Family Constellations
Discover the Hidden Dynamics Shaping Your Life
Many of the challenges we face in life do not arise from our individual experiences alone. We are deeply influenced by the families, relationships, and larger systems to which we belong. Sometimes we unconsciously carry burdens, loyalties, or patterns that began generations before us.
Family Constellations is a gentle yet powerful experiential approach that helps bring these hidden dynamics into awareness. By seeing them more clearly, we often discover new possibilities for healing, freedom, and more authentic relationships.
Whether you are struggling with relationships, recurring life patterns, grief, family conflict, questions of identity or belonging, or simply a desire to understand yourself more deeply, Family Constellations can offer profound insights that are often difficult to reach through conversation alone.
My own approach to Family Constellations is grounded in more than three decades of experience in psychology, existential counseling, and whole-person development. I integrate Family Constellations with an understanding of trauma, nervous system regulation, symbolic processes, and the creative potential within every person.
Online sessions make this work accessible no matter where you live.
Although many people initially wonder whether Family Constellations can be effective online, the answer is yes.
Online constellations can be remarkably powerful and allow us to explore family dynamics, relationship patterns, life transitions, and personal questions from the comfort of your own home.
Online sessions are particularly well suited for people who:
– Live in areas where in person Family Constellations work is not available
– Prefer the privacy of individual work
– Are unable to travel
– Wish to explore family, relationship, or personal issues in depth
– Are seeking an ongoing counseling and coaching process
Whether this is your first experience with Family Constellations or you have participated before, online work offers a flexible and deeply personal way to engage in the process.
There is something uniquely powerful about gathering together in a shared physical space.
I offer both individual and group Family Constellations in Wisconsin and periodically in Calabria, Italy. Group workshops provide an opportunity to experience the wisdom of the larger field while individual in-person sessions offer a quieter, more focused exploration of your unique concerns.
People often come to Family Constellations seeking greater understanding of:
- Family relationships
- Parenting
- Partnerships
- Repeating life patterns
- Loss and grief
- Life transitions
- Identity and belonging
- Personal growth and healing
Whether you participate as a representative or present your own constellation, many people find these workshops to be deeply moving, illuminating, and transformative.
Is Family Constellations Right for You?
Every person’s journey is unique.
If you are wondering whether Family Constellations is the right approach for your situation, I would be happy to help you explore whether it is a good fit.
Whether we work together online or in person, my intention is always the same: to provide a respectful, compassionate, and thoughtful space in which greater understanding, healing, and new possibilities can emerge.
The Background and Theory Behind Family Constellations
Human beings are becoming ever more adept at processing trauma, at looking at its damaging effects through time, and at developing tools and approaches to help us integrate it in healthier, more life-affirming ways.
Since many of our most basic survival needs have been met for those of us living in industrialized societies, we are now in a time where we can focus more on developing the quality of our lives, rather than simply on survival and reproduction.
Freud first formulated his theories on the unconscious at the end of the 19th century, and since that time, there has been exponential growth in our ability to understand how human beings function on not only a physical level, but on the psychological and spiritual ones as well.
Family Constellations is a method developed by a German therapist, Bert Hellinger, and it is an exceptional tool that helps us first be able to See where past trauma – our own, or that experienced by others in our family, including those who went before us – may be affecting us, and how we can begin to resolve it.
As we gain the ability to see these hidden patterns, our increased compassion and understanding has a healing effect on the entanglements often underlying them, and we can also see what we can do to make new internal (thoughts and emotions) and external (actions and behaviors) choices in the now.
Our new understandings and choices help us break free of the patterns that we formerly did not even know were affecting us, and we also create a shift in the energy of the entire “metamorphic field” (Rupert Sheldrake) of the family. (Go here to read more about the metamorphic field and how Constellations work functions).
We slowly gain new strength and freedom to move in directions that are more aligned with our Authentic Selves.
This benefits not only those who are on the healing journey, but the entire family system.
This does not mean that the one who is doing the “work” needs to carry the burden of the entire family.
Often, it is those who are most sensitive in family who suffer the most deeply, and who take on the role of the “black sheep”.
At some point they realize they must undertake a healing journey, but they can often feel responsible for healing the whole family, and even for saving those who have hurt them.
In reality, while this excessive responsibility is a natural way that a child attempts to create a bond with their family, to express their love and so they can feel safe and that they belong, it is a form of entanglement that only creates further imbalance.
Family Constellations can help us see not only where personal or intergenerational trauma may be affecting us, but also where we are shouldering too much responsibility for others (aka codependency) in an attempt to create a sense of connectedness with our family system.
Bringing in greater balance for ourselves allows us to create a deeper harmony with taking care of ourselves, and allowing the others in the system to assume responsibility for their own evolution, healing and growth.
With time, this furthers balance and a greater sense of peace and harmony within the family system, and benefits not only the person on the healing journey and their family, but produces positive energies and healthier role models that contribute to the Greater Good in all kinds of fascinating ways.
I look forward to seeing you soon at the group workshops, in person or online, or in an individual session. I have found that this work done individually or in groups, in person or virtually, is truly a powerful tool that can deeply benefit anyone, no matter where you are on your journey. It has brought me personally incredible levels of healing and integration that I have been surprised and profoundly grateful to experience, and I have seen my clients benefit as well.
I feel truly honored and blessed to be able to share it, and I look forward to seeing on this incredible journey!
