AOL EmailVery good, you've got it down! Now to catch it in progress with a
clients live constellation.... it is like a butterfly and you have to remember
these things or you'll have a hole in your net. Many people will NOT give up
their righteous anger easily as most time it seems to justify their existence.
BEING RIGHT that is... oh the ego never stops.....but the Soul knows truth. One
other thing is let the client have their resistance as we are not there to
justify their egotistical assumptions which would be a losing battle. This work
goes under their radar and transforms them inside out where the ego
manifestations seem to happen outside in etc...Are we all double shifting our
negative grandfather issues on to Mr. Bush here in America? discuss.....love
GARY STUART LA, CA
----- Original Message -----
From: TomBuoyed@xxxxxxx
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 10:26 AM
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] double shifting
The realizations that came to me about the issue of "accepting" vs.
"taking" one's parents move me now to explore the family system dynamics that
Bert describes as "double shifting." The question arises: if I'm stuck in my
own self-pitying reactive pain because I am merely ACCEPTING my parents with
gracious tolerance, then what is preventing me from TAKING them as they are?
The systemic answer is that I must be carrying their burden in some way. Then I
discover Bert's insights about "double shifting."
Let me put it in my own words as I read about it on pages 150-151 of
Bert's book _Acknowledging What Is._ If anyone cares to correct me and/or
expand it further, please do so.
(1) A woman has a grandfather who physically abuses his wife, the
woman's grandmother.
(2) The woman unconsciously carries the burden of her grandparents
perpetrator-victim dynamic as a way of compensation in her family system.
(3) And she wants to stop the abuse dynamic by avenging her
grandmother's victimization in order to bring order, i.e. balance, to her
family system.
(4) She thus feels angry at all men in general and in particular, she
takes her vengeance out against her husband.
It is easy to see the systemic shift with the males in the family. The
actual perpetrator is the grandfather, but the woman shifts the responsibility
from Grandpa down to her husband, who is innocent in this context.
It's more difficult for me to see the other shift, where Bert states
that the woman is actually showing great contempt for her grandmother by not
taking her as she is --- that is, to take Grandma as the victim of Grandpa and
take Grandpa as the perp. Instead, she seeks to avenge her grandmother. But
this obsession for revenge shows that while she may, in fact, ACCEPT her
grandmother, she does not TAKE her grandmother as she is.
I feel a diagram is in order, so here goes. (Hope it comes through
intact)
(Victim) <----------------------- (Perpetrator)
Grandma <------------------------Grandpa
.....|.......................................|
.....|.......................................|
.....|....(shift 2)........................|...(shift 1)
.....|.......................................|
....V......................................V
Granddaughter -------------->Husband
(new perpetrator)----------->(new victim)
As I look at this scheme, it strikes me that I am interpreting both
shifts as down (See my arrowheads). But I also think I need a diagonal line
from Grandpa (GP) down to granddaughter (GD) because it's clear that GD shifts
the perpetrator energy to herself from GP and then deflects it like a mirror
deflecting a sunbeam right between the eyes of her husband (HB). By acting as a
deflector, then GD takes no responsibility for sending GP's perpetrator energy
to HB. Yet she has no right to avenge her GM because she as GD has not
experienced GM's pain.
But things become clearer for me if I look upon the other shift not as
a shift DOWN from GM to GD, but rather as a shift UP from GD to GM. This makes
sense as the Victim is always seen through the Sympathy side of the Soul
whereas the Perpetrator is seen from the Antipathy side. I consider Sympathy
to be an expansion from one's heart/soul out to another (picture blowing up a
balloon), while Antipathy is a contracting, recoiling reaction to angry
perpetrator forces coming into the heart Soul (picture deflating). The point is
that the two energies flow in opposite directions. Furthermore, Sympathy makes
me want to merge or identify with the Victim, while Antipathy makes me want to
separate from the Perpetrator.
Now may I copy the diagram above with only a change in arrowheads to
signify the opposing directions of the double shifting flows.
(Victim) <----------------------- (Perpetrator)
Grandma <------------------------Grandpa
..../\.......................................|
.....|.......................................|
.....|...(upshift.........................| (downshift separating)
.....|....merging)......................|
.....|......................................V
Granddaughter -------------->Husband
(new perpetrator)----------->(new victim)
I then see double shifting as happening simultaneously because if there
is a reaction in the soul toward Antipathy, there must be an equal and opposite
reaction of Sympathy somewhere else.
So, as GD down-shifts her GP's perpetrator energy, deflecting it
angrily over to her HB, she must simultaneously up-shift her sympathy reaction
to identify and merge with her GM. So she unconsciously represents GM to avenge
GM's victim status, and she simultaneously dissociates herself from GP's perp
energy by deflecting it over to HB.
I hope this is clear and I feel I should stop here and post this and
see what feedback I get from y'all.
Thomas
PS COMING ATTRACTIONS! In characterizing "double shifting," I also
see how Bert has really expanded and extended the traditional psychotherapeutic
idea of projection because the source of projection is not just the GD, and
that has ramifications for the "transference/counter-transference" discussion
that is going on.
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