Family Constellations Austin

11/16/2025

https://open.substack.com/pub/coolstoriesandburningquestions/p/i-take-the-baton-from-here?r=6jlfo5&utm_medium=ios

Being a mother carries such power and responsibility, it feels almost unfair.

11/12/2025

Bert Hellinger, who created Family Constellations, taught that what we haven’t healed with our parents is reflected in our spouse or our partner. That person is like a full length mirror for us, showing us what we need to heal. The problem is not with them. This is our own responsibility.

This post describes Family Constellations perfectly! Taking responsibility for our own healing, healing our childhood wounds, and not putting that responsibility on anyone else. When we do this, we can actually show up in our relationships and be able to love rather than just need. It changes the dance, so to speak. And it creates a healing effect on everyone else in the family system. 💖

🙏🏼

Most men don’t realize this, but when you’re stuck in codependent or “Nice Guy” patterns, you don’t see your wife through the eyes of a man.

You see her through the eyes of the boy inside you.

You see a beautiful woman in front of you, but the way you react to her — the anxiety, defensiveness, people pleasing, shutting down, or trying to fix everything - has nothing to do with who she actually is, or what your relationship truly needs.

It’s happening because the boy inside you is looking at her like she’s supposed to give you what your parents didn’t.

Maybe you expect her to calm your insecurities, make you feel worthy, or continually reassure you that you’re enough. And when she doesn’t, you feel rejected, unappreciated, or even angry.

This isn’t about her.

This is about that younger version of you who never had his emotional needs met — who still believes that if he can finally get enough validation, enough reassurance, enough closeness, he’ll finally feel whole.

Your job is to become the man who knows how to meet his own needs and then invite her into connection — not demand it from a place of fear.

Yes, you can make requests in your marriage. Yes, connection matters. And yes, she might be dealing with her own version of this...

But the foundation has to be built from within you.

11/12/2025

In Family Constellations, we get to see the “programming“ we took on unconsciously. It’s as if we say, “I’ll take that on for you, mom and dad, so we all can survive.“ We do it out of love, but that love is misdirected.

We actually aren’t able to heal or be responsible for what isn’t ours. The most responsible and the most healing thing we can do is to find and take our rightful place in our family system. When we do this, we accept our parents just as they are, and we take our place as “the little one.“ From there, we can receive what we were meant to have, and there is a beautiful ripple effect throughout the whole family system where love can flow more freely to everyone. ✨❤️

Reposted •

A parentified child is a child who is forced to act like an adult when they are still in their childhood. They tend to take on adult responsibilities for themselves, their siblings, and often their parents.

Signs you were parentified as a child:
- Often told you were “mature for your age”
- Pulled into arguments between parents
- Relied on for emotional support from parents
- Spend a big chunk of time taking care of others in your family
- Often feeling responsible for the feelings and wellbeing of others
- Lack of boundaries with family members
- The family peacekeeper
- No time to be a child or engage in child-like activities
- As a child you felt anxiety, guilt, and shame

Many times, things shift in adulthood after parentification took place during childhood. An emotionally immature parent will often have trouble letting go and might start treating their adult child like they’re still incapable or dependent, almost as if they can’t trust them to handle life on their own. This can feel suffocating, like you’re stuck in a role that no longer fits who you are.

It’s confusing because as a kid, you were forced to take on responsibilities way too early, but now, as an adult, you’re treated as if you’re not able to make decisions or take care of yourself. This can often make us confused about who we are.

11/12/2025

We will meet this Monday, November 17, starting at 5:30pm, in the Tranquility Room at (Casa de Luz Village, 1701 Toomey Rd, Austin, 78704).

Serving is free. We appreciate your service! Try to come at the beginning (5:30pm) and stay for the whole session (until about 9:30pm), if you can; this creates continuity and cohesiveness for the people constellating and for the group as a whole. But we appreciate you coming for whatever part you can. 🙏🏼

For more information: familyconstellationsaustin@gmail.com

Family Constellations is a way to heal trauma – from our own lives and inherited from our ancestry.

Trauma can manifest as behavioral problems, addictions, relationship problems, violence, health issues, and much more. The process of Family Constellations allows us to reveal the source of these problems, honor those from whom they came, and let go of what isn’t ours, with honor and without judgment.

The result is not only our own healing, but healing for the whole family system. We are left with compassion and gratitude, allowing us to live our own lives with love and purpose.

11/04/2025

Survival was necessary then. But we were never meant to live that way. We can choose differently now.

In Family Constellations we can see how we are out of place in the family system… trying to be a parent to our siblings, and even to our parents, because our parents didn’t show up the “big ones” we needed. And now we parent our spouse because that’s all we know.

But we can change that now – by releasing what was never ours that we took on out of love, to help, to survive. We can reclaim our own lives and start living from love, not out of survival. ❤️🙏🏼

Reposted •

Many trauma survivors learned early that no one was coming for them.

That love had to be earned through usefulness.
That safety came from being strong—never needing, never breaking.

This adaptation, known in trauma theory as a fawn response or self-abandonment defense, is not weakness but survival. The nervous system learns that connection requires caretaking, that visibility risks rejection, and that silence preserves belonging.

So they become the reliable ones—the helpers, the steady presence for everyone else—while quietly carrying their own unmet pain.
Their smiles conceal hypervigilance. Their strength hides exhaustion. Their empathy is a language learned from scanning for danger.

Healing asks something radical:
To let strength include softness.
To be witnessed without performing wellness.
To reclaim the parts that never stopped waiting to be met with care.

You are not unrecognizable—you are remembering yourself.

11/02/2025

Those of us who choose to heal, to speak up, not to repeat the dysfunction – we often feel like outcasts. But we are actually what our families have been calling for – even crying for – to do what nobody else could do. Don’t blame those who blame you. See them with compassion, knowing that they simply don’t have the ability to see what you can see and to make the changes that you have the courage to make. 🙌🏼

🙏🏼

In dysfunctional families, the “status quo” isn’t peace. It’s silence. Denial. Power imbalance. And anyone who challenges that balance gets labeled as dramatic, difficult, disloyal… when in reality, they’re the ones willing to grow.

When you stop pretending, stop appeasing, stop making yourself smaller just to keep the peace – you become a mirror. And mirrors make people uncomfortable when they’re not ready to see.

This is why so many cycle breakers feel like outcasts. But your voice, your clarity, and your boundaries are not the problem. They’re the beginning of something healthier.

🖤 You were never too sensitive.�

11/02/2025

We will meet this Monday, November 3, starting at 5:30pm, in the Tranquility Room at (Casa de Luz Village, 1701 Toomey Rd, Austin, 78704).

Serving is free. We appreciate your service! Try to come at the beginning (5:30pm) and stay for the whole session (until about 9:30pm), if you can; this creates continuity and cohesiveness for the people constellating and for the group as a whole. But we appreciate you coming for whatever part you can. 🙏🏼

For more information: familyconstellationsaustin@gmail.com

Family Constellations is a way to heal trauma – from our own lives and inherited from our ancestry.

Trauma can manifest as behavioral problems, addictions, relationship problems, violence, health issues, and much more. The process of Family Constellations allows us to reveal the source of these problems, honor those from whom they came, and let go of what isn’t ours, with honor and without judgment.

The result is not only our own healing, but healing for the whole family system. We are left with compassion and gratitude, allowing us to live our own lives with love and purpose.

11/02/2025

“Healing isn’t about forgetting what happened. It’s about teaching your body that the danger is over.”

Family Constellations is a way to heal trauma – our own or inherited. We can heal our childhood wounds or see that these were grandpa’s wounds and leave them with him. We can then reclaim and start living our own lives. 💖

🙏🏼

Unprocessed trauma doesn’t just live in your mind; it lives in your body. The headaches. The gut issues. The exhaustion that no amount of sleep fixes.

When you suppress pain for years, your body finds other ways to speak. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline flood your system, keeping inflammation high and your immune response on edge. Over time, that constant tension can lead to anxiety, hormonal imbalance, autoimmune issues, and cognitive decline.

But this isn’t about fear, it’s about awareness. Because the same body that stores pain also holds the power to release it.

A few ways to start:
- let yourself FEEL small emotions instead of burying them. It keeps the system moving.
- prioritize rest that’s actually restorative, not just numbing.
- move: dancing, walking, stretching etc. Trauma leaves through motion.
- practice self-compassion. Safety begins with how you speak to yourself.

Healing isn’t about forgetting what happened. It’s about teaching your body that the danger is over.

11/02/2025

Parentification means being put in the position of a parent by our parents. It means being asked to parent our siblings or even one of our parents. In Family Constellations this means that we are out of place, and nothing can flow as it’s meant to. We can change that for our whole family system! 💖

🙏🏼

When a child gets put in the position of caring for a parent emotionally, they don’t just grow up faster, they grow around the needs of other people. Their attention shifts outward early, often before they’ve had the chance to develop a relationship with their own feelings. So instead of learning how to tune into themselves, they become skilled at noticing what someone else is going through.

Over time, that outward focus starts to feel like a strength. And in many ways, it is. They know how to make others feel seen. They can read between the lines. They offer comfort easily.

What often goes unnoticed is how ditticult it becomes for them to extend that same care toward themselves.
When you spend years monitoring the emotions of others, your own can start to feel unfamiliar or even unimportant. You learn to understand pain only when it belongs to someone else. As an adult, that can look like compassion for everyone but yourself, and a quiet struggle to recognize when you’re the one who needs care.

Healing often begins with slowing down long enough to notice how automatic those old patterns have become.
It’s not about forcing self-compassion, but about creating the conditions where it can grow. That might mean learning how to name what you feel without minimizing it. It might mean recognizing when you’re being hard on yourself and pausing instead of pushing through. Over time, the same attention that once went toward everyone else starts to include you, and not because you’ve earned it or proven anything, but because you finally believe that your experience matters too.

10/24/2025

We will meet this Monday, October 27, starting at 5:30pm, in the Tranquility Room at (Casa de Luz Village, 1701 Toomey Rd, Austin, 78704).

Serving is free. We appreciate your service! Try to come at the beginning (5:30pm) and stay for the whole session (until about 9:30pm), if you can; this creates continuity and cohesiveness for the people constellating and for the group as a whole. But we appreciate you coming for whatever part you can. 🙏🏼

For more information: familyconstellationsaustin@gmail.com

Family Constellations is a way to heal trauma – from our own lives and inherited from our ancestry.

Trauma can manifest as behavioral problems, addictions, relationship problems, violence, health issues, and much more. The process of Family Constellations allows us to reveal the source of these problems, honor those from whom they came, and let go of what isn’t ours, with honor and without judgment.

The result is not only our own healing, but healing for the whole family system. We are left with compassion and gratitude, allowing us to live our own lives with love and purpose.

10/24/2025

That IS a very powerful choice! 🙌🏼

Family Constellations can help us heal wounds from childhood and release coping mechanisms that don’t serve us anymore. We can develop more understanding, and therefore gratitude, for those in our lives who did the best they could, through their struggles and trauma. The work we do on ourselves has a huge ripple effect throughout our family system. it is very noble work. 🙏🏼

Reposted • .seaman

I blamed myself for the abuse I went through for most of my life.

I thought it was somehow my fault, and that I must have done something to deserve it.

This belief filled me with shame and guilt, and it controlled my life. I felt like I was carrying a heavy weight that I couldn’t put down.

I now know that this feeling of blame and guilt is something many people who’ve experienced emotional, physical or s*xual abuse struggle with.

It’s common to think that you’re the one at fault, even though the truth is the exact opposite.

But as l’ve grown and started to heal, I’ve realized something important: the abuse was never my fault. It was never something I deserved, and I didn’t do anything to cause it. Understanding this has been a big step in my healing process.

What’s more, I’ve grown into someone who can protect and care for myself in ways I needed as a child.

This is one of the most powerful and important choices I’ve made in my life.

By learning to protect and love myself, I’m not just surviving, I’m healing.

And this healing is a journey that many of us who’ve been through abuse are on.

We’re learning to let go of the shame and guilt, and to see our true worth.

10/24/2025

We will have a special Thanksgiving celebration on Monday, November 24, starting at 5:30pm, in the Tranquility Room at (Casa de Luz Village, 1701 Toomey Rd, Austin, 78704).

5:30-7pm potluck dinner
7-8:30pm small group constellations

5:30pm potluck dinner - bring a dish if you would like, but if you’re not able to, that’s fine! Let us know ahead of time that you’re coming so we can have an idea of how many to expect: familyconstellationsaustin@gmail.com

Constellations will follow at 7pm. We will do small group constellations focused on thanksgiving and gratitude.

For more information: familyconstellationsaustin@gmail.com

Family Constellations is a way to heal trauma – from our own lives and inherited from our ancestry.

Trauma can manifest as behavioral problems, addictions, relationship problems, violence, health issues, and much more. The process of Family Constellations allows us to reveal the source of these problems, honor those from whom they came, and let go of what isn’t ours, with honor and without judgment.

The result is not only our own healing, but healing for the whole family system. We are left with compassion and gratitude, allowing us to live our own lives with love and purpose.