My First Family Constellation: What if the Problem Isn’t Just You?

Not beat myself up over waiting this long to head into my family issues.

This had always been me, I had thought-the problem. For years, it was me carrying the weight of the dysfunctional condition of my family on my shoulders. It was easy to chalk it up to personal shortcomings, to convince myself that if only I’d try harder I could fix everything.

But the fissures started to become too deep to go on overlooking them.

It was a friend that first recommended family constellations to me. At the time, I wasn’t interested. “I don’t need another therapy,” I said, brushing it off. What could some group exercise do that hours of one-on-one therapy hadn’t?

Still, a part of me was curious. What if I had missed something? What if that tangled mess of emotions I had been carrying wasn’t, in fact, all mine in the first place?

I sat in a circle with strangers that Saturday morning, ready to begin my first family constellation. I remember thinking quite nervously-what if this was going to be an utter and complete waste of time? But the facilitator carried with her an air of calmness, and she simply explained the whole process that I did feel a little bit more at ease.

When it was my turn to go, I focused on the relationship that has perhaps been the most complicated in my life-my relationship with my father. Every time we had talked, it seemed to twist itself into an unsettled knot, making my stomach ache.

I choose representatives for the group, people to stand in for my father, my mother, and even myself. It was surreal, watching these strangers rise and take their places as stand-ins for my family. But the instant they moved into place, the energy in the room began to shift.

My father’s proxy stood with his arms crossed, that all-too-familiar stubbornness etched on his face. My mother’s proxy stood off to one side, not wholly disengaged, but hardly involved, either. And the proxy for me? She stood frozen, her eyes darting between the two, at a complete loss for which way to turn. It was unbelievable how much it was like real life.

Then the moderator asked them to talk.

My father’s representative broke the silence first. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he said, in his exasperated voice.

Ouch.

But it hit home. I knew right then and there that was how our conversations felt: he was on edge, not knowing how to meet my expectations-always on guard.

Then my mother’s proxy told me, “I cannot help you. I have tried, but I just do not know what else to do.” The words hung in the air like an unresolved argument we’d had a thousand times.

It hurt to watch, but it was also clarifying. It wasn’t just me; I wasn’t the only one lost in this dynamic. They had their struggles, their fears, confusion. I have been so focused on fixing myself, I hadn’t stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, the whole system was broken.

Then came the unexpected:.

The facilitator turned to the representative standing in for me and asked her to speak. “I feel stuck,” she said. “Like I’m carrying something I don’t understand.”

It was like a light went on in my brain. What if this wasn’t mine to carry? What if the anxiety and frustration I felt wasn’t all mine, but rather part of some much larger web of unresolved family tension?

The facilitator nodded. “Sometimes we inherit much more from our families than eyes, hair color, and body type,” she said. “We carry their silent grief, their unresolved battles, and we don’t even know it.

It hit me, finally, like a ton of bricks: all this time, I blamed myself for it; I’d have thought if only I worked on my own issues harder, I could get those relationships around me fixed. Well, it wasn’t that straightforward. There were deeper patterns here, ones far beyond my own control and predating my life.

But as the session neared its end, a queer sense of peace had wrapped itself around me. The magical cure hadn’t been affected, and my problem with Father didn’t resolve overnight. Still, I left with a different perspective-one where I could be a little kinder to myself.

What if I had never done the constellation? What if I had trudged along with life, toting the weight of family history without ever raising a question?

I know healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken; sometimes, it’s realizing that not everything is yours to carry. Sometimes, it’s in knowing that problems go deeper than the ones you can fix on your own.