Family Matters: An Unusual European Therapy Heals Dysfunctional Families

Sara Wiseman

Sara Wiseman

Ah, the nuclear family: mom, dad, 2.3 kids. Eating dinner around the family table, swapping stories of Little League, cheer squad and summer camping trips.

Sound familiar? Of course it doesn't!

Flash forward to 2007. Meet mom, dad, grandma, mom's boyfriend, grandma's third husband, four sets of kids being raised by three families, half brothers and step sisters.

It's all part of the new American family dynamic. One in five Americans live in a stepfamily. One in three marriages end in divorce. And more kids live in non-traditional settings, including shared custody or with single parents.

Repeat this dynamic for a while, and you get a kind of present-day family soup. Stir in family relationships from the past, and the plot thickens. You're no longer merely dealing with your relationship to your mother, you're also dealing with ancestral ties - the roles played by your grandparents, their family members and their ancestors.

"Knowing your place in your family is key to the wholeness and integration of the individual," says Catherine VanWetter, a Corvallis-based therapist trained in a system that works with these dynamics. Her Family Matters therapy is based in part on Bert Hellinger's Systemic Constellations theory.

Hellinger, now in his 80s, is a German master therapist who currently lives in a small Bavarian village. The system he developed has been widely used in Europe, England and South America over the past 50 years. Oregon's VanWetter is one of a small group of therapists nationwide who is trained to teach the Constellations system in America.

And interest is growing.

"This is not talk therapy," says VanWetter. "It tends to have immediate results for most people, bringing about a transformative shift that is felt immediately, and continues to work even after the initial therapy session is complete. An entire family system can be healed, even if only one person in the family is getting therapy."

Most importantly, the process relies on input that comes directly from our ancestors. "When I use the system in a group process, I'll have group members be chosen as representatives of the individual's family member," says VanWetter. She calls it going into the field.

VanWetter, who is a therapist and not a psychic, cautions that once the field is activated, it's powerful.

"Representatives will begin to take on the physical characteristics of the ancestors - a hand gesture, a way of moving the head, a way of sitting. They will speak with the same vocal inflections and tones," she says. And what's most eerie is that they will act as conduits: receiving messages from the ancestor, saying things that they couldn't have possibly known.

VanWetter does not use hypnosis, trance states or calling upon spirits to activate the field. "It just happens - our collective soul is activated, and somehow, the representatives are able to speak a collective, universal message of the ancestor. The results are extraordinary - often the beginning of resolution takes place instantly, simply by receiving the wisdom from the family collective in this way," she says.

VanWetter almost always directs the individual to respond with compassion and respect, but not necessarily forgiveness. "That's not always ours to give," she says. "But what is always appropriate is to respect that person's role and position in the family. No individual can be whole until the entire family is healed."

Some examples?

A woman does a Constellation. In the process, she discovers her grandfather, a German, had family members who were persecuted by the Nazis. Coincidentally, she married a man whose family was also persecuted. She is able to process her grandfather's information, and somehow, the whole dynamic shifts. Something at the core is irrevocably healed.

"Because Hellinger [the creator of the Constellation theory] is German, much of the work he did dealt with Germans: dealing with the collective guilt if their ancestors had been Nazis, or the shame and fear they felt if they had been persecuted by them," says VanWetter. "In America, we find this is still an active wound with some families of Germanic descent."

Family members who've suffered from molestation, child abuse or abusive relationships often carry a deep shame that stems from their ancestors, VanWetter found. "In many cases, they have taken on the role of a long-dead relative, and are living out that person's role, instead of their own. When we heal the family, the individual can take on his or her own proper role."

Sometimes Constellations are intense. In one recent workshop, a man had recurrent feelings of shame. When VanWetter did a Constellation for him in a group setting, the field activated, and his family history came to life: there is a mother who committed suicide, a handful of step siblings, a grandparent who was a chronic alcoholic, another great-aunt who committed suicide. This particular constellation was so intense and the field so active that VanWetter decided to stop the process midway through.

"You have to know when to stop. You have to know what people can handle," she says. "In this case, it was clear that this man would need more experience with Constellation work before we could work at such intensity."

Another example: a woman, who has been previously married, is marrying a man who has also been married previously. In her Constellation, she is able to recognize the first wife and the first husband as a part of the family dynamic. In recognizing their roles as a part of the whole, years of bitterness and hatred dissolve.

"This isn't talk therapy. It happens before your eyes, you experience it viscerally," says VanWetter. "It can be a shock for people - to actually talk to the representative, and hear what they say. Because what they say is so very much what that family member would say, or would have said. Even though you are dealing with people's representatives, not the actual ancestor or family member, the effect is the same."

What this process ends up doing is healing the family collective, the collective soul of the family. Clients can experience an immediate change, and then continue to experience reverberations and healing in the months to come as the family system becomes whole.

Sara Wiseman writes on spirituality and wellness. She has co-authored Soul Motion: Dancing the Divine with Vinn Marti, and is completing a second novel. Contact her at wiseman@open.org. Catherine VanWetter can be reached at www.courageconsultants.net, catherine@courageconsultants.net or 541-753-1820.