Els van Steijn

The Fountain, find your place

Control your life through insight into your family system

The Fountain, find your place

Control your life through insight into your family system

Ⓒ Els van Steijn

: 978-94-92331-69-4

Originally published under title: De fontein, vind je plek

Author: Els van Steijn

Translation: Natasha Barton

All rights reserved

Robbert, Job and Mette and all others dear to me:
you have a big place in my heart!

With thanks for the abundant source of my family system.
Full of gratitude for my teachers.

With deep respect for everyone who dared
to open up his or her soul to me,
allowing this book to be written.

1   Introduction

THANK YOU FOR ALL THE GOOD I HAVE RECEIVED, I WILL USE IT WISELY

1.1  Being Happy

A nine-year-old boy asks his father: “What must I do to be happy?” His father replies: “Come, get your backpack and your donkey. We’re going on a four-day trip.” On day one, the son sits on the donkey with his backpack. The father walks beside him, his own backpack on his back. The people they pass comment to each other: “What a lack of respect that son has for his father. He’s not that small anymore, and yet still he sits on the donkey. His father isn’t getting any younger either; ridiculous”. On day two, the father sits, wearing his backpack, on the donkey and the son walks quietly beside him. Again, people talk about them. “What a despicable father, he puts his own comfort and convenience above that of his son. What’s more, the father’s not that old and the son is just a little boy.” On day three, both the father and son, backpacks and all, sit on the donkey. “How selfish! Animal abusers! How can they do that? We’d never do such a thing.” On day four, both the father and son walk alongside the donkey with their bags. And again, people gossip about them: “Those two don’t understand what a donkey’s for. What a couple of idiots for not using the donkey”. When they arrive home, the father asks his son: “Has your question been answered?” The son nods.

In order to experience happiness and satisfaction, it’s worthwhile to give meaning to a situation yourself, regardless of what the other person thinks. Always of course within the limits of law and reason. After all, everyone has an opinion about something, just as you and I do. Often though, this opinion is formed without any background knowledge or understanding of the situation at all. In your judgment you reject others, and sometimes feel superior too.

You give meaning to your life by acting as far as possible according to values and standards important to you. You feel comfortable and powerful when you and your environment fulfill these values. On the other hand, you lose energy when your environment doesn’t adequately align with what you need and find important in life. By living according to your own values, you avoid becoming a rubber ball, bouncing everywhere and nowhere, among everyone and everything. And of course, you have an inner compass to guide you. It directs you, regardless of the advice your environment, invited or not, gives you. Providing you with something to hold onto and a sense of calm.

YOU GIVE MEANING TO YOUR LIFE BY ACTING AS FAR AS POSSIBLE ACCORDING TO THE VALUES AND STANDARDS IMPORTANT TO YOU.

Nevertheless, living according to the standards and values important to you isn’t always enough to make you feel satisfied. You may experience an inner emptiness, remain unfulfilled or wanting for something, even when by current standards you’re relatively, or even very successful. Sometimes, analysing the facts alone isn’t sufficient to enable you to understand specific crisis situations in your life. You feel something you just can’t quite put your finger on, but have no idea what, where and why. There seems to be an invisible undercurrent significantly influencing what you do, how you function and your wellbeing in both your private life and in society as a whole.

1.2  The undercurrent

In my work as coach I’ve come across many situations in which people are affected by the undercurrent, without knowing how to deal with it. They find it difficult to maintain relationships for instance, put themselves constantly at the back of the queue, or get caught up in battles with authority .

The undercurrent is often elusive. It’s usually difficult to put your feelings of restlessness, reasons for lack of success or a loss of energy into words. Frequently these are repetitive, extremely persistent patterns. You probably know from experience that good intentions and discipline alone are not always enough to help you get a grip on your life.

In my work as team trainer, coach, and family and organisation constellation therapist, I use two principles as starting point:

If invisible patterns are made visible, they become more manageable.

Facing reality is healing.

The first principle ensures you can influence the undercurrent if you expose it. This involves a certain amount of responsibility. The question is whether you want to bear this responsibility. Once a pattern has become visible, you can no longer claim ignorance. You can however decide how you want to deal with it. Confronting your destiny gives strength. Sometimes though, you may prefer to remain ignorant. That’s fine too. Although such a choice does have different consequences for your day-to-day life. The price you may pay is the rubber-ball effect or a feeling of powerlessness.

Regarding the second principle, I’ve the experience that facing reality, however tough it may be, provides the greatest relief and sense of space. Reality may mean for example that your parents were insufficiently able to give you love and attention. Or you’re dealing with addiction or have rejected a religion very important to your family. By saying yes to reality, you allow it to have less of a toxic influence on your life. The louder you say no, the harder what you reject bounces back at you. The trick is to say yes to what is there and acknowledge it has happened (or is happening), to then be able to separate yourself from it.

The son from the story with the father and the donkey realised that saying yes to reality made him most powerful. Regardless of what you do or don’t do, someone always has an opinion about you. This is the reality and will never change, however hard you fight it. Surrendering to what’s inevitable gives you strength.

Systemic Principles

Water always chooses the path of least resistance and travels straight down, never against gravity. This is a law of nature. Fighting it achieves little and costs energy. You can though get this principle to work in your favour, by for example installing water irrigation techniques on lower-level farming ground or building dams so that water is kept out of specific areas.

SURRENDERING TO WHAT IS INEVITABLE GIVES YOU STRENGTH.

The undercurrent also harbours laws that are not always visible, but whose effects are noticeable. Although the undercurrent is complex, it can be reduced to a few basic patterns and essences you can depend on and use to define the effects.
You experience the undercurrent in various aspects of your life. It doesn’t matter if you live alone, with your partner or with your family. Additionally, you’re also part of various groups: clubs or an organisation, but also a town and country. Look at every group you belong to as a system. Systemic means: recognising the enormous web that connects all the people and events within a (family) system, and how these affect the past, present and future.

Every system involves laws or systemic principles that you can get to work for you. They help you shift into a positive spiral, so you can improve your relationship with yourself and your environment. Many of the systemic principles were identified by the German missionary and psychotherapist Bert Hellinger (1925), who elaborated on the experiences and insights of others. My work is based on Hellinger and I’ve developed a metaphor to make the systemic principles more understandable and insightful. I have called this metaphor the fountain .

The Metaphor of The Fountain

The systemic laws that I describe using the fountain concern processes within your family system; processes that you are not, or barely aware of. The fountain clarifies your place within your family system. And when you can take your place within the family system, you’ll also be able to more easily find it in other aspects of your life. By standing firmly in your place in the fountain, you can live your life freely and enter into relationships without being swept along by the instability of others.

Imagine a beautiful fountain with different trays of water, flowing into each other. At the top are your great-grandparents, the tray under that belongs to your grandparents. Under this are your biological parents. Your place is the tray under them (in the birth order of the children). Maybe you’ve also passed on life, meaning that your children are under you and, beneath them, your grandchildren etc. Take your place, and you’ll receive an invisible strength essential for feeling fulfilled and powerful.

Often though, you’re not in your rightful place. For various reasons, you may have ascended to a tray above you. Meaning you no longer receive, but give instead. Although you may feel big and important, you’re actually building up a deficit. You become needy.

The trick is to get to your place and stay there. Leaving your position in the fountain can happen both consciously and unconsciously. You’re not always aware you’ve shifted. But because you’ve changed place in the fountain, you’re unable to adequately capture its flow. Meaning you’ll have to stand on your own two feet in life, without the natural support of the fountain. You’ll also often feel a sense of inner emptiness. The good news, is that the fountain is always available, provided you’re in your own place and you say yes to what is there, to the good and the bad. You learn to receive.

Constellations

A means to making systemic laws and the resulting dynamics visible, is the family or organisation constellation. A constellation is a visualisation of how the fountain of your system flows.

During a constellation, all elements of the force field of your problem or stalled process are mapped out. This is done by focusing on a specific problem, for example how much of what you do doesn’t end well or that you often take on responsibilities that aren’t actually yours.
Other participants serve as representatives of the people close to you and position themselves in a certain way in the space, replicating your situation. During a constellation it becomes clear how you stand in relation to others. Patterns and any accompanying dynamics become visible. After the diagnosis, possible interventions are explored, so that you and your system can be even more empowered. Through a constellation, solutions present themselves. You get a different perspective on the situation, which will also work through into other aspects of your life. What you should do often becomes clear naturally.

1.3  Inner Attitude

YOUR PLACE IS THE POSITION WHERE YOU ARE MOST POWERFUL AND WHERE YOU CAN ACCESS YOUR INDIVIDUALITY AND FLAIR.

The wonderful thing about having insight into the fountain is that by actively working on your inner attitude, you can claim your rightful place. And what’s particularly welcome, is that you’re not dependent on anyone else to do this. Only you, by changing your inner attitude, can take charge of your life and take your position in the fountain. Your place is the position where you’re most powerful and where you can access your individuality and flair. It’s related to your family system but - strange as it may sound - it doesn’t matter whether family members are living or not, or what they have done well or even badly in their lives. It concerns only your inner attitude in relation to your family system. Of course, some people have a more challenging life than others. Your destiny encapsulates all the circumstances that have led you to being who you are today. In my experience, everyone who truly faces their own destiny can not only cope with it, but draw strength from it too.

It can sometimes be extremely painful and difficult to accept your own destiny. Turning a blind eye feels easier. Which is why you often focus on something or someone else. Perhaps frustratingly though, it’s not possible to take over somebody else’s destiny. You only make yourself and the other person weaker by taking responsibility for something that’s not yours. By facing what is yours (your destiny), you create strength within yourself, and surprisingly, within the other person too. This is a golden rule you can always fall back on.

Systemic working is about your inner attitude in relation to your family system. Who and what that comprises, will be discussed later in this book. My clients often tell me they like the fact that the people from their family system do not actually have to be involved in this process.

Effects of patterns from your family system on your current private and working life

It’s striking that the patterns from your family system with which you (un)consciously live or struggle, repeat themselves in your private or working life. To put it very simply, you can often link a pattern, for example regularly clashing with senior organisational layers, to something that you probably still have to figure out with your father. Another dynamic results from the pattern of feeling over-responsible . Almost certainly there’s a pattern within your family system that means you’ve cared for at least one of your parents in a particular way.
So many of the dynamics in your current life can be traced back in this way to your family system, and this pattern repeats itself in your own family and your private or working life.

I don’t want this book to suggest that the systemic perspective is the (only) truth, that it’s the sole trustee of wisdom or that there’s no other way to empower yourself. I do hope though that this book gets you thinking and gives you new insights you can relate to your own experiences. Relief, energy and space often come about once the effects and workings of the systemic principles are clear. The objective of this book is to present you with another perspective. After all, a different interpretation can provide you with a new field of vision. And this is how you expand your possibilities and potential.

In this book I discuss several themes concerning living, rather than being lived or surviving. In addition, I want to help you find your place in the fountain, so that you can (continue to) claim your own position. Personally, I’m convinced that the systemic approach gives access to a button able to trigger many useful mechanisms. Please be aware that this book can never replace professional guidance when experiencing psychological distress. In my opinion, it shows more courage to acknowledge your limits than to exceed them. It can also prove worthwhile to request the help you need on time.

I wish you the courage and strength needed to stand, when desired, even more so in your rightful place!

Els van Steijn

Utrecht, Bujumbura, Molkwerum, Montolieu 2014-2016

2   The Fountain

You Belong

2.1  Receiving

Years ago, during a visit to St Tropez, I learned something important from my mother. My husband and I were visiting my parents for a few days during the summer holidays. A good friend of my mother had also flown in for a week. We decided to spend a day people and boat watching with a bit of window shopping thrown in. Enjoying the good life. My mother’s friend and I wandered down a narrow street where we saw a beautiful raw-silk shawl hanging in a shop window; various shades of blue with sparkling beads and sequins, just enough without being over the top. I thought it was stunning. The friend saw me looking at it and asked me if I would like it. I protested, but before I knew it, she’d manoeuvred me into the shop. Close up, the shawl was even more beautiful. It cost 350 euros. No way would I ever spend that kind of money on a shawl. But my mother’s friend said: “I can afford it, and it would give me pleasure to buy it for you”. My timid response was: “No, thank you, I just can’t accept it”.

During lunch my mother cleared her throat. Ever since we were young, my sister and I knew that there was no escaping what she was about to say: “Els, you needed to go to the toilet too, didn’t you?” In the lobby of the toilet she said: “You must listen to me. Sometimes you need to accept something from somebody else, simply because they so badly want to give it to you. Get over your sense of guilt. Allow the other person to give, without taking it out of pity. Accept it as a wonderful gift and be truly grateful. And feel the happiness the shawl gives you”, she added.

An inner struggle, but I can tell you that the shawl is still hanging in our bedroom over the back of a chair. Every time I look at it, I’m proud I had the courage to accept it. Accepting the gift has made the relationship between my mother’s friend and I even stronger. Since my mother died in 2007, I go out to dinner with this friend every year around the time of my mother’s birthday. It’s always a precious evening for both of us.

RELATIONSHIPS ARE ESTABLISHED ON THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND NOT ON GIVING.

Relations are established on the ability to receive

Accepting the shawl taught me a life lesson. Giving was always much easier for me than receiving. And generally speaking, giving is viewed more highly than receiving. What I’ve learned is that relationships are established on receiving and not giving. It requires courage to accept something you’re not sure you can reciprocate. The feeling of owing something to someone else can be experienced as negative. A sense of giving power away. The question is whether this is actually the case. Because by accepting something, you can actually become more powerful.

When I accepted the shawl, an exchange of giving and receiving took place between my mother's friend and me. Everyone gives and receives in their own way. Every exchange can be different in format. This creates a wonderful, jointly-generated back and forth of giving and receiving. This exchange is felt as a sincere relationship.
Before a connection is even made of course, there must be a trigger, in the form of giving. The relationship only takes shape when both the giver and receiver can receive. I hadn’t understood this enough up to that point. I thought that by giving, there was a relationship. Giving gave me a feeling of safety, while receiving made me vulnerable. I was afraid that by receiving, I would lose my sense of independence and autonomy. Quite the opposite was true. Once I started to receive, I could give even more than I could before, and now without becoming empty myself. And precisely this made me strong.

At that time, I had no understanding of the invisible principles behind living a good life. I learned that being able to receive in your family system works its way extra positively through into all aspects of your life. If you receive based on your family system, you have the ability to nurture healthy relationships elsewhere. Without the inner-connection with your family system you are unable to receive and must do everything yourself. Temporarily, this is manageable. But eventually you’ll feel empty and unfulfilled.

2.2  CONNECT

By connecting is meant: being able to both give and receive. It’s totally okay if you give more for a while than you receive, or the other way around - provided that at some point settlement takes place. Should we give exclusively and accept nothing, and this pattern continues to repeat, we’re looking at an unequal relationship. In all relationships, except those between parents and children, there should ultimately be a balance between giving and receiving. Parents give more than children can ever give back. This imbalance will be rectified by the children, through their own children and other life goals.

BY CONNECTION IS MEANT: BEING ABLE TO BOTH GIVE AND RECEIVE.

Through trial and error, and self-reflection, I noticed that people who are connected to others are strong. They seem to be able to take any knocks life hands them and are more grounded. People who are unable to (successfully) connect with other people lack something essential in their charisma and in their lives. They lack vitality, a natural determination and zest for life. They frequently miss that twinkle in their eye.

In the absence of connection, you go in search of compensation in the form of kicks, (less)harmful habits, and addictions to alcohol, pills, drugs, gambling and sex. This also includes disorders connected to the use of Botox and health products, addictions to shopping, exercise or work. Peaks are needed to take away the dullness. Only then will your zest return. Or, you become demanding and critical because the lack of sufficient connection causes inner emptiness. You often feel insatiable, and although you may look powerful from the outside, it’s questionable whether that strength is also present on the inside.

The stand-by setting

An alternative to addiction as a result of not being able to connect, is excluding yourself. You put yourself on stand-by, evading the process of giving and receiving and withdrawing. You shut yourself off. Because if you don’t accept anything, then you also don’t feel any obligation to give something back. What you do, you do on your own. This is exhausting, and people notice, particularly those closest to you. They’re unable to understand and connect to you. After all, you won’t accept anything.

If you cannot or do not want to receive, you build up a deficit. This happens first and foremost because you’re not in your place in the fountain. If you connect to something or someone, you’re able to both give and receive. A connection means you surrender to what is there, with all that goes with it. Which is not necessarily always pleasant. Receiving includes both the good and the less good. As a human being, you also have to find a response to the unwanted gifts. How you can accept the things you don’t actually want but are there anyway, is discussed in chapters 8 and 9 .

Connections versus ties

The opposite of stand-by also exists. Sometimes it seems as if people are too connected with other people. They can’t let the other person go. They stay angry, disappointed, accusing, dependent or for example over-concerned towards certain people. When any of this happens, there’s talk of a tie instead of a connection.

With a tie you need to try and imagine that an invisible, short, taught rope is stretched between two people. Whenever you want to take a step, you also need to carry along the burden and weight of the other person. When they move in a different direction, you need to try and keep your balance, and not get pulled along. This isn’t a welcome way to live your life.

A connection between two people also includes a non-visible rope, but one that’s long and flexible. Every time one of the two people move, the rope stretches and provides the space needed. At the same time, you feel connected to each other, which allows and enables you to accept strength and energy from the other person. In a connection, the giving and receiving flows smoothly.

A tie comes about when you (at least) are not standing in your place. There’s a good chance that more people from your system are not in their place, something you then unconsciously react to. The good news is, only you have to stand in your place to transform a tie into a connection, irrespective of what the other person does or doesn’t do. It’s about your inner attitude. So that you can claim your place in the fountain and take responsibility for your own life. Let go of what is not yours and take what is yours.

2.3  THREE SOURCES OF STRENGTH AND ENERGY

The correct balance between giving and receiving makes you powerful. Finding that balance is connected to the extent in which you draw from three essential sources of strength and energy. Or in other words: can you connect with the following sources, and unequivocally receive from them too? These three sources are:

The first source of strength: the rationale

Many people have a generous helping of mental strength, and this comes from the rationale. It enables you to do what you have to or want to do. This can create beautiful, good things, allow you to achieve your goals and tackle the more unpleasant things in life. In short, a useful resource that’s needed to be successful in life.

In times when your body protests against high demands or when unwelcome emotions rear their head, you can use mental strength to ignore them. Which is fine, as long as you start listening to your body at a certain point. Your rationale has the tendency to push away certain thoughts and unpleasant feelings. For example, the question of whether you’ve actually made the right decision, the realisation that you’re falling from your pedestal, that you and your partner are growing apart, or your body is giving off signals that point to more than just a hefty dose of flu. To be able to do without and carry on are meaningful qualities. Up to the point that the rationale keeps you away from whatever’s demanding attention and shouldn’t be ignored. Once you are no longer able to structurally experience any (positive or negative) feelings, your alarm bells should sound. If you cannot feel sufficiently, you’ll also no longer be aware of your deepest needs and will become alienated from yourself.

The rationale off-button is sometimes difficult to find. Voices and inner-dialogues stay active. Often, an extreme physical signal is required to tell you that the body or a particular subject needs attention. The rationale is then ready for rest after rationalising and pushing away all those unpleasant feelings emerging from your body

The second source of strength: the body

The body has a wisdom that our rationale cannot understand. Who doesn’t recognise the impulse, the moment your intuition took over, or the gut feeling that suddenly told you what was good for you? Or your feet leading you somewhere, that in hindsight turned out to be just what was needed.

THE BODY HAS A WISDOM THAT OUR RATIONALE CANNOT UNDERSTAND.

Your body responds before your rationale realises that something’s going on. Your body has issued tens of signals before your head even notices that you’re tense, feel ill or are mentally exhausted. After all, your body is always in the here and now. Your rationale can flutter away, to the past or to the future. Rationale and body can only exchange if they’re connected to each other. When connected, they’re able to strengthen each other. With one head elsewhere, it’s difficult to work together.

The trick is to consciously notice your body’s signals. These signals can vary from curling your toes, sweating more, tilting up your chin or perhaps dropping your head and shoulders, pushing your upper arms against your body, clenching your teeth, scratching an itch, grinding your teeth, biting nails, talking and walking faster, not listening etc. Everyone has their own repertoire. Learn to recognise these signals at an early stage. If you don’t (sufficiently) recognise your reactions, your body will give off increasingly powerful signals to make it clear that you apparently have to do something. Refuse to listen to your physical reactions, and you may eventually be overcome by palpitations for instance, headaches, fear/panic attacks, (phantom) heart attacks or a burn-out. These are indications that you’ve something to acknowledge that you’d rather avoid (both consciously and unconsciously). Realise that although the signals may be painful, frustrating and difficult, they’re actually friends with your best interests at heart, wanting to do something good. For example, encouraging you to take some rest, ask for help or lean on someone.

Contrarily, learn to recognise your personal signs and characteristics of relaxation, such as the space created in your abdomen when experiencing relief, your jaws that relax and your mouth that no longer feels dry.

The poem The Guesthouse by the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi (1207 – 1273) illustrates how the connection with both your rationale and your body is essential.

The Guest House 

This being human is a kind of guest house.
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.  

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,  

Still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out,
for some new delight.  

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.  

Be grateful for whatever comes.
Because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Often, you can only decide in hindsight and after a long time whether something has been good, bad, useful or meaningless. It’s possible, for example, that losing your job was terrible because you needed it to pay the bills, but it did give you the space to make a career switch. Or your partner breaking off the relationship, which was distressing, but you’re now able to be true to yourself again. Or when you broke your leg, which meant you couldn’t go on that trek, a trek during which a number of the group lost their lives. The trick is to delay your final judgement.

Wandering heads

People who live primarily according to their rationale, I call wandering heads. It seems as though their head and body are separate. The head appears to float a few centimetres above the body, meaning there’s no longer any interaction and connection possible between the body and head. A pity, because it’s precisely this collaboration that’s so extremely powerful. One is no better or worse than the other. They are different, meaning they need each other. The signals from your body must be evaluated by your head, and the signals from your head must pass through your body and heart.

THE ART IS TO DELAY YOUR FINAL JUDGEMENT.

If your head connects with your body, you have more potential. You’re also more firmly planted in the here and now, meaning you’ll have more impact. The following quotation from Italo Magni, an internationally-renowned speaker, describes wonderfully the effect on others when you talk respectively from your head, your heart and your soul: “If you’re talking with your head, you’re going to speak to their heads. If you talk from your heart, you’re going to reach their hearts. If you talk from your soul, you'll enter their soul”.

Occupying your body

Being, and staying in your body is thus important. In daily communication the 80-20 rule applies. Remain 80% in your body and use the remaining 20% for communication with others from your rationale. Experience has proven this to be more than sufficient. If you manage to stay with your body during a discussion, you’ll notice that you’ll regularly get brainwaves and will spontaneously start to ask questions that really make sense.

In particular when relaxing (sports, yoga, fishing, hiking), wonderful alternatives and solutions for problems that you’d previously not thought of can present themselves. In any case, relaxation proves a welcome opportunity to dim the volume of the inner dialogues in your head. It’s advisable to find a structural form of sport and/or other means of relaxation. Also try, during all forms of communication with others and yourself, to remain in good contact with your own body and the signals it sends out.

The trick is to stay in your body and occupy it completely. It’s not uncommon to have a lesser relationship with certain parts of your body. One of the laws of working systemically is that nothing or no-one can be excluded; all (body) parts belong. Dare to come into contact and go in search of connection with the very part of your body you reject. You’ll notice that from this part of the body there’s growing strength and wisdom. Those rejected parts of your body have an important message to tell you

The third source of strength: your family system

As a human being, you’re more connected to your family than you could ever imagine. A family is a system in which everyone has their own place and is inextricably linked to the other. A family system is intertwined by destiny.

AS HUMAN BEING YOU ARE MORE CONNECTED TO YOUR FAMILY THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE.

In a family system, a family soul or conscience prevails (see section 3.2.2 ). In practice, there’s a kind of radioactivity in a family system: you don’t see the influence, but the effects are tangible. You notice that in families, generation after generation, there is addiction, illness, aggression, abuse or suicide. Or that children care for their parent(s) in a particular way, rather than the other way around. Or that fathers are absent.

To pick up the third source of power and energy you must stand in your own place in the family system. Everybody has his or her unique place, determined by seniority of your system of origin. You have your place and others have theirs, regardless of what you think of them and they of you. One place is not better or worth more than the other place. See section 2.5 to determine where your place is.

The power of your own place

In your place you receive the power and invisible, but essential, nourishment from your family system. Without this nourishment, you feel empty inside. When in the wrong place, you’re less able to receive the nourishment. Only in your own place do you develop your individuality and flair, and feel life flowing spontaneously towards you. You seem to prosper. This is the place where you should take root. A place that’s there whatever happens; it belongs to nobody else. The question though is whether you’re in your place. How you can arrive there, if not there already, is at the heart of this book.

IN YOUR PLACE YOU RECEIVE INVISIBLE POWER FROM YOUR FAMILY SYSTEM.

Circumstances can mean that you’re (no longer) in your place. For example, because as a child you were structurally the go-between for your parents, because of their unresolved, long-term conflict. You then come to stand between your parents instead of beneath them. Out of love, children unconsciously carry what another cannot or does not want to carry. By doing so however, you take on a responsibility that’s not yours, meaning you’ll be unable to thrive. You can, and may, only carry what is yours to carry. This theme is further elaborated in chapter 5 .

In practice, you see that you either consciously or unconsciously take the patterns that come about from your system of origin with you throughout the rest of your life, both private and working. Were you the bringer of harmony for example in your family system, then there’s a real chance you repeat that behaviour within your own family or at work. A repetitive pattern is often characterised by a certain stubbornness. Discipline, good motivation and an ability to learn are not always enough to break through these patterns permanently. In my opinion, the desire to change patterns is often sought in the wrong areas. Of course, there are all kinds of methods, skills and alternatives to make your pitfalls more manageable, but there’s a pretty big chance you’ll fall back into your old pattern if it isn’t tackled at the source. In almost all cases, the cause lies in the fact that you’re in the wrong place.
Imagine, you’re unable to occupy your body properly (wandering head), because you were confronted in your family of origin with physical aggression or with long-lasting, contradictory signals from your parents. A logical response is no longer wanting to feel your body. Working on better body awareness alone doesn’t solve the problem though, because you also have something to solve with your parents in the system.

Together, the rationale, the body and strength of your place in the family system form a strong trio. Two sources are not always enough. If you can draw from three sources, you’ll get extra strength. In the yoga lotus position (meditation position) you also have three pressure and support points: your one knee, the other knee and your bottom. If someone gives you a push from behind, you still have two knees to provide grip. If you get a push from the left, you lean on one buttock and your right knee. See the three sources of strength as your steadfast tripod, providing stability in your life.

2.4  THE METAPHOR OF THE FOUNTAIN

Your family system, containing your own place, can be compared to a fountain. Imagine again the beautiful fountain, consisting of multiple trays of water at different heights. Water flows abundantly from the higher trays to the trays below. The tray below also overflows, spilling water into the underlying trays. And so on; an infinite fountain.

Somewhere in the top trays of the fountain are your predecessors. In the layer beneath you’ll find your great-grandparents, with all the members of the family system from the corresponding generation, including miscarriages, stillborn infants, aborted children and even children given away. In the tray below that of your great-grandparents, you’ll find your grandparents. The tray below that belongs to your biological father and mother. The tray underneath is yours, with any brothers and sisters in birth order. The tray under yours is meant for your children. Grandchildren can be found under this again. The fountain thus grows endlessly as long as children are born into your family. With every generation, a new tray is added.

Your place is in the tray of the fountain where you belong, per definition under your parent’s tray. You will always remain the child of your parents, even though you may have had children yourself and perhaps even grandchildren. You will always be their baby, just as you will always be the grown-up in the eyes of your children. The trick is to stand, and stay standing, in your place. Leaving your place can happen both consciously and unconsciously. You’re not always aware of the shift. The effect of not being in your place, is that you’re unable to adequately receive the flow of the fountain. This means that you’ll have to stand on your own two feet in life, without the natural support of the fountain. The good news, is that the power of the fountain is always available, as long as you’re in your own place.

Your biological parents are in the fountain tray above you. It doesn’t matter if your parents are still alive or have passed away, or if you have even ever known them. It also doesn’t matter systemically if they were actually able to care for you. Sometimes, all that parents can give is the passing on of life .

Your parents give you who they are and what they can give. This is what they pour down the fountain. They give you all the positive, and negative, available. Positive is for example care, warmth, love, seeing you, hearing you, encouragement, physical contact, comfort and support in whatever form.
The negative can include a great sadness they carry caused by the premature death of a parent, brother or sister, or because they’re grieving for a child that is dead. They can also have an addiction, the consequences of which they also pass on. Perhaps there was aggression, violence and (sexual) abuse. And although you absolutely don’t want to receive this, you unintentionally get this as part of the 'package deal'. Your parents may also pass on over-concern, helplessness, the victim role and extreme demands. All of this usually poured unintentionally into the fountain, alongside all the wonderful things you also receive.

Finally, parents also pass on what they cannot give – and what you may possibly have loved to receive. In your daily life as a child you’ve missed certain things because of this; individual attention, a reassuring cuddle, support, money, intellectual baggage etc.

YOUR PARENTS GIVE YOU WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY CAN GIVE.

Breastfeeding as metaphor

Imagine that what your parents give you can be compared to breastfeeding. The natural process of breastfeeding is that the baby must suckle to get milk. By sucking, the milk passes into the baby’s mouth. This stimulates new milk production in the mother. If the baby, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to suck, the mother’s milk production will eventually stop. This is how nature works.

As mentioned previously, your parents give you everything they are able to. As a child, even though you’ve grown up in the meantime, you have to say yes to it. Saying yes initiates a flow that’s nourishing for you as a child. This flow is also fulfilling for the parents. It doesn’t matter, by the way, whether your parents are still alive. If, as child, you say no and refuse to accept what’s there, the family-system source is as good as gone. This doesn’t mean you can’t lead a good life if you’re not in your place in the fountain. But it does mean that you’ll have to do most things without help. You receive the flow of your family system’s fountain insufficiently or not at all. Meaning that all you can fall back on are the sources of the rationale and the body.

You will always be your parents’ child, even if the contact is broken

You will always be your (biological) parents’ child. Maybe you feel you’ve already said farewell to your parents. Or you’ve tried to break ties with your parents, or vice versa. It’s also possible that you actually put words into action by breaking contact altogether. Although you may be able to claim there’s nothing more between you, deep down it proves to never be the case. The ties between members of the family system are inseverable. However forcefully you or the other person deny there’s ever been a connection between you: whatever happens, you always remain the son or daughter of your parents, whether you see each other or not.

If you’ve reached the point that contact is broken, chances are that your parents have poured down all kinds of 'nutrition' that you didn’t want to receive but that you cannot say no to. Refuse to accept what’s there and inwardly break the connection with your parents, and you leave your place in the fountain. Morally speaking, you may be right in saying no. Systemically speaking, this works against you. The trick is to firstly say yes, meaning you remain in your place, to then later be able to say no. You do this by letting go of what’s not yours and accepting what is yours. How you can do that, follows later in the chapters Accepting your Place ( 8 ) and Descending ( 9 ).

2.5  Your family system

Every human being is part of their own, unique family system. A system such as a family, but also an organisation or a club, includes loose elements or people who have a certain connection or structure and thus effect on each other. You’re usually insufficiently aware of this influence. Every system is in turn part of other systems. Logical then that you occasionally feel like a rubber ball.
Your parents have passed on life to you. Through your parents, you’re also connected to their families. In a family system all the members are influenced by the working of the so-called family conscience. The family conscience can be described as the family’s collective memory. In this memory, the entire history of the system is stored. All the positive, and negative, events of the family are contained here, such as war, unprocessed grief, abuse, guilt and murder. This means that events from the past, particularly those we are not aware of and maybe even know nothing about, can have an incredibly powerful influence on our present. See also section 3.2.2 . for explanation of the family conscience.

Looking systemically means that you also view people within the context of the history of the (family) system. It means that you’re aware of the enormous web with which and through which all people and events within the family system are connected to each other, effecting the past, present and future.

How special it is that you’re here

Imagine that your (biological) parents come to stand behind you. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve known them or not and how you experience the connection with them. Behind your parents, you position their parents; your grandparents. The four of them are stood side by side. Behind them come their parents, your great-grandparents. And behind them, their parents and their parents, etc. And you continue until the very beginning. Doing this, there’s an enormous fan of predecessors behind you. In front of you are your children, any miscarriages, stillborn or aborted children. Maybe they have also passed on life, meaning that in front of them are even more (grand)children.

YOUR PARENTS ARE THE ONLY ONES RIGHT FOR YOU.

Realise that if one person had not stood in the correct place behind you, you wouldn’t have been here. In other words, if one of those predecessors had run off with someone else, you’d never have been born. How special it is that you’re here. No one other than your parents could have done that. And this is why they’re the only ones right for you.

Who’s part of your family system?

You’d think that the family system is only created by blood ties. However, the family system includes more people and elements in its parts:

Predecessors with brothers and sisters, regardless of whether they’ve died or not.
So, blood ties and regardless of their deeds.

The children, aborted children, children given away or kept secret.
This also includes miscarriages not mourned for. Miscarriages that are acknowledged and have been mourned, do not belong in most cases to the family system (see the next section).

Half-brothers and half-sisters from all generations.

Ex-partners of predecessors.
Everybody that’s made space is part of your family system and you must acknowledge that their – maybe voluntary – departure or death has created space for you. This applies to both ex-partners of your predecessors and to your own ex-partners. If the former partner of a ancestor had not left (however they did), your parents would not have come together, and you wouldn’t have been born.

Perpetrators and victims.
Both the perpetrators and the victims are part of each other’s family system. It doesn’t matter if there’s a blood tie. Thus: the victims made by a perpetrator from your family (or by yourself) belong to your family system. If you’ve become a victim because of a perpetrator who originally didn’t belong to your system, the perpetrator is part of your system from that moment on. You will subsequently be incorporated into the perpetrator’s family system as victim.

Perpetrator and victim roles can take all kinds of forms. For example, aggression, violence and murder. Abuse of all kind, such as sexual abuse and incest, but also financial abuse including being cheated out of money or land. Also, people that have been extremely negligent or have caused serious accidents. Further, murderers, traitors for example in the Second World War who ensured that a family member was arrested. Every family has perpetrators and victims.
Everyone who you have had forced sex with.

Loss or misfortune for someone else that has turned out in your favour.
Think of money, inheritance or lives. You’ve prospered or become rich through the adversity and misfortune of others, not acknowledging the other person's share. Or you’ve earned money at the expense of others. Credit where credit’s due.

Your country of origin.
Your country of origin or place of birth must be acknowledged. To not do so creates restlessness and inconsistency, almost an (unconscious) homesickness. Certainly, people that have had to flee their country and deny this connection, can assume that there will be a pull from the country of origin that passes on to future generations. The same applies to clans and tribes that you may originally have been part of.

Unspoken secrets.
A secret can be anything. The mother, for example, knowing that the child has another father, but the partner is unaware. Or the father not knowing that he’s made another woman pregnant, because she doesn’t tell him. Or half-brothers and sister that are never spoken about.
Other secrets can include abortions, or incest and abuse that’s known about within a family, but not discussed or stopped. Sexuality and suicide that cannot be talked about.
It can apply to people, as well as events and themes.

Everyone and everything from the above summary belongs to your family system, regardless of the deeds done (or even not done). This isn’t always easy for everyone to accept. All the participants of your family system have an unconscious influence on each other. One participant may suffer from this unconscious influence to a greater or lesser extent compared to another member of the family system. You then bear the consequences of the unclaimed destiny of another participant from your family system. This is called systemic burden. For further explanation, see section 3.2.2 , The family conscience.

Adoptive parents are not part of the adopted child’s family system. This is often a shock for both the adoptive parents and the adopted children. Adopted children are part of the biological parents’ family system. This is in no way connected to the fact that adopted children usually love their adoptive parents with all their hearts and are able to receive a lot from them, which they can also hopefully accept. The adoptive parents are part of the destiny of an adopted child. The destiny includes all the circumstances responsible for making the person who he or she is, both in the positive, and the negative sense.

Most likely, the following people or events also affect your family system

Not all family systems respond to people or events from the list below. They may have more influence on one family system than another. The reason behind this is unknown. It’s therefore not unequivocal - in contrast to the aforementioned list of people and elements that will always affect the conscience of your family system. Ultimately, a constellation can identify whether the people or events below are part of your family system or not.

Miscarriages that have been mourned.
It depends per family whether they are part of the family system or not, otherwise they belong to somebody’s destiny.
Miscarriages that have no space because they haven’t been mourned, do belong to the family system, as I described earlier. Also, don’t forget the halves of twins or multiples that didn’t make it in the mother’s womb and died.

Everyone with whom the sexual deed has ever taken place. Even if only once.
A tie is always created with former partners. You feel this tie the moment the relationship is broken. If the relationship has been sexual, it’s more difficult to separate from each other. This doesn’t mean that everyone you’ve ever had sex with influences your family system. This differs per family system. In some family systems, all former (sexual) partners appear to have an influence, and in other family systems they don’t. Participation in your family system definitely takes place when the sexual act is in the negative sense (forced sex).

Victims of a natural disaster or war etc.
For example, the children that did not survive a flood, when you did. In some families, the victims become part of the family system and in other families it’s not the case.

People connected by survival, such as a lifesaver and the person saved.
This also includes patient and organ donor. Without the death of the donor you would not have received a new kidney (this also falls into the category of acknowledging those who have made place). Also, don’t forget egg and sperm donations.
Likewise, someone that saved you meaning you stayed alive, for example because your car ran off the road and landed in a ditch. If the rescuer is shut out, there’s a bigger chance that that he or she will be part of your family system.

YOUR PLACE IN THE FOUNTAIN IS WHERE YOU FIND YOUR STRENGTH.

Your place in the fountain

Your place is always beneath your parents’ tray in the fountain, in your child tray that you possibly share with brothers and sisters. For example, you occupy place two because there’s an older brother next to you who has place one. The younger brother or sister that comes after you, has place three. You (if you are female) are then his or her big sister. It doesn’t matter if a child is alive, only lived briefly or has died. The place is inextricably linked to the deceased child (and everyone is always the child of the parents).
The oldest of a twin, even though maybe only born five minutes earlier than the twin brother or sister, has place one in relation to the other. The birth order also applies to half-brothers and sisters.

2.6  LEAVING YOUR PLACE

The foundation of the fountain metaphor is that you come into your strength when in your place. It’s there you benefit from the invisible support of the fountain. For various reasons you may be aware of or not, you may have left your place. Perhaps you’ve never actually been in your own place since birth. Consequently, you’re somewhere else in the fountain of the family system. Per definition, this is not your place. You’ve ascended. Or descended. You’ll then for example be positioned under your younger brothers or sisters. In general, you’re more likely to end up in a higher place rather than descending (beneath your own place). It’s impossible to leave your family system.

Where can you ascend to?

You’ve ascended to the tray above you, your parents’ tray.

You can also ascend beyond your parents’ tray. You’ll then be in your grandparents’ tray, or even higher.

You’ve changed places in your own child tray with a brother or sister who has a higher position in the order, so was born before you. You can also be in the wrong place because a child is not counted, for example an unacknowledged child, an aborted child, miscarriage etc.

You ascend and then fall back down to your child tray. You’re somewhere between the trays. You’re yo-yoing.

If a parent tends to descend, the child will ascend

A DEFICIT ARISES BECAUSE FOR A LONG TIME, YOU’RE NOT IN YOUR PLACE IN THE FAMILY SYSTEM, SO ARE NOT TAKING OR RECEIVING.
YOU WILL UNCONSCIOUSLY START TO CLAIM THIS DEFICIT FROM YOUR CHILDREN.

Can you also descend in the fountain? Yes, as long as you have younger brothers or sisters or if there’s a tray available beneath you with children (alive, dead or miscarried etc.). Otherwise there’s no-one beneath you in the fountain. In practice, I see that if you have children and want to descend to their tray (you don’t want to be an adult, but remain a child), the children are more likely to come to you. They then take the place as your partner or go to the tray above, where they assume the role of father or mother of their own parent. Your descent is then turned into their ascent.

If you tend to be a child with your own children, you are needy. A deficit arises, for example, because for a long time, you’re not in your place in the family system, so are not taking or receiving. You will unconsciously start to claim this deficit from your children. Children, out of love for their parents, want nothing more than their parents to be okay, even if at the expense of themselves. The child has the unconscious, false illusion that if they take good care of the parent, it will negate the parent’s deficit. The child senses perfectly when a parent is needy. A small child cannot resist this and ascends. Perhaps when the child is an adult, he may be able to resist this pull to ascend.

A deficit that arises from above, can never be recovered and compensated by the tray below. This is a systemic law. Getting rid of the deficit is only possible via the inner process of the person him/herself. Everything that the child give unconsciously, out of love, goes into a bottomless pit of the parent. The parent is insatiable, as the deficit can never be filled through the child, nor through partners, friends or employers.

If you want to take good care of your children, then make sure you’re in the right place in the fountain, meaning the child is not unconsciously invited to ascend. If this happens, this pattern will be passed on, generation after generation. The child ascends because the parent has a deficit, in turn making the child needy. Subsequently, the deficit will be felt in the future by the child’s children, who then ascend to take care of their parent. And so on. This pattern repeats itself until somebody can stand in his/her own place and resist the powerful pull of ascending.

3   Feeling guilty and innocent

PLEASE LOOK AT ME KINDLY IF I MAKE DIFFERENT CHOICES

3.1  Sweet, good little girl/boy syndrome

There was a time when I lived largely according to the following principle: if I work hard, get on with things, am successful, sweet, kind, thin, smart and don’t moan (because some people have it tougher than I do), the world and those around me will get how justified it is to give me a chance. Subsequently, the other person will see me, I’ll get my promotion and they’ll realise how dumb they were to shut me out and pass me by.

By adopting this pattern, I wanted to stay blameless. Keep my hands clean. I remained a spectator of life rather than fighting for my place and what I wanted. Sure, it’s inevitable that we’ll sometimes squabble over the same bone or disagree with each other. That’s life. But I only took the space that was offered to me. This kept me blameless. Innocent. It’s not unusual to feel unique, pure and perhaps even superior to others. This is how you remain a child. To the outside world, I appeared extremely responsible. But the question I eventually needed to ask myself, was whether I was taking responsibility for my own life or perhaps for someone else's instead.

To grow, you need to make yourself guilty. It’s impossible to avoid good and bad dynamics. You’ll always make mistakes, do stupid things, upset people and occupy space that someone else would had gladly claimed. Only the wishful thinking of the sweet, good little girl/boy syndrome would expect that this dynamic could be avoided.
We live in a world of dualities. And like it or not, both sides of the spectrum are ever present. Strength and vulnerability, certainty and doubt, life and death, fighting and fleeing, war and peace, etc. By only embracing one aspect of the duality, you deny your potential and become alienated from yourself. The aspect you push away or believe should be absent will find a way to be heard anyway. However hard you try. Only when you acknowledge both aspects within yourself can you move past the negative, and specifically the things you’re finding it difficult to reconcile with.

The other side of the sweet, good little girl/boy syndrome is accepting blame. With accepting blame, I mean taking responsibility for your own life and not someone else’s, besides your own children. Claiming your space and allowing yourself to be okay. Which isn’t easy. Because if you choose yourself, knowing that people you care about are unhappy or having a hard time, it’s difficult to accept your own happiness. You feel guilty if you’re happy. And by accepting guilt, you somehow feel that you’re to blame, that others may be disappointed in you or disapprove of what you do. Your decisions may even mean that others are hurt. And this can be so unbearable that you choose to remain on the stand-by setting. Stay passive. The subsequent advantage is that you feel innocent, which is comfortable. You’re back to behaving according to the sweet, good little girl/boy syndrome. The lesson you have to learn here, is how to tolerate your guilt and the accompanying feelings.

3.2  Your conscience

Feeling guilty or innocent stems from your conscience. Besides the personal conscience, popularly referred to simply as conscience, there are two other types of conscience active. In a family system we talk of a so-called family conscience. Bert Hellinger, the most influential spiritual father of systemic work, established that there are three types of conscience:

The personal conscience

The family conscience or collective conscience

The universal conscience

These three types of conscience and their effects will be explained in the following sections.

3.2.1  The personal conscience

When you do something that falls within the framework of the group or family, you feel innocent and good. If you act in a way that rebels against the system, where you run the risk of eventually being excluded, you feel guilty and bad. This is your personal conscience, something every individual is aware of. This conscience can be felt. It acts as a radar, letting you know how much you belong (or not). The personal conscience applies to your family, but also to other groups. Different rules apply to different groups.

Feeling guilty therefore represents the risk of being excluded and not belonging. And if you’re particularly dependent on this group or family to survive, then the need to ‘fit in’ is acute. As you become more mature and independent, the need to adapt to a group for this reason will diminish. After all, you can take care of yourself. You’ve developed talents and autonomy over time that make you less dependent on them. The fact that you frequently forget this when confronted with difficult situations, is another matter.

The personal conscience is the conscience of good and bad within the group. When you do something that falls within the group norms, you feel innocent. This means you can do the most terrible things, without feeling guilty. Take for example criminal and violent youth gangs, or the structural persecution of Jews in the Second World War. Although the people involved commit horrific acts, their conscience remains clear. Because doing what they do ensures they belong within their group.

Feeling guilty and not responding

A pattern that regularly emerges is feeling guilty for having eaten too much, for drinking alcohol, neglecting those close to you because of a new boy/girlfriend. Or working too many hours, not visiting your parents enough, being unkind or maybe even lying or stealing, the list goes on. Guilt makes you correct yourself and get back on track, although this can also be a bad track with a clear conscience. Perhaps your personal conscience allows you to better manage your impulses or makes you more friendly and social. These feelings of guilt can be very useful.

A less desirable kind of guilt is saying out loud you feel guilty, but subsequently doing nothing in response. You feel miserable yet stay wallowing in the misery. What you are actually saying is: I’m already having such a hard time with my feelings of guilt, that I haven’t the energy to do anything about them. Usually with the unspoken addition: and don’t talk to me about it - surely you can see what a hard time I’m having. In your mind, the feelings of guilt you’re experiencing mean you’re already being punished enough. This is an unconscious process. You cite this punishment as a reason not to change your behaviour.

You can also go completely the other way and feel guilty without any reason at all. You constantly feel guilty when choosing you, preferring to destroy yourself than deny the other person something. This can become a destructive pattern. Guilt like this is certainly not a reliable adviser. It makes you lose sight of where both your, and the other person’s responsibility lies.

Connection, order and the balance of giving and receiving in the personal conscience

The personal conscience organises what you need to do, or not, to belong to the group or family concerned, as described above. This is also called the aspect of connection. The personal connection also organises two other things: the order and the balance of giving and receiving.

Every individual needs overview and a certain degree of predictability in their life. Order within your personal conscience expresses itself in your need for clarity, insight into boundaries and social structures. If you understand how these things are organised, you also know how you need to behave to belong. As a result, you can feel protected and safe.

If there were no boundaries and everything was possible (so without order), you’d be unable to develop a good or bad conscience. Boundaries help you to get your bearings, and thus develop your conscience. In a world where everything’s always possible, you’re unable to assign a feeling to a good or a bad conscience. In general, children brought up without boundaries lose their way. But on the flipside, boundaries so rigid that there’s no room for negotiation are also disastrous. The logical consequence of this constraint is resistance. Particularly when dealing with growing children, it’s the task of parents/educators to constantly broaden the boundaries, teaching children to take responsibility.

The principles of balance in giving and taking

The balance between giving and taking is important to determine whether you ultimately want to belong to a group. If you receive something from someone, you feel guilty deep inside. You want to pass this on by giving something back. Making you innocent again. Because the other person can take from you, he feels guilty and once again will give something back. And so on. This interaction ensures a satisfactory relationship, involving a healthy turnover of giving and receiving.

The personal conscience adheres to the following principles relating to balance between giving and receiving:

Parents give to their children all of who they are, and everything they are able to give. The children must accept this.

If the parents were able to give more, they would have done so. If you are privileged to have children, then recognise whether you’re indeed giving everything you have available. Sometimes, due to circumstances, the battery’s empty and needs to be recharged before you can give again.

Parents give more to their children than the children can ever give back. This imbalance between giving and receiving is the way it should be. Because the parents have passed on life, they give by definition more than a child can ever give back in return. A child takes care, attention and love. Meaning your love as a parent will flow for your child. You become fulfilled.

Although it’s quite common for children to take care of their elderly parents, it’s key to do this from their position as child (in the child tray in the fountain). The parents stay big and the children stay small , even though the children now organise practicalities for the parents and help them with things they find difficult.

WHEN THERE ARE NO BOUNDARIES AND EVERTHING’S POSSIBLE, YOU’RE UNABLE TO DEVELOP A GOOD OR BAD CONSCIENCE.

Children must take from their parents. They must nourish themselves by accepting. What they may not do, however, is demand anything that the parents are unable to give. A child may not make claim to more.

Children accept their parents as their parents. This means that the child says inwardly: you may have me as your child. And the child accepts what the parents can give to him or her. In almost all cases, what the parents give is more than enough.

Of course, you can always give your parents feedback or set boundaries, but you may not make demands. To put it bluntly, parents have nothing to make amends for. It is your destiny, not theirs. Who says the world is fair? These are the laws according to which the fountain flows. It’s your choice. Do you want to make claim to your non-existent right, meaning things won’t go well for you? Or do you want to be happy?

Brothers and sisters: those born earlier give to the brothers and sisters born later. The older child gives the most and the youngest child receives the most.

A child in position four for example, may never position themselves (or allow themselves to be positioned) in place one, because of a misplaced sense of superiority or responsibility. This will disrupt the balance. Whether children are young or already adult makes no difference.

THE EXCHANGE OF GIVING AND RECEIVING DOES NOT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE IN THE SAME FORM.

In all other relationships, from partner relationships to all kinds of private and business contexts, giving and receiving needs to be in balance should you want to feel comfortable in that relationship.

The exchange of giving and receiving does not always have to be in the same form, both in the material and immaterial sense. Sometimes, you’ll give more than you receive (or vice versa). No problem, as long as the balance is eventually restored.

In contrast to the common assumption that giving is better than receiving, it’s useful to understand that relationships are founded on being able to receive. In practice, receiving appears to be a lot more difficult for many than receiving.

3.2.2  The family conscience

You belong inextricably to your biological family. Thanks to blood ties and destiny. Without even realising, you’re an inevitable part of the so-called family conscience. A family conscience is a collective conscience that watches over a group rather than an individual, in this case a family. The family conscience includes all the memories and events linked to your family history. In contrast to the personal conscience, the family conscience cannot be felt or observed, although the effects are noticeable. The family conscience plays out at a deep, unconscious level.

The main purpose of the family conscience is to keep the family together and where necessary, to restore the balance between giving and receiving of the entire family system. The family conscience doesn’t accept the exclusion of an individual belonging to the family system and will intervene should this happen. This creates a difficult paradox. Your personal conscience will allow you, for example, to exclude your father because he’s behaved badly, or your aunt who is 'weird'. You can also let the memory slip of your deceased little brother or sister, because the sadness is too overwhelming. The personal conscience wants to exclude or disown someone, while to the contrary, the family conscience doesn’t allow this.
There’s a chance you’re morally justified to exclude someone, for instance in the case of incest, aggression or criminal acts. But this doesn’t bother the family conscience. The family conscience has no respect for ethics. Its primary objective is keeping the entire family together. Meaning that without even being aware, you end up facing a difficult balancing act.

Entanglement or unconscious identification

What happens when someone is excluded as a result of your personal conscience? The answer is both simple and incredibly complex: the family conscience is activated and someone else from the family system, often a child from a later generation, will be used to represent the person who’s excluded. This random designation takes place completely outside of the child’s consciousness. Without knowing, you become a symptom carrier of what’s going on in your family. In systemic terms this is called entanglement or an unconscious identification .

Have you ever had the feeling you were leading someone else’s life? Chasing goals that aren’t even yours? Or do you feel sadness that’s too severe a response to what’s actually happening in your own life? Have you ever thought, ‘it would be better if I didn’t exist’? Or noticed that your behaviour and patterns are actually similar to, for example, a grandfather or grandmother, uncle or aunt who the family has been at war with? Or that you experience feelings of extremism or aggression that may have been taken over from someone in the family system banished because of murder? Or that having survived a natural disaster or accident that others didn’t pull through, you’re no longer able to be truly happy? Does any of this seem familiar to you? You may be dealing with an entanglement or unconscious identification.

A child that is entangled, is no longer in his or her position in the fountain, meaning he or she is unable to live with full vitality. The designated child will experience feelings and behaviour that resemble the feelings and behaviour of the excluded person. A child does this unconsciously and out of deep love for the family system. A concrete example. Imagine that a grandfather has committed a crime and is excluded by the family. The child that’s unconsciously entangled with this grandfather may follow the grandfather into criminality or exclude himself from the family. In chapter 7 , I’ll explore the unconscious identification or entanglement in more detail.

Repetition of patterns from generation to generation

Besides the primary objective of keeping the family together, the family conscience also has the goal of re-establishing the balance between giving and receiving across the different individuals and generations. What this means, is that all the unresolved and unprocessed issues from previous generations will once more rear their head in later generations. And again, an innocent child will be unconsciously designated to bring any unresolved issues from previous generations to light. This is why certain patterns repeat themselves from generation to generation. And this will continue until there’s a way found to let it go. Chapter 8 and 9 will describe how to break out of this pattern.

Connection, order and balance between giving and receiving in the family conscience

The connection of the family conscience refers to the preservation of the entire family. Everyone who belongs to the family system remains part of it, irrespective of the actions of the respective individual.

When talking of the family conscience, order relates to time order. First come, first served. Parents go before children. Grandparents before the parents. The first child comes before the second child. The first partner/spouse/lover comes before the second etc. This doesn’t mean that after divorcing the partner in position one, you can’t deeply love a partner in position two. The two are not connected. The former partner remains in position one, even though the relationship is over. This is how the fountain flows.

Order also means that everyone has the right and duty to bear his own destiny, nothing more or nothing less. If someone from a previous generation has a challenging destiny and finds this difficult to face up to, a child in a later generation will help bear that destiny, from a place of deep love. This happens without the child being aware. And here lies the unconscious illusion that in doing so, the child can lighten and lessen the destiny of the other person. This is a hopeless exercise - you can’t bear what is not yours. It’s a basic law. Meanwhile the child feels big and important (in as far as he’s aware). In terms of order, the child is not allowed to take over the destiny of someone present before he or she was. To do so, would weaken both the person that is so-called being saved, and the child that wants to take over. It’s no coincidence that the heroes in classic tragedies meet their fate because they shoulder or fight something that’s not theirs.

FAIL TO BEAR WHAT IS YOURS, AND IT WILL BE TAKEN OVER BY SOMEONE ELSE.

Order between partners/parents by virtue of the role they have

Partners/parents stand together in one tray of the fountain and each have their own position. Most systems seem to adhere to the following order: position one is responsible for safety, protection and representation of the system to the outside world. Position one is always at the service of position two. Position two is responsible for the care and protection of the system internally. It depends on the system, who is in position one or two. This can be either the man or the woman. The same applies to homosexual relationships: there’s always a position one and two. One position is not better, more valuable or more powerful than the other. This is simply how the water in the fountain flows. Also see section 11.1 for further explanation.

Order between systems

A new system goes before an old system. A new family system only comes about when a child is incorporated. A relationship where there are no children, is only a connection. A relationship, however, has little chance of success if you only remain loyal to your system of origin. You need to formulate joint norms and values with your partner that are not solely based on just one system of origin.

Balance of giving and receiving

The personal conscience is about the balance of giving and taking between people. The family conscience tries to achieve this within families, where it is constantly looking for balance. If one person has taken too much, another person will then unconsciously give more, provided he/she is entangled. This means that within the family, across the generations, a settlement can take place in all kinds of areas.

Examples:

If someone from your family system had exploited or abused other people, there will be a settlement. So, if one person has taken too much, the other will give extra, provided he/she unconsciously identifies or is entangled with the person involved.

All that remains unprocessed from earlier generations, such as grief, sadness or trauma, is taken over by somebody with a later position.

If somebody doesn’t bear what is his, or cannot/will not accept his responsibility, it will be taken over by someone else.

Children are the reflection of the inner emotions of the parents and the family system. Like a tidal wave, life is passed on through your predecessors, eventually flowing through your parents into you. Nobody other than your parents could pass on life to you. This makes you an inseparable part of the family conscience and the accompanying family history, even more so than you may have thought. Your family system (and thus family conscience) is always the right one for you. Without them you wouldn’t have received the gift of life.

DAILY LIFE AND THE SYSTEMIC INVISIBLE WORLD ARE SIGNIFICANTLY INTERWOVEN.

3.2.3  The universal conscience

Besides the personal and family conscience, a person has another conscience, the universal conscience. The universal conscience is a conscience that stands above the personal and family conscience. Within this conscience, not one single system, so nothing or nobody, is excluded. It keeps everything and everyone together. This is the objective of the universal conscience.

This universal conscience has a flow and a creative effect. You feel the power and the direction it pushes you in. The universal conscience creates movement towards a destination incomprehensible to human beings. To fight it is senseless, as the power’s effects appear too abundant for you as an individual.

Since the personal and family conscience are specifically relevant for understanding the functioning of the fountain, I will not further explore the universal conscience here.

One of my teachers once said: do you want to understand it or be happy? Clients say that they feel happier and experience more space, once they yield to the systemic principles. Although they don’t always understand the dynamics, they do feel the power within themselves and experience more inner peace. Should they try to use their rationale to understand the invisible dynamics, or submerge themselves entirely in a family history, the effect of the systemic principles is often negated. It’s a surrendering to the wisdom that comes from the collaboration of the rationale, the body and the family system (three sources of strength) with your own position. Allowing you to outgrow your own life script from your family system. Allowing you to surpass yourself.

3.3  Accepting your guilt

However you look at it, systemic principles occupy a much larger share of our daily lives than we think. Daily life and the systemic invisible world prove to be significantly interwoven. It’s impossible to go through life without owing someone something. If you want to be innocent, you remain a child instead of becoming an adult. The paradox here is that you must descend to your child tray of the fountain to mature. Which goes hand in hand with guilt.

An example of accepting guilt (or bearing your guilt) is leaving home even though you know that your parents will find it difficult and prefer you to stay. Carrying guilt is also getting that special study scholarship which means that others won’t be able to go to college. Accepting guilt can also manifest itself in the fact that everything seems to be going well for you, but not for your brother, who just never seems to have had luck on his side. Or ending a relationship because you feel it’s hindering your personal development and keeping you small, whilst knowing that your ex is devastated. Carrying guilt can also express itself in evading romantic relationships (because you’ve taken the place, for example, of the absent father), so that your mother’s not alone. At that moment, your potential lover doesn’t really stand a chance. Your mother’s sadness is then the guilt that you will feel. Guilt in your working life can be hurrying to the crèche at five o’ clock to pick up your offspring, leaving your team to finish up the work. Although you insist that you’ll complete it tomorrow morning, they still carry on and finish up. Perhaps you’ve caused an accident where someone was seriously injured or even died, for example in a car crash. You carry this guilt with you.

I regularly meet people who are described as extremely responsible by the people around them. They’re at everyone’s beck and call, do what others have left by the wayside and always put the needs and wishes of others first, while they themselves are exhausted. They organise things that should actually be a joint responsibility but feel an extra sense of obligation. These people also structurally carry on working to complete the mountain of tasks still unfinished. Behaviour that’s welcome, and easy, for the people around them. After all, you can depend on people like this, which is what keeps the world turning. The question however, is whether they pick up the responsibility for the things they’re actually responsible for, or they do things that aren’t theirs to do in the first place. I’d like to say to these people that, paradoxically, they’re not actually taking responsibility at all. They take the responsibility for their boss, partner, friends and even the world, but don’t take any responsibility for themselves. They fall into the sweet, good little girl/boy syndrome. They welcome the feeling of innocence more than accepting guilt. It’s often easier to pick up someone else’s worries and concerns, than to acknowledge your own problems, issues and sore points.
Per definition, you’re not responsible for the happiness of another. This is down to the individual themselves and is never down to you. Of course, it’s necessary to be there for each other and support each other when someone is (temporarily) facing tough times. This is human nature, and often brings about good.

GROWTH ISN'T POSSIBLE WITHOUT GUILT

Growth isn’t possible without guilt. Tackling your guilt and wearing it with dignity ultimately make you the most powerful. General law dictates that you weaken both yourself and the other person if you take on responsibility which is not yours. The complexity, however, is that you feel wonderful and useful when bearing something that’s not yours. It perhaps gives you the feeling that you matter. Which is comforting. The question is whether, deep inside, you are also as happy, content and fulfilled. If you ascend in the fountain because you’re taking on responsibilities that aren’t actually yours, you will suffer. Unfortunately, this is a general law. There’s a major chance you’ll deny this, of course, thanks to the drug of feeling big and important.

Accepting happiness in the knowledge that others are not doing so well

Feeling innocent is something many people aspire to, both consciously and unconsciously. Probably you too. What’s specialabout this, is that problems and difficulties unconsciously give you the sense of being innocent. After all, you’re busy doing something good for your family system or the people around you. Accepting your happiness by letting go of what’s not yours, means that you become guilty. Feeling guilty is horrible. However strange it may sound, accepting your happiness and letting go of the heaviness can evoke fear. Also known as angst. You could actually be successful and happy in the full knowledge that other people you care about are unhappy. Have it easy whilst others are having a hard time. But this takes courage.

This is where duality reveals lightness and heaviness. The heaviness is associated with innocence. Because you ascend in the fountain you feel heaviness caused by problems and complicated issues you’re unable to solve. You do however feel big and important - and that can work as a drug. The question is whether you succumb to the temptation of the kick that innocence provides, or whether you choose what is good for you, which causes guilt but will however eventually give you a feeling of lightness.
Lightness is the other side of this duality. By letting go of what’s not yours, you have freedom. You leave the problems and worries of others with them. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be there for them, however. You accept your share, nothing more and nothing less. This will make you feel guilty, maybe selfish, as you don’t seem to be having such a hard time as other people. These feelings do not stem from a wrong choice (your choice for lightness), but the weight of the guilt that you have to endure. However strange it may sound, guilt creates heaviness, so that you can face lightness. If you can endure the guilt, you will eventually feel the space, vivacity and gratitude the lightness gives you.

To take is to create guilt

The craving for innocence can also bring about another disadvantage - that you figuratively step out of a relationship because you don’t fundamentally connect. Relationships are based on the balance between giving and taking (receiving). Taking equates to making yourself guilty. Receiving is the ability to sincerely accept something or someone while you don’t always know if, how and when you can return what you’ve received.

If you’re not prepared to make yourself guilty in a relationship, you encourage the other person to leave it. You make yourself guilty by giving, and consequently receiving less. It’s unbearable for the other person to only receive and not to give. If your partner is ‘healthy’, he or she will leave you, because they need more than guilt alone. If it’s a needy person, he or she will lean on you without giving something back. To put it bluntly, you’re being used, which is for a large part down to you.

By making yourself guilty you gain stability and power as a person

The moment you truly take on the guilt, you’ll feel the strength in your body and mind. This is a systemic law: accepting your guilt gives you power and strength. Accept the guilt half-heartedly, and this strength will not yet manifest itself.

By going along with the dynamics of guilt and innocence you become grounded and rooted. You bear your personal responsibility. From a systemic point of view, it’s important you only take what is yours, leaving the other person what is his. What belongs to you, are your actions and their consequences, even if carried out unconsciously or with the best of intentions. This gives you stability, gravity and weight, making it less easy to ascend in the fountain. You are rooted. Life may buffer you, but you don’t fall over. You remain in your position despite all the chaos around you.

HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS NEED AN EQUAL EXCHANGE AND SETTLEMENT OF GIVING AND TAKING.

Settling your guilt when you’re unable to give back

Healthy relationships need to have an equal exchange and settlement of giving and taking. The only exceptions being the relationship between parents and children, and between teachers and pupils/students. Settlement will then take place in the next generation. You as child will probably get older, passing on all the good you’ve received to your children and other important goals and people in your life. The teachers of today were also once young, and as pupils received from their teachers. Something they could not return at the time. Through themselves and their profession they give all the good they’ve received to the next generation. So this is about passing on, and this gives strength. It also creates settlement.

Sometimes, settlement can’t take place for a practical reason. Someone’s seriously ill for example, perhaps even terminal, or physically or mentally handicapped. Sick people can only then give sincere gratitude. This (sick) person accepts what he’s able to receive as a great gift, knowing that he will not be able to return it. Accepting your destiny is helpful in this. You, as giver, will have to authentically accept the gratitude to complete this transaction of giving and receiving. By accepting the gratitude, you are saying that the acknowledgement you’ve received for giving is enough, more than this person could ever give back in any other way. This allows everyone to maintain their dignity.

Some people find it difficult to accept thanks or a compliment. They brush it aside and avoid eye contact with the person displaying gratitude. People who can’t accept thanks and compliments well often shuffle uncomfortably on the spot, saying things like, “it was nothing”, “it helped me too”, or “it was no trouble”. By doing this, you take away the other person’s opportunity to express gratitude and win back a sense of equality. And you disconnect. It’s a missed opportunity to allow sincere energy to flow back and forth. Accepting a thank you without making yourself too important or too insignificant, is an art in itself.

3.4  Taking responsibility for your own life

In order to be an adult and truly deal with life, you will have to grow. You cannot escape the dynamics of guilt and innocence. And you yourself will have to formulate an answer to the question of how you do this. Only you can decide. What choices do you make and are you prepared to bear the consequences without complaint? If you don’t want, or dare, to do this, you’ll remain a child and innocent. Because you don’t face what is part of life – being guilty – you’ll continue to feel empty in some way. You’re likely to lack a certain amount of humanity and acceptance that you’re essentially no different from others. You may also fall short in terms of kindness towards others. After all, you yourself aren’t dealing with the nuanced struggles life brings. So you’ll probably be quick to condemn other people and even yourself. Accepting guilt means facing up to life. Only then will you take responsibility for your own life.

The fountain can help you take responsibility for your life. It clarifies your position, enabling you to explore whether you’re actually where you should be. You leave the responsibility for the lives of others with them and pick up your own. The systemic perspective is thus about setting boundaries. About breaking loose, yet remaining connected.

ACCEPTING THE CONSEQUENCES OF A CHOICE MAKES YOU ADULT.

Thanks to the connection with your family system, and in particular the inner connection with your parents, you’re able to walk your path. To experience freedom of choice. Without this connection, your ability to experience deep freedom will be limited. The systemic mechanisms will remind you that you still have a tie, instead of a connection, with your family system. In other words, that you’ve ascended in the fountain. As a result, your life will then be lived for you and stubborn patterns will once again manifest themselves.

If you’re aware of the patterns and dynamics that you’re dealing with, you can do nothing other than take responsibility for your own life. Only when invisible patterns are made visible, can you gain control and consciously decide how to deal with them. Whatever choice you make, it’s perfectly okay. Every choice has a different consequence. Accepting these consequences are also what makes you adult.

4   Your destiny

YES, YOU BELONG WITH ME AND NO-ONE ELSE

4.1  Worries are relative

My grandmother always said: “Everyone’s worries are relative”. Emotional survival in our society is usually about living comfortably and dignified, not about battling death, except of course when facing life-threatening illnesses and extreme situations. Part of every life is joy, warmth, love, hope, but also sadness, pain, fear and desperation. All of which you’ll experience if you’re positioned firmly in your own place in the fountain.

Sometimes you know and feel that you’ve ended up in a position that’s not yours to occupy. Should this happen, it’s probably fair to say you’ve ascended in the fountain. As a child you shouldn’t have to regularly act as mediator between your warring parents. Or take care of your father because your mother isn’t up to it, for example because of an addiction. You shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of (verbal) aggression because a parent cannot deal with his or her frustrations. Or be quiet as a mouse, not allowed to be cheerful, because daddy has to concentrate . Briefly of course, this isn’t a problem, but if it becomes a recurring pattern, forcing you to become introverted, then it becomes a concern. If your mother embarks on a new relationship after divorcing, she shouldn’t start talking to you about her sex life. You shouldn’t have to change your ways because your father is in therapy or is seriously ill. Perhaps you don’t want to bother your mother with trivial things; she’s got enough on her plate with your father. I’ll get by, you think. Or you have a brother who’s handicapped, in a wheelchair or has Down’s syndrome; how can I complain, when compared to my brother, I’m pretty lucky?
You may have even ascended at birth – or even earlier, in the womb. Consequently, you may never actually have occupied your place at all. A teenager that yearns for a baby to care for and give the love they missed out on, will unconsciously call on her child (in the womb) to satisfy her needs. To what extent then can the teenager be there for the child? Who takes care of who? A question, not a judgement.

Ascended children are accustomed to displaying behaviour that doesn’t actually belong to a child. For them, it often feels perfectly normal. They don’t usually realise that their world is topsy-turvy. What’s more, the child feels big, which is a nice feeling. As a rule, the child usually knows deep down that this isn’t his place, and that he’d be better off small and as a child.

Children sometimes lose confidence in parents being able to provide for their needs. When a parent and child have been separated for a while, for example when the child was still very young. Perhaps there were unavoidable hospital admissions (child or parent), or a separation because one parent was forced to work away from home to earn money. During the parent’s absence, the child becomes fearful and probably angry too. Beneath this lies the child’s primary emotion of needing and missing the parents so much. Which in turn can trigger the child to decide he can’t get that what he needs from the parents. He stops reaching out and giving. Even when the child and parent are reunited, the child no longer dares to trust that the parent(s) can give them what they crave. The child makes a judgement about the parents (I cannot trust you) and retreats. And in doing so, ascends in the fountain to the tray, or above the tray, of his parents.
In the course of time, a child can also become dissatisfied about what he has received. Perhaps he feels that the parents aren’t good enough . And so breaks the inner connection.

There are also examples of not being aware of ascending in the fountain because you’re unconsciously identified or entangled with someone who’s excluded in the family system. After all, the family conscience ensures that someone from a later generation, without that person realising, is designated to represent a person excluded from the family system. You’ll display behaviour and experience feelings that aren’t yours, but belong to the person excluded. The person you’re entangled with. A pattern’s not yet emerged. You feel that something’s not right, but can’t quite pinpoint what exactly. You don’t yet fully understand you’re not leading your life from your place in the fountain. Before this happens, you first need to hit a wall, or crisis point - at work for instance, or because you become ill etc. This will force you to start exploring, leading you perhaps to this invisible dynamic.

Reasons for ascending in the fountain

To summarise, there are three reasons for ascending in the fountain:

You take care of someone who is above you in the fountain. You take responsibility that’s not yours, but someone else’s. In other words, you bear something that’s not yours to bear. I call this ascending method one: taking over undue responsibility.

You make a judgement about someone above you in the fountain and (partly) disconnect. In other words, you refuse to accept and receive what is there.

This is method two of ascending: making a judgement and disconnecting.

You are unconsciously identified/entangled with someone excluded from the family system. You represent someone from the family system whose place isn’t acknowledged. This person may not belong. This is the third method of ascending: unconscious identification.

YOU HAVE YOUR DESTINY. THIS DESTINY BELONGS TO YOU. IT’S YOUR TASK TO FACE THIS.

In chapters 5 to 7 , the three reasons for ascending in the fountain will be further explained.

4.2  The Destiny

You and/or one of your parents can have a challenging destiny. A destiny comprises all the circumstances that make someone who he is, up to the present day, both in a positive and negative sense. Both your father and your mother have their own destiny, just as you do. For many, the fact that everyone has their own destiny can be an eye-opener. Your destiny belongs to you. Nobody else. It’s your task to face it and accept it. Fortunately, your destiny also includes many wonderful things. Ready to say yes to all this and be grateful? On the other hand, you sometimes don’t have the choice and must accept what’s (not) there.

Destinies can be difficult. They can be easy. You never know exactly what someone else’s destiny is like. Perhaps certain things are simply not discussed. Take for example rape, aggression, war trauma, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS), a past in concentration camps, having to flee, serious illness, addiction, the absence of loved ones because of stays in prison or a psychiatric hospital, sadness and grief due to the loss of loved ones and miscarriages, a demanding ex-partner etc. All these things, and more, are why we don’t have the right to judge someone. Turbulent situations and a challenging destiny do not however excuse anyone from the responsibility for his or her actions.

It’s a general law that everyone who accepts his or her own destiny, gains strength and stability. Facing your own destiny is the same as taking responsibility for your own life. It’s often easier to turn away from your own destiny and busy yourself with someone else’s.

4.3  Consequences of ascending in the fountain

Your destiny can lead to you ascending in the fountain. What are the possible effects of ascending and no longer occupying your own position?

You don’t capture the natural flow of the fountain

You develop a pattern in which you find it easier to give than to receive

You become big instead of strong

It becomes easier to blame yourself than have a realistic image of the situation

You allow things to go badly for yourself (from feeling empty to a burn-out)

You give the system a chance to sustain itself

You become vulnerable to addiction

You install stubborn patterns that are hard to break

You lose contact with your emotions, making you a wandering head

You no longer capture the natural flow of the fountain

If you’re stood in a tray above where you should be, you want to reverse the fountain and give to the trays above you. Defy gravity. This is doomed to failure. The flow will never be able to reach its destination. And what’s more, it’s an exhausting battle. Most important of all is thus that you leave your place, as to not receive the natural power of the fountain.

You develop a pattern, whereby you find it easier to give than to receive

Primarily, you learn to receive if you’re in your place and dare to accept. If you’ve installed a pattern within yourself, where you primarily give and find it difficult to receive, you’ll find it difficult to maintain relationships.
If you only give and see that the other person only takes, with no prospect of giving back, then your natural and healthy response is hopefully to eventually stop giving. If you’re in your rightful place in the fountain, it simply won’t be possible at a given moment to keep giving if you can’t also receive. After all, you’re aware of how rewarding it can be to also receive.
If you’ve ascended in the fountain, to stop giving to someone who only takes will be an enormous undertaking. You know no better than to give and receive little in return. Your ability to keep on giving without any settlement is so well developed because you’re used to being elevated. Even when friends point this out to you. “Take care of yourself”, “you look tired”, “set boundaries”, “should you really continue this relationship?” etc. You’ll probably come up with plenty of reasons to keep giving. After all, it all seems so selfless. But meanwhile, you’re ignoring your own destiny.

ONLY WHEN YOU’RE IN YOUR RIGHTFUL PLACE WILL YOU BECOME STRONG AND STABLE AS PERSON.

Do you want to be big or strong? If you ascend, you’ll become big instead of strong

If you’ve ascended in the fountain, you feel big and maybe even important. What child wouldn’t want this? As child, your first instinct is to do everything for your parents. You’ll help them, support them, shoulder burdens for them, become ill or even die for them if you feel that this would offer a solution. By doing so, you believe (unconsciously) that you’re doing something good for the family system, that this gives you the right to be part of it. Two things that you don’t realise however, are that whatever happens, the family system belongs to your family and you will always have access to your own place. Only when you’re in your rightful place will you become strong and stable as person.

Blaming yourself is easier than having a realistic image of the situation

There’s a deep love between parents and children. If the parent is needy, even sometimes displaying deviant behaviour, you’re unable to digest that as a child. The idea that something should be wrong with the parent is unbearable for the child. No way can this be down to the parent, thinks the child. The deep love that the child experiences for the parent doesn’t allow this. Which is why the child’s first response is to display behaviour that supports, helps and cares for the parent concerned. The child will keep trying and trying, doing anything and everything to relieve the parent. All from a place of deep love. When these attempts appear futile, the child will adopt another way of rescuing the parent. Understand that the child’s often not aware of his attempts to rescue. So what does the child do? He resorts to blaming himself, rather than admitting something could be wrong with the parent. If only I was kinder, smarter, quieter, nicer, prettier etc. then this probably wouldn’t have got so far. Blaming themselves is a process the child is not aware of. And can also express itself in self-hatred. It’s easier to hate yourself than to hate (one of) your parents. The feeling of hate disguises the deep loss and longing for the parents. A child is unable to understand and accept that this is all the parents give. Parents give what they’re able - if they had been able to give more, then they would. And this is simply something you have to accept.

ASCENDING AND NOT ALLOWING YOURSELF TO DO WELL ARE IDENTICAL.

If you ascend, you allow things to go badly for yourself (from feeling empty to a burn-out)

Ascending and not allowing yourself to do well are identical. Temporarily, you may be able to live without the flow of the fountain, up to the moment you become exhausted. Which is when your other sources of energy (rationale and the body) are no longer sufficient to compensate for the absence of the fountain. Continuing, without filling up from the fountain, will eventually lead to a burn-out. A burn-out is usually seen as the result of taking insufficient care of yourself. You’ve become empty. I view a burn-out as a consequence of not taking up the flow of the fountain. You miss something real and essential is your life, because you’re not in your place in the fountain. You experience emptiness because you’re not embedded in the right place in the fountain. A burn-out may also be the result of an entanglement. Whose obligations are your trying to fulfil, obligations that per definition are impossible? This can’t be maintained.

You give the system the chance to sustain itself

If you always take on the care for someone above you in the fountain, then the other person won’t change. Unconsciously, the other person seems to know that you’ll take it on. If you’ve descended, the other person feels (unconsciously) that something has changed, forcing them perhaps to act. Maybe the other person won’t take it on, but it doesn’t belong to you. By letting go of things yourself, or indeed actually engaging in the connection you were previously avoiding, the opportunity opens for movement within the system. I’m not saying that something per se will change. But you do create an opening for something else to emerge. Alternatively, the patterns will just keep recurring time and time again.

An example of self-sustaining patterns. Children who unconsciously claim the neediness of a parent, subsequently ascend and incur their own deficit. A deficit they will later claim from their own children. Thus establishing a pattern. You can also make a judgement about someone above you in the fountain. As so often happens, perhaps your father can not see you, meaning you disconnect with him. With ‘seeing’, I mean you blame your father for seeming to have little in common with who you are and what your needs are. Making you feel insufficiently acknowledged for who you are and where your place is. In most cases, you don’t see your father either. This pattern often repeats itself: your child cannot see you, just as you cannot see your father. This can carry on from generation to generation. Goodness me, you’re so alike…

You install stubborn patterns internally that are difficult to break and penetrate other facets of your life

It’s difficult, because patterns that emerged in the family system repeat themselves in other areas of your private and working life. You’re often motivated and disciplined to break this pattern temporarily. But this rarely happens on a structural level. Only when you resolve something at the source, can you install a new pattern and outgrow your old dynamic.

You are vulnerable to addiction as a result of compensating neediness

When you ascend in the fountain, you receive or take too little from the fountain. You want to top up this deficit. The problem is that most people aren’t familiar with the concept of the fountain, so don’t understand the cause of the deficit. They do however feel the deficit deep inside. It’s an unpleasant feeling, something you want to get rid of as quickly as possible. It can express itself in vulnerability to addiction, whether serious or trivial, and all kinds of other (non-)guilty pleasures. A kick certainly gives temporary relief, but the effect’s not permanent. You can only eliminate a deficit in the fountain by descending to your place in it, although the point of no return has sometimes already been reached. I’m not saying that you by definition become addicted if you ascend. Only that the chance is greater when you’re not in your place in the fountain.

You lose contact with your feeling and emotions, making you a wandering head

By ascending you often lose contact with your body. Experiencing your own shortcomings for example, or your frustrations and feelings of deprivation, injustice and loneliness, is horrible. It’s easier to turn to your mind to explain away or ignore the nasty feeling. And this can actually be a very useful response to minor incidents. And a blessing for those who blame themselves for everything around them.
Assuming we’re talking about something essential, then you’ll develop the habit of wanting to feel increasingly less. Because giving in to feelings is associated with something turbulent, painful and a lack of control. As a result, you’ll occupy your body less and less. You’ll become a wandering head.

4.4  Your destiny and accompanying emotions

If you’ve ascended in the fountain for a long length of time, a pattern is created in which you find it difficult to feel the emotions belonging to the original event (the reason for the emotions). The paradox, is that on one hand you’re apparently emotionless, and on the other hand respond too sensitively. Or to put it differently, you avoid the emotions that accompany the wound and allow in other emotions, that disguise the actual pain, but don’t resolve it. This can manifest itself in hypersensitivity in many areas to anger and aggressiveness. You are angry and aggressive, for example, instead of sad about the rejection. Because you’ve convinced yourself that emotions and misery belong together, you’ll also feel less in daily life. You’ve levelled off your ability to feel. Unfortunately, this also means that you feel and experience the good things in life less too.

When you’re full of emotions, you cannot listen and think rationally

Emotions are part of life and provide day to day colour. Emotions, both positive and negative, keep you away from your rationale. When you’re feeling lots of emotions, you’re no longer able to listen properly and think rationally. The emotions need to first subside, before solutions and next steps can be considered.

PRIMARY EMOTIONS ARE SHORT AND INTENSE, CLEANSING YOU WITHIN. THEY ARE HEALING.

Many people find dealing with their own and other people’s emotions difficult. Their impotence drives their desire to do something for the other person. Instead of silently being with someone, listening to them, they will comfort, explain why it’s not all that bad or how it will be over quickly. They’ll frequently come up with all kinds of solutions. Or talk about how they’ve experienced the same thing. This is to cover up their own awkwardness and discomfort instead of offering support. Mostly, someone in need simply wants you to be there. Resorting too quickly to solutions, they won’t feel heard or seen. They just need to blow off steam – people generally have the resilience and presence of mind to deal with their own troubles.

It’s useful to distinguish the different types of emotions, in order to be able to deal with them effectively:

Primary emotions

Secondary emotions

Adopted emotions

Meta feelings

Primary emotions

A primary emotion is an emotion directly linked to an event itself or an original wound or trauma. Primary emotions are short and intense and cleanse within. In other words, they have a healing effect. Afterwards, you always feel better and space is created.

A primary emotion is for example being happy because of a surprise encounter. Or being sad and mournful because you hear that a loved one is seriously ill or has died. Or furious, because someone has attacked your child. You can use this anger to set down extremely useful boundaries. Perhaps you feel pain because someone important to you can’t actually see you. The primary emotion is directly linked to the original event. There can be a lot of time between the event and actually feeling the emotion.

A primary emotion releases something, so you can carry on. You step out of the circle instead of remaining inside of it. Experiencing primary emotions ensures the processing of the situation that caused the emotion.

Primary emotions of others can affect you. You empathise, yet don’t get left feeling sucked dry by the emotions of the other person. As a rule, you don’t experience other people’s primary emotions as a burden. This is in contrast to secondary emotions.

SECONDARY EMOTIONS DISGUISE THE PRIMARY EMOTIONS BECAUSE THEY HURT TOO MUCH.

Secondary emotions

Secondary emotions disguise the primary emotions because they hurt too much. The loneliness, the deprivation, the sadness or the shame are too heavy to bear, allowing secondary emotions to be activated. Imagine that someone hasn’t been there enough for you. This is often a feeling of: I have missed and needed you (primary emotion) turned into anger for that person or the world (secondary emotion). This usually happens completely unconsciously. It’s seldom unwillingness, but rather the inability to deal with the primary emotions. Somewhere deep inside you have a foreboding of how turbulent it will be to face the primary emotions. At that moment, the primary emotions are too overwhelming, causing the secondary emotions to take the upper hand. An alternative to using the escape route offered by secondary emotions, is to not want to feel anymore. You go into your mind and turn your emotions into something rational. You occupy your body less and less, because after all, this is where you feel the emotions.

Secondary emotions are long-lasting. You may feel temporary relief, but they don’t heal you on the inside. If you’re stuck in secondary emotions, the stress also remains present. The same secondary emotions keep returning. In your mind you see an image or story about the event, making it difficult to see and feel the reality. The feeling’s not a product of the event, but of the inner image that you’ve created in your head. When experiencing secondary emotions, the eyes are often closed. It helps to ask the person in question to look at you. This will bring him back into the here and now and closer to the primary emotions. Your body, after all, is always in the here and now.

Secondary emotions are often complaining and insulting by nature, often with the objective of not actually taking action. The role of victim is also often adopted. A common response is a preference to stay away, mad, than to return feeling angry. Sometimes the anger is justified. Only you often don’t have the right to claim anything, certainly never from your parents. Hopefully you’ve the inner strength to move towards the pain that lies beneath the anger. By staying away, on the one hand you are disconnecting, and on the other hand not accessing your primary emotions that can offer resolution. This is a clumsy combination. Giving up your anger is a big ask. You’d rather complain about someone else than feel how painful the loneliness is. Prefer to make the life of the perpetrator, whose drunk driving killed someone, a living hell than to feel the loss of a loved one and embark on the grieving process. Understand that this is not usually down to the unwillingness of the person involved, and do not judge it; the pain is too big to actually face it now.
You can push emotions away for a very long time. Often, you’re afraid of the primary emotions that would be released should allow reality in. It’s like a ball under water. As long as you’re big and strong you have the strength to keep it submerged. But a ball under water will always come to the surface. Sooner or later, you’ll drop your guard, or your body will let you down. And the ball will race to the surface. This is the best thing that can happen to you, but at that moment you feel terrible and incredibly vulnerable. Facing the primary emotion is thus the pathway to the light.
Even though you’re able to keep the ball under water, in both good and bad times, small unwanted emotions will still manage to seep upwards. The earlier you dare to acknowledge you need to face something, the bigger the chance you will rise above your pattern and outgrow it. After all, obstructive patterns repeat themselves until you’ve looked at what actually needs your attention.

Secondary emotions invite other people to help, certainly people with the so-called rescuer syndrome. This is the tendency to immediately jump to help others, taking on responsibility that’s not yours. What’s tricky here, is that no-one can be rescued while they’re still lingering in secondary emotions. Despite fits of crying and frustration, nothing changes on the inside. Eventually, the onlookers and rescuers become irritated and feel taken advantage of. This is in contrast to situations in which primary emotions are expressed. In the case of the latter, everyone feels cleansed afterwards.

Sometimes an emotion is not relative to the event and you project certain feelings onto people or situations (or someone else projects them on to you). This happens especially with secondary emotions.

Finding your way in society depends amongst other things on your background, your intelligence, your rationale, and also your ability to access your primary emotions to resolve something. Secondary emotions will continually make you tired. Primary emotions may make you temporarily tired and lifeless, but the end result is that they cleanse you. Being tired of the right things is not bad.

Adopted emotions

Separate to this, there’s also another type of emotion, the so-called adopted emotion . Adopted emotions are emotions that aren’t yours, but that you have taken over from someone from your family system. Making you unconsciously identified with someone from your family system (see chapter 7). These emotions continue until you come out of this unconscious identification. You perhaps lead the life, and take on the battles, of someone else from your family system. Or you feel sadness that actually doesn’t match your life but someone from your family who couldn’t truly mourn because of the intense pain.

Meta feelings

The fourth type of emotions are meta feelings. Meta feelings are feelings that transcend the other feelings, such as love for example, or gratitude and joy. If you’re in your rightful place in the fountain, you’ll regularly experience these types of emotions.

Ups and downs

Some people’s lives have lots of ups-and-downs. Adrenaline kicks alternate with bouts of melancholy and a feeling of emptiness.

Ups and-downs are fine as long as somebody tales full responsibility for his or her life and doesn’t harm other people or the world. One individual needs more adrenaline than another. It does become a concern though, when you need those ups and kicks to compensate for your inability to feel vitality in your everyday life. During the ups, you feel vital and strong. You feel the adrenaline flowing through your veins. After the up, you’re tired and empty. You can also feel a certain degree of depression: the downs. The period between the ups and downs is not experienced as enjoyable, but as dull.

The time between the ups and downs is day-to-day life. Particularly if you’ve experienced lots of unpleasant things, you’ll be reluctant to experience your primary feelings too much in ordinary life. As a result, daily life will become bland. You’ll go in search of kicks to invigorate yourself, because your day-to-day life doesn’t offer you enough triggers. This can go so far that someone, for example, starts self-harming. This offers a way of still feeling alive, because on the inside you seem to be dried up. Hopefully, in cases like this, alarm bells start ringing and professional help can be brought in.

If you recognise these enormous ups and downs, and find yourself suffering from them, it makes sense to find out why you need those ups. What primary emotions are you avoiding? Maybe it’s time to explore the event or period, without drowning in it. But maybe it’s still too early. Ask yourself whether facing it would make you stronger or weaker.

4.5  (Innerly) absentee parents

Circumstances and events sometimes make it difficult to look after yourself. Your destiny can be challenging. Sometimes you’re at the front of the queue when life hands out the favours, sometimes you’re at the back. That’s life. As a young child, you’re totally dependent on your parents for survival. They give you what they’re able to give, and this is what you must make do with. Parents are sometimes literally, but also figuratively absent, while you actually really need them (something though that you stubbornly deny on the outside).

Sometimes parents can’t be there for you as much as you need them to be

Parents can be innerly absent because they’re ‘occupied’ elsewhere. In daily life the parent is often able to offer adequate care, but something is missing when the needs go any deeper. A child senses this and become alert. On one hand, the child can attract attention and draw the parent back into the here and now (often leads to negative attention), or alternatively, he will try to lighten the parent’s load. The child will look at what belongs to the parent and will take on responsibilities that aren’t actually the child’s to take. As a result, the child ascends in the fountain. The child takes care of the parent(s).

Reasons why you sometimes can’t be there, comprehensively, for others:

Loss in various areas

Handicaps or serious physical or mental illness in the family

Something or someone is excluded

Abuse, aggression in the family

Literal or figurative parental absence

Other topics that demand attention

Below, a concise explanation of the consequences of these reasons and the possible associated dynamics.

Loss in various areas

Early loss of parent(s), perhaps already in childbirth

Deceased brother or sister

Stillborn children

Miscarriages

Infertility

Fatal accidents

Suicide of loved ones

Divorce

Loss through natural disasters

Connection to victims who did not survive when you did

Grief due to burnt-down houses, destroyed buildings or lost natural beauty

Loss of country of birth because of forced migration/fleeing

A consequence of this may be that you want to follow the person or element that’s no longer there, even into death. The underlying thought is “if I follow, we will once again be reunited”.

IT’S SOMETIMES EASIER TO ALLOW THINGS TO GO BADLY FOR YOURSELF THAN TO ACCEPT YOUR HAPPINESS.

It’s also possible that the child feels that one of his parents has a longing for death. Based on an unconscious false illusion, the child will start believing: if I do it now (for example, die) then it’s resolved and you’re free once again. Then you don’t have to die. The child doesn’t realise that this achieves nothing. What can also happen, is that children will start demanding attention from the parent they feel longs for death in order to keep them with the living. This demanding of attention can be, for instance, by displaying frantic, aggressive or angry behaviour or by becoming ill. The child thinks unconsciously: if I can keep my parent occupied, then he or she can’t leave.

A child can also choose to not let things go well for himself and make himself small, thus eliminating the big difference between himself and those who seem less blessed.

Possible underlying ideas and dynamics:

Rather me than you

I’ll do it in your place

I follow you

Innerly, a piece of my soul is with you

Things won’t be better for me than for you

Handicaps or serious physical or mental illness in the family

Handicaps

Serious physical illness

Psychological disorders

If someone in the family is handicapped or seriously ill, for example a younger brother or sister, it’s very difficult for the child to be happy. Because if you allow things to go well for yourself, the difference between you and your little brother or sister will grow. And so it’s easier to allow things to go badly for yourself than to accept happiness. You sabotage, as it were, your own happiness.

Possible underlying ideas and dynamics:

I follow you

Things won’t be better for me than for you

Something or someone is excluded

Everything related to what goes unspoken within the family. Events, for example, or history, specific people etc.

Aborted children

Twins or IVF babies, whereby two embryos are put back and one baby is born alive and the other dies in the womb

Previous partners of your parents who have made space for your father or mother, meaning you could be born.

Your, or your partner’s previous ex-partners who have made space and whose place is not acknowledged

Family member in prison, in an institution, etc.

Suicide in the family not spoken about

Family secrets

War history, survival of concentration camps no longer talked about, someone who stood on the wrong side in the war etc.

Victims created by the family, plus the accompanying perpetrators

People at whose expense you have prospered (one man’s loss is another man’s gain)

From a systemic point of view, nothing or no-one can be excluded in a family system. Should this happen, then a child from a later generation will identify who/what’s been excluded. It can relate to people as well as (in)tangible matters, goals or feelings. You’re then unconsciously identified.

Possible underlying ideas and dynamics:

If you don’t look, then I will, with love and respect (if the other person doesn’t want to face his destiny, then I will out of love for you)

I follow you

Things won’t be better for me than for you

Abuse, aggression within the family

All kinds of addictions

Aggression

Rape

Incest

Prostitution

Abuse

Murder

Exploitation

Based on the logical idea that you don’t want to take over the destructive behaviour and pattern, you reject the bad habits and behaviour of the other person. What makes this complicated, is that out of unconscious loyalty, you simply copy and install the pattern that you’ve rejected from one of your parents in yourself. The more the pattern isn’t allowed, the bigger the chance that you’ll follow it. You may not become an alcoholic, but instead a workaholic or drug addict. Sadly, you often see these patterns passed on generation through generation. This is down to an unconscious loyalty to your parents. Deep inside you know that you cannot, and will not stay loyal to your parents. And so you copy the pattern you hate so much. To offer yourself the biggest chance of not installing this pattern within yourself, you need to say yes to the fact that it’s there, but leave the responsibility to the person concerned. Consequently, facing your own concerns and worries in that area. This is descending in the fountain (see chapter 8 and 9 ).

Possible underlying ideas and dynamics:

Installing in yourself the pattern that you’ve rejected in someone else

I follow you

Rather me than you

Literal or figurative absentee parent (you in the parent or child role)

Working abroad while you stay at home

Migrant worker/asylum procedure while the family stay behind

Conflict situations (going into hiding, fleeing, participating in acts of war)

Your parents (or you) are absent due to hospital admittances, a psychiatric clinic, prison etc.

You’re at boarding school meaning that your parents aren’t close by

Divorce in which the children are not allowed to see or have feelings for the other parent

Workaholic parents

Parenthood via sperm or egg donation. The children usually don’t know who and where their father or mother is

Absence of the biological parents in cases of adoption. Foster children too, sometimes

Unrealistic demands from the parents towards the child (no boundaries, or contrastingly too many boundaries without considering the child’s needs)

Over-concerned and fearful parents (self-involved)

Parent that favours one child over another

Sometimes you don’t get what you so long for from your parents, for example love, time and attention. This can be down to all kinds of circumstances which are frequently easy to explain and valid too. In such a moment, you lose confidence that you can get what you long for from your parents. You no longer dare to reach out. You close down and disconnect. In technical terms, this is called an interrupted reaching out movement. By interrupted is meant that the asking for is stopped. It’s an aspect of method two of ascending in the fountain: judging and disconnecting.

Possible underlying ideas and dynamics:

Interrupted reaching out movement

Filling of the empty space of one of the parents as partner

The consent of the parent/caregivers, to move towards the other parent (or to the biological parents or sperm or seed donor), is missing. The child must then betray the person who looks after him so well, if he wants to be able to move towards the other person as well.

The inner decision, “I'll do it on my own” with the effect that you disconnect

FROM A SYSTEMIC POINT OF VIEW, NOTHING OR NOBODY MAY BE EXCLUDED IN A FAMILY SYSTEM.

Other topics that require attention, meaning you or someone else are sometimes innerly absent

Religion

Sects

Following leaders (whether or not dictators)

Following a vocation that’s customary in the family (doctor, farmer etc.)

The family business goes before the family

A task that you take over from someone else in the family

In certain families, there are some specific topics that require a lot of attention.

Possible underlying ideas and dynamics:

I follow you

Yes, you’re big in our family

You belong completely

Please view me kindly if I make different choices

YOU ARE ALSO INCORPORATED INTO THE FAMILY CONSCIENCE. YOU DON’T FEEL IT, BUT NOTICE ITS EFFECTS IN DAILY LIFE.

The summary above gives possible reasons why people cannot always there comprehensively. There’s often also talk of a compound dynamic. Your soul, via the family conscience, is occupied elsewhere , meaning you’re less able to occupy you own place in daily life. If such a destiny affects one of your parents, it’s often the case that he or she cannot always be enough for you. You feel the inner absence unconsciously as a child.

You are so much more connected with your family system than you could ever imagine. You’re an inseparable part of your family system; there’s no escape. And every family system has a family conscious. Everything not addressed at the top of the fountain is passed on to those who come into the family later. After all, a family unconsciously bears everything together, with the burden randomly divided by the family conscience among the family members. Having a challenging destiny shows a great unconscious love for the family system. You’re also incorporated into that family conscience. You don’t feel it, but notice its effects in daily life, the light and the heavy. Maybe you’re also literally or figuratively absent now and again. Don’t forget that this is powerlessness, not unwillingness.

5   Ascending, method one: taking over undue responsibility

I BOW TO YOUR DIFFICULT DESTINY, LET GO OF WHAT’S NOT MINE AND ACCEPT WHAT IS

5.1  Leave someone his destiny, or leave someone to his destiny

An excerpt about children and parents by the Lebanese poet, philosopher and artist Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931) from The Prophet 1923:

Bow and arrow, your children are not your children  

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
and though they are with you they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward
nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and he bends you with his mightthat his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so he loves also the bow that is stable.

The fountain is beautifully put into words here. Parents give, children receive; not the other way around. When the children take, it’s a fulfilling process for the parents, making the love flow even more abundantly. The parents occupy their rightful place, above the children. Without being aware though, parents will take from their children anything they have lacked in their own life. And by doing so, unconsciously reverse the roles. A young child knows deep inside that a parent is needy and will be unable to resist the appeal. The child ascends. An adult child may be capable of making different choices, but a younger child has no option other than to ascend.

Not interfering with someone’s destiny, allowing them to take responsibility for their own problems, is an art. Should you interfere, you take over undue responsibility. Responsibility not yours to take. This doesn’t mean of course that you have to desert people. To leave them to their own destiny. The two are not the same at all! We’d be living in a very selfish world should this be the case. Just because you are allowing someone to face their own destiny, it doesn’t mean you can’t be there for someone. You can be a listening ear, provide moral support, help with practical issues or take something over if the other person’s burden becomes too heavy. There are conditions though - that you act from your tray of the fountain and don’t give what you do not have. If you’re performing a balancing act, by giving you’ll lose balance and there may be victims. Only when you have received, can you pass on.

5.2  Making an unconscious appeal to your child as parent

How, as a parent, can you make an unconscious appeal to your child that will result in the child taking over responsibility that is not his? The example below explains.

Scenario 1: Appeal to care for the parent

Imagine that your parents have lost their seven-year-old son, making you the older brother (you are the youngest). The effect of this is that your mother is partially absent inwardly. She does what she needs to do on automatic pilot, and although she is functioning, true joy in life is lacking. The loss of the oldest son/brother is in the destiny of this family. What is added to your destiny, in addition to your own grief for the loss of your brother, is the fact that your mother finds life difficult. Because her soul is partly with her deceased son, she’s able to be there for you less. This hurts and may even feel like rejection. You wrestle with the question of whether you’re actually worth it. Part of your destiny is also difficulty being happy again and living your life fully. Perhaps you feel guilty should you have fun. If you’re unable to fully pick up your life again, yet another person has also fallen victim to the death of your brother. It’s your responsibility how you deal with your destiny.

Experience teaches us that those who acknowledge their destiny and say yes to it, can access a strength that someone with a less challenging destiny cannot always find. It’s far easier, as in the example above, to care for your mother to lighten het load, than to face your own pain. Frequently, you’ll tone your teenage behaviour down (or, to the contrary, display extreme behaviour as a cry for attention). Or perhaps you’ll adjust your behaviour, so your mother doesn’t have to worry about you. You’ll focus on cheering her up, protecting her form your daily trials and tribulations. In the practical sense, your mother cares for you, but deep down you feel the responsibility to lighten her load and her mood. This is no task for a child. At times like this, you ascend in the fountain to a position above your mother. You become, as it were, your mother’s mother. For the most part, you do this unconsciously and from a place of deep love every child has for his or her parents.

Of course, a child can support a parent if necessary. A child, for example will perhaps hug their sad mother as a token of sympathy - but from the child position. The child however, by definition, holds no responsibility for the happiness of the parents. The mother can say to the child: “Mummy is sad about the loss of your brother. This has nothing to do with you. I’m your mother and I take care of you. Not the other way around. Go outside and have some fun”. A child will probably protest briefly, because he feels big if he can take care of his mother, which is a nice feeling to have. Deep inside however, he knows it’s not the task of a child to do this. If the child can accept this from the mother, he will go and do what he should be doing at that age, with a sense of relief.

Powerlessness instead of unwillingness

In the example above, the mother eventually manages to regroup after a period of mourning. The loss of her son will always remain a scar, but she’s able to rediscover her joy in life. She’s also available again for her youngest son. This mother has accepted her destiny, with the accompanying pain, sadness and frustration. On the one hand, pain for the loss of her son, and on the other hand possibly also the shame and guilt from realising she wasn’t there enough for her other child, when he was also having a hard time.
If a mother can remain the big one during the period of mourning and the remaining child can be small because the mother stays in her place, the fountain continues to flow. This isn’t always possible though, as there’s a big chance the child will start caring for the mother. The pain is too intense and overwhelming.

Scenario 2: Appeal to take over someone’s destiny, in this case the sadness

If a parent (or someone else within the family) cannot or will not face his or her destiny, then out of love, someone lower down in the fountain will do this. This is a systemic law. If the mother herself shuts out her own destiny, a random child will take it over. The child is usually not aware of this. The family conscience ensures that the sadness is not forgotten and will still be seen, meaning that the deceased child will be recognised in his place. Usually, the child that has taken over the sadness will be excessively sad in daily life, a sadness that doesn’t correlate with reality. The child that takes over the destiny of the mother never faces their own destiny. You cannot simultaneously bear someone else’s destiny, and your own.

Unacknowledged sadness can manifest itself in ignoring the deceased person or viewing the deceased person, as it were, as still alive. You can also wallow in the past. A home that’s brimming with photos of the deceased person is not a home in mourning. The same applies to a situation where there’s an endless search to find someone to blame or never-ending court cases to punish the perpetrator. This will not bring back the person that has died, but much more importantly, the person that has died will not be acknowledged (excluded). He will not be allowed to be dead. It’s your brother’s destiny that he died at the age of seven. The loss, and how you deal with it, is part of your destiny.

Scenario 3: An appeal to lead the life of your deceased brother

Imagine that because of the pain, your brother is no longer mentioned. Nothing more is said about him and he seems to have lost his place in the fountain. A systemic law is that everyone has, and keeps, his place. It doesn’t matter if the person concerned is still alive and what he has done, or not done, during his life. There’s a very big chance that a child from a later generation unknowingly identifies or becomes entangled with the deceased brother, who is excluded. This is method three of ascending in the fountain (see chapter 7 ). You lead, unconsciously, the life of someone else, in this case the deceased brother. One of the consequences of an unconscious identification is that the person representing the excluded dead brother is unable to occupy his or her place in the fountain. Often, you allow yourself to suffer to lessen the gap between you and this brother. Something generally done unconsciously - you’re not aware, as in this example, that you’re representing your deceased brother. This entanglement belongs to your destiny without you actually being able to see it. A constellation can make an entanglement visible.

5.3  Needy Parents

Maybe your parents have cared for their parents or they were inwardly absent (see section 4.5 ). Perhaps they made judgments about their parents and were inwardly disconnected from them. Or perhaps they were even unconsciously identified. Should this be the case, then your parents have ascended in the fountain. At that time, they are needy. They’ve not been able to receive the power of the fountain. This doesn’t mean that they can’t live a valuable or enjoyable life. If they do lead a pleasant, healthy and worthy life, it’s often thanks to their rationale and their body. They do lots themselves, without drawing from the family fountain.

Compensating does not solve the essence of neediness

A needy partner will, without noticing, claim the deficit from his or her children. The parent unconsciously calls upon the child to supplement the deficit. A call that for a child is irresistibly attractive and impossible to resist. Because the child responds to the appeal out of love, the child ascends. And thus comes to stand above the parent in the fountain. By doing so, he loses his own place, with all the associated consequences. The neediness of this child will subsequently be felt by the (grand)children, who in turn ascend. This pattern will be passed on, unchallenged, from generation to generation. Only if you stand in your place, will this pattern be broken.

By the same token, the deficit is also often claimed from the partner, an employer or from the authorities. “You have to give this to me, I have the right to it because I’ve received too little.” This is also an unconscious pattern. Additionally, compensation can be found in the form of (non-)harmful addictions. None of which seems to permanently fill the emptiness. Compensating can never get rid of this feeling of lacking something.

Fortunately, it’s always possible to occupy your own tray of the fountain so that this generation-transcending pattern can be broken. Succeed, and your children will not be tempted to ascend in order to look after you, or to bear or take something over from you. This unburdens your child. Meaning you take care of your child in the best possible way, leaving them free to lead their own lives. How to descend is discussed in chapter 8 and 9 .

THE QUESTION IS WHETHER TAKING OVER CERTAIN RESPONSIBILITIES IS APPROPRIATE AND RESPECTFUL.

5.4  Signs that you have ascended due to taking over undue responsibility

Below are behavioural patterns and characteristics that may indicate you’ve ascended in the fountain according to method one. Systemic techniques (including a constellation) can demonstrate whether you’ve actually ascended, or whether the behaviour patterns below have a different cause.

Behaviour patterns and characteristics that can indicate you’ve ascended due to taking over undue responsibilities are:

Being over-responsible

The helper syndrome

Physical characteristics, including neck, shoulder and lower back complaints

Poor sleep

Sensitive to subtle signs from the environment and lack of boundaries

Being over-responsible

You structurally take on responsibility that’s not yours. This can be a conscious choice because, for example, you want to live according to your values. This way of taking (over) responsibility can give strength, although bearing something that in essence is not yours to bear, is ultimately doomed to failure. The question is whether taking over certain responsibilities is appropriate and respectful.
When you structurally, and in the broadest sense of the word take over tasks that are actually somebody else’s, you’ll notice that it costs a lot of energy. Logical, because the general law is that you can only bear what is yours.

Over-responsibility can manifest itself in your private life in all kinds of ways. A few examples.

Your mother (or father) is over-concerned about your welfare as child. There’s a big chance that as child you’re too obedient, loving and obliging. You won’t, for example, go out and explore the big, wide world because you don’t want to make your parents scared or anxious.
A child needs to be able to be a child, explore the world within boundaries and learn to cope with difficult, tense and frustrating situations. This is how a child builds independence, resilience and self-confidence.
By not exploring as a child, you take over some of the responsibility for making your parent happy. It’s your parent’s overanxiety and not yours. Your destiny is having a parent who is over-concerned. Something you need to deal with, without short-changing yourself.

You’re mediator between your parents. Your parents frequently argue or are perhaps divorced. A child is often used as neutral go-between to calm things down. You uphold the role because it works so well. Or you’ll start doing everything you can to keep things pleasant.
You love both parents and want nothing more than to hear both parents say: “You can love me just as much as you love daddy (or mummy)”. Your stomach’s in turmoil if one parent speaks negatively about the other. Because you know that you’re both the father and the mother. The moment that one parent talks negatively about the other or expresses this through non-verbal behaviour, a part of you will unconsciously feel rejected. And so you want to do everything possible to allow things to go well between your parents. That this is at your own expense, is less relevant. As child, you’ll do anything for your parents.

WHAT IS HAPPENING BETWEEN YOUR PARENTS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU AS CHILD.

You’re a go-between for your parents. You act as messenger. This is also a form of being a mediator. The parents can no longer bring themselves to talk to each other. And so you’re used to passing messages on. At that moment, you’re in their tray in the fountain. This is never your task. What’s happening between them is theirs and never yours. In other words: what is happening between your parents has nothing to do with you as a child.
Your destiny as child is that your parents (no longer) have respect for each other. And you will have to keep hiding away the love for the one parent when spending time with the other. The pain, sadness and rejection you experience as child, is unfortunately something you’ll have to face yourself. But only when you’re older. Because as child, you’re now having to survive, adapt and possibly even take sides with one of the parents.

Mothers in particular often seem to need the child to have fulfilment in life. Without the child they feel empty and are unsure of what to do with their lives. The child then satisfies the need of the mother. The child provides vitality and energy in the home, even though this shouldn’t be the job of a child.
This is also the dynamic of teen mothers. In many cases these young teenage mothers need love so much that they long/demand this from their child. While parenthood actually means that the parents care for the child, and not the other way around.

If parents talk too openly with their children about their problems, relationship issues and certainly their sex lives, the child can no longer be a child. Of course, parents can share some worries with their children, as children sense this anyway. They can admit to being worried, but also make clear that as adult they can cope without the help of the child. Again, the difficulty here is that the child will feel big because he’s involved in big-people problems . Children enjoy feeling big. On the other hand, the child feels frustrated because deep inside he knows that it’s nothing to do with him, he can never resolve the problem and yet he’s still caught up in it.

Following the death of the father, for instance, a divorce or when dealing with a father’s alcohol addiction, the son often comes to stand in the father’s place, beside the mother. He now behaves like the eldest man of the house. This need comes from the son (because the position is suddenly available), as he believes he should take on certain things now the father is absent. This all sounds very charming and lovely, but systemically speaking it’s a disaster. This is never the place for a child. As mother, push him out of your tray in the fountain.

Another possibility is that when the mother’s not there, the daughter stands next to the father, believing herself to be the best partner for him.

You, as youngest brother or sister, mother and take care of your older brother or sister who’s not doing so well. The basic rule is that you may not bear responsibility for anyone above you in the fountain. You are allowed to bear the appropriate responsibility for everyone lower than you in the fountain, but then only to a certain extent. So if you’re the older brother or sister, you may take over a little of the responsibility of your younger sibling, but only from your role as older brother/sister and never as parent. The other way around, this is not allowed. Of course, as younger brother or sister, you may be there for your older siblings. Being there is not the same as taking over responsibility.

You can resolve or prevent such situations by giving feedback about what doesn’t belong to you and what’s bothering you. Subsequently, you return what he or she needs to ‘organise’ at their own level, to the appropriate person. You set boundaries and clarify what is yours and what is theirs.

The helper syndrome as characteristic of ascending according to method one

The helper syndrome is a manifestation of drawing undue responsibility towards yourself, with your own needs as primary motive, and the needs of the other person only in second place (even though this is sometimes difficult to admit).
With the helper syndrome, you display behaviour focused on helping others. You feel a stimulus to comfort someone having a hard time, help them, solve or expose their problems. Rallying the troops like this can be appreciated, even sometimes very necessary, but certainly not always. What is your pure motivation?

There’s a chance that you underestimate the resilience of human beings. In my experience, people are much more resilient than either you, or they themselves, suspect. They really need to be given the opportunity to access their resilience. The helper is too quickly available to lend a hand, provide all kinds of practical and mental support. Give someone the space to mobilise themselves. Put yourself in the other person’s position: the question is whether what you would need in such a situation is also what the person having a rough time needs. A listening ear and simply being there is often more than enough. Your ready-made solutions are not always the answer. It’s about how you can truly help someone and if you’re not simply satisfying your own needs so you don’t have to (uncomfortably) look on helplessly.

It can happen, that people with a tendency for helper syndrome give what they would like to receive. Maybe also what they themselves have missed out on. People with helper syndrome also often appear to have built up a deficit that you can link back to something that has happened, or is happening, within their family system. By giving what they themselves need, they secretly hope they will get something in return, something they were once so in need of. It’s a hope of gaining reciprocity. But who is helping who?

A welcome consequence of the helper syndrome for some people, is that the giving makes you untouchable. Having the right to something from someone else, without the other person having the opportunity to fulfil that debt, gives power. And to the average person, this feels a lot better than owing someone something.
When you help and rescue, you feel big and maybe important too. Which feels good. The question is whether being big also makes you stronger. If you deprive the other person of the opportunity to become equal to you by giving something back, you remain big. If you want to be strong however, it’s better if there’s an exchange of giving and receiving. Because those not willing to accept and receive, eventually have nothing more to pass on. Which ultimately weakens you.
Likewise, those who are helped feel small and insignificant. They withdraw from the helper or start criticising them. The helper then feels misunderstood, under-valued and becomes disappointed in all those people who supposedly don’t understand how hard he’s working, and how much he’s sacrificing for them.

Physical characteristics, including neck, shoulder and lower-back complaints due to ascending by method one

People who have ascended in the fountain appear in many cases to suffer from back, neck and shoulder complaints. There’s no scientific proof for this. It is what I see in practice with my clients. The neck and shoulder muscles are tense. As if these muscle groups and bones are carrying something very heavy. They appear to be burdened by something. This often proves to be correct, with the person bearing something for someone in the (family) system. Not that you are always aware of this. You can also of course, have your own challenging destiny that weighs heavily on you.

Chances are that people who have ascended in the fountain experience weakness of the lower back. It’s as if there is too little support from the lower back. You cannot be sufficiently supported by your hips and your lower back. You do not accept the support. These people have often descended in the fountain and are unable to adequately place their parents above them.

Often you also see that people who have too much responsibility have a strong muscle tonus (simply put, a lot of tension in the muscles). The moment you learn to let go of what is not yours and what makes you weaker, there will also be an improvement in the physical experience of the muscle tension.

Finally, something about eye contact as a physical characteristic of ascent due to taking over responsibility that’s not yours. Children who have experienced that a parent finds eye contact difficult, because it may be too confronting, will adjust the intensity of their eye contact to what the parent can handle. Although it then appears that the child is not connected to the parent, adjusting the level of eye contact is actually a sign of the child's concern for the parent. A negative repercussion though, is that later in life the child finds it difficult to make eye contact in a healthy way. Too much eye contact may then be experienced as intrusive.

Poor sleep

A moderate quality of sleep can be a sign you’ve ascended in the fountain. Finding it difficult to fall asleep or waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back in sleep is a widespread problem. This can be for all kinds of reasons, including too many stimuli, poor sleep hygiene before going to bed, caffeine and a thousand and one worries about bills to pay, principles, relationships, the past and the future.

Poor sleep can also mean that you need to watch over something. If you’re worrying about your young children, then this is justified. They are in the tray below you in the fountain and so you are responsible for them. But if your children are grown up, the challenge is to allow them their destiny, however difficult that may be for you as parent.

The moment you watch over something that isn’t yours, you’ll start feeling more restless and more stressed. Because you sense that you can’t resolve it. Something that’s not yours is elusive. You are powerless. Logical then, that your sleeping is disrupted. The trick is to put something back where it belongs, with or without the broken gramophone record technique. You do this by consistently returning what you are concerned about to the person it belongs to. Repeating this until something is done about it, or it becomes clear that you simply have to accept it . This is all you can do at this moment. Which is sometimes difficult to accept.

IF YOU ARE MERGED WITH THE OTHER PERSON, YOU CANNOT DISTINGUISH WHICH FEELINGS ARE YOURS AND WHICH BELONG TO THE OTHER PERSON.

The next sign that you may have ascended according to method one, is sensitivity to subtle signals from the surroundings and lack of boundaries

You seem to have a well-developed talent to sense what is happening between the lines. You possess feelers that pick up subtle signals. Which was necessary, because if you care for someone in an unconscious way, you’re also attuned to their unspoken wishes and moods. You’ve learned to respond flawlessly. This happens so naturally you don’t even realise you’ve adjusted to the needs of the other person.

I believe that talent as a result of repetition and routine is a response to the fact that at some point, it was essential to master this skill. I’m not talking about a music or dance talent or something similar. I’m talking about skills that can be learnt, such as perseverance, the ability to walk away, stay positive etc. If someone has become extremely good at something, it was probably necessary to display that behaviour. What’s great is that you can apply these talents to your life. And in doing so, bear the fruits of the ‘obligatory’ development of those talents.

Free of boundaries

People who are sensitive to subtle signals often literally (physically) have a very thin skin. And if your skin’s thin, then it’s very easy for other people to implant something in you. This can be a need, an idea, or an urgent wish or demand. You don’t seem to be sufficiently armed to deal with all that bombards you from the outside world. It finds its way inside.

You also seem to find it difficult to determine what is yours and what is somebody else’s. It’s difficult to feel where the boundaries lie. If you’re merged with the other person to a certain degree, for instance the person you take care of and for whom you take over some of the responsibility (whether consciously or not), then it makes sense that you can’t clearly distinguish between your feelings, wishes and needs and those of the other person.

Being merged is not a healthy connection. A healthy connection means understanding your limits, both literally and figuratively. And being in touch with your own body. If you can feel yourself, you can also feel what is not yours and what belongs to someone else. Something that doesn’t usually work by only acting from your rationale. Your body has senses and wisdom within that help you feel your boundaries.

IF YOU CAN FEEL YOURSELF, YOU CAN ALSO FEEL WHAT ISN’T YOURS AND WHAT BELONGS TO SOMEONE ELSE.

As a counter reaction to being merged, you also see that people completely shut down. Everything bombards them too forcefully. And so they arm themselves against their sensitivity with a wall that nothing or nobody can get through. This creates disconnection with your environment, which once again is not useful.

5.5  PRESUMPTION AND ARROGANCE DUE TO TAKING OVER UNDUE RESPONSIBILITY

To conclude this chapter, I would like to say something about arrogance. Wanting to take over something from someone above you, wanting to rescue them, is actually a testament to arrogance and presumption. When small children do this, it’s perhaps better to call it misplaced responsibility. Although caring and wanting to rescue comes from a deep love and an ingrained pattern in your family system, this love is wrongly directed. You’re taking the other person’s destiny away from him. Everyone has the right, and indeed duty, to bear his own destiny. Nobody else can and may do this. When you bear the destiny of the other person, you ultimately deny someone his dignity and strength.

Imagine that you have had a child. How would it feel if the child started taking over your tasks? Would you want your children to take over responsibility from you? Deep inside you know that this isn’t okay. After all, your children should lean on you, not the other way around. In the eyes of your children, you’re probably the big person . And likewise, your children will always remain your little ones, even when adult.
Yet I often see that adults prohibit their own children from doing what they do with their own parents. This is double standards. For some strange reason, you give yourself permission, despite your role as child, to take care of your parents and carry their burdens. Nonsense. You will always be their child. Just like your own children who grew in you or your partners womb, you’ve too been in your mother's womb. According to general laws, you can’t even bear that responsibility. You’ve denied someone their place because you are standing there.
Of course you can take care of elderly parents, but only from your child’s tray in the fountain. They remain above you.

Other presumptions

Another presumption is thinking that you have influence on particular things. Certain situations are simply beyond your control - illness, bad or good luck and death. Fortunately, you can influence how you deal with them. Between an event and your reaction is always the freedom to determine how you want to respond.

Realise that you can only surrender to your destiny. Of course, you can influence many things and processes in your life. How you organise something today influences tomorrow. But sometimes, you’re simply at the mercy of the waves.
On one hand, dare to accept the gift of all that’s good with total gratitude. On the other hand, also have the courage to surrender to less fortunate aspects. It’s part of life. If you dare to admit you’re broken, if you dare to face it and feel it, a new force emerges that can bring about something good. You take on the adult role and the responsibility.

Not addressing what your real responsibility is

What I regularly encounter, is that people liable to take on undue responsibility become defensive when challenged. Because they’re too busy doing things that aren’t theirs, they don’t get around to the things that they’re actually responsible for. Practically speaking, these are tasks relevant to their position, role and place, but also to simply looking after themselves properly, so that they are, and remain, available to others. When I give them feedback on this, the usual response is sulky and offended: “You can’t pick me up on that, look at how busy I am for other people and how much I do for… and you dare tell me that I’m not taking any responsibility?” “Yes”, I then say. “You are not taking the appropriate responsibility. First deal with what belongs to you. If there’s then space over, you can sink your teeth into somebody else’s business, but only from your tray in the fountain”.

6   Ascending, method two: making judgements and disconnecting

NOW I CAN SEE YOU

6.1  Someone doesn't see you, do you see them?

Have you ever had the feeling someone didn’t see you? Figuratively speaking? Although you communicate with each other, you feel that they’re not truly seeing, hearing and understanding you. This interpretation - that the other person doesn’t see you - can be absolutely true and reflect reality. My next question to a client however, is always: “Do you see him?” This is usually followed by hesitance, slight protestation and the reply: “You’re right. I don’t see him or her, or at least, only partially”. Recognising this achieves a superior level of honesty. Which in turn demonstrates courage.

What is seeing someone?

What I understand by seeing someone, is that you see someone in his or her totality. That you acknowledge someone, with all their strengths and their weaknesses, and allow them to be themselves. So with all the good, and perhaps less good aspects, successes and failures, layers, and all the lumps and bumps that make this person who he is in essence. This also means that you only truly see someone when you accept everything that he brings with him. If you don’t, you reject (part of) the person. So also, his background and accompanying destiny.

Some people are only prepared to accept another person’s destiny, rather than accept the actual person. This verges on helper syndrome. And is certainly not wise. By not accepting the person, but only his destiny, you’re likely (to put it bluntly) to fall into the trap of becoming either a rescuer, or a profiteer. Which path you follow depends on the destiny (fortunate or not) of the other person, and your own needs.

Now I’m not claiming that you should see each person you meet in their totality and connect with every single one of them. However, it does makes sense to be willing to do this with people close to you, both literally and figuratively. In any case, your parents, your brothers and sisters, your partner and your children if you have any. The family conscience means you are connected to them anyway, so a connection is more favourable for you than a tie.

The art is not to observe selectively. If you only see the positive aspects of someone, you’re not truly seeing them. This is the so-called halo effect . All the positive dominates, thereby disguising or erasing all that’s less attractive. What makes this so complicated, is that we live in a world full of duality. There are two sides to every story, whether we like it or not. Sooner or later, this side will come to the surface. Do you remember the ball under water, that you pushed away? It came to the surface because it belonged there, despite our efforts to block it out.

We can also be faced with the opposite situation, of course. All the negative aspects of a person dominate, meaning the positives get completely snowed under. This isn’t fair either. Essentially, nobody is entirely good or bad. Moreover, it’s your personal conscience that determines what is actually good or bad. And opinions are simply opinions – one isn’t worth more or less than another. At the most, opinions determine who you want to be around and who you want to avoid.

Sometimes, you may simply find someone irritating . Which makes giving and receiving more difficult. Understand that you can always leave what you find irritating about someone with them. What belongs to you, is having to deal with someone with this negative quality, making your life more complicated. It’s your responsibility to choose how you’ll deal with this. And you can always choose to let go of what is not yours.

Slipping into no longer seeing and hearing each other

When you see someone, you normally have the space and willingness to listen to that person. To hear what he has to say. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with the other person’s opinion. But you are willing to invest time and energy in understanding the person. Of course, that’s not to say you must reach an agreement or make a compromise. Agree to disagree is also an acceptable option.
Through a desire to keep seeing someone, you stay curious about the other person’s viewpoint. Perhaps this will also lead to a broadening of your frame of reference and view of the world. This does however require some development of your mind, patience and your ability to deal with uncertainty.

You and the other person may not always be willing to listen to each other and ask questions. This can stiffen the situation and the relationship. This usually happens gradually, although it can sometimes be a more rapid process.
First of all, there must be a willingness to listen to each other, if only to discover if the other person is trustworthy. There are two starting points possible: I trust you until it’s proven that I can’t trust you. Or I don’t trust you, until proven that I can. During the first few seconds of meeting, the trust can be flipped to I don’t trust you, or vice-versa. Your starting point also has consequences for your non-verbal attitude.

If, for one reason or another, you don’t feel heard or seen, there’s a chance you’ll respond defensively, both verbally and non-verbally. You’ll fail to listen to the other person properly or be selective in what you acknowledge in order to confirm what you thought to be true anyway. You listen in a way that only underlines what you already know or believed. You don’t (always) hear or want to hear the rest.

When the differences between you only become bigger and the similarities smaller, you’ll emphasise the contrasts. You’ll interrupt each other, on a quest for one-upmanship. You may even magnify your own importance and superiority and discredit the other, both to their face, and afterwards to others. You may also start looking for allies.
Your empathy disappears bit by bit. You’ll slowly start feeling irritated and will find it increasingly difficult to hide the fact. You try to disguise it, but your verbal behaviour and non-verbal communication are not in alignment. Your belief in any positive future actions by the other person will diminish.
You’ll start thinking increasingly black and white. Your personal conscience will start judging more and more in terms of good and bad. You represent the good, and the other person the bad. You’ll also assume that the other person is not acting with integrity and is actually playing dirty. Something you of course would never do, because your intentions are after all pure. Because of this, you’ll make demands and guard your boundaries even more. You’ll pull the blinds down, perhaps even build some solid walls. You may also use emotional blackmail and make all kinds of threats. You’ll want to see the other person getting, in your eyes, what they deserve because of what they’ve done to you. In short, things don’t go well at all.

Gradually, the realisation dawns that there’s not actually anything more to be gained. The hope for a good outcome fades. You become cynical and maybe even bitter. The situation is now so out of control that you’ve got stuck (and the other person too). You don’t want to lose face - after all, the battle has already cost so much. If you’re unstable, you may often want to harm the other person. You no longer view the other person as a human being, but as a caricature.
If someone close to you has an opinion, then it has to be one that’s pro-you . Every nuance by an outsider is viewed as a lack of loyalty. You’re probably full of stress and no longer able to relax when around this person. Preferably, you want to erase him or her. Good riddance. The tricky thing here, is that by feeling like this, you destroy yourself and probably the other person too. We all have a natural need to feel connected (especially with people who are important to us). During this escalation process, the connection’s completely lost. Which is painful for all involved. Even if they claim ferociously that it’s not.

But this is the consequence of this continual fighting. The connection is lost, although you are in contact with each other. Understand that running away and avoiding confrontation is also a way of disconnecting.

ALTHOUGH POSSIBLY IN CONTACT, THE CONNECTION IS LOST: A FROZEN FOUNTAIN.

A frozen fountain

Love congeals when you don’t truly see each other in essence and become cynical. A child has a tireless love for his parents. This love doesn’t flow openly but is and remains very much present deep down. As a result, the fountain becomes frozen. Disconnecting due to the judgements you make, you solidify and freeze, ascending in the fountain. The strength of the fountain (and your life) cannot flow freely. You probably also feel cold, miserable and empty on the inside.

There are a few things you can ask yourself to determine whether you’re actually seeing someone or not:

Are you seeing the person as a whole - the good, the bad and the ugly? How do you know? Would your best friend, brother, sister, partner etc also say the same, if they were being honest and not simply saying what you wanted to hear? What would the older, wiser version of yourself say?

Is a feeling of rejection getting in the way of you seeing the person? Are you truly not seen or heard, or are you simply not getting your own way? Stamping your feet like a demanding, angry and spoiled child? Or are you acting the victim? Do you actually have the right to make demands?

Can you empathise? Stand for a moment in the other person’s shoes. Can you see things from his or her perspective? Forget for a moment what you would want him or her to see. What do you see? How do you feel?

Have you turned the other person into a non-human caricature?

If in doubt, a constellation can help you discover whether you can, or cannot, see someone. A constellation exposes this without mercy.

Should you conclude that you see the other person insufficiently, then there’s hope. There’s a chance that from your side, some improvements can be made in the relationship. And this can have a knock-on effect on the other person. After all, if you truly see someone, the other person will always sense that deep inside. This creates possible space and openings for something constructive. Sometimes the point of no return has already been passed. Then you will grieve and shift your goalposts. Or rather: then it, he or she is no longer a problem, but a given. After all, you have no influence on the situation and so can do nothing but surrender.

When you realise that despite seeing the person, you’re still not reaching them somehow, then it could be time to ask yourself if you’re actually approaching that person correctly. After all, everyone is different – one approach definitely doesn’t fit all. Experiment and work out how to best get your message to hit home. You know which approach works best for you, now it’s time to find out what works best for others too.

6.2  The other person doesn’t see you

Unfortunately, the world is such that sometimes the other person is not able to see you, while you can see him and remain connected. The question is whether it’s possible to create a two-way flow of giving and receiving. It’s a sign of a developed mind, to see someone while the other person is less capable of doing so. The trick is to permit someone their place anyway. This ensures that you can receive from the invisible fountain, which whatever happens, will do you good.

Someone not being able to see you is a very real issue. It’s painful and sad. Particularly when involving someone you would normally expect to be able to see you. For example your father or mother, or one of your siblings. Unfortunately, this fact is part of your destiny.

Sometimes, circumstances are extremely complicated. You may not know somebody’s destiny, which can be very challenging. Or someone may project an intense conflict with his father, for instance, onto you.
Another example of the other person not being able to see you, is that your parents break the relationship with you. Systemically speaking, this isn’t possible. You’re in the same family system, meaning that the connection, by definition, remains . Circumstances have dictated that the contact cannot be maintained. Perhaps your parents see a ghost image behind you. While looking at you they unconsciously see someone else. They project the image of that person onto you. (Also see chapter 11.2 about ghost images).

THE ART IS TO PERMIT SOMEONE THEIR PLACE.

It can also be the case that as a child, you are extremely vulnerable to addiction making it not safe to have you around. Then the only thing parents can do is protect themselves and any other children by excluding you from their daily life. Know that you are never excluded by the family conscience of your family system. Whatever happens, you will always belong. This might offer some comfort.

The other way around, as child you can never break the inner contact with your parents. You may not see each other anymore, but because of the rejection and your feelings of anger and disappointment, the tie between you and your parents has become extra powerful. And it’s this tie, rather than connection, that makes it difficult for you to walk your own path.

You can always cope with what belongs to your destiny, because you own how you approach the situation. This means that you regulate your inner attitude, irrespective of what’s happening around you or how a person is behaving. You leave what doesn’t belong to you with the other person, such as their decision to not want to see you anymore, and you look at what your contribution and responsibility is. This is the pain, sorrow and sense of loss that go with this. (See Accepting your Place and Descending in the Fountain, chapters 8 and 9 ). This eventually creates a sense of calm. Allows you to return to your position in your tray of the fountain.

6.3  Examples of ascending due to preconceptions/judgements and disconnecting

Below are several examples of situations from your private life that could be the reason you ascend in the fountain. It’s up to you to determine whether you can resist the appeal made to you, meaning you can hopefully stay connected with a person and remain descended. The examples concern all possible people in your family system, although a condemnation from your parents has the most impact on your life

You are angry and indignant because a member of your family system has done something morally reprehensible. Abuse, incest, aggressive behaviour, murder, theft, fraud, blackmail, prostitution etc.

A member of your family system has an addiction, that has major impact on day-to-day functioning.

In your eyes, someone is not taking sufficient responsibility. For example, parenting tasks, private affairs and work/professional issues.

You’re ashamed at the lack of decorum. Poverty, for example, or nonchalance, dialect, neglect, little engagement with society, the list goes on. Maybe you’ve attended university and your parents have not completed any further education.

Your parents have a lifestyle you are unable to embrace. They are devoutly religious, for example, member of a sect or have political leanings you find unbearable. Or, during the Second World War, they chose to stand on the wrong side and for example collaborated with the enemy.

IT DEMANDS WILLPOWER AND DISCIPLINE TO STAY CONNECTED IF YOU MAKE A JUDGEMENT.

What’s complicated here, is that you’re often morally in your right when you ascend. So, based on your personal conscience, you’re probably justified. You’ve doubtlessly got proof that the other person is bad, poisonous or inferior. But the family conscience doesn’t accept someone being excluded and denied the place assigned to him, with all the subsequent negative consequences for those who then become unconsciously identified. And there’s consequences for you, too. You ascend in the fountain as a result of your judgement. Willpower and discipline are required to stay connected if you make a judgement.

6.4  What does ‘making a judgement’ mean?

As a human being, you’ve learned to quickly assess a situation. Is the coast clear or not? Is this fun or not? Should I carry on or stop? Do I trust him or not?
We observe certain behaviour or situations and label it with our opinions. This is your interpretation of the situation - or in other words, your judgement. And making judgements can happen in the blink of an eye. Which is good, because it gives the world more clarity. Some situations demand speed. If we were to only observe, without making any judgements, we’d probably go crazy. But how do you still see the wood for the trees? How else can you distinguish between good and bad or an apple and pear?

People find it difficult to observe. Instead of describing the behaviour, we judge it. Imagine, you’re in a restaurant with someone and you say to them: “Look, those people at that table over there probably don’t have a good marriage”. This is a judgement. Beneath a judgement, there’s always an observation, a description of the visible behaviours, for example: they make no eye contact, one keeps interrupting the other without letting them finish, he raises his voice, she has her arms crossed, they’re both on their phones a lot of the time, the wine bottle is strategically positioned right in the middle of the table etc.

People make judgements in the bat of an eye. For example: he’s lazy, she’s not taking responsibility, he’s stupid, she’s a slut, he’s playing the victim again, she’s always over-sensitive, he can’t take criticism and takes everything personally etc. You judge based on the behaviour you observe. If the behaviour is causing you to suffer, you can give feedback. Feedback is a way to make someone aware of their behaviour and its effects, in the hope that the other person will then adjust what he does.
The correct technique is to first name the behaviour, instead of launching into a negative judgement. We often only do the latter. The annoying thing is that it’s human nature to go into defence mode if you hear a negative interpretation of yourself. Instead of listening, you become defensive. If you were to start by describing the behaviour (the observations) and then subsequently giving your interpretation, the chance that the message will hit home is much bigger. Even better, name the effect of that behaviour on you. Then ask: “Do you recognise this or understand this?” Maintain eye contact and stop talking for a moment.

Putting yourself above the other, disdain and feeling superior to…

When should you be concerned about making a judgement? The moment you put yourself above someone, you’ve ascended. It goes without saying that you may sometimes feel better than someone else because objectively speaking, you do something faster, smarter or with a more positive result than the other person. This isn’t a concern, and in fact demonstrates a healthy self-image. After all, everyone is different. As long as you don’t undermine someone else, then there’s no cause for concern.
The moment you elevate yourself in an inappropriate manner, you ascend in the fountain. You perhaps look down on someone, feel contempt for that person or see the other person as inferior. What you are really saying is the person can’t belong. You deny someone his place and fail to acknowledge that the place belongs to that person. This has systemic consequences.

You can, besides someone standing above or next to you, also have a judgement about someone beneath you in the fountain. You deny someone his place. From a systemic perspective, denying someone his place is rectified by someone from a later generation in the family system. Meaning that someone innocent from a later generation runs the risk of being designated, unconsciously, to represent the excluded person.
If you have a negative judgement about someone beneath you in the fountain, you are, irrespective of the personal and human drama, less affected systemically speaking. After all, it’s the destiny of that person to have you condemn them and not see them. Of course, it doesn’t feel good for you either, but because you don’t ascend, you experience less of a systemic burden.

Factually speaking, you primarily experience negative consequences when judging someone standing above you in the fountain. In no way am I saying that you should always agree with the person above you or have to lie down and accept everything. Of course not. You are always free to give feedback and set boundaries for someone in the tray above you in the fountain. By setting a boundary, I mean indicating how far someone can go, but also saying no, saying when you’ve had enough and defending yourself. This allows you to stay in your tray in the fountain and permit the other person his place. Staying connected but protecting yourself in the meantime.

The complexity of ascending due to judgement is that even though you can be fully in your right morally or legally speaking, the fountain doesn’t take this into account. If you ascend, things will ultimately not go so well for you.

YOU WILL UNCONSCIOUSLY INSTALL THE PATTERN YOU REJECT IN ONE OF YOUR PARENTS IN YOURSELF, DUE TO UNCONSCIOUS LOYALTY.

6.5  Signs that you have ascended due to judgements and disconnection

Occasionally making a judgment about someone will not immediately cause a very large systemic effect in the fountain. Making judgements is inevitable. We don’t have to become holier than thou. Whether something has a systemic influence and therefore consequences for the flow of the fountain, depends on the duration and intensity of the judgment and the degree of disconnection. Negative judgements will always cause you to ascend for a while anyway. The question is how fast you can descend back to your place in the fountain before a major systemic consequence is tangible.

The general consequences of ascending in the fountain are described in section 4.3 . The specific signs and possible effects of ascending due to judgements and disconnection, include:

You get what’s morally right, but lose your place in the fountain

Installation and imitation of the pattern you reject

Victims also become perpetrators

Being too demanding and dismissive

Being critical of yourself

Physical characteristics, including poor eye-contact and a closed, non-verbal attitude

You get what’s morally right, but you lose your place in the fountain

The people around you and your inner-circle will often agree with you when you have certain judgements about someone. The question is whether you have the right to judge someone. After all, you know nothing of the other person’s destiny. Presumably that person sees it from a different or a larger perspective. That you don’t understand this, don’t like it or it bothers you, doesn’t mean you’re a better person than the other or that they have no idea, are selfish, an idiot, bad or whatever else. You have a problem with this person, that is clear. Leave what belongs to that person with them and pick up your own responsibility.
The tricky thing is that two seemingly incompatible principles are competing here: the personal conscience and the family conscience. The family conscience judges you when you do something that feels good for the personal conscience. And so the question is: what’s wise? What will make you feel stronger and weaker, depending on which conscience you follow?

Another sign that you’ve ascended due to judgements and disconnection, is the installation and imitation of the pattern you reject

Have you ever heard yourself say: “As long as I don’t start resembling my father or mother”? “I’m going to do things differently”? And indeed, you come to the conclusion that you look very much like them in certain areas. Often in terms of characteristics and patterns that you once found so annoying.
There seems to be a systemic law behind all of this. You unconsciously install the pattern that you reject in one of your parents in yourself. To put it simply, you’re 50% your biological father and 50% your biological mother. Deep inside you know you’re positioned beneath them, because after all, without them you wouldn’t even have been here. Somehow you also know that if you reject them you also reject yourself. The consequence, is that you feel empty inside, making it difficult for you to love yourself. You will also rarely feel self-satisfaction (or you will over compensate into a form of narcissism, also a lack of self-love).
It’s precisely the things you don’t like that are the things, in one way or another, you will imitate. Or in other words, from a place of unconscious loyalty for your parents you will install the pattern you’ve rejected in them in yourself.

YOU ARE 50% YOUR FATHER AND 50% YOUR MOTHER. REJECT THEM, AND YOU ALSO REJECT YOURSELF.

A few examples: your mother was always complaining, and you’ve also turned out to be quite a party-pooper. Or you think your father is a boring goody-two-shoes, which is actually what you’ve become if you’re completely honest. The certainty virus and the play it safe approach you cursed your parents for also seems to have taken hold of you. Or, to the contrary, living on the edge, a reluctance to take responsibility, not making choices, never finishing something, playing the victim, succumbing to middle-class suburbia, not giving up when giving up would actually be better for you. And consequently, you may have taken over all kinds of things that you actually detest. Because you don’t want to be like them you’ll stubbornly do the absolute opposite. In the meantime, you notice that you unconsciously copy their patterns. If you try to be different just for the sake of being different (and thus not to look like them) you come across as fake. You can only be different to your parents if they can be entirely themselves.

There are also examples in which you and the people around you rightly say that it’s better to not take over that pattern or behaviour. Take addictions for example, or aggression, carelessness with money, piling failure upon failure, not being able to maintain relationships etc. If, for instance, a parent has an addiction you certainly won’t want to install this. After all, you’ve witnessed from close by just how tough it is. You had to support your parent when he or she was incapable of taking a single step further, you cleared up the mess, you walked to the glass recycling, you saw your other parent suffer, you didn’t dare bring any friends to the house, home was no longer home because of the aggression and raised voices, you probably even had to take on all kinds of chores that a child of that age shouldn’t have to face, etc.

Logical that this isn’t what you want. Many manage to not become alcoholics, but some don’t. You’ll also often see that another kind of addiction starts to develop.

The moment you say yes to the pattern that you’ve rejected in your parents, in the sense that it’s okay that one of your parents has it, there’s a large chance that you won’t install it in yourself. I realise that okay may sound a bit strange. There’s humility in it, meaning there’s an understanding that destiny can steer in this way, and you have no influence on it. As a result, you leave what belongs to them with your parents. This doesn’t mean you have to like what happens and can’t be angry or sad. The fact you have a parent with an addiction, with all the subsequent consequences, belongs to your destiny. If you can totally accept your parent, trimmings and all, including the addiction, leave what isn’t yours and actually face what is yours, then you have a very real chance of escaping this pattern. See chapters 8 and 9 about accepting your place and descending.

Victims also become perpetrators

If a child (un)consciously ascertains that a parent is needy or is not comfortable in his skin, the child will generally start by examining what he can do to cushion the parent’s, or other loved ones, destiny. At a certain point, the child sees that the situation differs from an average situation. Moreover, the child realises that all his attempts to make it better actually achieve very little. The child becomes angry and will eventually make a judgement about (one of) the parents. Generally speaking, a child can muster quite a lot of patience before rebelling against the parents and disconnecting (although here too are exceptions of course). Such a child will become needy themselves. Indeed, he will ascend in the fountain. For whatever reason, the parents could not be there for the child. The child is victim of the situation and has accumulated a deficit. From the role of victim, the child can respond oddly and do stupid things - creating a victim-perpetrator dynamic. In addition, the child also runs the risk of unconsciously imitating the pattern he rejects. Imagine that aggression runs in the family. There‘s a major chance that the child will not be able to suppress their aggression either. Meaning that sooner or later, the child will become a perpetrator.
Should you have ended up in a victim-perpetrator dynamic, have the courage to explore your own perpetration . By doing so, you face your own destiny and per definition descend in the fountain.

Another sign that you may have ascended due to judgement and disconnection is: being too demanding and dismissive

People who have ascended in the fountain due to judgements, are not easily satisfied on a day-to-day basis. What’s there is not good enough. Bring them flowers, they’re the wrong colour. Take the initiative, and there will always be something you’ve forgotten or should have done better. They are quicker to see what isn’t there that what is. Judgement always leans towards not being good enough rather than something positive. Making you harsh and demanding, both for yourself and towards others.

If you have a judgement about (one of) your parents, it’s usually the case that you also cast that critical attitude over everyone and everything. You see the attitude reflected in your relationship with your boss, in romantic relationships, in friendships, with neighbours etc. What you receive from others is either wrongly timed or not the right amount, or from the wrong person.
If you’re not prepared to accept, you remain unfulfilled, unsatisfied and empty and you usually seek compensation to replace what you’re missing. Giving up on the vain hope that the recognition, devotion or closeness of that important person will ever be delivered according to your standards, is still too difficult.

And so you can become demanding. Frustratingly, you can’t demand anything from the trays above you, but may only accept what is there. No more and no less. Don’t adhere to this, and you’ll ascend - and by definition, things will not go well for you. This is again a systemic law. Of course, you can look at how you can manage to better meet your needs. By for example making a request, expressing your expectations, giving feedback, negotiating, creating a bargaining chip or perhaps asking for help instead of implicitly demanding something. By making demands, you are saying that what is there is not good enough. The quality and/or amount doesn’t match your expectations. You have a judgement. And so, you ascend in the fountain. Usually, what you have received is enough. And the rest is something you can normally take care of yourself.

IF YOU MAKE A JUDGEMENT ABOUT ONE OF YOUR PARENTS, IT’S USUALLY THE CASE THAT YOU ALSO CAST THAT CRITICAL ATTITUDE OVER EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING.

An alternative to being demanding is to set yourself on stand-by and withdraw from a healthy exchange of giving and taking. Because nothing you are offered is good enough anyway, you stop accepting. And you barely give either, as in your eyes you get nothing in return, so what’s the point. You’re on the stand-by setting. Deep inside you’re enormously disappointed that those around you are not able to give anything worthwhile, while you always do your best. By doing so, you withdraw from life, as life is based on the dynamic of giving and receiving. After the disappointment phase, you’ll convince yourself that you need little or nothing at all. You’ll also feel superior to the other person, because you don’t need anything and obviously the other person does.

The challenge is to be grateful for what there is and accept what is offered. What do you connect with? With what’s there, or what isn’t?

In addition to being demanding or adopting the stand-by setting, perhaps you won’t share something with your parents or significant people because you actually dislike them. “Oh well, they don’t need to know that, they won’t understand anyway, or I actually quite like the fact that I know more than they do.” By doing this you also make a judgement about their knowledge, skills and way of dealing with complicated things. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a wise choice not to share or tell things now and again. As long as you accept your own guilt and are willing to accept the consequences of your choices, it’s fine to exclude people. Only when you do it out of disdain and to feel bigger and better, do you ascend in the fountain.

Besides withdrawing out of disappointment from the dynamic of giving and receiving (ie life), as described above, you can also adopt the stand-by setting in a different way. If you feel that you’ve taken or received a lot, you’re not always prepared to take even more. Imagine, your life has twice been miraculously saved, because you were rescued from a situation you got into as a result of your own incompetence. You can then feel that you’ve already taken so much that you don’t dare receive any more. You adopt the stand-by setting. The art is to be genuinely grateful for the great gift you have received. By putting yourself on stand-by, you become the victim anyway. Sometimes, to compensate, you’ll give extra (as a kind of penance) but receiving remains difficult. You experience that the balance between giving and receiving is askew which makes you feel guilty.

The next sign that you’ve possibly ascended according to method two is being critical about yourself

People who have ascended due to judgements are in many cases critical of others, as described above. But even more so, they are not easily satisfied with themselves. They also apply the same critical attitude that they convey to others to themselves. They rarely feel good enough and are dissatisfied with themselves. Only when you learn to accept your parents completely, will you get a more nuanced image of yourself and others. Only when you can accept all the good, and less good aspects of your parents, will you manage to truly feel okay about yourself, if not actually like yourself.

It’s also possible you are critical about others but not about yourself, mostly crediting others with the blame. In general, this kind of person is perceived as irritating. Don’t forget that this type of person probably has a challenging destiny. Be kind and be glad that you don’t have to live like that. Don’t forget, they may not appear outwardly self-critical, but deep down they are. Only they don’t share their critical self-reflection with you. This is often accompanied by shame.

Lastly, a final sign that you may have ascended due to judgment: physical characteristics including poor eye-contact and a closed, non-verbal attitude

Meaningless eye contact is a sign that you don’t take the other person seriously. You look, but don’t really see. Or the eye contact is too brief, meaning there’s little exchange. There’s also the possibility that you want to avoid any eye contact at all. You can also exaggerate eye-contact to appear dominant when the conversation has escalated.

Besides a limited level of eye contact, the non-verbal attitude appears to generally be closed. By closed attitude is meant: arms crossed in front of your body, turning away from the annoying person even if you are talking to each other, maintaining a physical distance etc. It’s also interesting to ask yourself how a greeting and farewell is with such a person. Is there respect in the way you relate to each other?

6.6  Combined ascending

Method two of ascending often comes about because method one has too high a price, that you can longer afford to pay. Method one is ascending due to worrying about, and taking over, undue responsibility. Based on the sweet, good little girl/boy syndrome and wanting to be big and important, a person generally tends to apply method one first of all. If that’s not sustainable, chances are that you’re going to ascend via method two. You make a judgement, because you see that your rescue attempts are not achieving anything. Then the other person is suddenly weak, dumb and a walkover.

Often you also see a combination and exchange between ascending according to methods one and two. This always results in things not going well for you. You’re out of position in the fountain, because circumstances sometimes don’t offer you any other choice. For survival, ascending is sometimes the only option available to you. This isn’t insurmountable, provided you can then descend to your place in the fountain. However, the situation should not take too long, otherwise the price paid for ascending will be too high.

7   Ascending, method three: unconscious identification

YOU HAVE A BIG PLACE IN MY HEART

7.1  An Invisible world

If you’re a wandering head, and draw in particular from the source of rationale, you’re going to be challenged in this chapter. Have the courage to delay your judgement and feel your body. The body has a wisdom different to that of the rationale. New insights will be created if you manage to combine the two.
Some people find the subject of unconscious identification strange and difficult to grasp. Experience shows us that you’re so much more connected with your family system than you realise. You can’t always understand this using rationale alone, but you are always part of the so-called family conscience and its field of influence. It’s inescapable, whether you understand it or not.

The invisible fountain seems to be a world apart. Yet you see the effects of that invisible world in everyday life. A family conscience has a number of general laws that on a conscious level, most people are not familiar with. Although, as far as I know, there is no scientific evidence for the apparent, invisible systemic laws, experience teaches us that your life runs (more) smoothly when guided by the fountain. This doesn’t mean that you won’t experience setbacks or bad luck. Some things are simply beyond our sphere of influence. All you can do is approach these situations with a certain degree of humility. How the cards are dealt is determined, among other things, by your systemic destiny, luck, your own inner attitude and the resources you have available, both within you and from your surroundings.

7.2  Unconscious identification or being entangled

Let me begin with a few examples from my practice: many people were killed during a natural disaster. My client survived but has since found it very difficult to cope with life, even though he’s an extremely intelligent, social and naturally cheerful person. He seems to have become unconsciously identified with the victims that didn’t survive. Because of the entanglement, he unconsciously started leading the lives of those who didn’t make it. Although this person had many opportunities for success, and for his life to go well, something unfortunate always happened at the moment he could harvest , making a situation less positive than initially expected.

Another of my clients was sleeping extremely badly. Even the idea of going to sleep made her excessively anxious. It turned out that she was entangled with someone in her family who had been attacked and abused in her sleep. It seems the subject had always been avoided, hence my client’s apparent entanglement with this person.

These are two concrete examples that I’ve recently come across, but you can also become unconsciously identified with someone from the family who could never do things right (the black sheep) for example, or with your father’s ex-partner who was angry with your father for dumping her unceremoniously, or with victims of war or natural disasters who didn’t survive. You can also be entangled with your mother’s country of birth. She had to flee because of war and had never talked about it since. There are endless possibilities.

What is an unconscious identification or entanglement?

Unconscious identification means that without even noticing, you’ve been taken into service by the family conscience. As child from a later generation, you’ll represent someone or something from an earlier generation, someone or something that for whatever reason is not acknowledged in their place in the family system. An innocent child is sacrificed by the family conscience to take on a task that he or she fundamentally has nothing to do with.
What’s complex and frustrating, is that simultaneously, the child is punished by the same family conscience for ascending in the fountain, meaning he’ll not do so well. The price paid on a daily basis is often high because the child follows the pattern of the excluded person. At the same time, the love that the entangled child feels for the person who’s excluded cannot reach its destination. After all, he’s taken on something that’s not his responsibility.

This phenomenon is called unconscious identification or being entangled with someone . It can be about both a person or an element, for example a goal, an event or a secret, but also an emotion like anger or aggression. Imagine that an uncle has committed a serious violent crime, leading to exclusion by the family. You possibly unconsciously represent him, and may notice that you experience a large degree of aggression and anger that actually doesn’t correlate with your life.

Adopted feelings and patterns

A child that is unconsciously identified will experience the feelings of the person with whom they are entangled. He will also demonstrate behaviour similar to the person he is unconsciously entangled with. The child isn’t aware of repeating these same patterns belonging to the person concerned. If entangled, you live according to the dynamic of I follow you and I won’t do any better than you (the excluded person you are entangled with).

The moment you realise that in terms of behaviour, you are similar to an excluded person in your family system, it’s useful to explore whether you’re maybe entangled. When it comes to positive behaviour, you’ll probably not find out you’re entangled. The entanglement may well be the best thing that has ever happened to you. For example, an entanglement with the smart, rich uncle with a good business acumen, that for one reason or another has fallen out with the family. You may have taken over his patterns.
When you’re entangled with someone excluded because he or she could never do the right thing, an entanglement becomes a heavy burden. You may also follow in the footsteps of the person that was always talked about negatively and disapprovingly. Once you realise you’re stuck in a repetitive, destructive pattern that repeats itself generation after generation, it may be useful to involve a systemic coach.

THE SYSTEMIC DESTINY YOU’RE HANDED IS PURE CHANCE, DOWN TO GOOD OR BAD LUCK.

Who’s allotted what systemic destiny is pure chance and down to good or bad luck. Someone with a challenging destiny in his day-to-day life often has a deep unconscious love for the family system, because he’s taking over something that isn’t his. In particular, we see that the destiny is taken over from direct lineage, so from parents, brothers or sisters, or grandfathers or grandmothers. But this doesn’t mean you can’t get entangled with someone else from the family system, such as aunts and uncles, and ex-lovers. Don’t forget that perpetrators and victims are also part of your family system. If perpetrators (or victims) are excluded, the perpetrator-victim pattern will keep repeating itself within the family.

7.3  Family conscience laws that cause an unconscious identification

Which laws can play a role in unconscious identification? An innocent child is sacrificed by the family conscience based on one of the following laws:

Everybody that is part of your family system belongs

It doesn’t matter if the person concerned is alive or dead. If someone is denied his or her place (excluded innerly), the entangled child will unconsciously act according to the principle if you don’t look, then I will, from a place of love and respect, at the person or thing that you cannot, or do not dare, to face .

The family system has a collective capacity for maintaining the balance between giving and receiving

Compare this with the law of the communicating vessels. If one has received or accepted too much, another will give more and vice versa. It should be noted here that the advantages and disadvantages are not distributed evenly. A random person in the family system is designated, or sacrificed by the family conscience for this, not always fairly to our standards.

Imagine, for example, that your parents have taken advantage of other people, in terms of forced prostitution, theft of money and goods from others. Subsequently, a child from a later generation unexpectedly commits suicide or doesn’t allow things to go well for himself as payback. Not that the act resolves or corrects something, but the child unconsciously feels that he’s putting something to rights.

The history, the origin and how it happened need to be acknowledged

The moment there’s denial about how something came about, the pattern will be repeated. A child can then be unconsciously taken along in that repeating pattern.

The family conscience-based loyalty includes everyone and everything that belongs to your family system. Who or what is included in your family system is explained in detail in section 2.5 . One certainty is that the family conscience always takes these people and elements into account. So, everything that’s unresolved or unprocessed will be passed through to the next generation. Someone else from the family will ascend because of the entanglement in order to so-called resolve something for previous members of your family system.

THE MOMENT THERE’S DENIAL ABOUT HOW SOMETHING HAPPENED, THE PATTERN WILL BE REPEATED.

The same section also includes an overview of people and events that are also possibly of influence on your family system and that you therefore can be entangled with. It differs per family whether the family conscience will tackle this or not. A constellation can identify whether or not they belong to your family system.

7.4  Signs that you’ve ascended in the fountain due to unconscious identification

If you ascend in the fountain due to unconscious identification, it’s tricky to know if you’re entangled or not. It’s a process that’s not directly visible and plays out at an unconscious level. Occasionally, someone may comment about a child (that may already be an adult): “goodness, granny always did that too”. A family constellation is a way to make an entanglement visible. In addition, there’s a number of signs that can be identified to help you decide if you’re entangled:

Repetitive patterns within the family

Emotions that are too big for, or don’t correspond to the situation

A longing for death

Having the same name as the excluded person

Repetitive patterns within the family

Repetitive patterns are easiest to explain using a few examples: your behaviour shows you despise your father. Often, you’ll see that just as you despise your father, so your father despises his father, your grandfather. And indeed, now your son seems to despise you too.

Or: you realise that your own children are just as unable to laugh about you as you were able to laugh about your own parents. Or your grandmother and mother had disdain for men in general, and that pattern repeats itself. Or a striking number of family members die at a certain age because of an accident. There can also be a repetitive pattern of bankruptcy in the family. The possibilities are endless.

Emotions are too big or not appropriate for the situation

People express their emotions to different degrees. But sometimes there’s a real sense that certain emotions are too big for a situation. Someone is too angry, indignant, offended, sad or whatever else. Such situations can suggest entanglement. You see a combination of adopted emotions (see section 4.4 ) and the emotions that correspond to the actual situation. These emotions overlap. They express themselves in your daily life and in contact with others. Certain people are more likely to trigger these emotions in you, often touching on something that is part of the original problem of the person you’re entangled with.

If emotions are too big for the event, then this can indicate an entanglement. But it doesn’t have to. It’s equally possible that you’re stuck in secondary emotions, unable to escape them. The moment, for example, you haven’t adopted your parents, extra emotions will be projected onto somebody else (see ghost images, section 11.2 ). Combine this for example with being trapped in the role of victim and responding fiercely to what others view as something trivial, and voilà; a violent stream of emotions emerges.

Suppose, during dinner you talk about the negative feedback you’ve received from your supervisor at work, and how you think it’s unjustified. Your partner recognises the feedback and suggests that perhaps there’s some truth in what your supervisor has said. This can trigger a feeling of extreme anger with your partner, whereby the emotion is too big for the corresponding incident at the kitchen table. There may be old pain and anger beneath this, the pain caused by your father, in whose eyes you never did anything right. This isn’t actually an entanglement, but possibly the consequence of ascending, method two pertaining to your father.

WITHIN, THE PERSON WHO IS ENTANGLED SAYS TO THE EXCLUDED: I SEE YOU, I FOLLOW YOU AND I WON’T ALLOW THINGS TO BE ANY BETTER FOR ME THAN FOR YOU .

Longing for death as a sign that you may be entangled

When someone is excluded, the family conscience is activated and an unconscious identification is created. Within, the one who is entangled says to the excluded: “I see you, I follow you and I won’t allow things to be any better for me”. You focus your inner love on this person. There’s a major chance that you’ll lead your life as that person does or has done. Because this person is excluded, he or she will face challenges and may find it difficult to truly embrace life. You will follow this pattern. Certainly, building the entanglement on the pattern “I won’t allow things to be any better for me than for you”, creates angst and weariness. Because if you were to grab life by the horns, the difference between you would become too big, and unconsciously this is something you don’t want. You allow things to go badly to negate that difference. As a result, you sometimes develop a longing for death.

Often, you’re entangled with someone who has already died. This can create an extra affection for death, however strange this may sound. Unconsciously you assume that you will then be united or become closer. In practice, this leaning towards death actually expresses itself as not taking life . You want to move forward in life, but then again, you don’t. As if you’ve got your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time. This costs a lot of energy, while achieving very little.
You can also allow things to go so badly for yourself, that you die as a consequence. The disease anorexia is also an expression of this. By not eating, you are faithful to the person you’re entangled with. If you eat you feel guilty because you are then breaking free from the entanglement. You may have suicidal tendencies based on “I follow you and won’t allow things to be any better for me than for you”.

A small sign that sometimes suggests an entanglement is the sentence 'It’s better I’m not here'. Although do make sure that isn’t just being uttered by a complaining child (as an adult), who’s failed to get their own way and craves attention.
Someone who frequently says sorry at times when not applicable could also be entangled with someone who’s excluded.

Having the same name as the excluded person

Certainly in the past, names of deceased and stillborn children were given back to a later-born child. Imagine that child one has died and child two gets the same name, then to a certain extent child one is denied and excluded. Subsequently, child two is likely to become entangled with child one and will start to lead child one’s life. Child two is likely to experience a longing for death due to the entanglement. In addition, the child in place two has a hard time anyway, because to the outside world the child occupies place one and will be treated accordingly. The position of child two is actually place two, where they will receive the power of the fountain.
Parents often have different expectations of the different places. Something different is expected of child one (the oldest) than of child two, three etc. This makes it difficult for child two, who’s actually child one in the eyes of his parents, to fulfil all these expectations.

If you have been given the same name to honour the deceased person, but are also seen yourself, then this isn’t a problem at all.

Should what has been written above resonate with you, and you suspect an entanglement with a destructive pattern, it makes sense to contact a systemic coach. By asking the appropriate questions, a round-table constellation or participation in a constellation day, an invisible pattern can be made visible. Certain interventions can break through an entanglement. The power of the deep love that flows from the family conscience of the person unconsciously identified will be directed elsewhere. And as a result, the deep love between the two remains (the person excluded, and the person entangled), but you are still able to occupy your own place in the fountain.

7.5  Nuances

In my practice I see there’s a bigger chance that your life will be influenced by the effects of ascending according to method one and two, than via method three. If you run into certain restrictive patterns, I would advise you to start by tackling descending, based on the first two methods of ascending (pertaining to your parents). Keep an unconscious identification at the back of your mind to maybe explore at a later date.

Because you don’t realise you’re entangled in most cases, it’s difficult to find out what the source of your behaviour is. Suppose for instance, that due to your entanglement you do stupid things. What about liability then (not in a legal sense)? Being entangled makes you innocent. You do however always remain responsible for your actions. Making you simultaneously innocent and responsible.

IF YOU ASCEND IN THE FOUNTAIN, IN WHATEVER WAY, YOU’RE NOT EMPOWERED, MEANING YOU CAN LIVE YOUR LIFE LESS FULLY.

The difference between installing the pattern that you reject and entanglement

With method two of ascending, judging and disconnecting, you unconsciously install the pattern of imitating the behaviour you’ve actually rejected in one of your parents. You take over the behaviour out of unconscious loyalty, because deep inside you don’t want to lose your parents. The moment you’ve accepted your parents fully (placed them above you in the fountain), the stubborn pattern will no longer follow you. You therefore have direct influence on this. This is not an entanglement.
With an entanglement, you’ve been designated by the family conscience to represent a person and by doing so, you automatically take over characteristic behaviour. You can only break the pattern by leaving the entanglement. The eventual effect is the same: because you ascend in the fountain, in whatever way, you’re not empowered meaning you can live your life less fully.

Being entangled and caring for your parents

The moment you’ve become entangled with someone, it’s nearly always because one of your (grand) parents still had something left to do but didn’t do it effectively enough (powerlessness, not unwillingness). In many cases, the entanglement means that you completely unconsciously take over the responsibility from one of your parents. Two for the price of one. Or rather, you have to acknowledge two patterns if you want to descend.

8   Accepting your place

Yes, I agree

8.1  The person that I was I am no more

The poem Metamorphosis by Peter Geraedts, 1981.

The person I was, I am no more.
The one I am will not last,
and the one I become, disappears.
In this transformation I exist.
Forgetting.
Awakening
Desiring.

Personal note

I’m familiar with all three methods of ascending. I know what it’s like to be ascended, and what it’s like to descend. This has changed me as a person. I was afraid that to let go would mean losing myself. Quite the opposite turned out to be true. I only became stronger and more independent.

The source of the family system endlessly feeds the fountain and is always present, regardless of what’s happening on the outside. You do however have to be standing where you can receive the flow of the fountain. Nothing or nobody can deny you access. Where you stand, is up to you. Your inner attitude can always allow you to take your place. Feelings of guilt, that can go hand in hand with descending, give you the strength to transcend your conscience and live life to the full. Sometimes the stubbornness will win, and the comfort you feel in being innocent. Or you remain caught in the sweet, good little girl/boy syndrome. And ascend in the fountain.

THE REWARD FOR TAKING RESPONSIBILITY IS LIVING YOUR LIFE, INSTEAD OF YOUR LIFE BEING LIVED FOR YOU.

The process of descending is on one hand simple, yet on the other complex. Simple, because you follow the systemic principles that naturally draw you into the positive dynamic of the fountain. And complex, because this may involve wounding people in the process. Choosing yourself over others means that others may be less fortunate, or disappointed in you. The price of allowing things to go well for yourself in the knowledge that loved ones aren’t doing so well, is high. This is difficult to endure, sometimes even unbearable. You’re likely to encounter old wounds and fears that you’ve hidden away. In short, you will face your destiny. The reward for taking responsibility for your own life is being able to live your life, rather than it being lived for you.

8.2  Effects of descending

If you want to take good care of both yourself and your (grand)\-children in the trays beneath you, then you need to be able to descend, when desired, to your own place. In section 4.3 I talk about the consequences of ascending in the fountain. In a nutshell, descending (the opposite) comes down to this: if you descend, you’re able to receive the natural flow of the fountain. You learn to better receive what is there. This makes you stronger as a person, meaning you have even more to give. You also develop a more realistic picture of yourself and the world, and can easier differentiate between what is yours and what belongs to someone else. You are more capable of this than you used to be, because you’re more able to integrate your rationale and the wisdom of your body. You experience that stubborn patterns can 'suddenly' be broken and that something new can emerge. At the same time, you’ll notice that the need to compensate your shortcomings subsides, because your vulnerability to addiction subsides. In short, you allow things to go well for yourself.

I’d also like to add several bonus points that these effects of descending can produce (in no particular order):

You become rooted

Your life will start to flow and often, miracles occur

From connection, you will freely go your own way

You feel more fulfilled

You learn to better feel your own boundaries and are more able to let go

You will see the beauty in yourself and others, without (or with less) jealousy

You’ll take the appropriate measures in terms of actions

You’ll be more in the here and now

Your body takes on more shape

You become rooted

If you’ve successfully descended in your tray in the fountain, you’re embedded and rooted. A tree with strong roots endures storms and won’t be blown over easily. Of course, you can be buffered when facing tough situations. But the roots mean you won’t be tossed around like a rubber ball. The environment will undoubtedly keep coming up with reasons for you to ascend, this won’t change. If you’ve managed to descend, it’ll be easier for you to resist the temptation to ascend. You learn to deal adequately with your impulses to ascend, meaning you immediately descend again.

Your life will start to flow and often, ‘miracles’ occur

The moment you occupy your place in the fountain, or even before this, when you’re on your way down, you’ll see all the wonderful things happening in daily life. Almost as if, magically, the puzzle pieces suddenly fit together. Life smiles at you and overflows with generosity.
Where it used to be difficult to differentiate between your responsibilities and those of other people, this all seems to become much clearer. Making life more orderly and straightforward. I often see, for example, a job suddenly landing in someone’s lap out of nowhere, future partners being met, or a house that has been for sale for ever suddenly being sold. It sounds too good to be true. But from personal experience and that of my clients, something special usually happens. This doesn’t mean to say that things always go the way you want them to. But space seems to become available, whatever kind, ensuring that life flows and brings something good.

From connection, you will freely go your own way

If you separate yourself from entanglements and are able to resist the temptation to ascend, then you are free to go your own way. There’s no longer an invisible pulling force dragging you in a direction you actually don’t want to go in. Making you much more able to wander your own path.

If you are in your place in the fountain, you’re connected with yourself and with everyone that belongs to your system, and even those outside of it. Thanks to this connection, the fountain can flow freely. And so, you’re connected positively, without all the disadvantages of an oppressive tie.
In the meantime, you feel a positive dependence. Someone who’s in their place will often say, literally, “I can’t do it alone”. This sentence is expressed from an adult role. This person is prepared to take responsibility for his or her life. So it isn’t an expression of impotence, being needy or playing the victim, but based on a realistic picture of how dependant a person is. Working together can usually achieve more than one individual can ever do alone. Moreover, someone who genuinely expresses the sentence mentioned above realises that receiving and giving belong together if you want to be connected. Giving makes you independent and receiving dependant. You can now embrace both (you no longer push away one aspect of the duality), making you free to make you own choices.

You feel more fulfilled

The systemic answer to the question of when you feel fulfilled, is: “When everyone that belongs has their appropriate place in the family system”. If not everyone’s in their place, you feel unstable and experience a kind of restlessness. It’s difficult to pinpoint this disquiet. If you descend, and everyone and everything gets their systemically correct place, starting with your parents, you feel fulfilled within. And this allows you to be in your place in the fountain: the prerequisite for allowing things to go well for yourself. Although your family may exclude members, you can also make the decision to allow everyone who belongs their place (at least, from within).

Even though life may sometimes be challenging, if you allow everyone his or her place, you’ll feel fulfilled and no longer empty deep inside. You’ll no longer be guided by the traction from the fountain. You’ve let go of what’s not yours and accepted what is. Reconciled with yourself, your family and the world. It is what it is.

You learn to better feel your own boundaries and are more able to let go

When you break free of the dynamic of ascending you’ll better feel what is yours and what is someone else’s. This allows you to more easily take responsibility for your own life and let go of what’s not yours. You’re more able to identify where boundaries lie, so that you can better protect your own.

If you’ve ascended via method one (adopting responsibility), you can (partially) be merged with someone else, for example your mother. It’s a symbiotic relationship. You feel very little difference between what is hers and what is yours. Only when you can feel yourself and can leave what belongs to the other person with them, can you genuinely understand what you do and do not want. The interference of the person you’d merged with is then reduced to a healthy connection.

You will see the beauty in yourself and others, without (or with less) jealousy

By descending, you seem to reach some kind of balance. You become milder and more nuanced. You’re able to accept yourself, the good, the bad and the ugly. Without jumping into “that's just how I am”, making it seem like you're not willing to change something about your behaviour.

Descended, you dare accept your own qualities and potential, as well as your limitations. Neither your greatness nor your less appealing sides seem to terrify you. What remains is a healthy tension. Strangely enough, my experience is that many people find it more frightening to face their greatness than their limitations. It’s easier to keep yourself small than to allow your talents to bloom and have influence.

Your mildness also usually reaches other people. You see something positive in the other person, without the need to make yourself feel small(er) and insignificant. When you’re needy, you feel small and powerless (this can express itself in arrogance or even narcissism as a defence mechanism). Then you can develop feelings of jealousy and envy. When you descend you’re able to leave the other person in his or her worth, without feeling threatened yourself. Feelings of jealousy and envy decrease. You’ll stop begrudging others for being better than you at something.
Even if someone has a blemish , you manage to be milder. In the past, you would have probably written that person off. You adopt more of an approach of live and let live .

You’ll take the appropriate measures in terms of actions

If you know who you are in essence and have landed in your place in the fountain, you get a better idea of what actions are appropriate for your life. What is realistic, without over-estimating yourself or being too modest? It would be a waste of your potential to make yourself too small. You may just end up as a feeble shadow of yourself, or your angst will take the upper-hand. If you make yourself too big, you can cause damage by over-estimating yourself, or become someone others may be afraid of. When you’re in your place in the fountain, you seem to instinctively know what fits and what doesn’t. An additional advantage is that you get more innate authority.

WHEN YOU DESCEND YOU’RE ABLE TO LEAVE THE OTHER PERSON IN HIS OR HER WORTH, WITHOUT FEELING THREATENED YOURSELF.

You’ll be more in the here and now

If you don’t learn to accept yourself (by accepting your parents), you’re going to live a life based on how it should be rather than how it is. This makes it difficult to be present in your actual life, and you’ll be occupied elsewhere rather than in the here and now.

When you have ascended, you’re often absent within yourself. Although you’re physically present, your mind is elsewhere. You may be entangled. Or your thoughts are occupied by a misconstrued image of reality. Or you try to avoid your fears. As a result, you’re much less able to absorb the here and now. And since the here and now is the only time you can act, chances are you miss a lot. Besides, tomorrow is today. You sow and reap in the here and now.

Your body takes on more shape

When you descend in the fountain, your body usually takes on more shape. In my view, your body becomes more beautiful, firmer and better inhabited. When you ascend, your body has less shape. For one reason or another, losing weight is easier if you’ve descended.

You can also see on someone’s face if they’ve descended and are in their rightful place. Faces become firmer and more adult, instead of childish. In my eyes, adult faces are much more attractive than the more childish versions that don’t correlate with the age. The eyes are also much more alert and awake. They start to sparkle.

Whatever happens, you’ll start to feel your body better. Where you were first a wandering head, you’re now more at one with your body. Your breathing becomes deeper, while before it was shallower and trapped higher up in your body.

Certain physical symptoms will also often diminish. Particularly if you’ve ascended via method one (adopting responsibility), you’ll feel less pressure in your shoulders and neck. And if you’ve put your parents above you in the fountain, I often see that your lower back becomes stronger.

A nice bonus is that people who have accepted both parents are found attractive by others (regardless of their appearance). The combination of inner peace and having access to a rich source of energy as a result of taking your place, appeals to a lot of people. I suspect that it’s because you can usually get a pretty good sense of whether someone is real or not. Deep inside you know how difficult it is to be yourself, and this authenticity only really happens once you’ve descended and taken your place. Doing this successfully, commands respect. Because you feel that the authenticity is pure, such a person is often more appealing.

Broadly summarised: life smiles at you if you’re able to descend. On the down side, you forego the secondary benefits of being ascended. Or in other words, there’s also advantages to being ascended, which you will let go of. You must be prepared to pay this price.

8.3  The process of descending

Taking good care of yourself is the biggest gift you can give yourself and someone else. Only then have you truly got something to give. If you’re in your place in the fountain you will, per definition, receive. If you have ascended and want to receive, the only way to achieve this is to embark on the process of descending.

Surrendering

Descending is a kind of surrender. In essence, descending is accepting what is there. Surrendering to your destiny. You say yes to what there is, in its entirety, no its and buts. Descending is changing your inner attitude.

By saying yes, you find solution to the challenge of simultaneously staying connected and setting boundaries, in order to protect yourself. You remain connected, yet at the same time can act autonomously. You take responsibility for your own life. You let go of what is not yours, and in doing so, face your own pain, sadness and disappointments.

Descending is a refocusing of the deep love, a love that is naturally in every child but can become blocked. In short, how can you convert the tie into a connection?

Accepting your parents

If you want to take your place in the fountain, an important step is to accept your parents. In systemic technical jargon, accepting is often simplified to taking . But taking (and accepting) your parents is about more than acceptance alone. That is rational. This accepting is acceptance with an open heart and without judgement. It is a reconciliation with how it is (or was). The challenge is to not look critically at what your parents have or haven’t given you, but to accept the things that are there. You give your parents the tray above you in the fountain and say within: “Yes, you are my parents and the only ones right for me. You may have me as your child”.

You’re 50% your father and 50% your mother. If you inwardly reject your parents, you per definition also reject yourself. Consequently, you experience a constant gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction about yourself, however hard you try to allow things to go well and however hard you try to like yourself. Accepting yourself cannot be separated from accepting your parents. Which can be extremely frustrating for some people. To my knowledge, there is no other way.

You accept your parents, warts and all, you leave what is theirs with them and take what is yours. You face your own destiny. What you feel you have missed out on, you can practically speaking get somewhere else, once you’ve said yes to your parents. This is descending.

Inner attitude

What’s great, is that you’re dependent on no-one during the descending process. The process of descent is a change in your inner attitude. And so you don’t need to involve any family members, partners, friends or for example bosses in the process. Of course, you can let them know, but you don’t have to. Because it’s not about what they do or don’t do in daily life, or what happens there. Those are circumstances. It’s only about your inner attitude.

The question of why a family member does or doesn’t do something, either now or in the past, is a question at a conscious level and will not really help you any further. Generally speaking, answering such questions has little influence on your choice to descend or not. The rationale, so the wanting to understand, has taken over, while submission is the key to healing. An answer can perhaps give you some understanding, but also more anger and doubt. You may also get bogged down in all kinds of secondary emotions. The answer doesn’t actually matter. What’s happened has happened. The rationale distracts you from your own process of descending. You’re no longer occupied with your inner attitude.

LIFE SMILES AT YOU IF YOU’RE ABLE TO DESCEND.

Keep in mind that something deep down can be different than you think and maybe even understand. For example, you’ve established you have a judgement about your mother and have disconnected with her, but deep down you appear to take care of your father. He turns out to be needy, for example because of his own mother being absent. If you were to move towards your mother, your father could become jealous. Deep inside, you father doesn’t want his precious child to move towards his mother (the partner). And so, out of love for your father, you turn away from your mother. This almost always plays out at an unconscious level.
Moreover, you can never know the destiny of the other person. Certainly, in particular cultures, like for example in Indonesia, it’s usual to keep quiet about horrific events, meaning you don’t know what challenging destiny your (grand) parents may have had.

The actual process of descending will be described in the following sections. In chapter 9 , specific instructions will be provided for descending if you ascended according to method one to three. It’s a puzzle to decipher how you have ascended. But only then will it become clear how you can descend to your place in the fountain.

8.4  General basic steps to descend in the fountain

I believe that every person can discover his or her creative way to manoeuvre through the process of descending. There isn’t a ready-made plan, with a start and finish, with carefully planned steps in-between. If only it was so simple. The only thing I can offer you are a few focus points, which you can use to go further.

Acknowledging that you’ve ascended

Although there is no standard plan of action for descending, in my view the first step is the acknowledgement that you’ve ascended in the fountain. Hopefully, the first chapters have provided you with sufficient tools to determine whether you are in your place in the fountain.

Do you really want to descend?

You then make the decision whether or not you want to descend. Every choice you make about this is okay. Only the consequences are different. If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your choice without complaint, then you behave as an adult (even if you perhaps choose for the benefits of being ascended).

There’s often a hidden advantage to being ascended, meaning the price of descending is too high. After all, what else can you do with your life if you can no longer care for the person from whom you’ve taken over responsibility? How can you then feel valuable and important? Or if you’ve ascended via method two, it’s easier to remain angry with a person or despise them, rather than connecting and feeling your own pain, rejection and disappointment. When ascending via method three (the unconscious identification), you don’t realise you’ve ascended, but lead the other person’s life instead of your own. If you were to stop leading the life of someone else, who are you then? This can bring uncertainty.
In short, not wanting to descend has its advantages. The choice you make, whether to descend or remain ascended, is up to you. The effects of your choice on your daily life will be different. In any case, whatever you choose, you remain solely responsible for your life, plus that of your children (if they’re still small). And if, for whatever reason, you’re unable to care adequately for your children, then this is the destiny of your children. If they face their destiny, they won’t pass on their deficit to their children, your grandchildren and society.

IN ANY CASE, YOU REMAIN SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE.

Personal note, how I do it

I’m not a stranger to ascending. Luckily, I’ve also managed to learn how to descend almost immediately again. The pulling power to ascend is however always present. I have no influence over it. All I can do is defend myself against the temptation to ascend. After all, in many, many cases I’ve got little or no influence at all on my surroundings. Meaning I’m left to deal with my own false hope and illusions that I can have some kind of impact. What’s more effective, is being alert during that initial pull to ascend, so I can immediately start to descend and thus return to my place.

When I ascend because of method one, I say to myself inwardly: “I’m ascending. So, I’m allowing things to go badly for myself. I don’t want this to happen, so descend, descend and descend once more. It’s not my responsibility to take this on. What’s actually mine, and what belongs to the other person?”

If I’ve ascended via method two, the first thing I say to myself is: “I’m ascending. So I’m allowing things to go badly for myself, even though objectively speaking I may be right. So descend, descend and descend once more”.
I need to repeat this message within for a few times until it’s got through to me enough and my frustrations are slightly more manageable. I’ve learned the hard way that my truth is not someone else’s truth, however long we may discuss it. Furthermore, being right and being proven right are sometimes two different things. Being right is of course my truth. A wise person once said to me: do you want to be proven right or be happy?

I then get to work on the points I need to do something about. Unfortunately, a one-off action is usually not enough. There’s no other option but to keep active in order to be firmly anchored in my place in the fountain. Descending is like an acrobat landing on his feet. Firstly, move to your own tray and then stand firmly in your place. This is the first stage of being properly descended. You may still be tossed backwards and forwards, but you won’t at least ascend as easily anymore.

Descending is finding your own answer to the following action points

If you want to descend, you need to get to work on the following action points:

Put your parents above you in the fountain

Let go of what belongs to the other person and face what is yours

Say yes to what is there

Deal with your own primary feelings

8.4.1  Put your parents above you in the fountain

Stubborn patterns in your day-to-day life that are hard to change stem from your family system. For example, finding it difficult to deal with authority, diving into the care modus, stepping into the role of victim etc. Feel free to assume you’re not in your place in the fountain and that you have ascended. Despite training and coaching, good motivation and discipline, these patterns can’t always be broken.

Your parents are the only right ones for you. Without them, you wouldn’t have been born. Nobody except them had been able to do that. The best thing they could have passed on to you, they have – your life. Besides this, parents give what they are able. If they had been able to give more, they would have. What they do give is nearly always more than enough, and abundant. It’s circumstances and destiny that have meant that your parents, in your eyes, have had shortcomings. Whether this is actually the case, is really not so relevant. After all, this is what is there, and this is what you have to work with. The question is what you connect with. With what is there, or what isn’t? Furthermore, you may not demand anything of your parents, only accept what there is and where necessary give feedback about behaviour and set boundaries based on the connection. If you give criticism instead of feedback on how they are , then you immediately ascend again.

The last section briefly described what it means to accept your parents and give them a place above you in the fountain. Within, you say: “Dearest mum/dad, you’re my mother/father and I’m your daughter/son. Thank you for all the good I’ve received from you. I accept this from you”.

Should you find it difficult to say this, you can add the following: “Yes, you are my parents and the only right ones for me. I accept my life at the full price it’s cost you and me. The things I feel I have missed out on, I can now take care of myself. I have received a lot. Thank you for this. You may have me as your child. You are the grown-ups and I am the child. I will leave you with what is yours and accept what is mine. Thank you, dearest mummy/daddy”.

Sometimes, your rationale won’t yet allow you to make this movement towards your parents and you’ll go into defence mode. Your rationale and feelings indicate that (too) much has happened. Your body and soul, on the other hand, often demonstrate a different movement. Deep inside, every child wants nothing more than go to their parents and be wrapped in their safe arms. Rationale and feelings stop the body from doing this however, because the pain is too overwhelming, pride gets in the way and things have been difficult.

Sometimes, on a practical level, it’s not safe to go to the parents, certainly if there’s talk of aggression and abuse. But even so, you can still go to them inwardly. Accepting your parent is after all establishing a connection, at least inwardly. If you don’t do this, then you ascend via method two. The consequence is that you don’t allow things to go well for yourself. Which isn’t a smart option. Work on your inner attitude. Learn to accept your parents, the good and the bad, and leave what is theirs with them. Only bear what is yours. In doing so, you face your own destiny and come to your place in the fountain.

You’ll sometimes say to yourself “I don’t want to become like them”. Your parents do things differently to how you would. Realise that your parents often aren’t able to do things any differently. They do feel love, but sometimes can’t show and express it enough. Assume that your parents have also ascended in the fountain and have therefore missed out on things. Another time context may also play a role. Shortfalls your parents may have experienced may be expressed in all kinds of ways. Which you can blame and hold them responsible for. Secretly, you hope they will one day miraculously change and you will still get what you think you deserve. You’re actually just as needy as they are, although the shortcomings can express themselves differently.

ACCEPTING YOUR PARENTS IS MORE THAN A RATIONAL ACCEPTANCE.

Accepting our parents means both honouring the person you’ve received from, as well as what you have received. If you feel you’ve received nothing or very little, you can at least be grateful for the effort they have made. And be grateful for the life they have passed on to you.

Accepting your parents is more than a rational acceptance. It is a more vital sensation flowing through your body and heart, not just from your rationale. You can literally and figuratively bow down before your parents. You have reconciled with them, yourself and how things have happened. You see your biological parents as the grown-ups and you’re their child. Should you have children yourself, isn’t it unthinkable that they would care for you instead of the other way around? Isn’t it a terrible idea that your children would later turn their backs on you because they don’t like you, don’t think you are good enough and even despise you, while you feel that you’ve given what you could give and that you have paid the price (including, fortunately, all the positive outcomes too)?
If you refuse to acknowledge where you belong, things will go badly for you and thus you’ll be reminded of who you exclude.

8.4.2  Letting go of what belongs to the other person and facing what’s yours

When you accept your parents, by giving them their place in the fountain above you, you will let go of what is not yours and face what is yours. Letting go gives freedom, meaning the fountain can flow. Letting go is not pushing away or hiding things/people. You give up your resistance and struggle and instead relax. You surrender. Setting down distance is an action and not necessary. You let go and say yes (also see 8.4.3 ).
Letting go means you can set your own boundaries. Letting go however, is not disconnecting, but setting boundaries from an inner connection. Setting boundaries does not mean you shut yourself off. You can always give feedback and set boundaries from your tray to the tray above. In the meantime, you’re allowing someone the place above you, because that place belongs to that person, whether you like it or not.

The question you need to ask yourself to let go and face what belongs to you is: what is mine and what belongs to the other person? Only when you can answer this do you know what you need to let go of. What belongs to the other person, the situation the other person is involved in. Or in other words, his or her destiny. This is what you are confronted by, and probably suffer from as a result. The definition of someone’s destiny is: all the circumstances and events that have made, and are still making, the person who she or he is. If you can let go of what is not yours and face your own destiny, you simultaneously let go of the hope for a better or different past. This will give you space.

Some people claim to have returned to their parents the burdens they have carried for them. I don’t agree with that. You let go of what’s not yours and then see if your parents pick it up or not. It’s not yours. So, you give nothing back.

What is yours? Simply put, everything connected to your destiny. The situation as it is. The other person’s destiny is a fact. There’s a chance you may feel hard done by, experience pain or even have been damaged yourself. This is for you to bear, including all the primary emotions connected to the events. When determining what is yours, you also look at your own share of the situation. Sometimes, being mercilessly honest about yourself helps the most.

When you know what is yours, you also know what you can do to bring about change. Make tangible what you are going to do to tackle and organise what is yours. Good intentions alone are not enough. Set goals and make a plan of action. Rather one well-developed plan than watering-down your focus by wanting to do too much at the same time.

A few examples of what is yours and what is someone else’s (e.g. one of your parents):

What belongs to the other person?
What is yours?

The other person is needy, has shortcomings, claims you and leans heavily on you.
This makes you ascend and you cannot (yet) offer resistance, meaning you fall into the trap of taking over responsibility.
You are angry because you’ve had to turn down fun things because you have to organise things for the other person.

You constantly worry and feel guilty, because you feel that you always fall short.

You haven’t learned to ask for help and have become too independent, and as a result cannot keep a partner.

You have also become demanding to those around you, because you have shortcomings. You therefore think you’ve become a mean person.

The other person has an addiction or serious illness.
You’ve had to grow up too quickly and have missed things that are part of adolescence.

You blame your parents for having received little attention from them whilst at the same time, you’re ashamed of thinking like this

You realise that you were different to other children and that you were bullied

You didn’t dare bring anyone home

You find that you also have a vulnerability to addiction, with all the struggles this entails.

The other person doesn’t see you enough and makes hurtful remarks.
You realise that someone important to you doesn’t acknowledge you and doesn’t see who you actually are

You question whether you are good enough.

You’re filled with a need to compensate but can’t really appreciate praise. You’ve become stubborn, meaning that you don’t want to see the other person either.

You find it easier to simply settle rather than give feedback and confront.

You still have the hope that one day, the other person will see you.

You believe you have rights that can still be claimed.

The war (or terrible situation) that is not, or hardly spoken about, influences the family.
You have learned that you can’t be vulnerable and cannot rely on other people.

You carry on, without taking a break, and you push everything that you find difficult away, because it’s nothing compared to the past.

You have received few expressions of love because family members were damaged, meaning you don’t know how to connect and enter into a relationship. This makes you feel lonely.

You also have no chance of having your own children without a partner.

The other person makes no decision, or the liberating message you’d hoped for doesn’t come.
You have to put up with your impatience and uncertainty. You’re in the anticipatory stance.

You feel frustrated and powerless.

You’re tossed back and forth between hope and fear.

You don’t dare take a stance and make a decision yourself.

You blame your environment for everything, without seeing your own part in the situation, resulting in you being so stuck now.

You realise that this isn’t how you are, and you behave as you actually hope to in such situations.

Part of looking at your own destiny is that you learn to let go of what is not yours. Realise that not letting go or holding on to what is someone else’s, ends up costing you more energy and effort than learning to deal with what belongs to you. A destiny not accepted becomes a destiny doomed.

8.4.3  Saying yes to what there is

During the process of descending you will investigate, among other things, what is yours. You are responsible for all that is yours, nobody else. If you take up this responsibility, you say yes to several aspects:

You say yes to what is there, namely

what you receive, and want to receive

what you receive but actually don’t want to receive

what you don’t get, but so wanted to receive

You say yes to the past

You say yes to the appropriate guilt

You say yes to the consequences of not wanting to accept

You say yes to what is there

You’d think that saying yes to good is easy. But make no mistake: this can be a real challenge for some people. After all, you can only truly receive if you’re in your rightful place. If you’ve ascended, you’ve installed a pattern making it easier to give than to receive.
Don’t forget to accept all the good that life has in store for you with genuine gratitude. You don’t have to feel guilty for being blessed. And certainly don’t make yourself inferior to lessen the difference between you and the other person. This is useless. Have the courage to be privileged (without becoming arrogant, feeling superior or better). The more you receive and accept, the more you have to pass on.

Embrace both the good, and the less positive things. Saying yes to what’s there, but what you actually don’t want to receive, is difficult. But it’s there, like it or not. We live in a world of dualities. You say yes to both the good, and the less welcome aspects of your life and your destiny. This doesn’t mean you should let the less welcome aspects have a free hand, without limits. Genuinely recognising that these undesirable aspects also belong is often enough.

Saying yes to your parents and their less positive aspects, such as an alcohol addiction for example, does not mean you approve of the addiction. Addictions are an integral part of life; they exist. Only when you say yes to the unavoidable fact that the addiction is part of your parents, is it most likely you won’t follow in their footsteps. The moment you allow yourself to resemble your parents, you receive the freedom to do something about it. The fear of becoming like them stops you from being in touch with your own individuality. If you first say no instead of yes, then generally speaking your individuality is more a lifestyle than true individuality. To be able to say no, you need to first say yes.

IF YOU FIRST SAY NO INSTEAD OF YES, THEN GENERALLY SPEAKING YOUR INDIVIDUALITY IS MORE A LIFESTYLE THAN TRUE INDIVIDUALITY.

If you don’t get what you so deeply long for, you have to say yes to the fact that what you long for just isn’t going to happen. Your grief for this gives you space. Grieving is thus more than saying goodbye to someone or something that isn’t coming back.

Things happen in life as they happen, although sometimes you would have liked things to work out differently. Systemically speaking, denying the past appears to work against you. By saying yes to history’s path, you allow and acknowledge the truth of the past. Yes, this is what happened. You sweep nothing under the carpet. Acknowledging the past doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it and that it wasn’t difficult. You recognise that this is what happened.

For example: “Yes, you’re my father who I love very much, and you’ve made wrong choices meaning you’re now in jail”. Or: “Yes, the abortion took place against the father’s will”. Or: “Yes, my parents gave me up because of economical motives”. Or: “Yes, in the war we sided with the occupiers”.

You say yes to the appropriate guilt

If you explore what is yours you’re then able to assume the appropriate guilt. What is your share and what is the accompanying guilt? I experience people laying too much blame with their environment. All credit to you if you’re able to take a good look at yourself and honestly explore your own (lack of) responsibility, however painful and shameful this may be.
I also encounter people that lay far too much responsibility and guilt at their own feet. They must learn that life can’t always be controlled and that sometimes you are simply at the mercy of fate.

Denying and pushing away appropriate guilt is like an open wound that continues to fester. Saying yes to your guilt within, by definition, provides strength. Moreover, you increase your self-esteem.
“Yes, I caused an accident. My behaviour caused damage. Yes, I failed to take action. Yes, I got myself in a fix. Yes, I was so swept away with my sadness that I had no space for the pain and needs of my other children.”

Also say yes to the positive share that you have had in something, without arrogance or false modesty: “Yes, I gave what I could give and that was a lot. Yes, because of me, failure was avoided”. Or: “Thanks to my idea, the business didn’t go bankrupt”.

You say yes to the consequences of not wanting to accept

Saying yes does not imply that you can never say no. Certain situations allow a yes, but definitely not all situations. By saying no, you draw a line. As long as you stay connected, this can done problem-free. After all, you can always give feedback and set boundaries for the tray above you. This doesn’t mean you will then ascend in the fountain.

There are always consequences to saying no. Imagine, you decide to stay away from your father as he displays aggressive behaviour to you. You don’t attend family gatherings where he’s also present. The consequence is that you will undoubtedly also miss precious moments with the family and will perhaps be unable to show him your recent new-born, which makes you deeply sad inside. You have said yes to this consequence. If you decide to avoid contact with your father, try to allow him his place within you. This inner connection will do you good.
Saying no to your family system is by the way more complicated than saying no to people in your daily life that are not part of your family system. The consequences are more significant to you and have possible consequences for generations after you.

Accepting the consequences of remaining ascended

Imagine, you make a conscious choice to remain ascended. If you are prepared to virtuously bear the consequences of this, you are and remain ascended, but behave like an adult prepared to take responsibility for his or her life. There’s a real chance this means you’ll suffer less from the negative effects of ascending, because you have agreed with yourself that you accept the consequences. You don’t have to like the consequences, but don’t bother the people around you with them. Should you do this, then you’ll remain the whiny, demanding child that only wants to bear the good and not the bad. And you don’t take responsibility for your own life.

WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS THAT YOU CAN UNCONDITIONALLY CONNECT WITH WHAT IS THERE.

‘Yes, but’

Realise that a yes, but keeps you from descending in the fountain. Yes, but implies a limited surrender. What’s important is that you can unconditionally connect with what is there. With yes but you’ll install excuses from your mind, meaning that you can’t finish your inner movement. Descending is a surrender that you do with more than just your rationale. It’s an inner attitude from both your body and soul.

8.4.4  Engaging in your own primary feelings

If you want to descend you’ll inevitably encounter all kinds of emotions. I’m not in favour of endlessly expressing secondary emotions. It solves very little. At most, you’ll feel temporary relief. After which, the old feelings will resurface once again. In contrast, primary feelings are useful and help you move on. Push them away, and you will become sad, restless and fearful. Moreover, emotions that are oppressed tend to find an alternative way to express themselves. In the process of saying yes and figuring out what is yours, emotions will emerge. The trick is to get started with the right emotion and theme.

The first step is allowing the emotions. Instead of running away from them, you welcome them. When dealing with your emotions, you need to explore whether it concerns primary or secondary emotions. Should you find that you’re stuck, chasing your tail with secondary emotions, invite yourself to move towards the primary emotions. Question yourself. You can for example ask: “Is this in essence what it’s about? Is this the real sore-point or is there an even deeper layer beneath? What emotions are difficult for me to deal with? What emotions do I want to avoid because they can be too painful? What would I rather not think about? Why does that hurt so much?” Literally ask yourself these questions, and then feel how your body responds. Then go inside your body to the place that responds. So, where your focus is directed to. If desired, direct your breathing to the emotion at the sore-point. Then wait and listen to your body. See what feelings and insights emerge and say yes inwardly.

8.5  Losing a small piece of yourself

Every person gets lumps, bumps and bruises throughout life. And as severe as it might sound, every individual is traumatised in a certain way. This doesn’t mean you can’t lead a healthy and happy life. But you can sometimes have the feeling you’ve lost a small piece of yourself. The feeling of being incomplete can rear its head during the process of descending. If you’re able to rediscover that missing part of yourself, you’ll stand extra firmly in the fountain.

Traumas are relative. What is for one person a trauma, is for someone else a challenging topic, a complicated situation, suffering, bad and annoying, regretful, to a shoulder shrugging: “It is how it is”. When facing a situation that could possibly cause a trauma, your reaction consists of a combination of fight, flight or freeze behaviours. So fighting, in whatever way, fleeing such as running away or avoiding, or freezing meaning you are temporarily paralysed. In a traumatic situation, primary emotions emerge sooner or later. You’ll often notice that you’ll start to shiver or shake after a traumatic experience. This is a very healthy physical reaction. By shaking, the body ensure that the trauma doesn’t lock itself into your body, meaning it will be less able to manifest later.

Your survival component

The moment the trauma occurs, the following happens (very simplified): your survival component is activated and regulates you being able to survive the situation in a practical sense. The survival component does what it deems necessary to get through the situation.
Now imagine that the event was intense. The primary emotions seem to completely flood you. From a child’s perspective, a situation can quickly be life threatening. As child, you are completely dependent on your parents or carers for survival. Which is why a child experiences a fear of death. If a child is small, he doesn’t have the resources that become available later when growing up. Moreover, as a child you have no idea of a world around you, hopefully also keeping an eye on things.

Your trauma component or split-off component

Under guidance of the survival component, the primary emotions experienced as too violent are bundled into a trauma. In addition to the primary emotions, capacities and skills are also included in this, such as your ability to be adventurous, to be open, to be relaxed, to feel your body and your ability to trust others. Your survival component ensures that this trauma is separated from you. You have lost a piece of yourself. Which is why the trauma component is also called your split-off component.

Because of this split-off, you briefly don’t have to deal with side issues expertly hidden away in the trauma. Indeed, at the moment of survival you can’t deal with primary emotions, they’re too overwhelming. You haven’t got the time and space to do so. The attention is solely focused on surviving the situation. According to the survival component, the rest must give way.
The trauma component is split off and parked outside of yourself. You no longer have access to it, especially as a small child. The access to this split-off component is made difficult by the survival component. The survival component is happy that the primary emotions and certain abilities are hidden away. After all, the purpose of the survival component is to survive.

Your healthy component

The survival component and trauma component are therefore involved in the event of the trauma. Additionally, a healthy component remains active in the body. The healthy component is unaffected by the trauma. It will continue to develop undamaged in to an even more mature version of yourself. This is helpful in processing the trauma.

THE HEALTHY COMPONENT WILL CONTINUE TO DEVELOP UNDAMAGED IN TO AN EVEN MORE MATURE VERSION OF YOURSELF.

After the traumatic event

The survival component maintains the goal of protecting you from that horrible event and the accompanying feelings you had at the time. After the situation, something else happens though. The purpose of the survival component after surviving, is to prevent a repetition of anything that resembles the traumatic event. Any event that even hints at bringing about memories of the original traumatic event will take the survival component out of hibernation. it will come into immediate action to eliminate anything that resembles the situation and feelings of that time. Now, however, initiated by a current situation, which according to the survival component is reminiscent of the original traumatic experience. It’s important to start recognising what triggers the survival component to come into action each time. Rejection, for example, too much intimacy or fear of being left.

What’s difficult, is that your survival component, in terms of development and responsiveness, pretty much came to a standstill at the age when the trauma manifested itself. In the meantime, you’ve grown up and have access to all kinds of resources that you didn’t have as small child. You’ve now become independent, no longer dependent on your parents or carers for survival and even possibly live alone. You’ve undoubtedly also developed all kinds of qualities that help you to place and deal with a situation. The survival component barely recognises this. A trauma when you’re older is thus generally speaking better to handle than at a young age.

The moment something occurs that reminds you deep inside of the trauma of the past, the survival component takes control again. The hibernation is over and the survival component kicks in instead of your healthy component and the older and wiser version of yourself. This is why your response now is practically identical to how you responded in the original situation. After all, the survival component has not grown with you still intends to protect you against everything linked to the situation in the past.

The survival component wants to stay away from the primary feelings that arose at the time of the trauma and are usually stored in the trauma component that has been split off. The survival component has an unimaginable number of tactics for this, that differ from person to person. For example, not being in touch with your body, meaning you’re a wandering head and rationalise feelings. You can also be swept away by secondary emotions, that can make you feel you’re doing well (and yes, you’re facing your feelings, but unfortunately not the right ones). Often, the environment also says to you: “How clever of you to be able to be so in touch with your feelings”. Putting you thus on the wrong track; it should be about feeling the primary emotions.

Healing by retrieving the split-off trauma component

The protection mechanisms mentioned above, led by your survival component, arise from powerlessness and never from unwillingness. The situation is too intense. You do after all have an advanced sense of what is going to happen to you, if you let in your primary emotions. The coast is sometimes not yet clear to tackle the primary feelings you experience as a result of the traumatic event.

The moment may come that your healthy component is strong enough to bring back the split-off trauma. You’ll reintegrate the split-off trauma component into yourself. You feel whole and complete once again. Although you weren’t aware of the trauma component being split off, you experienced an emptiness deep inside. You felt that something very personal, something that belonged to you, was missing. You have rediscovered that piece of yourself that you’d lost. Although this process of retrieval is not simple and undoubtedly asks a lot of you, experience is that it delivers a lot of good. Primary emotions are after all brief and intense, but they cleanse. In a safe environment, knowing that you have all kinds of resources available and even maybe the support of a professional to guide you, the process will probably be very productive for you. The choice to not face this is also perfectly fine, it simply has different consequences.

It’s important to be gentle with yourself. Sometimes you’ll curse your survival component because it hampers your lust for life and development. Understand that the survival component, and accompanying behaviours, have been of vital importance. In retrospect, you may possibly be ashamed of your reaction, and how you got stuck in your trauma. Be kind to yourself and realise that you could do nothing else at that time. The behaviour you displayed then was the best choice at that moment. You couldn’t have behaved differently, otherwise you would have. You’re also invited to look at the younger version of yourself with kindness. Be proud of yourself that you have (had) the strength to at some point face the trauma and even to grow beyond it.
Strange as it may sound, it’s fitting to show gratitude towards your survival component. Without the activated survival component at the time, you may have been literally or figuratively broken.

YOU HAVE REDISCOVERED THAT PIECE OF YOURSELF THAT YOU’D LOST.

Surpassing your survival component demands a lot from you. Engaging with your primary emotions can be intense and confrontational. You probably feel vulnerable. Realise that shame, nerves and fear are part of life. If you manage to reintegrate the trauma component with the primary emotions and hidden away capabilities, the survival component will be less likely to gain the upper-hand. The trigger that alerts and awakens the survival component will always remain a vulnerable point for you. The healthy component, together with the retrieved trauma component, can slowly convince the survival component that it could loosen the reins a little.

Letting go of fear

In the process of saying yes to your primary emotions, you also usually come into contact with your fears. The basic idea is that your fear will become less, and probably even disappear, once you highlight it. You routinely have advance expectations about fear which usually don’t come true. Your fear is now no longer needed, only you usually don’t believe this yourself. This fear used to be extremely necessary and logical. And although your first tendency is generally speaking to curse the fear, don’t forget that fear can be extremely useful. Fears serve as warning signs to protect you.

When fear rears its head, there’s no use in fighting it. Don’t avoid your fear. Don’t go into denial but say yes to the fear. To the actual fear and to its presence. Because you want to move towards accepting the fear. Only then do you gain strength from within. You build yourself up. If you don’t face or allow your fear in, you’ll remain in the survival mode. In extreme cases this can be useful, but generally speaking it isn’t necessary.

What you can do, is partially 'breathe away' your fear to an acceptable level. Keep breathing until the fear no longer controls you at all. This will calm you. Keep your eyes open while doing this. Everything is less scary with your eyes open than with your eyes closed. You will look differently at the (scary) inner images and you will lose contact with the here and now. Certainly in the beginning, don’t be under the illusion that you can breathe away the fear completely. To a tolerable level is good enough.

Your challenge is to welcome and accept the fear. Which is saying yes to the fear. If you accept your fear, you also generally accept the old traumatic situation as well. Accepting and acknowledging that this is what has happened and that it’s part of your destiny. This is saying yes to the past. Which does most people good.

Nowadays, a lot of anti-depressants are prescribed. In some cases, I have my reservations. Anti-depressants are great for getting through certain periods. They tackle the symptoms. And I also see that the pills partially block the route to the real cause. Doing a constellation with someone who uses anti-depressants proves to be much less effective. Because of the anti-depressants, it’s questionable whether you sufficiently reach the primary emotions that cleanse and heal you inside. Because only then do you really tackle the root of the problem. Other techniques, like for example EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), where the consequences of traumatic situations can be reduced, can also help. We need to consider what is wise and most supportive for an enjoyable life on an individual level.

9   Descending

I TAKE IT FOR THE FULL PRICE IT’S COST YOU AND ME

9.1  Letting our light shine

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves:
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God?
You playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

This beautiful quote about taking responsibility for your life and destiny is by Marianne Williamson from her book, A Return to Love , 1996.

In short, we accept what is ours and belongs to us. We let go of what isn’t ours. How courageous is that.
I’ll leave the concept of God down to personal interpretation.

By standing in your place in the fountain you increase the chance of becoming an even better version of yourself. Imagine what more you can accomplish with all that extra energy you’re possibly losing by ascending or being needy. What light do you want to let shine? Do you dare stand in the spotlight? Standing in the right place in the fountain will undoubtedly help you with this.

There are a number of aspects of descending that you need to navigate through. Unfortunately, there’s no standard recipe I know of. In the last chapter, four general areas of attention were defined. Areas you encounter when you want to descend, regardless of the method of ascending:

THERE ARE A NUMBER OF ASPECTS OF DESCENDING THAT YOU NEED TO NAVIGATE THROUGH.

Putting your parents above you in the fountain

Letting go of what is someone else’s and facing what is yours

Saying yes to what is there

Dealing with your own primary emotions

In the next section you will find a number of extra starting points for descending, should you be ascended via one of the three different methods.

9.2  Descending after method one of ascending, taking over undue responsibility

People often say: “I want to take responsibility for my own life, but at the moment I can’t as I have to keep everything up and running. If nobody else does it, then I have to”. Or: “I’m strong, so I can deal with it – I’m used to it”.
Maybe it’s true, maybe not. Courage is needed to make something snap. Which can actually be more productive than simply endlessly rescuing - which may make things fine again momentarily but doesn’t actually change anything in the long run. You keep running and everyone around you assumes that everything is doable. After all, you always manage to pretty much solve everything, right? If you’re lucky, you may get a thank you.

Avoiding the anger and disappointment of other people

I also hear people say they’re frightened others will be angry or disappointed if they stop taking over certain tasks, without actually having verified or experienced this themselves. Instead of being fearful of the other person’s reaction, it’s useful to look at your own feelings. Are you secretly angry inside that you have to take on the burden yet again? That you once again must be the person responsible for finding a solution? Do you dare approach your own frustration? Beneath your (withheld) anger, is there not a disappointment that the roles have been reversed and that you really need the other person, while they aren’t there for you enough?

Subsequently, it’s easier for you to avoid the other person’s feared anger, disappointment and disapproval, than to feel that you yourself have missed out on things. This pain may be intense. It’s more straightforward to fall back into your old pattern of ascending, allowing you to keep feeling useful and needed, but meaning you don’t take good care of yourself. Do you dare to accept guilt by taking the risk of other people being angry or disappointed in you? The question is – who’s anger and disappointment is it actually?

Accepting your guilt

You probably have to learn to accept your guilt. Accepting guilt is taking responsibility for your life. This means that you’ll possibly disappoint, hurt or sadden people as a result of choosing yourself. Accepting guilt also includes the prospect of allowing things to go well for yourself, while others dear to you don’t do so well. This is hard to bear. You probably feel guilty. And it’s precisely this guilt that you need to endure. It makes you grow up and plants you firmly with two feet on the ground. This guilt gives strength.

WHO DO YOU REALLY HELP BY HELPING?

When do you truly help someone?

When do you truly help someone? Particularly when you’ve cared for a parent as a child, this pattern will affect you in your relationships, friendships and work. Being there for other people has become second nature to you, meaning you push yourself into last place. Needy and/or devious people are able to tap into your feelings, getting you to blindly take on things that aren’t actually yours to deal with. It gives you a feeling of importance, of doing something good. Which there’s nothing wrong with. The question though is whether you’re really helping others and the common cause, or whether you’re sustaining a system that disempowers everyone. If you’re truly honest, what is your motivation? Who do you really help by helping?

Setting boundaries doesn’t have to mean disconnecting

Needy parents unconsciously claim what they have lacked from their children. It’s impossible for children to resist this. As an adult, you’re able to make a different choice. But this may appear as if you’re shutting yourself off. Setting boundaries however is possible to do while staying connected. You can allow someone a generous place in your heart, while maintaining distance from him or her because this is better for you for a particular reason. Setting boundaries is an essential way of protecting yourself. It’s also a way of taking responsibility for your own life. You continue to give the other person their rightful place. You receive what is there and accept what is not.

It is, and remains an art to leave someone their destiny, without being dragged into it. Letting go of things is intense. In the short-term there’s often little to be gained. Big gains usually only happen long-term. You need to tolerate the frustration and doubts about whether it’s okay to let go. And you need perseverance, because you’ll undoubtedly stumble, falling back into your old, stubborn pattern. It often takes a while before the people around you realise that you really aren’t going to fall into the trap of ascending. They may even start to consciously manipulate you or use emotional blackmail, hoping you’ll fall back into your old pattern. After all, it’s handy for them if you do.
Leaving someone their destiny means not offering help but can also mean that your help may not be accepted, or even rejected, by a loved one. For someone who has the tendency to ascend via method one, this is extremely difficult. You see the other person in chaos and are powerless. You must bear the guilt of doing well while the other person isn’t.

Parents who become needy due to old age

In return for the many good things they have received as children, people often take (informal) care of their parents. This can be wonderful, and systemically speaking not a problem, if you do it from your tray in the fountain.
You now organise your parents’ practical affairs, take care of them moving home, you may even help them with their medical or physical care. This makes it easy to start standing above them in the fountain. Continue to see yourself as the child, and your parents as the grown-ups. Be grateful for all the good they have given you. Allow them to retain their worth. Let them make their own choices and bear responsibility for their own life. Yes, you can guide them in their decisions, but allow them to make their own decisions for as long as possible.
It’s important to understand that a new system always goes ahead of the system of origin. So, if you have to choose between the welfare of your own family with children, they will always have priority over the system of origin.

Compassion instead of pity

If you have ascended via method one, you naturally have the tendency to help and support people. It becomes you. Make sure you maintain this approach and act from your own place and based on the appropriate motivation: compassion instead of pity. Should you not do this, you will make the other person small, take away his or her worth and destiny.
You can only start giving once you have received. When you receive because you’re standing in your place in the fountain, you have a source that constantly feeds you - until you yourself have something to give. The most beautiful thing you can give another person, is taking good care of yourself.

9.3  Descending after method two of ascending, judging and disconnecting

The moment you feel you’ve been hard done by and are not being seen or heard, you become full of reproach. You make judgements about what has happened and those involved. There’s often an inability on both sides to get beyond bad habits. Perhaps you think that a parent isn’t good enough for you, and if so, there’s a major chance you’ll eventually break the connection, in any case inwardly. This doesn’t mean you have no day-to-day contact.

Converting ‘It’s not (good) enough’ into constructive behaviour

Circumstances (your destiny) are why you may have sustained structural shortfalls in the form of attention, care, love and safety. Meanwhile, deep inside you feel unfulfilled, dissatisfied and empty. These needs express themselves somewhere between two poles:

You retreat and become passive

You become demanding and go in search elsewhere of what you’ve missed out on

YOU SAY, I’LL DO IT MYSELF AND I CAN DO IT ALONE . THIS ATTITUDE MAY PROTECT YOU TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, BUT IT ALSO PUTS YOU ON STAND-BY.

Pole one: You retreat and become passive

You’ve lost faith that the people who are important to you can give you what you need. Somewhere, the conviction has taken hold that others do not want you. You have waited and hoped in vain. Nothing came your way, or what did come was in your eyes not good enough. This makes you angry, cold and distant. In response, you start to live according to the motto that you need nothing or nobody to fulfil your longings. You say “I’ll do it myself” and “I can do it alone”. This attitude may protect you to a certain extent, but it also puts you on stand-by. And in the meantime, you forget that you only truly sense who you are as a person in relation to the people around you.

Before deciding you don’t need anyone, you’ve probably made attempts to ask for what you need. You think you’ve been clear, and that what you need is logical. This turns out to be a disappointment. You often disguise your needs and ask indirectly. Secretly you hope that the other person picks up on this. If they don’t, you feel disappointed. Disappointed because you don’t get what you so long for, but also because you’re surprised that someone doesn’t sense what you need. You may even play the offended bystander: “Why does nobody understand me, when I can understand them?”
You feel that what’s offered to you is not good enough. And in all likelihood, you express this too, although probably not openly and to the appropriate person. Because you don’t get what you so long for, you feel rejected. You don’t feel acknowledged in something that’s essential and real to you. This hurts. You may possibly stop reaching out, because if you’ve got to ask, you’d rather not have it anyway.

To get over this quiet resentment, you have to face your open anger. If you face your anger, you’ll be able to move towards a deeper level. There, among other things, you’ll encounter your primary pain, your loneliness and the feeling of rejection. A path you’ve also got to explore is acknowledging your need for contact. After all, you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t need connection.
The trick is to make space for your need to connect. Connecting and limiting together form a duality. Saying yes to both sides ensures that something new can emerge instead of patterns repeating themselves. You’re already very familiar with the limiting side. Be constructive and tackle the other side of this duality. You also need to learn that expressing what you need doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get it. Dealing with uncertainty is an integral part of life.

Pole two: you become demanding and go in search elsewhere of what you’ve missed out on

The things you have missed out on can also manifest themselves in the belief that you’re entitled to receive more than you have received. You display forceful, complaining behaviour towards those around you. The problem is that you’re at loggerheads with one of the systemic laws. You cannot demand anything from your parents and everyone above you in the fountain, only accept what there is. Of course, you can ask, but it remains a request and can be followed by no (otherwise it’s an order). You’re also always able to give feedback if you think that the balance between giving and receiving has been lost. Likewise, it’s advisable to make your expectations explicit.

Because you feel like you’ve missed out, you will try and acquire (or even force) these things from your partner for example, your children or your employer. No matter how brutal it sounds, you feel you’ve the right elsewhere to what you missed out on. Of course, it makes you stronger if you can receive elsewhere. But in essence however, you remain insatiable, because the deficit can’t be filled in this way. Logical, because your destiny is challenging, and you’ve been ascended in the fountain from a young age. The solution is to work away your deficit by descending in the fountain.

The solution is both simple and complex. You leave what belongs to your parents with them and face what is yours. You accept your deficits and sadness. Additionally, you let go of your claim on your parents. After all, you can’t demand from your parents, only accept what is there. By demanding more, you are saying that it wasn’t good enough – a judgement that makes you ascend. And means that things will go badly for you. Objectively speaking, it may be true that you were neglected. That is your destiny, and nobody else’s. If you face your own destiny instead of being angry with the world, strength and space will always emerge eventually. This is a general law.

By facing your own destiny, you can grow beyond your neediness and the claiming behaviour you express towards those around you. This demands a lot from you. Should you not be successful, you’ll probably take on a tragic, sad appearance.

Don’t forget that you’re allowed to be angry about the fact that your parents, in your eyes, didn’t give you enough and have wronged you. Just don’t stay wallowing in that anger. Move on towards your own primary pain: your jealousy, your sense of loss, rejection and loneliness. After all, you haven’t the right to claim more from your parents. Some people however are so trapped in the feeling of having been wronged that they think they have the right to have nothing done to them. Time and time again, they face disappointment. If this happens to you, then you’ve landed in a difficult vicious circle.

I’d rather things go badly for me than make the move towards you

Staying angry means that the stress stays too. At the same time, you say inwardly: I’d rather hold on to resentment and bitterness, than feel how much I have missed you. If you don’t want to descend in the fountain, you have the attitude of: I’d rather allow things to go badly for myself than take responsibility for my own life. To turn this around, you need to be prepared to accept your parents and your destiny as they are.

WOULD YOU RATHER REMAIN ANGRY OR FACE YOUR DESTINY?

The question is whether you want to grow up, or whether staying angry is easier than taking responsibility for your own life. Again, a side-note is appropriate here: not being able to move towards your parents is always impotence and never unwillingness. The pain is still too overwhelming. At the same time, you live with the illusion you can build a satisfying life on your own, should you reject your parents. Reject them, and you also reject yourself. Accepting them is the only path I know to authentic, inner peace.

Do you feel superior?

Do you regularly think: I know better than those idiots, bunch of losers? Do you make yourself too large? Where do you get the right to judge? Can you be modest and see that you’re essentially no different to most people? In other words, how can you make sure that you’re humble enough to accept that you’re no different to everyone else, with all the good, and the bad, this entails. Or as written in the bible: you see the splinter in someone else’s eye, but not the plank in your own eye. Do you have the guts to subject yourself to an honest inspection, or do you fall into the category of the pot calling the kettle black ?

Being empathetic and demonstrating understanding for someone similar to you doesn’t take any effort. So, you don’t feel any better either. How often however do you listen with the intention of really understanding the other person, especially when you have an opinion about them? Do you only listen to what you want to hear and what confirms your view of the world? If you feel superior to the other person, you’re more likely to listen with the intention of disagreeing and getting your version of the story across. You’ll also be less likely to remember when the other person does something good. But should they do something bad, you’ll rarely forget. Can you see the other person in the current version too? Most people grow and develop. Do you stay clinging to your opinion about the previous version of that person? Are you capable of letting go of not letting go ? What makes this process extra complicated, is that a person doesn’t want to be unfaithful to themselves by contradicting themselves. This makes it difficult to change opinions or agree with the other, annoying, person. If you’ve been very vocal about something, and then subsequently change your opinion, you feel uncomfortable. You’re inconsistent. Or you’re afraid that others will think you’ve no backbone. This feels like a loss of face. And so you’d rather stubbornly cling on to your original opinion. Meaning though, that you stay ascended according to method two.

Staying connected

To decide whether you really want to descend, you have to work out whether you want to be big or strong. By ascending, you make yourself big. But the question is whether this also makes you strong. If you can make yourself small by descending to your place in the fountain, there’s a major chance that you’ll be strong and happy. Do you want to be big, or happy?

Not everyone in the world is as considerate of other people. Depending on their own world view and survival mechanism, people undoubtedly see things differently. And they’ll never agree. Who knows, they may be extremely loyal to their (family) system, they may have unconsciously installed patterns in themselves that they actually reject, or they’re entangled with someone who’s been excluded, meaning they feel totally innocent. You don’t know, and can’t be expected to know. Protecting yourself by setting down boundaries is sometimes absolutely necessary. Try however, to at least stay connected inwardly while setting boundaries. This doesn’t mean you have to start loving the other person. Although of course you love a parent, however stormy the skies. The sun, in the form of your love, shines through. That you can’t see or feel it, is another story.

Learn to see the other person as a human being, with all the blessings and flaws this brings. Connect with what is there, and what isn’t, with both the good and the not so good. Receive this. Accept everything. After all, it’s there. Shut it out, and it will come back to slap you in the face. So, face your destiny.

YOU MAY COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT YOU’VE BEEN HARD IN YOUR JUDGEMENT.

Perhaps, you’ll conclude that you’ve been harsh in your judgment. Maybe rightly so, maybe not. This doesn’t matter. You are the one to suffer most from ascending. Once descended, you can feel ashamed of your reaction. Be gentle on yourself. Making this judgement was one of your survival mechanisms.
Also, be gentle to the person you truly can’t understand. Some people have an extremely challenging destiny, and as a result have a hard time functioning in society, are looked down upon or scorned. Their unconscious love for their system is so big that it’s easier to suffer all the scorn and hatred from society, than to let go of the systemic task (possibly an entanglement with someone who’s excluded or an unconscious identification with the victims in the family system). There’s often an enormous strength and pit-bull mentality behind these people. This unconscious love that they feel for their systemic task (because of the entanglement) is contra-productive. After all, you can’t solve anything at the top of the fountain as it doesn’t belong to you. Only they don’t realise this. Their task and loyalty are so precious and valuable, that they accept things going badly in day-to-day life. Develop the ability to see this massive strength and love within these people, directed somewhere else. Whatever happens, they remain responsible for their own deeds (or lack of them). It may be necessary to protect yourself against such people, by setting clear boundaries. By focusing on what may be behind this, you can more easily remain connected inwardly with them.

Waiving your claim and letting go

To completely descend in the fountain, it’s essential you abandon your claim to make up for what you’ve missed and make your expectations come true. Only then do you truly let go. You speak out against the person you believe owes something to you: "You are free of me. I release my claims.’ With this statement, provided you speak sincerely and without resistance, you let go of the other person having to supplement and compensate for what you lacked. You let go of your complaints and expectations. This letting go demonstrates class. Although I talk here of expressing something outwardly, the essence is that your inner attitude aligns with this sentence. Only then do you truly let go of your claims.

Forgiving is systemically not helpful

In this context, the statement “I forgive you” is inappropriate. Because you become bigger than the other person and will once again rise above them despite the fact you were already doing so well at descending. During the process of descending you arrive at a critical point where you have to make the choice to forgive or let go. By forgiving, the whole world will think you’re wonderful, generous and noble. You’re appreciated by everyone. The secondary gains are therefore large. However, systemically, it doesn’t help you. To the contrary, you actually ascend, because you make yourself bigger than the other person. The other person already feels guilty because he’s made mistakes with you and now he’s also being forgiven. That is almost untenable for the recipient. The balance between giving and taking has totally gone. Meaning you stay connected with a person in an unpleasant way. Dare to choose the path of most resistance by letting go. Take what is yours and leave what belongs to the other person with them. You may wait to see if the other person takes his or her responsibility. That’s not up to you. Let go of this.

Letting go of false hope

False hope sometimes rears its head during the process of descending. Secretly, you continue to hope that one day, a miracle will happen. Somewhere you dream of a better past. That the other person will still see how nice, good or smart you are, that they’ll apologise, admit how stupid he or she has been and that they’ll make up for it. Dream on. You often believe – without saying it out loud – that you don’t have to take any action and that the other person should. After all, you’ve suffered so much already. Assume that this won’t happen and if it does, you’ve received an amazing gift. Do yourself a favour and give up on your false hope. By secretly cherishing this hope, you continue to think the other person’s not good enough. You keep your judgement, meaning you ascend.

The recognition that there was an imbalance is often all you need to wipe the slate clean. Although it’s best for you if you get that recognition from the other person, it’s more realistic to believe that there won’t be any confirmation of the imbalance coming your way. You can also give this recognition yourself without (self) pity and a claim to get even. You then put an end to the past and can focus on the future, without being constantly sucked backwards.

9.4  Descending after method three of ascending, unconscious identification

If you’re certain that your parents are standing firmly above you in the fountain and structurally, things aren’t going well for you, it may be useful to investigate whether there’s an unconscious identification. Included in structurally not going well is not being able to maintain relationships successfully, having recurring problems at work, having had at least one burn-out, misfortune with accidents and illness, or things always going wrong at the last moment. Every life encounters ups-and-downs. And this isn’t a concern. If the ups-and-downs have the upper hand and you know that you’ve positioned your parents above you, you can approach the option of exploring whether you’re entangled.

Descending is also refocusing the intense love you feel unconsciously for the family system and specific members of it. You unconsciously take on a task from someone above you in the fountain, but also maybe from an excluded younger brother or sister. Unconsciously, you’ll start to by and large lead the life of the person and feel what that person feels. It’s also possible that you’ve installed an internal saboteur within yourself, because through the entanglement, you don’t want things to go better for you than for the person excluded in the system. The deep love you feel for the person you’re identified with, cannot reach its destination. Because you’re going against the principles of the fountain. By accepting your place, the love and strength will be focused differently, hopefully now in a way that’s healthier for you.

Besides using a constellation to reveal an entanglement, you can also ask yourself the question: “What similarities can I see between my life and that of all those involved in my family system?” If there are striking parallels, you may be entangled. Being ascended through unconscious identification is difficult to figure out for yourself.

If it turns out that you’re entangled, you can dissolve the unconscious identification respectfully. A constellation is the most suitable way to do this. The person you were entangled with almost always maintains a big place in your heart. This person is also usually grateful to you for having seen him or her. You nearly always get his or her permission to go your own way. This can become visible in a constellation.

Out of the entanglement, and now?

Imagine that you’ve successfully stepped out of the entanglement. I regularly see people still finding it difficult to find their feet. If the pull of the entanglement that made you ascend is gone, it’s sometimes difficult to face your own destiny. Who are you? You may possibly display behaviour as if you were still trapped in the entanglement cage. By stepping out of the entanglement, the cage door opens. Sometimes the well-trodden path is easier and more familiar than the uncertainty of a new, unknown destination. Repeating the old pattern seems to be simpler than picking up the responsibility for your own life. And if you get out of the entanglement, you indeed become unfaithful to the family system. This is a high price to pay. Realising that you are no longer entangled can give you the strength to change patterns that first seemed impossible to positively and permanently change.

9.5  Signs and pitfalls

Order in terms of descending

The route you follow to descend and get to your own place in the fountain differs from person to person. If in doubt: firstly, put your mother above you and then your father. If you still feel that you’re not yet firmly rooted in your place in the child's tray, then you should start working on a possible entanglement.

Yo-yoing

If you’ve managed to descend, often something happens to suddenly pull you upwards again. Hopefully you’ve integrated the metaphor of the fountain into your life, so you can recognise the pull upwards. There will be times you can offer more resistance and times when you can’t. The yo-yo effect. You’re moving up and down between your tray in the fountain and the layer above. Which is a common phenomenon. It doesn’t matter if you ascend again, as long as you make sure you return to your place quickly. This is better for you and probably for those around you too.

ASCENDING AGAIN IS NOT BAD, AS LONG AS YOU MAKE SURE YOU RETURN TO YOUR PLACE QUICKLY. THIS IS BETTER FOR YOU AND PROBABLY FOR THOSE AROUND YOU TOO.

The pull from above to care for someone in daily life will probably not decrease. Certain people will also continue to annoy you. The triggers for you to ascend haven’t disappeared just because you’ve managed to get to your place in the fountain. The pull is present, only you’ve now learned to deal with it, meaning you either stay in your own place or are able to return quickly.

You may consider yourself done with a certain pattern and dynamic. Yet later, that very same theme rears its head in another form. This isn’t unusual. You’re not back to square one. If you understand the essence of the principles of descending, then you can find a response to this (subsequent) theme more quickly.

You always have three options

If you don’t like something in your life, then you always have three options in terms of what to do:

Change it

Love it

Stop it

If you find yourself in a situation you’d rather not be in, but that falls under your responsibilities for your own life, your first option is: change it. What can you influence and what not? What possibilities are there to change the situation in a direction that will make you happy? To do this, you do need to accept your guilt.

Check you’ve not simply deployed yet more of the same behaviour with the change it option. Imagine that your garden is full of weeds, and you want to get rid of them. You can start digging, to get rid of the weeds. But after a while, the same weeds regrow again. You’ve probably not dug out all the roots. So, with the best of intentions, you start to dig again. And this repeats itself over and over again. And in the meantime, you feel like you’ve invested endless effort and worked yourself to the bone. Which you have. You’ve also fallen into a trap. You’ve been through the same process multiple times and in essence, nothing has changed. It would be better to deploy alternative behaviour. Test and do something new. In this case for example, by using pesticides. If this doesn’t get you anywhere either, then you start looking for the next solution, using plants for instance that will overrun the weeds. You can also pave your garden entirely. Put a list together of how you can tackle it.

If you don’t want any weeds in your garden and have tried everything to get rid of them, you could apply the love it option. Try and find a way to start appreciating the weeds. Although most people don’t want weeds in their garden, they can actually provide us with some beautiful foliage and flowers. Perhaps you’ll be able to start loving them after all.

If the love it option doesn’t work, then you’ve one option left: stop it. If you haven’t managed to love the weeds, you could eventually move to a new house. Get out in the broadest sense of the word: leave, separate, divorce, stop treatment, find another job etc.

No influence

Sometimes you have no influence at all on a situation. The options change it, love it or stop it just don’t apply. For example, because you have to flee from the violence of war, you’re a terminally ill patient or you’re in prison. You’re no longer in control. If you truly can’t resolve something, then it’s no longer a problem but a given fact. So stop wrestling with it. All you can do is surrender to it and let go. With problems that can be overseen, you can, if you wish, sigh: ‘Yes, this is just part of my destiny. It’s frustrating and I don’t like it, but this is how it is.’ In difficult circumstances, the trick is to get to your primary feelings and allow them in. And where necessary to deal with your grief.

Descending and assertiveness

During assertiveness courses you learn to set boundaries and say no. Very useful, because it takes a particular skill to do this with respect for the other person, while also keeping check on your own objectives. What is insufficiently addressed in such courses, I feel, is the process of saying yes in addition to saying no. Or in other words, not falling into the trap of disconnecting. There’s a major chance this will happen when you structurally say no.

Triggers that make you ascend and what-then scenarios

It’s useful to identify the triggers that make you spontaneously ascend. Is there a pattern to your ascending? Who and what do you react to? And what happens then? What’s the effect? Once you’ve identified the triggers that make you ascend, you can formulate what-then scenarios in terms of concrete behaviour:

Firstly, name the trigger and the effect

For example: my mother is always over-concerned about me. She lists reasons why I shouldn’t do something and how an alternative is much better. Tells me how dangerous something is and the risks it entails, plus how much it worries her. Effect: I will adjust my behaviour and stop doing things, because her fears are more difficult to deal with than dealing with my own disappointment about not doing certain things.

Afterwards, comes the what-then scenario

The moment she becomes over-concerned, I take a deep breath and say to myself: “These are her concerns, not mine. What is mine, is that I have a mother who suffers from anxiety, meaning that I can no longer share my anticipation and enthusiasm with her. This is frustrating and sometimes saddens me, as this makes me keep back certain things which makes me feel dishonest”. I allow these primary feelings to enter. I say to my mother that I see her concern, but that it’s still important for me to do this. When my mother lists all the reasons why it could go wrong or keeps telling me to be careful, I tell her that I’ve considered the risks and have taken the decision, regardless of what others think about it.

The what-then scenarios are the practical aspect of the descending process. A key point is that you let go of what’s not yours. And this is possible with the what-then scenarios, but don’t forget to get to work on your inner attitude and accept your guilt. You’re the only one responsible for your life, and an unavoidable part of this is being guilty. Something you must endure should you want to walk your own path.

10  Your Parents

YOU ARE THE ONLY ONES RIGHT FOR ME

10.1  Parents are a package deal

You’ve only been given one set of parents. Nobody can take over the systemic role of biological parents. You get them. No choice in the matter. Parents are a package deal. End of discussion. What you reject in them, you unconsciously install in yourself out of unconscious loyalty. How this pattern is expressed can vary, but in essence, the pattern remains the same.

Understand that you belong to your parents’ family system. Other people can also lovingly take on the role of father or mother besides your biological parents. These are extra fountains, from which you receive abundantly. Systemically speaking however, you’re at the mercy of the system of origin. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve known your parents or not. Your original biological family system has most influence on you in comparison to other systems you are also part of.

Accepting your own place in the fountain ensures that you also accept your place in day-to-day life more easily. In short, you do this by accepting your parents. You receive strengths and capabilities from your father and mother that help you take your place in life. Roughly speaking, you specifically receive the ability to connect from your mother and the strength to set boundaries from your father. This doesn’t mean though that you can’t take over any so-called feminine qualities from your father and any masculine ones from your mother. Acknowledge the duality. Both have their place.

The following sections address the different explicit things you receive from your father and from your mother.

10.2  Your mother

The movement towards your mother is the most healing movement I know of. Descending to your mother usually leads to wonderful, apparently unplanned, positive events in your life. I’d even sometimes go so far as to call them miracles, without raising false hope. In my experience, beautiful things happen when you’re able to accept your mother comprehensively as mother and allow her to have you as child. Deep inside, something heals meaning that the fountain will flow more smoothly.

Your mother represents life

However unreal it may sound, your mother represents life. How you relate to life is identical to how you’ve connected to your mother and how you view her deep inside. The inner place you give her appears to be a strong determinate of how you perceive life from deep within. The general law suggests that how far you ascend towards your mother is equal to the extent to which life rejects you. When you ascend, you experience restlessness, all kinds of knock-backs, difficult (personal) relationships, dissatisfaction and lots of things that just don’t seem to go right in daily life. Life often feels heavy. The positive spiral is created when you descend.
If you’re unable to connect with your mother, you’ll also have difficulty connecting to life and all that goes with it. Even if your mother has a challenging destiny, you can still connect to her. And yes, this will undoubtedly ask a lot of you. The good thing though, is that if you succeed, you will get strength that someone with a less challenging destiny rarely has.

HOW YOUR RELATE TO LIFE IS IDENTICAL TO HOW YOU’VE CONNECTED TO YOUR MOTHER.

Being able to connect to others and loved ones

Connecting is a complicated term. It’s the combination of giving and being able to receive, enabling you to create substantial yields. When you connect, enhancing patterns repeat themselves and continuity is established. Something every human being needs to a varying extent.

When you can connect to your mother, with the good and the bad, and accept her as she is, you’re able to deeply and wholeheartedly connect to another person. So also to a romantic partner. Through your inner connection with her, you’re able to give and receive love. Personally, I don’t believe in unconditional love between partners, but I do believe in it between parents and their children, except when parents are badly damaged.

If you’re still (insufficiently) able to accept your mother, then there’s a major chance you relate to your partner in the same way you relate to your mother. This makes it impossible to deeply connect to your partner. You don’t dare lean on your partner and find it difficult to receive. Or the alternative, you take and demand too much because you’re so needy.
A relationship in which both partners have learned to connect in moderation can, by the way, be satisfying and nourishing. From the outside anyway, relationships like this often appear to be loving and caring. The question though, is whether the connection is just as strong on the inside. Do you remember the general law that relationships can only be established if partners are able to receive from one another? You learn to receive by standing in your place in the fountain. And so do relationships like this can sometimes come under pressure, if one of the partners does learn to connect.

If you haven’t learned to receive from your parents when you were small, you can also learn to do this from other people. It’s sensible to then apply this technique to your mother (and your father), as not doing so would mean you’d still not be standing in your place. Nothing is as essential as the life source that’ll start flowing once you receive from your mother. Fail to tap from the source of your mother, and you’ll remain a watered-down version of yourself.

Some mothers are only able to pass on life, not care for you, protect you, give you warmth and offer you safety. Then this is what it is. You can still embrace life fully, through your inner attitude towards her. You’ve undoubtedly paid a hefty price for it – and your mother too. Let go of your claims for more. In nearly all cases, what they have given is enough – even more than enough. Recognise the powerlessness and don’t interpret it as unwillingness.

You get your femininity as a woman through your mother

A little girl gets her femininity from her mother. Of course, a woman also has masculinity (after all, she’s 50% her mother and 50% her father). The same goes for a man. By saying yes to her mother, a young girl accepts her femininity. You take what it’s like to be a woman from your mother. Through other women you can learn what femininity means.

Women who have (not yet) completely accepted their mother but have accepted their father (so placed him above you in the fountain), will generally speaking become seductive later. This can be confused with femininity. The two can go hand-in-hand, but not necessarily.

If a daughter has accepted her mother, you will see tenderness and femininity appearing in her face. This femininity has something adult and powerful about it. The childish girliness disappears from the face.

A group often stands before your mother's eyes

Some people feel less at ease in a group. They find groups intimidating and complicated. Groups give them headaches. This feeling of discomfort in a group, certainly in new, unfamiliar groups, goes beyond the healthy tension that’s normal should you have to do something in or in front of a group. Neither does it have anything to do with how shy you are.

You’re often able to recognise your mother in a group. In other words, the group often represents your mother. When faced with a group, you feel her eyes focused on you. Depending on your inner attitude towards her, the group affects you. Perhaps you see disapproving eyes, demanding eyes, judgemental eyes. Maybe even kind eyes, encouraging eyes, confidence-inspiring eyes or proud eyes…

When you’ve accepted your mother, groups will become less scary. Instead of seeing the group as one whole (as your mother), you’ll now see a group of individuals. Which includes, just like in normal social circles, people you like and don’t like, and people who care for you, or don’t. Presumably, in the process of maturing, you’ve found your own way of dealing with this. In short, if you’ve accepted your mother, you’ll feel much freer and more at ease when dealing with groups.

Allow your child a mother instead of a friend

A mother, and often the daughter too, will frequently say that they are each other’s best friends. Systemically this is messy. Allow your child a mother instead of a friend. Your child only has one mother – don’t deny them this. A child can make a vast number of friendships himself. But he only has one mother.

If as a mother, you feel the need to stand beside your child at their level by making friends with them (the mother descends to the child tray of her daughter), then you’re needy and almost certainly unable to occupy your own place. You’d rather be a child than a grown up. Don’t saddle your child with this. This is your pattern, not your child’s. If the child confirms that she has her mother as a friend, don’t believe her. The child is taking care of the mother. The effect, that the child no longer occupies her spot in the fountain and has ascended, is probably not perceived as problematic by the child. After all, a child’s love for the mother is immense.

Mother and mummy

Mothers are essential for your own well-being. How do you speak to her inwardly? And in day-to-day life? How do you speak about her? With some distance or with connection? Depending on your upbringing, you’ll be more accustomed to saying mummy, mother or mum. In essence this doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve connected inwardly, you respect her and allow her to be who she is. Of course, this also applies to how you address your father.

10.3  Your father

Where you learn to connect and thus accept life through your mother, through your father you receive the ability to set boundaries and accept the world.

Decisiveness and ambition versus the urge to prove yourself

The moment you reject your father, you have an extra need for people to see you. You want to be seen and heard, convince others that you are capable, worthy and can achieve your goals. Deep inside you want to be acknowledged for who you are, what you do and that you matter. To this end, you’ll often prove yourself socially.

THE MOMENT YOU REJECT YOUR FATHER YOU HAVE AN EXTRA NEED FOR PEOPLE TO SEE YOU. YOU GET A URGE TO PROVE YOURSELF

Chances are you achieve great goals, are successful and even celebrate major triumphs. Other people praising you makes you happy. What’s annoying though, is that all this praise and appreciation doesn’t sufficiently outweigh that feeling of one important person not seeing you enough. You continue to feel insecure and dissatisfied. In certain ways, you remain insatiable. One success upon another cannot sufficiently compensate for the emptiness.

The moment you manage to put your father above you in the fountain, you’ll notice that you possess decisiveness that no longer expresses itself in the need to prove yourself, but in ambition. Your motivation in terms of what you do, seems to have been miraculously transformed into ambition. Ambition because you find the goal worthwhile and it triggers and challenges you (each at their own level). You are ambitious, irrespective of what the world thinks and whether or not the result is broadly recognised and appreciated. This feels very different.

Of course, there will still be times when you still feel a need to prove yourself, even if you’re descended. Possibly, your decisiveness becomes more competitive after descending. Every individual, to a greater or lesser extent, has the need for acknowledgement, appreciation and success, even when in the right place in the fountain. This is completely normal.

YOU RECEIVE THE ABILITY TO CONNECT FROM YOUR MOTHER, AND THE ABILITY TO SET BOUNDARIES FROM YOUR FATHER.

Even if your father is unable to see you in daily life, yet you’re able to accept him as he is, lumps and bumps included, you’ll notice that your urge to prove yourself will transform into ambition. A sense of calm will come over you and you’ll be happy with what you’ve achieved.
As a result of you being able to place him above you in the fountain, your father will sometimes be able to see you. Cherish these moments instead of being dissatisfied that he can’t see you at other times. Say yes to what is there and receive it as a generous gift.

Acceptance of authority

When you find it difficult to place your father above you, this often discloses itself in conflicts with authority. You find it difficult to accept something imposed on you from above . You quickly go into resistance mode and become entailed in discussions with the authorities and those who represent them. In your private and working life you notice that you have little time for bosses, managers and everything that represents authority.
If you manage to descend in the fountain by occupying your place and putting your father above you, you’ll notice that the way you deal with authority suddenly becomes more supple.

Setting boundaries

Via your mother you receive the ability to connect, provided you’ve managed to connect with her. From there you also get the ability to allow enhancing patterns to repeat themselves, therefore creating continuity. This is extremely useful and generally speaking ensures a pleasant and enjoyable life. A too-strong connection is however unhealthy. If you’re not careful, a symbiosis or fusion arises in which you no longer know what’s yours or the other person’s. It seems wholeheartedly close or romantic with a partner, but I see that as something that’s not good for you. It’s essential to keep sensing yourself when you connect with something or someone. Otherwise you have too little protection against what’s coming towards you. You run the risk of becoming a bouncy, rubber ball. Furthermore, people around you seem to be easily able to etch all sorts of ideas and opinions onto you, and the question is whether these are actually good for you.

In order to be able to sustain yourself in the world it’s necessary you learn to set boundaries. Because every individual views the world based on his personal conscience, and lives according to his own truth, sooner or later discord and rivalry will rear its head about the division of space, resources, attention and time. Undoubtedly, others will have something you would like and vice versa. Sometimes, as a result, you’re unwillingly dragged along in a battle to get or keep your own place. You may have to defend yourself and be forced to fight or perhaps to flee. In addition to this kind of conflict, it’s also about unsafe and non-nurturing environments. Think relationships, friendships and jobs that don’t promote your well-being.
You also need strength to be able to accomplish something. But too much strength can degenerate into aggression. Aggression can bring about something good but can also destroy things. You need decisiveness to live in the world around you. A skill you receive chiefly from your father.

So being able to set boundaries is essential in life. Just like being able to connect. Together they form a duality. To allow things to go well for you, you have to say yes to both sides. Setting boundaries while also staying connected is tricky, but not impossible. Unfortunately, there’s no standard method for this. Only you can determine how you do it. Your way is not my way and vice-versa.

Fortunately, you can also learn the skills and attitudes related to both connecting and setting boundaries in later life through other people, if you’ve not succeeded in accepting your parents. This remains learned behaviour though (although it can actually feel real). The natural ability to connect and set boundaries is only available to you by placing your mother and father in the fountain above you.

Accepting the world and pushing boundaries

By accepting your father, you’re better able to set boundaries. Being able to do this means it’s also safe(r) to explore and maybe even push your boundaries. If you’re able to set boundaries, you can challenge your boundaries based on positive, rather than negative motivation. Which means you move towards pleasure instead of allowing yourself to be controlled by fear. In doing so, you make the world around you bigger. You broaden your horizon, literally and figuratively. This makes you better able to grow beyond your (doomed) destiny and move towards your destination.

You accept life via your mother. You say yes to what is there (and what isn’t). You are connected. This connection enables you to allow patterns to repeat themselves, safeguarding a certain continuity. Which brings stability. Based on this stability, you can explore the world. If not, you’re surviving instead of living.

By accepting both your father and your mother, you’re able to live in the world around you. Accepting life happens via your mother, accepting the world via your father. Understand the potential that’s released if you fully accept both parents.

You get your masculinity as man through your father

Fathers are important people in the lives of children. What young child doesn’t want to be able to nestle in the safe arms of his father? Boys learn how to be a man from their father, by putting their father above them in the fountain. You get your masculinity as a man through your father. When this happens, you’ll see more masculinity appear in the son's face.

If, as boy, you don’t manage to move inwardly towards your father, you’ll fall short as a son. In the case of divorced parents or single mothers, the mother often deeply disapproves of the father, or even despises him. If the son should want to move towards his father, he’ll be unfaithful to his mother. Which is a hefty price to pay for a child. The child could start turning against his father, a way of caring for his mother, making her feel happier. This is ascending using method one towards the mother, and towards the father using method two, disconnecting. At the same time, the son feels rejection of himself and his being a man at the moment the mother expresses negative feelings about the father, if he’s actually being talked about at all.

The mother is every child’s first love. Logical, as they’ve grown in her womb. Afterwards, a girl should pull towards her mother and the son towards the father. Of course, you also always remain connected to the other parent.

Girls explore their femininity through their father when they are small

It seems that women who’ve has a strong bond with their fathers when they were young have more self-confidence and experience less stress. Advantages that stay with them their entire life.

It’s beneficial for a young girl’s development if she can safely explore her femininity with her father. A young girl becomes curious about her body and femininity. She’ll parade her new pretty dress to her father and show how pretty she is. As father, you can help her here. You can reward and encourage her, set boundaries if she goes too far, make clear what is appropriate and not appropriate etc.
Fathers often find this scary. Particularly when girls enter adolescence and start to develop curves. A healthy father won’t want to experience any sexuality with his daughter. And so he’ll retreat in response to her femininity. The daughter doesn’t understand. It used to be fun, didn’t it, and rewarding to show off her femininity? And now the father’s pulling away. Subsequently, the daughter can develop the (unconscious) belief that demonstrating femininity is parred with the retreat of someone she loves with all her heart (her father). And so the daughter learns that femininity is something negative. The daughter blames herself for this: I must be doing something wrong, because it can’t be daddy’s fault. At first, the immense love of the child for the parent doesn’t allow for the idea that the father could perhaps do something clumsy. The child will blame herself. As father, it’s useful to realise that your reaction and what you do has major influence on your daughters and sons.

Absent fathers, great chance of need for spirituality

I’ve seen with many clients that there’s a real chance of developing a leaning towards spirituality if there’s an (inwardly) absent father. This makes you ascend in the fountain via method two: you make a judgement about your father and often disconnect. Because your father rejects you, you miss out on guidelines, something to hold onto through life. In that vacuum, you seem to have a need to get your framework from elsewhere. This trait may not reveal itself until later in life. With a young child, the pressure from the (peer) group and the desire to be no different to others are still too significant to allow a move in a spiritual direction.

10.4  When do children feel safe?

Your parents have had at least one child: you. Perhaps you’ve also passed on life or are going to. How do you allow things to go well for your child systemically?

As parent, stand in your place in the fountain so the child doesn’t ascend to take care of you

Put your relationship with the father or mother of the child above the relationship with the child

Accept that the child is allowed to love you and the other parent equally

Set boundaries

Don’t favour any of the children, but do acknowledge their position

As parent, stand in your place in the fountain so the child doesn’t ascend to take care of you

These general laws hopefully ensure a personal, inner motivation from you as parent to descend in the fountain if needed.

Put your relationship with the father or mother of the child above the relationship with the child

However strange it may seem, for me the relationship between the parents goes before that with the children. A child feels safe, protected and free when things are going well between the parents (divorced or not).
This is where the systemic world possibly comes under threat from the day-to-day practice. Of course, parents focus on their children. Particularly when the child is young, more time will be spent on taking care of the little one. This is unavoidable. After all, small children are completely dependent on their parents to survive. Systemically speaking, the relationship between you and the father/mother of your child existed before the child. This relationship deserves to be honoured and maintained. If the care of the child completely overrides your relationship with your partner, meaning you no longer fulfil your role as a partner, children will feel this (no matter how well you take care of them). Children can relax when they feel that their father and mother respect each other and have a good time together.

AS PARENT, STAND IN YOUR PLACE IN THE FOUNTAIN SO THE CHILD DOESN’T ASCEND TO TAKE CARE OF YOU.

Accept that the child is allowed to love you and the other parent equally

A child feels safe when allowed to love the father and mother equally. Particularly when the child is older, you can literally say: “You can love daddy just as much as you love me”. The father also says this: “You can love mummy as much as you love me”. You then add that it’s completely okay to go the other parent. If necessary, say to yourself: “If you going to the other parent hurts me, then this is mine and not yours”. If required add to this: “Leave what is mine with me”. By doing this, you give the child the space to love both parents equally and allow the love to flow freely.

When a parent speaks badly about the other parent, this hurts the child. Deep inside, the child feels part of himself being rejected. After all, the child is also part of the other parent. Not every parent is sufficiently aware of this. Or formulated more sharply: when you reject your child’s other parent, you also reject half of your child. And a child notices this, unconsciously.

Giving permission to love the other parent is not always easy if the relationship is problematic. If one parent is insufficiently respected by the other parent (or even rejected), the child can do nothing else but declare himself unconsciously in solidarity with the rejected parent. The child become unconsciously loyal to the rejected parent while also feeling personally rejected for who they are. The way it is expressed can be different, because if the child is not allowed by the mother to love the father, he’ll start talking like the mother. The same is true the other way around.

When parents don’t solve their conflicts, these conflicts end up with the children. Certainly if the children are older, it may turn into clashes between brothers and sisters. One child emphatically follows one parent while the other child expressly opposes this, out of loyalty to the other parent. Which child goes for which parent is difficult to guess. You can however assume that the loyalty, in nearly all cases, is unconsciously distributed evenly. Often making a conflict between brothers and sisters a reflection of the conflict between the parents.

Set boundaries

Children need clarity, a social structure and boundaries. Parents also need to be predictable for the children in their devotion and responses. This makes a child feel protected. Setting boundaries is vitally important for a child. Children naturally try to push the limits. Continuing until the boundary becomes clear. In most cases, it doesn’t matter where you set them. They want to feel a boundary. Until then, you’ll be tested. Generally speaking, this is a restless period for both the child and for you.

Children can orient themselves on the basis of boundaries. Meaning they can develop a conscience. They experience what is good and bad. Which allows their personal conscience to find a framework of reference. Children allowed everything don’t build a framework of reference, meaning they’re unable to find a safe place within the family. The child then lives in a vacuum without boundaries. Because the child never feels the counter of a good conscience (and therefore never gets to know the feeling that accompanies a bad conscience), he’ll not have a good conscience.
The natural process of exploring the two sides of the conscience produces resistance. This further develops a personality. It’s actually down to the parents to keep broadening the boundaries little by little. This allows the child in a relatively safe, but still challenging way, to explore the world, appropriate to his capacities and possibilities. Boundaries allow you to grow. Sometimes you’ll go over the edge.
Thanks to a well-developed conscience, the conscience’s balance organ will ensure balance and compensation. A child can only grow from guilt. If you want to remain innocent, then you will remain a child.

Don’t favour any of the children, but do acknowledge their position

Favoured children are disastrous for a family system. Every child has his or her unique place in the fountain where they’ll receive the greatest strength from the fountain. For example, if parents systematically and structurally favour the child in place three, that child can end up in position one. This place belongs to another child, the first child. As a result, all children are pushed from their place and thus automatically absorb less of the flow of the fountain. Of course, if a child does something special, you can certainly recognise this, but leave each child in his or her own place. If you are a favoured child and your environment pushes you out of your own place, then you can in any case inwardly give yourself and your siblings their place.
You can also give yourself another place. Imagine, you have place three, but you take care of the parents who need help while by default, your brother and sister take place one and two. You could develop a feeling of being to entitled to place one. This isn’t, and never will be, your place.

It’s quite natural, as a parent, that you may find it easier to get along with a particular child because you have more in common with each other in terms of personality and interests. This doesn’t matter, as long as you give every child their place, enough individual attention and appreciation of everyone for who they are.
One product of this is often conflict about inheritances. The marginalised children still want a settlement as compensation.

10.5  Complicated systemic situations

In this section we’ll explore a number of systemically complicated situations. Due to the complexity of the situations, the subjects deserve more attention and support than I want and can give here in the context of this book. This may cause some things to come across as controversial. The following statements are my vision. It’s my conclusion based on my experience and observations of clients. The invitation is to first of all absorb what is below without judgement, before deciding if your perspective on these situations could change or not. We’re talking about the following situations:

Broken contact between parent(s) and the child

Incest

Step-parenting/blended families

Suicide in the family

The question is why the parents or the child wanted to try to break the relationship. You may be able to break contact in daily life; but systemically you can never break contact, because you and your parents are part of the same family system. By breaking contact you will disconnect, making the systemic pulling power only greater. The connection is then turned into a tie.

If the child leaves, it’s usually because the child has a judgement about one of the parents. Unfortunately, systemically speaking, you do not have the right judge your parents. Moreover, it’s not up to you to interfere with what happens between your parents, for example. Or too put it more bluntly: it’s got nothing to do with you, it’s not your responsibility. You may not be your parents saviour, nor their judge. This will make you ascend. For example, you have an opinion about your father who’s cheating and to protect your mother, who may or may not stay with your father, you break contact with your father.
Sometimes, leaving is absolutely necessary. For example, if it’s not safe to stay around your parents, because of unstoppable aggression. In terms of your personal conscience, you may have a point. But to the family conscience, it doesn’t matter if you are morally justified or not. The systemic mechanisms then step in.
It’s healing for your own process to leave what is theirs with your parents. You face what is yours. You also need to find a way to give the parent you are struggling with his or her place above you in the fountain, if you want things to go well for yourself.

If your parents send you away, then unfortunately this is part of your destiny. You cannot do anything about the fact that your parents say no. What you can do though, is find a place for them in your heart (however difficult this may be).

Incest

Incest is, also systemically, a drama. First of all, a daughter loses her father (for this example, I am assuming a father-daughter incest, but every form of incest follows the same principles). The daughter gets a partner instead of a father and therefore loses her position as child. She is pulled into the tray above her. Besides the loss of her father, the daughter also loses the mother. The forced sexual act means that she occupies the mother’s place. Apart from the pain that incest brings with it, deep inside the daughter feels guilty towards the mother. Often the daughter doesn’t get access to these feelings. Anger towards the mother, who didn’t prevent it, usually dominates. Meaning that the daughter, as child, is no longer in her place in the fountain due to many reasons.

Incest involves a perpetrator-victim dynamic. The difficult thing about incest is to not only think in terms of perpetrators, but also consider the fact that the child has lost the father (and probably the mother too). Deep inside, the child loves the father with all her heart, despite everything, although this is something she can’t access with her rationale.

It strikes me, that children who have an incest history, usually don’t want to receive compliments about surviving the incest. Deep inside they often feel that they had a systemic task. This is usually out of love for the mother, who for one reason or another, was not in her place in the fountain.

What the father did to the child, he should never have done. It does unburden the child if the father acknowledges guilt and takes responsibility. And if possible, expresses verbally that the child is totally blameless. The perpetrator then has power available that can bring about something good. This usually doesn’t happen though. Often the perpetrator is not able. Sometimes, the guilt doesn’t allow this.

Healing for the daughter lies in the fact that she can see her father as a father again (at least inwardly). In most cases, the daughter wants nothing more than to accept the father as father again, but the pain and outrage (also from those around her) are too great. This makes it extra complicated to make the inner movement towards the father.

There’s often talk of a split-off trauma that must be taken back (see section 8.5 ). The daughter must leave full responsibility to her father and face her own pain and confusion. The daughter may sometimes think she has encouraged the father. Even if this was the case (a small child can sometimes encourage, without contemplating incest as effect), it’s always the father that carries responsibility. For a daughter, it’s sometimes easier to blame herself than blame her father. Her intense love for her father doesn’t allow it. The daughter prefers to think of herself: “I’m completely worthless, I seduced him”.
If the daughter can reclaim her split-off trauma component, this helps her to inwardly accept her father again. A constellation can be extremely helpful in this

Finally, something about perpetrators (from within or outside of the family). If a perpetrator is systemically excluded, he’ll be represented in the system later on. And thus incest patterns can be repeated generation upon generation. This is an unconscious identification. Someone from the later generation who’s entangled with an incest perpetrator can also exhibit other behaviour belonging to this person.

Step-parenting and blended families

In today’s society, there’s a pretty big chance you’re a child of divorced parents. This absolutely doesn’t have to be a problem. The next chapter, sections 11.4 and 11.5 , explains how parents can separate in a systemically responsible manner and arrange co-parenting so the fountain continues to flow.

Stepfathers and stepmothers can play a wonderful role in bringing up stepchildren. They are, and will never be, the real parents. The biological parents remain responsible, provided of course, they are still alive.
Former partners often find new life partners. Regularly it’s expected (unspoken and unconsciously) that the new partner will take on the role of father or mother of the children from the previous relationship. This is something that can never be expected of a partner. After all, he or she is not the child’s parent. The child has its biological partners as only true parents, regardless of what the stepfather or stepmother thinks of him or her.
If the new partner makes the conscious choice to take on the role of parent, then that is a great gift. Because a new partner doesn’t have to do this. If the step-parenting is forced in one way or another, a settlement will take place between the step-parent and the child. This can take on all kinds of forms, in which the child pays back what the stepparent has given and what actually should have come from the parent of the child. The parent of the child has taken too much from the stepfather, meaning that the child will unconsciously give extra to restore balance. The child compensates for what the biological parent cannot expect from the new partner.

Suicide in the family

Personally, suicide doesn’t shock me. What I see, is the immense systemic love that often hides beneath it. It’s also possible for suicide to emerge from a personal trauma.

It goes without saying that such a personal drama has impact, with all the incomprehension, impotence and disbelief that results from it. Also the questions that those who are left behind face - whether they were not enough and what they should have done differently. I believe that some people are too damaged or have such a challenging destiny that love, humanity and successes cannot find their way through to them.

In daily life, a huge setback or a depression can sometimes be the final straw to make someone step out of their lives. Personally, I believe that someone who does this also fulfils a task in the family system. You often follow in the footsteps of someone who’s been excluded. This unconscious task has made you ascend in the fountain. After all, you’re trying (unconsciously) to do something for the family system.

A FAMILY SYSTEM UNCONSCIOUSLY BEARS A LOT FOR EACH OTHER.

Someone who commits suicide usually does this from the dynamic I follow you. For example, you follow a member of your family system that has died or has committed suicide. This unconscious love is great and can concern both a loved one, and a person from the family system that’s excluded and with whom you’re unconsciously identified. Possibly, the dynamic things won’t be better for me than for you , plays a role. Suicide is then in their unconscious reasoning an excellent option to be equals. Another possible reason why someone commits suicide is because the system has an imbalance in giving and taking. The debt of another member of the family system is then compensated. A family system unconsciously bears a lot for each other.

11  Partners, relationships, divorce and co-parenting

I TAKE ALL THE GOOD WITH ME INTO THE FUTURE

11.1  A successful relationship

As child of your parents, you’ll grow up and probably become interested in love, lust and sex (in no particular order). With a bit of luck, you’ll find someone fantastic to share your life with. Perhaps a new generation will come forth out of your relationship. If it does, a new tray will automatically appear at the bottom of the fountain.

For a relationship to be successful, it’s essential that both partners are prepared to look at their own share and themes. Only then can something good come about. Should one of the partners not be prepared to face his or her share, then the relationship hasn’t got a chance. Unfortunately, love isn’t always enough, however unromantic that may sound. Insight into your own themes, patterns, pain and being connected to yourself are essential for a mature, stimulating relationship. Only then can you see the other person in their true light. Fail to do this, and you’re simply connecting with an illusion.

Relationships don’t always last a lifetime. Ending a relationship in a dignified manner is beneficial for the future course of your love life. Various systemic aspects influence whether a romantic relationship does or doesn’t succeed. I’m convinced that systemic invisibilities have a real effect on a relationship running smoothly. However, I don’t believe you necessarily have an ideal relationship if you’re able to tick off all these aspects. There’s more to it than this, including for example the combination of personalities, needs, values, etc.

Several systemic aspects are discussed below that can serve as preconditions for a healthy relationship.

Your partner unconsciously turns towards you when you face your own destiny

An invisible law in relationships is that partners turn away from each other, without even realising, when a partner doesn’t face his or her own destiny. The moment you find it simpler to look away, your partner will start concentrating on something or someone else and will inwardly turn away from you. On a day-to-day basis, your patience will run out. This changes acutely once your partner senses you’re facing your own destiny again. But in the meantime, you’ve probably used up all the brownie points in the relationship, meaning it will still come into serious jeopardy.
A side note: your partner will turn to you appropriately when in essence he’s (psychologically) healthy and systemically unburdened. This is contrary to turning towards each other as the result of a burdensome pattern, which gives rise to a less nourishing relationship.

If you don’t want to face your destiny, but would rather take responsibility for someone else’s, or solve the problems of the world, you fail to take responsibility for your own life. Consequently, your partner turns away from you at an unconscious level and in doing so, becomes alienated.

Place one and two in a relationship

Your partner stands next to you in the fountain. Partners can occupy place one or place two. One place is not better, bigger, more or less valuable than the other. Both partner positions are equal. It’s slightly similar to the order in the brother and sister tray. With brothers and sisters, your place is determined by seniority, but this doesn’t have any effect on the equality. With partners, determining position happens differently.

Place one takes care and defends the system to the outside world and is in service of place two. It also determines the framework in relation to the outside world (in consultation with place two). Place two organises the care and defence of the system internally and with this, the preconditions for joint survival.

Traditionally, you’d maybe assume that place one is for the man and place two for the woman. In ancient times, we are told, the man went out hunting and defended the territory. The woman took care of everything and protected the system internally. Simplistically translated to a few decades ago: the man went to work and took care of the money. The woman controlled the household and the children. But perhaps this isn’t as easy to interpret as it would appear.
With my own system of origin, my mother is in place one and my father in place two. And this, while my father worked and earned more. My mother was, among other things, part-time doctor and sat on various boards.

A system or fountain flows as it flows. It doesn’t matter which partner is in which place. The places can switch with each other, even within the same relationship, as long as both individuals maintain their strength.

And this is where it regularly goes wrong. Women in particular, who are independent in all kinds of areas, unconsciously end up in conflict with their partner because they both opt for place one. This doesn’t work. Often – after exploring which partner has been naturally assigned place one or two in this relationship – it turns out that the independent woman (or man) is actually better off in place two. Noteworthy, is that when both people are in their rightful place, they’re both able to access their strength and individuality even more.

It seems that extra stability, dignity and space to breathe in and out becomes available once they’re in their place. You immediately sense the flow between the two partners when each takes his own partner position.
Which place you have in a relationship can be determined via a mini-constellation.

Former partners often keep their place

Depending on your family system, former partners and anyone you’ve ever had sex with can continue to be part of the system. It differs per family system whether ex-partners continue to count. There is no general law to determine this.
Your next, new partner gets the place + one. So your current partner can have place three, ten, fifty or two hundred. Again, one place is not better or worse than the other. It’s true though, that a place at the beginning of the row brings with it a stronger bond.
Just consider, in terms of connection the first few relationships when you were young were, systemically at least, more intense than the higher numbers. The break-ups of relationships with a lower number are systemically more complex than those with place eighteen for instance. Systemically, there is less of a pulling force with higher numbers, because the systemic connection becomes slightly diminished with each subsequent relationship. This doesn’t mean that you won’t suffer in day-to-day life from the break-up of the relationship. Perhaps place nineteen is luckily your true love (in so far as true love exists). Systemically speaking however, this place does have less influence than earlier loves.

A systemic law is that everyone who is part of the family system has his or her own place. They belong.

Which possibly also includes your former lovers (depending on your family, as mentioned earlier). Sometimes a relationship is ended unkindly or unpleasantly. Your memories of the adventure are probably tainted. Imagine, this person (your ex) has place two with you. Meanwhile, you carry on with life and meet your next partner, who gets place three. This relationship produces a child. Because you internally exclude your ex and don’t give him or her place two in your life, there’s a big chance that the child born out of the next relationship will become unconsciously entangled with your ex from place two. Your child can subsequently express extreme anger with you, which you don’t understand - your child’s emotion is too intense for the situation. But what the child is expressing, is the anger taken over from the ex who was dismissed disrespectfully. Meanwhile, the child isn’t in his correct place in the fountain because of this entanglement. Which is why it’s essential you inwardly give your ex-partners the place they deserve.

RESPECT EVERYONE WHO HAS MADE SPACE FOR YOU, SPACE THAT ALLOWED YOU TO ARRIVE AT THIS PLACE.

It’s also important that your new partner allows your ex-part\-ner(s) their place. After all, if they hadn’t made space, there would have been no room for a/the new partner. The systemic principle of this is: respect everyone who’s made space for you, space that allowed you to arrive at this place. In addition, be grateful that former partners probably already started working on the less attractive aspects of your current partner

In-law jokes

Making jokes about your parents-in-law may seem innocent, but systemically it’s a sensitive area. When you joke about the mother of your girlfriend, for instance, your partner feels wounded deep inside. After all, it’s her mother. She feels rejection of a part of her. Although she probably won’t say this out loud and may even laugh along, it doesn’t benefit your relationship. Your partner feels unsafe with you at that moment (unconsciously).
Even if she makes the same jokes about her mother as you do: that’s okay, because she’s the one making them.
Remember that her parents have accomplished something astonishing. They’ve ensured that this beautiful person is your partner. Know your place!

You say yes to both your partner and your partner’s destiny

Don’t forget that in a relationship, you don’t only say yes to your partner, but also to his or her destiny. That destiny is inextricably linked to your partner. Without respect for the accompanying destiny, you don't respect your partner enough. And this also includes the parents. When you inwardly say no to your partner’s destiny, the relationship’s essentially over because you don’t fully say yes to the package deal (and vice versa too, if you only say yes to the destiny of the partner and not the actual partner).
To offer a little reassurance though: there more to your partner’s destiny than the parents alone. And it goes without saying that you may always give feedback and set boundaries if parents (in-law) intervene too much in your lives.

The moment children are born from your relationship, a new system is created. This new system always goes before the system of origin. So what to do when in doubt: choose for your new system. Then the fountain will keep flowing. A partner is not yet a new system. At what point systematically a new system is formed with childless couples, I daren’t say with certainty. As the relationship progresses, a constellation can identify which system has priority, so that the fountain(s) continue to flow smoothly. One thing is certain: a relationship in which the system of origin has constant priority has no chance at all.

Giving and receiving must eventually be in balance

In all relationships, except parent-child relationships, giving and receiving must eventually be in equilibrium should you want to feel satisfied. As a result, you have a balanced and nurturing relationship. It’s not a problem at all if you give or receive more than your partner for a while, as long as, in whatever way, you settle – get back what you have given. Being genuinely grateful can also be a settlement.

You give something to your partner. Your partner is able and wants to accept this from you because he or she loves you. Because your partner values you equally, they give back, with just that little bit more than he or she has received. Because you also can, and want to receive, you’re happy to accept this. This makes you feel guilty though, because you’ve received more than you’ve given, and so you’re triggered to start giving again, plus a bit more. And so it continues. Realising a huge turnover. The relationship blooms

THE TRICK IN A RELATIONSHIP IS TO SENSE WHAT THE OTHER PERSON CAN AND WANTS TO RECEIVE.

The trick in a relationship is to sense what the other person can and wants to receive. Perhaps one person wants to give more than the other is prepared to accept. If you then want to continue giving, while the other person doesn’t accept, your frustration is nourished. The moment you learn to better adapt, giving the other person what he’s able to receive, the relationship relaxes. If the situation of having lots to give but being unable to find a home for it lasts too long, I’d recommend exploring whether the balance will ever be restored, or whether you’re simply hoping in vain.

You may bump into an old flame and feel free to embark on a relationship. In many cases, starting up the love again is very easy. This is down to the fact that you’ve already built up a huge turnover of giving and receiving in the past. You’ve accumulated a start capital for the new relationship. In the renewed relationship you continue to build upon this start capital of giving and receiving. There’s a chance you’ll be disappointed, because the exchange of giving and receiving first time around was also insufficient to allow the relationship to continue. The starting capital you now have can give a distorted picture of the situation and your love. It’s possible that the starting capital will be quickly demolished because the giving and receiving no longer flows. Maybe not. The saying old habits die hard doesn’t exist for nothing.

11.2  Finding and keeping a partner is tough

The dating world hasn’t only grown as a result of social media creating new possibilities, but also because people nowadays are less willing to settle for a partner that doesn’t quite tick all the boxes. Relationships aren’t always exchanged because you’re unhappy it seems, but because you want to be even happier. Personally, I see this as something positive, making me realise that the bar’s often set pretty high for a partner. On top of this, women are often extremely independent, making a possible partner question what more he or she can add and contribute.

In connection with yourself

A possible reason for relationships not to work, is that you need to be in connection with yourself to be able to connect to someone else. A failure to do so means you’ll be living side by side, rather than with each other.

There are all kinds of meditation techniques, moments of reflection and relaxation, to help you come into contact with yourself. Do this and you’ll have touched down within yourself, you’ll inhabit your body, be awake and present in the here and now. This helps maintain relationships. If you’re literally and figuratively absent, little will be achieved.
The annoying thing is that systemically speaking, this way of doing things doesn’t build a connection. You can only do this if you manage to connect to your biological parents, by putting them above you in the fountain. Only when you have accepted your parents, can you accept yourself fully and thus enter into connections

Even if you have not fully accepted your parents, you can still have worthwhile contacts and beneficial relationships. But from a systemic point of view, this is phoney contact. Back and forth, partners give each other good care, attention, sex and valuable support. Or they bundle their strengths. These contacts are often extremely loving and caring. But in essence however, they miss the connection. To the outside world they sometimes appear to be ideal partners, while deep inside there is little to no systemic connection. What’s missing is the inner connection to the parents, making the connection with the partner automatically weak(er). This is unconscious though, and as long as you (or your partner) do not suffer as a result, it’s not a problem.

For women who have difficulty finding a partner, there may be a deep-seated contempt for their father. This is not, however, a natural law. So, don’t draw your conclusions too quickly. It’s also possible that your mother feels contempt for her (ex-) partner(s), her father and men in general. If you then embark on a relationship with a man, you’re unfaithful to your mother. You follow your mother. Which is a high price to pay. You'd rather be loyal to your mother than to allow things to go well for you. Ask your mother inwardly: “Please view me kindly if I also love daddy. And other men”. Hopefully she can do this. If not, then it’s her concern and not yours. By accepting your own feeling of guilt, and at the same time placing your mother above you in the fountain, you’re able to create wonderful relationships with men.

In men you generally see less contempt, but instead a fear of women and all that’s feminine. A natural response is to want to dominate, cover up, ignore or push away the things you’re frightened of. Other possible responses are wanting to exercise control or literally and figuratively touch and retreat (sex is usually not a problem).

What level of intimacy can you handle?

Moving away from intimacy is a survival mechanism. Intimacy can be scary. Even a possible threat of intimacy can sometimes be frightening. From a distance or temporarily, intimacy can be overseen and desire for it grows. Up close though, the contact becomes tense again. At a distance, you have (easier) access to your needs for intimacy and you can feel your love for someone deeply and allow it to flow.

During too prolonged contact, your survival mechanism switch\-es on. This allows you to channel an abundance of intimacy, and bring the threat of too much intimacy back down to an acceptable level. For example, by leaving all options open and not (yet) making a choice, leaving yourself escape routes. Or you’ll make something big out of something very small, creating a reason for yourself to say that the person isn’t the one after all. Suggestions are enthusiastically made to spend a week together or to move in together, but every time it’s put off – because of work, busy-busy-busy, diary clashes or it’s just not the right time.
Ex-partners are often praised to the heavens. Systemically, it’s absolutely responsible to give your ex-partners their rightful place, so certainly do so. Thanks to the distance that’s arisen after the end of the relationship, the magnified issues that then played a role are no longer so threatening and the risk of too much intimacy has passed. This often smooths out current contact.

INTIMACY ALSO MEANS DARING TO SHOW YOUR VULNERABILITY.

Intimacy also means daring to show your vulnerability. Not everyone can deal with this tension and these feelings. Besides, everyone has a need for intimacy. The question is, to what extent this need is allowed in or indeed pushed away. This is seldom unwillingness, but nearly always powerlessness. The survival mechanism is probably doing its work. Which was once necessary. The question though, is whether this is still helpful now. For now, this mechanism remains overeager.

Ghost images

In order to be able to connect deeply, you must be in contact with yourself. Of course, you’ll continue to regularly feel clumsy, stupid and an idiot, but deep inside you sense that you’re okay. And so you feel connected with everything that’s yours. At that moment, you’re systemically ready for a relationship.

When embarking on relationships it’s extra important that you place your mother above you in the fountain. If you haven’t accepted your mother, you’ll unconsciously place your mother behind your partner. Meaning you’ll see a so-called ghost image. You believe that you’re only seeing your partner, when actually you are also seeing your mother at the same time. You think you’ve connected with your partner. But this is questionable. You connect with your partner to the same extent in which you’ve connected with your mother. The moment you place your mother above you in the fountain, you connect at a systemic level to your partner. Only then are you able to see your partner in their true light. The ghost image has disappeared.
This is the starting principle for both women and men: the extent to which you’ve connected with your mother determines the extent to which you’re connected in-depth with your partner.

If, as woman, you’re unable to accept your father, you unconsciously see your father in all men. Which can really work against you if you’re looking for a partner. Similarly, for maintaining relationships. After all, your father is standing behind every (potential) partner. And you’re seeing a ghost image, without even realising.
As man and (potential) partner, you’ll need to be quite someone special to challenge these unconscious preconceptions. How do make it clear that you’re not her father? Rationally, and using practical evidence, you may succeed in convincing her. But deep within, it’s much more difficult. After all, she’s the only person that can dismantle that ghost image (by accepting her father and putting him above her in the fountain).

THE EXTENT TO WHICH YOU’VE CONNECTED WITH YOUR MOTHER DETERMINES THE EXTENT TO WHICH YOU’RE CONNECTED IN-DEPTH WITH YOUR PARTNER.

This ghost image doesn’t have to be a problem in day-to-day contact with men. But in romantic relationships with men, it becomes a lot trickier. It can also make your life complicated when you have a boss above you at work that you don’t get on with so well. Just as you don’t accept your father above you in the fountain, you seldom accept a boss or other figures of authority, leading to conflict.

Men see their mother in all women if they’ve been unable to sufficiently place their mother above them in the fountain. If you’ve not put your mother above you in the fountain, it’s sometimes useful to remind yourself that it’s your partner in front of you and not your mother.

The same principle applies to homosexual and lesbian relationships. The extent to which you systematically connect with your partner can be traced back to your ability to make the connection with your mother.

When you get the feeling that someone’s emotion is disproportionate to a specific situation, you should ask yourself to what extent that person projects a ghost image onto you. Has this person unknowingly put his father or mother behind you, making him or her extra affected by something that in your eyes shouldn’t give rise to such a fierce response? Look critically at your own share before you consider whether a ghost image possibly plays a role in your encounter. Simply do what you can do from your side, without having any pity (ascending, method one) or to feel better than the other person (ascending, method two). Understand that only the other person can dismantle a ghost image

Should you now conclude that you’re (still) insufficiently able to put your parents above you in the fountain, this doesn’t mean you can’t have warm, genuine relationships. The systemic approach undoubtedly has influence on how you experience the relationship. But in addition, everyone looks for something different in a relationship. If you can find this in each other, then you’re on the right path.

I believe, from a systemic perspective, that you only have a good relationship when you and your partner are equally able to connect. If one is better able to connect than the other, then there’s imbalanced growth. The one partner feels short changed, while the other has the feeling of being flooded and overwhelmed.

In the past, I wasn’t as good at connecting. Yet I still had enjoyable relationships. Since then, I’ve developed further and arrived at my place in the fountain. Because of this, my relationships have deepened and become even better. Am I now happier than I was then? I was happy then too, but in a different way. It’s like climbing a mountain. The higher you get, the better the view. This doesn’t mean that the view you had half way up wasn’t beautiful. It’s just different to the more expansive view you have when you’ve climbed higher. Descending in the fountain has increased your awareness, meaning you can approach your relationships at a deeper level. This happens naturally.

11.3  Difficult moments in relationships

Every relationship has its ups and downs. This is part of life. Do you throw in the towel easily or do you stay hanging in patterns and with people that aren’t good for you?

Cheating

Morally, opinions about cheating vary. Systemically speaking, the question is why you or your partner is cheating. What’s going on in the system that creates the space for a foray? A few systemic reasons:

Deep inside, are you or your partner actually available for a relationship? Are you or your partner systematically distracted by something that makes you less present (e.g. due to mourning or entanglement)? And are you capable of connecting? Have you placed your mother sufficiently above you and locked her in your heart?

Are you perhaps systemically needy because you’ve missed out on things, giving you (unconsciously or not) the right to satisfy your needs elsewhere?

Are you in love with someone new, but don’t have the guts to end the current relationship? It’s a systemic tactic to force separation by allowing things to go so badly that your current partner sees how much you are suffering, and so instigates the separation himself. Sometimes relationship therapy is also used. The environment sees how hard you’re trying to save the relationship. But oh dear, it hasn’t worked … leaving you with a clear conscience.
Relationship therapy sometimes works, but then both you and your partner have to be prepared to work on your own themes. Otherwise, in my view, it’s pointless.

Do you perhaps follow your father or mother who’s a cheater? Are you unconsciously loyal to them? Or have you unconsciously installed the pattern you’ve rejected in your father or mother, but that you, to your surprise, can’t out a stop to?

Systemically, there are many different patterns that can lead to adultery. The above examples are only the tip of the iceberg. They may make you do things out of systemic innocence, but you remain fully responsible for your own actions. Incidentally, these reasons aren’t intended to give you permission to get cosy because you couldn’t do anything about it. It’s completely up to you to make your own choices, as long as you’re prepared to carry full responsibility for your decisions (without laying the guilt at someone else’s feet).

Imagine, a man has cheated, confesses and she forgives him (he and she can of course be changed around). This produces an imbalance. He has literally and figuratively taken, and she forgives him. Because forgiving is an extremely high form of giving, she becomes bigger. In this case, the man has already taken by cheating, and subsequently takes again by accepting her forgiveness. This creates an enormous imbalance. Forgiveness itself is wonderful, the question though is whether this actually benefits the relationship. To restore the balance, she would have to do something to him (= take), but slightly less than he did to her. If she would take more than what he had done to her, he’d again get the impulse to settle, as he’s then facing a deficit.

What often happens, is that the cheater breaks up the relationship after being forgiven, because carrying the guilt is too much. The environment doesn’t understand this at all, as after all, she’s forgiven him, right? Too much guilt is unbearable.

From a systemic perspective, it makes more sense to not confess to the cheating (from other perspectives, other options can be considered). The moment you admit to your foray, this enhances your honesty. Your conscience is clean. What’s difficult about this, is that by doing so, the responsibility for making things okay again is put at the feet of the innocent other person. It’s the other person who’s defensively sucked into this whole issue. If they were to show the cheater the door, they run the risk of being blamed for the end of the relationship. The cheater can then claim pitifully: “I wanted to carry on, but he/she didn’t anymore”.

And so I wouldn’t recommend forgiveness. More effective, systemically, is letting go and leaving the responsibility for what belongs to someone else with the other person and bearing what is yours. Subsequently, you can consciously choose to carry on with your partner (or not).
What’s unusual, is that once adultery comes out into the open, it can also bring something positive, as long as you’re prepared to look beyond the morality. The cheating breaks through a dynamic within the relationship. Both partners can enter into a more adult role, which allows for (years of) patterns to be broken.

Making things right

Giving and receiving need to eventually be in balance, should you want to feel free again. Feeling free is the settlement of the balance between giving and receiving

When are you going to make things right in your relationship? If you’ve taken too much. Taking can occur on all kinds of levels. A simple example is you’ve been away for a week with friends and your partner has taken care of the children on his own. Or you ask the other person to do something that’s actually your responsibility. Or you’ve argued and said stupid things, have shown contempt for your partner or have cheated. In general, you know precisely when you’ve taken and the balance shoots through to the other side. Realise that “sorry, I didn’t mean it” means you’ve taken. Only when the “sorry” is interpreted as authentic by the other person, is it making anything right again. There’s usually more to be done.

To restore the balance when the other person has taken too much, you could take, but then to a lesser extent than the other person has taken. The alternative is the other person gives more to ensure settlement. Usually, it’s a combination of the two.

RESTORE THE BALANCE WHEN THE OTHER PERSON HAS TAKEN TOO MUCH, YOU COULD TAKE, BUT THEN TO A LESSER EXTENT THAN THE OTHER PERSON HAS TAKEN.

If one partner takes (demands) too much as compensation, chances are that you end up in a negative spiral of settling. Binding things together in a nasty way. If these acts of revenge continue, there’s a major turnover of negativity. One person does something mean. In response, the other person does something even more cruel. Consequently, the other person again feels the need to settle this, and so it continues. Leaving you in a negative spiral. Until someone decides to settle something, but just that little bit less than the other person has done. Only then can you escape this negative spiral. The same can happen with a positive spiral: both people keep giving a little bit more than they have received. Keeping you connected to each other in a positive way.

Although the relationship has long been over on a day-to-day basis, you still don’t feel free. There’s nevertheless a niggling feeling of having to get revenge on the person. The question though, is whether this is good for you. Acknowledging that there’s an imbalance and that you waive any further claims is more constructive.

Repenting

Sometimes you know you’re guilty. You’ve used someone, for example, have been aggressive or have ended a relationship disrespectfully. Paying back a debt by repenting is systemically not a sensible option.

To get rid of nasty feelings of guilt, you sometimes make yourself suffer. You can also worry yourself silly and keep repeating how guilty you feel. Doing this may make you feel as though you’re paying off your guilt. The question is whether the other person possibly involved also benefits from this. What you do is convince your own conscience that you’re okay again, and that you’ve paid off your debt. You allow yourself to once again be part of the group or family you want to belong to. After all, you’ve had a rough time. Usually however, this is a passive approach. The question is whether, by repenting, you’re facing your own destiny and taking responsibility for what you have done. By only worrying and waiving your claims, you don’t compensate for what you’ve taken (too much of, or by accident). It doesn’t reach the other person.

Abortion

Having an abortion can have systemic consequences. No matter what, the aborted child belongs to the family system and deserves his rightful place.

This child is often not spoken about or the subject becomes taboo. A general law in systemic thinking is that that everyone who belongs to your family system, belongs. Should this aborted child be excluded, then someone in the family system later on will probably become entangled with this child (ascending, method three). Usually this is a younger brother or sister. This child seems to have a longing for death and won’t allow things to go well for themselves. The entangled child lives according to the principle: I won’t allow things to be better for me than for you, sweet aborted little brother or sister. They’ll also often rebel against the parents.

This doesn’t mean you have to shout about your abortion from the rooftops. All you have to do, is allow this child their rightful place and give it a place in your heart, including the father or mother of this child. Your next child is always child two (if the aborted child has place one). By doing so, you unburden any subsequent younger brothers or sisters or even the generation after that.
Part of this is also taking responsibility for your choices. Yes, I’ve made the choice to have the child aborted, because my freedom was more valuable to me (or fill the reason in yourself). Often, terms will be used that suggest something has happened to you, like “they took the child away” instead of “I had the child aborted”. In most cases, there’s no question of force. “My partner made me get rid of it”, is seldom the real reason for the abortion. Take responsibility for your choice. This gives strength and dignity.

Experience shows that in most cases a relationship is over after an abortion. The trick is to mourn for this child together with the father or mother of your aborted child. Sharing this grief together gives the relationship a chance of success for the future. Although little grief may be felt in daily life, but rather relief that the matter has been resolved, there tends to be a deep connection with this aborted child. A piece of the parents’ soul is taken away with the aborted child, creating a sense of emptiness. Giving this child a place in your heart allows you to feel complete again. Only if you both succeed in this, is there a chance that your relationship will survive the abortion. In any case, always view your (former) partner as the other parent of the child with his own place.

Bearing the loss of a child together

Losing a child: it’s difficult to imagine. It happens. Fairness doesn’t come into it. Fighting it achieves nothing. In one way or another you need to grieve. Grieving is saying goodbye to something or someone who’s not coming back. It’s over.

If the child dies through the fault of someone else, attention is often focused on the perpetrator (or a perpetrator) to get it to court. This can bring relief. But do you actually grieve for the child? This may seem harsh. May this child be dead? Of course not, you cry. Saying yes to the reality and the course of history is facing your destiny and reconciling with it. This achieves more than anything else you can do. I’m not saying you can’t take legal steps; just don’t forget to feel your primary sadness instead of secondary anger.

Sadness is very individual. Grieving has no logical path, and everyone does it in their own way. The chance of losing each other in the sadness is substantial. Grieving for this child together helps keep the family stable. This child continues to be part of the family. Dare to say the child’s name, to reminisce. Develop simple rituals meaning the child keeps his/her place and at the same time, is allowed to be dead. Young brothers and sisters will understand this. It will be good for them to know they have a deceased (little) brother or sister. You don’t make things easier for them by sheltering them from what’s happened.

To the contrary: if your entire life revolves around the deceased child, you must question whether this child is mourned deeply. The child now belongs to the deceased and not to the living. That is your child’s destiny. Your destiny is that you lose a child. Your destiny is that you are alive and your child dead. Accepting your own destiny always releases a strength that can bring about something good. You honour the child more by living, than by continuing to mourn. If this doesn’t work, then the accident has created even more victims.

11.4  When is a divorce successful?

At some point, you can reach the stage in a relationship of having enough. You’ve done everything in your power to save the relationship (or not) and have decided that the relationship will come to an end. It seems the way in which you end a relationship can have consequences for the further development of your love life.

IT APPEARS THAT THE WAY YOU END A RELATIONSHIP CAN HAVE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR LOVE LIFE.

After a divorce the connection of the first or second marriage (or relationship) remains. This connection is indestructible. Your ex-partners usually keep their place in your family system (and you in their family system). Those that acknowledge and respect this are able to embark on a subsequent connection. The relationship may well be over, but the systemic connection as a result of the relationship or marriage still exists. Should you have had children together, then co-parenting will always remain in existence systemically (regardless of whether one parent denies the other parent of access to the children).

It’s an art, to break something off with dignity, with respect for what was once precious, good and valuable. You are systemically free for a subsequent relationship when you can say, and genuinely feel, the following:

I loved you/you meant a lot to me, even if I am now saying goodbye to you.

I was happy to give you what I did.

Thank you for all the good things you gave me. I appreciate it. (So don’t criticise it now, when at the time you saw it as something good).

I take my responsibility for what went wrong between us. I leave the responsibility for your share with you.

I will take all the good that came out of our relationship with me into the future. Thank you for this.

These sentences help to give acknowledgement for something that was valuable and good. They create space for a new future for both of you. Partners feel valued, which benefits future relationships. This is even more crucial when children play a role.

It’s sometimes difficult for you or your partner to feel the above, both within and outwardly. If the sentences above are a bridge too far, there is a middle road. You can express to your ex-partner (as long as children have been born): “Through the children, I feel the love that I once felt for you”.
If you don’t manage to eventually genuinely experience the five points mentioned, then this is what it is. The disadvantage of this, is that you remain connected in a negative way. It’s a tie instead of a connection. Which maintains its negative pull. In addition, you run the risk of a child from a subsequent relationship becoming unconsciously entangled with your ex-partner who you don’t allow his or her place.

Often, the love is not yet over, just the relationship. It doesn’t work. Which is a shame. Hopefully you can give your ex-lover a warm place in your heart (besides the systemic place they have anyway).

11.5  Co-parenting

In section 10.4 I described when children can feel safe. Parenting includes the responsibility for your children, particularly when they are young. Don’t stick your head in the sand and be the wise one. Parenting is for life, even after a divorce. Even if one parent doesn’t allow the other to have shared parental rights, systemically there’s always co-parenting. Realise that the child that’s kept away from the other parent will become unconsciously loyal to the absent parent.

Children aren’t mad, they feel inside that something’s not right with the relationship. Make repeatedly clear to the child that he’s completely blameless for the conflict between you as parents. Initially, it’s unacceptable for children that their parents are quarrelling or are angry or mean to each other. This gives them a sense of insecurity. They would rather take the blame than to admit that parents don’t know everything and sometimes behave like idiots. Something they can’t understand when young. A child prefers to believe that he’s not sweet, kind, smart or pretty enough, and that this has caused the discontent.
You could try telling the child: “Daddy/mummy is sad/angry, and this has nothing to do with you. We’re perfectly capable of working this out together as grown-ups”.

In order to ensure a systemically-safe separation, in addition to coordinating the inner and outer attitudes between you both as partners (which is described in section 11.4 ), it’s also useful to systematically arrange co-parenthood. If you’re not able to do this, the child will land in an unavoidable conflict of loyalties. He will also feel partly rejected for who he actually is.
At that moment, the partner lives according to the principle I’d rather things went well for me than my child. And I’d rather be angry and frustrated with my ex-partner than allow things to go well for my child. Is it unwillingness or powerlessness? You’re part of the child’s destiny. A child may demand nothing from his parents, only accept what is there. Hopefully, once he’s older, he’ll learn to give feedback and set boundaries. Until then, the child is defenceless, and the survival mechanisms and systemic principles will take over.

CHILDREN FEEL PROTECTED AND SAFE WHEN BOTH PARENTS RESPECT EACH OTHER’S POSITION.

Systemic co-parenting

Children feel protected and safe when both parents respect each other’s position. Certainly, after a divorce, this is extremely important for the children. If you want to establish systemic co-parenting, you authentically say and demonstrate the following to each other, in your inner attitude, actual deeds and non-verbal behaviour:

I respect you as the father/mother of our child/children. It’s unfortunate that our relationship didn’t work.

I find the welfare of our children the most important.

Both parents say the following, out loud, to their children:

You may love mummy/daddy just as much as you love me.

I will always allow you to go to your mummy/daddy.

It’s advisable to repeat the above messages regularly so that the children will genuinely start to believe you. You’ll notice that this will allow the children to relax. To this end though, the words need to match the actions.

Everyone in his rightful place with co-parenting

Don’t allow a child to take on the role of the missing parent. The oldest child may tend to do this, but it may just as easily be another child. The oldest boy may also want to become the man of the house, regardless of whether he lives with his mother. This is not the place for a child, even though deep in your heart you’d like it to be. Do not give in to this. Say to the child: “I take care of you, not the other way around”. Likewise, never say to the child: “I’m now both your father and your mother”. Rubbish – you’re only ever one of the two.

It’s usually beneficial for a child to have a photo of the other parent in their bedroom. Feel free to stand your photo next to it. It helps if the photos reinforce that you and the other parent are the grown-ups. It’s also valuable if the picture sends out the message that you take care of the child. The child then hopefully remembers that it may (read: must) lean and receive. Which is the natural flow of the fountain.
If you take good care of yourself by standing in your own place, reconcile with your own destiny and respect the children’s other parent, your children will not be inclined to ascend in the fountain. This is the greatest gift you can give to your children.

12  Where are you standing?

ME HERE, YOU THERE

12.1  IN WHAT PLACE ARE YOU?

​How do you look at your mother? How does she look at you?
How do you look at your father? And how does he look at you?  

How do you look at your partner? And how do they look at you?
How do you look at your children? How do they look at you?

With your father and your mother in your heart, you can’t freeze. You take your place in the fountain. From there, you can use your individuality and flair to achieve and chase goals valuable to you. With the invisible support and strength of the fountain, you have vitality and enjoy relationships that enrich both you and the other person. You receive what is there. Receive plenty and you’ll have lots to give.

Thanks to your inner attitude, you can descend to your place in the fountain if needed. You allow the systemic principles to work for you, automatically pulling you into a positive spiral. Creating, as I see it, conditions for a good life. You have more control over the quality of your life. You’re able to go your own way more freely, based on your connection with what’s there. Connection gives strength, strength that you can then use to do good.

All this though, doesn’t change the fact that if you’ve created the systemic conditions for a pleasant life, you also need to be effective in other areas. Think perseverance, discipline, bravery, courage to take risks, to walk away, to be vulnerable, to learn, to be enthusiastic, to be privileged to have people around you who believe in you, as well of course, as simple luck.

Personally, I’ve discovered that by standing in my place I can listen to my inner voice and intuition better. They show me in part the way to a valuable, fascinating and successful life. Only I can respond authentically to this. Nobody else. My response is no better or worse than someone else’s, at most it’s different. Because of this, I increasingly become my own person. My response to what constitutes a good life attracts certain people to whom this also appeals. And so my relationships and encounters become more profound. This also means that some people don’t like me as much. But this is part and parcel of life

Imagine you manage to root yourself in your place in the fountain. Consider what you can do with the extra energy, energy that you were losing when you weren’t yet in your place in the fountain. You can deploy this energy differently. Because you’re descended, you’re able to give without restraint. The source you draw from is constantly being replenished.

Your inner attitude is yours and nobody else’s. So, you can always take responsibility for this (as long as you’re in reasonable healthy). The fountain flows, regardless of the external circumstances and how difficult it can sometimes be to find the gateway to the positive spiral of the systemic principles. The strength of the fountain is there, no matter what. Where you stand is up to you. You always have the choice to pick up the flow of the fountain.

ACCEPTING GUILT GIVES YOU THE STRENGTH TO TRANSCEND YOUR CONSCIENCE AND LIVE LIFE FULLY.

Taking on guilt gives you the strength to transcend your conscience and live life fully. Guilt, contrary to general opinion, isn’t a bad thing (unless you’ve broken the law). Yet sometimes stubbornness, obstinacy and drugs still manage to conquer the sweet little girl/boy syndrome and you want to be innocent.

Imagine that you’ve ascended, and descending is problematic. You can’t change reality. This is what you must live with. Can you not then have a pleasant life and be satisfied? Based on my own experience, the answer is yes, of course you can. You will have to do more on your own. But if you take good care of yourself, this shouldn’t have to be a problem at all. I’ve now learned to consciously place my parents above me inwardly. Which allows me to immediately feel the strength flowing. I also visualise this image in moments when I need strength and energy.

12.2  Do you want to get it or do you want to be happy?

The fountain can give you access to a positive spiral, a spiral that comes about when you manage to make systemic principles work for you. I hope that through The Fountain, something that seems elusive perhaps becomes more manageable for you. My motivation to write this book lies in my deep trust in the effect and workings of systemic principles. I want to convey this message to the world, so that everyone can take advantage of it if desired. Irrespective of what you do with it, I hope you’ve at least got a different perspective on your life and your relationships through this book. The Fountain can help you by identifying the appropriate connections you should have with significant people around you. Perhaps you’ll realise there’s scope in one particular direction. You can either tackle this yourself or get professional help. Certainly, do the latter if something is complicated, difficult or intense. I have more respect for people who dare to ask for help than for people who only keep turning in circles. After all, asking for help and support requires courage. It’s an invitation to receive. Also understand that this book can never be a replacement for professional help.

Much of the background to the dynamics of systemic principles cannot yet be explained. I see they work, and how. I hope that you’ll recognise the resulting dynamic in your own life and can make the necessary adjustments to lead your own life more freely. It’s logical that you want to understand the underlying theories, but you can also opt to take advantage of this lack of understanding. By only focusing on analysing situations, you go to your head and give yourself an escape route to avoid primary emotions and surrendering to what is there. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes not. Do you want to get it, or do you want to be happy?

12.3  Different fountains

A fountain is a system. Of all the systems you are part of, the family conscience seems to unconsciously have the most influence on your wellbeing. Besides your family system, you probably have your own new system with your own children. You’re also maybe part of an organisation system for example, various social systems, clubs, clans, religions, a country etc. Although you can leave a system by cancelling a membership or quitting your job (saying this, you always belong to the former employees/former members of the relevant system), you can never do that with a family system. The family system continues to always pull on you and can always take you into service unconsciously.
The basic principles of ascending and descending in the fountain are, in my opinion, identical in all systems, with one essential exception: giving your parents their place is essential for your wellbeing.

You may realise that stubborn patterns that manifest themselves in your current life can be traced back to the patterns in your family system. You take these patterns into your daily life and they repeat themselves in your new family, at work etc. With all other systems, for example that of an organisation, there’s always a mix of your own system and the system concerned. The conscience of that particular system (for example the organisation conscience) inevitably does its work. Presumably, even more systems are mixed. This is my assumption. In short, a complex field of forces. My next book will address this.

HOPEFULLY I KNOW MY PLACE; NO LESS AND NO MORE.

As human beings, we’re connected with each other via all kinds of systems. Physics can now even prove this. I only feel it and surrender to what I can, and cannot, influence. Hopefully I know my place; no more and no less.

12.4  My place and yours

The exclusive, expensive shawl I dared to receive from a friend of my mother was a life-changing event for me. Feelings of warmth still flow through me every time I see that shawl.
Although the shawl (with everything it represents) does not come from the fountain of my family system, it’s another beautiful fountain that flows richly and I’m allowed to be part of. The shawl activated my ability to accept guilt in the process of giving and receiving. Even more importantly, is that with this, I have made an essential choice in my life. Surrendering to what is there and saying yes to it. In other words: I have learned to receive. I find this exciting. And not. I resist the temptation to not accept. If I don’t accept what is there (in the positive and negative sense), then personally I have little to pass on.

There’s lots of things in life you can’t refuse. You get it whether you want it or not. Sometimes you’re at the front of the queue in life, sometimes at the back, as I am for example, when it comes to being childless. This is my destiny. Facing up to things is the only constructive option I know of.
By receiving the shawl, I learned that I’m allowed to accept all the wonderful things available to me. Before this, I didn’t have this courage. Remaining on stand-by seemed safer. In receiving the shawl, I had to accept my guilt. I do sometimes refuse to accept something, as long as it’s within the possibilities. I ask myself the question: does accepting this make me stronger or weaker? With each answer comes a certain consequence in terms of accepting guilt. And I always say yes to this.
I now know that relationships are established on the ability to receive. And guilt is an integral part of this. Not accepting my guilt and walking away means I remain a child instead of becoming an adult. Facing my guilt, on the other hand, gives me strength and freedom.

I trust in the functioning of the fountain at the moment I know I’m in my rightful place. Rationally, I can become stressed when something doesn’t go well. Deep inside I feel that the systemic principles help me on the right path, even though I sometimes go through something seemingly negative first.

I’m in my place. Which is place three. Beside me, my dearest elder sister, and beside us, our brother, who both my sister and I never met in the flesh. Above us, mum and dad and their brothers and sisters. Above them, all their predecessors in their trays. Plus, their ex-lovers, numerous children not born or miscarried (the destiny of our family). My tray also contains the perpetrators and situations we have been victim of, the victims created by what we have done and our rescuers. Beside me my husband, together with my other lovers. Beneath me, the fountain tray is well-filled with our non-born children. All of which have a place in my heart.

The one person from my family system has of course a bigger and more meaningful place in my heart than the other. This is fine; they nevertheless belong and have their own place in the fountain. Which I am pleased to give them.

​My place,
it belongs to me.
Forever.
A home.
A safe haven.
Wherever it may be (in any case, within),
no matter what.  

Your place,
it belongs to you.
Forever.
A home.
A safe haven.
Wherever it may be (in any case, within),
no matter what.

Sources

This book wouldn’t have come about without the many insights from people working in this subject area.

Elmer Hendrix from the Institute for Systemic Work
(www.systemische-opstellingen.nl) has the skill to put difficult to describe processes into words. His mission is to make systemic work widely accessible, and he applauds being quoted. Some phrases, such as the definition of working systemically, originate from him.

Publisher Het Noorderlicht (www.hetnoorderlicht.com) has published wonderful books in the area of working systemically. It would be impossible to mention all the writers here. Of course, the works of Bert Hellinger, Jan Jacob Stam and various others has been fertile ground for developing my knowledge.

The various books by Stephan Hausner and Franz Ruppert about health and trauma are also worth reading.

This book also includes widespread theories such as the description of giving feedback, but also the escalation ladder of Glasl. It’s not always clear who can be named the original creators.

Thanks

The metaphor of the fountain is my personal wording of systemic principles. Over the years I have sought accessible words to make systemic laws understandable and transparent, so that my clients can independently apply these invisible mechanisms to their daily lives. The encouragement to write this book stems from my clients and people in my profession telling me about the significant effect of the fountain metaphor in their daily lives. I also heard that people were searching online for the theory of the fountain but were unable to find anything. When asked where they could read more about the fountain, my spontaneous response was: “In the book I’m going to write”.

I wouldn’t have been able to formulate The Fountain without the clients I’ve been able to guide over the years. Because they dared share their soul with me, I was able to write this book. Thank you all for your trust, being open to new perspectives and sharing your intimate stories, with all the struggles, successes and emotions that go with them.

In 2002 I made a career switch. I was ready to realise a dream I’d had since studying. That one day, I’d step into the world of training. After graduating from the Hotel Management College in 1993 I didn’t yet feel anchored enough to do this. In 2002 I made the transition to become a behaviour trainer in the education and training world. In 2008 I founded my own training and coaching practice for individuals and clients (www.elsvansteijn.nl). This was one of the better decisions in my life.

Without the many teachers on my path I would not have arrived where I am today. I’d like to thank several people specifically: Annemarijke Gerritsen (then teacher at the Hotel Management College in the Hague) who in 1991 stimulated me as a student to lead evaluations and (group) behaviour during outdoor training sessions, and who saw in me what I could not yet see. Jos Stroom, who provided the gateway to the world of training. Marc Jacobs, who made me strong personally and professionally, and still does: let’s do what we love. Rob Blomme, who stimulated me to start up for myself. Niels Tekke, who offered me the opportunity to enter the corporate world with my new profession. Mieke Laarakkers introduced me to systemic work. Elmer Hendrix from the Centre for Systemic Constellations (www.systemische-opstellingen.nl) ensured that I was trained in systemic work and overcame my hesitation to get started. He’s unsurpassed. His faith in me was in part responsible for me daring to spread my wings in the systemic field. Jan Jacob Stam is also a systemic master and his way of looking at things has taught me a lot. And I continue to learn from the many people around me, through the interaction with my clients, but also by observing and reading books. For this, thank you.

When my spontaneous response about writing a book actually led to a serious book, I unexpectedly met several publishers who wanted to publish The Fountain. Thank you for your generous invitations, support and ideas. Siets Bakker, from publisher Het Noorderlicht (www.hetnoorderlicht.com) ensured that this systemic book was bedded in the systemic field, something Het Noorderlicht stands for. This book takes its place in a new tray of Het Noorderlicht. Siets, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to travel with you, and that you make the emerging future visible.

Guido Keff from Keff & Dessing Publishing made his entire network available, and particularly himself as human being. To me, you’re a life artist. Thanks to you I dared think big. Thank you for supporting me.
Floortje Dessing wrote to me literally “these types of books can’t get enough attention, right?!” Thanks for your support and trust.

Feedback I got from the first readers was nerve-wracking. Responses varied from “I’m not a target group”, to feeling enormously touched. The readers: Elmer Hendrix, Marc Jacobs, Lisette Rienstra, Ton Jansen, Margreet van Steijn, Frits Dingemans and Robbert Dankers. Thanks for your precision, effort, detailed and practical and moral support. Juliët Jonkers edited the Dutch book. I started my own company because I like to work with people I find fascinating and sincere. You are one of them. Thank you for your help in making my book extra readable. Thanks also goes to Annemieke Heinen for the final corrections

Other people who have helped me are Marielle Hollander (both as dear friend and with her extensive network and practical support). I make grateful use of the marketing and PR know-how of the people mentioned previously, and not to forget Brigitte Vogelsangs, Carlijn Kuenen and Dijana Cicak. The same goes for Carlijn van Ravenstein.

Brechtje Baars and Leonoor Verplanken from design bureau The Green House (www.thegreenhouseamsterdam.com) took care of the book design. What an energetic and inspirational collaboration. I can’t recommend them enough.

Without the support and the literal and figurative space from friends and family it would have been more difficult to give shape to the writing process. Aunt Ineke (van der Bij-Haanschoten) made her beloved house in Molkwerum available, with the seagulls and the butterflies in the garden. And thank you for your support and love: Lian Ka Tjoa, Odette & Wijnand Tigchelaar, Kirstin van Loon, Merel Kanters and Esseline Dorrestijn. My mother’s friend (from the shawl) was there for me during the creative process of this book, in her own, authentic way.

Natasha Barton (nb@natashabarton.com) has taken on the English translation with accuracy and enthusiasm. Thank you for safeguarding the quality of the fountain and my energy into the future.

I can, and may, always lean on Margreet van Steijn, my big sister. I’m so lucky we stand in the same tray of the fountain, together with our big brother, who we never knew personally.

Robbert Dankers, my husband, has the ability to see something beautiful in (nearly) everyone, and to stimulate this. So also, in me. He sees possibilities instead of obstacles. Thank you too for the freedom you allow me, your love and practical and mental support in all kinds of areas. Our children Job en Mette were not born, but this book is also a child with a big place in my heart.

Once again, thank you!