Family Constellations: Preparing for a Workshop
By Carol Heil, LCSW-C
If you plan to bring an issue to a constellation, you should do a little preparation. Information considered important in doing your family constellation is primarily factual in nature. Personality traits or how family members got/get along is not relevant in this context.
What we are looking for is basically two things: (1) What is your primary issue? We would like you to state this as concisely as possible. We will ask clarifying questions and will likely explore what would be a good outcome for you. (2) What happened in your family (nuclear family and/or family of origin) that would be considered unusual, tragic, or that brought about a significant change in the life of the family.
Family of origin includes parents, siblings, grandparents, great grandparents (and sometimes further back), aunts, uncles, etc. It may also include important premarital partners of parents or grandparents. Nuclear family includes spouse and children as well as significant former partners and children from former relationships. Sometimes people are considered family members if they have had a life-altering effect on the fate of the family.
Questions to consider: Did anyone in your family:
- Die at a young age? Have a parent die when the child was a young age?
- Die during childbirth? Suffer illness, disability or life at risk due to childbirth?
- Commit suicide? Attempt suicide? Feel chronically suicidal?
- Die in action as a soldier or kill others during a war?
- Commit a serious crime? Commit a war crime? Go to prison? Be a victim of a crime?
- Have a stillborn child? Have an abortion or miscarriage?
- Have an “illegitimate” child or a child that was abandoned or given up for adoption?
- Have a former spouse, fiance, partner or lover of either gender?
- Have a serious or long-lasting illness?
- Have a physical or mental disability?
- Die in the Holocaust? Go to a POW camp?
- Become a missing person? Disappear for a long period?
- Join the clergy or enter a monastery? Live an unusual life?
- Win or lose a fortune? Become disinherited or disowned?
- Become seriously scapegoated, ignored, rejected, slandered or cast out?
- Suffer sever trauma? Sexual abuse? Mental illness? Life-threatening events?
- Have serious symptoms or difficulties repeated across generations?
- Have a child with serious problems?
- Emigrate to another country?
- Have a shameful family secret?
- Experience anything that might be considered tragic or highly unusual?
Please note that most families have their fair share of the events listed. These questions are simply intended as guidelines or to jog your memory. Please don‘t feel the need to research all of this before coming to a workshop. However, a fair knowledge of family members and significant events is helpful to the constellation process.