Healthy Families - Peace on Earth

If there is beauty in the person

  There is harmony in the home

  If there is harmony in the home

  There is order in the nation

  If there is order in the nation

  There is peace on earth.

What is involved  in family health? Genetics, healthy lifestyle, open respectful communication,  parents who are strong and confident in their roles and provide clear  boundaries. All of these might be good goals for most of us, so where do things  go wrong?

Many parents are  very aware of healthy lifestyle options and setting a good role model of  communication and behaviour, but may experience difficulty in feeling confident  in their roles and unsure about what healthy boundaries are and how to set them  up. You may be well educated and well informed and have done personal  development for yourself, in order to make sure you are as good a person you  can be, but still find unhealthy patterns from your own or your partners’  family of origin, coming into your own young family, in spite of your best  efforts to avoid this. Or it could be that you have a child who appears to be  isolated, timid, anxious, or aggressive, even though you are providing the very  best environment and role modeling that you can. The truth is that we are each  born into our family energy and that we are highly sensitive to it and carry it  with us, whether we are aware of it or not. Our children are likewise born into  their own family energy and pick up instinctively or unconsciously on their  parents’ feelings, underlying depression, sadness, anger or any other emotion,  from a very early age. In this way, children carry energy for others, which has  the effect of weighing them down and not allowing them to be totally free.

According to Bert  Hellinger the originator of Family Constellations, children have an incredibly  strong love for their parents and family members. This love is so strong that  the child will if it can, sacrifice itself by trying to share or carry Mum’s  sadness, Dad’s depression or any other emotion. This then becomes “baggage” for  the child and can restrict their growth as free innocent children. In this way  many of us as adults now will have “carried” our parents symbolically and felt the  need to “hold things together” for the family in some way.

If this happened  to you, you will probably be an over responsible or serious person who missed  out on your childhood to some extent. You are likely to continue to look after  and carry others in your life, including your partner. Alternatively, you may  find it impossible to commit to a family of your own, perhaps because you are  still entangled in the early dynamics of your original family group. Others may  see this as irresponsibility or immaturity. The truth is you are probably  carrying so much for others from your family of origin, that you are not free  to commit to a relationship or family of your own.

Case study. (Names have been changed)

Tom came to a  Family Constellations workshop with some concern for his daughter Sarah who was  ten years old and was showing signs of anxiety and hyperactivity. Tom was in a  very loving relationship with his wife and three children of which Sarah was  the oldest. The other two children appeared to be doing well.  Tom was well educated and had done quite a  lot of personal development himself so far. In asking for a few facts about his  family of origin, he said that he had very little contact with his parents and  that he does not have a good relationship with them.

He was asked to  select representatives from the group for himself, his mother, father and  daughter and place them in the room in relationship to each other from his own “feeling”  perspective, not using his rational mind as much as possible. He placed the  representative of himself and his daughter quite close and a long way from the  representatives of his parents. The representatives soon started to get some  body sensations and feelings as the family field developed in the room in the  next few minutes. The representative of the father turned away from the parents  and the representative for the daughter started to shake. The representative  for Tom felt a tightening of his jaw and chest. When he was asked to turn to  look at his parents, his anxiety increased and the shaking of the child  decreased a little. The representative of his parents looked distant and cool. The  facilitator gave Tom and his parents a few healing sentences to say to each  other that released the tense emotional state of Toms representative quite  considerably. The representative for his mother had softened and Toms representative  and was able to move closer to her and hold her hands while looking into her  face. The representative of his father continued to look aloof.

On asking for  further information of his fathers’ life we found that he had lost both of his  parents in the war when he was nine years old. Two representatives were  selected for them and placed behind the father. The representative for the  father turned, but found it hard to look at them and felt a strong upsurge of  anger. Having expressed this several times he now felt sad. After a brief  interchange of further healing sentences he eventually looked at them both and  fell into their arms embracing them for a few minutes.

When he turned  round to see his son Tom, now with the representatives for his parents behind  him, he looked much softer and was able to say to Tom, “I see you now.  I‘m sorry I have not been here for you.”  The representative for Tom is relieved and  moves forward to embrace his father. A few moments later Tom is standing with  his mother and father and turns to look at the representative for his daughter.  She is smiling and looking calm and moves towards her father and grandparents. At  this point Tom is asked to take his place in the constellation instead of his  representative. He holds the representative of his daughter’s hand and looks at  the representatives of his parents for a while and is visibly moved. The  constellation ends here.

Tom contacted me  the next day after the workshop to say that his daughter appeared to be much  calmer and much more cooperative. Two weeks later he let me know that he had  resumed contact with his parents and his daughter is continuing to do well.

This case study is  very typical of Family Constellations bringing out the dynamics of a family and  also providing a suitable solution. It was possible to see in this case that  each person in this group was caught up in family tensions and that once these  were released and a few simple interventions were put into place that love  could start to flow more easily and each member of the group felt more  comfortable.

The daughter here  appeared to be a very sensitive indicator of the stress levels experienced in  the family energy. The difficulty between the grandfather and the loss of his  parents had caused a rift between him and his son and the grand-daughter was  feeling the turbulent energy of her father’s situation.