Our body is inherently healthy. Much of what we refer to as illness often resolves naturally due to our self-healing abilities. Consider a scraped knee or a fever; illness comes and goes. However, sometimes a condition or ailment becomes persistent. In such cases, a symptom constellation can provide deeper insights into its origins. Similar to shadow or family constellations, symptom constellations operate according to systemic laws.
Two Systemic Laws are:
- Everything desires to be seen.
- Everyone has their rightful place within the system.
When something or someone stands in the shadows of a family system, it may manifest itself through a circuitous route, seeking to be acknowledged. This could relate to a family secret or a life event that remains unspoken. Such matters might involve war, a wrongdoing, a traumatic experience, a miscarriage, or anything else that could not withstand the light of day.
There is a saying: “You are as sick as your secrets are large.” This applies both individually and within a family context. From a systemic perspective, illness can be a part of the family system that calls for acknowledgment through the body. The illness then serves as a ‘trigger’ to bring old wounds to the surface.
Conflict as the Source of Illness
Any type of conflict invariably impacts the brain, psyche, and associated tissues or organs simultaneously. Using The Art of Shadow method, we can explore the underlying conflict that resides within you. We can also establish a contrast between living with an illness and allowing the body to remember what it feels like to be completely healthy. How would it feel to be whole again?
What enters into relationship may heal
— T. Hübl
Healing in Relationship
By creating a constellation for the illness, we connect with the systemic informational field of the family system. Representatives perceive what or who has been excluded. In relation to others, we can discern the message that the illness seeks to convey. Conversely, healing relationships can illuminate an illness in a new light. Instead of viewing an illness as the problem of a single individual within the system, consider it a collective issue.
Healing Happens in Relationship
— Stephan Hausner
A Symptom Constellation is Not a Treatment
Although a constellation is not a form of treatment, it can reveal the message behind an illness or symptom.
“Even when working with those who are ill, we are not focused on disease treatment or healing. We confine ourselves to systemic work, exploring the dynamics that play a role within the current family or the family of origin. Once these dynamics are illuminated, it often has a soothing or even healing effect on the illness, but this is not an end goal. It may well become clear during the constellation that the illness is in its rightful place and that the client is growing through this illness. Therefore, any attempt to bring about healing could intrude upon the patient’s soul and disrupt their destiny. We aim to assist on a different level, connecting with something greater.”
— Bert Hellinger, “The Art of Helping”
Book Tip: Even if it costs me my life
Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness by Stephan Hausner. Healing Practitioner; education in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy and Osteopathy and various approaches in humanistic Psychotherapy, Stephan Hausner is working since 1993 with Systemic Constellation Work, focusing mostly in Illness and Health.
Stephan Hausner conducting a systemic constellation in Amsterdam