Family Constellation Work
Let’s talk about Family Constellation Work.
Overview
Family constellation therapy is a therapeutic approach developed by German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger (1925-2019) in the 1980s that addresses intergenerational trauma and hidden family dynamics. The method emerged from Hellinger’s unique background as a former Catholic priest who spent 16 years as a missionary among the Zulu people in South Africa, combined with his extensive training in psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, and family systems work.
Core Concepts and Principles
The therapy operates on Hellinger’s “Orders of Love” - fundamental laws governing family systems including the right of every family member to belong, respect for hierarchy based on who came first, and the need for balance between giving and taking. Central to the approach is the concept of “systemic entanglements,” where unresolved trauma, exclusions, or “forgotten” family members from previous generations unconsciously influence current family members’ behavior, relationships, and wellbeing.
Hellinger identified that families operate under a collective “family consciousness” or “knowing field” that contains the memories and patterns of the entire system across generations. When family members are excluded through death, abandonment, or trauma, later generations may unconsciously take on their fate, emotions, or symptoms through hidden loyalties to these excluded members.
How it Works
Group workshops are the primary format, where a client (seeker) selects group members to represent family members and positions them spatially based on intuitive feeling. These representatives, without knowing the family history, tune into sensations and emotions that emerge through what Hellinger called the “knowing field.” The facilitator observes emerging dynamics and guides the process toward resolution through spatial movements and “healing sentences” that acknowledge excluded members and restore proper family order.
Individual sessions use similar principles through imagination, symbolic objects, or the therapist as representative. The approach typically requires minimal background information and often consists of single sessions lasting 2-4 hours, creating a “healing image” that continues working unconsciously.
The therapy aims to interrupt the transmission of guilt, pain, and suffering across generations by revealing hidden family dynamics, honoring what was while turning toward life, and helping individuals find their proper place within the family system while breaking free from unconscious loyalties that no longer serve them.
Constellation Work is a method that helps us see the invisible dynamics operating in our family system, giving us an awareness and subsequent freedom from patterns that due to our “family system patterns” has caused dysregulation. It is based on the premise that symptoms or negative patterns in the present often have their roots in unprocessed trauma or loss of previous generations. Shifting perspective through this method reduces shame, increases clients’ curiosity about their place and purpose in life, brings peace and understanding to client’s suffering and that of others in their family, aligns the client with the family soul, and allows love to live in the family lineage.
