You can use systemic family constellations to understand how you belong into your family system. Are you the black sheep? Every family has an unwritten set of rules or norms that are expected to be followed by each family member. As a young child you learn to follow the rules and you begin to understand how you belong into your family of origin. Some families have rules that children are seen and not heard. Some families respect children and others do not. Some families put the needs of the children above the needs of the adults. Some families dedicate all their attention to the success of the children. Regardless of what they may have or may not have done, everyone has the right to belong in the family system. Are you consciously aware of how you belong or fit with your family system norms?
It’s important to understand how you belong into your family system or whether you reject or rebel against it. If you reject your family you may be the black sheep. Whether you consciously think you know how you belong with your family, you may be shocked to learn you unconsciously maintain strong family ties of deep love and loyalty that may or may not be quite unhealthy for you. You may consciously reject your parents or family in some way, but unconsciously you energetically find a way to show love and loyalty to the family system by being or doing something the same as another family member.
What Does Your Family Value?
Families may consciously or unconsciously treasure humour, physical attractiveness, coordination, dexterity, intelligence, happiness, sadness, emotional expression, or emotional suppression. Fairly early in life you tend to develop a sense of how you belong into your family of origin. We also know whether we toe the line and follow the rules, or whether we are the black sheep or rebel of the family.
Chronic Illness to Belong
How you belong to your family system may be through chronic illness or conditions. Some families, due to unresolved emotional trauma of the past, have difficulty fully embracing life. Some families have generation after generation of symptoms, conditions, illness, or relationship difficulties. How you belong may be through symptoms, chronic conditions, or dis-eases. These symptoms and conditions may serve to unconsciously help an individual belong into their family system, or they serve as support in some other emotional way. Some conditions create a boundary to keep others away. Some conditions serve to draw others in or to draw attention. Some conditions force others to care for you when you consciously or unconsciously don’t feel like you get enough attention. Sometimes an illness is the only way to be seen in a family. This can be quite obvious in families that have experienced a major separation in some way and the attention of the parent is diverted elsewhere.
By paying attention to the messages of any symptom or condition you may be experiencing, you can begin to understand whether it helps inform how you belong into your family system. You then have the choice of consciously choosing another healthier way to belong into your family, leaving the unhealthy pattern back with your parents or the past generations where it belongs. You can change how you belong in the family system. By doing your own healing work, you can initiate the energy movement to shift how other family members belong into the family in the present and going forward into the future through healing.
Acknowledging Unresolved Emotional Trauma
Let’s look at an example: Great grandmother had depression and anxiety, grandmother was depressed and nervous, mother is depressed, and now you, the daughter of the family system, are also feeling depressed. You may have developed this symptom unconsciously to remain loyal to the women of your family system. Some emotional trauma may have happened way back in this family system and it remains emotionally unresolved. There may have been children or adults die too young, miscarriages, stillborn children, aborted children, or other family tragedies, and at the time the emotional pain was not fully expressed.
This trauma became locked into the body cells of great grandmother as a felt sense of pain, emptiness, grief, sorrow, or anger and it travelled down through the generations. This is referred to as epigenetic inheritance. Something in the past drew the energetic attention of great grandmother away from her children and it started an emotional family response pattern down the family line. The women thought depression was how you belong into this family system.
Some children manifest conditions to give a depressed parent a reason to live. When the parent is not connected to life in a healthy way, the child unconsciously shares the pain with the parent so the parent doesn’t have to carry the unresolved emotional family trauma alone. That’s how children unconsciously create energetic entanglements with their parents or family members. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to heal this family wound or not. Would you like to change how you belong into your family?
Healing the Family System
Sometimes an individual feels it’s easier to live with the symptoms and conditions than to do the deep emotional healing work to shift unhealthy relationships. Sometimes individuals are more afraid to find out who they are authentically beneath their façade of un-wellness, or how others will respond, if they let the symptoms or conditions go. Sometimes it feels easier to remain a victim. Sometimes individuals choose not to take any responsibility for their own wellness.
In the example, you can shift this emotional response pattern and leave it behind with your mother where it belongs. You have to belief that she is strong enough to carry this burden on her own. That is the difficult part for most people. If your mother has been emotionally needy and depressed your whole life, how can you envision her strong enough to carry her own burden? That is the basis of your emotional healing work, it’s about you changing, not her. It’s about developing compassion for the journey of your mother and accepting her as she is or was. You can’t do the healing work for the prior generations but you can do it for yourself and your minor children. Your adult children need to do their own healing work.
No one has to continue this emotional response of depression. By acknowledging where the emotional pattern began, by developing compassion for those who came before you, and by choosing to let this energetic entanglement go, you can bring healing to your family system. This healing can’t be done in your head, although it can begin there, it has to be deeply taken into your body where the unhealthy emotional pattern of depression is stored.
This healing work can be difficult for members of those families that treasure emotional suppression. No one wants to address their emotional issues. Everyone carries on as if everything is just fine. Things are frequently kept fairly superficial so that everyone will get along just fine.
In other family systems, one generation after another passes addictive behaviours from parent to child or grandparent to child. That’s how you belong to the family system. This is an emotional way of avoiding having to address their deep inner emotional pain. Addictive behaviours include drug and alcohol abuse, workaholism, gambling, or extreme eating, shopping, unhealthy sexual behaviour, compulsive television or technology use, or extreme exercise regimes.
Are You Ready to Heal?
Not every person sees a reason to heal these emotional family wounds, but I hope you will. If not for yourself, perhaps you can make the effort for the future generations of your family system. If doesn’t matter if you have children yourself or not, your nephews and nieces can also be the carriers of these energetic emotional entanglements.
Are you ready and willing to evaluate how you belong into your own family system?
