What are Family Constellations?
Family Constellations is a healing process that explores how hidden dynamics in our family system can influence our thoughts, feelings, relationships and even health issues. Constellations are models of the family system that reveal how experiences of the past can dominate our present. Often without being aware, we are reliving the suffering of our ancestors.
In Family Constellations we connect to our immediate family as well as ancestors through a field of energy that allows us to discover the truth behind shame, guilt, trauma, mental illness, disease, and the damaging effects of violence, war, immigration and more. We can begin to see how the past gets in the way of love, wealth, success, healthy marriage and our inner happiness. Family Constellations can also help us understand our relationship with our parents and its ongoing effect on our life.
In Family Constellations we connect to our immediate family as well as ancestors through a field of energy that allows us to discover the truth behind shame, guilt, trauma, mental illness, disease, and the damaging effects of violence, war, immigration and more. We can begin to see how the past gets in the way of love, wealth, success, healthy marriage and our inner happiness. Family Constellations can also help us understand our relationship with our parents and its ongoing effect on our life.
Photo by Arden Wong
A powerful insight of Bert Hellinger, the founder of Family Constellations, is that each family system has natural laws that keep the family in balance and allow love to flow. In family systems where these laws are violated, shame, guilt, rage or trauma can become normal to the family members.
One of the most important natural laws is that all members of a family system belong and must have a place. If someone in the system is not given a place, then younger members can become "entangled" with the issues surrounding the one who is excluded or even take on the excluded member’s difficult fate. This is particularly true with ancestors who have been forgotten or shunned or become a secret. These unconscious entanglements are behind most of the issues that are explored in Family Constellations.
Releasing these entanglements can free us to live our own life and often help to restore balance and love to the family system and perhaps our greater communities. This release can help clarify what must be seen, what can be left behind and what we can honor in a different way so that our lives move forward in a good and healthy direction.
One of the most important natural laws is that all members of a family system belong and must have a place. If someone in the system is not given a place, then younger members can become "entangled" with the issues surrounding the one who is excluded or even take on the excluded member’s difficult fate. This is particularly true with ancestors who have been forgotten or shunned or become a secret. These unconscious entanglements are behind most of the issues that are explored in Family Constellations.
Releasing these entanglements can free us to live our own life and often help to restore balance and love to the family system and perhaps our greater communities. This release can help clarify what must be seen, what can be left behind and what we can honor in a different way so that our lives move forward in a good and healthy direction.
Issues that can benefit from Family Constellations
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In Family Constellations, we set up a family system with volunteer representatives, objects or guided visualizations. In a typical workshop, participants are chosen to represent members or elements of the family that is being addressed. Tuning in through the energy that connects us to our family and ancestors, representatives can give us information about what has happened and perhaps clues about what can be changed, released or acknowledged to create healing for the client and the system. The process is mysterious but truthful and transformative.
In an individual session, we use paper, objects or visualizations to represent the family system. As in a workshop, hidden and unexpected dynamics operating within the system are revealed and addressed in a way that aims to find a healthy and respectful place for all members of the system.
"Unresolved traumas from past generations must be brought to light. As long as they remain buried in the pain or silence that surrounds them, fears and feelings that don't belong to us can reappear in our lives—and we will think they're ours." – Mark Woylnn, Author of It Didn't Start With You
In an individual session, we use paper, objects or visualizations to represent the family system. As in a workshop, hidden and unexpected dynamics operating within the system are revealed and addressed in a way that aims to find a healthy and respectful place for all members of the system.
"Unresolved traumas from past generations must be brought to light. As long as they remain buried in the pain or silence that surrounds them, fears and feelings that don't belong to us can reappear in our lives—and we will think they're ours." – Mark Woylnn, Author of It Didn't Start With You
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Testimonials about Family Constellations sessions and workshop
"I have been receiving individual Family Constellation sessions from Barry for almost a year. Barry is gifted in accessing and directly attending to deep wounds and facilitating transformation at a soul level. I struggled with multiple layers of trauma for many years before receiving sessions with Barry. Very early on and in every session, I developed clarity and healing around complex traumatic issues that I was previously feeling perplexed by and hopeless about. Family Constellation sessions with Barry have refreshed and illuminated my nervous system, psyche, and soul after years of agony, confusion, and fatigue.
I transitioned to online Family Constellation sessions with Barry in March after the stay-at-home orders in Illinois were implemented. I have experienced the same quality of profound depth, intuition, and healing through Family Constellation online sessions as I did in person. Barry is able to pick up on and address vibrational realities that he addresses in Family Constellation work regardless of physical distance. This further speaks to the healing that takes place on a fine vibrational field beyond physical limitations in Family Constellation sessions.
I am a psychotherapist in training. The clearing of my aura and psyche as a result of Family Constellation work has greatly improved my presence with my clients and significantly expanded on the positive changes I witness in them as a result. I have gained so much greater access to my deeply buried true nature as a result of this priceless work, and I will always be grateful to Barry."
-- L.A., Chicago, IL, Psychotherapist in training
"For the first time in my life, I don't walk around laden with feelings of guilt for everything I did/do/say/think. For once I can look at myself and consider myself created just as God wanted to create me, not full of flaws that make me faulty, less than a real person, and a disappointment to God and other people.”
--R. P. Chicago, IL
"What I didn’t realize until I met Barry Krost is that the thing for which I was searching, the reason I was exhausting all available therapies, the piece of my life for which I was longing so terribly was within me. In my first session with Barry, he created a space for me so that I could feel what love is. “Do you feel that expansiveness? Right here,” he asked as he put his hand on my heart. “That is always there. You can have that whenever you want.”
Since then, Barry and I have had breakthroughs in every session. From children to career, to my theatrical life, to education, to cleaning, to math, to test taking, to childhood, to in-laws and grandparents, Barry has shown me through Family Constellations that we can find the root of whatever keeps us from moving forward. Never have I experienced a therapy or therapist so truthful, pure, and effective. I owe him more than I can express."
-- E. C., (Chicago, IL)
"It took me many years to attend a Family Constellation Workshop with Barry Krost. I tend to lean towards evidence-based interventions that are logical and pragmatic. Eventually I found this approach to be limiting, and my conventional strategies of psychotherapy and medication were not working. I felt stuck, in a rut, revisiting the same past hurts again and again and living a day-to-day life haunted by a pervasive anxiety and chronic pain. One day, I took a what-the-hell it's only $45 attitude, and figured at the very least it couldn't hurt.
I was completely blown away. This form of therapy is so much more holistic than anything that I have tried before, and I have done the gamut (CBT, EMDR, MBSR, somatic-emotional release, client-centered psychotherapy, internal family systems, etc.) Family Constellation Workshops are physical, kinesthetic, emotional, and spiritual work. I grew up in a less than supportive environment and I tend to be highly critical of myself, and often unfairly of others. The unconditional and unwavering support of this group was truly profound. The people in the workshop helped ground me in knowledge that I began to accept at an emotional level rather than superficial intellectual understanding.
To give an example, at one point I leaned back into a line of about seven women who were standing there with the sole purpose of supporting me. As my resistance and need to be in control finally began to soften, the woman behind me spontaneously began to hum like a mother does to a child. Almost immediately, I melted and I began to weep, not in the half choked sobs I am familiar with, but a gentle catharsis of grief I had been holding on to for years. I had held so many others up in times of pain, given when I had nothing left to give, and now I leaned back into the steady strength of a literal line of women and a symbolic lineage of mothers. Their wordless, selfless compassion registered in my body and soul and lifted me up. Barry intuited that I was rushing myself, ashamed of taking too much time... and he told me "take all the time you need. This is for you," and he whispered to the woman behind me "she's never had this before." He was right. For the first time I truly *felt* that I was not alone. I was supported, I was cherished, loved, and safe. In the sacredness of that space I was finally able to *receive* and I will carry it with me always.
-- E, (Madison, WI)
"Barry's distinctions of the Barely Dead and the Radiant Dead and how to work with them in the Constellations context are enormously helpful to my own healing process and in my work with others. Through two visualization processes, I was able to support ancestors who didn't know they were dead on towards their Peace and Loves on the other side. Barry works in a way that is very respectful of the Dead and their role in support of the Living. He is also very conscious of bringing to awareness and healing what has held these ancestors in our field."
-- Marianne Connor
I transitioned to online Family Constellation sessions with Barry in March after the stay-at-home orders in Illinois were implemented. I have experienced the same quality of profound depth, intuition, and healing through Family Constellation online sessions as I did in person. Barry is able to pick up on and address vibrational realities that he addresses in Family Constellation work regardless of physical distance. This further speaks to the healing that takes place on a fine vibrational field beyond physical limitations in Family Constellation sessions.
I am a psychotherapist in training. The clearing of my aura and psyche as a result of Family Constellation work has greatly improved my presence with my clients and significantly expanded on the positive changes I witness in them as a result. I have gained so much greater access to my deeply buried true nature as a result of this priceless work, and I will always be grateful to Barry."
-- L.A., Chicago, IL, Psychotherapist in training
"For the first time in my life, I don't walk around laden with feelings of guilt for everything I did/do/say/think. For once I can look at myself and consider myself created just as God wanted to create me, not full of flaws that make me faulty, less than a real person, and a disappointment to God and other people.”
--R. P. Chicago, IL
"What I didn’t realize until I met Barry Krost is that the thing for which I was searching, the reason I was exhausting all available therapies, the piece of my life for which I was longing so terribly was within me. In my first session with Barry, he created a space for me so that I could feel what love is. “Do you feel that expansiveness? Right here,” he asked as he put his hand on my heart. “That is always there. You can have that whenever you want.”
Since then, Barry and I have had breakthroughs in every session. From children to career, to my theatrical life, to education, to cleaning, to math, to test taking, to childhood, to in-laws and grandparents, Barry has shown me through Family Constellations that we can find the root of whatever keeps us from moving forward. Never have I experienced a therapy or therapist so truthful, pure, and effective. I owe him more than I can express."
-- E. C., (Chicago, IL)
"It took me many years to attend a Family Constellation Workshop with Barry Krost. I tend to lean towards evidence-based interventions that are logical and pragmatic. Eventually I found this approach to be limiting, and my conventional strategies of psychotherapy and medication were not working. I felt stuck, in a rut, revisiting the same past hurts again and again and living a day-to-day life haunted by a pervasive anxiety and chronic pain. One day, I took a what-the-hell it's only $45 attitude, and figured at the very least it couldn't hurt.
I was completely blown away. This form of therapy is so much more holistic than anything that I have tried before, and I have done the gamut (CBT, EMDR, MBSR, somatic-emotional release, client-centered psychotherapy, internal family systems, etc.) Family Constellation Workshops are physical, kinesthetic, emotional, and spiritual work. I grew up in a less than supportive environment and I tend to be highly critical of myself, and often unfairly of others. The unconditional and unwavering support of this group was truly profound. The people in the workshop helped ground me in knowledge that I began to accept at an emotional level rather than superficial intellectual understanding.
To give an example, at one point I leaned back into a line of about seven women who were standing there with the sole purpose of supporting me. As my resistance and need to be in control finally began to soften, the woman behind me spontaneously began to hum like a mother does to a child. Almost immediately, I melted and I began to weep, not in the half choked sobs I am familiar with, but a gentle catharsis of grief I had been holding on to for years. I had held so many others up in times of pain, given when I had nothing left to give, and now I leaned back into the steady strength of a literal line of women and a symbolic lineage of mothers. Their wordless, selfless compassion registered in my body and soul and lifted me up. Barry intuited that I was rushing myself, ashamed of taking too much time... and he told me "take all the time you need. This is for you," and he whispered to the woman behind me "she's never had this before." He was right. For the first time I truly *felt* that I was not alone. I was supported, I was cherished, loved, and safe. In the sacredness of that space I was finally able to *receive* and I will carry it with me always.
-- E, (Madison, WI)
"Barry's distinctions of the Barely Dead and the Radiant Dead and how to work with them in the Constellations context are enormously helpful to my own healing process and in my work with others. Through two visualization processes, I was able to support ancestors who didn't know they were dead on towards their Peace and Loves on the other side. Barry works in a way that is very respectful of the Dead and their role in support of the Living. He is also very conscious of bringing to awareness and healing what has held these ancestors in our field."
-- Marianne Connor