SYSTEMIC FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS
THE VALUE OF TIME
Time is the principle organising force positioning events in the past, present or future. Systemic maps are often used to resolve issues from the past, diagnose and acknowledge the present or predict the future. In particular, working with the entanglements of the past restores balance that often releases a creative energy within the family.
In any family, there is a history that influences, constrains and also makes possible what follows; recognising this allows for a deep connection to life. Grandparents and parents ‘give’ and those that follow or join later ‘receive’.
WHERE DO WE BELONG
Bonding and the need to belong are strongest with children but continue throughout life and are forces constraining the success and failure of all group members. The question is often about to which group people belong. In families parents have loyalties to each other, to their children as well as to their families of origin and of course to their friends and places of employment. In this systemic approach, the group is of greater significance than the individual, whose purposes are always developed in the shadow of their membership. All who participate in a system, whether family or larger group, seem to have a deep unconscious feel for the completeness of that system. They react to the exclusion and dismissal of any part; often by representing or living out the fate of those excluded, or creating symptoms that damage the potential of the individual. Then the energy for life and flow within the system contracts or becomes blocked.
OUR PLACE IN THE FAMILY
Each person needs to find their right place in the family system, a place they can trust, which gives them safety and inner quiet so that they can work at their best. When someone operates from the right place, this is marked by feelings of innocence, often experienced as onscientiousness.Â
Every system develops ‘ways that things are done’ – cultures or patterned activities that are the price of belonging – and families are no exception. Agreement about roles and functions is very important to the interconnected functioning of a family. It is about social order, hierarchy and function.
