Family Constellations and Trauma

By Marc Baco

A supportive book for those who want to know: How you can work cautiously and with patience on your traumatic experiences. How to find and activate resources. How you can quickly bring feelings and behavior triggered by trauma into balance. How you can overwrite your traumatic experiences step by step with the help of family constellations. How you can transform trauma in the long term with family constellations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Sep 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071565537

Book preview

Family Constellations and Trauma

Marc Baco

––––––––

Translated by Sarojini Seeneevassen 

Family Constellations and Trauma

Written By Marc Baco

Copyright © 2020 Marc Baco

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Sarojini Seeneevassen

Cover Design © 2020 Sarah Wanning

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

Family Constellations and Trauma

Transforming traumatic experiences in a healing way

with patience, love, mindfulness and gentleness

Copyright© Marc Baco

37 voices Verlag, Schallstadt

www.37voices.de

Cover: Sarah Wanning

Cover pic:

© vege - Fotolia.com

© 123dartist - Fotolia.com

All rights reserved.

Note:

This publication has been researched and compiled to the best of our knowledge. However, both publisher and author cannot assume any liability for ideas, concepts, recommendations and relative information therein.

The published tips and advice are to be understood as aids in order to come up with one’s own solutions.

For any questions, please contact your family doctor or therapist.

This book does not replace medical treatment/therapy.

The author and the publisher cannot guarantee your personally desired result. You are wholly responsible for all your actions.

We would like to expressly point out to the reader of this book that no successful result of any kind can be guaranteed. Also, no responsibility can be accepted for any kind of consequences that you or other readers may have in connection with the content of this book.

The reader is responsible for any ideas and actions arising in connection with this book.

Reproduction, translation, distribution, further processing or similar actions for commercial or non-commercial purposes as well as reselling are not permitted without the written consent of the author and publisher.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Traumas and Traumatic Experiences

With Patience, Love, Mindfulness and Gentleness

Findings from Family Constellations on Trauma

Useful Insights from Outside Family Constellations

Where Constellations for Trauma-Thresholds are Not Appropriate

What Happens in a Family Constellation

Resources as a Solid Foundation

Leaving the Family System

Prenatal Trauma: How Experiences in the Womb Affect Life

Perinatal Trauma: Complications at Birth

Postnatal Trauma: Alone in the Incubator

The Interrupted Movement to a Parent

Trauma Due to Neglect: Unrecognized and Very Common

Childhood War Trauma

Trauma Due to an Accident

Abuse - a Serious Attachment Trauma

Attachment Trauma Violence: What Dreams Can Reveal

Trauma in the System of Attachment

Acquired Trauma

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Recommended Literature

Recommended Facilitators for Family Constellations in Europe

More Books on Family Constellations by Marc Baco

Softness

Frozen in childhood memories,

repressed, deep-frozen in the subconscious

and yet subliminally always present,

enduring humiliations,

receiving blows,

is my SOFTNESS

under the impression of great loss,

embedded in liquid krypton,

enclosed by walls of ice,

whose blocks are held together by

superficial warmth

paired with repellent cold,

striving for

infallibility

invincibility

invulnerability

of perfection

scheming calculation and distrust.

AND yet my first gift to you was

SALT

Marek Artur Pasterz

Introduction

Anyone who knows my other books on family constellations will find some passages familiar, since I repeat the basic principles in each book. The wording is therefore the same in certain parts of the book.

The theme of Trauma is gaining in importance within family constellations. Thanks to Franz Ruppert and Berthold Ulsamer among others, further discoveries are constantly adding to knowledge in the field of family constellation.

While perpetrator-victim constellations used to be dominant, I have observed that in recent years, more and more constellations have switched over to trauma constellations. Several family constellation facilitators will need to rethink and reorientate their work accordingly.

Trauma is such a serious event that the question of order, attachment and balance between give and take - the three classical and main fields of family constellations - fades into the background and can usually only be tackled after dealing with the trauma. Most of the time, the power of a trauma overrides the other principles of family constellations energetically. To ignore this and work on order, for example, can therefore prove fruitless and pointless.

In this book, I differentiate between one-time traumatic experiences and constant or persisting traumatic experiences over a certain period of time. In particular, I treat developmental traumas which, even if prenatal, can affect a whole lifetime.

To my experience, this distinction has proven its worth. I will go into more detail about this in the chapter Traumas and Traumatic Experiences.

In my opinion, a family constellation is a very open system which can easily integrate knowledge from other areas such as psychology, other forms of therapy or coaching. This is why references to Somatic Experiencing according to Peter Levine, Neural Somatic Integration according to Arthur Munyer as well as craniosacral biodynamics are included in this book.

But first we will look into some basic findings in family constellations concerning trauma.

At this point, I do not claim to meet the demands of scientific theses or the condition that hypotheses should be reproducible and accountable. Family constellations, as I know and practice, do not meet these requirements. They remain a phenomenological form of therapy with an 'esoteric' touch.

This means that I will probably not reach readers who have a scientific approach.

In fact, I cannot provide any evidence and most likely, your matter of concern is so individual that the findings in this book are only a guideline and cannot replace your own constellation.

This is also why this book is aimed at facilitators for family constellations, as well as interested lay persons who wish to work on the topic of trauma and for whom a family constellation is the best way to tackle their traumas.

Marc Baco, facilitator for family constellations at Freiburg i. Br./Germany

Traumas and Traumatic Experiences

As you may have seen in the table of contents, there is a whole series of traumas, ranging from prenatal trauma to trauma handed down from other persons.

I decided to classify the traumas according to their time of occurrence and then again, differentiate according to their duration.

What is meant by that?

The time of occurrence refers to the age at which the traumatized person went through the traumatic experience. For example, at birth, at the age of 5 or 16 years, etc.

The duration adds an intensity/time component. It does make a difference whether a traumatic event happens once, (trauma type I), or if it lasts for a longer period (trauma type II). A single rape is different in intensity from years of rape in a marriage.

The intensity or severity of a trauma is a very individual and subjective perception. A single rape may be worse for one victim than years of abuse for another.

Personality, endurance etc. play a role here, summarized with the term resilience (psychological resilience) or vulnerability.

In this book, I use the terms trauma and traumatic experience as synonymous, whereby I usually refer to one-time events with trauma, and persisting, or longer lasting phases, with traumatic experience. But I don't do it consistently.

What defines a trauma?

A single or recurring shock triggers a trauma if it cannot be processed within a reasonable time.

For example, when someone feels that a situation is life-threatening and he can neither flee nor fight, is helplessly exposed to the circumstances and overwhelmed by his emotions. The last