Understanding family constellations

You have probably seen how construction work on a building starts. The first thing to do is to look for a suitable location and study the qualities of the land. If the area where you want to build is suitable, the next thing to do is to start the excavation work.

💡 This large hole will be where you will install the foundations that will support the entire building. If the foundations are well-built, the rest of the building structure will be a safe place for your neighbours.

To get closer to the movements of family constellations and to understand their foundations, I want to explain to you what their foundations are, that is, the base on which they stand. The foundations of family constellations are the good and the bad conscience, nominated by Bert Hellinger.

Good and bad conscience

We can define it as a cohesive force that binds individuals to the clan into which they are born. This force can also be understood as a primitive biological survival programme that comes from ancestral times. And what was its intention? Imagine life 120,000 years ago. Then, existence was a hostile and dangerous experience. Our earliest ancestors had the impulse to stick together because the chances of survival were much greater for both the clan as a whole and the individual.

💡 The more individuals the clan had, the better they could defend themselves, distribute the task of hunting, take care of the children, organise life… And if there were few individuals, life was even more stressful because among very few they had to take on many responsibilities.

If someone in the clan wanted to question any rule or doctrine, they would experience a feeling of guilt and shame for being different from the others. Here appears a feeling of bad conscience with which we feel bad about ourselves. The feeling of bad conscience will make you regret or want to change your mind and attitude to be like the rest of the clan again. Because in addition, if you were different from the rules or principles of coexistence governed by the clan, you could be kicked out of the group. And if you dared to be different, it was very likely that you would have to assimilate the consequences of being left alone and isolated from your group of belonging and, therefore, the security of your life was in danger and your chances of survival would be much lower than if you stayed within your clan.

☝🏻 The vast majority of the time, you let go of your creativity, forgot what you preferred and went back to the established norms and a feeling of good conscience entered you. A feeling that this way things are better for everyone… But at the price of forgetting your personal needs, at the price of giving up your life path.

It is precisely the feeling of bad conscience that is the indicator that we are living our life and leaving behind the unconscious loyalties and allegiances to our clan. It is the sign that I am allowing myself to be myself.

This programme can also be described as a loyalty to our family of origin. A loyalty of such strength and energy that it will determine my unconscious decisions about how I will live my life. We do not realise that it is guiding our decisions.

And here appears another force in contrast to the force of cohesion. The force of individuation. This impulse pushes us to live our life, it directs us out of our clan to explore our life path, to turn on our light and discover our genuineness. It is a creative, authentic movement. And it comes at a price that we have to experience: the guilt and shame of wanting to be ourselves, of allowing ourselves to be as we want to be and not as we have been told we have to be. It is the price of reaching our adult state, our maturity, and independence. Guilt, shame and bad conscience are the bridge we have to cross to reach our island where we can develop our full potential. Life and our family system expect this of us. It is the life mission of each of us to discover ourselves and to be able to be ourselves.

However, guilt is only experienced by “Children”, adults do not feel guilt for prioritising our life. But this is a separate issue.

An example can expand my explanation

I remember a girl, whom we will call Gloria from now on, who came to my individual consultation, explaining to me that she could not understand why she felt bad about falling in love with a boy. She told me that it was the most beautiful thing she was experiencing in her life and that the boy was a beautiful person who made her feel loved and that she loved him. They were 18 years old, and it was the first time they had started an intimate relationship in which they both felt committed in their feelings of love.

Opening the constellation showed how her manager would not allow herself to leave her parents behind. She told me that her mother was ill for a long time and that her father worked and took care of her. Gloria also devoted part of her time to her mother’s care.

Unexpectedly, life brought the experience and the moment for Gloria to fall in love, to open her heart to another person, to dedicate part of her time to her lover, to give her life energy to her partner. To love someone apart from her clan. And this is where the two forces I have described come into conflict. The force of cohesion to the clan to stay together to survive, and the force of individuation that pushes Gloria to live the life that is hers. She was experiencing a guilty conscience for opening up to her boy and spending time together away from her family.

Loyalty to her clan may make her not allow herself to live in love by unconsciously deciding to stay with her family. She will feel guilty and live in shame, opening her heart to this man and leaving her family behind. Even if it is only for a few hours while she goes to the cinema with her boy. If she decided to stay with her family instead of going to the cinema with her boyfriend, she will feel a good conscience and the guilt and shame will disappear.

These loyalties and fidelities based on the feelings of good and bad conscience that bind us to our family of origin are what family constellations help us to leave behind. We can open up to our lives free of guilt, free of shame, free of fear of being ourselves.

📎 Alba, S. [Sergio]. (2024, 17 November). Understanding family constellations. PsicoPop. https://www.psicopop.top/en/understanding-family-constellations/