Family Constellations Quotes
“Good medicine, like good psychotherapy, is based on recognizing what really is the matter with a patient. In my experience, family constellations in a therapeutic context are the most effective method towards clarifying what is essential for each individual. Here it is the unconscious mind that plays the most important role. Since systematic entanglements are unconscious, a therapeutic method is needed that can bring this to light. Bert Hellinger observed and described how invisible bonds in families may have effects over many generations, and in family constellations, he developed a method of making visible those bonds as well as the underlying basic dynamics. This process often allows healing to occur.”
Ilse Kutschers & Christine Bruder, What is OUT of ORDER HERE? Illness and Family Constellations, page 8
“I am convinced that Constellation Work, with its systemic worldview and the gift of the opportunity to stand as a representative in a constellation, is one of the most relevant and important tools to support us as we navigate our evolution into our future. I am convinced because I have stood in powerful constellations, and I’ve had the felt experience of being guided to unexpected resolutions by some unseen hand, of knowing that we are parts of a larger whole, of knowing that, in one sense, we are not individuals, but rather human systems of relating, of knowing that the Here and Now contains both the past and the future, undivided. I have experienced deeply held beliefs transform in minutes and hate and fear and frozen hearts dissolve. Entanglements can be undone. Love can prevail.”
Hunter Beaumont
September of 2021, Knowing Field Journal
“Reconciliation between the decendants of victims and perpetrators is perhaps most durable when they are able to mourn together for the dead on both sides and hold all in respectful memory. In the soul, the deceased victims and the deceased perpetrators need the love of the living long after the actual events. One consequence of the deeds that have been perpetrated is that victims and perpetrators can only be loved in conjunction with each other. If a perpetrator had many victims on his or her conscience, it may be more than the love of a single person can carry. Resolutions may only be possible through the love of many, that is at a societal level.”
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), 74.
"In Family Constellations work we use representatives to stand in for members of our family and ancestors; this is when we engage the unseen presence that we have come to know as the Knowing Field. It is then that we meet the phenomenon that representatives have access to information and feeling of the individual they are representing. This, for the representatives, can be a powerful and life-changing experience in its own right as they step into another's shoes and 'become' someone else, with little or no knowledge of the personality and circumstances of the individual they are representing."
John L. Payne (Shivasti), The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations, (2005), page 4.
“Constellations succeed by diminishing the unconscious impluses that drive destructive behaviors. In a heartbeat, the pattern is released, opening the heart to reverance for life and compassion for others. “
“When we set up Constellations with men serving life terms in prison, and look at what emerges, first we see that our hearts carry everything a human heart can hold. Then we find a way to heal the trauma so life can continue in a good way. We agree to it all, to carry it all… with compassion.”
Dan Cohen, I Carry Your Heart in My Heart: Family Constellations in Prisons, (2009), page, 18-19.
“Inexplicable symptoms are distressing and weigh heavily on our clients, who feel responsible for them and self-critical when they cannot get themselves under control. It is an enormous relief when their symptoms finally make sense, or take on meaning through systemic understanding. "
Ursula Franke (Bryson), In My Mind's Eye: Family Constellations in Individual Therapy and Counseling, (2003), page 43.
“When adult children take care of their elderly parents, love requires that they treat their parents with the respect due to them, even if the parents become more child-like in their behaviour and demands as they grow older. A son or daughter can never really satisfy such child-like demands. It is often helpful for the caretaker child to imagine that the deceased grandparents give the elderly parents what they need to satisfy these childish demands, and children can lovingly give only what is actually neededand what is justified and appropriate.”
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), page 87.
“The family constellations method and process developed by Bert Hellinger is new and old at the same time. Hellinger took the concept of phenomenology and used this way of viewing the process to work with family constellations. The method required a different kind of therapist from the Moreno/Satir style, one who could be open and touched by life and death issues, be courageous in the face of despair and trauma, could trust the unknown, and remain engaged and present while waiting for a resolution to emerge from the client.”
J. Edward Lynch, “The Stance of the Facilitator,” Messengers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Hellinger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005), page 84.
“The healing path of Family Constellations is one of taking ownership of your life. Its healing as an act of supreme agency. Healing is saying, “I am an adult; I am responsible for my life. I’m in charge.” Healing is finally knowing what you want and what you don’’t want—and being willing to do what necessary to get rid of the latter and bring the former into reality.”
Marine Selennee, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies: Using Family Constellations Therapy to Recover from Inherited Stories and Trauma, (2022), 173.
“If a person in a family has committed murder, then he or she is bound to the victim through the heavy shift in the balance between giving and taking. This connection is stronger than family bonds, and the perpetrator is obliged to follow his or her new bond and leave their family. If he or she does not do that, a serious risk arises—that family members in following generations will have to share the fate of the perpetrator. They often do so by leaving the family in acts of penitence for the perpetrator. An example would be committing suicide. The perpetrator must voluntarily undergo the same fate as the victim by going to prison or some similar manner of taking distance from normal life in order to relieve future generations“
Indra Torsten Preiss, Family Constellations Revealed, (2015) page 115.
"Often, when individuals who are entangled with the fate of one who has died tragically, unlawfully, or has been forgotten, it is the drain on their physical organism that leads to the development of illness and disease. When we are identified with one who has died, we have one foot in the grave so to speak, and therefor we are not fully present in physical life."
John L. Payne (Shivasti), The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations, (2005), page 31.
“Healing sentences are another substantial part of Family Systems Constellation facilitation. These sentences, and the emergence of the right healing sentence, can be taught and learned. It is such a powerful aspect of constellations work, so that if one can find support in the training for stillness that allows these sentences to emerge, it is worth the time and patience, to actually learn as much as possible in a training setting.
Francesca Mason Boring, Family Systems Constellations: And Other Systems Constellations Adventures: A transformational Journey, 2015, page xx.
"Whatever the underlying reasons for a disruption in the early child-parent relationship, the consequences are that the child is often caught between an unfulfilled need for closeness to his or her parents and a sense of having to hold a line of demarcation and protection. In the context of a constellation group, if the background of this relationship disturbance is brought to light and the patient’s emotional splitting resolved, there may be an end to this ambivalence in the soul; there may be a sense of peace, and often healing at the physical level as well."
Stephan Hausner, Even If It Cost Me My Life, Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness, (2011) Page 67.
“While working in a phenomenological manner, one must dare to listen, look, touch, smell and perceive in a way that may be outside of the norm of Western linear thought. The archeological truth is that, we all come from the tent (or cave). We all come from the early indigenous people of our lineage, no matter which continent we hail from. The knowing field is part of the landscape of human beings, and warmly invites every facilitator and every family to walk there with humility and competence. When facilitators find a place of trust in the knowing field, there is often a wonderful feeling of recognition, a coming home, for the client and their family system, those who are supporting the Circle and the facilitator.”
Francesca Mason Boring, Family Systems Constellations: And Other Systems Constellations Adventures: A transformational Journey, 2015, page 19.
“Healing means freedom. The freedom of creating the life that you truly want based on your own terms, beliefs, and values. Not being afraid of pleasing everyone, of being rejected or abandoned because you think or feel differently. Healing is self-love. Healing is falling madly in love with yourself, secure with yourself, especially belonging in your soul.”
Marine Selennee, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies: Using Family Constellations Therapy to Recover from Inherited Stories and Trauma, (2022), 175
'''Unresolved issues from the past may cause the heart to shut down. If left unattended, this disruption in the flow of love carried across generations, ripples into the shadows of the family landscape, often emerging as illness, emotional difficulties, and broken relationships."
- Bill Mannle
“A love that is awake sees the other as he or she is and loves that person as a complete individual. Love leaves room for the other person and that person’s fate. That loved one is strengthened. I always ask my clients, “Does this love strengthen you or weaken you?” When such questions are understood and taken seriously, the answers are spontaneous and reveal the essential quality of that particular love. “
Ilse Kutchera What’s Out of Order Here? Illness and Family Constellations, (2006), page 23.
