Some of the relationships before us were loving and wonderful whereas some were a learning opportunity. Though many of our ancestors had learnt lessons, those they didn’t learn they passed through to the following generations.
That’s why we see patterns in families and the behaviour of people repeating through the generations. There are hidden loyalties that we hold onto, to pass the message through time.
Love often flows through generations yet sometimes it doesn’t if there was an interruption of the love. Suffering in families and repeated patterns may be caused by the break of the flow of love.
There are a few indications that have been observed over the years throughout the work with phenomenological psychology.
Here are some of them.
1. THE WORK STARTS WITH ME. In any relationship, including a parent-child one, the work needs to start with ourselves. It’s easier to pinpoint the problems we have to our parents, but it’s hard to change someone who we may have chosen in the first place.
Instead, I encourage you to ask these questions: What can I do to improve my communication with my parent? What can I do to create a safe and non-judgemental container when we meet again? What can I forgive them for even if they are not alive any longer?
When we encounter our parents, we often get triggered by the old habitual loyalty of being a child in the relationship to them. This is an invitation and an opportunity to work on our own ‘inner-child’ and allow our ‘inner-mother’ to help nurture and nourish ourselves.
2. SYSTEMIC ORDER. What comes to the system first has a precedence over what comes second. I.e. parents come to the family system first and children come second. That has consequences for the hierarchy of love [1].
Respect for what came before us is paramount. In families and organisations, if new members don’t respect the previous generations, it can be a problem for the whole system. This often shows up through conflicts, tensions and health problems. It’s important to keep in mind that whatever was before us made it possible for us to take our place. Being grateful and thankful to people and events before we came, brings more flow of love and energy into the family dynamic.
It’s important to embrace & respect the previous family members especially if there were children from the previous marriage. In many cases, the new family system wants to be independent and take precedence over the previous one. While this is the right direction, it’s important to remember that it made it possible for the following system to take place. Respecting the order of love would mean bringing in perspective and choice-making in – taking the whole system in mind.
3. GIVE AND TAKE. In many families, we see the reverse order of children looking after parents, even in the childhood age. Many children, out of love for their parents, would assume the role of a parent. This has some consequences for children in that system. The role of a child is to take and for a parent, it is to give. Asking parents for help is natural as this is how love flows. The opposite in the extreme version (wherein children assume the role of a parent to look after their parents) may have a ‘burden’ effect leading to health problems and mental struggles. Often observed in family constellations, once the children find the ‘right’ place in their family, they restore the order of love and energy between members of the family flows better. [1]
4. DISLOYALTY. As children, we all want to make our parents happy, in order to be accepted and loved by them. When we grow up and make a new family with a person from a different family, culture and a set of beliefs, we need a lot of strength and energy to form a new system. That may require becoming disloyal to our family of origin [2].
5. CREATING BOUNDARIES. Every relationship needs a set of boundaries, especially if it’s a complex relationship with members from different systems, e.g. mixed cultures, children from previous relationships, open relationships, homosexual relationship, polyamory, single parenthood, etc.
Creating a vision of what a successful relationship for you would look like, is a great way to remember why you have the relationship in the first place.
The boundary is a rule or a principle that helps make decisions and navigate through the complex world of relationships.
6. IT’S BEYOND ME. Remember that generational patterns and behaviours are beyond our personal decision to have or not to have them. If we want to change them, we need to face them and take the whole system in mind (Satir, 1998). Working on the deeper layer of blocks that prevented the flow of love across generations and resources we can access anytime to change them, is a great way to let go and release old generational codes. Family & Business constellation and systemic relationship repatterning is a great way to do this work in a 1:1 or a group setting. (More information about this work here)
A child-parent relationship is one of the most complicated ones because a child ‘stays’ the child in the mind of a parent. Albeit being adults and making their own life happen, children grown big often continue to want to please parents or rebel against their parents. This is a familiar behaviour which we see across many families and generations.
Unless we learn how to address issues on the level where they belong, we will get into entanglements of loyalties to our parents and that may jeopardise our relationship with our intimate partners and our own children.
I believe there is a positive outcome in everything we touch if we want to change something positively. If there is an issue or miscommunication or longing to be loved by our parent just a bit more, we don’t need to ask our real parents to do that. In most cases, it’s not possible. They are who they are and they are a consequence of many generations before them that make it happen for them to be born.
What we can do is create a new reality or potentiality for change inside us first. Doing this work change my relationships with the whole family and it is sustainable until now.
When I first encountered the systemic work some 20 years ago I was blown away by the powerful and concise process that it entails. How precise and accurate the issues were laid out in from of me. It was clearer than the daylight what the problems were and how I could go about them. Up until then, I was in the unconscious darkness of my own doubts and inner-blame game. Systemic work was revelatory for me and that’s why we offer this integrative bio-genesis work for families and individuals around the world through deep-dives, retreats and workshops.
REFERENCES
[1] Hellinger, B. (2006) No Waves Without the Ocean: Experiences and Thoughts. Karnac Books.
[2] Hellinger, B. (1998) Love’s Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships.
[3] Satir, V. (1988) The New Peoplemaking. Science and Behaviour Books.
Here is a video about the constellation work in our last Enrich Retreat: