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Systemic influences may be out of your awareness,
yet include the relationship events that influence your life. Systemic diagnosis
offers deep insights into your life's hidden
dynamics - and systemic solutions for achieving goals or solving problems. Talk
is cheap - long-term change needs work.
Systemic insights are simple yet profound,
hidden yet obvious, and always revealing. Yet you may never understand your own
family system as well as you understand that of a client's.
Family Constellations
Family constellations can be called ritual maps of
subjective spatial locations of imagined people, as part of an overall experience
of relationships. Family constellations can be made with actors (in a workshop),
or with empty chairs or other objects (during private sessions).
Family Constellations were first described by Alfred Adler.
Applications of family constellations were developed and incorporated into family
therapy by Virginia Satir (see New Peoplemaking), and popularized
by Bert Hellinger.
We build on these efforts and integrate
material from traditional cultures. Systemic diagnosis reflects the
creation of life and the fulfillment of life responsibilities, rather than
somebody's ideas or
intuitions. We use systemic maps during goalwork, to check who supports you
towards your goals, relationship ecology (consequences to relationships
following a change) and to help you assess the effectiveness of
proposed solutions.
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Our research into
Hawaiian spirituality
indicates that many rituals utilized non-local action. The rituals of ho'oponopono
and la'au kahea assume that human health reflects human relationships, and
that information can pass between distant relatives. (When action at a distance
becomes healing at a distance, it seems miraculous.) |
A warning - moving actors or representations on a family
constellation communicates: "You can feel good and relax
because you have successfully imagined that you have solved a
problem". We find that long term change requires appropriate
coaching in a person's relationship skills and behavior. We stabilize desired changes by changing
both subjective experience and relationship activities.
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When healing relationships,
we respect each person's values, and honor
each person's wisdom. We find that ALL clients can make intelligent
choices. |
Talks with people after family constellation workshops
indicate that the benefits of imaginary change-work often vanish
within a few weeks. See Systemic Health
and Systemic Magic.
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Be honest.
Don't promise anything that you don't whole-heartedly
believe you can deliver. Let your experience speak to you as well as to your
clients about what to expect. You can promise to provide the agreed
coaching, you can promise to discuss every technique before using it,
and you can promise your clients your compassionate attention! |
Trauma, Tragedy and Health
Every family experiences drama, trauma and
tragedies. Some common family trauma include the consequences of:
Most families can resolve relationship trauma
and move on, but some get stuck, unable to find a balance between giving and
receiving, between honoring and forgetting, between life and death.
Families unconsciously follow family rules.
For example, if a family member is ostracized, another family member may
marry a substitute for the excluded person, or may identify with the missing
family member. If a missing person is not brought back into a family, a system
- and system members - lose part of their identity. A family member may
unconsciously recover and express the lost identity.
Cross-generational entanglements explain
why some tragedies are repeated in each generation.
Relatively simple but toxic examples of cross-generational systemic suffering
are the varieties of emotional
incest, as shown by relationship diagnosis.
See Mother-Son
Entanglements and Father-Daughter
Bonds.
Children can become entangled in the drama of
missing, hurt or grieving relatives, and can identify with or bond
to those relatives. Later in life, as these adult children act out their
entanglements, creating the seeds of chaos for the next generation of
children.
Cross-generational entanglements can be
exposed with systemic diagnosis and resolved with systemic coaching. Failure to
expose and resolve family entanglements can have serious consequences, such as
schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder, depression,
anxiety ... and suicide.
Constellation Risks
There are risks for people who participate as actors in other
people's family constellations. As observers of a system interact with
the members or substitutes of that system, the consequences of observation,
especially for those who act roles in other person's system,
flow both ways.
Many family systems require one or more members to
be physically or mentally unhealthy, and the observers and actors may
identify with those people, and experience psychosomatic symptoms.
This seems to be common (based on discussions with participants
of family constellation workshops).
Unstable or immature observers may become enmeshed in the
drama of dysfunctional family constellations. They may react and abreact to
what they discover, and distort their own relationships. The consequences of
role playing unhealthy family members
can be unpleasant. (Systemic Health.)
Family constellations provide a way to change inner
representations of relationships. However, changing representations is
unlikely to change other people's representations, nor motivate other people
to ignore any past hurt or injustices. Unless followed by appropriate
action and interaction, the apparent benefits family
constellation workshops seem to disappear within three months.
Our Systemic Coaching
As the behavior of individuals in a system can reflect an entire
system, Our systemic coaching is used in human resource management and
organizational development, to provide efficient and effective models for solving
systemic problems and organizational re-engineering. (Some interesting theories
of family constellation work involve morphogenetic
fields and chaos coaching.)
Consequences of relationship trauma (e.g.
abuse, betrayal,
suicide, abortion and adoption)
continue in a family (as cross-generational entanglements). Junior members of a
system may follow senior members into obsessions, illness or death.
As human organizations reflect systemic principles;
systemic disturbances can affect entire organizations and populations.
Some questions that may expose potential systemic stressors are:
- How is power delegated?
- How do leaders gain power?
- Who really makes decisions?
- How are those decisions communicated?
- How are people removed from the system?
Our systemic coaching can restore order in systems and
change the human resources of a family, team or organization. This
emotional
intelligence can help you answer:
- How can a family increase happiness?
- How can a team increase effectiveness?
- Which applicant best fits an existing organization?
- How can core competencies be duplicated or improved?
Systemic Solutions
Following systemic diagnosis, we coach people to define their goals
and plans to reach them - including relationship goals. Verbal and nonverbal objections
and entanglements are explored until each goal is
congruently desired (no nonverbal objections) and limiting
relationship bonds are dissolved.
Would you like to
benefit from our experience?
Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2001-2010
All rights reserved.
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