08/11/2024
One of the many insights Bert Hellinger shared with the world is his observations about "the orders of helping" and how those in the helping professions can have the right relationship with their clients and their fate.
He had observed that in the field of psychotherapy, there was an unhealthy stance to helping when therapists stood above the parents of their clients, casting down judgment. Hellinger saw this as dangerous for both the client and the therapist, a type of dark magic that could create more entanglements for the client and the one attempting to help.
"In our professional helping, for instance, in family constellations or in psychotherapy, and even more so in the medical field, we are often dealing with matters of life and death. And the purpose of our helping here is to support individuals to connect with their own destiny so that they can develop and grow according to their own calling.
When are we permitted to help?
In whose hands are life and death? Are they in the hands of a helper? If people behave as if they hold the fate of another human being in their hands, they claim a position that belongs only to God, or the power that we might sense behind this word. So, in matters of life and death we would do well to show utmost restraint. Are we permitted to help at all then? Yes. But only if we are in tune with the greater forces that decide over life and death of human beings. What forces are they?
Helping with respect. What does this mean on a practical level? First of all, when we help people, we must give their parents a place of respect and love in our hearts, regardless of how they were as people and what is said about them. When clients complain about their father or mother, they are implicitly complaining about their fate as well. And they complain about God and whatever this word conceals for us.
When I take into my soul what clients say about their parents in this sense, then I act like them, as if I am above their fate and above God. How can I be of help then? I have given myself the status of their creator. What effects will it have on my soul - and perhaps on my body and health as well - when I behave like this? Can anyone adopt such attitudes of superiority without getting into grave danger themselves and exposing their clients to these dangers as well?
When we observe the attitudes and the procedures of many people in the helping professions, and the degree of blindness they exhibit that way, when we really take a closer look at that and let it touch our souls, then we can feel: We must undergo a deep transformation in order to make our way of helping a safe one, first of all, for ourselves, but then also for others.
So back again once more: how can we proceed safely? Whatever people say about their parents, I as a helper look at the parents in deep respect and love. Then I look at the ancestors and at the events of fate that happened in this family. And I bow to it all, thus coming into harmonious contact with these fates and with the whole background and with the great soul as it is at work there. When I am in agreement with all of this, a hint may come from this field that tells me if I can do something and, if so, what it would be. Or, what emerges might be that I must be very cautious or refrain from any action, or if I am permitted or even obliged, to tell the other person what I perceive.
Sometimes, from this resonance I get a message that appears very harsh, and yet it is in accord with fate. At other times, I am told to back off and to let the person know this. Harsh as this appears at times, it still happens in accordance with the other person's fate and in agreement with his or her soul".
(Hellinger, Rising in Love)
When we add the other challenges discovered by the early psychoanalysts, such as transference, counter-transference, and projective identification, it is clear that we must be alert, I do not believe that this stance is ever complete, but we must stay alert to these subtle and oceanic forces that can put us in a trance or fantasy that we are "bigger" than we are.
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