Family Secrets. The Practice of Systemic Constellations

Nadezhda Markova is a psychotherapist with extensive experience and the author of bestselling books on systemic constellations. In this book, she explains what consequences can befall descendants if you conceal from relatives secrets that relate to the history of your family line and, if revealed, can tarnish the family’s image. People hide “shameful” deaths: murder or suicide, deaths from criminal abortions, alcoholism, drug addiction. They keep quiet about infertility, divorce, ruin, vile actions, troubles with the law, and bad heredity. Silent about abandoned, aborted, illegitimate, and adopted children; about infidelity and betrayal of any kind; about violence by relatives.

The goal of all these secrets is to preserve family values, keep a good name, and sometimes even life— to ease the current situation. But over time, what was hidden to protect the family can end up destroying it. People experience torment of conscience, suffer, get sick, and endure pain because in their family history there was an episode they cannot forgive themselves for. And if those who committed the hidden act take the secret with them to the grave, others pay for it: their children or grandchildren unconsciously take on the atonement for someone else’s guilt.

Helping to heal the family-and-line system is possible with the method of systemic constellations.

In this book, you’ll see—through the life stories of the author’s clients and constellation sessions conducted for them—how the secrets of living or already deceased relatives influence our lives and the fate of our children and grandchildren. You’ll learn what is safer for you and your family line: to open up or to hide a secret; how not to become a hostage of the secret conspiracy of silence; how to neutralize the destructive consequences of a secret; and how to cleanse the family from the influence of the distant past. The appendix includes relieving phrases that ease psycho-emotional well-being, and you can use them outside the context of constellations.