February Book of the Month
written by Marnie McGann
Acknowledging What Is, is a compilation of fascinating and engaging conversations between journalist, Gabriele ten Hövel and German psychologist, Bert Hellinger (1925-2019). Hellinger is renowned for the Family Constellations or Systemic Constellations approach, which reveals hidden dynamics in families…how we are influenced by our ancestral relationships, often without conscious awareness. With an investigator’s curiosity and healthy skepticism, Gabriele ten Hövel questions how Hellinger’s approach can work, and her sense of wonder lightens the serious and tough questions she poses. Hellinger is concise and equally tough with his responses. He adheres to the strong principles and ideas that he maintained about life, albeit some controversial.
Family Dynamics: Accepting Reality
Hellinger says that we must accept the reality of our lives. But accepting does not mean lying down and resigning to a determined fate. Rather the human condition requires each of us to accept our family dynamics but claim our own fate. By fully accepting reality as it is—without judgment, without wishing it away—we can begin to break the chains of past trauma, guilt, or emotional entanglements. “When someone can recognize reality,” Hellinger says, “then he or she achieves greatness.”
Hellinger believed that the unspoken truths and unaddressed emotional patterns within family systems are often the root causes of personal and generational challenges, as well as many physical illnesses. By acknowledging our place within our family system, we can begin to understand how we are influenced by not only our immediate family members but also by relatives and ancestors, historical events, and cultural norms. We can honor the past but not be bound by it. This shift in perspective can bring healing and end the harmful cycles that affect generations.
Hellinger’s voice in these interviews is profound and direct, but also accessible. He brings insight to family patterns and systemic issues and he backs up his experience and knowledge with his own case examples. He described himself as a family therapist who can help the system find a path and order. He thought of psychotherapy as “caring for souls.”
The book may seem daunting at first because of its heavier philosophical topics. Hellinger tackles depression, guilt, loss, hate, death, anxiety, incest, abortion, and outrage, to name a few, but he also explores love, loyalty, centering, self-realization, bonding, fulfillment, and order. We all have families, and we all want to do better. Reading this book is a step in the right direction.
Family Constellations: The Interstellar Space for Change
Like Milton Erickson, Hellinger was experiential, phenomenological, and artistic in his approach. “A painter…sees the whole, as does a poet. That’s how I approach human systems,” Hellinger states. “I don’t look at the individual person, but rather see that person embedded in a relationship system…Every constellation distinguishes itself in some way from all others; no two are alike…It’s the client who sets up the constellation, not me. Through this process, things come to light that would never have been possible from a personal description.”
In family constellations, clients often find that acknowledging the pain of the past—whether it’s a lost child, a suicide, an untimely death, an emotionally distant parent, or a family secret—can lead to profound emotional release and understanding. But acknowledging what Hellinger calls “the break in the original love” often requires letting go of expectations, and our rigid notions of what is moral and what is immoral; what is right and wrong. “Conscience cannot guide you to a recognition of what is good.” Hellinger says, “That is guided more by awareness, observation, and respect…Each person is good in his or her own way, and each is also entangled in his or her own way…...everyone is caught in some way…and everyone serves in some way. That’s a transcendent view that goes beyond the concrete. It promotes peace if you assume that whatever happens—good or evil—has some larger connection.”
In family constellations, there is a deep respect for the order and complexity of family systems, with the understanding that no one person is to blame for the negative family dynamics. Hellinger is adamant that no good can come when we point the finger at an individual. He says that anger and blame do not result in resolution. In fact, he says that if a child brings charges against a parent for wrongdoing, the child will in turn inflict self-punishment on him or herself. “There is only one way to resolve that for children, and I call it ‘spiritual forgetting.’ The children must withdraw from the issue completely.” “Many schools of therapy,” Hellinger says, “purport that in order to become healthy, the individual has to separate from the family, or oppose the family, or do battle with it.” According to Hellinger, a child must take the parent are he or she is and go beyond their own pain. But experiencing deep pain together with a parent can be healing.
Hellinger talks about “looking past” a client, instead of focusing on the client’s interpretation of their family and situation. He sees the whole, the larger picture, which comes alive through a constellation. Something must be brought into the light, into order. “In a family constellation,” he says, “the resolution is there when all family members are pleased. When each person is in the right place; when each is being true to what is important to that person; when each is attending to his or her own life and not interfering with others, then everyone has dignity and self-esteem and feels good.”
Everyone in the family has a place and everyone belongs (except, according to Hellinger, those who commit murder), including those who have died. There must be balance and order. And there is a hierarchy. Hellinger says that parents have the first place, and their relationship takes precedence over their parenthood. When parents try to be equal to their children, when they try to be buddies instead of parents with authority, there are negative consequences for the children. They will feel insecure and not free. They will know their parents are not in their rightful place and they will feel the effects.
But how can a family constellation with strangers standing in as representatives for one’s family members work and provide healing? Hellinger says: “There is a depth that flows through everything and is beyond the bounds of time. I see life as a pyramid. On the top…is what we call progress. In depths, the future and the past are the same—there’s only space, no time. Sometimes one comes in contact with this depth, and the hidden order of things becomes visible…When I set up a family, the individuals who are standing there can feel what’s going on in this family even though the real family members may be far away. The orders within the family repeat themselves in the constellation. Through a constellation, I suddenly have access to a reality that is not accessible to me through thought processes. Something comes to light that has previously been invisible. When it’s out in the open, I can look to see if there’s a resolution there. But in the same way that the real family is present in the constellation, the resolution of the representative family also has an effect, in return, on the real family. Something returns to the system, even if they don’t know anything about it. This is contacting the greatness of the soul…There seems to be a group consciousness that has an effect on all members of the family systems. When any one of these group members has been unjustly treated, the group consciousness demands that things be evened up.”
Hellinger also says that when one sets up a family constellation, he or she transfers what is going on in the family into a spatial picture. “If the constellation is done correctly, the representatives are standing in a new system and no longer in their own family system. They’re aware of exactly what is going on in this system.”
Death as a Continuation of Being
Hellinger does not shy away from the weighty subject of death. He views it as a comparatively small and temporary state in one’s total being. Death, he says, is just the extension of our being. Children should learn from a young age that death is natural and nothing to fear. Hellinger gives the example of a grandfather dying and instead of sheltering a child from the death, he would take that child close to the dead grandfather and allow him or her to touch the grandfather. He would then explain to the child that the grandfather has died, and his body is now cold, but that the child can now remember him forever. In doing this, the child’s fear of death will dissipate. It is no longer a scary mystery, but simply a fact and part of the circle of life.
Hellinger has observed that there is a tendency in families to follow another family member into death, or illness, or to a particular fate. Children often have a “better I should die than you” mentality when it comes to their parents. “What happens in a family constellation is the dead are brought back into the picture so that they can be reintegrated. Many illnesses and disturbances are attributable to the exclusion of rightful members of a system, and these are often the dead members. When they are brought back in, others are free.”
Ordinary Doing as a Path to Peace
Hellinger also talks about “ordinary doing.” He says: “The simplest and deepest ways of acting are in the family, from the father and the mother in relation to the children, and from the children in relation to their parents. These are the greatest and deepest actions and are the basis for all others…It is in these simple acts that an individual can be fulfilled…In such acts there of being in quiet harmony with something great.”
Hellinger maintained that the strongest bonds are those formed between parent and child and throughout the book he acknowledges that children will still love and be bonded to their parents, despite the circumstances. “Children must take life from their parents as it is given to them,” Hellinger states. “It’s not a child’s place to understand nor to forgive their parents. That is presumptuous!”
At only 162 pages, this slim book is packed with insight, knowledge, and wisdom not only for psychotherapists but for anyone who has experienced trauma, loss, or emotional pain due to family dynamics and is ready accept what is. I am not a psychotherapist, and I thoroughly enjoyed Hellinger’s perspective and wisdom. I have several take-aways from this book: that family bonds are strong and important; that loyalty equals love, and it requires that we are willing to share in the family’s burden of fate; that we are all interconnected, and our actions reverberate to the larger whole.
Facing the painful realities of our family dynamics is not easy, but the result is a new sense of freedom from judgement and blame and a willingness to embrace life just as it is.
