Introduction to Family Constellations
Especially for People New to This Work!

by Leslie Nipps

Despite its name, Family Constellations are not about the stars in the sky; instead, they are about the alignments and arrangements in our larger family stories. All of us are the recipients of many generations of family experiences. The practice of Constellations explores how the more immediate situations in our lives fit into those broad patterns that precede our individual lives.

This short Introduction is especially for people considering signing up for a Constellation, or who’ve signed up to receive one already, and are new to this modality. It’s also for anyone who’s interested in learning more; however, the main purpose of this article is to avoid misunderstandings about what Constellations are, and to help people prepare for a Constellation if they’ve chosen to have one.

If you’ve come to this page for another reason or in another way, do check out the rest of my website for all my offerings, events and information!

Constellations can provide a powerful, and often astonishingly quick, insight into what’s driving some persistent life issues, and at the same time can also provide similarly quick relief when clients have been feeling stuck or blocked.  It is not a miracle cure! And of course the outcomes for individual clients – as for all healing modalities generally – vary widely. But for many people, it’s a frame to approach their issues that permanently changes how they look at and feel about their lives.

As a friend and psychotherapist colleague of mine observes: “As a client of a Constellation, you get to watch a deep, large story unfold in front of you. The story will be about your life, but probably from an unexpected and profound perspective. Observing your life through a Constellation is akin to an x-ray showing you something of crucial importance that simply isn’t visible in therapy or everyday life. Almost always, there is an aha! as your life makes deeper sense and new options emerge for you.”

A Few Words from Constellation Founders:

As usual, it’s all been said before by our elders, so I invite you to hear their voices to understand Constellations more deeply:

Bert Hellinger, Founder of Constellations Work:

“A family system is disrupted when [members are excluded]. This happens, for example, when members shut out of memory someone who suffered, or was sacrificed, or did some wrong—perhaps a sister who died in childhood or an uncle who became institutionalized…

The family Constellations of people with psychological or physical problems often reveal such acts of exclusion. Although those suffering such illnesses are unaware of the connections, they reenact in their own lives the fate of the excluded or forgotten person.”

Bertold Ulsamer, German Facilitator:

“Family Constellations demonstrate that we have a special, previously unconsidered bond, not unlike a biological connection, with all of the members of our family, living and dead. We usually suppose that only those relatives we knew, with whom we got along or had trouble, were important or had an influential effect on us. But, above and beyond those obvious situations, are invisible, imperceptible connections to other members of our families, whether or not we know or have even heard of them.

“What is suppressed [or lost, or forgotten about, or excluded, etc.] within a family does not disappear, but rather ‘floats’ around within the system, awaiting an opportunity to emerge…The newest family members, the children, feel this unexpressed energy, take it in and live it out, expressing it in their own lives. Children are thus ‘entangled’ by their ancestors, as they take on their ancestors’ behaviors, feelings and fates as their own.”

Therefore, what we do in Constellations…

So, we may not spend a lot of time on the family of origin story in a way that you might be used to! I may ask a lot more questions about your lineages and the larger traumas – wars, tragic deaths, immigration, etc. – that were a severe blow to the family. This is where the genius of Constellation work lies.

Another way to say it: Don’t be surprised if we are less focused on the interpersonal dynamics of your family, and more on core ancestral exclusions and traumas that are possibly driving the issues you bring to our work. Our intention is to treat the invisible causes rather than conscious symptoms (the various dynamics clients are often already aware of in the family), in order to bring a more lasting balance and peace you and your family system.

One Example:

Let’s say a client comes in complaining about feeling guilty all the time, and she’d like to change that. She already knows (and remembers) how her parents used to criticize her and blame her for all the family problems. She understandably reasons that this childhood imprinting has caused her to feel persistently guilty in a way she can’t seem to shake.

In Constellations, we honor this “origin story” of the client’s guilt. However, knowing this source, and even acknowledging that her parents were wrong about their blame, hasn’t actually improved the client’s experience of feeling guilty all the time.

So, we get curious – where in the family ancestry might there be a concrete event in which someone was unfairly blamed, or perhaps a genuinely guilty perpetrator was never punished, leaving a lot of guilt floating around the system because it’s never been honored, seen, or given a place? Might this be part of the source of the parents’ behavior, and if so, can honoring this historic event release the entire system from the compulsion to re-member this event in the painful persistent guilt of the client?

This is what I have seen over and over: when we can find the systemic exclusion, loss, heartbreak, guilt, etc., and honor it properly, the client experiences a relief they could not fully get from interpersonal family-of-origin psychological insight.

This is what we will explore together.

Helpful questions to ask before a Constellation

Therefore, you are invited, even before your Constellation, to start thinking in a potentially new way about getting help, and what we may be up to together. A few things:

♦  Find one issue with “weight” to bring to the Constellation. We all have lots of problems! However, a Constellation usually focuses on one thing that we’d like different in the here and now, which focuses the work and has a much greater potential to bring some real good-chunk-size change. Spend a little time turning to your deepest dignity and ask about your life NOW (not the past) and ask if there is something CONCRETE that you would like different.

♦  Be prepared to be interviewed about your family tree. We will probably talk some about the psychological story of your family of origin and childhood, but perhaps not as much as you are used to. Instead, we will focus more on the concrete events and traumas that have impacted you and your ancestry over the last few generations. However, don’t worry! Whatever you know about your ancestry will be just fine.

♦  Finally, remember that you are a descendant of a complex family with many histories. In most traditional and indigenous cultures, the beloved dead are an important part of our lives, and we suffer for lacking a relationship with them – even the ones we might not like! You may begin to notice that they wish to bless you in the harder task: of living full and well in this world, as it is.

I look forward to working with you, and I am honored to accompany you on this path!

Peace, Leslie