowing each other. Entanglements are usually more serious with family members who were excluded, concealed, or avoided. Entanglements can also arise when ancestors have done something they thought was right at the time but that turns out to have been a great miscarriage of justice. This often happens in wartime, whereby actions undertaken in the name of idealism or conviction are considered inexplicably gruesome in retrospect.

What Causes Entanglements?

Entanglements always result from children taking on an emotional issue from their parents or parents relying emotionally on their children (this is known as parentification).

An early death is the most common cause of entanglements, and examples are as follows: Brothers or sisters around thirty years of age or younger A parent when the children are around thirty years old or younger A miscarriage from the sixth month of pregnancy onward or sometimes even earlier Maternal death or complicated delivery This also applies to brothers and sisters of mothers, fathers, and grandparents.

Common causes of entanglements that continue over several generations are as follows (this category counts also for the parents, their siblings, and grandparents): Sexual and other serious abuse Death and manslaughter Automobile and other accidents involving death, serious injury, or permanent impairment Participation in all kinds of war situations, including collaboration with or membership in extremist groups like the German Nazi Party and the Khmer Rouge or participation in resistance movements during war A combination of various acts of violence Great injustices with lasting consequences, like being unjustly ruled out from an inheritance Ancestors involved in slavery on both sides Ancestors with genocide experiences, including Jews, Armenians, North and South American natives, and Australian aboriginals, to name a few Entanglements always occur when family members bear heavy fates usually accompanying exclusion, trauma, victimization, or not being able to process emotional problems. It is important to look back at least two generations. The most important examples of a heavy fate are as follows: Suicide All forms of exclusion from the family Physical or intellectual disabilities Confinement (e.g., in jail or concentration or work camps) Homosexuality, when it leads to exclusion Bankruptcy, if it leads to poverty Extramarital births, especially if they are concealed Adoption

The most important examples of family members with a heavy fate leading other members to entanglements are as follows: Victims of crime Psychiatric patients Nuns, monks, or priests in the family Immigrants or emigrants Children who were placed in a foster family or with other family members at a young age A family member who was sent away to a boarding school at a young age without valid reasons Adult family members who continued to live with their parents Family members who were forced to leave their places of birth Family members whose parents were from different nationalities Family members not able or allowed to express and live out their cultural identities Poverty, destructive relationships, hate, or strong disrespect against women or men in the family, especially when they prevail over generations, also leads to entanglements.

Further on, is it important to become aware of the existence of any family secretsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;things that nobody wants to talk about or nobody is allowed to talk about. It is not important to uncover such secrets for a constellation to be successful; all we have to do is to give the emotional load that comes with the secret back to where it belongs.

To show how entanglements affect relationships, I will describe three of them: parentification, the early death of a child, and the early death of a parent. These are the most important kinds of entanglements. A much more comprehensive discussion of entanglements is to be found in my book Family Constellations Revealed.

Parentification Parentification, or parent identification, occurs when children have to give something emotionally to their parents or take on an emotional load from one or both of them. This happens when parents seek consolation or emotional support from their child. A clear example is the father who seeks the affection from his daughter that he misses from his wife, the mother who wants to make a better man of her son than she considers her husband to be, or the attempt of a mother to get her son to fill her inner emptiness. (See “Mummy’s Boy and Daddy’s Little Princess”) Often, parents involve their children in their struggles and difficulties during and after divorce. This also means that these children are expected to emotionally support one or both of their parents. (See “Split Loyalties”).

Another cause of parentification is the absence or early death of a parent. This traumatizes children. Furthermore, one of the children is frequently called upon to replace the absent parent. One example is when an eldest daughter is expected to step in and replace a deceased mother. Likewise, the eldest son becomes the “man of the house” when his father dies or is absent. The balance of give and take is thoroughly disrupted in these situations. The child has no say at all in the matter and is now expected to assume the role of a parent, having to give instead of receive. This results in disruption to the family order. We see this happen often in single-parent families.

For the child, the burden is too heavy, of course, and failure is guaranteed. No matter how loving and eager the child is in taking on an emotional load from a parent, the child cannot succeed in carrying the emotional burden of an adult nor fill the emotional void of parents.

Furthermore, the child cannot possibly succeed in taking over a parental role. This leaves the child with a feeling of powerlessness, which may well lead to depression later in life. This will, no doubt, have a major impact on the child’s relationships later on. The confrontation with unprocessed elements—which automatically result from parentification—will return in future relationships through reciprocity.

Here’s a classic example of a constellation with parentification of both parents.

Michael, age thirty-two, has a three-year-old son with his partner. Lately, the burden of parental responsibility has been just too much for him. He feels depressed. In his constellation, he stands opposite his father. He is angry with him and looks down upon him.

His mother says, “I feel nothing for my husband, but I feel connected with my son very much.” After speaking these words, she looks in a demeaning way at her husband and then smiles at her son. I ask Michael to say to his mother, “Your relationship problems and your anger toward dad belong to your life. I’m just a kid.” After that, he relaxes, acknowledging the aptness of the statement. He is now aware that he was abused. His mother confirms this and says “Yes, I love my son more than my husband.” Then I ask Michael’s mother to say to her son, “I have used you. I’m sorry.” But instead, she says, “No, I really abused him and went against my husband.” Then I ask her to say to her son, “I’ve have abused you. That’s my

responsibility; that all belongs to me. I’m sorry. You have had to do a lot for me.” The son nods. “That’s right,” he says. “I am pleased to hear that.” I suggest to Michael that he repeat the following to his mother, which he does: “Your problem with dad belongs to you—the abuse as well. I leave it with you.” This relaxes him even more. He looks at his father. After a while, he says, “I feel better about my dad, but I still think he is weak.” His father confirms this and says, “Yes, I feel weak. I feel heavy—very heavy.”

In the course of the constellation, the origin of Michael’s father ’s heavy load becomes clear.

Michael’s father stands between his parents and must constantly mediate between them. On top of that, his mother demands his emotional support. Apparently, Michael’s grandparents lost their first son in an accident on their farm and blamed each other for the death of the child instead of going through a grieving process. They never ceased arguing after that. Seeing this, Michael discovers his loyalty toward his father and how strongly his father is connected with his deceased elder brother.

During the constellation, Michael’s father is able to give back to his parents the emotional burden he carried over from them. Further on, he gives his elder brother a place in his heart.

Afterward, I ask him to say to Michael, “All the heaviness belongs in my life. I can bear it. I am the parent, and you are only a child.” Michael relaxes and says,” Yes, I wanted to carry it for you.” Then I ask him to say to his father, “All that heaviness is part of your life and fate.

You’re the adult; I’m just a kid.”

Now Michael himself comes into the constellation. I ask him to say the following to his father: “Dear Dad, you are fine as you are. You’re the adult; you can handle it. I’m just a kid.” Then I suggest to Michael to bow before his father. This affects them both. Tears well up in the eyes of both Michael and his father. Michael wants to hug his father. When he does this, he begins to sob. Several times, I asked Michael to say “dear daddy” and follow it by taking a deep breath, as if he were breathing in his dad.

The Early Death of a Child Anything that is not processed in a family system and given no place ends up as an entanglement. That certainly applies to painful events such as a stillborn child or a child who dies young. Often, one or both parents suppress this pain to protect themselves against the deep pain and feelings of powerlessness. If more siblings come along afterward, the young child who died is usually not counted, due to suppression or ignorance. If the first child died at the age of one, for example, and there are two more children, parents usually speak about having only two children. They say, “We have two children,” while there are actually three.

The same applies to miscarriages. They have, as a rule, an effect on the system from the sixth month of pregnancy, but sometimes as early as the fifth month. The sixth month is the month in which a child is viable with all the necessary assistance. Sometimes it is also traumatic for parents when a fetus dies even earlier in pregnancy.

Of course, it is unnecessary for a parent to talk about losing a child at an early age with just anyone, but being able to discuss the child in the family circle is necessary; the existence of such a child should never be withheld from brothers and sisters and other close relatives.

They should even feel free to talk about the deceased child. If that is not possible for whatever reason, the dead child is not given his or her place, which effectively boils down to the child not being counted. Not counting a lost child is tantamount to exclusion and results in entanglements. The children who come into the family later on are not in their proper place; they are not in chronological order. In this example, then, the second child will become the first, and the third child will become the second. For both children, this means it will be difficult to find their proper place later on in life.

The early death of a child, therefore, has a very deep impact on the whole family system, with consequences that are beyond an individual’s control. The effects have a direct impact not only on the children born into the family subsequently but also on older siblings. One or more of the children will develop unconscious guilt of varying intensity, because they have lived, while a sibling has died. They feel, unwittingly, that they have been unduly advantaged over the young child who died. Given the pain that the death of their brother or sister entails, they find it inappropriate to have happy relationships or lead happy lives. Completely unaware, they want to share the fate of the young child who died. This is the way the collective conscience demands compensation for the exclusion of a member of the system, of the family.

And so we see at least one of the children in the family confronted with a destructive impact on his or her life and, therefore, all future relationships. In the example of Joyce (link) it is plain to see the serious impact on her relationships caused by her connection with her deceased older sister.

Sometimes, it goes so far that living siblings become suicidal or drug dependent. Many seek out death by practicing dangerous sports. Hellinger calls this “expensive” suicide. So many “lead foots” on the road play with death because they unconsciously want to “follow” a dead sibling. Through his or her behavior, an adult will bring the unprocessed grief back into the

family system. Here, the blind love of the child plays a decisive role. This is reflected in unconscious phrases like “I would rather die than you. Let me do it for you” or “I want to be with you (in death).” In constellations, we see that children adopt these attitudes and subsequently give shape to the same blind love in their lives (see also the section “The Magical Love of the Child” in chapter three).

Sometimes parents (usually mothers) cannot let go of a lost child. They are emotionally bonded with the dead child, with reduced or zero energy for their living children. In extreme cases, this leads to suicide or a masked suicide through illness or an addiction, which is extremely tough on the living children. If they want their mother ’s attention, they are forced to “stand” beside the dead child, as it were, because that is where the mother ’s attention is focused. The children are frequently burdened with an attachment disorder or at least a feeling of not being seen.

The living siblings inevitably have an emotional bond with the child who died early, which is an entanglement. This usually leads to a degree of emotional absence, with destructive effects later on in their lives, particularly in marriage and raising their own children. If there is sufficient room in the family to mourn, and if the child has a place in the hearts of family members and is counted, then there is nothing to worry about; there will be no entanglement.

From experience, however, I have found that this rarely happens.

John, age thirty-two, has had several relationships, but he has trouble becoming attached to his partners. In his constellation, it becomes clear that the early death of his sister plays a determining role and actually gets in the way. He is very attached to her. Even though the representative of his sister wishes him a beautiful life, it is very difficult for John to break away from his sister. Only when representatives for his parents are brought into the constellation does change come about. At first, both parents cannot look at their daughter, who died young; their grief is too great. After a while, they manage to open up more to her and give their daughter a place in their hearts. This helps John accept her death. He also gives her a place in his heart and is, therefore, free to open up to having a long-term relationship.

Death of a Parent A similar effect on children comes with the death of one or both parents. Again we see guilt and the death urge in one or more children. After such enormous misfortune, children often find it very difficult to lead happy lives, let alone allow themselves happiness in relationships.

By the early death of a parent, the natural exchange and bond between parent and child is abruptly terminated. The child’s pain is so great that he or she withdraws and tries to shut out the world. Often the child will also unconsciously “follow” the dead parent and share in his or her fate. Suicidal behavior, drug use, and diseases are among the methods chosen to achieve this aim. We also see that people who have to go through the loss of a parent are not really good at developing or maintaining relationships because they still are partly emotionally “stuck” to the deceased parent. This means that they are not present or available for a partner.

The effects manifest themselves in various forms and degrees of destructiveness in all of their relationships, as if life may no longer be beautiful or harmonious.

Joseph, age thirty-seven, no longer likes his job, and life for him is heavy in general. After years of relationship problems, his wife wants to leave him, which only compounds his problems. When I inquire about his family history, the early death of his father is the most important fact that emerges. When Joseph was five years old, his father died in a car accident.

Joseph chooses a representative for himself, his wife, and his father and constellates them.

Father and son face each other, while Joseph’s wife faces away at quite a distance to the left of them. The constellation immediately shows how strong the connection between Joseph and his deceased father is. His father ’s representative wants to lie on the ground, and Joseph’s representative indicates that he feels very tired and wants to lie down next to his father. The representative of Joseph’s wife feels frustrated and wants to get away from Joseph. Joseph sits on the side and looks on at the unfolding drama; he nods in confirmation.

In the course of the constellation, I get Joseph to lie on his father ’s spot. Joseph feels himself how it feels for his father to have a son so strongly connected to him that his son actually wants to be with him in death. Joseph now feels himself that his father does not want his son to follow him into death. His father feels sad about this and finds it very painful. He wants his son to experience life to the fullest and to be really alive, happy, and enjoy a good relationship with his wife. For Joseph, this experience is a real revelation. He now understands what he has to do: start the grieving process, which he could not go through when he was five years old. He feels much quieter and can really look at his wife now. Even his wife’s representative indicates that she sees major positive change in her husband.

In the months following, Joseph feels through the pain of loss and slowly but surely gets more in touch with himself. His marriage improves remarkably, and his partner now wants to stay with him and give their marriage a second chance.

In Laura’s constellation (link), it is evident what it means for a fourteen-year-old daughter to have her father unexpectedly die from the rupture of a heart artery. For another example, see

also the consequences of the early death of Barbara’s grandfather on her father and then on Barbara herself in her second constellation (link).

Sometimes children of parents who died early become angry. They feel very let down by their prematurely deceased parent(s). Of course, they can rarely express this anger, because it is expected that they mourn graciously. Moreover, they even feel guilty about their own anger: “How can I be now angry with my parents who died at a young age?” Being angry is easier than feeling powerless. The anger helps them, of course, not focus on hurt and grieving about the deceased parent. In such cases, they do not have to go through the painful process of mourning and so avoid the feelings of powerlessness. This avoidance behavior does not occur completely unconsciously in older children (over sixteen years of age), though it is the case with young children. However, these children are really traumatized. The grief, the loss, and the pain remain frozen within, and it takes them an enormous effort for others to make real contact with them.

Louis, age thirty-two, and his wife have been struggling in their relationship for quite some time now. He wants to clarify his part in their struggle. The most important fact that he mentions is the early death of his mother. She died after a long period of illness caused by multiple sclerosis when Louis was twenty-one. In his constellation, Louis discovers, to his surprise, his impotent rage against his mother. Because of her illness, he felt very let down and unrecognized by her. Instead of getting his mother ’s attention, he had to support her in her illness without any hope of being cured. This insight is new to Louis. He was convinced that he had previously handled the death of his mother. For him, it was a “closed chapter” in his life. The constellation clearly shows that he hid emotional charges in the “closed chapter.” He becomes aware of the destructive powers at play in his unconscious anger toward his mother, which came back into his relationship as anger toward his wife. With this understanding, he reopens the “closed chapter” around the death of his mother and begins a real grieving process. Through the constellation, he is able to feel a fondness again for his wife, and he understands now that his wife is not his mother.

7 Constellations Methodology A relationship constellation is the next step in evolution and ethics.

—Indra

In this chapter, I will describe the process of relationship and family constellations and explain the importance of the Knowing Field and representative perceptions. Furthermore, I will explain constellations in the individual setting and, finally, look at whether a relationship or marriage can be saved by a constellation.

A relationship or family constellation is an excellent therapeutic instrument that can give clarity to relationship problems. It can help to get love flowing again because it exposes the underlying structure of relationship problems, making it possible to find meaningful solutions and let go of discordant aspects like entanglements or loyalties. (The term “systemic constellation” is sometimes used to cover all types of constellations.)

To constellate relationship problems, I prefer to use the traditional method of constellations, which I describe in my book Family Constellations Revealed and which is similar to the method Hellinger developed into the late 1990s. He went on to develop other types of constellations, such as “movements of the soul,” which are also very useful. But the learning process afforded in those cases is not as clear, in my opinion, because they are basically nonverbal methods, making entanglements or loyalties less visible and resolutions less obvious.

A major advantage of relationship constellations is that they work without weekly recurring sessions with endless conversations and good advice from the therapist. One or two constellations are sometimes sufficient to instigate clearly noticeable improvements in a conflict situation. Another advantage is that the seeker ’s partner is not required to be present in the constellation or even know anything about it. Even so, it has an effect on the absent partner through the reciprocity that plays a fundamental role in relationships. In this case, we look at the seeker ’s part in the relationship and try to find appropriate solutions for that person. Sound ethics forbid us to look into the family system of the absent partner, but that is not even necessary, because when one partner goes through a process of change, the other has to adapt in reciprocity if he or she wants to remain in the relationship.

From experience, we know that the efforts of one partner in addressing relationship problems impact upon the other like two cogwheels that fit neatly into each other. Whenever one of the gear cogs changes or is removed, a reorientation is necessary and usually occurs automatically. There is always the risk that the other partner will not want to change or is unable to change. This mostly happens when that partner is severely entangled in loyalties,

which can mean an end of the relationship.

If both partners are present in a constellation, one partner begins by constellating the representatives. Once all of the representatives have been constellated, the other partner is given the chance to change the constellation until it feels right for him or her. Questioning of the representatives by the facilitator gives an impression of the different ways both partners perceive their relationship. The usual constellation process is followed until all entanglements are made obvious and good solutions are found. At the end of the constellation, one partner, followed by the other, replaces his or her representatives in the constellation. This is performed in order to absorb the new constellation image.

A couple with relationship problems cannot expect a therapist to fix their relationship like a mechanic fixes a car. They have to be prepared to go through an awareness process as described previously. Expecting a therapist to act as a referee in relationship problems is a sign that a person is not willing to do the necessary work; rather, it is an attempt to get the therapist to side with that person, to confirm his or her account of being an innocent victim, or to seek the therapist’s support in helping the other partner see the error of his or her ways: “Convince him/her. He/she doesn’t listen to me!”[1] Or the therapist may be used for his or her sympathetic nature as a sounding board for the seeker ’s complaints. A relationship cannot be healed in this way. It indicates that the therapist is still entangled in his or her own system and is therefore biased and not really able to find necessary solutions to help others rejuvenate relationships.

People who want to improve or heal a relationship have to be prepared to look at themselves first and come to terms with their entanglements and the concomitant reciprocity. When they do, they will discover something remarkable: in general, there is no guilt or guilty party— there are only entanglements and loyalties that complicate or destroy a relationship between two people.

On innumerable occasions, I have heard representatives say and feel the following in constellations. When the entanglement is resolved, partners look at each other as if they are seeing each other for the first time. They often say it literally: “For the first time, I see you for the person you really are.”

Constellating a relationship helps two people look fundamentally at their bond. This represents so much more than is afforded by the usual superficial assessments that make up the “blame game.” Problems and solutions become explicable as a result of both partners recognizing how they are entangled in difficulties carried over from their families of origin.

Both are touched on the soul level and are healed from something they have lived out in their relationship, which was subconsciously carried over in an assignment from their collective or personal conscience. By seeing, feeling, and processing these entanglements, both partners go through a deep personal learning process and are given the strength to rejuvenate their relationship with newfound love. When divorce is unavoidable, partners are able to separate

in an adult way and go on to open up to something new.

This also applies when only one partner constellates the relationship. The impact is greater, naturally, for the seeker, but we often see that the positive influence extends to the absent partner as well.

Why Is It So Effective?

According to Bert Hellinger, family and relationship constellations work at the level of the soul. They go beyond rational thought and our normal capacity for change. We were born into a family and take on the whole family system as an inner image or mind-set. This mindset, which all people carry with them, includes what is known as the “family conscience.”

Through a constellation, this inner image of knowing becomes visible and emotionally perceivable. Apart from its many positive elements, a family conscience may also contain unresolved or suppressed elements present in a family system.

A constellation allows us a clear look at our family conscience stored in our mind-set. It provides us with the necessary knowledge and information to dissolve or heal repressed and subconscious aspects of our family history.

When we constellate our relationship in a group constellation, by choosing representatives for each family member and positioning them in the designated space according to our inner view and feelings, we make a subconscious image visible. It is given a “gestalt” and a “voice.”

Since the representatives do not actually form part of our family, they are not identified with our subconscious family conscience. That allows them free access and perception to the family conscience, as a kind of sensing instrument, so that this knowledge can be shared. It is not advisable, then, to constellate a family with the actual family members, because they are too enmeshed in their own family conscience.

The fact that representatives can perceive independently makes it possible to bring subconscious connections, such as loyalties or entanglements, to light, alongside anything else within a family that is unresolved or suppressed. By working with representatives, solutions are sought and found, and the representatives are moved around into new formations until a more harmonious family constellation is achieved. At the end of the constellation, this new family image replaces the old inner image in the seeker ’s mind-set.

Just as the old image subconsciously determined our lives, the new image does so from then on. The resultant changes stem from the same subconscious depth and take shape in our daily lives.

The concept of the subconscious has been with us since Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.[2]It is now generally known that the part of our being that we are conscious of can be compared with the tip of an iceberg. All that is unprocessed or suppressed in us or our family is like the biggest (albeit hidden) part of the iceberg: not lost, but stored up in the subconscious part of our memory and in the family conscience. That is all part of our mind-set. Access to these levels is not easy using only our intelligence and power to reason. It’s like jumping over one’s own shadow.

Relationship constellations work at the deepest layers of the subconscious, bypassing the analytical mind and enabling us to work through unresolved and repressed family aspects.

This automatically changes and harmonizes the basic settings in our mind-set, which results in a more harmonious state of being, whereby we feel better in ourselves, and our relationships work better. The beauty of a constellation is that there is only one way out: out of an entangled existence and into a state of relaxation, awareness, and peace. All of these benefits become an integral part of an improved life.

Naturally, the success of family constellations depends on the seeker â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s level of openness; how much newly acquired knowledge and awareness he or she can face up to and integrate in his or her life is crucial. The seeker â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s involvement in the theme and how much he or she is touched emotionally are also important factors. A constellation conducted out of curiosity alone or over an issue that is not that important to the seeker will be rather superficial and lack impact. This will also be the case if the seeker remains emotionally aloof and tries to read the constellation in a rational way. In this sense, family constellations are not wonder pills to be popped in order to achieve instant marvelous results. Excessively high expectations are to be avoided. What becomes conscious and how much of it the seeker can integrate is part of a personal journey and growth process. As Hellinger puts it, solutions can be found and integrated only if they are in harmony with our soul.

It is important to realize that the integration of a family constellation causes changes in the life of the seeker. These processes of change can happen only if we can let go of the old inner image of our family and take an inner distance from certain family members. Sometimes, this can be hurtful. During a constellation, we work with unresolved elements floating around in our family system. They remain unresolved because they are so painful. Sometimes, people prefer to avoid these issues; it seems that for some people, daily suffering is a better alternative than going through that pain. This may be difficult to understand, but it should also be fully respected. Seekers should also realize that it takes a few months or sometimes even up to two years for a constellation to be fully integrated. Therefore, it is useful to wait until a constellation starts to manifest in daily life before embarking on a new constellation.

The Knowing Field The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.

—Albert Einstein

The Knowing Field forms the basis of constellation work. Anyone fortunate enough to experience a family or relationship constellation as a representative or the actual seeker knows how astonishing this phenomenon is. Without prior knowledge, representatives have access to information that normally is accessible only to actual family members. Through being constellated, though, they have access to the feelings of and knowledge about a completely unknown family. How do the representatives know that? Where does the information come from? How does the representative sometimes reveal details that the seeker or his or her family had forgotten?

To give you a taste of what you can encounter in a constellation, just imagine that you have been chosen to be the representative for the father of the seeker. The only information you have about the strangers who are chosen as the other representatives is that they are stand-ins for the seeker ’s mother (the wife of the man you are standing in for), the older daughter, and the younger son. You have no special feelings for these people, no particular likes or dislikes, and the seeker has not mentioned anything at all about the character traits of these family members.

One by one, the seeker guides you and the other representatives to certain spots, and more perceptions are aroused within you with the subsequent placement of each representative involved in the constellation. You start feeling something that was not there before. You have been placed opposite your “wife.” Your “daughter” has been placed much too close, and your “son” is difficult to perceive at all. You feel a lot of anger and tension toward your “wife,” and your “daughter” is placed so close that it scares you. Your “son” is placed too far away according to your feelings.

The facilitator brings another representative into the constellation: the “second daughter,” who died as a baby from SIDS, (sudden infant cot-death syndrome). Without knowing what overcomes you, tears run down your cheeks, and you feel a deep pain. Suddenly you know where the anger toward your “wife” comes from; you realize that you have made her responsible for the death of the child.

Through the facilitator ’s questioning, you start to understand that the feeling of powerlessness for you as the “father” was too much to bear. It was much easier to find someone else to blame rather than face up to such powerlessness and pain. So it was easier to blame your wife.

All of the information and feelings arise in you effortlessly.

The facilitator continues to work with the constellation and presents you with certain statements like “You are my wife. I am your husband. I feel a deep regret over my attitude toward you.” Slowly, all of the entanglements become clear to you. Every time something is

resolved, you become more relaxed. After a while, the facilitator gives you a new place in the constellation next to your “wife.” Now you feel a profound love toward her. Your “children” are placed opposite you, and even your “second daughter,” who died early, has been given her place. You feel fatherly concern and love. You are proud of your family. At the end of the constellation, the seeker steps into the constellation and replaces his or her representative to repeat the last steps.

A constellation begins with the seeker constellating his or her relationship or family by randomly choosing participants as stand-ins (representatives) for him- or herself and for other important members of his or her family.

Typically, this might be the father, the mother, brother(s) and sister(s). He then places them, in a centered and connected way, in a spatial arrangement in relation to each other. Suddenly, something comes to light in this process that surprises the seeker. That is to say, that in the process of the constellation he or she comes in contact with a knowing that was not accessible before.

—Bert Hellinger[3]

Strikingly, from the moment they are constellated, representatives start feeling as the person they are representing. Sometimes they even feel their physical symptoms. A knowing power field between the seeker and family members on one side and between the seeker and selfchosen representatives on the other emerges time and time again.

For a long time, Hellinger referred to this phenomenon as a “secret.” Evidently, the family soul or family conscience is able to manifest itself in a constellation. This is not confined to the family sphere, because organizations, teams, sections of companies, and even whole company structures can be constellated. Indeed, anything that can be described as a system can be constellated. Using this definition, all forms of relationships can be seen as systems. This might be a person and related sickness symptoms, addiction, or money problems.

Relationships concerning an organization or between a producer, product, and client can also be viewed in this way. Access to underlying structures through representatives occurs each time a system is constellated in a focused way. It is then possible to clearly see and deeply feel subconscious influences.

The fact that representatives have access to a knowledge they normally would not be able to perceive has not yet been scientifically substantiated; however, the term Knowing Field has gained widespread, worldwide usage. This is a very appropriate term, coined by well-known family constellation facilitator Albrecht Mahr. Anyone who has experienced this phenomenon becomes conscious of a much deeper connection between people.

In the chapter about science and constellations in my book Family Constellations Revealed, I put forward various theories about this phenomenon. For me, the most important one that could explain the Knowing Field comes from Rupert Sheldrake.[4]

How do migratory birds, for example, find their way over thousands of kilometers, and how do homing pigeons find their way back without a map or navigation system? Where do bacteria like the influenza virus and other living organisms get the information they need to adapt themselves constantly to altered environments? According to Sheldrake, these life forms, like people, have access to information fields that he calls morphogenetic (shapeforming) fields.

He calls the transfer of information morphic resonance. The basis of this theory goes way back to Aristotle’s theories about the soul. According to Aristotle, the soul that exists in the seed of every plant is what creates the plant. Over the years, the concept of the “soul” has changed to “field,” and, in the last century, biologist Paul Weiss developed the concept of morphogenesis.

This concept concerns a regeneration process that enables some reptiles to regrow entire limbs, a processes in living cell division that cannot be explained by DNA theory alone.

Sheldrake’s work is notable in that he fused different theories and fragmented studies on this topic together, transforming them into a functional hypothesis. To Sheldrake, the morphologic fields are just as real and evident as gravitational or magnetic fields. These we also cannot see with our eyes, but we have no doubt about their existence.

These fields can instantly relay information via morphogenetic resonance without the passing of time and apparently without tools of communication. This is comparable to what we see every day in constellations, when representatives express the feelings of people totally unknown to them and reflect the feelings and attitudes of ancestors clearly and truthfully.

When Rupert Sheldrake first saw a constellation in action, he commented that he had seen a morphogenetic field in action for the first time.[5] For Sheldrake, it is a foregone conclusion that morphogenetic fields are present in everything around us. These fields are responsible for the formation of crystals in their typical shapes and the reason why all cells in the creation of an embryo know where they belong. Morphogenetic fields play a key role in the survival of animals and other organisms. According to Sheldrake, these fields operate throughout nature, and each organism or inorganic structure in the universe has its own morphogenetic field. These fields are all connected with each other and influence each other in reciprocity.

Sheldrake’s research is impressive, so to explain his theory fully goes beyond the scope of this book. For further information, readers are referred to his books as listed in the bibliography. I also recommend Sheldrake’s video on my blog,[6] where he speaks about his work and family constellations.

It has long been known that a strong bond exists between family members.

Nagy’s contextual therapy,[7] which has generally become an integral part of the psychology curricula at the university level, speaks about imperceptible loyalties and balances of giving and taking in relationships. Even the family conscience is explained in the contextual approach as “the existence of an

accounting ledger with a record of obligations and responsibilities between all family members.â&#x20AC;?

The Constellation A person who wants to have his or her relationship constellated has to have a good reason to begin with: a theme. The theme is the posing of a particular problem close to the seeker â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heart, which he or she wants to become conscious of in order for it to be resolved. Having a relevant theme gives depth and power to a constellation, while curiosity alone makes a constellation superficial. Through reading this book, you might realize that there are certain things about your family that you would like to find out more about. To attempt a constellation on this basis, more out of curiosity than anything else, is not advisable; successful constellations stem from an authentic emotional involvement. Among other things, you can constellate, for example, are all kinds of relationships and personal problems.

Themes concerning careers and success in life and business can also be effectively constellated.

A constellation theme is defined in a short interview between the seeker and the facilitator at the beginning of the constellation; together they look at who and/or what should be constellated in order to reach desired solutions. The theme could be the seeker â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current relationship or family of origin or, if it is about sickness, the seeker â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s symptoms. The seeker provides the necessary information about family history during the interview. Only factual information is required for a constellation; character descriptions of family members or partners are unnecessary. Indeed, they are to be avoided, because they hinder the perceptions of representatives.

The avoidance of character descriptions is just the thing that enables a constellation to have such a forceful impact. Suddenly your parents are present in the constellation; just as distant or as argumentative as you know them to be. Sometimes representatives make gestures just like your real parents or other relatives without them knowing anything about your family.

Constellations are certainly not role-playing exercises.

Representatives Once a clear theme has been decided upon and the necessary facts have been presented, the seeker chooses representatives from the participants present, for the seeker and for other family members involved. Choosing representatives is always done by request, so participants have the right to refuse if it does not feel right for them to take on a certain role.

Guided by his or her inner perceptions, the seeker then takes each representative by the shoulder, one at a time, positions him or her within the designated space, and determines the direction he or she faces. There are no further instructions about posture or anything else. A constellation works deeply and has strength when it is done as a ritual: conducted in silence and with everyone’s complete attention. Plans or drawings completed beforehand are superfluous. A constellation is a timeless picture that reveals itself in the moment. If the facilitator senses lack of attention, he or she may call a halt to proceedings and try again later.

Once all of the representatives are placed or constellated, the seeker sits just outside the constellation space with the other inactive participants so that he or she can follow everything being said and done. In therapeutic jargon, this is called the “metaposition.” The facilitator asks the representatives to tune into the position they occupy and open up to all perceptions that arise. Sometimes representatives are asked to follow an urge to move or act on something they feel strongly. For example, a representative may want to step a bit farther away from or closer to another representative or feel the strong urge to lie down on the floor.

By going with the flow and being open to incoming perceptions, something comes to light even at this early stage in the constellation. It seems as if the constellation wants to tell us a story. Something that was invisible and subconscious is revealed and becomes perceivable in body and mind; the inner subconscious picture, the mind-set of the seeker, comes to life, so to speak.

The facilitator asks the representatives, one by one, to share the perceptions they experienced in their positions in a brief yet adequate way. Their positions toward each other and their answers make the underlying family structure clear and uncover possible entanglements and loyalties. Entanglements are significant connections that exist between the seeker and other family members. (See in chapter six, “What Are Entanglements”) In concert with the representatives, the facilitator works to bring entanglements or problematic loyalties to light to enable a search for possible solutions. Consequently, there is often a need to add more representatives. The facilitator does this according to the facts of the family and indicated entanglements. For example, the constellation might uncover a child who died young or a forgotten former partner of the grandmother, and so they too will be given a place in the constellation. The added representatives are almost always excluded and forgotten family members or traumatized ancestors with a difficult life history. Once they are brought in and positioned by the seeker or facilitator, they are also asked to tune in. Based on the reactions of other representatives toward those newly placed, the meaning behind their

inclusion and possible associated entanglements becomes clear.

By the end of the constellation, the facilitator, in accordance with the representatives, finds the right place in the constellation for each of them. This right place mirrors the systemic laws described in chapter six, “A Look Behind the Scenes”.

When an appropriate resolution image is reached, the seeker is asked to take up his own place in the constellation, replacing his or her representative. The last important steps are now repeated, and the seeker is asked to repeat the appropriate statements and reenact rituals like taking a deep bow toward parents, which has such a freeing effect on his or her representative.

The facilitator helps the seeker to integrate what has been seen and felt, for example, by asking him or her to “take in” the final constellation image and let it sink right in until he or she internalizes it. To end the constellation, the seeker will usually be asked to take a conscious step forward, in order to leave the old behind.

The seeker needs time and rest straight after the constellation to allow the integration process to continue to take effect. Any exchange between the seeker and other participants is best avoided for at least half an hour after the constellation. This is when the integration process has usually been concluded. To finally round off the constellation, the facilitator makes sure that all representatives have stepped out of their roles.

The Interrupted Constellation There are times when a constellation has to be terminated before a solution is reached. This occurs when the constellation lacks power or important information is missing. Another reason for interrupting a constellation is when a very intense climax has been reached. The early termination of a constellation can have a positive and astonishing effect. The curtailing itself invites the soul to take a big leap forward; the seeker â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feeling of responsibility about taking the next big step is strengthened and allows the space for a rich learning process. The facilitator should never give in to the temptation of wanting a happy ending or of striving to work out everything to the last detail. This might be well intended, but it will interfere with the essence of family constellations.

Emotions in Constellations Once all of the representatives have been constellated and have tuned in to their positions, the facilitator addresses each of them in turn. This is usually when they reveal their perceptions and express all feelings involved. The facilitator tries to ensure that feelings are not unnecessarily dramatized in a constellation. It is sufficient that representatives respond in a clear and relevant way, which facilitates delving into deeper layers.

Language Use in Constellations Sometimes the language used in constellations seems a bit old fashioned. When I ask a representative to repeat phrases like “I honor you,” “I’m just a kid,” and “I give you my blessing” to another representative, people sometimes react in surprise. In practice, it is always clear that this type of language has a deeper meaning. Commenting on this, Hellinger says, “This language works on the soul,”[8] and the soul is beyond time and fashion. The word usage in these phrases solves the entanglements and has a profound effect on us. They bring love streaming back. These are phrases with a special force and effect that are hard to find in our everyday language. It is certainly also due to this language that communication during a constellation does not degrade into superficial generalities.

Rituals in Constellations The most common ritual in a constellation is bowing down before someone, such as a parent, which allows tangible detachment and release from everything that we carry for them. In this way, we honor them and their fate as it is. We accept them for who they are. In fact, by bowing down before the right person, we restore balance and order in our system and, therefore, also in our mind-set. That is a very liberating experience. The facilitator makes sure that bowing takes place after all exposed entanglements have been resolved. Only when done in free will can a bow be authentic and have a moving and healing effect.

Being a Representative Being a representative is voluntary. Relationship and family constellations work with and through surrogate perception. That is where representatives come in. They are necessary to expose the family system of the seeker. Representatives can be seen as measuring instruments.

They give information to the facilitator, just like one reads an instrument like a thermometer.

Just as a thermometer does not interpret its measurements, representatives are also asked not to give any interpretations of their perceptions. They have to put their own wants and wishes aside during a constellation to make room for the thoughts and feelings of the person they are representing. That may seem complicated, but, after working with family constellations for many years now, I know that most people have little trouble acting as representatives and are able to adequately tune in to sensations and emotions.

By being a representative, you acquire an incredible amount of insight. You can experience how it is to feel â&#x20AC;&#x153;entangledâ&#x20AC;? and then pass through the various phases of a constellation until a solution has been reached. Representatives can then naturally benefit from this experience in their own lives. A person selected for a place in a constellation that has similar or parallel dynamics to that of his or her own family will frequently undergo a vicarious learning process.

Being a representative offers a unique opportunity to develop perception skills. We learn to express feelings and perceptions more clearly. Judgments and prejudices dissolve away. The image we have of ourselves also undergoes a positive transformation. If we were usually somewhat anxious in daily life, we now suddenly experience what it is like to feel strength. If we were normally self-assured, we now know how it feels to be a weak and helpless person.

All of these perceptions make us richer and more aware of being human. Personally, I feel that there is no better environment to learn about life.

Constellations in the Individual Setting When I started as a constellation facilitator, I was convinced that representatives were essential for a good constellation. But I have since changed my mind completely. Many of the constellations I now give are individual sessions without representatives, similar to the form of group-setting constellations described previously. There are four main ways I work in individual sessions: using small dolls or figures; using floor anchors; working with chairs; and working with the seeker ’s imagination in the Ursula Franke[9] method. The theme and the wishes and capacities of the seeker all have bearing on the choice taken.

Little dolls and figures are the ideal instrument for individual constellations. They are an exemplary diagnostic instrument that can clearly reveal disturbances just by the way they are positioned or constellated in relation to each other. A good example of this is Kevin’s constellation (link).

A floor anchor is an A4 sheet of paper on which the name of a family member to be represented is shown, with an arrow indicating the direction this person is facing. Floor anchors are laid out in the same way that representatives would be constellated. When the seeker stands on these anchors, he or she tunes in as if signifying the representative. The constellation of Jane (link) is a good example. Different-colored chairs can be used instead of A4 pages. This is the third method I frequently use, which works in the same way as A4 pieces of paper. See Susan’s constellation (link).

With the fourth variation, the complete constellation takes place in the seeker ’s imagination as visualization. The therapist asks the seeker to tune in to the perceptions of a certain family member and to imagine, from that family member ’s perspective, how the family member feels toward him or her. For example, I say to Ron, “Imagine that you could experience your mother ’s perception by seeing through her eyes and feeling what she feels. Once you are able to do this, would you please look at your son? Good, do you now see your son?” Ron nods, and then I continue, “Please say to your son, ‘You’ve had to do so much for me. You’ve had to carry so much. This may end now.’” Ron repeats this sentence out loud. Then I ask him if it sounds right and if according to his mother, the feeling expressed is correct. He confirms this.

Again as his mother, I ask him, “Do you want your son to leave all of your pain and grief with you?” From the perspective of his mother, Ron clearly feels that she means it.

I ask him to gently return from visualizing and, after allowing him a moment to come to rest in himself, I ask him to take a deep bow and say out loud, “I now leave all of your pain and grief with you, as I am only a child.” Then for the sake of closure, he says, “I thank you for everything in my life. I will make something special of it.” (See Mark’s constellation as well (link)) The biggest obstacle for individual constellation work is the seeker ’s difficulty in letting go of ideas and prejudices regarding how other family members think and feel; when “letting go” skills are developed, a person can freely tune in to the feelings and viewpoints of family

members.

Sometimes it is difficult for people to â&#x20AC;&#x153;feelâ&#x20AC;? what someone else, like their mother or father, is feeling. At times, people identify with their own situation and vision so strongly that they have difficulty taking distance from it. Consequently they struggle to comprehend how their parents, for example, could think and feel differently than they do. This, of course, is not a bad thing; in cases like this, I invite them to join in a group constellation seminar in order to participate as a representative. They then experience how representative perception operates and usually lose all difficulties they had with individual constellations. Seekers who have already done constellations and still have trouble letting go have unanswered questions or discover that old loyalties persist in their lives. They can easily work out and release unresolved issues in an individual constellation.

Can Family Constellations Save a Relationship?

Saving a relationship is not within the power of a facilitator or therapist and is also not that professionalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s responsibility. A facilitator who presents him- or herself in this light is presumptuous and lacking respect for the seeker. The role of a facilitator in a family constellation is to help people become aware of their (destructive) loyalties and entanglements and seek ways to resolve them by working in harmony with the perceptions of the representatives and the family system of the seeker. What that turns out to be is not under his or her control. What the seeker does with the information gained from a constellation is also not the responsibility of the facilitator. A relationship can only continue on if each partner goes through a profound learning process. If the couple choose to break up, the partners still learn and become wiser and so both reach a better state from where they can begin a new relationship. For me as a therapist, both options have equal merit.

Control Thwarts Love Another note of clarification: wanting to control ourselves, our partners, or our relationships is usually based on an assumption that the act of controlling is necessary. Most often, this stems from an unprocessed element from our family of origin. The assumption that something has to be controlled testifies to a lack of respect for our partners. This distorts the balance of give and take in the relationship.

The partner who is controlled will inevitably feel like the bad guy after a while. In the end, he or she will behave consistently with his or her partner ’s presupposition, borne out of a desire to control. By doing this, he or she confirms the righteousness of the controlling party. These presuppositions are confirmed subconsciously and experienced as a deep loyalty with a member of the family of origin. The reciprocity process we saw previously is clearly manifested here.

Using the systemic order and laws as a new morality—or worse still, as religious dogma—is nothing more than a form of control. It is totally different when people fully understand what the systemic order and laws mean and reorient their lives as a result of their own awareness process, because then, the motivational force originates from within instead of from outside influences like moral teachings, dogmas or religions.

Forcing and manipulating your partner to adopt a particular attitude will not work for the same reasons; reciprocity will prevent outcomes from being positive. The systemic order has to be experienced and understood; it cannot, naturally enough, be artificially imposed externally.

Glenda, age forty-eight, comes to me about problems with her partner. Her partner had enthusiastically read all Hellinger ’s books and demanded that she follow along, because, as he asserted, Hellinger says, “A woman follows her man.” She feels uneasy about his demands and wants me to give her a second opinion on the matter. She wants to know if what her husband says is true: that a resolution will be found only if she goes along with him.

I try to make it clear that following an archaic dictum comes up often in constellations, but these days, this has to be taken with a grain of salt. It is certainly not a position that can be forced upon someone. This is just as absurd as a wife demanding her husband be a “real man.” A man cannot simply demand that his woman “follows.”

What Hellinger means by writing, “A woman follows her man and the man serves the woman” or, in other words, “The feminine follows the masculine, and the masculine serves the feminine,” is that one partner in the relationship is more oriented to the outside world. He or she earns more money, for example, or is the leading partner. He or she does this to serve the partner who is more oriented to the nest. It represents an archaic inner picture that we all carry with in us: that of the hunter (man) and the collector (woman).

Fortunately enough, society allows room for women and men to express their femininity and masculinity in equal and balanced ways. This means that neither man nor woman can be assumed to take on a subservient role. The issue here is one of attitude as a result of the inner makeup of both partners, but it is not intended as a static element. By being demanding, shifts in responsibility are brought about because “If you are not able to follow, you are responsible when the relationship fails, so you are guilty when things go wrong” or “if you do not want the place that I have prepared for you or that I demand of you, our relationship won’t be harmonious and I won’t be happy.” This kind of reasoning heavily burdens a relationship and indicates entanglements in the family of origin. Once both partners let go of old entanglements, they slip into their rightful place in relation to each other.

For Glenda this is an eye opener. She will have a discussion with here partner and take the opportunity to manifest herself on equal footing with her partner.

According to Hellinger,[10] every form of control works against love and against harmony in the relationship. Attempting to use what is written in this book as a recipe for a harmonious relationship and wanting or even pushing to implement the values described without going through a real process of constellating personal themes is a form of control. Even this form of control contradicts love.

8 What Can I Do Myself?

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;BrenĂŠ Brown[1]

Perhaps, while you were reading the examples in the previous chapters, you recognized something in your own life. Many themes are obviously very recognizable because we all have families. Of course, we will find at least one of the disturbances discussed in many families. Maybe it is already clear for you the impact certain unprocessed events in your family have on you, especially regarding happiness in your relationships. Should you then register directly for a family or relationship constellation weekend, or is there something you can do yourself to improve your relationship?

Discover the answer to this question yourself in this chapter. I will give you important tips that you can apply step by step, and I cover different methods and exercises that have proved their worth. You will see for yourself that you can improve your relationship like many other couples have already experienced. We start by looking at the order of how people sit at the table. This sequence change is simple and usually has a strong positive impact on both your relationship and your family. Then you will find out about Inner Child Meditation. This meditation is a great way to realize your own unfulfilled desires. At the end is a questionnaire, designed to uncover your mind-set about relationships, which will help to make you aware of your loyalties and entanglements and enable you release them.

You obviously understand that these tips and techniques are not intended to replace professional relationship constellations or psychotherapy when necessary. Neither I nor the publisher of this book shall be liable for any possible negative consequences of doing the exercises described here. The exercises described here are also not meant to replace necessary medical care. If you or members of your family have been traumatized at some stage, I would advise you emphatically to seek professional help, because retraumatization may occur during a constellation. So use your common sense.

Table Seating Arrangements In a long-term relationship, partners are not recommended to make a habit of sitting opposite each other during meals or when talking. It may have been appropriate and romantic in the beginning of a relationship, but it will be disruptive in a long-term relationship. The partners should face the same directionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sitting together next to each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;if they want to enjoy a harmonious relationship. When people sit facing each other, there is a natural tendency for the tension between them to rise, making their entire communication rather confrontational.

In the beginning of a relationship or for a candlelight dinner, it is normal and desirable for tension to rise, which is why sitting opposite each other works. This tension is then usually discharged during intimate moments through sexuality. Beautiful intimate moments are, of course, essential in couple relationships; however, the mounting tension during a candlelight dinner leading to beautiful fireworks is counterproductive in the daily routine. When partners sit facing one another over the long term, tension levels frequently change into relationship stress.

It is also not recommended that warring parties sit facing each other, especially when tensions are running high. This only exacerbates the situation, making it more difficult to find solutions acceptable to both parties. If on the other hand, they sit in a semicircle, the situation is normally perceived as less offensive and less reproachful because there is no direct confrontation. This makes it easier to discuss problems and find solutions together.

Every position or stance that we take toward our partner has a different emotional value and therefore creates a different emotional response.

How we position ourselves (literally) with respect to our partner creates our (relational) reality.

This is not something I made up; it has become clear from numerous constellations. Try it yourself with these simple exercises in two parts. Ask a friend to do the following exercise with you. It is not recommended you do the exercises with your partner or spouse, because you know each other too well, and that could impede the ability to perceive freely.

In the first part of the exercises, your friend just stands on one spot and opens up to possible perceptions, while you take on different positions relative to him or her. Stand for a moment to his or her right and carefully observe how that feels for you. Then swap places: stand in front of your friend, and observe what changes for you. Then move again and stand to his or her left and observe again what has changed for you.

Do you feel something different in the three places, or does it all feel the same?

Which position feels better in relation to your friend? Share your observations with your friend, and swap roles. Stand still on a spot and carefully note any changes in yourself while

your friend occupies the positions described previously. What do you feel now, and what changes? Which position that your friend adopts in relation to you feels better now?

Continue on with the second part of the exercise, and imagine now that your friend is your boss and therefore hierarchically above you. He or she stands still. This time you approach in a calm manner, first from the right, so that you end up to his or her right. Then you stand in front of him or her before finally moving left so that you end up on his or her left. Make a mental note of how you feel when approaching each position. Is there one that feels better, more enjoyable, or safer for you? Share your observations with your friend.

Do the exercise again, but now you are the boss and your friend approaches you from different directions. Do you feel the same or different with the three approaches? What differences can you observe? Which direction of approach is most pleasant? Try to look at your perceptions without judgment. Do you feel more energy or safer in any particular location? Which location or direction of approach allows you to communicate more easily?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been through this exercise with hundreds of people during training sessions and seminars with very similar results. In the first part of the exercise, the vast majority of participants say that standing to the left or to the right of someone is much more pleasant than standing faceto-face with them. In general, most people feel confronted when facing another person.

After the second part of the exercise, most participants indicate that approaching a person of a more senior position (higher up hierarchically) is generally easier when you do it from his or her left. Approaching face on was also experienced as confrontational and from the right as disrespectful.

This is a simple demonstration of the fact that systemic laws play out in all our relationships (see in chapter six Systemic Family and Relationship Laws). Knowledge and application of these laws create more harmony in all our relationships and even more so for couples. More harmony comes about when these laws are applied on a family level. The easiest way to do this is to ensure a correct order of hierarchical placement at mealtimes and other gatherings where members sit around a table.

The “Right” Table Positions Just like the hierarchy in family systems, the proper (best and most harmonious) seating arrangements are governed by hierarchy in a clockwise order. This means that a person to the right of another is hierarchically more senior. It is very important to note that it is emotionally stressful for children to sit on a hierarchically higher place than their parents.

Table positioning works best like this: Round table Parents come first, and they determine the order between them themselves. The children follow on to the left according to age, oldest to youngest. So, the oldest child sits to the left of his or her parents followed by the second, then the third child, and so on.

Rectangular/square table Again the order of hierarchy occurs in a clockwise fashion. Parents take up position on one side of the table or on each side of a corner but never opposite each other. The children are positioned across from their parents according to their age and in a clockwise way as in a round table situation, from old to young.

Very young children may sit between their parents or between a parent and the oldest child as long as they have not yet learned to eat independently. Once this happens, they move up to their proper place in line.

Children should not be seated at the head of the table, because it is too “heavy” for them. A nice exception to this rule occurs during celebrations, like birthday parties, where the child gets the attention of the entire family. And, as already mentioned, a couple without children are best off sitting beside one another on either side of a corner, at right angles to each other, forming a semicircle.

Claire, age thirty-seven, wants more harmony at the table. She believes it is important to sit together at the table to eat at least once a day. Often it gets noisy at the table. She wants to see if everyone is in their “right” place by doing a table constellation. She places a representative for herself on one side of an imaginary rectangular table and one for her youngest daughter, age seven, to her left. Her partner ’s representative sits opposite her, and immediately to his right is one for their ten-year-old daughter. The four representatives take a moment to feel out their positions, and then I ask Claire’s partner to swap places with their youngest daughter.

The children are now sitting along one side of the table in the proper order, and their parents are side by side on the other side. Both children say they feel better with the change; they feel more relaxed. Even Claire’s partner indicates that this situation feels better. I get the parents to swap places. Now Claire sits on her husband’s left, opposite their eldest daughter. All representatives indicate that they now feel even better. Claire’s representative is particularly relaxed in this arrangement. Claire replaces her representative and comes into her own table constellation to take up her new position. She clearly senses the difference. When I see her weeks later, she tells me that after several days of teething problems, it is quieter at the table.

Susan, age thirty-four, is a single mother with two children: John, age nine, and Sharon, age seven. She struggles with John, who does not always do what his mother asks. During an introductory evening, I give Susan the option of having a table constellation. At home, around their rectangular table, Susan sits at the head of the table, with John to her right and Sharon to her left. While there is nothing to remark about Sharon, it is plain to see that something is up with John. Setting the representatives in the right family order, I place Susan to the side of the rectangular table where John normally sits, and both children, next to each other, opposite her.

The position at the head of the table, on her left, remains vacant.

Everyone immediately feels better, and the atmosphere is more relaxed. Susan is surprised.

Sitting in her new spot feels rather strange to her. The spot to her right is vacant; it felt so good having John there. I make it clear to her that this position is actually where an adult should be sitting, and that her son cannot be a substitute for a partner. As long as he continues to sit to her right, he will feel a bit bossy. John’s representative says that he felt unstable and disrespectful sitting to the right of his mother. He felt he looked down upon her. Now, in his new position, he is looking at her.

By asking her to sit in various positions around the table, I allow Susan to try out different seating arrangements. Soon enough, she understands the principles at work and also how important the correct order is. Out of curiosity, she decides straightaway to implement the new seating arrangements at home for a week. A few weeks later, she phones to thank me. “It’s much more peaceful at the table now, and John listens much better,” she tells me.

It always strikes me how something that may be considered as unimportant as dinner table seating arrangements can influence, in a positive or negative way, the feelings of all family members.

In principle, table order applies also to newly blended families. Children of both partners can be “mixed,” but in the correct order; sitting across from their parents, and next to each other according to their dates of birth. If only one partner has children, then they are best seated to his or her left. This means that the partner without children does not come between his or her partner and his or her children.

Barbara, age thirty-nine, is a crisis mediator and has greatly benefited by knowing how to position clients to the best effect around her meeting table. This is especially useful considering that she often deals with divorce cases, where good seating arrangements are crucial. Before she was introduced to table constellations, she let clients choose where they wanted to sit at either of two tables positioned opposite her table. However, this sometimes led to the children sitting between their parents.

With the help of representatives, we tested various strategies to find an appropriate seating arrangement for the “warring parties.” The tables now form a semicircle, with Barbara’s table to the right, two tables for the parents in the middle, and a third to the far left for children, if they are present. A play corner for toddlers was also added. The children are no longer placed

between the “fighting” parties, and the communication between parties runs more smoothly and is more successful.

Are you game enough to try out the “right” seating arrangement around your dinner table with your partner and/or family for a week to see if this improves the situation? Children will often complain about the change, but with a little patience, you will soon be appreciating a more peaceful atmosphere at the table, as a rule.

Inner Child Meditation Inner Child Meditation is the perfect way for delving into your unfulfilled emotional aspects.

A problematic parent-child relationship or an attachment disorder is the source of many unfulfilled desires in childhood. These are then subsequently projected onto the partner, who cannot possibly make up for whatever it was that went unfulfilled in a partner ’s childhood.

“Romantic” phrases that we constantly hear in all kinds of popular music, such as “I can’t live without you,” “You’re the only one who can make me happy,” and “Stay with me forever,” are underpinned by a childish, demanding attitude. Such an attitude burdens love in a relationship.

As we have seen, you are inevitably confronted again with the emotional deprivation from your own childhood in your couple relationship. It’s in your mind-set, and your partner can only cater to your mind-set, precisely because he or she loves you.

Thanks to Inner Child Meditation, you can let go of your identification with unfulfilled desires and still learn how to complement what your parents were unable give you concerning devotion, approval, and closeness.[2] For example, as long as you think you are lonely when you feel lonely, there is identification. However, it is actually the inner child in you who feels lonely. An adult, after all, does not have to feel lonely. Even when an adult is alone for some time, this does not necessarily mean he or she has a problem with loneliness. The child in you is the one who has a problem with solitude or being alone. This child could not have survived without the attention and presence of his or her mother. So every time you feel lonely, need attention, need acknowledgment, or feel let down or not seen, it means that the corresponding unfulfilled desires from your childhood are stirred. It is the inner child in you who needs attention or acknowledgment, needs to be seen, or needs the presence of an adult. Certain external circumstances, such as a particular behavior of your partner, trigger your old feelings of unfulfillment, which means that a similar situation brings back your old unprocessed pain. Therefore, you feel your old emotional unfulfillment, and it feels like it has just happened.

By the compelling power of reciprocity, your partner will most likely be the one to remind you that something is lacking in you. Every time you are reminded of this is an ideal moment to work with this meditation. No matter how powerful your feelings of unfulfillment are, you can always redress them by giving your inner child what he or she still needs, thanks to the Inner Child Meditation. With a lot of patience, you can gradually break your identification with all these feelings and supplement and heal the inner loss from your childhood.

Put about half an hour aside for Inner Child Meditation, and make sure you will not be disturbed while sitting quietly on your own. Maybe you are already in touch with feelings that come up from your inner child or know that they are in you. Both situations are good. It is important that you are patient with yourself and with the child in you. Through several meditation sessions, you will learn, step by step, how it works. If, for example, you have difficulty visualizing anything, just feel it. For others, it may be difficult for them to feel their

inner child. In that case, it is better that they use their imagination. Utilize your own creativity.

With patience, you will learn a way that you feel comfortable with.

When I ask you to say something out loud, do it at least so loud that you can hear your own voice. As a result, possible solutions or a healing process is initiated. Nothing will be achieved by just thinking hard. The difference between verbalizing and thinking aloud is something you can perceive for yourself easily. Providing the necessary safe space will allow your inner child to express old emotional burdens, such as sadness or anger, adequately and safely. Be adult about this by creating a safe environment to protect the child who lives in you.

Read the instructions for the meditation carefully and thoroughly at first, and do it as feels best for you. Be aware that you may encounter old unprocessed “loads” from your family during the meditation. Just give them back, saying out loud, for example, “Mama, I now give you back your impatience.” It is not bad if it does not work right away, because you may have come into contact with powerful family entanglements. In order to heal these entanglements, it is best to consider doing a family constellation. During the meditation described as follows, we use feelings of loneliness as an example. You do the meditation best with the feeling that presents itself at the time.

Go with your attention inward, and try to feel your body. Breathe deeply a few times with an open mouth. If you sense something definite, go with that feeling to perceive it as clearly as you can. If you cannot detect any particular feeling, go back to one of the times when you, for example, did not feel seen or understood by your parents or felt lonely. Feel the age at which you experienced the most difficulty with this issue. For example, at what point did you feel most lonely in your life? This might have been at the age of five or ten years old or even just three months. Go into your memory, back in time, and feel or observe that baby as best you can. If the feeling is not so clear, it will help to visualize or feel your inner child at that particular age who has had felt so lonely. If it was a little baby, take him or her in your arms like a little baby. If it concerns a twelve-year-old, of course, do not treat him or her as a baby, but rather sit next to the child and have a conversation. A six-year-old may sit on your lap. So use your own creativity, and do something for you at the age of the child in question that feels appropriate to you. Connect with your inner child as much as you can. It may feel strange at first, which is only normal, but continue on anyway.

In any contact, always address the child by name. If as a child you had a different name, a pet name, or nickname, use that name, but only if that feels better. If you have experienced the same feeling of loss at different ages, go step by step through all stages of this meditation for each age and, if necessary, repeat the meditation as frequently as necessary. Start with the feeling when your inner child feels lonely at the age this was most clearly felt for the first time.

Feel or visualize your inner child, and start to communicate with him or her. The first level of all communication with your inner child is sensing the child. Feel your inner child in your arms, close to your body. Feel or observe your inner child struggling with feelings of

loneliness. Sensing these feelings is the first step to releasing your identification. You realize that these feelings belong to your past. Instead of “I am feeling…” you now say, “My inner child has that feeling.” This happens automatically by way of you looking at the emotion of your inner child at that age when that emotion originated.

Take enough time to feel your inner child or visualize and tell your inner child out loud, using his or her name, “[Name], I see you.” This is the second level of communication, starting with your inner-child dialogue. While you talk to your inner child, feel the emotions of your inner child.

Try to tune in to the real needs of your inner child. It is normal for us to experience our inner children in different ways; sometimes they might be indifferent, stubborn, or lack confidence.

Patience helps out here, so be adult about this and monitor yourself for any signs of being disapproving, resistant, judgmental, or whatever it might be toward your inner child. These are most probably attitudes that you have adopted and copied over from your parents. Let their disapproval or judgmentalism go by saying aloud, “Mommy/Daddy, I give your disapproval/indifference (or whatever else it is) back.” Do this without reproach.

Sometimes you experience resistance to your inner child, which is also something that has been mostly copied from one or both parents. If that is the case, then you have internalized the resistance of your parents to you as a child. So tell your inner child, “Mommy and Daddy gave me what they could give. I may do it differently than Mom now. I may do it differently now than Dad. I love you. I respect you, and I now give you my attention and respect.”

Begin to give your inner child what he or she needs. What a child always needs is someone who is happy that he or she is there. Are you happy to be with your inner child? Can you convey that feeling of joy to your child? Do not dismay if you cannot; that’s OK, because you are only repeating your childhood experience(s). This is normal. Ask yourself, “Who was not happy with me being around? What were the reasons?” Feel what is happening, and try to determine if the emotional load is connected to your mother or your father. Then give it back to him or her. If that does not help, I suggest you to do a family constellation, because this implies an entanglement with a family member who died early or something like that.

If you can feel the joy, then tell your inner child, “[Name], I’m glad you’re here. You’re welcome here with me.” Say that out loud. Nothing is achieved by “saying” this in your head.

However, if you say it out loud, it is going to do something with you. Do you feel it? The difference is remarkable. Now say, in your own way, “[Name], you are always welcome here with me.”

Feel and see the reaction of your inner child. Keep repeating the aforementioned phrase until you get a clear response. That might be difficult in the beginning, and it makes no sense to try to force things. Patience is required. If you continue to feel and observe your inner child, he or she will react at a certain point, because he or she actually needs you. What do you feel? If it is loneliness, then let your inner child know that, as an adult, you are always there for him

or her. Are you able to convey this to your inner child? This offers a child the best form of feeling safe: knowing there is always someone there who loves him or her. Give your inner child specifically what he or she needs, as made evident from your perceptions. Tell your inner child, for example, “[Name], I will always be there for you, whatever happens.” Make it clear that your words are heartfelt. If other things come up, express these to your inner child as well.

If your inner child asks something of you that you are not sure whether you can give or do, tell your inner child that you are learning to listen to him or her. Be honest. If you remain uncomfortable or fearful, just communicate the way you feel. Just say, “[Name], I’m scared, but I’m willing to learn to open up.” Maybe your inner child feels unsafe with you, has no trust, or is so disappointed that he or she has pulled away. In a case like that, you will need lots of patience. Your unconditional presence is going to heal your inner child. Your inner child has had reasons to give up. Do not put pressure on your inner child, because that will only be counterproductive. Have patience, and respect your inner child.

Breathe deeply, and get into your feelings. Tapping into and expressing your feelings is the greatest way to purify yourself. Acknowledge your inner child’s feelings, and be comforting; be warm and loving so that your inner child will feel safe enough to open up to his or her feelings and cry if necessary. If your inner child is really angry, allow him or her to express this anger in a safe way, and say simply, “[Name], I understand you. You have reason to be angry; I respect your reasons. Be angry if you feel angry; you don’t have to keep it in anymore,” and say, “It’s safe for you to be angry.” If you feel that your inner child wants to hit or kick, give him or her space. Use a pillow or a mattress or whatever else you have handy for this. Do whatever you can to help your inner child discharge his or her emotions in a safe way. You’re the adult. Give your inner child all of the understanding and support he or she needs for safe expression. By taking on this responsibility, you are going to save your inner child.

Make a resolution with yourself that you are going to save your inner child. You will allow him or her to express all of his or her feelings and frustrations, and you will do everything necessary to make him or her feel relaxed and happy with you.

Visualize, inside yourself, a safe haven with a comfortable bed representing your unconditional “yes” for your inner child and a beautiful blanket representing your love and affection. This is your inner child’s home. Tell your inner child that he or she is always welcome, and breathe deeply in and out through your open mouth. Visualize and feel that safe haven in you, and then gently rest both hands on your body where the safe haven is. If you still feel the need to say or do something to your inner child, do it now.

To end the session, see yourself bowing to your parents and say, “I thank you for life and for all that you have given me. I’ll take care of the rest myself. Love you.”

Give yourself enough time for this meditation (at least a fifteen minutes) to allow everything

that has happened to integrate. To support you in this process, you might find it helpful to listen to music you like.

Getting to Know Your Mind-Set To become aware of direct loyalties, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with all the ideas, opinions, and the actual relational reality of your ancestors. By doing this, you become aware of your mind-set about relationships. This allows you to discover to whom you are loyal and identify the relative from whom you have carried over destructive attitudes that you repeat in your own relationships. This information will help you to let go of undesired loyalties. You may not be able to let go of more entrenched loyalties and entanglements by yourself, but this questionnaire will be a good preparation for your own constellation.

Questionnaires Answering the following questions will give you a general idea of the level of relationship harmony in your family.

How many relationships/marriages of parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles (on both your father ’s and mother ’s sides) are there in your family? From your perspective, how many of these relationships were really happy, good, bad, or ended in divorce?

Out of ___ relationships, ___ were really happy, ___ were good, ___ were bad, and there were___ divorces.

(For example: Out of fourteen relationships, one was really happy, three were good, seven were bad, and there were three divorces.)

To find out more about your mind-set on relationships, take your time to fill out the questions in the following questionnaire. You might find it more convenient to download this questionnaire as a PDF file from my site, www.the-systemic-view.com.

Note: Keep your eye out for the most typical statements, patterns, blame, or pain points, starting from the relationship(s) of your parents. Keep your answers brief and to the point.

Your father What are typical statements he made about men? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements he made about women? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements he made about your mother? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements he made about himself? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements he made about his relationship with your mother? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements he made about relationships in general? …………………………………………………………………

Your mother What are typical statements she made about women?

…………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements she made about men? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements she made about your father? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements she made about herself? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements she made about her relationship with your father? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements she made about relationships in general? …………………………………………………………………

Their marriage What are typical statements about their relational reality? …………………………………………………………………

If your parents are divorced, what was the reason for their divorce? …………………………………………………………………

Do both parents give the same reason for this?

If not, what reasons does your mother give? …………………………………………………………………

If not, what reasons does your father give? …………………………………………………………………

Grandparents Continue on with questions about the relationships of your grandparents. Try to collect as much information as possible. Sometimes it is necessary to talk to your parents. Some parents or grandparents talk about these things openly and honestly. Frequently, however, families do not talk openly about these things.

Usually, you will need to be very diplomatic to get this information. This might call for having a relaxed chat with grandma, starting out by asking about her childhood and funny events in her youth and then gently easing in to ask about the same things in relation to her children. Or perhaps you could ask her how she fell in love with grandpa and how that time was for her. This often requires a significant dose of creativity. Do not be afraid to ask about relationships of ancestors and their ideas about men and women.

To gain insight into your immediate loyalties to your grandparents and what you have carried over from them, answer the following questions. Make a list for each side of your family: your mother ’s side with her family and your father ’s side with his family. The same can be done with your grandparents insofar that you have enough information about them.

Note: Again try to avoid long stories. Look for the key pain points or patterns on relationships, and write them down succinctly.

From your perspective, how was the relationship between your grandparents? …………………………………………………………………

(List three or four words that characterize their relationship)

Grandmother: What are typical statements your grandmother made about your grandfather? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements your grandmother made about men in general? …………………………………………………………………

Grandfather: What are typical statements your grandfather made about your grandmother? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements your grandfather made about women in general? …………………………………………………………………

Do you remember things they said specifically about their relationship? …………………………………………………………………

If your grandparents divorced, what was the reason for this? …………………………………………………………………

Do both grandparents give the same reasons?

If not, what reasons does the grandmother give? …………………………………………………………………

If not, what reasons does the grandfather give? …………………………………………………………………

Uncles and aunts

How many uncles and aunts remained without a partner? For those in steady, ongoing relationships, find out how many were good, difficult, or ended in divorce. What are typical stories or statements about their relationships? Write down the main points. ………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………

You now have completed at least three question lists: one about the relationship of your parents, one about the relationship of your father ’s parents, and one about the relationship of your mother ’s parents. Continue on and also create question lists about the relationships of your great-grandparents, or go on with significant information you have uncovered about your uncles or aunts.

Have a good look at the information you have collated: What do you notice? Can you already spot patterns or similarities between their relationships and yours? Which beliefs does it look like you have carried over from them? Have you already uncovered any loyalties at this stage?

Of course, we are not nearly ready yet, because we still have to look at your own relationship(s). Importantly, consider all long-term relationships, if any, and, of course, your current relationship. If your current relationship is not your first, make sure you compile a list of questions for your first relationship, the one in which you had sexual intercourse for the first time. For each key relationship as well as your current one, answer the following questions as clearly as you can on a separate sheet of paper.

Questionnaire for your own relationships and marriages For your current relationship With what expectations did you start this relationship? …………………………………………………………………

What is difficult in this relationship? …………………………………………………………………

What is most lacking in this relationship? …………………………………………………………………

Do you feel respected and seen? If not, in what ways (e.g., care, input, creativity, intimacy, sexuality)? …………………………………………………………………

What are the main things you criticize in your partner during a conflict? …………………………………………………………………

What are the main things you blame your partner for during a conflict?

…………………………………………………………………

What is most lacking in this relationship for your partner? …………………………………………………………………

Also important is your relationship with your parents What do you feel was most lacking in your relationship with your mother? ….…………………………..…………………………………

What do you feel was most lacking in your relationship with your father? ………….……………..…………………………………..……

Answer the following questions with a rating of 1 to 10, with 1 being unattached and 10 being strongly attached.

How strongly as a man are you attached to your mother? …………

How strongly as a man are you attached to your father? …………

How strongly as a woman are you attached to your mother? ………

How strongly as a woman are you attached to your father? ………...

Note: If your score exceeds five on solidarity with the parent of the opposite sex, then your relationship skills have very likely been compromised. Read the section about Mummy’s Boy and Daddy’s Little Princess.

Questionnaire for your past relationship(s) or marriage(s) (Complete a separate list for each important relationship you have had.)

With what expectations did you start the relationship? …………………………………………………………………

If you ended the relationship, what was your specific reason for doing so? …………………………………………………………………

If your partner ended the relationship, what was his or her specific reason for doing so? …………………………………………………………………

What was most lacking for you in this relationship? …………………………………………………………………

Did you feel respected and seen? If not, in what ways (e.g., care, input, creativity, intimacy, sexuality)? …………………………………………………………………

What were the main things you blamed on your partner during a conflict? …………………………………………………………………

What are typical statements your former partner made about you, or what did he or she blame you for in a conflict? …………………………………………………………………

What was most lacking in this relationship for your former partner? …………………………………………………………………

If you have had several different relationships or marriages, you will certainly be able to find patterns, sore points, or mutual recriminations that repeat themselves. These are particularly important. Look for these parallels and possible repetitions across your relationships.

Your Mind-Set You have now collected a lot of information. Look for parallels, and see if you can find repetitions of relationship patterns or attitudes of family members in relation to men and women through the generations. Bring everything together, and write down what you notice.

What direct loyalties and entanglements are visible to you that affect your relationship or marriage?

What can you do with this information?

Suppose you discover that you are seen and feel respected as little in your current relationship as when you were six years old. And that your mother in her relationship with your father is not seen and does not felt respected, just as her mother? What do you do?

An open conversation with your partner about what you have discovered can at least provide for greater openness and clarity. Helen, age thirty, told me how she did it. Shortly after yet another argument with her partner, she filled in all of the questionnaires. She discovered a pattern of not feeling seen and respected, something for which she reproached her partner.

She decided to share this insight with her partner and began by saying, “Sorry for accusing you for not seeing and respecting me; that’s something very painful of mine.” And then she told him of her painful experiences when, as a six-year-old, her parents paid little attention to her. She also told him about her loyalty toward her mother: she is carrying over the same conflict of not feeling seen and respected from her mother into her current relationship. This talk made Helen realize for the first time how much old pain and suffering was associated with her issue of “not feeling seen or respected.” She discovered that this suffering was the emotional charge behind her reproaching ways with her husband. At the same time, her partner responded with more openness, and, when Helen admitted her deep pain and wept, he opened himself completely. Helen then felt a connection and love for him that she had not felt with him for a long time.

“The truth will set you free,” said Jesus (John 8:32), which is very applicable here. By being brave enough to talk to your partner about the loyalties and entanglements that you have discovered, you are daring to wade through the “swamp of your soul.”

With the valuable information about your mind-set that you have now acquired and the questionnaire in the next chapter, you can (if you so wish) do a family constellation with a professional therapist.

Best of luck!

9 Preparing for Your Own Constellation In this chapter, you will find a second questionnaire as well as some guidelines on how to prepare for your own constellation. Various testimonials will show you how constellations operate and what they have meant for those who have set up their own constellations.

Questionnaire and Preparation If you have become somewhat familiar with your mind-set after reading this book and would like to use constellations to improve your personal life, relationship, or health, then it is necessary for you to find as much relevant information about your family as possible.

You have already collected a lot of information to help you map your mind-set. This information is intended primarily for yourself, to consciously look at your own situation and make you aware of possible entanglements or loyalties. It will definitely be beneficial in helping you to heal your relationship or marriage. Fill in the following questionnaire if you want to do a constellation. Limit your answers to the actual facts. All of the facts of your family history are important. The most important facts are those connected with heavy fates of family members, such as trauma, abuse, exclusion, or death. Here is an overview of the most common examples of heavy fates. The more generations you go back, the better.

Note: You might find it more convenient to download this questionnaire as a PDF file from my site, www.the-systemic-view.com.

Difficult Fates The early death of one parent, before the child turns twenty-eight to thirty years of age The early death of a sibling, before he, she, or you turns twenty-eight to thirty years of age Miscarriages after the third month of pregnancy Maternal death Major accident or illness or victims of natural and other disasters Physical abuse or incestuous relationships Physical or mental disabilities Suicide or murder Victims or perpetrators of a crime in the family Imprisonment (jail, concentration camps, confinement to reservations, and so forth) All kinds of war-related experiences Homosexuality Exclusion from the family Nuns, monks, or priests in the family Psychiatric patients in the family Bankruptcies Emigrants Forefathers involved in slavery (as slaves or masters) Native forefathers Colonial rulers Extramarital births (in the past, where it caused social disturbance) Children who were passed on to foster parents or relatives at a young age

Adoption Family members sent at a young age to boarding school without necessary reason Family members forced to move or flee from their home country Family members with parents of different nationalities Family members never allowed to leave the parental home To make it easier for you, here is a questionnaire about you and your family.

Personal facts from your childhood Were there complications with your birth?

Was your mother ill, or did she have a permanent injury as a result of your birth?

Were you hospitalized early or later on in childhood due to a sudden or heavy illness?

How many siblings do you have?

Were there miscarriages or children who died at a young age?

Do any of your siblings suffer a difficult fate (see above)?

Personal facts from your adolescence/adulthood Were there important partners (first great love) before your current couple relationship?

Were there special reasons for the premature end to an earlier relationship (e.g., parental influence or interference)?

Were there any abortions?

Were there any miscarriages or children who died at a young age?

Were there extramarital births?

Were there children from an earlier relationship?

Facts on the level of the parents How did your parents meet?

Did one of them have an important couple relationship previously?

Did one of them have a relationship earlier, or was he or she married before?

Were there important reasons why an earlier relationship of either parent could or should not continue?

How old were they when they were married?

Were you born before or after they were married?

Were you the reason they married?

If they did not marry, was there a special reason for this?

Facts from your maternal/paternal family of origin Mother/Father

How many siblings did he or she have, and where did he or she come in the family?

Were there miscarriages or children who died at a young age?

Was there a difficult fate (see above)?

Each grandparent How many siblings did he or she have, and what was his or her position in the family?

Were there miscarriages or children who died at a young age?

Did he or she as a child or adult undergo a difficult fate (see above)?

Great-grandparents and erstwhile ancestors on both sides Were there any difficult fates or notable events?

Once all of these facts have been collected, you need to ask yourself the following question: Where and with whom can I best set up my family constellation?

Personally, I suggest you look for someone with some years of experience as a facilitator/therapist before starting to work with family constellations. Ensure that your chosen facilitator/therapist or coach is a well-trained, seasoned professional. By checking online (e.g., on www.isca-network.org), you will certainly be able to find a suitable facilitator/therapist or coach in your neighborhood.

After Your Constellation Try to talk as little as possible in the first half hour after your constellation, and give yourself the necessary time and space to integrate your new insights and solutions. Take all the time you need. Avoid questions out of curiosity from others about how things went or why the constellation took a particular course; this will disrupt the process and only serve to distract you. It is better to give yourself time to allow everything to sink in.

Most facilitators advise seekers to forget about the constellation and not ponder it any further.

What you can do, however, is recall or recollect the end sensation of the constellation: the feeling and relief you experienced. This will give you the chance to resonate with the final family image that the constellation presented. If you do this in the days after your constellation, without becoming compulsive, you will actually enhance the integration process.

The integration of experiences from your constellation needs time; the amount of time needed will vary from person to person. One person might feel direct changes, while the next might go through a period of worsening symptoms before things change for the better. This is a phenomenon also known in classic homeopathy, wherein the symptoms first become worse, even when the correct substance is administered. The patient goes through a healing process since his or her immune system is apparently finding balance on a fundamental level. If this is the case with you, then have patience, and do not immediately look for another facilitator.

Instead, make another appointment with the facilitator who guided you in the constellation. He or she knows what happened in the constellation and can best guide you through the readjustment process. This is never a substitute, of course, in situations requiring medical treatment.

Sometimes after a successful constellation in which significant issues were resolved, clients want to engage in another constellation shortly thereafter. They start to see all kinds of deep unresolved issues and want to clear them away as soon as possible. Although this is very understandable, I would advise against it. If you do constellations too frequently over a short period of time, you hamper the integration process. You also risk only partial resolution and manifestation of constellation solutions into your life. The best thing to do is to wait a few months before you do another constellation or at least until clear results start to emerge.

Do not forget that you might need months or sometimes a year for a complete integration process to take place. So relax, and let your soul do the work for you!

Testimonials To give you an idea of the possible outcomes of reading this book or attending family constellations, I will include here various testimonials that clients have sent me.

Veronique, age thirty-two, psychologist Indra, thanks for the valuable insights. I gained a lot from reading your book. It’s been life changing. The surprising insights and experiences about my relationship with my husband were so clear and obvious that I couldn’t believe I had never previously been able to see the strong dynamics at work. Even during my training as a psychologist, no mention was ever made of the presence, depth, and far-reaching consequences of the systemic loyalties that bind us together and entangle us.

My inner image of a “man” in couple relationships, that I took over from my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother (this is the extent to which my personal conscious experience of the women’s line in my family system reaches), sunk in when I was reading Heal your Relationship while lying on my bed, ready to nod off. I began musing about my relationship in light of what I had just read. It was not purposeful thinking or analysis, yet I immediately sensed truth in these words. I felt compelled to synthesize this truth into my relationship to integrate them more deeply. My left hand was on my belly when I heard my inner-self say, “Fill me.” Slowly, the idea unfolded that I expected, demanded even, my husband to fill my inner emptiness and to rid me of my fears. A task in which any man will naturally eventually fail.

To my utter dismay, I saw that I had not only perfectly copied over this behavior from my own mother, but from my mother-in-law as well! (This means I was a perfect fit for my partner ’s mind-set.) My mother-in-law always called me “oral” because she perceived in me a bottomless desire for affirmation and love. I now saw very clearly how she suffered the same fate and how amazingly similar in essence we were, despite our different personalities.

The frequent conflict situations I witnessed as a youngster often left me with a sense of injustice and powerlessness. Both my adoptive father and my father-in-law were unjustly criticized by their respective wives, in my eyes, for not being good enough. It seemed to me that women put the bar unrealistically high. They longed for the love from their husbands that they had missed out on from their parents. As far as needing or demanding love from partners was concerned, my mother, my mother-in-law, and I were like a bottomless pit.

What I also see is that both my mother and my mother-in-law had to be “saved” from a very emotionally difficult situation—my mother-in-law, from a family with an absent father and an alcoholic mother, and my mother from the “shameful” situation of being a single teenage mother. Their husbands, my adoptive father and my father-in-law, were called saviors and probably reveled in that role: that was their part and consequently that of my husband.

My husband had to save me (which he enjoyed doing out of loyalty to his forefathers) from

the emotional crisis I found myself in when I was seventeen following the shocking revelation from my mother that I was adopted by my so-called “daddy” when I was two years old. My husband and I had known each other for some time before I got into this “crisis,” but we had only just become a couple when he grabbed the opportunity to be my savior.

I never got to meet my real father, because he passed away before I even knew of his existence. It turned out that my mother fell in love with my father, hung around with him for a few weeks, and became pregnant by him from having sex only once. He had agreed to meet up with her again, but he did not show up so he was never told about me. My mother just left it at that. When I asked my mother why she had never contacted this man again and never let him know he had a daughter, she told me that she felt that he had only “used her for sex.”

At first, it was very difficult for me to comprehend that my whole family thought it was simply OK, and even considered it unnecessary, to discuss the fact—that my father never had to know that he had a daughter and that it would not be important for me to know my biological father. In addition, I found it quite remarkable that my adoptive father had adopted me when I was two, knowing that my biological father was still alive. Wasn’t he aware that a man has a right to know that he has fathered a child; his own flesh and blood running around in the world? I wonder what he must have thought of himself as a man in relation to women, to be so contemptuous of males. The way I see it, his behavior showed that he placed so little value on a man’s role in his couple relationship to his woman and on his role in the family.

Women in my family, as well as in the family of my husband, live with an inner image that men are not worthy: they are selfish and do their own thing, while their wives have to take up the slack with their kids and are left to carry the burden alone. A strong victim feeling toward the man is at play here, because “women are victims of men.” Our inner image cries out, “Men don’t give a damn.” We women know what love and sacrifice are. Men are only interested in fun things like sex and leave us with the consequences and the load. They have little regard for their families. We decided that men do not deserve our respect, and that we as women, know better, are more capable, and get things done better than men. My grandfather, my adoptive father, my father, and my husband live with an internal image about relationships and women that perfectly reflects the inner image their women have about relationships and men. I see a clear example of this in the relationship between my grandfather and grandmother. She had five children and ran a grocery store. My grandfather was a bus driver who worked long hours, so wasn’t home that much. She was praised by the women in my family as a hard worker, while he was seen as an absent freeloader. In last thirty years of his life, my grandfather had a love affair with a woman who could have been his daughter. The family knew of this affair and, although my grandmother gave tacit approval, practically nobody respected my grandfather. My grandmother suffered visibly through his behavior; she was the victim of her selfish husband. Just as my mother was the victim of my father, who was no longer present after he had taken advantage of her sexually. Just as my mother is a victim of her husband (my adoptive father), who always works, and does not take the initiative to spend time with her. Just as I was the victim of my husband, who would rather play computer

games than be with his family.

I feel and see a strong pent-up inner anger in my husband that I also observe in my adoptive father and my father. Sometimes our men explode, and we women are obviously the victims!

The puzzle pieces fit perfectly together in the end. The really shocking discovery for me is that, in my own relationship, I have unconsciously repeated something that I have deliberately rejected from my ancestral mothers’ relationships: a lack of respect for men. I also see that what’s happening in the outside world, and so also in our relationships; the inner realms of partners in a relationship fit seamlessly into each other. Now that the puzzle is becoming more visible piece by piece, I am apparently doing things differently because I feel the love between my husband and me flow. My husband has his place right next to me. I look at him and give him loving space. I have a handsome guy!

Karen, age twenty-eight When I met Michael, I had been alone for four years and was totally closed off toward having another relationship because I didn’t want to be hurt anymore. The first time I saw him, my heart skipped a beat and I knew immediately I was in love. But this relationship was really destructive. He had no money, so I helped him out financially even though I was feeling the pinch myself. I did whatever I could for him because he meant everything to me. However, he was mean and rude to me, which crushed me. After intercourse, I was often full of bruises. My friends and family didn’t understand me, and everyone kept telling me to leave him because he was no good for me. But I couldn’t let him go, I felt so much love for him! I wanted it to work between us so badly, and I wanted to save him.

In my first constellation about this relationship with Indra, a loyalty and entanglement emerged with my mother and my grandmother. My mother was also very mean to me and did not recognize all that I did for her. But still, I wanted to save her! My grandmother was also unhappily married and often got spanked. She tried to run away from her husband and went back to her family home. Back then, however, divorce was out of the question. Through court action, her parents forced her husband to take her back home. So she had to return to that “hell” house. When I look back on my childhood now, I was also repeatedly sent back to my “hell” home. I pleaded for help but it was never forthcoming! My experience with the juvenile justice system was just the same. In my loyalty to grandma, I continued on this pattern in my current relationship. When I gained insight into this in my constellation, I realized I could put an end to this. So I did.

Bruises were not a part of my new relationship, which started a short while after I stopped with Michael. This time, I didn’t let my partner take advantage of me. And I also didn’t have the urge to save him. But he was judgmental about me, which made me very sad and angry, and so we had a lot of hassles. In my next constellation, it became clear to me that this judgmentalism belongs to my mother. She was constantly judging me. During the constellation, I could feel clearly that the judgmentalism belongs in the past and with my mother, not me. Also, this relationship has now ended. I deserve much better!

Linda, age thirty-eight Dear Indra, Thanks for the constellation. A lot has changed between my husband and me. We can chat with each other again; it feels cozy again with him. I told him all about the connection with my father and his sister. Although he is not in favor of â&#x20AC;&#x153;alternative things,â&#x20AC;? he nevertheless listened attentively. All of our problems are, of course, not yet resolved, but the constellation was a big step in the right direction.

See you and thanks so much, Linda Kathleen, age thirty Hi Indra, You might remember my constellation around the lack of intimacy in my marriage. I gave the blockage back to the women in my family. Nothing much changed at first. I expected my partner would react differently to me in response to my constellation. At a certain point, I realized how unrealistic it was that I was waiting for him to change. So, I took the initiative to just do what I wanted and what I longed for. This turned out to be a very pleasant surprise for both of us. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now much better between us. It indeed seems that I have finally taken up my place as a woman, just as I did in the constellation.

Thanks, Kathleen

Indra Torsten Preiss From an early age, Indra developed an interest in social psychology. He quickly came to the conclusion that society cannot be changed from the outside; real change, he discovered, comes about primarily through an individual awareness process.

This is how Indra’s own journey of self-discovery began. Rebirthing and bodywork became his focuses after beginning with gestalt. What started off as psychotherapy gradually developed into an intense spiritual purification and an initiation journey. After training as a rebirthing counselor, he opened up his first practice in Germany. He went on to take training courses in bodywork, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and voice dialogue and was inspired by Osho. Meeting with the spiritual teacher Michael Barnett marked a turning point in his life. He was sure that even deeper spiritual dimensions awaited him. In an intensive period of study and learning, he broke away from restraining patterns and discovered the beauty of living in the here and now and looking at things as a whole.

After this time of intensive learning, he established himself in Antwerp and became father to three children. In his practice, he continued to develop and refine his own ways of working with the inner child and energy. Alongside individual sessions, he worked with groups and initiated annual intensive residential workshops under the banner “Being Yourself.” In this period, Indra made the inner move away from being a therapist to become a spiritual teacher.

In Indra’s ongoing quest to improve and refine his work, he followed tantra workshops and accredited courses by Margot Anand and René Koopmans, among others. This is when he came into contact with family constellations. He completed an annual training course conducted by Berthold Ulsamer and attended seminars conducted by Bert Hellinger, Albrecht Mahr, and other well-known constellators. The genius of this method had such an impact that the kernel of his first book was soon in the pipeline. It was a book he felt he had to write.

Published in Dutch in 2004 and titled Familieopstellingen in de Praktijk (Family Constellations in Practice), it was followed in 2008 by his second book, Gezonde Verhoudingen, translated into English as Family Constellations Revealed and soon to be published in Korean.

This is the path that Indra has taken to be the accomplished spiritual teacher he is today, experienced, resolute, and loving. Indra stands apart through his constant quest for a deeper truth as well as his candor, encompassing consciousness, and wisdom. He conducts an extensive range of courses in his Art of Life Studio as well as on tour.

From his extensive experience in working with couples in relationship constellations and, of course, with his own relationships, he has now written Heal Your Relationship.

Appendix: Rebirthing Besides constellation work, I work with rebirthing-breath work[1] to help people process their own pain, loss, or whatever it may be. Rebirthing was developed by L. Orr[2] as a breathing technique in which inhalation and exhalation are connected. Breathing happens in a flowing way, as intense as possible without straining. There is a slight emphasis on a deep inhalation and fully relaxed exhalation, as relaxed as possible.

Such breathing creates an intense energy flow in the body. At the beginning of a breathing session, you feel a little dizzy, your hands start to tingle, and a quivering sensation fills your entire body. This is a sign that energy is purifying cells at the physical level. On an emotional level, old, repressed feelings come up. If we allow these feelings to be and relax ourselves, emotional blockages are palpably resolved. We breathe through our grief, old pain, or restrained anger.

This enables, usually automatically, the release and surrendering of deep insights and images, allowing us to process our pain, loss, or trauma from childhood. We learn to love our inner child, to embrace and give him or her a safe place. At the end of a rebirthing session, we are usually in a deep, blissful relaxed state, often in meditation, quiet of mind and totally in touch with our bodies: reborn.

Of course, many other forms of therapy can help you to process painful experiences from your childhood, such as primal therapy, attachment therapy, bioenergetics, past reality integration, and many more. Whichever you might choose, please make sure that the therapist you choose is familiar with intergenerational loyalties and entanglements, as described in this book. If not, you risk trying to process endless and unnecessary emotional charges that actually belong to your ancestors.

—Notes— 1. Foreword 1. Brown, B., The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Hazelden, 2010. Kindle Edition, loc.673.

2. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books: 2000, viii.

2. Treat the Symptom or the Underlying Cause?

1. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, 86.

2. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, 68–70.

3. The idea comes from Detlefsen, T., en Dahlke, R., Krankheit als weg. Deutung en Be-deutung der Krankheitsbilder, München: Goldman/Bertelsmann, 1993.

4. Dawkins, R., The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

5. Sheldrake, R., The Science Delusion. London: Coronet, 2013.

6. Gottman, J., Silver, N., The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. London: Crown Publishing/Orion Books, 2000.

7. Goleman, D., Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1997.

8. Brown, B., The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Hazelden, 2010. Kindle Edition, 36, loc. 673.

9. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, 177.

10. Bryan, B., Goodman, M., Schaveling, J., Systeemdenken, Ontdekken van onze organisatiepatronen. Den Haag: Academic Service, Sdu Uitgevers, 2006.

3. Determinants of Relationship Happiness 1. Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., Invisible Loyalties. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

2. Hellinger, B., Weber, G., Beaumont, H., Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships. Phoenix: Zeig, Tucker and Theisen Inc., 1998.

3. Hellinger, B., Religion, Psychotherapie, Seelsorge. München: Kösel Verlag, 2000.

4. Sarah Holt, Nigel Paterson, The Ghost in Your Genes, BBC documentary.http://www.the-systemic-view.com/bbcdocumentary-the-ghost-in-your-genes 5. See www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetica.

6. G. Vines, G., “Hidden Inheritance.” New Scientist 28, No. 2162 (November 28, 1998), 27–30. http://www.ifgene.org/vines.htm 7. Ibid.

8. Gallagher, J., “‘Memories’ pass between generations.” BBC News, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25156510.

9. Hurley, Dan, “Grandma’s Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes.” Discover magazine, June 11, 2013.http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-yourgenes#%2EUlEZkCSxNhB. 10. Ibid.

11. Ducommun-Nagy, C., Van Onzichtbare naar Bevrijdende Loyaliteit. Leuven: Acco, 2008, 25.

12. Ibid.

13. Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., Invisible Loyalties. New York: Harper & Row 1973.

14. Buber, M., I and Thou. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013; first published In 1937 by T&T Clark Ltd.

15. Ducommun-Nagy, C., Van Onzichtbare naar Bevrijdende Loyaliteit. Leuven: Acco, 2008, 189.

16. Spielberg, H., in Ducommun-Nagy, C., Van Onzichtbare naar Bevrijdende Loyaliteit. Leuven: Acco, 2008, 189.

17. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, pp. 54, 160, 161, 163.

18. – 22 Ibid.

23. Winkelaar, P., Zingeving en Wereldbeschouwing. Leusden: De Tijdstroom, 2009, 38.

24. Allione, T., Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict. London: Hay House, 2010.

25. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, pp. 54, 160, 161, 163.

26. Ibid.

27. Reich W., The Function of the Orgasm. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973; first published Wien 1927.

See also: Lowen, A., MD, Fear of Life. Alachua: Bioenergetics Press, 1980.

28. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, 210.

29. Bowlby, J. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby Attachment theory: http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/online/inge_origins.pdf.

30. Johnson, S., Hold me Tight. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

31. Dr. Spock, known American pediatrician and author of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, says, “I think it’s a sensible rule not to take a child into the parents’ bed for any reason,” in Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, 193.

32. Chopich, J. E., and Paul, M., Healing Your Aloneness. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

5 What Burdens Relationships, and What Makes Them Flourish?

1. Hellinger, B., Neuhauser, J., Beaumont, C., Zeig, Supporting Love: How Love Works in Couple Relationships. Phoenix: Tucker & Co, 2001.

2. Zanardi Cappon, A., Mummy’s Boys, Daddy’s Girls. Kindle edition, available at Amazon.com, 2012, loc. 48, 93, 236, 117, 174.

3. – 6. Ibid.

7. Hellinger, B., Neuhauser, J., Beaumont, C., Zeig, Supporting Love: How Love Works in Couple Relationships. Phoenix: Tucker & Co, 2001.

8. Zanardi Cappon, A., Mummy’s Boys, Daddy’s Girls. Kindle edition, available at Amazon.com, 2012, loc. 1092.

9. Bergman, S., Sletvrees. Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 2013, 247, 286, 287.

10. – 12 Ibid.

13. Mottier, V., in Bergman, S., Sletvrees. Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 2013, 286.

14. Ibid.

15. Bergman, S., Sletvrees. Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 2013, 291.

16. Feuerstein, G., Sacred Sexuality. Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1992.

17. Ibid.

18. Hellinger, B., Wo Ohnmacht Frieden stiftet, Familien-Stellen mit Opfern von Trauma, Schiksal und Schuld. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag, 2000, 19. Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., Krasner, B., Between Give and Take: A Clinical Guide to Contextual Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel Inc., 1986.

20. Hellinger, B., Neuhauser, J., Beaumont, C., Zeig, Supporting Love: How Love Works in Couple Relationships. Phoenix: Tucker & Co, 2001.

21. Hellinger, B., Ordnungen der Liebe. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag, 2001.

22. Zanardi Cappon, A., Mummy’s Boys, Daddy’s Girls. Kindle edition, available at Amazon.com, 2012, loc. 1128.

23. Zanardi Cappon, A., Mummy’s Boys, Daddy’s Girls. Kindle edition, available at Amazon.com, 2012, loc. 1192.

24. Hellinger, B., Weber, G., Beaumont, H., Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships. Phoenix: Zeig, Tucker and Theisen Inc., 1998.

25. Hellinger, B., Was in Familien krank macht und heilt, Ein Kurs für Betroffene. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag, 2001.

6 A Look Behind the Scenes 1. Hellinger, B., De wijsheid is voortdurend onderweg. Gronigen: Het Noorderlicht, 2002.

2. Eisenberger, N., Matthew I., Lieberman, D. and Williams, K., Why Rejection Hurts: A Common Neural Alarm System for Physical and Social Pain, Trends in Cognitive Science, 2004, vol. 8 pp. 294–300 3. De Morgen newspaper, Belgium, July 6, 2002.

4. Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., Krasner, B., Between Give and Take: A Clinical Guide to Contextual Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel Inc., 1986.

5. Hellinger, B., in Praxis der Systemaufstellung, pp. 9 + 11, München, 2/2001.

6. Ibid.

7. Lewis, T., MD, Amini, F., MD, Lannon, R., MD, A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000, 13.

8. Hellinger, B., Ordnungen der Liebe. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag, 2001.

9. See www.systeemtheorie.nl/systeemtheoretisch-model.php; wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algemene–systeemtheorie 10. Michielsen, Van Mulligen, Hermkens (red.), Leren over Leven in loyaliteit. Leuven/Leusden: Acco, 2002.

11. Hellinger in Döring-Meijer, H. (Hrsg), Leiden ist leichter als lösen. Ein Praxis-kurs mit Bert Hellinger, Familieaufstellungen mit Suchtkranken. Junfermann Verlag: Paderborn, 2000, 225.

12. Ulsamer, B., Vliegen met sterke vleugels. Haarlem: Altamira-Becht, 2003.

7 Constellations Methodology 1. Schneider, J. R., in Praxis der Systemaufstellung. München: 1/2002, 31.

2. Jung, C. G., Collected Works of C. G. Jung. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970–79.

3. Hellinger, B., Ordnungen der Liebe. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag, 2001.

4. Sheldrake, R., Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science. New York : Riverhead Books, 1995.

5. Beaumont, H., in Rupert Sheldrake, Praxis der Systemaufstellung, pp. 23, 2/2000.

6. See http://www.the-systemic-view.com/rupert-sheldrake-about-family-constellations.

7. Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., Krasner, B., Between Give and Take: A Clinical Guide to Contextual Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel Inc., 1986.

8. Hellinger, B., in: Döring-Meijer, H. (Hrsg), Leiden ist leichter als lösen, Ein Praxis-kurs mit Bert Hellinger, Familieaufstellungen mit Suchtkranken, Junfermann Verlag: Paderborn, 2000, 215.

9. Franke, U., In My Mind’s Eye: Family Constellations in Individual Setting and Consultation. Heidelberg: Carl-AuerSysteme Verlag, 2003.

10. Ulsamer, B., Vliegen met sterke vleugels. Haarlem: Altamira-Becht, 2003.

8 What Can I Do Myself?

1. Brown, B., The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Hazelden, 2010, Kindle Edition, loc. 232.

2. Chopich, J. E., und Paul, M., Healing Your Aloneness. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

Bradshaw, J., Creating Love. The Next Great Stage of Growth. New York: Bantam Publishing Group, 1994.

Appendix: Rebirthing 1. For information about Rebirthing-breathwork, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing-breathwork 2. Orr L., Ray S., Rebirthing. Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1983.

Recommended Literature Family Constellations Revealed, Indra Torsten Preiss, The Systemic View Series, Antwerp, Belgium, 2012.

Acknowledging What Is: Conversations with Bert Hellinger, Bert Hellinger, Gabriele Ten Hoevel, Colleen Beaumont, Zeig, Tucker & Co, US, 1999.

Peace Begins in the Soul: Family Constellations in the Service of Reconciliation, Bert Hellinger and Colleen Beaumont, Carl-Auer-Systeme-Verlag, 2003.

Supporting Love: How Love Works in Couple Relationships, Bert Hellinger, Neuhauser Johannes, and Colleen Beaumont, Zeig, Tucker & Co, 2001.

Trauma, Bonding and Family Constellations: Healing Injuries of the Soul, Franz Ruppert and Vivian Broughton, Green Balloon Publishing, 2008.

Splits in the Soul: Integrating Traumatic Experiences, Franz Ruppert and Vivian Broughton, Green Balloon Publishing, 2011.

Symbiosis and Autonomy: Symbiotic Trauma and Love Beyond Entanglements, Franz Ruppert and Vivian Broughton, Green Balloon Publishing, 2012.

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past: Healing Through Family Constellations, Ceremony, and Ritual, Francesca Mason Boring, North Atlantic Books, US, 2012.

Even if It Costs Me My Life: Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness, Stephan Hausner, Gestalt Press, 2011.

The Ancestor Syndrome: Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree, A. A. Schürzenberger, Routledge, London, 1998.

The Science Delusion, R. Sheldrake, R. Coronet, London, 2013.

The Sense of Being Stared At, R. Sheldrake, Arrow Books, UK, 2003.

A General Theory of Love, T. Lewis, MD, F. Amini, MD, R. Lannon, MD, Vintage Books, New York, 2000.

Mummy’s Boys, Daddy’s Girls, A. Zanardi Cappon, Kindle edition, 2012, available at Amazon.com and other online stores.

Hold Me Tight, S. Johnson, S., Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

Feeding Your Demons, Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict, T. Allione, Hay House, London.

Recommended Websites Indraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website and blog: www.the-systemic-view.com International Systemic Constellations Association ISCA: www.isca-network.org/ The Knowing Field: www.theknowingfield.com Bert Hellinger Institute USA, http://mn8.net/hellingerUSA/color3.html Deutsche Gesellschaft fĂźr Systemaufstellungen DGfS: www.familienaufstellung.org Information about rebirthing -breathwork: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing-breathwork Information about energy work by Michael Barnett: www.michaelbarnett.net/MB2012/index.html