This Blog is based on a Podcast recorded 20 January 2020 with Dr David Owen, founder of the Natural Practice. The topic is how constellations counselling supports clients to build their emotional and mental wellbeing, as well as their immune systems. I’ve retained the Q&A Podcast style, however this is not a transcript. Link to Podcast here.
David:
I know that when I’ve referred patients to you at the Practice they’ve really benefitted from constellations counselling. It’s sometimes hard for people to understand the term constellations if they’ve never heard of or encountered this work, can you explain more about it and what sorts of issues patients come to you with?
Marcos:
Constellations is a way of working with the whole person: with their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects. People come seeking a wide range of support, for example anxiety or depression, relationship problems, emotional or psychological wellbeing, finding better ways to integrate the impacts of an illness (e.g., chronic fatigue syndrome) or working with the impacts of previous traumas. Sometimes clients want to work on existential or psycho-spiritual themes (life-meaning and direction), to give them greater awareness and agency in life.
We take these issues which form a 2-dimensional picture of the client, then add layers of context to gain a deeper understanding of the person, the issues, and life-impacts. I have heard you speak David of your ‘holographic’ approach to treatment. It’s similar in constellations counselling, in the sense that my clients and I co-create a hologram of their life, behaviours, choices and health.
David:
Can you say some more about how this work supports a client’s psychological and emotional health?
Marcos:
I start with one of the basic premises of constellation work, the theme of belonging.
Belonging is vital to human beings, without it we cannot survive as we are social creatures and belong to and contribute to so many systems; our family, extended family; our ancestry going back generations; our friends; our local communities; a local network; work communities; specific-interest groups; political interests; religious or spiritual beliefs. All of those are normally helpful in meaning-making yet there is a shadow too to belonging.
David:
I can see human beings need to belong, how might that relates to what a client wants to work on?
Marcos:
Imagine that being human is a bit like being a sheep farmer! We have a flock of sheep and every sheep represents a pattern or a trait, a way of understanding the world, or a behaviour. That flock influences who we are and how we behave. Most farmers also have a sheepdog to protect the sheep from straying too far, to protect them from danger of falling into a ditch, being prey to wild animals. The sheepdog maintains a coherence of the flock, and in the same way there is a part of our psychological construct that seeks to maintain a coherence to the self and how we manage life in a changing world.
Within our inner flock so to speak, we have many thought-forms and behaviour-patterns some of which are inherited and belong to a wider system, often from our family of birth/origin. What happens if those traits no longer serve us? Belonging is in continual tension with our human drive to self-actualise, to exercise our free will and autonomy, and become more authentic.
David:
I understand the analogy of the flock of sheep, how does this impact our emotional and mental wellbeing?
Marcos:
I’d like to share something I read recently from a Native American Indian wisdom tradition:
“When people believe they have no way out, the seeming lack of choices has put the will or emotional body in denial. Mental or physical illness will follow when the emotional immune system is overloaded with denied feelings and refused free will.”
Earth Medicine, author, Jamie Sams
David:
Is constellations counselling about increasing choice-fullness and by doing that you’re also supporting clients’ immune systems?
Marcos:
Yes, exactly that. Sometimes clients start from their physical wellbeing and we move towards their emotional and psychological health, as I said at the start, we are a mix of mind, body and spirit, each domain influencing the others.
When our inner sheepdog (often unconsciously) denies a particular behaviour or experience, our free will is constrained, our choice-fullness narrows. And we do not benefit from the diversity of experience that might have resulted from choosing new ways of responding or thinking.
In counselling work as clients begin to understand their own self-limiting behaviours and beliefs, they re- train themselves to allow a wider palette of experiences, ways of viewing the world, ways of relating. Coming back to that quote above, our emotional and mental immune systems are the more vital for being able to choose how to respond in a given situation, rather than defaulting to unconscious patterns.
David:
Thank you. Can you say something about how this works in practice in a constellations counselling session, for example does it work online, how long might it take for a client?
Marco:
Yes, since COVID all my counselling work has moved online, and it is possible to develop a sense of deep trust and connection with my clients on Zoom. Here’s how the process works:
We have a 10-15 minute phone call initially followed by an intake session: my client completes a pre-intake questionnaire providing information about the issues they wish to work on, family history, medical history, ancestral history (grandparents and beyond).
Clients do not have to have had any prior experience of counselling or therapy; quite often my clients will also be patients of one of the Doctors at the Natural Practice, for example receiving homeopathic treatment; that parallel approach works effectively.
We contract with agreements about how we will proceed: confidentiality, commitments to the process.
We use different approaches so it is not merely an intellectual exercise, but somatic too, in other words we include our bodies’ wisdom. I am curious about what an illness or difficulty might be teaching my client, where it resides in the body, what the illness might say if it had a voice.
As we embark on the constellations counselling work, we discover that often unconscious behaviour traits keep my client limited and are systemically linked to a person (someone in the client’s family of origin, or their wider ancestry), to a traumatic event, or to a cultural expectation too. We gain a deeper understanding of “who am I, and where do my thinking and emotional traits come from?” From there comes insight, acceptance, maybe forgiveness, and my client can be freed up to make new choices. I work in batches of about five 50-minute online sessions, normally spaces 2-3 weeks apart. Each session is followed up with a written thematic summary, including agreed homework to maintain the momentum between sessions. Sometimes a client has done enough after 5 sessions, or we re-contract to deepen the work further.
David:
Could you give an example of a behaviour trait that a client might work on?
Marcos:
Imagine there is a learned behaviour in my client’s family system which says: “it's not okay to get angry, just keep the peace”. Imagine my client in their different relationships every time anger comes up, their inner sheepdog suppresses their anger consequently they don't express it and it gets bottled up. Oftentimes it then turns inward, my client feels bad about themselves; blaming themselves excessively, “I'm not good enough”. This impairs relationships, self-expression and intimacy. And all this may be happening without my client even being aware. So the work of counselling is to manifest these unconscious mechanisms.
Once my client understands with whom or with what their denial of anger belongs, they can then make some peace with it, and start to explore new ways. For example, through homework agreed at the end of each sessions, my client might agree to notice and allow feelings of annoyance, irritation, or anger, maybe keeping a journal. So they start to build an understanding of these emotions.
Then they might progress to explore how to appropriately express those feelings rather than bottle them up. One of the enabling aspects of constellation work is that we can use objects or different seating/standing positions to represent scenarios and test out conversations. My clients get a sense of what it’s like to express new behaviours or use approaches like Non-Violent Communication to help express themselves in challenging situations.
I would like to conclude by returning to the theme of how this work relates positively to our mental and emotional immune systems. One of the conditions that enables a healthy, resilient and vital immune system is being able to express ourselves authentically. Sometimes that means re-training our inner sheepdog!
David: thank you Marcos, it’s been fascinating chatting with you, could you clarify how people can get in touch with you?
Marcos:
Yes, contact details, blogs, testimonials and more about Constellations Counselling at the Natural Practice website here or also on our Natural Practice Facebook page here.
