Family Constellations And The Hidden Loyalties That Shape Identity

Today I, Susan Sutherland, am sharing another conversation with my friend Caitriona Reed, a transformative guide.

We stay with the hard edges of identity inside relationship and what it takes to choose growth when life turns monotonous. Then we open up Family Constellations and the idea that healing happens in systems, not just inside a single person. Whether you seek healing through Family Constellations or other therapeutic models, the realization of the interconnectedness of families, communities, societies allow healing to be both broader and deeper.

We also discuss:
• commitment as an active agreement rather than an assumption
• rupture as a catalyst for deeper connection over time
• the limits of an individual-only model of therapy and responsibility
• unhealthy loyalty and learned patterns that look “genetic”
• hierarchy in family systems and the cost of children parenting adults
• how Family Constellations work with representatives and silent choreography
• why some constellations resolve clearly and others keep unfolding
• a story of reconciliation sparked after a constellation
• boundaries that protect versus walls that block repair
• trauma carried through generations and its links to mental health
• indigenous roots of constellation work and restoring community connection
• right relationship with land, practice, faith, and integrity

If you enjoyed the conversation with Caitriona and want to learn more about her, her work with family constellations, or her retreats on the sacred land of Manzanita Village in California, please visit her website Home - Five Changes.

Connect with Susan on Instagram and TikTok

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Transcript

A Relationship Turning Point

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello, my friends. I am here with my friend Katriana Reed, and we are going to continue our conversation today talking about identity and her work with Family Constellations. So welcome back, Kate.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Thank you. Thank you, Susan. I just want to say I love what you said in the last talk about the work you do with Mark and that that commitment to really uh feeding the relationship.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

So it's not just assumed, it's not just work it through, work it out, that you're proactively working to let me tell you, Kate, it is not without um it did not come easily for us. In August, I pulled Ripcord and I said, I'm leaving because um I had this energy at the time. It was very much the Lilith archetype energy, the the one who leaves. But um I realized that our life had become so monotonous and and it was walking a ring and not a spiral. It was just getting through the days. And that very much has been a catalyst for our growth. And perhaps it was meant to be that way because we are connecting in a very in a much deeper way now. So it has it has been transformative and also not what we have experienced for 20 years, but it is something we are experiencing now.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Well, I I think um any truly uh growing, nurturing relationship has difficulties.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

The sort of idea that it's all roses and chocolate cake, it it's it's a work uh because individuals change and often they change apart from each other.

unknown 2:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

And which is why the divorce rate is astronomical. Because people don't understand that you it's give and take, it's leaning in, it's it's listening, it's it's doing the work. And the same for us. Michelle and I have been at a point of of wanting to separate from each other often in the past. Uh it's we're in a different stage now where we're committed to doing the work. Whatever that might be.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Right. Which requires both of you being committed to doing it.

Commitment As A Daily Practice

When Relationship Pain Isn’t Yours

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Yeah, and it's an agreement. It's an agreement. So maybe that is a segue into family constellation where, because some of the things that we deal with in the difficulties we experience in a relationship are not really ours. And we've come to think of ourselves and the models of the various therapeutic models, the the culture of the individual isolates us and places us with the mindset that we're we're individuals and everything that we are is our individual responsibility. When the truth is we're part of many systems, but in particular, we're part of the family system that we came out of, which wasn't necessarily perfect. And people say, well, for example, I'm an alcoholic, it's genetic. My grandfather was alcoholic, my my mother was alcoholic, it's genetic. Well, the truth is there isn't such a thing as an alcoholic gene. It's not something you inherit, it's something you may learn through loyalty. And very often those kinds of, let's call them, unhealthy loyalties come because there was an absence of connection. Because the family system wants connection, wants an order, which is hierarchical because it goes generation to generation. It has certain requirements that the parent parents the child rather than child parenting the parent. And we we know lots of people, we all know lots of people where it's the other way around, where the where the child ends up parenting the parent, and that doesn't work. Or where our first longing, which is for the mother, our mother isn't fulfilled because the mother at that moment isn't capable of really providing the connection and the nurture, and it could be circumstances or or it could be something within her. So we end up with these habits which come about through a loyalty to a system which doesn't actually exist. That the the loyalty is in acting out as a as a kind of substitute for the for the deep connection that each part of that family system longs for. Um there's a story in the Zen tradition of two monks who are arguing about a flag moving in the wind. And one said, Oh, the wind's moving. I said, No, no, no, it's not the wind, it's the flag. And the teacher comes along and says, You're both wrong. It's the mind that's moving. And then I would go further and say they're all wrong because it's the flag, it's the wind, and it's the mind. All moving together. But within any system, it's full of moving parts. There's nothing fixed at all anywhere in that system. It's a continually, it's continually moving and evolving. And we have to surrender in some way to that movement. And where there's an interruption in that movement, we we have to find ways to maybe look at how we can see it differently, perceive it differently. What's so extraordinary about doing family systems constellation work is I have no idea how it works. Family systems work looks a little bit like psychodrama, in that the client would ask one of us to work on an issue in the family, or work on an issue, a difficulty that they're having that may at first seem to have nothing to do with the family. A lot of anxiety, a tendency to sabotage relationships, an addiction. It could be many different things. And different people, often not knowing who they represent, because we often were completely blind, will represent different parts of a family system, that person's family system.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

So you you let me set the stage it as a small group of people who may or may not know each other.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

And then you bring in issues and ask them out. But in their response, often they are identifying with someone in their family of origin.

Family Constellations Explained Simply

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah, except the participants. So we'd have a space and people would be placed in the space, but usually standing. And only myself and sometimes I will be will work blind. Only the client and sometimes they will work blind, because I'll say put in put in an unknown element here, and they'll place that person there. Or it could be people representing mother, father, ancestors, grandfather, many different things. Sometimes it will be abstract in the sense, put in somebody to represent the victim. So put in someone to represent the perpetrator, put in someone who kept secrets, and then often it's silent, and the client just watches the choreography. Or I might ask, Do you have anything to say to this person? And the client might say, Why why are they talking? They're talking just like my mother. What did you tell them? I didn't know their mother, I didn't tell them anything. It's uncanny. And um, it can play out. Sometimes it takes a while to play out a constellation that can go on for 40 minutes. Sometimes it's a very clear resolution. Sometimes I will, as a facilitator, uh facilitate that resolution. Tell them, you're my mother, I'm your child. What's yours is yours. What's mine is mine. I thank you for all you could do for me. And now I turn and take agency for my life. And that's a might not be that specific, but sometimes I as a facilitator will create a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

The conversation that would be healing for whatever they have brought fullfold. So in doing this, sometimes the acting out brings the awareness, which is healing. Or sometimes you have a solution, which is this is how you move forward from a situation that you felt victimized by before. This is how you unpack it and leave leave the burden here and walk forward free.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Right. And sometimes it's not a clear resolution. We have this thing, uh, I like to call it the Hollywood myth of a happy ending. Sometimes it doesn't end conclusively because the work really continues within the system. Not I won't say within the individual as they process, but it's within the system itself. The work continues for days or weeks after we've done that constellation. I'll give you an example. Uh, we worked a constellation with someone a few years ago who had a very difficult relationship with their brother. They hadn't spoken for several years. And there was a lot of history there. And we didn't necessarily go into that history or need to know that history. But they did a constellation which involved the parents and involved the brother, involved someone representing themselves. It wasn't long or complicated. Then when we finished that process, the client looked at their phone and they just received a text from their brother saying, I'm so sorry. You did so much for the family, and I just wasn't there. I really apologize. I'd like to connect with you. And how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 10:45

The brother was the other end of the country. Me not being a quantum physicist or even an academic, as you know, it's almost like I created the space and the resonance for to allow this healing. I am now open to it, where a lot of times we think the other person is at blame, and perhaps they are. Let's not let's not dissolve responsibility for choice and action. But a lot of times we are walking around with this barrier and this border up to where resolution can't come to you because you are walled off from it. And I think a lot of even in the spiritual world, we get so fixated on boundaries and creating this wall around us that we forget that once you are coherent and feeling more healed inside, you are open to that exchange.

How A Constellation Finds Resolution

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Absolutely. Yeah. I think one thing to report one thing that's important to remember about family systems work, you're not working with the individual, you're working with the system. So that closing down is an isolating. And once you break that isolation, for example, just two days ago we worked with somebody who's um who experienced a murder in their family. Their mother was murdered brutally. And they um they had worked through that. They didn't hold animosity at all with the murderer. This happened many years ago. But their son was suffering from some degree of bipolar disorder. And it occurred to me there was a connection between the son's bipolar disorder and the murder of his grandmother. And I don't know how that works, but it it seems to work within the dynamic of family systems constellations. And so we did a constellation where the sun wasn't present. The person whose mother was murdered was present. We were doing a constellation for the sun, but really we were doing a constellation for the system. And it was only a couple of days ago or so, I he hasn't spoken to his son. It's going to take time. The transformation is catalyzed through him, the person who was present, whose son tends to be a little on the manic depressive side. And he himself and others in his family also suffer from some degree, some mild degree of manic depressive. This is so woo. This sounds so off the scale of the way we normally think about you do therapy, you work with the individual. No, you work with the system. And it's it's it it plays out in that it works. Uh and it doesn't always work like instantly, and it might require several constellation sessions. Um, but it's it's partly in the attitude that's required to do the work, the understanding that it's in the system, that we're working in the system, we're not working to fix the individual. Um, that leads to pharmaceuticals, to a very narrow view of how we are in society. But to take that back to what you were saying a moment ago, when I think of your receiving the pages of Mary Magdalene, that's you working in a huge system that has a connection to your own personal background, your family, your your um, your history with Christianity, which was functional in some ways and not functional in other ways. And then coming to a place of resolution where suddenly you're downloading this. I mean, who'd have thought? It doesn't make any sense in in our rational world, in our in our mechanistic worldview. And yet here we have these incontestable pages that transform people. They transform me. They transform them.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

That's what we were talking about before is I did the work in order to be resonant with the receiving. And when you happened upon that video, the email you wrote, you said, I never write people after a YouTube video, but but I'm writing you now because it was transformative for you. Now, plenty of people have watched that and not had that experience. But you were in resonance with the message that was available. And so I understand we're operating within a system. We have to do our part to be open for healing. We have to make ourselves available for healing to bring awareness to it. And then the system can respond accordingly, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah. Well, it's many systems.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yes, yeah, of course.

The Brother Text That Arrived

SPEAKER_01 15:54

For example, when two people come together and produce children, two very different family systems, and more than just the family system, the cultural system. Your husband comes from South Africa. So that's a whole that's a whole different world coming together and then producing your children, which are themselves part of systems which include the two of you and your ancestors and going back for generations. And so it's almost beyond words, the the intersection, the it's it's like galaxies colliding and all these untraceable elements of it's like what I was uh writing to you about yesterday, the difference between complication and complexity. The complexity is untraceable. We can't we can't track it by looking at all the details of complications. And I think, you know, it goes back to what you were saying about being an open receptor so that the elements can play out in a health helpful, healthy way. And so the way an incoming system impacts you is in a way that does you don't take it personally, and you don't become defended. You you receive it. And, you know, going back into our last conversation, how we've become the opposite of that. Defended and not open to the way multiple systems play out through through different families, through different societies, through history, um, through the the forces, the historical forces that are impacting us now, and which we're sort of ignoring because our family systems are so all-consuming and so dysfunctional that it's what we can deal with. So we take pills.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Right. We try to pretend it's not there.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

One of the things that was kind of coming through to talk about as you were saying that is because you and Michelle do a lot of work with indigenous wisdom. And as you were talking about the family constellations and how we are impacted by what feeds into our system, what we have created. Um, just the the different experience we have now, especially in Western culture, in that the family unit is so small and so isolated. There it doesn't seem to be this multi-generational nurturing of the family system. Do you think that impacts us? I mean, obviously, but yeah, I I think so.

Boundaries Versus Openness To Repair

Trauma And Mental Health In Systems

SPEAKER_01 18:45

I I think so. We we have um throughout history uh dependent on larger, you know, in in in most cultures, um even recent indigenous cultures, a child was raised by a community. Right. They didn't necessarily know who knew who their father was, or even their mother, really, because they'd been mothered, they'd been nurtured, they'd been supported, they'd been on the back of an aunt or a cousin or even someone they had no direct blood relationship to. So there was that sense of community. I I don't want to be too idealistic, but that does and that did play out in our history for thousands of years, tens of thousands of years. So I think without that, we've had to re-readjust. And that readjustment and our you know, our collective intellectual history, uh, which has turned our worldview into a view of a machine, the universe as a machine, the human and the human body and the human mind as a machine, uh, we've become separated, fragmented. Um it couldn't be any worse if it was a science fiction story, and yet we're living it. So I think yes, it it impacts us hugely. And I think, you know, in looking at indigeneity, it's important to, for me, it's important to recognize that we're we were all indigenous ones. We are still at heart, we're we're indigenous. And if we can only begin to see through the lens of of systems, looking at systems and how we we interact with others, and to somehow relate to other people as as part, maybe a remote part, but a part of the system in which we're living, so that there are sort of no accidents. What when a stranger says something to you, not not to be, you know, not to engage in magical thinking, but when a stranger says something to you, it's worth taking it into account. It's worth understanding that it's it's a mirror back to us. Whether it's a friendly encounter or an aggressive encounter, there's there's some information in there for us. It's a softening toward the world rather than uh putting up barriers. And you know, we're fortunate in that we we live surrounded by acres and acres of wild land. And um we learned actually to address other beings, animal or plants. When you pause for a moment, because something catches your attention. A surprising wildflower that you hadn't seen in previous years. You address it as your majesty. Oh, I love that. Or a raven. We have two ravens that sort of adopted us, and they they come by whenever we're outside, especially Your Majesty. And it it it creates relationship, and not a hierarchy, it's not really your majesty. No because you're bigger than me, you're a royalty, and I'm not. We're all your majesty. It's it's to honor the the majesty of the universe and to create that that relationship. Because that for me is the key piece of what indigenity means it's relationship to the whole world. The whole natural world, which includes us, which can include the artifacts we've made, uh that that we set up against nature. It's all nature. So yes. And constellations interestingly, the man, Bert Hellinger, the man who was a Jesuit, went to South Africa, stopped being a Jesuit, and learned from the Zulus something. He doesn't talk about it much. He passed away a few years ago. He never talked about it very much. The connection between the constellation work that he developed and the Zulu connection, that he had been a missionary among Zulus for most of his life. So there's something in constellation work that has indigenous roots. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

That's amazing. And when you do retreats there, when your focus is on indigenous w wisdom, what is the focus?

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Well, um it it it varies. Oftentimes we'll begin the day early. I I feel that the time when the sun comes up is it's a it's a portal. And um we'll give people tobacco to offer to a plant or to the directions. In the in the North and South and Central America, phys tobacco has been recognized as a powerful, powerful medicine plant.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah.

Indigenous Relationship With Land And Life

SPEAKER_01 23:39

An intensifier, uh a vehicle for prayers. Well, for the reason being that it's a powerful, it's a powerful plant. Um certainly it's an intensifier, as we see for the way people intensify their anxiety by smoking cigarettes. So we'll begin with, you know, sending people out to work on the land and and just be on the land to find a safe place, to find a song from their own voice. And we'll work outside a lot. We may talk uh uh about our own experiences or some of our own mentors and teachers. We live under a a mountain, and the mountain has become like a sacred place. We have friends in South America who have pictures of that mountain on their altars. So it's not just me making it out. Uh it has the form of a reclining woman. It's a very curvacious mountain that um I have a particular relationship to. And uh I talk about it and people seem to very quickly and easily develop a relationship to that mountain. We called her in Quechua language, well, actually in Shapebo language, uh in Amazonian language, Apu, which means Your Majesty, Apu Chekhuni Nusta, which means uh Your Majesty Spirit Princess. And um, you know, again it's not appropriate, it's it's just inclusive to include uh the language of the people, Andean people who have great reverence for Mother Earth, the Pajamama, for um for making offerings. And so I am sensitive to to appropriation, to the commodification of abstracts and cultural ways. So we can claim indigenity to this land because we we we've been here for a long time. I remember long ago sending people out, they were activists. We were working we were doing a two-year program with social activists, and I remember sending people out to walk on the land and walk on the land as though you really belonged. Walk on the land as if it was yours. And someone got really bent out of shape and talked to me about appropriation and it's not our land, it's stolen land. And I I told a story to a native friend who lives down the road, and she said, God, when are you people gonna get here? When are you people gonna arrive? When are they gonna arrive? And so it's that sense of you don't think of it as mine, mine only mine, but it's mine, and I am it, I belong to it. Often, often we say this isn't our land, we belong to this land. We we are the we we don't use the word property, because we are the property, we belong to the land. And it's a nice uh reframing, uh, much closer to the reality of it.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Because I I think if everybody would just focus on what feels like right relation, right relation to the land, right relation to the practices. For me, it has been right relationship to Jesus, knowing my own relationship and what feels like right relationship there, right relationship with organized religion. But that can be very personal and also can be very respectful that other people's right relations may not match.

Right Relationship With Faith And Closing

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Right, right, right, right. I think that's very good. I think it's important because Jesus, the Christian faith, has become so um codified in hierarchy and patriarchy and authority, and the pronouncements from on high, um, the authority, the unquestioned authority of patriarchal elders down the centuries who have been uh arbiters for the for the truth, which has really destroyed the spirit of of Jesus. And again, as we were talking about in the last, in the last conversation that we we had, it's amazing that anything has survived after 2,000 years that even resembles something of that relationship. Um we haven't talked about process philosophy and process theology, but the one thing that I I love about that, it's it's not just what God wants of you, but what you want of God, that you're in relationship with God to co-create, to collaborate, to further this co-creation of the universe as it unfolds. And it's not a hierarchical relationship at all. And if I go back to the Gospels, it's pretty clear that that's what is being implied. But you'd never know it if you listen to those who interpret the Gospels for you.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

A right relationship for me means I hold reverence and integrity. And if you're doing that with anything, with your food, with your environment, with your family, with your neighbors, I think you are living as we are meant to live. And that means regardless of what your practiced faith would be, regardless of what your spiritual practice would be. I know even after I unpacked religion, I went into spirituality and have had to unpack that too, because it came with a new set of must-do, should do. Right. Um, and now what I know is to center myself and say, am I living in a right relationship with me? Like, do I feel I'm practicing integrity in my relationships? So I thank you for teaching us about the family constellations. I think that's fascinating. And um, my system is complex, and I think it would be really interesting to unpack that.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and of course, ultimately there is no fully unpacking it.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

It goes on. Yeah, and and it goes back for it goes back to the beginning of the universe. Right. And we're we're just learning uh uh the unfolding, ideally without any expectation, but with engagement and enthusiasm and uh a willingness to participate. It's amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. We will be back again soon with conversations with Kate to unpack so many more things. Thank you for your wisdom and your lived experience and your presence here in this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Thank you, Susan. It's such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you.