Family Constellations - What Is It and how does it work?

Family Constellations was developed by Bert Hellinger, a German psychotherapist who passed away in 2019. Earlier in his life, he spent time living with the Zulu people in Africa, where he observed how remarkably peaceful their communities were. What struck him most was the way they resolved conflict. When there were misunderstandings, arguments, or disruptions in the group, they worked with what we now recognise as a form of family constellation work.

For Bert Hellinger, this was not only a therapeutic method, but a philosophy of life. When he returned to Germany, he felt there was something essential here that Western psychology was missing, something worth exploring more deeply. Over time, this became what we now call Family Constellations therapy.

At its core, this work is about healing your family story through acceptance, respect, and acknowledgement. Our first system is our family system, and whether we like it or not, it follows us throughout our lives. If we are not at peace with that first system, we carry its unresolved imbalances into every other system we enter. Friendships, romantic relationships, work environments, and even our relationship with ourselves are all influenced by what remains unresolved in our family of origin.

If anger, depression, grief, or conflict has not been met or processed, it does not disappear. It moves with us. Family Constellations supports people to make peace with the past, to acknowledge what happened, and at the same time to become empowered to live differently from their ancestors.

There is always a conscious part of your story. You know what happened and you can speak about it. But the most important part of the work happens at the subconscious level. For example, someone may say consciously, “I hate my mother,” while subconsciously they are deeply longing for her love. Family Constellations helps realign the conscious and subconscious so that what was unmet, unspoken, or suppressed can finally be acknowledged and expressed.

We are all individuals, each unique, yet we are also part of something much larger. Human beings need to belong. Everything that happened before you, every ancestor, every choice, every trauma, every loss, contributed to your existence. It is not a coincidence that you are here, living the life you are living. There is a bigger picture at work.

This is why we say, it did not start with you, but it can end with you.

Often people look at families and say, everyone is an addict, or everyone is a single mother, or illness keeps repeating. This is not a curse. It is not punishment. It is about belonging. To belong, we need to be seen, heard, and recognised. Sometimes repeating a family pattern is the only way the system knows how to keep connection alive.

If a grandfather, father, uncle, and sibling are all addicts, being different can feel like exclusion. On a deep level, a person may repeat the pattern not because they want to suffer, but because they want a place in the family, a sense of connection. As strange as it sounds, the behaviour is often an expression of love and loyalty.

At the same time, the family system is always seeking reconciliation and healing. Every new child born into the system is another opportunity for the system to find peace. Someone may reach a point where they say, “I don’t want to repeat this. I want something different for my children.” By acknowledging the pain that has been passed down through generations, that person creates the possibility for change.

When you do this work, you do not only heal yourself. The decision to break a pattern affects at least seven generations, three before you, three after you, and you in the middle. This is why Family Constellations is not only personal healing, but systemic healing.

As the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Family Constellations allows both to happen at once.