Introduction to Orders of Love

There are times when an individual and a family are so mired in their ritualistic thought and feeling patterns that nothing they do or a therapist does seems to “move” people to new possibilities.  We, as therapists and facilitators, have all been “stuck” wondering what is next, what can be done, how can we be of best service to this system, called a family?

Sometimes, we, like our clients need a different perspective, a new view, and a paradigm shift in our own ways of doing things.  Family Constellations (Hellinger,1998) gives us a tremendous capacity to shift individuals, families, businesses and ourselves.

Family Constellations, as well as Organizational Constellations, come to therapists around the world from a German named Bert Hellinger.  Hellinger’s transformational work stands on the shoulders of giants in the field of philosophy, biology, psychotherapy, field theory and native Zulu’s of Africa.

Hellinger, born in 1925, has given the world a new paradigm.  Hellinger shows us all a vastly different, vastly effective, vastly respectful, vastly humane, vastly humble way of viewing human beings and human systems.  

Family Constellations transcend normative practices.  Because Family Constellation work transcends “normative” practices, Hellinger, his work and those who practice his work are being greatly scrutinized

Albrecht Mahr, a German psychiatrist, stated in October 2005 in Chester, England, at the “Unimaginable Solutions Conference, “Bert Hellinger was a genius at seeing systems and patterns within systems and for that the world is better” (Mahr, 2005). 

Hellinger was given the opportunity to see and categorize family “orders” and systems, as a young missionary charged with converting the Zulu natives to Christianity.

Being among multi-generational families, gave Hellinger the opportunity to watch individuals and families over extended time and generations. From his “seeing”, he brought Orders of Love, Movements of the Soul, Movements of the Spirit and Family Constellations to the world. 

Watching and learning for nearly two decades, Hellinger noticed that many family systems seemed to flow well AND many family systems seemed to literally be stuck in some destructive pattern. 

His capacity to “see” systems and categorize exactly what he was seeing gave us Family Constellations rooted in the Orders of Love. 

This gift of the Zulu’s, transformed Hellinger’s life, as well as the lives of all who come into contact with his work.

How Does One Know if a Person Suffers “Systemic” Problems?

Ursula Franke (1995) brought to the therapy world a different way of seeing a client’s emotional issues.  Franke noted that there are four kinds of emotions.  Those four types are: primary, secondary, systemic and Meta emotions. 

• Primary feelings are those feelings which support action.  For example: primary guilt may occur when a cashier gives a customer too much change.  When the customer realizes that, s/he feels guilty.  Primary guilt would mean the customer returns the excess change.  And, when the action corrects the deed, the customer is relieved as the guilt ends.
• Secondary feelings develop when a person has had insufficient support for action which now forestalls it neurotically.  For example: secondary anger, lasts a very long time and seems almost continuous for a client.  If we continuously “therapy” the anger, the client is stuck.  The primary feeling is under that anger.  We find that most often the client was not permitted not supported to express grief. 
• Systemic feelings are feelings that belong elsewhere in the system and need to be respectfully returned to their owner.  One can tell if something is “systemic” due to the hopelessness of clients.  When a client appears and says I have felt rage for years and really have no reason to be this mad, nothing happened to me. 
• Meta feelings are feelings that carry strength and purity of vision.  For example: wisdom, joy, courage.

It is the systemic, the family feelings of connecting in costly ways, ways that reproduce the same ailments as before that Order of Love, Family Constellations aim to help.