Family Constellation Therapy (also known as Hellinger Therapy, Systemic Constellations, and Systemic Family Constellations) is a form of emotional therapy and a three-dimensional group process that has the power to shift generations of suffering and unhappiness. This alternative therapeutic method helps to reveal the hidden dynamics in a family or relationship in order to find and address any stressors that are negatively impacting them.

Bert Hellinger, the founder of Systematic Constellations, who practiced this method for more than 50 years, observed that many patients unconsciously adopt destructive familial patterns of anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, alcoholism, and even illness as a way of loyalty to their families. For instance, bonded by a deep love, a child will often sacrifice his or her own best interests in order to attempt to ease the suffering of a parent or other family member.

The goal of family constellations is to allow a patient to break these toxic patterns so that they may live healthier and happier by setting a new life course.

Benefits of Family Constellation Therapy

Clinical experience has shown that family constellation therapy may be used for a number of conditions and issues and that the benefits include:

Reveals hidden cross-generational patterns that are affecting our lives through unconscious loyalty to family
Helps to find the “right place” within our family and discovering ourselves
Empowers and strengthens our capacity to respond to challenges
Connects us to the source by letting go of uncovered toxic relationships or memories
Frees from remembering and analyzing the past

Here’s How it Works

Just as one inherits eye color and blood type, they also inherit the residue from traumatic events that have taken place in a family. While physical traits are easily discernible, this emotional legacy is often hidden. Anxiety, fear, financial worries, depression, illness, and unhappy relationships can all be forms of unconscious inheritance.

Family Constellation Therapy is an effective new therapy that is an alternative to traditional counseling and that is very established and popular in Europe and spreading around the world. It is quite powerful and effective at uncovering unfavorable or detrimental situations and providing solutions to relieve emotional stress. Most patients resolve their issue in a relatively short time using Family Constellations or a combination of therapy and constellation work. It is a relatively, quick, easy and cost-effective method. For many, this is a profound life-changing experience.

It has been found that changes within a patient may often result in unexpected changes around them. This may be due to changes in the connecting field of which one is involved and/or unconscious shifts due to starting an impulse in the personal and family soul that is set in motion by the Family Constellation process.

Family constellation is indicated for those with emotional disturbances and unresolved trauma that has afflicted a family through an event such as murder, suicide, death of a mother in childbirth, the early death of a parent or sibling, war, natural disaster, emigration, or abuse.

“Accepting the possibilities and the limitations that come through your parents means submitting to the world as it is.”
BERT HELLINGER, PSYCHOTHERAPIST, THE FOUNDER OF FAMILY CONSTELLATION THERAPY

Science and Safety

According to the European Family Therapy Community, Family Constellation Therapy has been widely accepted and integrated by thousands of licensed practitioners worldwide and can serve as an adjunct to conventional psychotherapy.
source: “Family Constellations”: An Innovative Systemic Phenomenological Group Process From Germany, The Family Journal, 2006

In his book, Stephen Hausner describes that every family member has a right to belong to the family system, and if for some reason the member is excluded or forgotten, usually in a latter generation, someone will unconsciously identify with the excluded family member.
source: Even If It Costs Me My Life: Systemic Constellation and Serious Illness, by Stephen Hausner

An abstract finds, in conclusion, the mixed survey methodology has provided valuable qualitative and quantitative findings indicating that the Family Constellation process does improve relationships and well being and also may provide a framework for other researchers or groups of practitioners of Family Constellations to do further research in many specific areas of the developing theory and practice of this modality.
source: Does the Process of Family Constellations Improve Relationships and Wellbeing? Australian College of Applied Psychology, 2009

NYCIM + Family Constellation Therapy

At the New York Center of Innovative Medicine, Family Constellation Therapy is one of many different therapies considered for each patient. Although numerous members of the staff are trained directly by Burt Hellinger in this therapy, if it does show to be best suited for you, NYCIM will recommend a Family Constellation Therapist to you. Because each person is unique, and their health needs are different, there is no set protocol for using Family Constellation Therapy nor is the patient able to request the use of this therapy if the medical team finds it would not be as helpful as another treatment or specific combination of therapies. The ultimate goal is the complete restoration of health in the most efficient and safe manner, and with so many therapeutic options, it is impossible to know if Family Constellation Therapy is right for you without an initial evaluation at our clinic.