Today I'll explain more about non-judgment and extracting yourself from family trigger systems.  These are the 3rd and 4th points in Five Star Family Healing as applied to your holiday experience.  3 other related blogs and the audio recording of our first session in the free Transforming Holiday Family Heartaches teleseminar are immediately below on this page.  Enjoy and--go for the opportunity this holiday presents to change your experience of family.

Star Three:  begin stepping out of family trigger systems. So, in looking at the shape your your particular family soul, I suggested you look between individuals and become aware of the patterns of emotional interaction.  What kinds of feelings are regularly exchanged or else suppressed?  Trigger systems are knee-jerk, mildly or seriously hurtful, often repetitive emotional exchanges.  For example, Mom and Dad always bicker about the same things.  Or your siblings regularly put you down for being too "different," and it makes you angry.

There are two kinds of "stepping out" I mean here.  The more extreme form, sometimes necessary, is to simply curtail your communication.  Sometimes, we just have to go away for a while and take our own space.  While we are "away," we can still follow the other "stars" in this approach--especially connecting ourselves with positive ancestral figures in what is our own psychically active, cross-generational family soul.

Otherwise, if you can manage it, a great way to "step out" is to stay present but non-reactive to what you experience family members doing.  It means being able to hold your space, remaining aware of your own feelings but not always acting on them.  This can be a challenge--but it is profoundly transformative for both you and the family members who don't have you to "play" with anymore.  To get good at this, one of the most helpful practices is coming up right now!

Star Four:  cultivate non-judgment and compassion. Now we come to a subtle but important point.  The constellation work perspective is entirely non-judgmental, but at the same time recognizes the guilt of perpetrators.  On their side, their strength lies in acknowledging the damage they've caused.  But on your side, holding on to a blaming attitude stunts your own and your family's growth.  Whether you can forgive or not, blaming keeps you in victim mode.

To be focused on all the bad things done by the very people who gave you life is to lock in the damage to your own root system.  Nobody does all bad.  Whatever else, certain people gave you the gift of life.  If you survived childhood to be here still now--then some things must have been done right for you.  Gratitude for them will start juices flowing that can repair the whole system. 

Again, less attention to individuals and more to what's going on between them and across generations shifts your perspective on blame.  Dad was a problem, yes, but his dad was orphaned and then subjected to a terrible stepfather, because his real father had been worked to death as a prisoner of war.  So Dad's father was just nearly all mean.  Maybe Dad did pretty well considering. 

When you see the patterns of trauma reverberating down across the generations--it becomes a lot easier to stop judging and have some compassion for people caught up in a self-propagating system.  Yet the family soul is always struggling to restore its balance in life and love.  Practice compassion and you wil become a profound catylist in achieving that.