When was the last time you blamed your parents for your less than perfect life? Yesterday? Today? Five minutes ago?
You probably don't realise how often you do that, and how much you harm your health when you do so.
It has become fashionable to blame parents, particularly mothers, for anything that goes wrong in our lives.
It's a phenomenon of the individualistic, "me-obsessed" decades in the wake of the hippy, flower-power era of the 1960s, and it isn't healthy for us, say specialists. They say it has serious consequences for our long-term health in body, mind and spirit.
A form of therapy based on Zulu traditional wisdom and matriarchy is designed to halt that process in its tracks.
South African-born psychologist Coleen Jones has an integrative psychotherapy practice in Ireland, and heads the department of psychotherapy training at University College Cork.
She recently visited Johannesburg to conduct a series of family constellation therapy workshops.
Family constellation therapy was founded by German psychoanalyst and missionary Bert Hellinger, now in his 70s, who worked in Zululand for 16 years as a teacher and director of spiritual studies and became fluent in Zulu.
His experience of Zulu tradition, its matriarchy, ancestor worship, respect for elders, and awareness of the soul's link to nature, form the basis of his work.
The therapy is based on the Zulu tradition of ancestors - elders, especially women, and those that have gone before - as the "doorway to life" and health on all levels, says Jones.
It allows the child, parent, grandparents and forebears to live "connected to one another like the links of a chain stretching back in time".
Those links have weakened and broken over time for a variety of socio-economic, political and psychological factors, most importantly a lack of respect for elders, and a tendency to expect our parents to be perfect.
Societal trends prevalent in the '70s and '80s, and individualistic counselling and therapy that was "all about me" exacerbated the breakdown, says Jones.
Psychological help focused excessively on the failings of parents, blaming them, and mostly mothers, for what went wrong with children. This in turn contributed to problems that plague our health today, both mentally and physically, she says.
Family constellation therapy aims to create an environment for acceptance of parents as ordinary flesh-and-blood humans who do their best, rather than archetypal, mythologically perfect beings who "should have done it right".
We need to "de-mythologise" our parents, says Jones, and we can do so through what she calls "orders of love". These are dynamics contributing to the flow of love in a family system, inspired by Zulu tradition that honours the right to membership in a family for all its members, irrespective of their actions.
That does not mean absolving parents or other family members from responsibility for any harm they may do.
There's no therapeutic "carte blanche" relieving anyone of the consequences of hurtful actions.
It's about leaving acts of physical or emotional cruelty, neglect and abuse "at the feet of the one who is responsible" so these are not carried "transgenerationally" into the future, says Jones.
That idea is based not only on Zulu tradition, but on the work of French philosopher Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger. She researched how systemic entanglements and covert family history cross generations and are carried along in families, with devastating consequences on health.
Family constellation therapy recognises the power of respect as a loving force that keeps the doorway to life open, says Jones.
It helps people move on in ways that facilitate health and healing by helping them to deal with trapped feelings of anger, resentment and betrayal towards parents who turn out to be less than perfect. It promotes personal growth and maturity.
It honours and protects order of precedence of family members, for example, eldest then youngest child, first family then second family, and "re-membering". It recognises the place of members who are dead or absent. In Zulu tradition, death does not deprive you of your place in the family hierarchy, nor does your physical absence, says Jones.
Family constellations also focus on the concept of plurality in the group, rather than the self-gratifying, individualistic drive.
"We are all profoundly affected by a need to belong and a sense of separateness," says Jones.
A sense of belonging is important for stability and mental health, and plurality is a way of "belonging for the greater good".
Healthy relationships involve not only the family, but finding ways of maximising our uniqueness while staying in community with workmates, congregation, fellow citizens, or whatever system of which we may be a part.
We reach out, hoping to make contact only to find barriers and entanglements, says Jones.
Death, illness, loss or conflict interrupt these efforts and cause ruptures. They cause problems in systems by confusing natural orders that can show up in very young children acting like adolescents, children taking over the role of parents, and parents acting as adolescents.
Family constellation therapy is designed to restore natural orders of systems, making it as relevant for health in the corporate as in the personal world, Jones says.
An example of a "misaligned order" is when the receptionist begins to instruct directors, pointing to an entanglement that needs sorting out for the overall health of the company and its staff.
The therapy has a "delicate simplicity that impacts and ripples deeply" and is shown to work, says Jones. It isn't easy or comfortable, because it requires humility to "consent to the world as it is".
"Humility is healthy", she says, and the more we practise it the healthier we will become.
How therapy works
It takes place in a group setting.
The person first discusses a family or relationship issue briefly with the therapist, then selects members from the large group to represent particular family members such as husband, mum and sister, who are positioned in the centre of the group or room. This forms a "family constellation" to allow patterns and entanglements to emerge, for example mother-in-law who gets in the way of the husband and wife.
From here the therapist follows a natural movement to facilitate a positive flow of energy, understanding and love to promote healthier relationships.
Who would gain from this kind of therapy
- Anyone who wishes to work through a problem or difficulty in personal, family or business-related situations, especially problems that are persistent or seem to resist the usual psychological interventions and efforts.
This may include:
- Parents with children, relationship or marital difficulties, addictions, grief and bereavement, abuse issues;
- Anyone coping with situations in which a member or aspect of a family's history may have been excluded, for example, if a child was miscarried or aborted; a person has died, disappeared or been abandoned because of HIV/Aids; a relative has been banished because of committing an act perceived to bring shame on a family;
- Workers in business settings - for example, if an older employee is made redundant apparently without due cause, this will disturb the group or system and cause interpersonal difficulties among the staff.