Complex Trauma meets Constellating Systems
Pulling Curtains Gently a.k.a., constellating systems with a heart for a change seeker's trauma
In 1990, I had my first experiences of the –only later named– Knowing Field (Albrecht Mahr, MD, ca 2000.) My bodyself was quite drawn to this phenomenon, and still is. The challenges, experienced in my very early life, wisely, insisted on finding a meaningful place for my existence in the systemic underpinnings of my family of origin, their socio-historical trauma imprinting, and their generational and ancestral trauma load. Wordless murmurings of visceral terror, and moonscape aloneness, gradually began to ease when I first had sought therapy in 1995. Constellating as a facilitator, around 2003, added to that ongoing shifting via re-membering erstwhile fragmented parts that began to cohere into meaningful narratives. My longterm relationship with the Field still yields answers to my quest and it surrounds my personal development faithfully.
For this writing, however, it is more important to highlight that I unquestioningly lean into the Field’s reliable companionship, in and throughout every counselling and facilitation process with my change seekers. Meaning, I entrust myself and them to the wordless, yet tangibly presence of the wisdom of untold aeons. No less!
My socio-historical location, first encountered, and connected with, during Social Trauma Counselling in 1995, ever since guides my Systemic Imagination and continued desire to seek, find, and take my place(s) in the world. That desire, over and again, allows me to collage whatever old –and new– fragmentations surface, back into thegreater whole. The image below shows a stone collage. I made it on the side of a street, where I sat, while still representing a change seeker in a workshop; you may say, it is ‘her’ stone collage. From this image (and experience) I later understood that integration into greater wholeness does not mean that fragments will merge. Wholeness is not one lump sum of all our processed experiences. This image speaks to that. There are remaining, tender fault lines. They may be vulnerable to breaking open, requiring to rearrange the parts. One part, or several, may respond to the presence of incidental or attempted assault, loss, or neglect. Lived experiences may echo through the new found gestalt. We may have times of feeling ‘set back’. Every integrated gestalt, however, has become a (new) resource that is availale in time of set back.
Back to heritage. If a historical echo chamber is of complex magnitude, it merges into a dense systemic ‘mass’. Integrating, then, continues to be the work of a lifetime (I’ll keep you posted.) Undoubtedly, collective weight behind my personal heritage is vast, making my Odenwaldian-German origin and German nationality a case in point: I am the descendant of war children (my parents) and of ‘colonizing-waring-genociding’ forbears (my grand- and great grandparents.) The ones in my parental lineages, obviously, survived and partook in the mounting events of the first halve of the 20th century. Their experience –bona fide wounds and indisputable guilt– were passed on to my body, mind, and soul, mostly in gestalt of compromised and fragmented presence during the second half of the century.
I was 39 years old when, holding the end of my rope, I traveled far to arrive at a welcoming place (River House, Lyons, CO), and be with caring persons (Trauma Lamas, Dr. Anngwyn St. Just and Dr. Peter Levine, and their, then, students.) Unfolding the dense systemic silence of my childhood and unveiling the pain of my biographical fragmentation became the work. Some fragments began to move into close enough proximity to actually see them. Two years into the work, in a moment of doubting my ‘complex trauma load’, I was told with quiet determination: “You qualify!”
No, this was not, nor is it still, a linear process. Albeit, a steady passion to learn more and to turn knowledge into skills accumulated in a relatively linear and integrating fashion. This passion is informed by the heritage of horrors perpetrated by my ancestral and collective forbears. It is informed by acknowledging the human-ness of the terrifyingly inhumane. At times, it is held by the tenacity to survive, passed on by above mentioned generations, when thriving is at odds.
The staggering magnitude of destruction in the field of my socio-historical location, in 1955, merged with terrifying experiences during my “first 700 days” (Alan Schore, Oslo 2014.) Mercifully, for some of which I can meanwhile be deeply grateful for. To share from a place of lived experience, becomes a privilege when I can support mending broken connection wherever possible. On the whole, I continue my voyage on the same path as all my change seekers. What’s mine to contribute to others, mostly younger ones, is the wisdom and skill I gathered during times I traveled ahead of them.
Sooo, what do my constellations look (and feel) like?
To those, otherwise apprenticed / experienced /trained, it may be my emphasis on emergent, trauma sensitive processing that is (mostly) unorthodox. I continue to respect the team of originators (including, not limited to, Bert Hellinger) and pollinators of the global spread of the constellating phenomenon. I refrain, however, from orders of love as guiding lights. Note! It is not love, per see, but an implicit ‘rightness’ –even universality– of (any given!) order.
A side note: This, may emerge from refuting what my forbears abided and fell by. Orders were the LIFEBLOOD of Nazi-Germany’s twelve year run on a 1000 Year Reich. Orders pressed every aspect of private, social, cultural, and military live into shape.
In contrast, I honour (even centre) the shattering effect of disordered love by tending emerging, erstwhile inflicted, wounds. Many a times, I work with change seekers themselves. At other times, I work vicariously with a representative’s nervous system. In my experience (and, yes!, also my opinion) any facilitator who works with a change seekers request needs to have a heart for complex trauma; the trauma that dwells in their body. And, yes, all too often has been passed forward for generations. One’s heart, of course is expressed through trauma and neglect sensitive comportment. It is established by fostering and including engaged participant withnessing, and by carefully addressing a change seekers –so far– unshakable pain.