Hello,
My name is Logan. I am a facilitator in Albuquerque, NM (and also very
mobile). I know many of you in this group. So it is nice to see your names
and comments popping up in my inbox.
If you don't mind me jumping on in this thread, I noticed that it seemed
that the father, in this case, admitted his feelings of sexual attraction
towards his daugher, verbally. After that, it seems, there was a discussion
about whether he commited any violations of his daughter after that, that
he may not consciously remember.
To be frank, telling your child that you desire her sexually is already a
violation. The daughter stepping away would be a very natural response.
In systemic work, I feel that we are used to high levels of disclosure and
maybe we don't always think about these elements of what is best kept
silet, and out of the field of a child who cannot and should not carry the
burden of a parent's sexuality. Hellinger has said that often it is best
for a person who has cheated to keep the guilt to him or herself rather
than telling the partner. The reason being that this puts systemic pressure
on the non-cheating partner as they must then respond, forgive, etc...thus
somehow placing responsibility with them, rather than where responsibility
rests.
This is not meant to at all be crtical of the wonderful work being done in
this case (most likely the situation was previous to the constellatino, I
am guessing) but just something important that I want to share. I have seen
this dynamic a few times, and there is also a value for non-disclosure as a
way of respecting the place of a child in the system.
In much of the constellation work I have done, and seen others do, I am
very aware that many people still do not fully see the child int he child's
place, something particularly rife in western culture and in the U.S. where
children are often sexualized. I have seen that facilitators, for example,
helping me to work with my parents, unconsciously seem to think that, as a
child, my representative should be doing the right things in order to make
the parents love him. With others it is the same. There is a pressure for
the child to surrender to the parents etc...in a way that sort of assumes
that I am increasingly seeing how not engaging in this way leads to
resolutions that may be slower, but go deeper, with the child finding his
or her place more naturally and truly in healthy order, rather than holding
a tense space on behalf of a client and a group of adults that have been
gathered together to fix something.
Guarind this sacred child-space seems to work real miracles.
Thank you,
Logan
