Tag: Family constellations

Healing from witnessing your parent being abused

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

Last night I watched ‘The Drover’s Wife’ on Netflix. It broke my heart wide open and then I closed it over to cope with the grief, the anger and the pain from domestic violence and alcohol fueled violence that affects so many women and children, myself included.

It is devastating as a child watching your parent be verbally, emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused. It is infuriating that you are too small to save them, to fight back, to stand up to the abuser and tell them to “STOP. Take responsibility for their pain and their life, to be a caring, mature adult and do the right thing”.

The joy of life gets stripped away as you deal with your anger, your resentment, your fear of when it is going to happen next or if it will get worse. You worry about your parent getting seriously hurt or killed and you being left alone with the perpetrator. You worry about when he/she will turn on you. You feel so helpless and hopeless.

You wonder why none of the other adults in your life step in to help. You wonder why your parent stays and allows themselves to be treated so poorly.

You struggle to lift your head up and live. You wonder “What’s the point of trying if it is always going to be like this”. You don’t ever relax fully just in case the fighting breaks out again.

Fun times, parties, are not fun for you as you know once the perpetrator gets drunk the fighting is likely to start. So, you brace yourself ready for what is to come. You hope and pray it doesn’t occur this time. You pray that maybe just once they will pass out before they attack and abuse.

You wonder whether there is any goodness in them at all and how they can live with themselves afterwards, after being so cruel and destructive.

You wonder why life is so hard and why humans can be so cruel. To survive you harden up, you numb yourself to the pain, you become bitter, cynical and angry. You do what you have to do to survive, even if that means isolating yourself from those you love, never letting anyone close because you don’t want to see their pain, face them being hurt anymore.

You close down and retreat into yourself or you leave, run away physically or energetically, no longer being a part of the family system. But energetically, spiritually we are always a part of our family system. They are in our blood, our DNA, the cells of our body. We live because they lived and passed on life to us. We can’t cut ourselves off, that’s like cutting off our own arm.

If we do cut ourselves off fully we will eventually get drained, exhausted, burnt out as we have cut ourselves off from the goodness, the energy supply, the river of life force that flows through our ancestors to our parents to us.

They are a part of us. We are a part of them. Our job as adults is to find our way back to our hearts, to feel our pain and to humbly stand before our parents and speak our truth.

“It hurt so much to see you suffer. I just wanted you to be safe. I wanted to feel your love and play. I wanted to be seen and listened to, to be heard and cared for. I accept you couldn’t give me that, you didn’t have any more energy, love or joy to give to me with what you were facing.

Thank you for giving me what you could. What you couldn’t give me I’ve had to find from elsewhere. It’s taken a long time to find it Mum, but I have found it. I honour you and all you went through.

I thank you for my life and for the closeness we now have. Thank you for finding your way through too. I’m so glad you won’t let anyone treat you that way ever again. I love you so much and I welcome you back into my heart, my life, my love and I look forward to spending more time together actually enjoying life. Thank you Mum, thank you for my life”.

When we can do this, we set them and ourselves free. We get to have peace in our hearts and calm in our bodies and nervous systems. We get to step out of hypervigilance, scanning for danger and isolating for protection.

We get to rejoin life and to see that there is love and goodness out there. There are lots of people who treat each other with love and respect. We start to let ourselves participate in life more fully and receive the love and goodness we have always longed for.

In time we also see that the perpetrator didn’t know how to behave better, how to cope with their hurts and disappointments from their life. As we heal we eventually find compassion for them and their journey. We see that they had deep pain inside which leads to their lashing out and hurting others.

We see that as an adult we can now walk away from that. We don’t have to stay entangled in their pain. We can hand it back and leave it with them. We can bow, honouring their difficult journey and then turn to face our own life, to walk forward into our future, using what we have learned to create as much goodness, love and joy as we can.

May all children and parents who have suffered from domestic violence find peace. May they heal and come back together to honour the love they have for each other and enjoy the rest of their lives as much as they can. Blessed BE.

Here’s a link to my page with free resources to assist with healing from child abuse.

(The healing process I’ve explained above is just my life’s example. A lot of the deep healing occurred through doing Family Constellations sessions where I could feel my feelings and speak my truth to someone standing in as a representative for my Mum and my Stepdad. I didn’t have those conversations with my actual parents. That would have been too confronting with the level of pain I had and they may not have been able to hear it.

Family Constellations creates a safe space for you to speak your truth and heal. Once you have healed and found more peace you might have a truthful conversation with your parents. When you’ve reached a greater level of peace within you, you are less vulnerable, less likely to be reactive or defensive if they can’t hear you or acknowledge what you have been through. Your parents will have seen what occurred very differently to you. If they have not dealt with their pain they may simply deny it or push you away as it is too hard for them to face it.)

Another self

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Health, Personal Development, Relationships

The Netflix series ‘Another Self’ is a Turkish 8-part series that follows the life of 3 women and their families as they work through their challenges with the help of Family Constellations. I’ve watched 3 episodes so far and each has shown a Family Constellations session explaining how illnesses, relationship problems, career issues, finance blocks and repeating patterns are often related to our unprocessed trauma or that of our ancestors passed on for us to heal and bring peace to the family system.

It is wonderful how Family Constellations is becoming more mainstream and how TV shows like this demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach as it reaches the core cause underneath our challenges and helps to alter our defence mechanisms and conditioning to free us to choose differently and experience a more joyful life.

I thoroughly recommend this show to anyone who is curious about understanding the deeper reasons why we experience the challenges we do. It’s an engaging and clever series beautifully presenting Family Constellations concepts and theory while demonstrating its application with real-life examples. Well worth watching. Enjoy!

https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81380432

Do we need to forgive?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Personal Development, Relationships, Self help techniques

It can be hard to forgive when you have been hurt deeply. This video explains some deeper aspects of forgiveness and how Family Constellations can help you to say what you need to say to those involved and hand back anything you’ve carried or been burdened with. Connecting with the energy of those involved in a constellation helps you to feel into their side of the story, to clear some of the emotional pain and to find peace. It’s well worth doing so you can focus on living and enjoying your NOW, not being stuck, entangled in the past.

If you’re keen to experience a Family Constellations I am hosting a workshop in Meadows on Sunday 7 Feb. Constellations can also be done in individual appointments.

Why does trauma repeat through families?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development

This week I’m sharing a video that explores why trauma repeats through families. It is often completely unintentional, but a parent’s wounding from the hurts in their life can make it hard for them to be fully present and available to their children.

Despite their efforts, part of their energy is tied up with their past and has them metaphorically turned towards the past and away from the now. The kids feel this and grow with a sense of lack. Once they become parents the same process repeats unless they take action to heal, so they can face now being present fully and available to their kids who will then grow with a sense of fullness, of being seen, held and safe, knowing they belong and that they are okay.

Family Constellations is a modality that can help unentangle you from the past so that you can turn and be present to your now, more able to give and receive love.

In this video, Jodi-Anne explores ‘Why does trauma repeat through families?’ It is one of over 100 questions she has asked about life and channelled an answer through automatic writing. All of these answers to questions about life, how to live peacefully and happily are available for free on the ‘Life Insights’ page of her website.

Intergenerational trauma

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Personal Development, Self help techniques

In this video, Mark Wolynn, author of the book ‘It didn’t start with you: how inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle’ explains intergenerational trauma, how and why it happens and how to stop the trauma being passed on to future generations. I loved this book and got many useful insights from it for myself, for the courses I teach and the clients I serve.

What is an entanglement?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

An entanglement is an enmeshment with another person that affects your ability to be yourself and do as you please. You are so caught up with the other person that your thoughts and feelings are tangled up with theirs. It is hard to know where you end and the other person starts, there is no boundary or separation, the two people are entwined, tangled together into one messy situation.

This comonly occurs when a child tries to take care of a parent. The child sensing the parent’s pain or inability to cope with their life, steps up and takes responsibility for helping reduce the burden on the parent. This is a reversal of the orders of love – parents are meant to give and children receive.

Happy kidsChildren are meant to grow focussed on life, play, having fun and age appropriate issues. It is not normal for a child to be thinking about adult problems and trying to solve them. But children will do this out of loyalty, out of love and out of a desire to stay safe and keep their home. No matter how dysfunctional or painful a child prefers to stay with its parent, rather than be taken away into the unknown, even if that unknown is a more loving home with other family members or foster parents.

Our loyalty to our biological parents is huge and stays with us our whole life. If we violate that bond, if we judge or reject our parents we feel a loss, an emptiness, a sadness deep inside, as the flow of love from the family line has been blocked. We are refusing to accept our parents and our life as it is. In essence we are saying ‘NO to life’ and we suffer as a result. The life force flowing to us is diminished as we are saying NO to our parents, NO to their love, NO to receiving any energy or support from them. We are saying “NO, you are not good enough, I wanted more, someone different to you”. This is fighting against life, fighting against what is. These are your parents for better or worse, they are your parents. They gave you life and if that is all they gave you it is a true gift. At the very least accept that, be grateful for that.

As we heal we can come to see our parents as not just ‘parents’, but as people with their own issues, challenges and emotional hurts. If we are trying to fix them, change them, influence them, we are still entangled. We are still caught up unhealthily over involved in their energy and trying to control life. This is like standing in front of a dam that is cracking and trying to order the water to stay there, not to move. It won’t work. As the dam cracks the water is going to gush forth, because that is what water does, gravity does.

Your parents have their own lives to lead and it is not our place to judge them or be overly involved in their business, to be entangled like this stops us from living our lives fully. It is best to accept your parents as they are, to say ‘YES to life’, YES to receiving whatever goodness you can get from them and to accept that as all they can give you, to say “That is enough. What you can’t give me I will get from elswhere. Thank you Mum, thank you Dad, you are enough”. When we can say this and mean it we are freed from the entanglement. The love strength and support from the family line can flow to us, helping us, supporting us to live more fully. We are accepting our place in life and letting ourselves receive the goodness from our family line.

Reaching that place of acceptance can be a long journey. It takes time to grieve what could have been, what you felt should have been and to accept what was and is. That is the journey of life. It is true and authentic emotional release work required until you do feel peaceful inside and accepting of your family.

You could choose to stay in judgement and anger over what has happened or hasn’t happened in your life, but this just punishes you and limits you and your ability to live life joyously. Best to untangle the web, to break free and accept what is and make the most out of it. This is one form of entanglement that can have a massive impact on a person’s life.

Another kind of entanglement occurs when a child takes on a burden for the ancestors present or ancient. It can be a sibling not wanting to live fully because they see their brother or sister afflicted with an illness or who died and they feel guilty for living or being able to do what the other could not. In essence they wish to join the lost sibling. This will result in poor health for themself or some other dysfunction in their lives, as in essence they are saying NO to life, NO to goodness, abundance, health and vitality. They are saying I don’t deserve this or I have no right to this. It is self sacrifice out of loyalty, out of love and entanglement with the fate of the other.

Instead of dying for the other choose to stay a while longer, choose to live fully for them, to do what they could not do, to achieve whatever you desire and to join them when it is your proper time. Whether it was a sibling who died young, your parent or your own child, you do not have to follow them into the grave. You can live and hold them in your heart, feel them in your heart. They are there, their energy is available to you. Your ancestors long dead watch you, pray for you and send you love. They want you to succeed and to advance the family line. It is okay to feel your sadness and to move through it back to peace and happiness.

Another type of entanglement which sounds a little more bizarre, occurs with past relatives whom you may not have even met. It is possible that a young woman having difficulties with infertility is actually entangled with a great Aunt who never married. The energetic connection is such that the present soul put up their hand to relate, to repeat the pattern that occurred in the family line. The same occurs with members of the family who suffered tragedies such as loss of a loved one, death, murder, suicide, etc. A present family member who is connected to the past ancestor may also have suicidal thoughts or mental health problems, they may have financial difficulties or other challenges in life.

Sometimes it is as if the current family member is atoning for the sins of the previous ancestor – they struggle to make up for the wrong doing of the other. In different situations it is as if the family member present today chooses the same fate out of love for the other, wanting to empathise with them. Either way it is not helpful to the present person and it hinders their ability to live their life fully.

When the entanglement is identified and healed the person is free to live how they like. They can consciously honour the past family member and their fate, but choose to be free of the entanglement now, with love and respect, bowing to the ancestor and leaving it with them. This is core Family Constellations work and it is beautful to watch these resolutions occur and people being freed from the knots that have bound them and limited their ability to enjoy their lives. With the knots untied they can walk forward easily to do what they wish, without hindrance. May we all walk freely and enjoy our lives. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (18 September 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

What is the family soul?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Self help techniques

reflective-treeThe family soul is the collective energy that surrounds a lineage of people from the same family. It contains all the memories and experiences of everyone in the family.

When there is trauma or exclusion a wound occurs to the family soul, a distortion of the energy, so instead of love flowing through the family line, pain now flows from the ancestors to the current and future generations. This also occurs when the orders of love are reversed, for instance if a parent is absent and a child does not receive the nurturing and connection it needs. The absence may be due to war, abandonment, physically if a child is given up for adoption or if a parent themselves is sick, unavailable emotionally or physically. When a parent is ill or emotionally unavailable, often the child will try to ‘give’ to the parent to help them cope or feel better. The child takes on responsibilities that are not theirs to carry – it may be helping out a lot around the house or caring for the other children or even caring for the parent. The orders of love are reversed in this instance as the flow of energy is child to parent, instead of it being the parent giving and the child receiving.

It also occurs when someone is excluded from the family, because everyone does belong to the family system, no matter what they have done. Excluding someone is like throwing a block, a big boulder into the flow of the family soul, the river of lifeforce energy flowing to all people. The block diminishes the amount of energy available to all people. Worse it creates a tear in the fabric of the family soul that will only be healed when that excluded person is bought back into your heart. If this does not occur, someone in future generations will subconsciously choose to relate to the excluded person and will end up feeling like they are not accepted or don’t belong, they will repeat the fate of the excluded individual as the family system attempts to heal the wound.

It is just like our personal journeys where life presents us with a repeating situation until we learn the lesson. This is the same thing, but at the family level. Discovering this enables those who are suffering to resolve it by welcoming the excluded person back into their heart, energetically welcoming them back to the family system and restoring them to their rightful place. This allows the lifeforce energy to then flow freely again to all members. This occurs at the soul level, energetic level, it does not have to be physically and often it is an ancestor long dead who was excluded and in need of reconnection to their rightful place in the family.

If there has been trauma in the family system, be it war, violence in the home, tragedy from loss of children, divorce, early death of parents, etc then this trauma can also pass through the family system to the current and future generations. It is as if the unresolved pain seeps through the blood of all involved instead of love, strength and support. This too can be healed so that those affected are freed from their over reactions to situations, the inappropriate feelings or thoughts they may have that don’t seem to be appropriate or consistent with their life experiences. For instance persistent suicidal thoughts or depression or anxiety could actually be resulting from entanglements with past family members, you are feeling their feelings, they are not actually your thoughts. These cease once the wound in the family soul is healed by acknowledging the tragedy, the loss and giving it it’s rightful place, allowing all to feel and move through the situation, instead of being stuck and controlled by it.

The family soul is a container of energy around all members of the same lineage, when all is well in a family you can feel the flow of love, flowing from the ancestors to yourself and the other current family members. This energy strengthens you, supports you and encourages you to live your life as you wish to do so, for you are the leading edge of consciousness, the person now evolving while here on Earth and expanding the consciousness within the family. The ancestors want you to succeed and do well, they want you to thrive and advance the family line. This is life as it was meant to be. This support is available once you heal any blockages to its flow. It is worth doing and quite easy when you know how.

There are many methods that can help. Family constellations is one of these, where the field supplies the information about what is missing and blocked and needs to be resolved within the family system. The challenge then is to feel what needs to be felt, forgive all involved and welcome them back into your heart. It is a similar task to our personal issues, just with some larger influences. It is a part of our evolution, our connectedness and oneness with the fabric of life. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (15 September 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

Why do we inherit family trauma?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Parenting, Relationships, Self help techniques

Trauma that cannot be processed by one family member, because it is overwhelming, they do not have the skills or knowledge of how to process it, or do not have the will to feel it and release it, will be passed on genetically to the next generation. It also of course affects the rest of the current generation due to the unavailability of the traumatised person who will be isolated within themselves, possibly numb emotionally and distant in their ineracting with others, be they their children or siblings.

Trauma stays within the body and freezes part of the person’s energy, it is literally stuck, frozen in time within them, locked into when the trauma occurred. It stays in the body until it is processed and if it is not processed then it remains locked in place, creating internal tension and dis-ease.

No individual wants this to occur or be passed on to their existing children or grand children. It is not an intentional thing, it is an automatic thing. If Dad has died in the war then Mum is going to be mourning, she is not going to be able to be present fully for the children or meet their emotional needs. The children will sense Mum’s pain and feel their own loss and mourning, so they will try to get Mum to feel better, so they can get the attention they need. If it doesn’t work they eventually give up trying and switch off, shut down emotionally, feeling empty, unloved, unsatisfied with life.

The pattern then repeats when they marry and try to get the attention they missed out on from their husband or wife. No matter how loving the partner is, they cannot make up for the emotional pain or love deficit from their partner’s childhood, so it will feel unloving or not enough. They may try hard to give enough, to do extra, be extra affectionate and giving, they may try to fill that hole in their partner. Eventually they realise no matter what they do it is not enough, it doesn’t work and they are exhausted from trying, so they switch off, shut down, isolate and become emotionally numb as well, so the pattern continues. No malice, no cruelty, just life when there is trauma within one or both partners in a relationship.

So how do you resolve it? By becoming aware of the trauma within, by creating a safe enough space that you can feel it, acknowledge it and let it dissolve. By seeing your defense mechanism and games you have used to protect yourself from it.

  • Have you kept yourself so busy that you can’t feel?
  • Have you been saving the world, feeling righteous putting all your energy into others or a cause, but neglecting yourself, avoiding yourself and your inner world?
  • Have you been pleasing others, doing for others, hoping that they will love and accept you and you will feel that you are okay, lovable and worthwhile?
  • Have you been isolating yourself from others, keeping a low profile, so as not to be seen or to avoid any possible further trauma? By being preoccupied with avoiding it, you stay stuck in it and will have difficulty exeriencing any joy in life.

There are many defensive mechanisms that people use to try and keep safe or to avoid their feelings. Looking good so to avoid rejection, fearing you won’t be accepted as you are, so you try to be, look, do everything perfectly. This is exhausting. It is no wonder people end up depressed or ill, their life force is being frittered away with fear and their over reactions to it.

To clear the trauma and stop passing it onto our kids we need to become emotionally aware and savvy in processing how we feel. Learn to go within and sit inside yourself, breathe, let the emotion surface and breathe through it, let it be released, felt into completion. It can’t be avoided. It has to be acknowledged and felt. Thank the defense mechanism for keeping you safe, but choose to be present for yourself and your inner child now.

happiness inside jobIt is this inner child part of you that needs your reassurance, your love, your acceptance. It needs you to become the good parent to yourself, to know that you will look after him/her and protect her, you wil be the Adult guardian she felt was absent in earlier years. As she feels safer and you feel and release the pain, you will find you are not triggered by life any more, you can live more in the now and be there for those you love. Your children, if you have any, will notice this shift, they will feel your presence and they will absorb your love, your attention, and you can meet their emotional needs, fill up their inner cup with love so it is overflowing, then they can acept themselves and enjoy their lives.

If their cup does  not get filled and they feel empty, forlorn, they will at a soul level choose to take some of your pain, some of your trauma so you feel better and then you might be able to love them more. They abandon themselves to care for you. This is a reversal of the orders of love and is damaging for all involved. Parents are meant to give and children receive. However, it is often reversed in many families when the parents are hurt, injured or unavailable, whether that be due to illness, addiction or absence.

Children try to make the parent happier, they may try to be neater or tidier, they may help out with the housework or try to cheer the parent up with jokes, they may try to steal the attention through getting into trouble to distract you from your pain or they may even sacrifice their own health, choosing to get ill so you will focus on them and not feel your own pain. Children are so loving, but this is not healthy behaviour.

In doing this chldren miss out on being kids, they grow up way too fast and this stunts their natural growth and emotional development. It locks trauma, pain and loss within them and so the cycle repeats. When they have their own children they will sense the parent’s pain and do the same thing, hence it passes through the generations. No malice, not deliberate, done out of love, of wanting to help and of not knowing how to heal the underlying issue of emotional pain and trauma.

Thankfully in today’s world we do have the knowledge of how to heal trauma, how to bring love back into the family system and to correct any reversals of flow, so that the younger generations can receive the love and support they need and deserve from the ancestors behind them.

Family Constellations and other methods can help individuals to heal their family systems, enabling hope and love to exist for all family members. There is much more that can be said about this in future blogs, for now this is enough, to understand that trauma passes through families until love is restored.

Each family member can find peace and happiness when the blocks to love are removed. It can be done, support is available and you can learn the skills to feel your emotions and release that which is locked away inside you. It is possible, it is worth doing and your children thank you, because then they don’t need to do it for you, the burden they carry for you is transformed, freeing them to enjoy their lives more. Such love, such loyalty, such strength and commitment to each other, that is what families are about and it is beautiful. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (10 September 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.