By Susanne Hazen and Josianne Zwart (Hey Joos! Virtual assistant & projectmanager)
Photo: tyler-nix-V3dHmb1MOXM-unsplash.jpeg
In previous blogs, I described situations in current relationships and from previous relationships that impact your current relationship. Today I will discuss the last part: what happened in the family of origin that affects the current situation?
Intergenerational trauma
Intergenerational trauma is a concept developed to help explain long-standing destructive patterns within families. It means the transfer or the transmission to younger generations of oppressive or traumatic effects of a historical event that took place with ancestors. This involves loyalty to and identifications and entanglements with people in the generations before you. I speak of ‘family karma’.
Read more about that on this page.
Do you want to know more about how to break free from a previous relationship? Or are there events in your current relationship that you want to work on?
During the online workshops, you can get to know Systemic Ritual at an entry level. I’ll tell you more about systemic constellations and rituals, but we will mainly do some constellations or rituals so you can experience how it works and what it can do for you.
Do you want more and live? Click here for the workshop series ‘Hidden Dynamics’.
It is also possible to have an individual session. See: individual-consultation-systemic-constellations-and-systemic-ritual/
Are you a professional and do you want to learn new tools? In that case, the course in Systemic Ritual is useful for you. See: Course in Systemic Ritual. You can download the leaflet on this page.
Commitment
Commitment is an essential part in relationships. Commitment is connected to the energy we give to something or someone or a certain value. Think of an important family value. For example, the value of freedom may be more important than the commitment to a partner.
You often see this with women from strict cultural backgrounds where women have to be submissive to men for many generations. Their mantra now is: “I won’t end up like this”. This value can be more important than the relationship with a man.
In every relationship, a piece of freedom is ‘given up’, but that is unacceptable in the example above. In this case, there is a commitment with all ancestral women who did not know freedom.
If a person shows no commitment to the partner, then his/her commitment is to something or someone else. And this has an impact on your relationship.
Intergenerational socio-cultural traumas
In addition to the impact of situations from our personal lives and from the lives of our parents and ancestors, socio-cultural historical traumas also impact relationships.
Such traumas include war, famine, immigration, slavery, genocide, colonialism, political unrest, disasters, economic collapse and radiation.
The impact of these events creates the dynamics of our relationships. We carry the past in our bodies in the present. These forces guide our choices until we are aware of them. Each country has its own history and, therefore, a different dynamic that can play a role in relationships.
It is sometimes said in shamanistic cultures that up to and including the 7th generation descendants still deal with the entanglements of ancestors. And this concerns traumas from the personal lives of those ancestors. When it comes to sociological, cultural, religious or political trauma, the impact can last for centuries.
Healing
Healing intergenerational traumas is the essence of the Family Constellations and Systemic Ritual method. In a constellation, you look for the cause of the problem. You look for people in previous generations who had every reason to be sad, anxious, angry, etc. In this way, you ‘expose’ the cause of the problem. You restore it through ritual phrases and/or actions and/or adding other ancestors who can help.
Tip: The other self – Netflix series
To find out more about this in a visual and compelling way, I recommend the Netflix series The Other Self: This Turkish series follows three women and their partners. The reason for the journey they make is the diagnosis of a serious illness with one of them. During the journey, they are introduced to family constellations. They are confronted with unresolved trauma from their family history, including murder, secrets, migrations and forbidden loves. Through systemic constellation work, it becomes clear how their family histories have influenced their lives. The series shows (with the right dose of drama and romance) how constellations can support you in finding yourself. Watch the series here.
Do you want to know more about how to break free from a previous relationship? Or are there events in your current relationship that you want to work on?
During the online workshops, you can get to know Systemic Ritual at an entry-level. I’ll tell you more about systemic constellations and rituals, but we will mainly do some constellations or rituals so you can experience how it works and what it can do for you.
Do you want more and live? Click here for the workshop series ‘Hidden Dynamics’.
It is also possible to have an individual session. See: individual-consultation-systemic-constellations-and-systemic-ritual/
Are you a professional and do you want to learn new tools? In that case, the course in Systemic Ritual is useful for you. See Course in Systemic Ritual. You can download the leaflet on this page.
Systemic Ritual and Systemic Constellations 