Family Constellations is a beautiful and powerful modality based on the work developed by the German psychotherapist, Bert Hellinger. Family Constellations did not suddenly appear in the therapeutic field; it has solid and respectable philosophical and psychological underpinnings. What Bert Hellinger has done is to meld together many different streams of therapeutic practice and experience and develop out of this a new way of working towards resolution of a life issue. But first a general description of Family Constellations work.

About family constellations
The resonance of the past continues to affect our lives in the present: we go through life often doing things that we do not want to do. We may feel trapped in endlessly repeating patterns that we seem to have no control over. We also tend to see our problems as belonging to us alone. Yet the fact is that we are born into a family system that already has powerful hidden forces and dynamics that will influence and impact our lives.

Family Constellations offer a way of working with an issue that allows the hidden bonds that exist within families and intimate groups to be revealed. These bonds of loyalty and love, or identification create what Hellinger calls entanglements. Individuals are caught in these entanglements and are bound in various ways to others in the family system; this in turn distorts the balance and flow of energy within the family. The family constellation can be used to explore these hidden forces by viewing a personal issue systemically and working phenomenologically.

The phenomenological stance is a way of working with ‘what is’; the information that emerges from the family field enabling the uncovering of what is hidden. We begin to see clearly how we are bound to the wider system and to individuals in the system. This in turn enables us to begin to ‘see’ the other, and to take a small step towards dissolving the destructive bonds and releasing the stuck energy. The process can offer new insights and perceptions that can open a way towards resolution.

What underlies a family system
We are bound consciously or unconsciously by deep bonds of loyalty, not only to our family of origin, but also to the wider family system. An interruption in the flow of energy in a family system may be the result of trans-generational layers of trauma and conflict, early deaths or difficult, unacknowledged fates. Individuals may feel caught in powerful, hidden forces, or inherited patterns of behaviour. These entanglements then have consequences for family members in the present generation, often manifested in the lives of individuals in the present family through symptoms such as depression, body pain, addictions, illness or simply the inability to live life fully.

What happens in a Family Constellations workshop
The Family Constellations workshop process is primarily experiential. Once a client and the facilitator decide together who in the family will be worked with, the client requests participants in the workshop to represent or ‘stand in’ for the chosen family members.The client will then place each representative in the central space. The spatial relationship that is revealed by this simple placing is that of the client’s inner image of their family. This spatial representation of the family also gives the facilitator immediate information about the family group. The facilitator is then guided by feedback from each of the representatives. Further information and an explanation of the terms used will be found elsewhere on this site.