30/09/2025
"Victim and perpetrator are twinned energies. When we hold on to the victim energy (or the perpetrator energy), we fuel the imbalance that disrupts the order of the family system, creating a cycle in which someone in a later generation will be drawn to right the balance, to act for us in an entanglement. In fact, when we commit to despising our perpetrators, we often unwittingly crate perpetrators in our children or grandchildren-people who feel justified in their anger as they seek retribution on behalf of those with whom they are entangled. We also perpetrate perpetrator energy through exclusion. As we know, missing people are among the greatest causes of entanglement. A missing family member is a week point in the structure of the system. The family system will seek to repair that vulnerability by replacing the missing with a member of a subsequent generation, who becomes identified with the excluded person and is drawn into that person's place. Or we may transmit victim energy, creating an entanglement with a child who is compelled to revisit scenarios like the trauma in an attempt to change its outcome. In all these senses, entanglement is in many ways like a generational trauma response. Whatever has not been taking care of and recognized will happen again. When we acknowledge what is and consent to it, when we include our perpetrators in our family systems, we cut short the cycle of violence and preempt the trauma it creates. This is a remarkable gift we can choose to give our children and our children's children."
Marine Selennee, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies:
Using Family_Constellations Therapy to Recover from Inherited Stories and Trauma, (2022), 170.
