Understanding Family Constellations: The Right to Belong

One of the core principles of Family Constellations is that everyone has a right to belong in their family system, no matter what they've done or haven't done. This means shifting from the narrow view we formed in childhood to seeing the bigger picture of the whole family system. This doesn't excuse bad behavior, but it recognizes a basic truth: we can't change what happened in the past, and we can only change ourselves.

If you experienced behavior from your parents that you consider wrong or hurtful, the path forward involves doing your own emotional healing work. As long as you blame and judge those who came before you, you'll continue to struggle in life. A key principle here is that "each person does the best they can with the emotional resources they received from their parents and family system."

You have to find your way to being grateful for life itself, then work on healing the rest within the context of your whole family system. Expecting something different from your parents creates an energy block in your life. Being an adult who still expects something from your parents creates ongoing difficulties.

Expanding Your Perspective

If you find yourself stuck in blame and judgment, you'll struggle until you can step out of that narrow childhood view and look at the bigger family picture. What emotional patterns, trauma, and backgrounds were passed from your grandparents to your parents? Sometimes you need to go back another generation or two to find the source of the emotional wounds in your family system.

Same-Gender Partnerships

Family Constellations work isn't limited to heterosexual relationships. In same-gender partnerships, the individuals will naturally sense their place next to each other energetically. This has nothing to do with social progress—it simply shows what's revealed energetically when a constellation is set up and we let the field do its work.

How Family Dynamics Show Up in Constellations

During constellation sessions, the facilitator might ask family representatives to move to different positions. The field often feels most comfortable with the father placed first, then the mother, and so on. This is a family order that many people emotionally long for but don't feel within their own family system.

When a family is set up in a line, many people initially feel uncomfortable in their placement within the family system. Many are shocked to find themselves far to the right as a younger child. Too often, they've spent their whole life trying to carry the emotional burdens of their mother or father, or they've identified with another family member's unresolved trauma. They end up feeling bigger than the parent or grandparent.

The child begins to feel calm as they allow themselves to be the small one in the proper family order. They start to let themselves receive from those who came before them, instead of their old pattern of constantly giving without taking care of their own needs first.

What Clients Bring to Constellations

Clients usually arrive with a very unhealthy emotional and energetic setup regarding their mother, father, and themselves. This dynamic is often what keeps them stuck in life or unable to move forward in a healthy way. This is what they carried out of childhood at the cellular memory level.

Unless we do our emotional healing work, we leave childhood with a very narrow view of life. We remember the dozen or so worst things our parents did. We don't focus on all the good or functional things they did that helped us survive childhood. While there's no specific goal for Family Constellation work, gaining compassion for your parents' and grandparents' journeys is crucial.

You are 50% mother and 50% father. What you reject in them, you reject in yourself. When you reject parts of yourself, connecting with your deep authentic inner core becomes difficult.

Understanding Bert Hellinger's Background

Critics of Family Constellations often point their finger at Bert Hellinger, so let's look briefly at his background. I had the chance to train with Hellinger's students but never with him directly, so I'm not an expert on the man himself.

I don't expect him to be anything other than human, as that would require judging someone who came before me. He certainly made mistakes, as we all do. His thinking and approach changed significantly over the last couple decades of his life. He was absolutely influenced by others and life events. That's actually how he first began to understand the deeper dynamics of family systems—by learning from other people's family systems.

We've just established that Hellinger was human, and like all human beings, we grow when we learn from our mistakes. What others call failures or mistakes are actually valuable learning opportunities.

Hellinger's Life Journey

Hellinger grew up during Nazi Germany as a young adult. He faced the post-World War II massive national collective emotional shutdown in Germany, under the world's spotlight as a perpetrator nation with many victims.

Hellinger was a youth when the Hitler Youth were being formed, and he refused to join. He grew up in a family that resisted nationalism. When he came of age, he was drafted to fight in World War II. Hellinger fought for Germany under Hitler. When the war ended, he was a prisoner of war in Belgium.

After the war, he became a Roman Catholic priest and spent 16 years living among the Zulu in South Africa. He thought he was going to Africa to change people's lives and convert them. However, he soon learned through watching and participating in their culture that he had much to learn from the Zulu and their multi-generational family dynamics.

While the Hitler Youth were turning in their own parents out of loyalty to Hitler, the Zulu showed deep respect for their parents and ancestors. There was no separation between the living and the dead. Hellinger listened and learned.

After 16 years, he returned to Germany, left the priesthood, and began studying various approaches to therapy. About 17 years later, while working with other colleagues, he developed the Family Constellation approach to wellbeing. He never copyrighted Family Constellations. It's generally recognized that he founded this systemic approach to individual and family therapy. There's no set way to do constellations, and current practitioners run the whole range of diverse approaches.

How Facilitators Shape the Work

All other facilitators take the work and make it their own, drawing from their background, study, and life experience. Each facilitator is influenced by their own family system. All of my constellation trainers have held respect for the one who came before them—Bert Hellinger—as the creator of this approach. This doesn't mean agreeing with everything he did or said. Respect doesn't mean agreement. Respect means honoring the other person as a significant human being, regardless of their beliefs or actions.

Hellinger's Various Influences

As mentioned, each facilitator works from their own emotional background. A Roman Catholic priest comes from a patriarchal background and belief system. The military has historically been patriarchal. Hitler had his own sense of who was superior and inferior. I'm sure tribal groups in Africa have their own sense of family system order. These were key influences in Hellinger's life.

I don't know Hellinger's family history with his own parents, but the rest helps explain any problematic opinions and mindsets that may have surfaced over the years and upset others. He did soften his stance on many issues as the years went on. His approach later in life was often to step back entirely from influencing the constellation, other than having his energy present. Sometimes he wouldn't even ask the client for information. He would just set up a constellation to see what revealed itself. Perhaps this was his way of addressing any blind spots he might still have carried within himself about patriarchy.