How to heal your family

March 7, 2007

“As long as our ancestors still suffer within us, we lack true happiness.”
-Thich Nhat Hahn


It’s no surprise that you inherit more than your blue eyes or auburn hair from your parents.
They may also have unwittingly passed on their unresolved hurts in life to you. If you’re like the average guy, you may have no clue that you’ve inherited these emotional “gifts.”
Yet unless you untangle yourself from the unspoken hurts that were passed down to you, they become your burden, too, said Toni Stanfield, a Traverse City clinical psychotherapist.
Stanfield said this is the premise behind a therapeutic technique—Family Constellation, which she has recently brought to Traverse City. It’s the leading form of therapy in Germany, where it was created by former priest and psychologist Bert Hellinger.
This therapy technique is used not only with families, but also with societies in conflict—where fear, hatred and exclusion have become the rationale for war and cycles of revenge. The technique assists the two sides to reconcile so that “fields of conflict” become “fields of wisdom.”
Since it was developed 25 years ago, Family Constellation has gone well beyond Germany’s borders to the Ojibwa in northern Canada, aborigines in Australia, Chinese and Mexicans, and Jews and Arabs.
Therapy involves trusting in the premise of finding wholeness with long-lost ancestors and requires role-playing in front of a bunch of strangers.
Yet people are willing to do just that to relieve the pain they’ve carried for years, Stanfield said.

POWER OF THE DEAD
As a bereavement counselor in the hospice field in the 1990s, Stanfield would often hear people say they still felt very much connected to the person who died. “They would say, ‘I know he is dead, but he’s really not. I still talk to him, he still talks to me. The relationship has not ended. He is still with me.’
“If you connect with people, you’re still connected. Sometimes if a person dies suddenly and there hasn’t been a chance to say good-bye, they come and say good-bye in a dream. I heard of all of these experiences so many times, and I couldn’t deny them. That’s when my journey started,” Stanfield said.
Stanfield believes at the end of life, as the body is breaking down, the spirit is still there and “we are soul.” She saw repetitions of trauma, such as untimely deaths that occurred in each generation at a specific age. She wondered if there could be a pattern of suffering that inexplicably repeated itself. Some people die peacefully, while others die “split and tormented.” Why is that?
This question led Stanfield to become a spiritual director: “I help people to become more present to their higher power. I ask them questions: Do you hear what God is saying to you? Do you understand what He wants you to do and do you have the courage to follow through? What is your sacred dream? What part of that dream comes from God, what part is from society and what it expects from you, and what part from your own ego? What it you really want to do, just for you?
“If a person is spiritually aware, they will have more joyful moments, moments of grace. You feel one with other people, with nature, with yourself. … In hospice, spirituality was very important. We had different people of different religions—the key point was respecting a person’s belief. People come to me because they’re in pain, and I always ask, ‘Where do you stand with your spiritual life?’ I make it part of my assessment.”
Her belief in the power of spirituality and the presence of those who had died led her to the practice of multi-generational healing. Two years ago, she was working with one particularly difficult woman who seemed destined to repeat the same romantic mistakes as her mother. So, she googled multi-generational healing. Up popped the name of Bert Hellinger and Family Constellation. She sent for books and tapes and began an intensive course of self-study.
This is where it gets weird. Last June, Stanfield went to a silent retreat and sat across from a woman, who passed her a card with information about a Family Constellation training in Plymouth, Michigan.
“It was out of the blue—I’d been thinking about this, but had obviously never said a word to her —this was a silent retreat. Somehow she knew.”
As a result of that flyer, Stanfield was able to take an intensive course in Family Constellation under the supervision of Dr. Ed Lynch, who runs the Graduate Marriage and Family Therapy Program at Southern Connecticut State University.

THE THEORY
Hellinger, the creator of Family Constellation, was a priest for 20 years and worked with the African Zulu tribal members, a deeply spiritual people who spoke of their ancestors as if they were alive.
After returning to Germany, he left the priesthood, married, and studied psychology. He developed his theory by blending what he had learned from the Zulus, his academic training, and his observations of families that he counseled.
His theory—in one sentence or less—is that the role of a family is to love and support each other from one generation to another, explained in his book, “Love’s Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships.”
The family can only fulfill this role if three principles are met. First, there is the rule of inclusion, meaning every member of the family needs to be regarded and recognized, including the handicapped, the mentally ill, the criminally ill, the aborted and the miscarried. All of them.
Secondly, seniority needs to be respected and honored. Parents and old members must be respected, honored and given recognition.
Finally, there must be a balance between giving and taking, especially between women and men. However, an imbalance may exist between parents and children—parents need to give more to the children—and children give back in the next generation.
If these three rules are not respected, love gets blocked and the family’s goal to support and nourish its members is not fulfilled. That causes emotional hunger that will go on for years and years.

WORKSHOP
But what does a “healing” session
look like?
Essentially all the participants gather in a semi-circle. The facilitator asks if anyone wants to talk about a troubling relationship or an issue, such as weight or illness. The participant talks about the problem and also provides some family background, such as a premature death or other trauma. After that, he or she chooses a few people to represent family member(s). If they agree, they enter a circle with the participant and make a living map. The participant stays out of the map, having also chosen someone to represent himself.
The representatives are asked to tune in and pay attention to what they feel.
“They are not really role playing, but experiencing what that person might feel or say—that’s the magic of this technique. They actually start taking up what these people were feeling. I don’t want to use the word channel, but if a person has accepted to help you do the work, they pick up this feeling from you and start to really tune in with you.”
The troubled person then begins inter-acting with the “family member” who has given them so much pain. The volunteer moves into a “morphic field” and “becomes”the person they are representing.
If all of this sounds a little woo, woo, here is an example. Stanfield was in a group with a woman who was still troubled by her relationship with her mom, a crack cocaine addict. She chose Stanfield to be the mom.
“The woman wanted to know why her mother always chose cocaine over her. Wasn’t she worth loving enough to let it go? I (representing her mother) was staring in the face of someone representing cocaine. I felt myself drawn very, very close to her face. The world disappeared around me; all I could see was the cocaine. I felt nothing else. I could see nothing else. When she asked me, ‘Why didn’t you choose me?’ I told her, ‘There was no choice. I never made a choice. I didn’t even see you.’”
Stanfield said she has treated drug addicts for decades, yet this was the first time she “experienced” the power of addiction.
If all this sounds strange and more than you can personally handle, Stanfield would assure you that it’s effective. It does gives a person immediate insight into the source of their suffering, although it is not a cure all. (There is also a technique to use this therapy at her office with models of people if the workshop doesn’t appeal to you.)
“The pain does disappear instantly, but you can’t just say, ‘I’m done with the work on myself, and I’m cured, and now I can set boundaries and can communicate feelings as I ought to or separate from people I need to separate from.’ But it gives you clarity and an eagle vision of what needs to happen, and sets you in the right direction.”
Interestingly, this is a family healing technique, yet it doesn’t involve younger children. That’s because when a parent or both parents are healed, the whole family can heal. Just one person can re-orient the dynamics of a family and return it to a sense of balance.
“In the workshop, healing can occur if you do the work yourself, if you are chosen as a representative, or if you just watch from the circle,” Stanfield said. “It really shifts the way you think and feel. It restores your ability to love.”

Editor’s Note: Toni Stanfield will be holding a Family Constellation Workshop at the Waterfront Inn at Four Mile and U.S. 31 North on Saturday, March 24, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Cost is $75. For more information, call her at Life Transitions Counseling at 935-4681.