Lecture Transcript: "Introduction to Systemic Counselling" for Parents and Teachers" (about 30 pages)
Lecture Transcript
“Introduction to Systemic Counselling
for Parents and Helping Professions”
by Dr. Günther Montag
Conference Themes
1. OUR SOURCES OF POWER
1.1. Meditation: Place of Peace
1.2. Introduction Round
1.3. Orders of Love
2. ENTANGLEMENTS AND SOLUTIONS
2.1. Missing Persons
2.2. Identification
2.3. Loss of Balance
2.4. Feelings which replace love
2.5. Incomplete maturity
2.6. Abuse
3. METHODS OF SYSTEM EXAMINATION AND THERAPY
3.1. Principal Attitude
3.2. Self Exploration
3.3. Representation in Single counselling
3.4. Constellations with Figures
3.5. Constellations with Representatives
4. STEPS TO HEALING
4.1. Notice the Entanglement
4.2. Replace the Mismatched
4.3. Accept the Solution
4.4. Forgive
4.5. Thank
4.6. Respect and LOVE
4.7. Let the Solution work
4.8. Final Meditation: Concentrate on the healing image
5. LITERATURE
1. OUR SOURCES OF POWER
1.1. Meditation: Place of Peace
Thank you very much for coming.
I am looking forward to learn to know each other.
I see your faces and the way you are dressed and are moving.
Everyone of you is unique and is a positive surprise for me.
Everyone of you came a special way here, which only she or he has gone.
Everyone of you has brought precious visions and thoughts with him or her.
The main attitude of our seminar is love, respect of all living and the trust in the work of healing visions to result in deep and remaining inner cure which will also be visible from outside.
We therefore shall direct our view on all, which will give us power, which will help, on the good things and thoughts we all, everyone of us, have already received. So I want to invite you to open your inner eyes to the level of visions.
I want to offer you to put a new vision of tranquillity, peace and love beside your visions and thoughts you already brought with you.
Imagine with your inner eye: there is a river, flowing quietly and smoothly.
See how the light of the sun is mirroring in it. See how the water is moving steadily.
Relax, shut your eyes if you want, and let the picture work within you.
For those, who come in later, I will repeat the most important thoughts several times.
Welcome, make yourselves comfortable. I invite you to see a vision of a stream of water flowing gently, in which the light of the sun is reflecting.
See plants, trees, maybe little houses at the riverside. See little clouds in the sky, and see animals that roam about near the river. See little and bigger birds coming from far to near and from near to far, filling the sky with life.
See little waves on the river, see how the sunlight reflects with golden shine. Imagine how the rich and everlasting abundance of water in this river is coming from afar, see how it is powerfully flowing on into another far land. Let your vision swift from bank to bank and from horizon to horizon and how it can find peace and rest.
Maybe you can imagine, somewhere within this view, or maybe just behind one of its horizons, there is a place where you are at rest and feel well. It might be far from or near to the river, maybe even quite near at the water. Imagine what belongs to this rest place, maybe a garden, plants, flowers, ways, maybe a rock or a bank of wood for sitting and resting, and maybe a house to be a home for you.
Let this vision of peace and protection grow inside you, more and more, part by part. See how it is being filled with colours, see how plants and light are filling the space.
Maybe it is good if a fence surrounds the place of rest, maybe there is a big or a little door, open or closed, as your feelings suggest it to you.
And now look for a place within that place, inside or outside the house, near to or far from the living lovely streaming river, friendly lighted by the warm sun or maybe preferably a bit in the shadow, where you want to be and can be and can settle down in a pleasant and relaxed mood.
Maybe you want to be here alone, but maybe you wish somebody here who respects you and understands you and wants to be together with you and whom you want to welcome here.
Can this be plants whose soul you can feel in a special way, it can be one or more animals which give you power and whose life breath you are feeling. Maybe these animals have their names already, maybe they will receive now names from you as signs of a special power.
You may also invite persons to be here with you, if you want. Persons you like to have with you here, who are also sharing your life in reality, or persons that live far from you and you would like to have with you, or maybe persons that do not live any more on this earth, but whose presence you would wish, and from whom power and love is flowing to you. Let them enter into your picture and give them a place as near to you as it is pleasant to your mind.
Let this healing vision work within you, the river full of streaming water with the sun shining golden on it, the place near the river where your soul found a home, the garden or the house where you are at home, the plants, the animals, and persons you welcome to be near to you.
Maybe there is still somebody more you are remembering now, maybe some of them are changing their position, as it is comfortable for your mind. It can be there are some persons or animals or plants coming you did not know until now, but you feel they belong to you. Maybe they have a name already, or maybe you find a name for them.
Enjoy this warm shining scene.
You are life, you love life, you live within life which is loving life.
Where there is love, the solution will be found soon.
Now please let this vision work within you some time. You will keep it and you will be able to come back to it later again and again. It is containing messages from the inner parts of your mind. Without words, but with pictures much more beautiful than words, they give you advice on things you have been searching for since so long time.
You came to rest at your peaceful place near the river, where the sun is reflected golden in the quiet waves, where there is your garden, maybe your house, where there are loving and pleasant plants, animals and men and women settling around you.
You feel how life and power are streaming upward from deep within you.
Now you may direct your view carefully into the direction the water of the river is flowing to, and you are seeing something which will enrich your life in future, for which your soul is waiting and which your soul is desiring.
It can be that you are just now seeing yourself going the first steps towards this new part of your life, and you may see some part of your future coming towards you friendly. Maybe it is only dim, fainted by the slight fog which ascends from the river. Maybe it is a bit hidden behind branches of plants which grow at the sides of the river. Maybe you can see only half of it behind a curve the river is flowing around. Just as much as you want to see, you see the new part of life you are going towards, and with the time it is becoming clearer, and its colours are becoming stronger.
Not only you alone are on your trip into the new land, which is life´s present to you in future. But also some of your companions are moving on with you – as slowly and as quietly as you like, and on that way which is best for your soul.
And as often as you want, you can look back thankfully or go back to the place of piece which is visible in your inner vision.
Let the vision go on doing its work, even while you are looking again into this room with your eyes, where we are sitting here. And while you are coming back into today's world and into this hour, your beautiful vision is remaining in the background and is warming you from inside.
Please open your eyes slowly and be there – welcome at the seminar on healing by imagination and on basics of systemic counselling.”
1.2. Introduction Round
These days we want to learn much on the way of self-experience, and you all may introduce yourselves shortly, and can share a part of what you have seen from within, so that we learn to know each other and get warm together.
Please say your name, I hope it is in order if we call each other by pre names, where do you come from, what you are doing, what brought you to this seminar, and – if you want – what pictures and which helpers have been near you in the last minutes.
1.3. Orders of Love
The fundamental of the systemic way of thinking is to see the human mind as a mirror of the family system.
Very often this kind of view helps to understand a child or a man or a woman and his / her "symptom" in an astonishing way.
There are different parts within each personality - they say, the famous "two souls in our breast”. Sometimes they are even more...
These can be seen as inner representations of important members of our family who have formed our character – but also as representatives of absent persons whom we have missed because they are in fact part of our families, and whom we honour in an unconscious way to balance the fact of them being excluded in reality.
The most important system, in which a human being has its place, is the original family.
By experience a knowledge has grown on regular orders, based on which families and other systems live, a kind of natural law after which every individual finds his place in the system.
It is not a “divine order", but – if talking in the language of the bible – a "law written into the hearts of men", something like a duty men feel within themselves. If they conduct their life after this order, they feel well in their system.
The main parts of this orders are:
BELONGING TO THE GROUP:
Everybody belongs to his/her the system(s) and has to be honoured.
One who has left his place (by death, by going away) has to be honoured.
Somebody from outside, on the cost of whom an advantage came to me or my system, also becomes part of the system in some way. (As an example, the real parents of a child which has been adopted, should be honoured. A stranger who saved my life has to be honoured.)
A person belongs to different systems at the same time, and has different roles in them. This causes conflicts sometimes, and – if no good solution is found – a “drama".
If someone, who has been excluded (by his own guilt or not) is “forgotten”, someone else feels his/her feelings and represents him. This is called identification. In most cases younger ones identify with older ones. So some hard destinies repeat again and again over generations.
In children, the other parent has to be honoured.
RANGE:
The former stands before the later within siblings, partners, workers in a company, and depending on age. Parents stand over children.
But the later system stands above the former in range: My own new family is more important than my original family, a later partnership with children stands above the former.
In a marriage the range is equal, but the roles are different: The woman follows the man, but the man serves the woman.
In organisations especially, range is also influenced by competence, work and effort. This may lift up the position of teachers, sponsors, adopting parents compared to the natural parents.
There is also a range for the “joker” - the external counsellor, the wise man (or woman), the oppositional, the prophet, the artist, who can give precious correcting informations to a system due to his view from outside.
One with higher range does not have something like overall command. But he has more responsibility, can and must meet more decisions, carries a heavier burden, has therefore also a right to get a compensation, e.g. by acknowledgement, also payment, honour and thanks.
BALANCE IN GIVING AND RECEIVING
There are more or less healthy ways of balance...
Who does not receive, can also not give, and the other way round. If I steal something, I can not enjoy it.
Who does bad, attracts bad. ("who takes the sword, will die by the sword.”)
There are two ways of balance - "good" and "bad":
Good side:
Answer good things with a little bit more good things to deepen a relation.
Answer good things with a little bit less good things to loosen a relation.
e.g. if a pen-pale relation falls asleep.
Bad side:
React on bad treatment with a bit less bad treatment e.g. to finish a hate relation or a fight. If you react on bad things with more bad things, this will cause war. There is also a hidden bad reaction on bad behaviour by using the higher moral stand in relations between victims and aggressors!
There are two directions of love and balance – vertical and horizontal:
Horizontal, sidewards, on one level, symmetric:
among siblings, in friendship, partnership, marriage, business life, politics.
Vertical, between different levels, asymmetric:
Parents love their children, which is an asymmetrical way of giving and receiving: Parents give love and receive honour. This way of balance could be better named a flow, like water flows from up to down. As a rule, parents give all they can give.
This vertical flow also happens partially among younger and older siblings, teachers and students, chiefs and employees.
The receivers` adequate reaction and compensation is to accept love, care and protection, to pass this on to the next generation or level, and to give back honour and thanks to the parents – as a partial compensation to them. It is good to take all the parents give us, to accept it (and say: It is enough) and make something good out of it.
So we say, parents are big and children are small.
If somebody has no children, or if the children are grown up: There are some meaningful ways of passing on the love we have received, like social work, teaching, helping, voluntary work, replacing missing parents for others, protection of nature and animals, art, music, work for relief organisations, prayer, church, “building new houses for the tribe”.
For believers: “Only what we have received from God in silence, we can pass on to others.”, "He who can kneel down before God, can stand before men.”
"Guilt": If the balance is not complete, there is a feeling of guilt. This can also be compared to the economic world. It is relative, there is no absolute guilt, no absolute evil! This guilt can be seen like a voltage or a tension or a difference in ground level, which calls for balance.
If on some level an adequate compensation or flow does not take place, others may want to take over this duty. Grand-parents can help parents in caring for the children and add what is missing.
If a balance is not possible, this unresolved-resolved tension can cause feelings of aversion, which initiate a movement of separation. This is the natural way how growing up children go out of their parents` house, which is sometimes accompanied by turbulences.
There is also a necessary balance with persons, plants, animals and the nature outside of our system!
If we have robbed nature, animals, other peoples, the planet, our not-yet born children and grand-children in an inadequate way and do not balance it, one of us could take over the feelings of the victims, become a representative of the victims and try a balance which changed roles...
See the “hippie” movement, representing the Red Indians, in America, see the efforts to help Africa, or also to learn from and imitate and honour San and !Kung people in Africa, as a reaction on their sufferings caused by the white peoples.
We only borrowed the earth from our children.
WAVES OF MATURATION FROM CHILDHOOD TO ADULT AGE
The flow of love also includes acceptance, guidance, showing limits, being a good example, giving a chance to gender-adapted identification.
With the steady flow of love children mature, like a plant matures best by a steady flow of sunlight and nutrients and water. Maturation comes in waves, which look differently for men and women, in which there is a preference to one of both parents for some time.
Boys: mother -> father
Girls: mother -> father -> mother
After successful acceptance and identification there will be a successful disentanglement, which is of basic importance for a self-sufficient life and an own new family.
2. ENTANGLEMENTS AND SOLUTIONS
2.1. Missing Persons
If there are deficits in a personality, which normally also means: in a family, like missing parental love, warmth, care, communication, it may be supposed that in fact not “something is missing” but “somebody is missing”.
Sometimes we see this directly in family constellations, even sometimes also in constellations with figures. Sometimes the client just forgets to post that person. Sometimes we see that somebody, for example a parent, is there with his body, but not emotionally. The figure or the representative looks away from his children in this case. Often he or she looks backward in the time line. Sometimes we find a series of such backward-looking persons, this may be a hint on a missing person or a very painful event some generations earlier.
In reality people can be missing through severe somatic or mental disease, frequent accidents, early death, addiction or extreme religiosity with longing for another world. (In families with many suicides, there are also often many priests or monks and nuns.)
The cure consists in to see, honour, thank and accept the missing person, who has to be honoured by an own representative, of course, in a constellation with real persons.
2.2. Identification
If somebody in a family has been excluded or "forgotten", or if a former partner of one of the parents has not been acknowledged or honoured, or has even been neglected, regularly at least one of the children represents and is identified with this person, which means, he or she feels the feelings, lives the life and repeats the fate of that person. So some hard destinies are repeated over and over for generations.
If in a system one or both parents do not take their place, and so the flow of love is cut off or weakened, somebody else tries to replace that parent. Often this is done by children who feel the feelings of missing, ill or absent fathers or mothers or grand-parents and take over their roles: parentification as a special case of identification.
If a child not only takes over the role of a parent for its siblings, but also the role of a partner for the other parent, we call this triangulation. In most cases this role fits to the child's gender (we say “mother's son” or “father's daughter”), sometimes there is also cross-gender identification, which can lead to homosexuality.
Paranoia, leading to loss of reality in severe cases, can be understood as a form of very deep or even multiple identification.
A cure consists in going the erroneous steps back and so correcting the erroneous constellation.
What we have taken over from this person “by mistake” - may it be a fate, a wish, a guilt, a plan, but also a right – we have to give back to him by symbolic actions or words. We introduce each other and say who we really are:
"You are my grandfather. I am only your little grandson. I thank you for my life. But I let your guilt with you. I expect from you to bear your fate.”
2.3. Lack of Balance
A weaker, less severe form of exclusion is a conscious or unconscious deficit in compensation, or to neglect its necessity. This compensation could be appreciation, but also material things.
Sometimes the mentioned neglect can cause feelings of hate as an inner defence against the feelings of guilt: “What did you do him so that you are so angry on him?” - often this happens after a frivolous separation.
Also lack of compensation towards a whole group can work like this: Feelings of guilt after denying a service to the community or tax fraud.
Can this also explain the fear of desertion in soldiers, and their sacrifices in wars on both sides?
If, for example, children try to do the compensation instead of their parents who refused to do so, and take on themselves a fate, a task, a suffering, a disease, a guilt, a right or the death of a parent or grand-parent, this is an entanglement.
The cure happens through fulfilling the compensation, but in a “good”, wise, possible way, by “seeing” instead of “blind” love. You can not give in to all claims of the other literally, but you can look for a wise and adequate substitution.
Examples:
Care for old parents:
You can pay others for caring for them, if you can not care for them yourself. “I care for you as it is right.”
Passive help to die, combined with emotional fellowship, might be a better way than being trapped in the progress-trap of modern mechanical medicine.
Civil service instead of military service or desertion.
Work for human rights instead of obeying a dictator.
Trick senseless bureaucratic rules for the sake of a good thing instead of serving the paper tiger.
2.4. Feelings which replace love
The mentioned entanglements block the vertical stream of love from the parents to the children. It is like children building a dam inside themselves to keep off the love from them.
This behaviour is transferred on friendships and partnerships, can break them and cause schematic repetitions of the same drama again and again.
The root of this mess is not that there is or was no love, but: We did not accept the love that was there.
Our feelings towards other beings can be either love or inhibited, transformed, hidden, distorted, armoured, barricaded, obstructed, blocked love, attitudes of defence against love.
In old times (Thanks God they are passing by) in psychotherapy we thought to be the highest wisdom to dig out the unconscious rage, and we hoped to set people free by setting free their aggression. Sometimes this helps a bit, but it is not yet the cure.
The most important and basic question is: “Where is the love?” or also “Where did the love hide away?”
All feelings can be explained through love.
There are different levels of feelings, one laid upon the other.
The first feelings are the feelings most within.
But to bear something unpleasant, we wrap a box, like an armour plate, around the pain. And around this armour plate one more and one more....
Is this "the dark side of The Force" ?
top:
---->
materialism, collective paranoia, sects, ideologies ("time spirit, Zeitgeist"),
war ...
new productions of old dramas:
familiar burdens
self injuries, also some “accidents", somatic disease
psychosomatic diseases or fear of diseases
(expression of ... in the body language, or: feeling with the body)
eating disorders, addictions (looking for...)
mania (defence of depression)
depression (longing for death, or exhaustion of...)
compulsion neuroses (defence of aggression or fear)
aggression, over-activism, rage (defence of the feelings below)
shame, fear (of the feelings below)
grief (= blocked love)
guilt (= kept-back love)
love
<----
down
top: "secondary"
down: "primary"
top: "chronic"
down: "acute"
top: "artificial"
down: "true"
top: "superficial"
down: "deep"
top: "petrified"
down: "soft"
top: "cold"
down: "warm"
top: "materialized"
down: "spirit & energy"
top: nameless, with many names, uncertain, incomprehensible, "mad", displaced
down: concrete. definitive, specific, with one name
top: consequence or defence (= trial to avoid a consequence)
down: reason
Not on “fear”: It could also be ranged more on top, as an attempted defence of the next-deeper level, something like a background-colour, denser to the top, smoother downward.
The quotation from one of the letters of St. John fits here: Fear does not match with love, but complete love drives fear away.”
We go wrong if we search too long for solutions on the top levels only.
Who does not know the children's game “hot-cold”?
Examples for erroneous trials in the “cold” area: Trying to improve the world through some “monisms” as racism, communism, munism, and also religious extreme salvation messages. Cold war. Helplessness and boredom of the so-called “rational” persons. Failure of sorts of only-individual psychotherapy, “self-realisation”, trial to explain mind on neuronal transmitter level only in psychiatry and medicine in general: The action of drugs is only understood in a very small part!
We see clearer if we put our heads out of the clouds and get into the deeper levels.
The reason of fear, rage towards a certain person (and – by transmission – many persons) and also the reason of the many non--personal and seemingly reasonless feelings is an interrupted flow of love.
This can be compared to with a picture from nature: A dam blocks a river, and causes drought beyond it.
Love is one of the strongest powers in universe, as strong as death, and blocked or imprisoned love can work as disastrously as death. Maybe this quotation from Salomon's song of love means something like this:
“Love is a flame of the Lord, so that even great floods of water can not drown it. Love is strong like death, inevitable like the realm of the dead...”
Symbol actions and words in the solution constellations can help to recognize and set free this slopped love, can bring the original direction of this love into consciousness, can complete the interrupted motion towards the loved person.
Little meditation:
"I see a little child, standing and running back and forth in front of a mighty fortress with walls and towers. In the walls there are several little and big doors, all of them closed. The child knocks and looks on several of the doors shortly, no one opens, again it is running back and forth. Then it walks some steps back from the walls, gets quiet and tries to get an overview. There it sees a door which is open. A light is shining out of it. The door opens to a yard. There a fire is burning. There it can warm itself up and finds friends and happiness.”
2.5. Incomplete maturation
If significant relatives are missing, or if there is an unnatural position towards them (like identification), through the interrupted flow of love maturation can not be completed.
A healthy maturation proceeds in phases or waves, which are different for men and women. These phases include the flow of love, acceptance of this love, a certain natural degree of identification and learning from the example.
Boys:
mother -> father
Girls:
mother -> father -> mother
If this maturation is interrupted, this can happen:
Before completion of the first phase:
"Early distortion" with weakness of the “I”, schizoid character, asceticism, weakness of social contacts due to a fear of others coming too near, because of a fear of new violation.
Contrarily, if development stopped in an early symbiotic phase with the mother, there can be a weakness in distancing oneself from others.
Before completion of the second phase:
Weakness, emptiness, addiction
Notes on addiction:
Addicts are often fatherless persons. There is a theory: the mother did not allow the child to accept the flow of love from the father. As a balance (or also revenge ?) the child tries to accept (or demand) the missing flow too much. Later the mother is replaced by other persons institutions and subjects with motherly features like mother church, Alma mater, mother hospital, mother medicine, mother society, mother drug, mother game-hall, mother prison...
But the father is still looked for in an unconscious way: By imitating the real father, which repeats the “bad” characters of the fathers in the sons. Also God-searchers are very often father-searchers.
For cure therefore fatherly figures are of advantage as therapists for addicted people.
There are gender-specific differences:
"Mother's Daughter": A daughter that remains with her mother: She remains a little girl, the female features develop scarcely. She becomes less attractive on men, is sometimes felt as "neutral". If the father has to be replaced, the male side grows stronger -> there is not so much need felt for a man, even she might look down on men. Partner's role to mother, rivalry towards father. Avoidance (-> panic), psychosomatic disease. self-punishment by failure, bad luck and disaster.
"Mother's Son": A son who remains with his mother: He remains a little boy, his masculine features develop weakly. Danger: Often he takes a role to be partner substitute for his mother, his male features grow weakly -> he does not become fatherly (although he may become a father...) Some of his female characters might develop more than usual Might impress ladies by his charms, but there might be hidden feelings of revenge against women -> unhappy searching in, and maybe changes of female partners (because this search is mixed with a search for a mother or maybe a longing for being young again and maybe a wish to be a woman) Feelings of revenge or rivalry to his father, transferred to other men -> he might be looked down upon or be disliked as a rival by other men. Self-punishment by failure, bad luck and disaster.
For girls only: Before completion of the third phase: "Father's daughter" A girl whose development became stuck in the near-to-father phase, the third wave was missing. Danger: Often she takes a role to be partner substitute for her father, she is girlish, attractive on men, sometimes “erotic”, but her female features of motherhood grow weakly (although she may become a mother...) Some of her male characters might develop more than usual She might impress men by her flirting behaviour, but there might be hidden feelings of revenge against men -> unhappy searching in, and maybe changes of male partners (because this search is mixed with a search for a father or maybe a wish to stay young forever or even a wish to be a man) Feelings of revenge or rivalry to her mother, transferred to other women -> she might be looked down upon or disliked as a rival by other women. Self-punishment by failure, bad luck and disaster.
Healing imaginations:
"ideal parents" see the good powers in the real parents" or (more difficult, but more helpful) see both parents, as they are, with all their powers.
Symbolic actions:
Train to perceive the parents by representing him by things, figures, pictures, candles, persons. Honour the parents and their position of first range by bowing before them, kneeling down, opening your hands, which all could be compared with a position of prayer. Continue the interrupted motion towards your parents by approaching and embracing them.
Healing words:
"I have no rights. My parents have given my life to me."
"You are my mother / father. I am only your little child (son, daughter)."
"You both are my parents. For me, you are together."
"You give, I accept."
"You did all you could for me. What is missing, I get somewhere else."
2.6. Abuse:
There are severe forms of personality splitting as a consequence of severe neglect or physical and mental abuse.
I try to explain these moods as an extreme form of identification.
Not only what the offender, a stranger or someone close related, has done, is experienced as traumatic. In many cases the parents` way of looking away, not taking the victim serious, saying nothing is felt as the more severe trauma.
Sometimes, for an example in case of sexual abuse of daughters by fathers, mothers allow it or even make the abuse possible to protect themselves.
In children, the only form of defence is denial and isolation, what the psychoanalytic language calls “primitive defence mechanisms”. The offender is excluded of the family picture by the victim. This can be seen in abused children's statements like “This man is not my father.” or “I have no father.”
On the other hand another layer of the child's mind feels the natural longing for the father. This layer wants to balance the father's absence by identification with him – but this layer works unconsciously, as the rest of the person, other layer can not bear it: The one who caused all the terror has to be kept outside!
So there is an unconscious identification.
This explains, why victims of abuse look like split (the so-called "emotional unstable personality" or "Borderline-personality disorder”), why they treat themselves badly, injure or abuse themselves. And it explains why they (or parts oft their minds) feel the offenders` feelings, protect them, they stage repetitions of the abuse scenario again and again, they might even become abusers themselves in some cases: "Identification with the aggressor".
Hellinger suggested solution sentences, which are criticised because they might hurt (and be felt like abuse), and therefore should be used carefully:
To the offender:
"A little bit I am like you"
(or, weaker) "A little bit I do it like you, but also a bit different"
and, acknowledging the strong bond to him:
“Something binds us together”
To somebody who tolerated the abuse and did not help:
"I do it with love to you"
3. METHODS OF SYSTEM EXAMINATION AND THERAPY
3.1. Principal Attitude
The main attitude is:
Learn,
without fear,
without intention,
accept what is there,
look on the solution.
Learn:
The wisdom of the Wise is the attitude of a learning child.
"The wise man is ready to listen"
"Be quick to hear, slow to talk, slow to rage”
The difference between a professor and a student?
The professor has looked more things up.
King Salomon was asked for a wish – one of might, riches or wisdom. He decided for wisdom and received the two others as wage for his good decision. So “might” (therapeutic influence!) is one of the side-effects of wisdom! And wisdom comes through respectful learning.
I try to think of every new patient in my practise: "he / she is unique, special, new, as he / she is, what can I learn from him / her?"
What do we want to learn? What helps! So the main attitude is resource-oriented, looking on the sources of power, and solution-oriented. Not, like maybe it was tradition in some forms of therapy, dig out everything, but: Dig out, what necessary, in order to transform it. While digging, ask yourself: “What helps?”
If there is severe mental injury, wait with digging until enough power is there: Real and mental helpers, also healthy “i's” in multiple personality, real and imaginary safe places, also for the evil: a “safe”, a vision for the treasure of the enemy.
You can compare this attitude with the relation between physiology and pathology: The former comes first in medical studies. Admire the complicated functions of the healthy body before you try to understand its disturbances.
Without fear:
This does NOT mean, not to have fear, as everybody has some fears! It means: Start to act in spite of your fear. Without following (giving in) your fear. Look with courage on the hidden, neglected, swept-under-the-carpet things and talk about them. Family therapy and – constellations begin with the fear “What could come out of it” or might be avoided because of this fear.
Also live with the fear to make mistakes. We make mistakes. Be ready to correct them. Verify presumptions.
Stanley did like this: “Mr. Livingstone, I presume?”
Confess if something remains unclear. Also try solutions and discard them if wrong. Try them on like clothes or shoes and walk some steps with them. Also allow the fear not to be able to clear everything. Be content with the part of truth which is necessary for the solution.
Without intention:
Want nothing. Be the lawyer of Mr. No-Change. Do not fathom “why” it is so, be modest and try only to see how it is. Do not help at once, bear the tension for some while, only look.
Abstain from voting, from appraisals, ideologies, exaggerated moralising, it can be poison like religious fanaticism. “In families good and bad is always the other way round as it is said”. Adjectives can implement appraisals, so better try to think and describe in views, scenes, things that happened, important biographical facts. Ask “what did he do?” instead of “how was he?”
Abstain from leading, controlling, patronizing, but watch the self-regulating and self-healing powers of the system.
Also do not exaggerate the systemic thinking and explanations!
“Some people look for what is behind the things, until they do not see the things any more!”
Accept what is there:
Ask for what your patient wants.
Start working with what can be seen and felt “on top”, with the leading dynamics.
The first part of the “solution” - and sometimes the most important – is to understand what powers are working, and the acceptance, which is easier if things could be understood.
This statement works around the "resistance", with which I mean the famous “yes, but...” of some “victims by tradition” who are used to their basic depressive feeling and fear changes, so they punish the helper by pressing the “postmarked” (“postmarked”) stamp on the helper's good advices....
So it is also a kind of “paradoxical intervention” to think about the existing, common-practised or tried solutions. Also to think them through to the end, which can also be death.
Look at what is there and bow before it.
Also the decision “my suffering is easier than the solution" has to be talked about – although it may shock us.
Then this decision needs not be forever.
But it helps the helper in stepping back, and it helps the learner to look for another view.
Look at the solution:
This is one more way to “accept what is there”:
there is a solution! Accept it!
For example – there was someone missing in you family, or he wast just missing for you – so go and phone him and write to him and think about him, or light a candle for him at his grave or on your table.
Also express thank and appreciation for a solution or help you have received.
This also means: Let the solution do its work!
After a therapy session or family constellation: Give room to the little plant, to the new awoke part of your life, the discovered seedling of wisdom, so that it can grow. Without disturbing its shallow roots...
3.2. Self Exploration
By thinking about yourself, through experiences you make by listening, reading and your own counselling work you explore your mind. While reading or hearing these sentences you are exploring yourself. In a case conference you compare the cases` fate with your own and find common and different things. In a family constellation everyone, representative or watcher, is busy comparing his and his system's constellation with the showed ones. Even while reading a biography or a novel, most of which are based on biographic data, you listen into yourself and find resonance. So looking into other persons life is both straining and interesting. inter-esse = being with them.
3.3. Representation in Single counselling
Every therapist enters his client's family system's roles – consciously or not. He feels them “in his belly”, intuitively, identifies in turns with them, sometimes stronger than with the client actually present, especially if the client is excluding someone. And he or she reacts accordingly, which may cause conflicts sometimes.
Many therapists use this phenomenon in purpose. They ask the client to link certain places in the room, certain chairs or figures on the table with roles of certain persons in his system, or with wishes or powers or properties of himself, which might themselves be mirrors of other persons. They ask the client to stand or sit
in sequence on the different places and explore their own feelings hereby. Or they go themselves to the different “points of view” and play the roles of the quarrelling different souls in their client's breast. So client and counsellor become representatives.
3.4. Constellations with Figures
Often it can help to see things from above like a bird. In my single therapies, the clients can represent their family with little figures. This might be easier as with real persons for first. The figures help to get an overview and make it easier to feel inside the different actors one by one.
An other way is to represent persons by little carpets, sheets of paper or chairs to sit or stand on. Therapist and client can change their positions and feel inside the persons represented by the different positions.
3.5. Constellations with Representatives
These are the real “family constellations”. You can set up your original family, the present family, a couple, interesting situations among friends, at work, in the management or in politics. Also counsellors can do a constellation of their clients` problems.
The “learner”, who wants to clear an item, should describe his problem with few words. Work at one theme only at one time. (Sometimes several constellations
are necessary after some time intervals). Please try to stay quiet, concentrated, serious and to respect all involved persons. Too many informations would block the brain and make empathy more difficult. Often the first which is said is the most important, like the first which is dreamt and remembered in a dream. After this there might come speculation, defence or insufficient attempts of solutions.
The learner chooses representatives from the other participants of the seminar. He or she explains their role with few words, takes them by the hand or by the shoulders and leads them to a place in the room where they should place themselves. Also a symptom, an important thing, a house, a project, a plan, a way of decision, a feeling, a property, a group like a nation, a tribe, a church, a company, the death or God (or the view like God is) could be represented.
All should empathize into their position and their relation to the others. Especially perceptions in the body or the wish to change ones position or to go away should be noticed. Have the courage to tell even strange sensations or thoughts.
Each family seems to have a field of force, a collective consciousness, which implies emotion and information. Even the dead are present in this field.
Please do not give long comments on other's sayings, no explanations, speeches, no scenes, no theatre, but just simple concentrated words, “I-messages”.
The seminar leader might ask questions and try changes of the constellation. Step by step we try to find a solution where every participant feels well.
The results have be worked up, completed by healing symbols and words.
Between several constellations there might be have relaxing meditations and short rounds where everybody can express himself.
4. STEPS OF HEALING
The aim of systemic therapy is healing and solution, so we do not stay too much at the painful re-experience of the traumatic events, but we look for the hidden love in the system and so we find a source of power to live on.
Where there is the love, there is the solution. Compare it with the hot-cold game. Near to the love it is “hot”. (Sometimes this can really be felt in the body, especially in some cases of hidden sexual love!). Love shows the way to solution.
Instead of the present solutions, tried out of “blind" love, a better, “seeing” one should be tried, where all are seen.
In a good solution
- everyone gives back what he had taken on himself in an overbearing way
- the "orders of Love" are respected
- everyone in the system feels well in his place
- everyone finds a way fitting for him
- everyone only bears his own fate
- everyone bears his own guilt or freedom of guilt
If this is found, we try to get the blocked love flowing again – first in inner visions, then it will have an effect on real life.
Sometimes the solution needs several steps to be worked out completely. Sometimes there might be different solutions, sometimes none.
Then we have to be satisfied with a new understanding of what happened. But by knowing the roots and the sense and the way love is expressed herein, also a heavy burden can be carried easier.
On the way to solution, we do the following steps:
4.1. Notice the Entanglement
Visual, auditive, kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory (VAKOG),
see, hear, feel, smell, taste,
- what is the problem
- what is missing
- who is missing
This perception (and description) with all senses is a thought of NLP. The client's preferred quality of sensing and thinking should be considered here.
In systemic thinking properties of character are not so much considered as the real things that really happen. We try to give a name and a picture and a sound and a taste and a smell to a person. This fits more to our brain which thinks in pictures. We think in a language like the Chinese which is a picture language. So “who is missing” instead of “what is missing”.
To perceive the missing or displaced person starts with the non-emotional part of the mind very often in us cognitive animals. One step more is to feel into that person and his situation. How would I feel if I were he or she, if the would hate me or close me out, or nobody would remember me, while I am existing?
This transition from cognition to emotion can be supported by sentences like these, maybe quite sober, objectively in the beginning:
"You are my grandfather. You killed in the war. You have been lost in the war."
Then we accept the original emotional situation, one of entanglement or fixation I suppose, so we use “entanglement sentences” to describe it on the emotional layer in short simple words, which is the premise for a later solution:
"I like to do it for you, Mother"
"Rather I (go, die) than you”"
"I am like you"
"I bear your fate"
"I feel what you felt"
"I do it like you"
A part of the solution – sometimes the whole solution – is to accept and cope with the existing. By an improved understanding it is easier to bear a hard fate, even to prepare for death, if it has to be.
There is a cleavage between to dare a change of attitude and to live on as hitherto. Here some decide “suffering is easier than a solution”. We have to talk about this. Just then, if we talk about this to be final, it does not need to be final. As a paradox intervention we can walk through the present solution or trial up to its bitter end, as an example death, or until another solution shines up.
By this we work around the resistance of “yes, but...”, which are used by some depressive patient who is used to his negative basic feeling and his lamenting and fears any change, who punishes the helper by devalued his good advice.
Some therapy ways, like psychoanalysis, end here and let it over to the client to arrange his live new with the new findings. "Leave him / her alone in a heap of fragments” or "Trust on the self-healing powers" ?
Systemic healing of inner visions goes on here: New healing visions with a visible solution are placed beside tho present ones of entanglements.
4.2. Replace the Mismatched
To re-place means to lead persons from the wrong to the right place. It means to replace the wrong person by the right one. For example, to bring a child back on the child's place and to put the father or mother to the father's or mother's place.
After these movements in the constellation, again a moment of silence and contemplation is indicated.
If parents are dead already, this first step of replacement will help honouring them, and then saying good-bye to them. A second step, is letting them step back to acknowledge the fact of them having died.
Some therapies offer a solution above or instead of this correction of mismatches: They introduce new helpful persons.
Example: The parents missed or failed. I replace them by ideal new parents. This can be an inner view of such parents, real surrogate persons in a therapeutic
situation, real persons in real life (re-parenting), spiritual beings like God or the spirit of a dead with whom contact is felt.
It is also a kind of replacement of the missing, if one divides mankind into good and bad men, breaks his connection to the Bad and expects great things from the Good. This way is used to protect oneself from being flooded with the terrible reality. But it is dangerous, as the putative “Good” can also disappoint soon.
Arguments against this over-done way of replacement: E.g. the own parents are quoted down in comparison to the surrogate parents. So you cut off the branch you are sitting on. You damage the root that feeds you. It makes it difficult to accept good from the own parents. So there comes a tendency to punish the surrogate-parents for their stand above the own parents, as seen often in adopted or foster-children.
So an over-done replacement is maybe a step before bearing of reality becomes possible.
4.3. Accept the Solution
Maybe at first we can not understand a new perception, maybe at first we refuse to see it, we impeach the fate or the persons involved. But it is already possible to appreciate, which means to become restful before what happened, let it work in us, compared to the silence minute in a memorial ceremony or beside a grave. By acceptance I mean a deepened perception or a way of seeing with the heart.
To accept especially the parents, means to accept all they give, to say “it is enough”, to accept it at the price they have paid, and at the price we have to pay for it, and to make something good out of it, to their honour.
There are healing sentences which support this acceptance. They may be attached after entanglement sentences. They might already show an alternative. They clear and make quiet. They work hypnotic.
"There is room for you in my heart."
"You went away and gave room for me."
"You had a hard fate, I know"
"I see, it was hard to bear for you."
"You are big, I am little."
"You are the first, I am the second."
"You give, I take."
"I am only your little child."
“I take all you gave me, at the price you paid,
and at the price I have to pay for it.”
“What you gave me, is enough for me.”
“I make something good out of it, to honour you.”
But we are allowed also to respect ourselves. we have to build a bridge between perception and acceptance of the others, and developing ourselves.
"A bit I am like you - but also a bit different."
"I do it like you – but also a bit different."
"I care for you as it is right."
If the loved relative is dead already:
Lay down beside the dead, bow before him, light a candle for him to appreciate the fact of his death.
"I stay a bit, then I will also come."
"Please look friendly on me, while I am still staying a bit."
"Please give me your blessing, if I succeed in what you could not do."
4.4. Forgive
There are different meanings of this word circulating:
forgive <--> pardon:
To forgive means not to value a real guilt, whereas to pardon is to say, there is no guilt. Deficits, mostly of the parents, are felt as a guilt, so to pardon might be too superficial.
So, to forgive depends on a guilt which is real to us.
But if we consider that life is a present, there is no guilt remaining, the good is more than any deficit. So there is nothing to forgive.
But another, helpful definition of “forgive” is “not to be unhappy any more because of him / her” (John & Paula Sandfords` books)
4.5. Thank
If this insight “Everything is a present” came through, thank is the logical consequence.
After the phases of denial, rebellion, rejection, rage, grief we should think and ask ourselves: Does, what is as it is, has a sense for me? Does it work something good in me and my children? What does it teach me?”
Example mediation story:
“An evil man wanted to destroy a young palm and clamped a stone into its crown. After years he came back. The most beautiful palm of the little forest bows its crown before him and says: I want to thank you. Your burden made me strong.”
Thank brings us back from wavering in the sky, down to Mother Earth, so that we can run again on our own feet with our own power.
If the displaced is back in its place, e.g. if the learning person can see him- / herself in the accepting position again, and can see the parents in the giving position, there comes a feeling of having accepted more than what can be paid back. As a compensation, we want to thank.
"You gave me my life."
"I make something good out of it, to honour you, to remember you."
"What you gave me, I am passing on."
Also here we can combine 2 recognitions, we join the accepting role with the active role:
"You gave my life to me. What I still need, I get somewhere else."
"You gave me the power to make it a bit different / better than you."
4.6. Respect and Love
To accept means to let something come near to me, to allow physical closeness. This can resolve also physical, materialized, strains, tensions, petrification.
It is wonderful if this last step of healing succeeds – even if it takes years and might be interrupted by back falls.
The "pathetic" language of the solution phrases, which sounds sometimes “old-fashioned”, acts on deeper (“older”) levels of our subconscious.
(Compare this to the languages of religious books...)
"I am your little child."
"My mum"
"My dad"
"I love you"
4.7. Let the solution work
We heal ourselves by replacing old visions by new, by letting new visions shining brighter than the old ones, or by setting new visions at the side of old ones, or by looking at the present visions from another side to make our view complete.
It could be compared with re-writing history by adding new facts, by removing or correcting old wrong comments.
But, as we gain power, we also heal ourselves by accepting all, also the dark side of life.
“The world is alright, as it is – with its light sides and its terrible sides.”
The symbolic actions and movements which we use in the family constellations (like changes of position in the room, coming nearer, looking at someone, bowing before someone, laying or sitting down beside someone, embracing, handing over something) work back on our emotions and help to release a stream of emotion into flowing again. The actions should be honest – or become more and more honest by practise – and come more and more from inside.
And, like all we learn, they may be repeated as a daily exercise.
This is a correcting emotional new-experience, an enrichment of the memory treasure in our memory of feelings.
After taking part in a systemic therapy session or family constellation, the new visions are taken home and work on in the participants.
Maybe you do not need to talk about it with others at all, maybe yo do not have to do any change of behaviour by force. You go back into your family or your system where you belong to, and your new knowledge on your correct place in the group will result in a new powerful radiation of mental energy, which will influence other persons in a positive way and make them react different.
One could also say, systemic therapy is like a puzzle with living parts: There was one part clamped in the wrong place. Now it found its new place, so it gives the old wrong place free, other parts will find their place much easier now, and so on.
Maybe there are more therapy sessions necessary, but also have the courage to have a therapy break and give the little new plant peace to grow!
Psychosomatic or somatic diseases may be cured or released.
But, as always in honest medicine, also this method can not promise a miracle-healing at once.
But the widened way of perception by itself can improve your general state and prevent diseases, which is de meaning of “good medicine” in the Red Indian culture.
Distance and wisdom will improve your overview and your good humour.
4.8. Final Meditation: Deepen the healing Vision
At the end I would like to invite you once more on an imagination trip...
I invite you to stand and admire the things and pictures and persons which became great within your mind in the last days and hours.
Imagine yourself as a small child, and you see a person standing before you, who has given you much, it can be your mother or father, grandfather, grandmother, or whoever is important for you now.
I will formulate the following thoughts for "mum", "dad", or, if I mean both, “the parents". Use for yourself the names you used as you were small and speak the words silently with me.
Dear mum
you gave my life to me
I grew inside you as I was small
I was a little point
you were around me,
you fed me,
power flowed from you to me,
you struggled for me,
there were adverse powers,
but it worked out for good.
You brought me to the world.
You gave me milk, in your way,
you went through shadow,
you went on,
you cared for me,
as best as you could.
you tried hard to do it well,
you made it well,
as you did it, it was good.
I am there
I am your little child
I honour you
Please look friendly on me
if I stay a bit
and even if I do what you could not do.
Dear dad
you gave my life to me
I grew from a seed of you
you wanted me to become me
there was a male power inside you which wanted me to become me
you struggled for me,
there were adverse powers,
but it worked out for good.
you brought me on my way
you gave me power
you went through shadow,
you went on,
you cared for me,
as best as you could.
you tried hard to do it well,
you made it well,
as you did it, it was good.
I am there
I am your little child
I honour you
Please look friendly on me
if I stay a bit
and even if I do what you could not do.
Dear mum and dad,
Now I see you both,
my mum and my dad,
for me you are together.
You came together with love
You together gave me life.
I am your little child.
I feel your love flowing
from top to down,
you are big, I am small
you give, I take,
I breath in love
and I breath out and come nearer to you
I become full
and come to peace.
You cared for me
you were there for me
it worked out for good
I thank you
Please look friendly on me
if I stay a bit
and even if I do what you could not do.
Now I see behind you
those who gave your life to you
and those who helped you caring for me
and those who also cared for me
grandmas, grandpas, and maybe others,
you cared for me together,
you helped each other,
I thank you all,
I honour you.
Now I look and see
persons I had confused,
maybe even confused with myself
I felt your feelings
and lived your life
and carried your burden
for some time.
Everything has its time.
you dear confused
can it be you learned to love the confusion a bit?
And I also learned to love the confusion a bit
and got used to it.
Now I learned something a bit
and know who you are and where you belong
and whose children you are and whose parents
and whose brothers and whose sisters
and whose partners at what time,
and everything has its time.
Now I learned something a bit
and know who I am and where I belong
and whose child I am and whose parent
and whose brother or sister
and whose partner I was at what time,
and whose partner I am now,
and everything has its time.
And you are now for me what you really are
and I am only me.
And I take you friendly by your hand
and lead you back to your place
and give you your place back
and give you your fate back
and give you your guilt back
and give you your rights back
and expect you to carry it yourself.
But you have a place within my heart
and I will not forget you.
My brothers and sisters
Besides me I see you all my brothers and sisters
all in a row
maybe like pipes of an organ
maybe a great organ
maybe a little one
maybe I am the only pipe
but I am ripe.
Maybe there are some other children in my picture
I played as a child with you
I saw you from the window
you were at school with me
I thank you for the beautiful time
and for all I learned from you and with you.
Now I look to my side
and see the beings that accompany me now
whom I love
and who love me
maybe the one or the other
whom I love in a very special way
with whom I share my life....
I thank you
that I can love you
and learn love with you
may I introduce you one to another...
I see those
to whom I have caused pain
with whom I made mistakes while learning,
with whom I fought,
who had to give room to me
I will try to compensate it
if I can
Some guilt will remain.
And I see those who caused me pain
Because I am also guilty
I am a bit like you.
And now I turn round and look
at those
whom I have given on life
and to whom I still will give on life
my children
my grandchildren
my grand-grandchildren
and so on
my students
my trainees
my patients, clients, customers,
my friends whom I gave an advice
or those who like learning and will read my books.
My dear parents
what you gave me
I give on.
Thank you for all you gave me
and for the power to pass it on
or to transform it and pass it on.
Please look friendly on me
if I go on
and pass it on.
RECOMMENDED LITERATURE:
see the English section of
www.hellinger.com.