12/28/2025
Entanglements in Family Constellations
In Family Constellations, an entanglement is a systemic bond in which a person is unconsciously linked to the fate, emotions, or unfinished life of another family member, often someone from an earlier generation. They form as unconscious loyalty to the family system.
Someone later in the family unconsciously carries something that belongs to someone earlier.
Parent–Child Entanglements / Blind Loyalties
Carrying a parent’s emotional pain, grief, fear, or anger; feeling responsible for a parent’s wellbeing; acting as a partner, protector, or caregiver; rejecting one parent out of loyalty to the other; difficulty taking life fully or living freely.
Ancestor Entanglements
Identifying with excluded or forgotten ancestors; repeating ancestral fates such as illness, loss, or early death; carrying unresolved grief from previous generations; persistent emotions with no clear personal cause.
Exclusion Entanglements
Effects of excluded miscarriages, abortions, or stillbirths; excluded former partners; family members who were shamed, disowned, imprisoned, or forgotten, unacknowledged perpetrators or victims.
Perpetrator–Victim Entanglements
Carrying guilt or punishment for ancestral wrongdoing; carrying terror, rage, or grief from ancestral victimhood; living both sides of historical trauma; repeating cycles of harm or self-punishment.
Death and Loss Entanglements
Following someone who died young; longing for death or withdrawing from life; chronic depression linked to unresolved loss; fear of living fully when others did not survive.
Relationship Entanglements
Difficulty forming or sustaining partnerships; repeating relationship failures across generations. triangulation with parents or former partners; unconscious loyalty to someone from the past.
Sibling Entanglements
Taking the place of a deceased or unborn sibling; survivor guilt; excessive responsibility for siblings; identifying with a sibling’s illness or fate.
Trauma and War Entanglements
Carrying war, displacement, or refugee trauma; chronic fear, numbness, or hypervigilance; loyalty to ancestors who suffered violence or exile.
Illness and Symptom Entanglements
Symptoms expressing unresolved family trauma; illness connected to excluded family members. addictions reflecting broken bonds or missing parents.
Identity Entanglements
Feeling you are living someone else’s life; not feeling at home in your own life; blocking success, love, or happiness out of loyalty; fear of ease, joy, or fulfillment.
Resolving Entanglements
• Restoring the balance between children and parents
• Acknowledging and seeing the excluded
• Repairing interrupted reaching out to the mother and father
• Returning what belongs to the earlier generation
• Taking rightful place in the family order
• Releasing perpetrator and victim dynamics
• Honoring fate without trying to change it
Barry Krost
healingbodytherapeutics.com
