Why & How Cases Are Linked To Intergenerational Trauma

Based on an interview between Amber and Manuel Mora Fernandez, Amber Law’s Client Wellbeing Collaborator for many years, a Family and Systemic Constellations Consultant and direct pupil of Bert Hellinger, the German psychotherapist associated with a therapeutic method best known as Family Constellations and Systemic Constellations, now practiced by Judges in 19 States in Brazil’s Family Courts.

Over the decades thousands of clients/ non clients have trustingly and courageously emptied themselves to me, spoken in detail about what happened to them, why they need my counsel. Early on I started noticing patterns of self-sabotaging behaviour that repeated itself in their stories. You might have heard the saying, “from the frying pan into the fire” -type cases. Inevitably, not only did the destructive conduct repeat itself, but it also escalated in nature and in the depth of harm caused to the clients and to others. For example, a divorce client would share with me her history of incrementally abusive relationships. Clients who had committed a crime described the pettier nature of their earlier brushes with the law. A target of bullying would describe how they suffered bullies in the school playground. Cases of ‘history repeating itself’.

Both fascinated and obsessed with these observable and tangible patterns, I felt compelled to find answers for my clients- what drove these seemingly similar downward spirals for so many of them across different fields of law? How could this be coincidental? How could we work together (lawyer- client) to finally break the chains, to generate a gentle upward spiral for their mental, emotional, and spiritual health? Otherwise, what kind of sustainable justice was I achieving for them once their case was over? What good was a ‘win’ or settlement today, when an inevitable relapse, replay and further brushes with the legal system loomed overhead in their tomorrow?

Intuitively and mindfully, I created what I now call my Compassionate Enquiry. I gently explored into and about my client’s childhood (after asking their permission to do so). I often found that the adult currently suffering a violent marriage, had lived a childhood fraught with violence: parents who were constantly in conflict, shouting, banging, slamming, insulting, humiliating, aggressive, abusive, hurting, rejecting, abandoning, unloving. Painful memories had left deep wounds in the client’s energy bodies (mind, emotion, body, soul). Those wounds had not healed because they had not yet been acknowledged. The now adult had subconsciously attracted similar people and circumstances to their lives to replay their childhood trauma.

I understood it was the unhealed wound of the past screaming to be seen that was driving present conduct. But this also unveiled another crucial piece of information- that the trauma did not start with them. If my clients were repeating their childhood traumas, it made sense that their parents in turn, were also replaying their ones.

In my search for answers, in 2008, I came across Family and Systemic Constellations. Travelling to Huelva, Spain for a weekend workshop with founder of The Essence Foundation, Egyptian Psychotherpist and Author, Dr Menis Yousry, I found the experience profoundly awakening and healing. I decided I needed to provide my clients with access to this healing modality as an opportunity for them to finally break the chains of inter-generational trauma. In this way, they would not pass family trauma down to their children.

Some years later I found Manuel Mora Fernandez who practices Family and Systemic Constellations in the vicinity, and who has for many years now, been a core referral point for many of my clients. In 2022, I participated with Manuel leading in the first Family and Systemic Constellations processes using horses, for the south of Spain.

Manuel explains how trauma passes down through the generations and how it can be healed. He says of the natural law of survival (translated), “If, in a human system, there have been themes of violence or, murders or some actions that are punishable by law, if that has not found a good place, if that has not had been truly acknowledged, if that has not been welcomed in the hearts of people; that is, if it has been rejected, for example, if that person entered prison, for something they did or did not do, but they entered prison and that person was rejected for it and was excluded from the system, someone else will later come along and will repeat the life of that person in this given context. They may even commit a crime simply because it is linked to that person, who was not welcomed.

And this allows me to talk about a law of the system, another law, which is the law of belonging. To a human system, everything belongs with the same right of belonging. That is to say, that all the people born in that system or who enter that system, have an equal of right belonging as any other and it also applies to the events that occur within the system. They also belong by the equal right of belonging. However, through our laws of let’s say, morality, we tend to reject some parts and others not. And we reject based on judgement.

When we judge something that has happened, in fact we are denying its right to belong, and in denying the right to belong, that creates, we say it introjects in the system a kind of seed that already belongs to the system and makes that someone will take it on and continue doing or manifesting what the previous person did.

The first step and method of understanding this is to recognize it without judgment, so as to say, what is it that happened? What event, what happened? This. And look at what happened before, what happened before in the family. It could have been this, this, or this other, no? It is a formula of being able to do a study of the family tree, where we can see if there is a person of the current generation, who may be connected to a person of past generations who brought this “conflict” to the system.

That is one way, another way for me much faster is a Constellation. When you do a Family Constellation, what it does is that it brings to the conscious what lies beneath in the unconscious and we see it in a 3D form, say. What is inside we take outside and once we take it outside, it is much more observable. And we see the dynamics that occur between the members of a system, how these relationships are, and there once we acknowledge what is, the next step is to give place to whatever it is that happened. To welcome whatever it is that happened, because when we do not welcome whatever happened, that something is always asking to be seen. It is always like a bell ringing drawing attention to be seen, and for it to be given its place.

Well, respecting that everything belongs let’s see how we can introject a more holistic view, a more systemic view, more human, more compassionate, more natural, more in accordance with our natural laws”.

Judge Sami Storch heard about the work of Bert Hellinger and Family (Systemic) Constellations. He went to Germany to learn directly from him and returned to Brazil bringing constellations into the court room.

See also www.systemiclaw.net