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15/8/2016 0 Comments

On Environmental Constellations

One of the things that interests me about constellation work is how it brings the bigger picture to our lives. Constellation work arose out of german psychotherapy in the late 80s. Albrecht Mahr a respected veteran constellation facilitator talks of how he went to a psychotherapist for many years, unable to shake off a depression that hung over him. Everything about his family of origin seemed well functioning, loving parents who cared well for their son, no great personal losses or mishaps in his early life. At that time psychotherapy did not provide the answer.

But the psychotherapy movement of the 1980s noticed something, all the therapy was very personally based, the lens was rarely taken out to a wider view. For Albrecht, once he looked wider and took account of his father’s nazi past and the suffering that caused to so many he was able to find a new way to love his father, look at his life and ease and make sense of his depression. He now works in Rwanda healing the trauma of that nation and publishes widely about his work and experiences.

In the UK, some say that we lost by winning the war. We are a bit smug and therefore don’t look at our own actions or those of our families with such a critical eye. - And I find myself wondering whether in the future the personal and spiritual agonies faced by Albrecht, will be faced by our children and grand-children as they take account of our blind environmental destruction.

So as I watch Germany lead the world in it’s renewable energy production, I watch in dismay in the UK as we come bottom of the League. I see today that Germany has banned fracking, just as we have created opportunities for fracking all over our land.

We are inextricably bound to our lands, we rely on the earth for our lives just as in infancy we relied on our mothers. And yet so many of us are so cut off from the natural world that we don’t even notice the phases of the moon or the touch of the wind.

And so I invite you to come to my next environmental constellation workshop. It will be an entirely experimental affair, we may work with our need to connect with nature - as we have done in the past, or we may work with our future selves and descendants to see what ways there are to help us now face our impact on the future, or we may work with nature in her traumatised state and see if there are ways we can help.

You are invited to come with an agenda - i.e. a problem you would like to fix. And if you do, I suggest you bring something very very specific with which you have a deep emotional or ancestral connection, or you can come with no agenda and we can work with the future.

I do hope you will be able to participate.

30/6/2015 0 Comments

Interfering mother? Is it ever possible to set boundaries?

6/30/2015

Your mum’s driving you nuts!
She’s SO interfering you can’t stand it. But you also rely on her to look after your kids. In fact, she is the only person you really trust with your kids and she looks after them a lot. Truth is you’d be lost without her. But she is also driving you mad.

She is controlling, she is bossy, she criticises your parenting, she criticises the kids. You don’t like how she behaves. But you can’t stop her. Whenever you try, it ends up in a massive row - or a sulk.

You know you can’t change her.
And what’s worse, even though you hate how she is with your kids, you recognise that sometimes you do the same.

You say the same things, you make the same put downs albeit wrapped up in noughties caring language. You notice yourself being impatient with them just like she is with you - criticising them for not being clean and tidy enough,

How do you stop this pattern?

Face it, she’s not going to change. All you can do is change your reaction to her. Simple, eh? Ok, it’s not, Not when it’s between you and your mum, your annoying, difficult, demanding, mum, whom you love and you just can’t loosen those apron strings.

You need better boundaries, you and your mum. Really firm clear boundaries. It sounds so simple. But it’s not that easy. The two of you have a life time of merged boundaries to undo.

When babies are born they both bond with and begin the long slow job of separating from their mothers and their mothers begin the long slow job of letting go. It’s a normal journey that we all go through, and our abilities to bond and separate as mothers, is shaped by our infant experiences. Something that we had no control over. So some of us find it easier than others - it all depends on how things were for us.

In many cases, circumstances mean that process gets in a muddle. Some mums let go too quickly, some mothers, can’t bear to let go as they cling to their infant child as an infant would cling to their mother. So if your mother had separation issues from her mother, she can’t help herself but over attach herself to you. The boundaries are a muddle and you can’t bear her clinginess - or interfering, but also find it incredibly hard to find a new place to stand and say no..

The stuck infant part of you fears if you set boundaries either you or your mother won’t survive. And the stuck infant part of your mother may fear the same.

It's a challenge.
No wonder so many people go through their lives not healing this most crucial of relationships.

Healing it requires conscious effort. Some people can figure it out for themselves, others go to psychotherapy or counselling, and others find they need to see the bigger picture. And that’s what where constellations come in.

We use constellations to set up your family and observe the wider systemic influences around your family that make it so difficult between you and your mother. So we may see for example that your mother’s mother was distracted by the war, or a tragic loss of an elder sibling - there are no end of reasons that could have caused your grandmother to be unavailable.    And somehow seeing it set up in front of you, with people representing your family members, helps you to really experience something you have known all along, but not really understood.

And somehow through this process of experiencing something you have known all along in a hidden unconscious way, can liberate you, help you to see your mother in a different light and then you find internally different tools for dealing with her.

Sounds a bit scary? - scary thought maybe, but actually more scary to spend most of your life not facing it.

There are techniques or things you can you do at home. Think about what resources are available to you before you deal with your mum. If you know she is going to tell you you should have painted the bedroom green not blue, talk to friends about it before hand, see if you can find a way to ease the tension before you speak to her.

Talk to your inner child you and let her know you will protect her from the ravages of your mum. Tell the frightened infant that you, adult you, will take care of this relationship now. These techniques should make it a little easier to tackle your mother from a calm and adult perspective.

And if that isn’t enough, and if you need more resources and kind support to help you set clearer boundaries, come to a workshop. Come and see others take steps towards their personal power and see if it’s the right thing for you.

Over to you:

Do you have a mother who is interfering? How do you set clear boundaries with your interfering mother? Do you do so in a way that enables both of you and your relationship to flourish? I am curious to learn how others deal with this:

And if you want more, if you want to see how these unconscious patterns arise in people’s families click here to find out more about what happens at a workshop or here to sign up to attend.

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Liz Sleeper

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On Environmental Constellations

Interfering mother? Is it ever possible to set boundaries?

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