Hello Thomas, Ursula and David,
I think that entanglement is a necessary requirement to facilitate
any transformative practice. In fact without entanglement there is no
possability of transcendence. In a previous email you said:
"The task of the client is to become a full member of the system as an adult,
saying yes to their full inheritance, but not being limited to its patterns.
The
work of the adult is to integrate the internal structures and update them to
present circumstances."
Are those internal structures of trauma not made of entanglement?
Honouring essence above entanglement is in my opinion a symptom of idealism and
not a very useful idea in practice. Transformative practice always leads from
the bottom up. Entanglement facilitates emergence of something new. All growth
is from the bottom up. It is the same in business systems. Good supervisors or
leaders, lead from the bottom up, not from the top down. I think Davids
observation that:
" It is often the family/systemic loyalty that threatens the future of the
family. I find it useful to recognise this in Business Constellations also, as
these are often about the life/survival of the family also."......
is paying attention to something that comes down the line within a family or
organizational system that can in fact harm the system. In this instance
returning or interupting the flow of that energy of harm becomes important. The
act of giving something back or returning it to its source can be very creative.
An example of how creative entanglement can be has happened in my workplace
lately.
A supervisor of our workplace is "too big" and out of order and refuses to
seek
solutions to personal feelings of discomfort with fellow administrators above
her. Instead she employs all sorts of trouble shooting activity sending her
discomfort down the line to those below her (displacement.) Habitually seeking
out problems to solve to feed the self importance of a supervisory role. It was
interesting to notice that four or five staff beneath her were becoming angry
me
included. It took me a little while to undertand that the only problem I had
with this supervisor was that she was looking at me and everyone else like we
were a problem to be solved. That was the problem! She was habitually more
interested in problems than she was solutions.
I called a meeting with her and two other supervisors who are above her
and reminded her that four other senior staff members including myself had
expressed dissatisfaction with her ways of supervising. I conveyed that I
thought it was important in this organizational system to acknowledge where
everyone who was all of a sudden upset was looking and confirmed that they were
all looking in her direction. I requested that she stop looking at me like I
was
a problem and trust me to come to her when I did have a problem. I also asked
her to stop treating me like a child, and gave her and the other two
supervisors a Hellinger quote on leading from the bottom up!
The effect of this interruption or action of giving back is that all the
discomfort that was displaced has now been returned to her. It is in a right
place. The other two supervisors have not been able to thank me enough for
"taking the horse to water", their words. (They also were having their own
problems with her.) I explained to them that no one has to actually do
anything
now as the energy that was seeking displacement with others is now pooling in
her own system and will self-organize itself according to her own guilt and
innocence. What is emerging out of that is a new way of leading. This woman
is more rested and more respected now by everyone.
So perhaps all that is needed is to successfully interupt a flow of direction,
this seems to fit with a successful act of giving back or returning
harm. Perhaps this is one way to disentangle. In my experience however I wish
to
honour that entanglement came first, emergence second and essence third.
Through
trauma or entanglement internal structures became less rigid. Therapy is mostly
a matter of interrupting a pattern and allowing the resources that already
exist
within the client to emerge by themself. This is staying resourceful in
presence.
Kind regards
Sadhana
Hello all,
My wife and I have been discussing this topic for several years. I
understand how Hellinger and his students use the term entanglement, but
I don't think it is a very useful idea in practice.
The client is the essence of their family system. All the information in
the family field is carried inside them. Clients aren't entangled and
they don't give things back to someone else. Who would they give it back
to? It is like the left hand giving back to the right hand.
Through trauma, the client's internal structures become too rigid. The
trauma-related structures are avoided because of the difficult emotions
associated with them. Therapy is mostly a matter of finding resources
for the client so they can come in contact with those difficult places
and stay resourceful in presence.
When they can stay present, they can occupy a context that is larger
than the presenting issue. The issue is inside them, instead of them
being inside the issue and then they need not move away from who they
actually are.
All the best,
Thomas Bryson
Munich
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