Navigating Challenging Family Dynamics: Holiday Edition
“Family Constellations Therapy” can help you not only survive, but thrive… even at dreaded family events with tricky dynamics. You might even surprise yourself and actually start to enjoy some aspects of the bonding time!
Family members can be the greatest blessing, give the warmest snuggles and create the strongest bonds… and at the same time they can cause the greatest amount of pain and stress.
Family can make your heart sing…
And at the same time some of them can make you want to shrink so small that you become completely invisible.
Family can make you feel cozy and snug during cold and dark moments in time…
And at the same time can have the power to chill you to the bone, shocking and shorting your entire energy system.
Family is the definition of living in a dialectic reality.
This week we, Esther Goldstein & Sara Chana Segal, went live on Instagram to discuss the hottest topic of the season;
Finding your place and a sense of inner peace within your family constellation - which is especially important this month.
Family Constellation Therapy in New York & Long Island
We invite you along with us, on a journey to find your spark in the darkness of dreaded anticipation.
Let us use the light of the Chanukah candles to inspire our quest for strength, courage and warmth as we learn to brighten the gloomiest of nights.
For those who don’t celebrate Chanukah, it might be interesting to note that the imagery of bringing light in the darkness is a common theme for most of the other winter holidays. Cultures and religions around the world seem to draw on a similar sort of wisdom and hope. Many of you celebrate Christmas, Winter Solstice, Kwanza or a unique combination of holidays sandwiched between Thanksgiving and New Years.
What we have noticed though, is that “too much family togetherness” is a big cause of anticipatory anxiety across the board.
Many of us are both excited to the core and dreading this time deeply…
Many of our lights have already started to dwindle well before the season reached its peak. Family holiday get-togethers have a unique way of shining a light on old dysfunctional patterns, insecurities and ineffective coping strategies when they could very well be an opportunity to strengthen bonds and make the world a bit brighter.
Family Constellations Therapy
Some of the clinicians in our practice often use a therapeutic framework called Family Constellations Therapy to help their clients shine a light on challenging family dynamics. By helping a client identify their “designated” place within the family, they can learn to utilize their strengths, redirect dysfunctional patterns and challenge harmful beliefs that have been deeply ingrained throughout the years.
Oftentimes people land up in therapy with issues or symptoms that “don’t make sense to them” and they try to rework the issues but nothing seems to be working. The answers to their problems seem way beyond their ability to fix - after all, you can’t really change other people.
If family is what is causing the problems, is the only answer to change yourself? Yes and no.
Perhaps it’s not really about changing yourself as much as it’s about discovering yourself and the patterns that actually belong to you (rather than the ones you inherit).
Family constellations help us map out unspoken dynamics at play and can help uncover the “hidden elements” that may directly or indirectly be the cause of the issue. Sometimes there’s a body memory or a missing piece of a puzzle that hasn’t been identified and simply by identifying it, you are able to shift and even resolve the problem.
In a Family Constellation sessions we combine other techniques to draw out information about how the family roles are generally played out. We get to know the potential burdens, entrapments, contracts and legacy dysfunctions that other key members carry into the relationship and learn to separate them from our own reality. We learn to have compassion for their plight but we also learn that the problems are not ours to carry.
3 Basic Principles of
Family Constellations Therapy
Want to watch about Family Constellations? Click the video here.
One of the main advantages of this framework is that we can work with family members without them being present. We can make our own shifts that will have ripple effects on those around us without beating our heads against the wall in a group setting. We work on our own side of the relationships with parents, grandparents, children, extended family and even the deceased and past generations. We take the power back.
There are 3 main principles of Family Constellations Therapy that we apply in combination with a variety of other therapy techniques based on each individual client’s personality, interests and needs.
Restore Belonging
Without realizing it, many of us own stories and therefore carry burdens that don't belong to us. When someone is left out of the family, becoming a black sheep, a member of the later generation might unknowingly take on a similar fate of ancestor ”entanglement.” This can be self inflicted or can be a dynamic unconsciously created by a family member.
Sometimes we carry the burdens of those we have never met but yet we still connect with somehow. Maybe we are not even the one’s carrying the connection but we are left to sort out a relationship with a family member who has a gaping hole from one of those relationships. Those who typically get excluded from the family constellation include aborted babies, miscarried babies, stillborn, black sheep, mentally ill, perpetrators. The silence can be harmful to families who are left with gaping holes in their understanding of the past. In therapy we find the missing pieces of the story so we can effectively grieve, find a place of acceptance, healing or justice, resolve the harmful patterns and restore a sense of belonging within the family constellation.
Order
Every member of the family has a place and a right to live within the order in which they were born or the order that feels healthy. This idea is referred to as the “Orders of Love”. Oftentimes, when one is born into a disordered family system, there are warped dynamics that can prevent healthy development. Role reversals between parent and child is a prime example of this idea.
A child who was never allowed to be a child, who was never nurtured properly, who became a chid-sized-parent to sibling, will inevitably deal with “Orders of Love” issues later in life. When a sibling is put in the position to act outside of their birth order, it can also create challenges.
In therapy we would combine a variety of techniques to help heal the inner child that has never really had a chance to be a child or a child that was raised by a younger sibling (or only other challenges in “order”) and we would teach self-parenting techniques. We explore new truths and new outlooks so that even though the family dynamics might not change, we can resolve the heaviness of the burdens that were never really ours to carry, learn to create boundaries and healthier ways to approach “too much family togetherness.”
Acknowledging What Is
The truth has a way of releasing pent up energy and stress similar to how a chiropractor or a massage therapist can release pressure points and muscle knots. The very act of acknowledging the truth is in and of itself a catalyst for growth and stimulates a ripple of changes that can restore belonging and order. The truth allows us to decipher and separate the burdens that are ours from those of our family members. It allows us to stop the dysfunctional thoughts, patterns and behaviors that tend to kick up during stressful times and especially at triggering family gatherings.
Using a variety of techniques in therapy we can make very subtle energetic shifts that have the power to make an enormous difference. We learn to treat ourselves kindly and compassionately, using “healing words” and acceptance.
You know the saying “The truth will set you free”? In this case, there is so much merit to that!
“The impact of stating the truth acts as an energetic, chiropractic like adjustment of the soul.”
- Camilla Adair
Wrapping Up
Living a fulfilled life is about finding a spark and bringing light and brightness to your heart, your soul and to your relationships. Each of us has this light within ourselves and the power to ignite a brighter future for ourselves and future generations.
“Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because what the world needs is more people to come alive.”
To watch Esther & Sara Chana on IGTV click here
So turning to you, dear reader….
I invite you to take a small step to look within yourself, so that you can being building- or continue building- a beautiful life. And if you’re looking for some one-on-one counseling, we are here for you. Counseling can help you create lasting changes to improve your life.
Our therapists in New York offer therapies that work
At our practice, we offer EMDR therapy, Somatic therapy, Attachment-Informed methods, Cognitive therapy, Internal Family Systems/Parts work and Expressive methods to help you experience relief.