Here are some stories of constellations that I have permission to share. I hope they help give you a sense of the work.

Story 1.

FEELING LONELY

I worked with a young woman who felt very lonely. She also wanted to feel more feminine—her parents had dressed her in very boyish way when she was growing up. We talked for several minutes. I asked how many siblings she had. The answer was one older sister. Something she said prompted me to ask if there had been any children who had died. She hesitated and said yes, her mother had an abortion before she married her father, and there had been a stillborn baby born before her that no one talked about. She knew because she had stumbled across a document about the child.

I suggested she say to that child, “You are my sibling. You died and I lived.” She cried quite intensely but briefly and then felt much lighter. She said she felt great love for her older sibling who had died.

I suggested she say out loud, “I am the fourth child from my mother and the third child from my father.” It was hard to do because it was such a codeswitch from seeing herself as the second child. As she said it, she became elated. She said, “I feel like I have my team. I feel like I belong to a strong team.” Her siblings doubled when she took those children into account. She said she felt very calm and happy, and she was very surprised by the feeling. I asked if the child who died before her was a boy or a girl. She said she thought it was a boy. I said maybe because the parents didn’t grieve that lost child, they unconsciously put her in his place and dressed her as if she was a boy. She was shocked by that idea, but almost immediately felt clearer and more like herself.

This constellation shows two key principles that come up in this work—the first is that everyone in a family or system needs their place acknowledged—members of a family feel it keenly when someone doesn’t have their place in the family heart. And the second is how important it is to grieve. If the parents aren’t able to grieve a loss, the grief gets stuck and someone else may have to carry it unawares.

Story 2.

WORKING WITH THE GENERATION AFTER WAR

I worked with a group of eight young men (which was an honour), most of whom had never seen a constellation. One of them said, “Well, I’m in physical pain and hung over and I feel like crap, so I’ll go.” I thought, “Oh man, you have no idea what you’re in for.” But there’s a natural intelligence that people have about whether to work or not, so I assumed it would work fine, and it did.

NOT BEING ABLE TO FEEL ANGER

He said “I feel like I am full of anger but every time I get near it, I can’t feel it”. He said when he tried to feel his anger about his ex-girlfriend, he only felt degraded and worthless. He said that if he let himself be angry, it would be “nuclear” or “mass murderer level.” He twisted his wrists round and round, as if trying to break some kind of bond.

SETTING UP THE CONSTELLATION

A constellation sets up representatives for some person or element—so in this case, I asked him to choose a representative for his anger. J. asked one of the other men to represent his anger. Anger stood in front of and stared at J, as if trying to connect with him. J’s anger came up and then shut down. Then Anger moved beside J and slightly behind him in a position of support. J’s eyes looked different and they relaxed.

CLARIFYING HIS ANGER AT HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND

He chose a representative for his ex-girlfriend. J. suddenly said to the representative for her “You didn’t appreciate or deserve what I gave you.” Her response was, “That really got my attention. That feels true. I need to hear more.” Suddenly J. said “I don’t need to look at her anymore,” and the representative for her said she wanted to sit back down.

CONFUSED ABOUT ANGER AND HATE

J. said he thinks of anger as very close to hate, which is close to violence, so he was afraid to feel angry. But he noticed when he got angry at his girlfriend, it wasn’t violent at all—it was quite simple, and he felt less tense after allowing himself to feel it. Then he said, “I guess anger is something I can deal with, but I still feel a lot of hate.”

THE HEART OF THE ISSUE

I suggested he say, “I feel hate.” It’s key in this work to say simple, true things. It often produces greater clarity and movement. His answer was, “No, that’s not right. It’s more true to say, ‘I AM hate.’” The room felt electric. There’s a moment in a constellation where you hit the heart of the issue, and that was clearly the moment.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY SPEAKING WHEN HE SAYS “I AM HATE”

I thought for a moment and said, “That’s not a personal level of hate. That feels much bigger.” I said that from instinct but also based on experience. I asked him if there was violence in his family background. He sort of shook his head no, but looked as if he couldn’t process the question. I asked where his parents were from. He said Vietnam. I asked about the war, and he said his father had to flee Vietnam during the war, leaving his mother behind and coming back for her years later. I felt a kind of “click.”

I said, “That level of hate feels more like a civil war, where a country is turned against itself.” So I suggested he bring in representatives for his dad, for the war, and for himself.

War said it felt really excited, like something big was going to happen. I said to J., “Say to your father, ‘Dad, it was too much for me.’” J. got very emotional as he said it. The representative for the father seemed shocked. He said, “That’s a lot.” He paused a minute. “But I can take it back. It’s mine. It’s not his.” The tension in the muscles in J’s face began to relax and he looked younger and less pained.

DISENTANGLING THE FACT THAT THE SON HAS TRIED TO CARRY THE FATHER’S BURDEN

I asked J. to repeat that sentence about it being too much three times. And also to say, “I’m your son and you are my father.” The father said, “That’s funny. I have a feeling like I am the son and he is the father.” Again, it took him a minute, but he agreed, “Yes, I am your father and you are my son.” He felt clearly better after saying this.

Those statements illustrate core principles of this work: 1) When the child says the simple truth about being a child of their parents, it relieves them of responsibility for carrying their parents’ burdens. 2) Sometimes parents lean on their children as a way to bear their trauma. But the parent must take back their proper adult role, which brings relief to both the parent and the child.

PEACE

The whole room got still. The war representative said it felt very quiet, almost peaceful. The father felt good. I asked J. how he felt. He said his whole body was relaxed. The tension in his neck and arms and back were gone. That seemed like the right place to end the constellation.