Turn suffering into love?

Ero Langlotz, February 2021
Translation: Anne Verena Groß

Since I have dealt with the issues of trauma and taken over trauma in my constellation work with very stressed clients, I have observed that in traumatized families (in Germany 99% of all families are traumatized) the connection between generations occurs mainly through suffering. Through inherited traumas, through one’s own traumas or through a connection between the two.

This can be inferred from the observation that those affected feel a feeling of betrayal towards the family when they free themselves from their own suffering. As if they would leave their family alone in their suffering, and thereby betray them. Or as if they had lost their belonging to this family as a result. The effect is like “a ban on being happy”.
This means that suffering is the glue, the pattex, that connects the members of a family over generations. Indeed, those affected mistakenly believe that “co-suffering” is love.

This is then often called – wrongly! – „loyalty“ by therapists. Paradox: People who appear carefree and free are then more likely to be repulsed as banal, uninteresting, because they lack the “stable smell of suffering”. And that affects the majority of the population, practically all of us.

Close your eyes and imagine how different our mood, our behavior, our coexistence could be without this cloud of suffering. THAT would be a species-appropriate life: And we should strive for that goal for animals as well as human beings.

The development of the trauma constellation work is not yet complete. In the last few weeks there have been further innovations. By including symbols for the true and false selves – for both the client and the parent – the client can distinguish between the two. If he/she can recognize both his/her own false self and the false self of his/her parents as a mode of survival, as a result of trauma and not belonging to the core (self), then he/she can understand why he/she suffered so much from it and that it was healthy to reject or even hate this false self (the own false self and the false self of the counterpart). Then he/she can feel the unintentional love from the core of the parents to his own core. That is his/her own true Self, that it is worth loving simply because it is there. Then for the first time he/she can feel a connection to them “from heart to heart”. And then an unspectacular life – without drama – no longer appears as banal, but as worth living.

It’s a bit like the fairy tale when straw is turned into gold.
Do you want to know how it works?

You can find examples under
https://youtu.be/okX6nUyK4q8

and
https://youtu.be/KrCYQ18stsQ

Here is a short presentation on this topic:
https://youtu.be/KU5Ogz44PV4