Family constellation work is a gentle therapeutic approach designed to help reveal the hidden dynamics in a family or relationship (or any other social system). We do this in order to address any stress points impacting these relationships, such as unresolved trauma from a specific event and to resolve them. I may propose these interactive treatments to clients where I believe one area of improvement may be addressed or further explored by a dynamic social situation. In this situation we can discover family ties (states of entanglement) or aspects of personality traits that can release a client towards fulfillment of one or more goals that we have agreed to address. Family Constellation therapy can be performed effectively both in individual and group settings, according to the application and requirements.
A little history…
Bert Hellinger, a German psychotherapist studied the family structures of the Zulu tribes during the 1950s. He found within their indigenous mysticism, a psychological social bond which he developed as a form of existential phenomenology. Hellinger continued to develop his understanding and methods while working with families in therapeutic scenarios over the next 3 decades and published his techniques that have grown worldwide. Hellinger’s basic premise is that family and social groups form models of belief that restrain or restrict an individual often subconsciously, creating specific behavioural outcomes. Once understood, these bonds can be modified to liberate or release the individual towards our agreed therapeutic goals.
