That natural ending, the out-breath in the field, that indicates completion of a constellation had happened. “I would normally stop here, but I’m going to continue”. Yes (I am embarrassed to admit), I spoke those words in an online group constellation a few years ago. When the constellation eventually ended, a participant started offering guidance to the client based on a similar issue she had faced. I did not stop her soon enough. Afterwards, all but one of the participants contacted me asking either for the client’s contact details to offer help or shared contact details of someone who they thought could help. This was something that had never happened before or has happened since.
With this client the ‘rescuer’ in me was triggered – and that, it appears, impacted the whole field of the constellation. I was rescuing, not helping. On reflection, I saw the disorder in my actions relating to the ‘orders of helping’. It was one of my biggest lessons and a wake-up call as a facilitator.
Just as the ‘orders of love’ provide guidelines for love to flow in a family system, so the ‘orders of helping’ provide guidelines for healing to flow when helpers engage with clients (Hellinger, 2003). The orders of helping guide facilitators with their approach to clients without crossing boundaries or creating dependency, instead creating an ethical, safe and effective space for clients to resolve systemic issues.
Helpers, as Bert Hellinger referred to constellation facilitators, need to be familiar with the orders of helping, and what it means to be a helper.
Bert Hellinger begins his article on the orders of helping with what is required of helpers (Hellinger, 2003). They need to be in touch with their own parents and ancestors, to be in touch with their fate, the unchangeable circumstances of their family and their own personal guilt, as well as with their own mortality. Only once this is done, he says, do helpers have the strength to help others. They need to be clear in their own examined life.
Facilitators also need to acknowledge the innate wisdom and healing capacity within each individual.Helping is part of giving and taking (as in the orders of love). It starts with parents giving and children taking, and then as adults being able to both receive and give. It is our human nature to want to help. Helpers need to have first received and taken what they need so there is no projection onto the client. For helpers when working with clients, this giving and taking is different from the giving and taking in the orders of love. Helping offered by helpers is an art.
Helping as an art must be learnt and practiced. It is a skill. Helpers must be capable of doing the work. They need to develop the skill of being empathetic – to have insights into what is appropriate for the client, and at the same time expand the client’s understanding of self (their core identity) and how their fate fits into the larger systemic context.
(Both the article “Orders of Helping”, written by Bert Hellinger in 2003, and the chapter “Helping in resonance with the whole” in “Rising in Love” (2010) are both highly recommended reading. In this blog I provide only an overview of the orders of helping.)
“Helpfulness is a human quality. We love helping others, as others helped us. … This is a general human trait. Professional helping is something completely different. If we are trying to help others in our work life in the same way as we would help one another in our normal human interaction it becomes dangerous…the purpose of our helping here is to support individuals to connect with their own destiny so that they can develop and grow according to their own calling.” (Hellinger, 2010, p. 113)
The first order of helping: Helpers only give what they have and can only expect and take what they need. This means helping within their capacity and experience. Disorders of helping here are wanting to give something you do not have to give (which can mean working beyond your competence or skill) and giving what you do not have to give.
Part of the art of helping is knowing the boundaries of giving and taking. If these boundaries are ignored an imbalance in the system occurs – when a helper gives something which deprives the client of the responsibility which they needed to carry alone if they are able and permitted to do so.
The second order of helping: Helpers respect the client’s circumstances, and helping only goes as far as circumstances permit. The helping is restrained and has strength. Helpers need to be in tune with the greater forces of life and death – and know that they cannot play God wanting to change the fate of another.
Disorders occur when these circumstances are ignored instead of looking at them with the client. If the helper has not accepted their own fate or has shadow issues they skirt, these circumstances can be blind spots for the helper when setting up the constellation.
A disorder takes place when the helper cannot bear a person’s situation or fate and therefore wants to change it. The client may not need help or want the change. The helper may intervene, and the client allows it – to help the helper. This helping then becomes taking and the taking of help becomes giving. This weakens both the client and the helper.
This brings to mind part of a story that Bert Hellinger tells in “Love’s Hidden Symmetry” (Hellinger, et al., 1998, p. 30). A young man sees a man riding a bicycle with a rattling fender. He hurries after the man, calling out to tell him his fender is rattling. The man on the bicycle replies “I’m sorry I can’t hear you, my fender’s rattling’.
The third order of helping: helping amongst equals. Helpers meet an adult (the client) who seeks help as an adult, not in a parent child relationship. However, where there has been an ‘interrupted reaching out movement’ (when a parent or primary caregiver was not present when the baby or young child needed them) the helper may, for the purpose of the constellation, stand in temporarily as the client’s mother or father.
Disorders occur when the helper allows the client to have the kind of expectation of the helper that a child has of their parents (referred to as transference). When the client is treated like a child, the helper may provide solutions instead of the client taking responsibility and bearing the consequences.
Counter transference may occur when the helper has unresolved or unseen issues in their family system which resonate with the client’s family system, causing an emotional or somatic response within the helper. A disorder may occur when the helper does not acknowledge their personal emotions and may act on them unconsciously.
The fourth order of helping: taking into consideration the client’s whole family system. The empathy of the helper is focused on the whole system rather than exclusively on the client. To work safely with a client, helpers need to look at the client’s parents with great respect and love, then look at their ancestors and at all the events of fate that have taken place in that family.
To work in accordance with the Orders of Helping requires a special perception as they cannot be rigidly applied as that requires thinking rather than perception. Perception of the of focusing on the client “as a whole without wanting to achieve anything specific other than from within to sense them in a way that is all embracing and encompasses the next step for them.” (Hellinger, 2003, p. 8).
A disorder occurs when the helper ignores, or disrespects excluded family members who may hold the key to the solution. When a client complains about family members or their fate, and the helper adopts the view of the client, then the helper is in service of the conflict and separation.
Helpers need to hold in their heart all of those that have been excluded, for whatever reason, including those that the client holds complaints against. To be in service of reconciliation the helper needs to hold a place in their heart for the excluded ones, or the person about whom the client complains. In doing so the helper prepares their own soul for the change the client needs to go through, and the client gains strength.
The fifth order of helping: helping without judgement. Helpers need to have love for each human being, no matter how this person may differ from the helper. They open their hearts to others so that the client can do the same in their system. A disorder here is to hold judgement and a superior moral stance in relation to the client and their system.
As soon as sides are taken, help cannot be offered. This can be challenging when clients present situations such as abuse, incest and rape. Instinctively the helper may want to side with the victim. But if they do, they will lose ground. All involved, beyond judgement about what is good and bad, right and wrong, must be equally respected with their fates and entanglements. Only when helpers release this distinction between good and bad can they be in service of reconciliation and offer real helping – joining together what has been separated.
The sixth order of helping: Helpers agree to the situation of the client, exactly as it is or was without any regret or wish to make it different. Through this acceptance the helper gains strength, and so too the client gains the strength to accept the past exactly as it was, and similarly the present reality exactly as it is.
A disorder happens when the helper and client both want something different from what it was and so the helper comforts the client – sharing the regret about what was – instead of taking up the challenge of facing reality.
Helpers assist in furthering the inner growth of clients. This is done by resourcing the client
Giving up wanting to help or to rescue people is essential if you sincerely respect them. There’s an important ancient discovery that helps us in this: One can act through deliberate “nonacting.” Actively being present without intentionally acting creates a collected force acting through nonaction. Nonaction isn’t withdrawal or holding yourself back. Holding back doesn’t bring anything good at all. Lao-tzu described the principle of nonaction beautifully in “Tao te Ching.” (Hellinger et al., 1998, p. 216).(both internally and with systemic support) in order to face conflict. Helpers support by helping clients accept their fate and face conflict with skills to deal with adversarial and difficult situations.
Helping in family constellations requires that the helper remains in control, works with restraint in the constellation, knows when to say no to a constellation, works with humility, and steps into each constellation with no preconceived ideas or knowledge, allowing the field and the greater soul to guide them.
Giving up wanting to help or to rescue people is essential if you sincerely respect them. There’s an important ancient discovery that helps us in this: One can act through deliberate “nonacting.” Actively being present without intentionally acting creates a collected force acting through nonaction. Nonaction isn’t withdrawal or holding yourself back. Holding back doesn’t bring anything good at all. Lao-tzu described the principle of nonaction beautifully in “Tao te Ching.” (Hellinger et al., 1998, p. 216).
Self-Care
I would add a seventh order of helping: Helpers take care of themselves. Be part of a peer group and have regular supervision to reflect on your work. Notice when after a session you feel drained. Is there a situation that belongs to a client that you continue to think about even after the session is over? What has their situation triggered in you or is mirrored in your own family system? Or are you still in the field of the client and need to withdraw to let the ancestors take over. After group work or several clients, it is important to set aside time for self-care. This is when the helper helps themself, to tend to their own needs, so they are sufficiently resourced to help without giving what they themselves do not have to give.
The disorder is exhaustion and burnout. Following the same process or formula in your work instead of treating each client and their issue as the unique circumstances demand.
Reflection
The rescuer in me has learnt to help with restraint. She works with the helper and the healer in me to facilitate healing when it is requested.
And if you are wondering about the client at the start of the article. I saw them again and the issue they brought was resolved, despite my infringement and disorder of helping. I worked with them again. This time when I heard that deep exhalation when a truth had been recognized, I listened and closed the constellation.
“When the work is done, I release the clients from my soul. Internally, I place the clients into the care of their parents or their ancestors or of an important family member who was previously excluded. The clients also turn away from me. I am free of them, and they are free of me. They do not have to concern themselves with what I might be thinking. Then all of their strength remains in their own soul. I have the greatest respect for the soul of each individual and their greater soul that governs all. Personally I keep out.” (Hellinger, 2010, p. 121)
References
Hellinger, Bert. (May 2003). Orders of Helping. Translated and edited by Jutta ten Herkel J. & Tombleson, S. (2017) The Orders of Helping. https://realacademy.net/orders-of-helping/.
Hellinger, Bert. (2010). Rising in Love, A philosophy of being. Hellinger Publication.
Hellinger, B., Weber, G., and Beaumont, H. (1998). Loves Hidden Symmetry: What makes love work in relationships. Zeig, Tucker & Co
Robyn Fergus https://innerpeacehealing.co.za
