35: Family Constellations: Healing Ancestral Trauma Behind Addiction with Karin Dremel
“Nobody comes to trauma, but through trauma.” – Karin Dremel
The true nature of addiction comes not from what we see at present but what we did not see in the past. And this is Science in what we call trauma. Our guest, Karin Dremel will expound the subject and enlighten us on the things we might not be aware of that has a direct bearing on family issues and addiction. She is a German psychotherapist, Naturopath and a Humanist Chaplain. Currently, her practice is situated in Boulder, Colorado where she helps individuals and couples through systems constellation groups.
Often, we see addiction through a limited perspective such that a present problem has something to do with how an individual copes that may potentially lead to addiction. But seldom do we consider what family origin has to do with how that individual arrived at choosing that particular type a coping mechanism. Join in today’s episode as our guest talks about the effects of generational trauma and silence, constellation healing, life-giving and life-limiting factors, belongingness and systemic trauma technology.
Highlights:
03:30 Karin’s Family Origin
08:11 The Silence
20:05 What Is Constellation
36:24 The Essence of Family Constellation: Belongingness
44:13 The Systematic Trauma Technology
Resources:
“Even If It Cost Me My Life: Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness” by Stephan Hausner
This week’s episode was sponsored by
It’s astral! It’s a star! No. It’s #ConstellationHealing! Learn more about your family constellation and how it acts as a lock and key to addiction with @TFRSolutions and Karin Dremel Share on X
Connect With Karin
Website: www.ancestor-matters.com
Email: kdremel@iliff.edu
Blog: http://www.karindremel.com/Family_Constellation/Blog/Blog.html
Telephone: 303-808-6280
Quotes:
08:25 “…there is such a thing as trauma for ‘normal’ people like myself.” – Karin Dremel
10:15 “When there’s silence in a family, we make up a story, the mind makes up a story.” –Jeff Jones
12:29 “Children are exquisitely equipped to gauge those things (silence in the family). And from those gauges also make their own behaviors to protect the system, but also to be part of the system.” – Karin Dremel
19:16 “So nobody, I tend to say, nobody comes to trauma, but through trauma.” – Karin Dremel
46:14 “…Family constellation groups is a holding environment, not specifically for addiction. … of people present, and witnesses who are willing to sort of stand into another shoes, feel, experience, their suffering, and bring back that information that’s available through that and sort of break the silence.” – Karin Dremel
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
MILESTONE AD:
I’m honored to have Milestones Ranch Malibu sponsor this episode of this podcast. Milestones Ranch is a small 12 bed premier dual diagnosis residential facility that believes that addiction problems in a family do not happen in a vacuum. Everyone has taken on impact and everyone deserves healing from the ramifications of addiction. I’ve experienced milestones myself. I’ve been there, feet on the ground firsthand. Over time of working with this team, I’ve seen the benefit of a group of dedicated professionals supporting families long term positive outcomes, what they call the milestones method. I have the utmost respect for their team and their collaborative model of health. So, check out their website at www.milestonesranch.com.
JEFF: So welcome everyone, this is Jeff Jones. I am here today with a woman that I have known for, I don’t know, many years, Karin Dremel. She’s going to be talking about family constellations, a phenomenally unique healing modality that blew my mind probably 15 some years ago. And when Karin came into the community in which I live in, and actually she facilitated a family constellation for one individual about her family and there was probably, you know, 15 or 20 people in the room that were standing around who were representatives and I was one of those people. And I also saw Karin late last year. She has been offering family constellations in Lafayette just as a community kind of service and I went to one of those and again, to watch someone who has the awareness of, you know, many different levels of not only generations, but kind of like elements of life or factors that contribute to life. Anyhow, welcome Karin. I really appreciate you being here.
KARIN: Thank you so much for having me.
JEFF: Yeah. And what I’d like to do is to start off, if you could talk a little bit about who you are, like how you would introduce yourself for this kind of podcast thing.
KARIN: So, I’m going to introduce myself here and also in other places first and foremost is to give a little bit of context and of a background where my passion and transgenerational healing is literally born. I’m German. I’m a German native. I was born in Germany in 1956. I’m a German citizen. And I happen to live in boulder, Colorado and I thoroughly enjoy the amount of sunshine we have. I’ve gotten very used to that. Being born in 1956 in Germany to German parents with German ancestors going back as far as I can know, which is three and a half generations, three generations, and a little bit of my great, great grandparents’ generation. That means my trends generational experience and if you will intrinsic in me living knowledge and tails, two world wars as the experience that three generations before me went through, and very specifically the horrendous participation and experience of the Shoah or Holocaust and, you know, a number of millions of people who were otherwise murdered and enslaved and exploited and displaced through the Nazi German attempt to create a 1000 year [inaudible], a thousand year [inaudible].
So, this is my legacy if you will. Even though I am nachgeboren, which means I’m a later born. There’s an actual common else for that, somebody who is born after 1945. My parents are children of war. There’s also a German term, kriegskinder children of war. And so it’s a very present foundation if you will, on which my decades of interest in initially family constellation and then broadening it beyond the family and to what people generally now speak of systemic constellation work, so that we can look at other systems beyond the family as well.
JEFF: Yeah. Wow. So thank you very much for that introduction, that very revealing introduction as to who you are and what you bring to the table with family constellations. And I’m just curious like when were you first inspired to understand more about your family or your grandparents and the kind of the ancestral lineage.
KARIN: Entirely lived in Germany until 2000 and since then I’m mostly living here, but I’m also going back and forth. So, it was almost 40, well I was actually passed 40, and in 1990 I started studying something that’s called in Germany heilpraktiker. And today here might be translatable into integrate healing practitioner. There’s actually a bachelor’s degree now here in Denver that people can do in this integrative healing practitioner thing. And the equivalent in Germany has been around for decades and decades and put into law in the mid 30’s. So, I studied to become one of those integrated healing practitioners in part because I was experiencing what now might be called PTSD or complex trauma, the effects of complex trauma or the effect of, you name it, developmental trauma. So, everything that makes a person easily, not only excitable, but overwhelmed and struggling with health and struggling with making sense of this, the ride, but what’s the –
JEFF: Well, I see your hand going up and down and it’s like a roller coaster.
KARIN: Thank you. The roller coaster. And so, I had about two decades of trying to do selfie [inaudible] with all of the available modalities. And in 1990, I came across the notion that there is such a thing as trauma for “normal” people like myself that claim that, you know, that have been run over by a bus, or they’ve been fallen off a cliff, or they’ve been attacked in an alley. None of this would apply to me, which of course people would consider traumatic. But growing up in an environment that is carrying generational trauma has its effect. One of the effects in my family was silence and continues to be. I see you smile because I can see you. We had previous conversation and you know a thing or two about silence as well. And specifically people who, and we’re getting to the addiction piece here too, because that silence is one of the powerful, powerful, powerful lock and keys in families and for individuals and for those sort of living with them and the whole system. Silence is one of the things that keep things in place.
JEFF: So yeah, before you go on, I want to ask a little bit more about silence because I mean, in my own way I have experienced and, you know, academically know that silence it’s like patterns of, you know, coping of responding of who I think I am in relationship to other people in my family, who I think I am in relationship to the world kind of thing. And when there’s silence in a family, we make up a story. The mind makes up a story. I know my mind did that and I don’t think I’m the only one.
KARIN: You know at the core of every systemic belonging or and or entanglement, this is the terminology that we use, entanglement. Individuals in there being in the system are entangled with the system in certain ways. And out of loyalty and out of atonement or a number of other things, they take on certain ways of being in the system, even across generations. So, at the core of that is our prerogative of belonging,
JEFF: Our prerogative of, like –
KARIN: A child needs to –
JEFF: Belong.
KARIN: Belong.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: And therefore a child needs to sort of, be in a way what the system needs.
JEFF: Right. Okay. So, then one thing that I hear you saying and that is that if a child is born into a family system where not a lot of things are talked about and maybe because it’s not safe for things to be talked about, that child will find a way to cope with the silence and have their own story about the silence, but also their own role in how to compliment a system that has silence as a, you know, main thrust.
KARIN: Yes. Silence is about language. And there’s much more information in the system that is being passed on. How close to you stand to somebody?
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: How much are you allowed to ask for or not?
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: So children not exquisitely equipped to gauge those things.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: And from those gauges also make their own behaviors to protect the system, but also to be part of the system.
JEFF: Yes. Yeah. I’m thinking about the family that I grew up in. I mean, I kind of know this intimately, experientially, and, you know, I know in the family that I grew up in, my grandfather showered more love and attention upon me than anybody in my whole life. As a child of like seven, eight, nine years old, that really, really caught my attention. That was impressionable. And I was like, I can’t tell you how good that felt to get that love and attention. And at the time I thought it was about me. I thought he was recognizing and seeing me. I grew up in a family, my family of origin, my mom and dad, you know, it wasn’t like there was a lot of chaotic things that were happening there, but I wasn’t really acknowledged a whole lot. But then my grandfather, oh my God, but, and here’s the but, and that is my grandfather is the alcoholic.
And there were other things like my mom and dad took my sister and I to Kentucky Lake every summer when I was like seven, eight, nine years old, so I had this experience several times. And I also saw that other things in the family changed down there. So even as a child I saw this and you know, I came from a family who didn’t talk about a lot of things, but then my grandfather, big booming voice and, you know, he would go out in the front yard, I’d be shooting arrows into the target and he would go: “Great shot.” I mean, it’s like so –
KARIN: Yeah. So this little boy was somebody within his own brokenness, if you will, he could actually exuberantly connect to.
JEFF: Yes.
KARIN: Right?
JEFF: Yes. So I knew that was possible.
KARIN: Yeah. And there were other behaviors as with people who self medicate with alcohol often have that probably where then confusing for you.
JEFF: Absolutely. Very confusing. It’s like what my mother said when we were leaving Kentucky about him, like none of it was good. And when we were down there, my mom who is very competent mother ran the family chop chop chop kind of thing. Down in Kentucky, she would be quiet and she was in the background. My Dad would be over there, you know, comforting or nurturing her. And my dad never needed to comfort or nurture her.
KARIN: At least I’m invisible to you, right?
JEFF: Exactly. Exactly. Visible to me. And so it was very confusing.
KARIN: Yeah. So here with you a story, we already have three generations.
JEFF: Yes.
KARIN: We have a narrative that is going outside of, you know, let’s say a couple or somebody has an addiction, we were already going outside of the narrow system into the family of origin and then step to further back into the grand parents into the third tier of generational. And now we’re talking, right? So it’s a generational narrative, if you will.
JEFF: Yes.
KARIN: And that is something that in a systemic constellation, as you described it is being externalized without talking about it, by using participants in a workshop to represent. And let me take your example, right? So your example would be, so this son of this very, very competent mother and you have an issue that you describe and I would say, well this issue may be connected with a family of origin. So we have you and your mom and your dad and you have a sister. Right?
JEFF: Yes.
KARIN: So you just mentioned her too. And then there’s apparently a very important figure is your grandfather. If we look at addiction, right? Because I would have asked you, is there a pattern of addiction? And you have said a moment ago, the addict was my grandfather. He was the addict.
JEFF: Yeah. And –
KARIN: Oh you said the alcoholic. Sorry, I have to be very precise here.
JEFF: Yeah. Well the other piece of this was my grandfather, he got divorced from his wife when my mother was like a teenager. A young girl and her and her sister got split up. And so my mother didn’t talk about that too much. And I knew something happened there that was very unpleasant for her and like that was never shared. So, I mean on one level it was a very big deal for my mother to even take my sister and I down there.
KARIN: Yeah.
JEFF: Because, and I didn’t know it at the time, but now I know that she was traumatized somehow by her father.
KARIN: Yeah.
JEFF: You know, and there’s some kind of like I call a trickle down, that’s not the language that you would use.
KARIN: Entanglement we would use, right?
JEFF: Entanglement from my grandfather’s addiction to my mother’s trauma and then to me. And it’s like having limited coping defense mechanism. So like I lived my life building relationships in the way that I knew, you know, which was not very healthy and not very deep. And of course when I was younger, I had my drug and alcohol kind of thing. I never really went to a treatment center, but my focus was more work.
KARIN: And you created the work, right? You created the remedy.
JEFF: Yes. [laughs] Oh, here. Yes.
KARIN: So, I tend to say nobody comes to trauma, but through trauma and maybe that’s also the case for addiction, right? So people who are so engaged as you are in finding models and creating access for people who can only maybe do this online or who don’t have resources, you know, whatever. You spend your life doing that.
JEFF: Yes. Yeah. I really like what you said. This kind of, you know, people come to trauma through trauma or people come to addiction through addiction.
KARIN: Yeah. Yeah.
JEFF: You know, and when we do that and we learned some things and then put them out to other people, that also enhances our own healing.
KARIN: That’s right. And this is a pretty good segue to maybe trying to explain what a constellation actually is.
JEFF: Please.
KARIN: Because it’s really difficult to describe, words don’t really do it. Not because we were silent about it, but because there’s so much more on what’s going on –
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: – and what we can actually put into words. So people come together and they’re generally strangers. People, you know, you might come with your friend or with, you know, I’ve had people bringing their sister but it’s not a family type treatment that you might traditionally find where the whole family comes in and then some intervention is done. This is not what this is.
JEFF: This is not family therapy.
KARIN: This is not family therapy. It is therapeutic for the individual and in extension of that for their family because they belonged to the system.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: Does that make sense?
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: But it’s not traditional family therapy where we work with mom and dad and then sort of do interventions where people learn to better communicate or something like that. Okay?
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: It’s not what this is. So, strangers meet. You were a stranger, right?
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: The first time was, [inaudible] and also the second time you were a stranger to me again, but now you’re not. So, you know, you have anything between, in my free offerings I sometimes have only two people and I still can do it, but ideally it’s between 15 and 20 people.
JEFF: Yes.
KARIN: People sit in a circle and an individual has an issue that they are a challenge, an issue or something that they have been working with for a long time that couldn’t be resolved. They’re at the end of their little rope or their long rope, whatever it is. And somebody said: “Go to a family constellation.” So now they’re sitting in this circle and I’d be the facilitator and this person through a small process of who is on first or who’s on next, right? Be selected. And they would sit in a chair beside me and it would have a very brief conversation. Generally, it is a brief conversation.
JEFF: I want to emphasize the conversation is brief, like it could be a sentence or two brief.
KARIN: That would be very elegant. [laughs]
JEFF: But it’s not often just a sentence.
KARIN: Yeah. It’s very elegant if you see it that quick as a facilitator. What is. But, you know, a minute, two, three at most five, because we do not want to saturate the circle of strangers with a narrative that the person has told, even if it’s about silence, right?
JEFF: Over and over and over.
KARIN: [inaudible] help themselves in the world for over and over and over again. So the first question is, are you aware of anything in your family that was catastrophic, tragic, unresolved, or a secret? There are a couple more, but this for our purpose right now, right?
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: This is where we have honing the person into saying something like: “Oh yeah, I had a brother who died at age four.” Important information. Important information. Or I would say it could be biographical, like something that happened to you.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: It could be family of origin. Something that was around your birth, or your conception, or something that happened to the family as a family of origin, or something that happened in your lineage, in your maternal or paternal lineage.
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: And then I might give it a little dropdown menu. So we want to look at death born children. What’s the English term? There’s an English.
JEFF: Stillborn.
KARIN: Stillborn. Thank you. Stillborn children. Somebody who is missing. Somebody who has been ostracized. We’re not talking to uncle George, ever.
JEFF: Yes. Right.
KARIN: Somebody who was in war or anybody who lived with a veteran, returning war veteran.
JEFF: Yeah,
KARIN: Very similar impact.
JEFF: Okay.
KARIN: Because veterans often have brought hell home in the hand basket.
JEFF: Right. Their own trauma.
KARIN: Yeah. Through their war trauma. And then as veterans silently or not so silently the whole family system lives with that.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: And adapts around it and coats around it.
JEFF: Yeah. I liked the way you said that adapts around it or coats around it cause that’s exactly what happens with addiction too.
KARIN: That’s right.
JEFF: It’s like the family system knows how to adapt, to survive, to continue being a family together.
KARIN: That’s right. That’s right. We have this term that people sort of use maladaptive behavior. Well, I’m not so sure there is any maladaptive behavior. There is adaptive behavior to circumstances that are difficult and challenging. There’s adaptive behavior, maybe there’s even adaptive behavior to toxic situations.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love what you’re saying Karin, so oftentimes I know in the addiction world that as a professional we analyze, and label, and we see the deficits, like therapists are trained to see the deficit and see the dysfunction and that’s not really helpful and that is the basis for a lot of the language. I mean, the language is very deficit oriented, like your enabling your child or your codependent. And it’s like, when did enabling get to be a negative word? Like yes, you’re enabling them because you’re trying to help them live.
KARIN: Yes. And I think the cutoff is what we do enable, it’s life limiting,
JEFF: Life limiting.
KARIN: Rather than life giving. So if you enable your son to tie his shoes?
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: You make him able to do that ?
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah.
KARIN: That will be very life giving because, well today we have velcro, but that will be their life giving because being able to tie your shoes, it’s better than falling all over your laces.
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: But if you enable somebody to get their next fix.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. It’s like oftentimes it’s complicated.
KARIN: It gets complicated. That’s right. Right?
JEFF: Because they’re not just enabling one thing, I mean, my senses, and I really want to say that families are really trying to do their best to be creative –
KARIN: Absolutely.
JEFF: – to come up with solutions of problems that they see. And there’s like the entanglement, as you say, like the web that weaves together is so convoluted.
KARIN: Especially if you add [inaudible].
JEFF: Yes. It’s not just cause and effect.
KARIN: No. No. So, any metaphor, you know, the shoelace metaphor. Any metaphor limps.
JEFF: Right. Yeah.
KARIN: But I would say that it was a cutoff point when we can step back just enough to see that what we’re enabling in the sense of like the pathology. Enabling is actually harmful and life limiting and it’s only a perceived resource.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: And it gets very complicated there. But if I go back to, you know, now we’re having these 15 people sitting in a circle, they don’t know each other. We have found out that setting up the family of origin for this person might be our entry into seeing what is out of balance in the system. So then that person is asked to choose somebody for their mom, for the dad, and sometimes right away for the siblings, but sometimes this triad, or maybe even just for their mother.
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: I remember one constellation that I did where young man was saying: “Oh, I know nothing about my family.” Right? When I asked, I know nothing. And then about three or four sentences into sort of wandering around that nothing.
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: And he had told me in the group that his mother had long bouts of depression, that his grandmother also had depression. So there is a pattern of maternal lineage, depression.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: And non presence.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: And so I stopped it right there and I said: “Let’s set up your maternal lineage shoes. Somebody for yourself to sort of – you look at the mother’s if you will. And then somebody for your mother and behind her, your grandmother and behind her, your great grandmother.”
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: Three generations, so four generations total. And what turned out to be the case is, let me emphasize, it’s representatives who are being set up and having embodied experiences of what it feels like to stand in that place that they are chosen for.
JEFF: Yeah. So this is what I find so fascinating about family constellation. It’s like when that person is telling that first story, like I know nothing about my mother, but she was depressed and her mother was depressed. And then it’s like, then you ask for volunteers to represent those people and when they come forward, it’s almost like energetically that system is created there because the people that stand in those roles they, help me out here.
KARIN: Your own experience. Remember your own experience, you said I stood in a row. Right?
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: One moment you were Jeff and you were sitting in your chair and you were curious what was going to go out. And somebody said, would you be willing to be x? I don’t remember who it was, but would you be willing to stand in for this person? And what happened?
JEFF: So standing in that role, it’s like what I remember is starting to feel different inside having different body sensations and having thoughts about something that I’m kind of going, what’s what that, that’s not how I would normally see things kind of thing, so that really fascinates me. I’m kind of like going, Karin how does that? You’re here and I’m asking impossible questions, but it’s like, how does that work? How do you do that? Like that’s like a magic trick or something.
KARIN: I don’t do anything. So, we are all together in this field where some people say there is way more information out there at any given moment in any given relational context, then we are aware of on a normal basis. And by sort of creating that space that actually quiets down and allows people who have now been set into spatial relationship, they’re looking at each other, they’re not looking at each other, they’re really close together, they’re really far apart.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: That’s contains information, which generally speaking stays way under the radar.
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: The real magic is not that we, that we respond to spacial relationships, that the content of it is pertinent to the system that we’re standing in.
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: Can I explain it? No. Have I seen it? A million? Not a million times, but many, many times. Yes.
JEFF: Well, I’ve seen you facilitate these processes and it’s like, you know, I heard you say that you do nothing and I want to challenge you a little bit on that and it’s like, hey, it is more than nothing.
KARIN: Yes, yes. No, I mean in terms of magic. I don’t do magic, but I have first learned about this work in 1989, somewhere around there, I was first introduced to this. When it started sweeping, literally put together by one gentleman by the name of Bert Hellinger. And it’s swept a literally throughout Germany because many, many people like myself wanted to figure out what is this thing with our parents and our grandparents and what happened and what does this mean for me and why are we in the science thing and what is behind that silence. So there was a historical context in which the specific kind of work that strangers as a group, and by the way people are strangers for about 20 minutes or until the first constellation, and then there is a human intimacy there that’s very different from most of group processes I have witnessed or been part of.
JEFF: Right. So Karin, one of the things that I want to ask about or I want to kind of name here, one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on as a guest for this podcast is with families with addiction sometimes it can be so easy for family members just to look at the surface and go, Johnny has an addiction. If he were to just get fixed, we would all be fine. And what I know from constellations is that there is quite a bit going on under the surface and Johnny’s addiction is an expression of something that’s going on under the surface.
KARIN: Yes
JEFF: And so like the family constellations and the method that you’re talking about of having a group of 12 or 15 people and one person, you know, 12 or 15 strangers essentially and one person kind of talking for a little bit about their situation and then people stepping into these roles. It’s like the person who tells the story, they’re standing next to the facilitator just watching this thing unfold and they end up getting information about their system, about their family, about addiction in their family looking at it in a way that they have never looked at it before.
KARIN: Absolutely.
JEFF: And that blows me away.
KARIN: Yeah, absolutely.
JEFF: So this is really the essence as I see it, the essence of what family constellations and your work has for family members.
KARIN: Yeah. And what the invitation for an individual with a family system and lineage that’s plagued with addiction, the invitation to somebody like that is that they can come to a place where they can do their own work, but translated into a systemic dynamic because other people are there to sort of construct and maybe even reconstruct other templates of relational possibilities. And at that point it is very important, one tenet of this traditional family constellation work is that the language is that there is a family soul.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: And as individual descendants, we belonged to the family soul, probably soul stretches over generations and into these branching out lineages and that descendants have a deep sense of loyalty to their forebears.
JEFF: To that family soul.
KARIN: To their forebears and to their ancestors. And by maintaining that loyalty, they belong into the family soul.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: Right? They have belonging there. So –
JEFF: And we all need belonging.
KARIN: That’s right. I mean, that’s a given. There’s tons of research on belonging.
JEFF: Yes.
KARIN: That belonging is the core of our longevity of our lifelong, you know, life cycle happiness or whatever you want to call that, also physical health.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: So that’s very, very important. And from this perspective of the family constellation work, our loyalty guarantees our belonging even as, you know, one of my colleagues in Germany has for, you know, 25 years or so, a couple of decades. He’s a integrated feeling practitioner natural path just like myself and his specialty is that he works with people with chronic illness and catastrophic illness. And he wrote a book then gives many, many, many examples of these constellations and the title of his book is Even if it Costs Me My Life.
JEFF: Oh wow.
KARIN: And that is the sentence he has people who have, you know, the representatives of people who have catastrophic or chronic illness. At some point in the constellation that sentence may come up when it is clear that through taking on being loyal to an ancestor who had this illness or a different illness, something unresolved in the ancestry.
JEFF: Yeah.
KARIN: I belong with this illness in some way even if it costs me my life.
JEFF: So then for people kind of coming in and like working with you and having their constellation unfold before them and then seeing this differently is like do they have different choices as to how I can have belonging in my life without having to put myself in harms way or danger or potentially killing myself in order to have belonging.
KARIN: Well with addiction that’s not uncommon, right?
JEFF: Right. Exactly.
KARIN: If we consider an addiction an expression of a loyalty to either the actual ancestral lineage or maybe even to the collective.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: If they explore some of the more recent memoirs that have come out, there is a young man and his name is Vance, his last name is Vance, DJ or JD, I always fumble that. And he is Irish Scott and he writes about his family and how violence and addiction and love –
JEFF: Right. And love.
KARIN: – are totally, and it is about belonging to the collective as much as belonging to the personal lineage.
JEFF: Yeah – yeah.
KARIN: To be some tough guy who drinks and whatever.
JEFF: So Karin, I have one question but I’m afraid to ask it because I’m aware of our time and I could just kind of like open up Pandora’s box here.
KARIN: It is Pandora’s box. [laughs]
JEFF: And so, you know, but I want to just ask it with the caveat of, you know, maybe if you could hint at or bullet point because that’s a huge topic. But when I look at addiction in the world today, it’s like the strategies that we have, which is our standard of care, obviously is not enough because there are, you know, like 150 people dying a day kind of thing. And with the opioid crisis and everything we know about that, I mean there’s a number of different pieces there and stuff. And so it’s like family constellations is not just about one family. It’s about the ancestors in the economic environment, and the stressors, and the challenges, and the coping strategies, and the strengths they had to deal with those strategies.
KARIN: And the wars and the famines and the programs.
JEFF: So, you know, this gets to be a very big deal. And so why I am mentioning this at the risk of opening up too much conversation where I could talk with you for the next day or something about this, is that addiction is at a place in our world where it’s out of control and families so oftentimes feels shame. They think it’s just them or they did something wrong. And, you know, what I try to communicate is there’s way more to it than just one person’s beliefs or strategies to help a loved one. And so I’m wondering, can you speak to the larger picture a little bit to shine light on from a family constellations perspective to shine light on the larger picture. And I want to apologize to ask this question that I truly have no idea and there’s probably no answer.
KARIN: So let me start with what I’ve began to call my work.
JEFF: Okay.
KARIN: Systemic traumatology, which is looking at trauma as an occurrence that were like Russian dolls.
JEFF: Yes, stacking.
KARIN: It nest it.
JEFF: Nest it.
KARIN: Right? So, there’s the individual then there the family, then there is the ancestry, then there’s the collective, the Scots Irish that so eloquently, Vance, I’m showing you. It’s above me. The book is up there so eloquently talks about his experience. The next is there is a nation, right? So there is the US America, right? That has its own narrative of what this is all about and then there is outside of that and then there’s outside of that and eventually we have a global impact of all of this. And specifically as it pertains to addiction, I’m not going into it, but there is several decades of a war on drugs and we could go from there and it would be get very gnarly because on the other hand of people being at the receiving end or at the acting out end of addiction, there is a commodification of the availability of substances.
JEFF: Commodification. I like that.
KARIN: Right? And an increasing potency every, you know, you turn around and you have a stronger strand of X, Y or Z, whatever it is.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: So there is a huge system that’s happening here and a huge system or parts of the system are not interested in resolution.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. So, thank you very much for that answer.
KARIN: And I want to get back to the family, the one thing and constellation. The one thing, if nothing else that family constellation groups are offering is that it is a holding environment, not specifically for addiction. It could be, but not specifically for addiction. Holding environment of people present and witnesses who are willing to sort of stand into another shoes, feel, experience their suffering and bring back that information that’s available through that and sort of break the silence.
JEFF: Break the silence. Wow. Thank you. Yeah.
KARIN: 15 people at a time.
JEFF: Thank you for bringing it back, you know, this big global thing to the family.
KARIN: We can have another podcast on the global thing but [laughs].
JEFF: [laughs] Yeah. And so, well let me ask, is there anything that you would like to say before we end, because my next question is going to be asking you how people can get in contact with you. But before I ask that, is there anything that was missed here that you can fill in?
KARIN: I think we emphasized the complexity of what a systemic family constellation is. We emphasize it on the way of describing the dysfunction, right? And what happens first is that we see the dysfunction, we literally see the imbalances. We see where there is adaptive functioning.
JEFF: Right.
KARIN: Usually call dysfunction. People don’t look at each other. People are far away. People are, you know, whatever. The second step is interventions to gradually, and in a trauma informed way, gradually shift the system such until everybody is at another level of ease and connection.
JEFF: I feel relaxation inside my body because just talking with you about this, I remember when I was the one who had a constellation done and just watching people do things in the circle, and I was feeling very disoriented and just in this conversation I started to feel a little disoriented. And then with your last comment there, I start to relax.
KARIN: Yeah. So we always at its most potential in a constellation we end up with a new template of more connection and more connection. You know, that could be a group hug, but it doesn’t have to be, it could also be something just saying, now I see you and I’m sorry I couldn’t see you for decades. That’s an opening, right?
JEFF: That is huge. Now I see you and I’m sorry I could not see you for decades. That’s huge. Wow.
KARIN: I am sorry. I was so sad. I could not see you as my child enjoy.
JEFF: Yeah. I couldn’t be present.
KARIN: I couldn’t be present. You know, there are many women, especially as we go back in generations who lost one child, stillbirth, whatever, and a few months later pregnant again and there’s the next child. They’re not even ready or they’re not even grieved.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah. Wow. Karin, thank you so much for this conversation. I really, really appreciate it. And if you could share how people can get ahold of you.
KARIN: I think the best is through my website because then also you can access a little more information and play around and so forth, we know what’s there. And the website is www.ancestor-matters.com because our ancestors matters matter. ancestor-matters.com
JEFF: Alright. Karin thank you very much.
KARIN: You are so welcome.