Michael Quinn Family Constellations

Stephan Hausner on Interrupted Reaching Out Movements
From: Even if it Costs Me My Life

“We speak of an early interruption of a reaching out movement when a child lose trust in a parent due to an early separation.  The child refuses any closeness to the parent for fear that the experience might be repeated.  Even thought he parents may have cared lovingly for their child following the separation, the child’s anxiety persists.  The child resist the attentions of the parent and represses his or her own longing for security and closeness. In an attempt to create distance from the mother without causing her pain, the child may develop physical symptoms to solve the problem.  Similar dynamics may also show up later in significant relationships.”  Page, 97

“Not only anxiety disorders, but also many other health problems such as asthma, chronic headache, or allergies, may be related to early childhood separation trauma. Such separations would include Caesarean births, a period of time in an incubator, being left in a baby care group or hospital, or a mother’s hospitalization (for example the birth of another child). Also sometimes parents leave their children in the care of relatives or friends because of work or travel and the child may be unable to feel the same degree of trust of the parents afterwords. “Page, 97

“Just as physical separation can have after-effects, an early emotional separation between mother and child may result in similar effects.  These too can originate in the circumstances of birth.  A connection between mother and child might be interrupted if the mother or child is in danger, or if the birth itself is a cause for heightened anxiety, for example during a precipitate delivery. “  Page, 98

“Emotional separation can even occur during the pregnancy.  For example if the mother is concerned  about health of the child.  She may have previously lost a child or children, or perhaps, her doctor has diagnosed a potential problem or made comments that have led the mother to have doubts about the health of the child. As result, the mother is no longer free to turn totally to this child-in-utero.  From this perspective labeling a pregnancy as ‘high risk’  is a step that warrants serious consideration. “ 98

“The earlier the separation between mother and child, and the longer it lasts, the more difficult it is for the child to resume a movement of reaching out again.  Generally this cannot be done without some external help.” Page, 98

Alcohol abuse can be related to several hidden systemic dynamics.

According to Bert Hellinger alcoholism is systemic issue often associated with missing masculine energy. In his work with family constellations, he found that many addictions, such as gambling, drugs, and alcoholism, are connected to a missing father (or masculine energy). It’s as if the addict is attempting to fill the void left by their father through their addiction.

Alcohol is used to fill the emptiness, sedate the feelings and allow behavior that is forbidden, including rage and aggression. We may observe many generations that use alcohol in this way but never resolve restoring their missing fathers. Reconciling with the missing masculine is essential to restoring health and well being to the family and filling the void of its absence with safety and love.

Alcohol abuse can also be there result of an entanglement with a family member or ancestor who has abused alcohol. Out of loyalty, sacrifice or love they may drink with the one or ones they identify with. Alcohol is also sometimes a way to express taboo secrets, events or excluded members.

ON LIFE AND OTHER PARADOXES, Bert Hellinger From Introduction by Ralph Metzner Zeig, Tucker & Theisen, Inc. 2002 Hellinger often uses an expression that was also a favourite of Martin Heidegger’s: the wonderful German word Gelassenheit, literally meaning “letting-be-ness”. Its feeling is something like “serenity”, although there is no exact English equivalent. Experience is meaningful when one leaves it behind. Letting means: moving on, transformed. When we can let something or someone be, we can stop judging, explaining, moralizing, imposing our concepts and interpretations, and instead perceive and acknowledge what really is, and thereby open up the possibilities of transformation. We are released from evil, only when we can serenely let it go. The concepts of letting-be, thus perceiving what is, and in this way transcending the dualities of “judgmentalism”, are very reminiscent of Taoist and Zen Buddhist teachings. The everchanging flow of water was for the Taoist sages both a metaphor for the natural way to live, the Tao, and emblematic of the desirable way to act. “Water is the softest thing in the world, but it overcomes stone, the hardest.” It is both nourishing, the highest good, and it always sinks humbly to the lowest point. In the words of the Hsin Hsin Ming, by Sengstan, the third Zen partriarch, “If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything.” Hellinger’s saying about the intrinsic order are reminiscent of another teaching of the ancient Chinese sages, namely the concept of li, which played an important part in both Confucian and Taoist thought. For the Taoist, according to Alan Watts, “li may be understood as organic order, as distinct from mechanical or legal order.” In Confucius’ thought, which is much more concerned with human relations in the family and society, li is often translated as “rite” or “propriety”, the right way to do a sacrifice ritual, the right relationship between parents and children. “Without li humanity, righteousness, and morality cannot be achieved…correct relationships of rulers and ministers, superiors and inferiors, fathers and sons…cannot be achieved”, says the Records of Rites, a Confucian classic. Confucian texts have explicit guidelines for the appropriate relationships between a first wife and a second wife, for example; just as Hellinger points out, there is a definite ordering principle at work for the relationship between former and present partners. In pointing to some similarities between Hellinger’s teachings and those of the old Chinese philosophers, I do not mean to imply that he derived his philosophy from these writings. It ione of the remarkable features of his work that he is resolutely committed to the empiricism of phenomenology: that is, all of his statements are offered as observations made in the practice of family systems therapy, not as generalizable principles or truths. The “statements of empowerment” are not prescriptions, to be applied by rote; they were observed to be empowering, bringing about a resolution, in particular situations. To those who would challenge his statements, Hellinger simply refers to his observations. The inherent order, he says, is not an opinion that one can have or change, at will. “It is not thought up, it is discovered.” The philosophical similarities to other teachings can function to clarify and deepen our understanding of some of these deepest paradoxes and mysteries of human existence.