Family Constellations
Is your past impacting on your present?
For most of us there is ‘unspoken’ stuff, secrets, shame, ‘baggage’ that is preventing us from fully stepping into our authentic selves.
Some of you know that I believe Family Constellations transformed my life, I am forever grateful to Julie Toms Arbel who facilitated a constellation for me that changed everything - in 30 minutes! I'd had an extremely difficult relationship with my mother and was extremely anxious and insecure. Of course once I slotted the missing piece into the holistic jigsaw (ditched the booze) I could see that there was more work to be done.
I wrote a piece for Spirit and Destiny magazine just after my first ever constellations experience…here’s an extract from it.
‘I have a new best friend, it sounds flippant but I am shining with enthusiasm and cannot stop singing the praises of what I’ve recently found. I tell everyone I meet (well if I think they’re able to comprehend it, given that its fairly out there !) and I’m encouraging everyone I know who has any issues in their life (who hasnt ?) to consider what I believe is the most profound life changing experience.
Did you ever see the BBC Horizon documentary Ghost in our Genes? if so you’ll know how our DNA affects us, but now, a new paridigm shift is showing that Epigenetics adds a whole new layer to genes beyond the DNA. It proposes a control system of 'switches' that turn genes on or off and suggests that things that people experience, like nutrition and stress, can control these switches and cause ‘inheritable effects’ in humans.
So what happened to me ? Well I attended a workshop called Family Constellations with around 25 men and women in a church hall in Herts, I had no idea what to expect but we were a mixed bunch, it was certainly no hippy airy fairy cosmic love-in but by lunchtime we’d all been on an emotional rollercoaster of a journey. I was originally told about Family Constellations by a friend who’d said all her years of angst about her relationship with her father had gone. She felt completely freed up.
Rather than trying to heal the past, a family constellations session is about healing the impact of the past on the present, in order to free you up to live the life you want to live now and specifically to help you to engage fully in loving relationships (so many of us 'sabotage' ourselves !)
I've recently become even more fascinated learning about 'inherited family trauma' (Check out the excellent book It didn't start with you by Mark Wolynn (a recent guest on the Alcohol Free Life podcast ) and the impact of adverse childhood experiences. I love the work of Gabor Mate, and Vincent Felitti (The ACE study) and I find it very powerful to realise that even a fairly low score on the 'adverse child experiences' questionnaire has negative impact on health and wellbeing in adulthood. In the original ACE study, those who scored 4 or more were 7 times more likely to be alcoholic, ten times more likely to have injected drugs and more likely to experience depression, and relationship breakups. You can take the ACE questionnaire here
I offer 1-1 coaching which is always about SO much more than not drinking! Recently I trained as a Family Constellations practitioner to add to my 'toolbox' of EFT, NLP and Matrix Re-imprinting and I I now work with leading trauma expert Rafe Nauen . I am fascinated by the connection of where trauma meets addiction, but we will address any topics that come up on the day. We may end up looking at someone's relationship with a sibling, a parent, or even looking at whether they should change career!
Family constellations really is difficult to explain, it was devised by German Psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, who realised that events that are traumatic such as abuse, abortion, early / violent death, miscarriage, can ripple down through generations and manifest in a range of psychological and physical illness. We now know much more about this of course with the phenomenon of Epigenetics
Rather than attempt to fully understand it, its probably better just to come with an open mind, absolutely no experience is necessary and its not 'acting' or psychodrama, but it can be profound. I’ts been described as 'Homeopathy for the soul'
I am joined by Rafe Nauen a leading expert in adverse childhood experiences, trauma work and family constellations and there will be time for Q and A, and then we will do some constellations. We won't be pre-booking the 'issues' so everyone will be invited to be a participant, a 'representative', and some will experience their own 'constellation'. Many people find it benefits them hugely just to witness constellations, they can be very powerful
Rafe says: 'Working with 'ancestral healing enables us to notice what’s going in the people’s systems – their family, their environment, their history. We inherit things from our past and we pick up things along the journey of life, and some of it is not helpful. Family Secrets, Early Deaths, traumas experienced all contribute to our current state.
Adverse Childhood Experience adds to the catalogue of “stuff” we carry with us. If we don’t manage to deal with it, it contributes to ill health mentally, physically and emotionally as we get older.
At a constellation workshop we safely explore these aspects using representatives chosen from the attendees. The issue holder (and the others present) get to see where the “stuff” belongs. And knowing that enables a final leaving it where it belongs.
Rather than trying to heal the past, a family constellations session is about healing the impact of the past on the present, in order to free you up to live the life you want to live now and specifically to help you to engage fully in loving relationships (so many of us 'sabotage' ourselves !)
Family constellations are about what Bert Hellinger referred to as The orders of love, about finding our ‘rightful place’ within our family system. They can reveal the way we are entangled with the fates and relationships of others who came before us. Hidden dynamics can be brought to light, and this can enable participants to move towards freeing themselves from forces that hinder their happiness. Julie Toms, the amazing practitioner I worked with all those years ago, believes that by initiating the healing of our families, we can heal the wider community and ultimately the world
As a representative you are there to be of service for the group but it’s amazing how much you get from it personally, it’s as though you get ‘filled up’ its literally food for the soul, I usually come away feeling that the world is a better place, I’m more open hearted, more able to see the good in others, to appreciate my family of origin, despite entangled relationships. I’m also much more aware of my responsibilities as a parent. One thing that used to trouble me was seeing the amount of ‘baggage’ all of us have, just how much I am messing up my own kids!, but as the saying goes, ‘The more work you do on yourself, the less they have to do’
Try a Family Constellations workshop for yourself, trust me its mind blowing.
You can head to find out more about Janey and her event in The Holistic Directory
