Being Our Own Size

By Erik Andersen

Reflections inspired by Thomas Hübl’s Healing Collective Trauma

I’ve been listening to Thomas Hübl’s Healing Collective Trauma (Hübl, 2020), one of his more recent offerings. There is a lot in it that resonates deeply with my own practice. He gives language to things I’ve sensed for years — the role of presence, coherence, and integration, the way an integrated presence becomes adaptive and responsive (Hübl & Avritt, 2021). He speaks of being with what is, how that ‘being-with’ generates capacity. In that sense, he speaks my language. He also suggests that the integrated presence of the facilitator offers co-regulation to the client, helping them to remain present and integrate the experience themselves.

Hübl draws heavily from research on presence and from his long-standing relationship with systemic and constellation work (Cohen, 2016). His emphasis on meditation, collective presence, and the metabolising of trauma through holding is powerful. And yet, even as I appreciate the depth of what he offers, I notice where he and I part ways – the idea that we are here to heal our ancestors.

This is where I feel the ‘orders of love’ bend out of shape. In systemic work, we do not heal the ancestors — we include them (Hellinger, 2001; Hellinger, Weber, & Beaumont, 1998). We call on the settled and the strong to support the traumatised ones so that we, the living, can take our rightful place and give back what does not belong to us (Hellinger et. al., 1998). The moment we imagine ourselves as the healers of the dead, we make ourselves bigger — a New Age belief that we are here to alchemise everything. It’s well-intentioned, but it violates the architecture of orders of precedence (Hellinger, 2001).

Inclusion Is Not Healing — It Is Hospitality

This came into sharp clarity in a constellation I had with a Zulu friend about ‘phutu’ and ancestral offerings. Ancestors are a visceral reality for many Zulu people, and the movement of offering food, ‘phutu namaas’ (a maize porridge, phutu, with fermented milk) is a gesture of inclusion (Berglund, 1976; Shirinda, 2014). When I asked Christel, my partner, why ancestors would be given food, she said something simple and beautifully grounded – “Because when you have guests, you feed them. That is how you include them.”

Inclusion is the gesture and not healing. Offering food is a way of saying, “You belong here and you are acknowledged. You are welcome in my field” and “You have been a part in creating who I am and giving me life”.

It struck me that this aligns with the deeper meaning of the season we’re in – Halloween. The old world Samhain’s ‘trick-or-treat’ is feed the ancestors and include them and they bless us descendants; exclude them and the system reacts with entanglements (Hutton, 1996; Ó hÓgáin, 2002).

This time of year is not about ghosts and costumes. It is about inclusion, reciprocity, and respect, and recognizing those who have gone before. It is about keeping the relationship between the living and the dead in balance (Bloch & Parry, 1982). A river flows from higher to lower ground. We descendants are the lower ground (Hellinger, 2003).

A Reflection About Why I’m Here

At 48, something in me is clarifying. I don’t experience it as a grand purpose or a cosmic assignment. It’s more that I’ve lived inside these studies — trauma, systemic work, Kabbalah, ancestral fields — for so long that continuing seems like the most natural thing to do. Rather than being pre-ordained or ‘Divine’, perhaps simply recognising the pull of and connection to larger fields, what others might call a ‘calling’ (Hellinger, 2011).

I’ve come to see that what people experience as a ‘calling from God’ might be recruitment from deeper layers of consciousness — the movements of history, ancestry, collective psyche (Janzen, 1992). It’s not necessarily personal at all.

But amidst all of that, I increasingly feel that the only true calling, if one exists, is to follow what brings bliss, aliveness and coherence. To live in a way that channels happiness rather than taking on the burdens of worlds that are not ours (Cohen, 2016).

The Danger of Becoming Bigger Than One’s Size

Over the last few years, I’ve often been pulled into trauma fields that were larger than me. In constellations, I’ve been drawn into vast collective vortices — genocide, war trauma, ancestral fragmentation — and in some moments, parts of my soul felt they had to become bigger to meet it. This is something Hellinger repeatedly warned against – taking on a size larger than our human proportion (Hellinger, 2001; Schneider, 2007).

I remember times when I flew out of my body, not from dissociation but from being pulled into the intensity of the collective experience. And yet, this expansion wasn’t always healthy. It sometimes meant abandoning the client’s movement in favour of a larger collective agenda that was not ours to carry — what trauma theorists call secondary over-involvement (van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006).

I’ve reached a point where I no longer want to be ‘big’ in that way.

I just want to be my size.

Yes, we have the skills to call in ancestors, angels, or larger fields. But I don’t want to become the conduit who does it all the time. I don’t want to process collective trauma on behalf of worlds that are not mine. I want to remain within the dignity of my own proportions (Hellinger, 2001). I want to be human calling on support.

Honouring Without Absorbing

The more I work with trauma, the more I feel that the healthiest movement is this – Include, honour, and ask for support but do not take on what belongs to the dead (Hellinger, 1998; Mahr, 1999).

Bring capacity into the field so each member can metabolise primary emotions like loss, grief and shame (Hellinger, 2003). If we can ‘be with’ these primary emotions, this release and movement can happen.

We stand in relationship with the members of our family and ancestors. This is where we bow, we acknowledge and we feed — but we do not heal them. They heal through their own orders, their own movements, their own lineages (Hellinger, 1998). And, importantly, they heal because there are supportive ancestors behind them and the systemic center of gravity moves upstream.

And perhaps that’s where Hübl’s book meets its limit — not in what it teaches about ‘presence’, which is profound, but in its tendency to draw us into collective healing fields that, if we’re not careful, can pull us beyond our human size (Mindell, 1995).

Being our size is enough because when we stand in our size, life can finally flow through us — from our original ancestor, the Earth, through subsequent generations to us (Hellinger, 2003).

References

Berglund, A.-I. (1976). Zulu thought-patterns and symbolism. C. Hurst.

Bloch, M., & Parry, J. (1982). Death and the regeneration of life. Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, J. (2016). The orders of love in practice. Heidelberg Press.

(Independent systemic-therapy publisher; title available via facilitator bibliographies)

Hutton, R. (1996). The stations of the sun: A history of the ritual year in Britain. Oxford University Press.

Hellinger, B. (2001). Acknowledging what is: Conversations with Bert Hellinger. Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

Hellinger, B. (2003). Peace begins in the soul: Family constellations in the service of reconciliation and healing. Carl-Auer.

Hellinger, B. (2006). No waves without the ocean. Karnac Books

Hellinger, B., Weber, G., & Beaumont, H. (1998). Love’s hidden symmetry: The orders of love. Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

Hübl, T. (2020). Healing collective trauma: A process for integrating our intergenerational and cultural wounds. Sounds True.

Hübl, T., & Avritt, J. (2023). Attuned: Practicing interdependence to heal our trauma—and our world. Sounds True.

Janzen, J. M. (1992). Ngoma: Discourses of healing in Central and Southern Africa. University of California Press.

Mahr, J. (1999). The flow of life: Working with family systems. North Atlantic Books.

Mindell, A. (1995). Sitting in the fire: Large group transformation using conflict and diversity. Lao Tse Press.

Ó hÓgáin, D. (2002). The sacred isle: Belief and religion in pre-Christian Ireland. Boydell Press.

Shirinda, P. (2014). Ancestor veneration in contemporary Zulu practice. Journal of Religion in Africa, 44(3), 255–276.

Ulsamer, B. (2006). The art and practice of family constellations. Carl Auer

Van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. R. S., & Steele, K. (2006). The haunted self: Structural dissociation and the treatment of chronic traumatization. Norton.

About the Author