Family Constellations and Systemic Therapy

....from the ‘I’ to the ‘We’, this family that lives within us....

Family Constellations in short

We interact with one another within family, professional and social networks ruled by invisible processes and laws. The causes for our difficulties (physical and psychological pain, behavioural problems and painful events, limiting beliefs…) are often embedded within our family tree structure. The staging of our systemic structures sheds a magical light on these hidden dynamics and their secrets, liberating our energy and our true potential for realization.

Used for individual, couples and family therapy, as well as for organizations and professional structures, systemic approaches are effective for:

  • self-assertion (within a family or professional system …)
  • self-knowledge
  • resolution of emotional conflicts
  • difficulties in couples
  • life changes
  • orientation
  • grief
  • repetitions of negative events (bankruptcies, separations, health issues…)
  • generational transmissions of diseases, difficulties
  • family secrets
  • life values
  • relational difficulties (parent-children, work…)
  • welcoming of the newborn child and its place within the family
  • abandonment and neglect
  • adoption
  • incest
  • aggressions
  • uprooting
  • integration to work environment
  • life’s stumbling blocks
  • communication problems
  • anxiety

How does it work?

Standard Group Session  

  1. Before the session starts, participants fill in a detailed questionnaire on their genealogy and hand it to the therapist.
  2. Introduction to Family Constellations and presentation of the course agenda;
  3. A small Constellation is staged in small groups so that everyone can discover the practice and become familiar with it.
  4. During the session, participants will stage their own Family Constellation, having themselves chosen who among the group will act as the members of their family (all family members need not being represented).
  5. Led by the facilitator, the unfolding of a Constellation (approx. 40 minutes to one hour) will magically highlight the family tree dynamics that interfere with a harmonious way of life.
  6. The Family Constellation facilitator will offer solution keys that will be put into practice and immediately integrated in consciousness, thus releasing the energy blocked within the family system that holds back individual growth. 

Intervention in specific systems (upon request):

  • Example  from the business world :
  1. Developing a professional Constellation and its hierarchy;
  2. Shedding light on its systemic structure, characteristics and limitations (communication, relationships, profitability and effectiveness problems…);
  3. Elaborating solutions, establishing resolutions and immediate integration.

Standard Individual Session  

  1. Discussing and selecting a topic;
  2. Exploring the selected topic using suitable therapeutic techniques;
  3. Staging the system through visualization, sketches or games (using Playmobiles, small figurines or others... for children);
  4. Resolving, under the guidance of the therapist, the highlighted dynamics and releasing their emotional charge;
  5. Reorganizing and harmonizing the system. 
  • “Be the change you want to see in the world.” (Gandhi).

To find in ourselves this life balance, which we all long for, calls for an audacious and authentic inner search for our deepest nature.

Many different yet complementary therapeutic tools are available to support us on this exacting journey towards individuation, a journey strewn with questioning, enigmas and discoveries….

Life’s enigmas, which escape analytical and conventional approaches, require us to distance ourselves and to question whether these events really happen by chance. We will then see that the ‘I’ is subjected to the ‘Us’, and what is at stake within this ‘Us’…. We belong to a family and a family tree of several generations as well as a Family Constellation. We live in the reality of a trans-generational family systemic that obeys the gold rule of loyalty. This loyalty can be described as the law of the unconscious collective of our families, an invisible bond that generates legacies that can be either welcomed gifts or undesirable burdens. Birthday syndromes or repetition of happy or unhappy trans-generational events, hardships, disabilities, illnesses, accidents, dramas and recurring hardships, difficult relationships, life diagrams and destructive behaviors: so many scenarios written by the non-verbal, the unsaid, the family secrets, the unfinished business and the accumulated burdens. Links in the chain of a unified system that had its own laws, we had “to play” certain roles and to live certain situations in order to “restore a balance”.

Thus at our birth, we arrived “from where we were at that moment”, but also in the middle of our parents’ programming and the invisible heritage of their respective families. Whether or not we were responsible for what was transmitted to us, the loyalty rule acts as though we were…

The goal of the Family Constellations technique is to turn the light on the intricacies of individual and family diagrams in order to release their burden. “Blocked” dynamics often cover up “repressed” dynamics.

“A problem without a solution is a badly stated problem” (Albert Einstein).

Our consciousness is very often unaware of the reasons our soul. The strength and magic of Systemic family therapy is to state problems in a daring new way by staging family diagrams. By allowing ourselves to identify the forces of “destiny” and the invisible bonds of loyalty, guilt and responsibility at work in our lives, we can deprogram them and liberate the energy of the unconditional healing force of Love, so it can fully radiate within us, nourished by awakening, acceptance, letting go, freedom, compassion and forgiveness…

Family Constellation therapy, mostly used within the framework of family genealogy, can also be employed in the analysis of any other system we belong to: professional, social, collective… Thus, systemic therapy helps us discover the diagrams subjacent to all the structures of our lives, to understand the role they play in our journey and to transcend them.

Let us be daring in this journey of self-discovery through theses systemic bonds so that we can rediscover our true identity, our full energy potential and the freedom to live the life that our deepest Self has planned for us. We will also understand why we chose our family and other social systems or why we were chosen by them, as well as how we wrote the scenarios of our lives, relationships and hardships …

So that by connecting with the intention of our soul, a force much greater than ourselves, we will become ourselves this transformation that will radiate within and around us…

Hélène