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Long-term conflicts between relatives, family problems… Sometimes we pay the debts of our ancestors without knowing it. Our correspondent tried to find answers to her questions using the method of family constellations.
My husband and I have been together for 26 years. Our son is now 19, our daughter is 25, and our granddaughter is six. And all these years I have been worried about the lack of understanding with my children. Even when they were very young, they acted according to their ideas of what was right and what was wrong. Their system of reference points did not coincide with mine. And now the children have grown up, and it has become even harder. The son stated that he never wanted to study economics, left the university and mastered the guitar for two years. Then he gave up this job. Now he is just lying on the couch – looking for his way in life. And the daughter builds a career, lives with us, gave birth to a child and “hung” it on my husband and I. She is absolutely sure that we should be grateful to her for such trust … It seems to me that for the last 25 years I have not been living the life I wanted. My family manipulate me, and I, in turn, do not bring them joy, only fatigue and irritation. All of us – relatives and friends – are constantly “out of phase”. With the hope of seeing why this is happening, restoring mutual understanding between different generations of our family and finding a way out of my personal crisis, I met with psychotherapist Albina Loktionova.
family systems
“Our family history influences us more than we think,” says Albina Loktionova. – Each of us is part of the family system (relations with parents, siblings, uncles and aunts, grandparents, husbands and wives), and when it is violated (for example, relatives “forget” about one of the family members or stop communicate with him), then the balance in the relationship is also disturbed. And this failure is involuntarily repeated by subsequent generations. The therapist suggests that I use the family constellation method to identify those “forgotten” episodes of family history that prevent my family members from living life to the fullest. After listening to me, Albina Loktionova summarizes: “The rules of love have been violated in your family. Order means hierarchy, subordination. In this hierarchy, for example, parents are always ranked higher than children, because it was they who created the family. There is no parental leadership in your family, the roles are mixed up. Let’s make an arrangement to understand this “tangle” and understand how to return to the natural hierarchy of relationships.
THE ARRANGEMENT SHOWS THE WAREHOUSE OF RELATIONS IN THE FAMILY, THE INVISIBLE MAKES VISIBLE AND ALLOWS TO FIND A SOLUTION.
Usually constellation psychotherapy is a group work. One of the participants talks about his situation, about what worries him the most (later it will be the turn of the other group members to do their constellations). Then he chooses from those present who, as part of therapy, will become a substitute for real people from his life. Calls their names and “roles” (my son, mother, school friend …). And he arranges them in the room where the psychotherapeutic session is taking place. The leader of the group carefully observes how close the participants in the arrangement will be to each other, where their gaze is directed – whether they are looking in one direction or in some other way. “The arrangement surprisingly reflects and shows the order that exists in families, and the interweaving that is present in it,” explains Albina Loktionova. “In other words, it makes the invisible visible and allows you to quickly find the right image-solution.” Since my desire to go through family constellations was spontaneous and impetuous, and the group began work only after the most vacation month – August, we worked together with a psychotherapist. And the deputies of my family members were sheets of paper laid out on the floor with figures-symbols inscribed on them – who is who. This work has become an invaluable experience – painful and healing at the same time, when I had to be in the shoes of my household and let through their feelings and understand hidden motives.
Read more:
- “I’m ashamed of my relatives”
family therapy
“Perhaps the feeling of guilt for a mistake that people no longer remember has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries,” Sigmund Freud* wrote about this for the first time in 1913. Three years later, Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, suggested that there is a collective unconscious, including a family one **. Subsequently, many psychologists and psychoanalysts were interested in the unconscious development of events within the family. Thus, under the influence of psychotherapist Murray Bowen, a systemic family therapy arises that helps to identify and change the role of each family member. Family therapist Virginia Satir has developed a method of family reconstruction that restores connections and details of interaction in several generations of a family. Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger founded the method of intergenerational psychogenealogy. She was able to trace the connection between the events of the past and today’s difficulties in a person’s life. Exploring the “genosociogram”, this kind of family tree, the psychotherapist unravels the tangles of family ties, helping the patient to free himself from the family “inheritance” and become himself. A similar approach is family constellation therapy with psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. He suggested acting out family stories in group therapy sessions in order to discover the source of the problem and interrupt negative repetitive scenarios.
* Z. Freud’s Totem and Discovery (AST, 2009).
** See K.-G. Jung, Essays on the Psychology of the Unconscious (Cogito Center, 2010).
I am making arrangements
I draw geometric shapes representing me, my husband, daughter and son. Square, rectangle, circle, oval, and on each tick I indicate the direction of view. I spread the papers on the floor. “Look,” Albina Loktionova points to the arrangement that I got, “you, your husband and daughter are too close. It’s crowded for you, as if you are pushing, interfering with each other. And the son is separate from you and turned his back to you. It seems that he is afraid to approach his family, as if he was too hot in your close circle, or he simply does not have a place in it. Or maybe the system itself, your family, excluded him? I am completely at a loss – what is the therapist talking about? And she continues: “Perhaps there was someone in your family history who is now undeservedly forgotten, and your son unconsciously identifies with this person?” Still not understanding what the therapist means, I begin to remember and talk about three episodes that our family tries to forget. My great-grandfather (my father’s grandfather), who was dispossessed during the years of collectivization and ended his days in Siberian exile. Even his daughter (my grandmother) never talked about him, who, even 50 years later, believed that this family page could be disastrous for the careers of her children and grandchildren. The second episode is connected with my mother’s parents. They really wanted, but did not dare to have a second child at a difficult time – the end of the thirties and the beginning of the war. Finally, I know that my mother fell ill and had to have an abortion a year or two after I was born. It turned out that my family from generation to generation carries information about an unborn second child and an unfairly forgotten ancestor. “In my mind, these events never connected with each other,” I confess to a psychotherapist. “Not only you, but also your son unconsciously perceived the dynamics of systemic interweaving and in a sense are now unconsciously compensating for the feeling of guilt towards the unborn second children in the family of your relatives or the “forgotten” great-great-grandfather. The distance at which your son is in relation to other family members – we clearly saw it during the family constellation – only confirms the fact: in your family there is no place for a second child, there is no model of communication worked out by generations, relations with him. “On the other hand, he tenderly and lovingly takes care of his niece, who has been growing up without a father since birth,” I fervently defend my son’s ability to feel kindred. “So it should be,” Albina Loktionova replies, “after all, his niece is, in a sense, an unexpected child. And he unconsciously “rehabilitates” her birth, gives her a chance to live.”
About it
Ancestral Syndrome by Anne Anselin Schutzenberger
In her most famous book, the French psychotherapist gives an insight into her discoveries of phenomena such as “anniversary syndrome” and “trauma transmission”. Not knowing about them, we often become hostages of the history of our ancestors, their secrets, problems and bad traditions (Psychotherapy, 2009).
“Happiness that remains. Where family constellations lead us.” Bert Hellinger
The German psychotherapist is sure: our movement in life is the movement of love of parents for each other, parents and children, brothers and sisters. The interrupted movement of love becomes a source of problems, which the method of family constellations helps to overcome. He writes about it in his new book (Institute for Consulting and System Solutions, 2010).
I’m big and you’re small
And what about my daughter? She is actively pursuing a career and does not want to get married, start her own family. And he includes his daughter in his plans only when he goes to visit and wants to show off a smart, beautiful and cheerful child. “Grandmother and grandfather, that is, me and my husband, are really raising a granddaughter. And the daughter only controls us, ”I set a new topic for the development of the constellation.
The therapist suggests that I stand on a chair, leaving a piece of paper with the symbol of my daughter on the floor, and imagine my mother – somewhere above me, high up, at ceiling level. This exercise helps to feel your own place in the family system, where every older generation is located above the next. “Imagine that I am your daughter,” continues Albina Loktionova. – Get down from the chair, come up to me and say firmly: “Lena, I am big, and you are small. You are my daughter and I am your mother. You cannot command me, and I must not obey…”
I obediently repeat these words, but I clearly understand that such a conversation is hardly possible with my real daughter. “Your daughter is used to dominating,” explains Albina Loktionova, “and in order to restore the correct family hierarchy, without which harmonious relations in the family are impossible, it is necessary to return both the vertical and the horizontal: establish contact with your daughter. Sit next to each other, tell about your feelings, or maybe just keep quiet … From such silent empathy, the once lost intimacy with relatives is often restored. The border that you have to draw between yourself and your daughter should not become the “Great Wall of China.” On the contrary, the exact distance will help to truly feel closeness and belonging to each other.
But here my anxieties about my son and daughter converge at one point – the second child! After all, the daughter, a beautiful young woman, will probably get married and want to give birth to a second child. And it will carry negative information about unborn second children in several generations of our family. “Suddenly he, too, will become a stranger among his relatives?” – I share my fears with Albina Loktionova. “This role in your family is already “fulfilled” by your son,” she explains. “But now that you understand the situation, you can change it. The problem is finally solved when relatives occupy the right place in the family hierarchy and are ready to bear responsibility for their actions. From now on, you can not be afraid of the return of the past.
EVEN FROM SILENT EMpathy TO EACH OTHER, THE NEVER LOST CONNECTION BETWEEN RELATIVE PEOPLE CAN BE RESTORED.
Let go of the past
Literally in two hours of family constellations, I discovered hidden motives that determined relationships among my relatives for many years. “The founder of the family constellation method, Bert Hellinger, says that accepting the past makes us free,” Albina Loktionova concludes the meeting. “But true acceptance also means accepting all the consequences of years of silence and hidden family secrets. And it’s really not easy to come to terms with the fact that in the past of our family there were losses and losses, mistakes and disappointments. It is difficult to accept your past – for this you need to reconsider many of your usual ideas and ideals. “We will have to clearly clarify the consequences – who won what and what price each of the members of the system paid for this past, and then determine the ratio of losses and gains,” the psychotherapist sums up. – If you can’t admit it, then you need to at least call the past – the past. And it will stop clinging, and it will be possible to let it go. Then we can move on.”