 Image by Silvia Siret who is a Family Constellation guide Having recently returned from a 5 day retreat I thought I’d write up my experiences of this modality. What is Family Constellations? Family constellations is a therapeutic approach developed by German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger that explores how unconscious family dynamics and historical traumas can influence an individual's present-day life. It works on the principle that individuals are deeply connected to their family systems and may be entangled in patterns, issues, or emotions from past generations. Through a group or individual process, the method uses representatives to physically and experientially reveal these hidden connections, leading to a resolution and release of emotional burdens. These are some principles:
My image at the top is from Silvia Siret – Family Constellations Life Coach, an old fiend of mine. Check out her page for a more detailed explanation of the processes involved. My first time: Ember combe with Barbera Morgan Probably a decade ago I attended a short weekend retreat. Back then I was more sceptical, but I remember experiencing the ‘magic’ of the work. I remember taking part in other people’s constellations. As a representative for someone else’s father I felt strange feelings and odd visual memories coming up. This is a major component of how they work. Each person who is brought into the centre of the circle is asked to continuously tune in as the process unfolds. What emerges is often spooky and profound. I can’t remember much from this weekend but I have some spooky examples to come. 2024: Buddhafield with Lisa Friedberg I loved Lisa’s style and in particular her introduction of what FC is. We had a huge tent full of people, maybe more than 100. She said things like:
2025: Buddhafield with Richard Buckworth I help run the men’s area at Buddhafield and this year Richard attended, who is a seasoned pro with FC. His workshop had around 20 men in it and the man who was exploring his past constellation had themes of violence within it, meaning he had to hold of energy and it was very intense. At one point we all helped hold the man so he could rage. I found Richard’s style to be very guiding - he offered a lot of knowledge about the process and many verbal interventions for all the representatives. This stimulated a lot of emotion. It seemed to me that the facilitator’s skill and intuition is very important in this process. I also pondered how much his interventions guided things and questioned if this was a bit of a puppet show? Petr Málek: Path of Soul and Shadow I’d heard excellent things about Peter’s facilitation and to be honest I was at first sceptical, especially as, on the first night of the five day retreat I attended with him in Wales he openly shared his ideas about what was going on for some of the participants, before really setting up a safer container. However, upon seeing him work skilfully over the next few days I began to trust his intuition, skill and love and I was profoundly inspired. He has a very direct style, a soft deep voice, which he uses skilfully, with dramatic pauses and gentle pace. He trusts himself. Some might consider this arrogant but I think he was really trying to offer truth from his heart and help trigger some emotion in people, to help them to connect to their truth. Constellations AND Shamanic Healings The 5 days were incredible and we got to do a constellation or a shamanic healing for each of the 20 participants as well as engage in group discussions about the work and to hear lengthy daily sharing from each person. What emerged was a group dynamic of deep love and trust. Petr’s version of a Shamanic Healing was a more receptive version of FC which is intended to heal past life traumas. I was sceptical already, when he told us this. I also remained open to the possibilities. He has one participant lie in the middle of 8 people, who represented 8 key energies:
My Experience of the Shamanic Healing I took part in supporting a female recipient and I ended up sat in the position of North West (Energy). During the healing process I witnessed a man, representing the recipient’s emotions, display real and deep grief and said some things that were incredibly apt for the participant and no one knew them beforehand. So there was no priming and the recipient did not display any clues in their body language. This is anecdotal evidence for something deeper at play. Were we really tuning into her soul and past lives? Pondering - What Is Going On? My theory is that we humans do have a deeper connection than we know. The subconscious and the genetic connections work on levels that we have not fully discovered. However science does have a basic understanding about mirror neurons, epigenetics and body language cues that could somewhat explain the spooky connections and coincidences. Are we picking up on subtle cues and being primed by the skilful facilitator to have strong emotional experiences? And to what end? My Constellation Regardless of all the rational mind stuff I went into my constellation with an open mind. In the end we only did a basic piece with a woman representing ‘love’ but she could also represent my mother, because before the constellation I shared both my wish “To feel genuine love” and some of my background, which included information about how my relationship with my mum affected me. It was a powerful piece of work that had me slowly walking towards her and acknowledging my pain but in a more truthful way. “I missed you”, “You gave me life”, At the end of the work I had received a powerful emotional experience to help me confirm the receiving of genuine love. I think this is what makes the therapy so powerful. Humans need profound emotional experiences to anchor psychological changes. Accepting the truth, forgiving our forebears and coming towards a positive intention is all part of it. Would I recommend it? I had a fascinating time at the experience and I really liked the ‘grounding practices’ in the breaks, which included working on the land with the local community. After every break we would dance together to loud music - which I loved. Petr offered some brilliant exercises all designed to help us come back to forgiveness, acceptance and seeing our own blame and shame and how they repeat patterns of dysfunction for us. He wouldn’t put it that way but I could see the underlying processes and I was impressed. I think the danger of this work is that people get so swayed with the ‘woo’ and so enamoured with Petr that they believe it too much and can have a hard time staying grounded in the reality of the present moment. Nonetheless I would recommend it, especially if you like a challenge with a facilitator who will be quite direct and strong in his approach. And now...? I’m personally going to direct my energy back towards attachment theory and habit change, grounded in evidence based approaches - both for myself and in what I offer to clients. I’m excited to add to my next course of Building Secure Attachments with some of my learnings and if you’d like to work with me please contact me today.  Coed Hills Rural Arts Space where I did FC in 2025
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 I’ve just read this wonderful article about the importance of telling your story and I largely agree with it. As a counsellor my training has helped me to understand that shame lurks in our shadows and can cause havoc in our lives through unseen adaptations from negative childhood experiences and when we open up about our story we can bring that shame into conscious awareness and that enables us to accept our adaptations with compassion and then gradually change them to become more healthy and less destructive.
Brain Biases For Survival However… and this is a big however… I personally think the counselling world does not educate and provide enough warnings to clients. As a coach and an advocate of mediation and positive psychology there is a very important aspect to bear in mind when framing our stories - the biases of the brain, which will always prioritize survival, and therefore FEAR (and other negative emotions that shock us). A bias is a systematic distortion of the facts, leaning towards a certain angle. Because of evolution the brain tends to bias towards:
First Warning: Your Brain Doesn’t Really Want Happiness. With the knowledge of these things we can try to temper our stories. The first warming I would give to clients is - the brain will not want to temper the stories. It wants to hold on to the fear. The primal parts of the brain and millions of years old and have served it well to survive and reproduce. It doesn’t really care for happiness. It will always prioritize survival, and therefore fear. Drama is a great way of fueling fear. The Second Warning: Drama Is Addictive The primal brain is basically addicted to drama. If you’re describing a challenging situation the brain will almost always want to dramatise it - to look for the problems and amplify them. It finds no-problem situations and factual sentences… kinda boring! Notice how when someone else tries to retell your situation without emotion the brain will get angry that the situation isn’t being presented dramatically enough. It will want to tell stories of brutal trauma and vulnerability. Whilst there is a place for that I believe that we must allow some space for raw, emotional expression and then we must try and let the stories go and come back to a healthy, balanced view. Again the brain will HATE this idea. It always wants to prioritize survival, so it will try to believe the negative and run life based on feelings instead of facts. The Third Warning: You Might Inadvertently Amplify Trauma The problem with this is that it may amplify the traumatic memories and then the subsequent effects. It can become an obsessive thought pattern that can create powerfully problematic symptoms and behaviours like depression, anxiety, OCD, bitterness or even panic attacks, intrusive thoughts and more. These are known as negative feedback loops, where the results of the negative thoughts reinforce negative behaviours and then create evidence that supports more negative thoughts, Trauma vs Adaptation Trauma is a real thing. I work with people who’ve lived under terrifying and unpredictable parents. I’ve worked with people who have been attacked and people who have had repeated abuse. It is important to emotionally validate how hard and traumatic these experiences were. However ‘Developmental Trauma’ is not the event itself but the series of events and the internalised set of beliefs and behaviours that the child adapted to survive. I often define it as ‘too much, too fast, too soon, too alone’. It is times we were not only overwhelmed but didn’t have the resources and support from people to process it. But is everything challenging a ‘Trauma?’ Sometimes we define big T Trauma and little T trauma, butIt is increasingly recognized in psychology and neuroscience that many responses described as "trauma responses" are more accurately defined as adaptations to adverse, threatening, or challenging experiences. This shift in terminology emphasizes that these behaviors are not a sign of a broken system, but rather a set of intelligent, protective strategies the brain and body developed to ensure survival in the face of danger I fought hard to acknowledge my ‘Trauma’. I know, I know, the brain fights this idea. It wants to cling on to the idea of trauma, because that is part of the drama triangle - the victim mindset. I think there is an important first step in identifying past pain and acknowledging how painful it was. Then as a second step we can challenge our own thinking and come to see that perhaps we have adapted to challenges and this is incredible! There might be some benefits to taking this perspective:
The Discipline To Amplify Positivity, As a counsellor I can attest to the power of expressing your pain and telling your story with a whole heart. It is so healing in itself, but I think that the healing job is only half complete at this point. Health is about balance. To balance the brain and the painful stories I believe we need to counteract the negative biases also. This includes:
Positivity Is Actually Easier The good news is you don’t have to use willpower to do this, you can use reminders. I call mindfulness Re-Mindfulness because all we’re really doing is reminding ourselves of some basic facts:
My personal practices I’m not perfect, that’s for sure. I’m a work in progress. I can share with you what I’m attempting to do to steer myself to be more aligned with reality and to rebalance the negative mind:
If you’d like help rediscovering you positive, playful and powerful adult self then come to a course or do some coaching with me.  Do you wait for your phone to be at 1% to charge it?
So why are you doing that with yourself? Remember:
Rest isn't a reward for exhaustion. It's a boost for performance. Most people think they need to earn their breaks. What?! The smartest people I know build breaks into their day. Rest Rituals to keep them going. They don't wait for permission. They don't wait till they collapse. They look after the body so that the body looks after the mind. Try this Notice your warning signs or set a timer for 25 mins and notice:
Rest rituals: Take micro-breaks before you crash:
Normalise resting when you still have energy left.
Here's what I do:
What do you do? Would you like help in being able to change gear more easily and look after he mind and body? Do a coaching session with me. Wishing you a restful day. Neil |
AuthorsNeil Morbey is a meditation teacher, group facilitator and inspiration guide for Positively-Mindful.com Blog Index
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