Transcription
Andrew Folkler:
And welcome everyone to another episode of Broken Family where we host conversations on divorce, parental alienation and high conflict relationships. My name is Andrew Folkler.
Barbara La Pointe:
And I’m Barbara La Pointe. Today we are going to discuss inherited family trauma and systemic family constellations. And this is why we have brought on a guest speaker, a very special guest speaker, to help us really dive deep into this topic.
Barbara La Pointe:
Welcome, Jonine.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Thank you so much, Barbara. Good to be here.
Barbara La Pointe:
So I’m going to provide a little introduction that you’ve been serving people for over 30 years. And you’ve integrated counseling, psychotherapy, NLP, inner child work, and of course family constellation work into your practice to create a powerful practice to help others heal from trauma. And Jonine also serves as the organizer for the Australian International Systemic Constellation Conference. And we are so excited to learn about this conference. And so without further ado, once again, welcome to you, Jonine.
Andrew Folkler:
Welcome.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Thank you, Barbara. Thank you, Andrew. Really good to be with you and to discuss these important topics.
Barbara La Pointe:
Why don’t we just start right off with the conference that you’re organizing with? What’s it about and who’s it for?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Oh, it’s up and passionately speak about that. It’s a conference that myself and a group of colleagues have been organizing over. This is our 10th anniversary coming up. And it originally began as a conference to counterbalance the fact that in Australasia, we don’t have a lot of the international trainers, certainly the first generation trainers, that all originated where the founder of this work, Bert Hellinger, originated.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So we always, as therapists and facilitators, we had to go to Germany to do ongoing training and to see international presenters. So a colleague of mine, Chris Walsh, had the psychiatrist in Melbourne, had the vision to bring them to Australia. And so we first began at the Sydney University in 2011. Since then, it’s grown and not only provides a platform for international presenters to share their skills and innovations with our Australian and generally the wider region, Australasia, but also a platform for our facilitators and trainers to share their skills.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And in the last two years, because of COVID, we’ve been really hit with some challenging dynamics and we’ve had to reschedule our beautiful in-person event. And so it’s morphed over the last 18 months, two years, into what is now beyond in Australasia, but a truly international systemic constellation conference.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So we have participants, facilitators and trainers from nearly 50 different countries. It’s really quite extraordinary and miraculous the way it’s come together. So it will be over eight days in multiple time zones. It will run nearly 24 hours a day. I think it’s about 18 hours a day. And with over 65 amazing trainers, many of them first generation. So esteemed elders and thought leaders and over 65 of them, over 120 workshop options. And each time zone and workshop session, which is from an hour to four hours, offers four choices. So there are four options in each of those.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
It’s really quite extraordinary in mind boggling. And when you look at the schedule that I’ve got, it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s quite, you know, if I’ve got rings under my rings under my eyes, that’s why. But it’s been the most joyful and collaborative adventure to achieve this. And just briefly, because I think your listeners are both parents and in relationship that coaches and therapists, there’s also there are four different streams of learning. So it’s open to everyone.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So those just on a personal journey of self discovery that really want to understand systemic principles that guide and nourish and strengthen healthy relationships and family systems. But there’s also a specific stream for organizational constellations. So many people work in coaching, they work in relationships and family dynamics, but many work with organizations. And the systemic principles that are within the philosophy of family, systemic constellations are also applicable in organizations.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So that’s really exciting. We’ve got extraordinary authors and trainers of many years that will be offering really insightful skills, not only to take into your personal life, but skills that you can translate into your practice as a coach or a therapist.
Andrew Folkler:
Sounds incredible.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
You are in for a day, a whole day on that, but it’s pretty wow.
Andrew Folkler:
For the people who don’t know what systemic constellations is, what would that mean for just the average audience member?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yeah, the average person would find that it’s systemic or family constellations is a set of guiding principles. I actually call it best practice in family and relationship systems. It’s a therapeutic approach or a theoretical approach, it’s a way to look at often hidden dynamics that inhibit a relationship from flourishing. There are certain principles that if followed will support and nourish and strengthen a relationship in family systems or organizations. And some really clear dynamics that if they playing out will hinder and sabotage relationships.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So you get a really clear picture of what works and what doesn’t for healthy family systems for and within healthy family systems or organizations. We know that they don’t continue forever. We belong in a family system and we can never un-belong, but in a marriage or in a business partnership it’s dependent on our agreement and our compliance with the values or commitments that were made.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So systemic constellations is profound in its capacity to give an understanding of what creates good beginnings for relationships or businesses, what works to serve it to flourish and also importantly, and Barbara, an area that you beautifully work in, I understand is in divorce guiding people through healthy divorce. The principles and systemic constellations are profound in helping people understand good endings and how best to support children.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
I cannot tell you in the years that I’ve been in practice, and I hope I’m answering your question, Andrew, the number of relationships that do end, of course, and that have these really difficult, torturous, step-parenting relationships or contentious divorces around so many things. And there are some really beautiful principles when applied from systemic constellations that can provide really good endings and importantly provide a beautiful environment for the next relationship to flourish, because if we don’t have a good ending and if we don’t have a healthy, respectful, co-parenting dynamic, the children lose, the individual, people that have partnered, have parted lose and the next relationship loses and doesn’t flourish.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And there’s this horrendous loss of joy and aliveness and potential that doesn’t happen because people don’t know that they don’t know that what they’re doing is operating from a mindset that’s really closed, limited and archaic, shall we say?
Barbara La Pointe:
Well, I think Andrew and I have talked about this a lot about just unconscious, uncoupling, and also just to speak to what you were saying about how children will act out what’s unresolved between the parents. And that’s come up a few times and like you said, I was really attracted to this work because I thought, wow, how can this serve families that are getting divorced? When you use that systemic lens, it changes everything. I thought you might want to speak to, or maybe we could talk a little bit about those guiding principles and Bert Hellinger’s Orders of Love, he refers to them as the Orders of Love in a family.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yes, lovely Barbara. And exactly that. It’s bringing a systemic lens to different dynamics. What Hellinger understood as did those whose shoulders he stands on in family systems therapeutic models was that there are certain guiding principles within a system and that everything is a system. Like we have our own individual system, mind, body, spirit, for those that believe a soul as well.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And then we have there’s a system within a relationship, there’s a system within a family, and a system is a bit like one of the children’s mobiles that you mobile mobiles, you’d say in Canada or the US, that hangover child’s crib, you know, a system operates a family system or an organization and indeed the planet operates in the same way that you can’t move one of those objects in the mobile mobile mobile without impacting the rest.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And I think the world now has been brought more and more into understanding of the interconnectedness of all things given the COVID, that we don’t exist in isolation, that we can’t say, oh, that’s something over there and it’s nothing to do with us. We are interconnected. And when you talk about the systemic lens, Barbara, we’re talking about not just where it sort of sets apart from some other therapeutic models where it talks to about the mind, body, spirit system.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yes, the familial or biographical history of an individual, but family systemic causes goes back to the influences up to three and seven generations and how we are impacted by that. So when you talk about inherited patterns, Barbara, you know, that children will often, you know, take on, of course, we inherit the mindset. We inherit the internal stance as a consequence of that familial background, but also culturally of what’s passed to us.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And we know now of studies of this has been anecdotal for many years, but we know now through epigenetics and DNA that in actual fact, unresolved trauma from past generations is passed on. The good news is, as well as unresolved trauma, strengths and resources are too, so we can be deeply grateful for extraordinary resources, resilience and creativity that has been passed to us from our ancestors.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
But unless, you know, we wake up and as you say, Barbara, you know, broaden our lens, you know, reassess the mindset that’s been passed to us from previous generations. Unless we review that, then we’re bound to act out in the same way and pass on our unresolved. So I think, actually, we have a duty, an absolute duty, it behooves us to really reassess and do what we can in this generation to heal the past traumas that have been passed to us, we can only do what we can do.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
But the more we resolve the past within ourselves, the less likely we are to injure our partner with it and everyone we come into contact with, you know, unless we heal the past, we’re both a danger to ourselves and to others, imploding or exploding and or our children. I think we have a duty, I think there should be a covenant actually, I think I’m going to sort of set up something or rather a championing for, there’s a compassion chart or I think there needs to be, you know, a parenting charter that says, okay, you need, you know, because so many people you would both have found say, I’ll do anything for my children.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
They say that, but the actions don’t match up and bless them and myself as well in the past. They don’t know that they don’t know that in actual fact, though they’ve got good intentions, they’re energetically passing on the unresolved trauma. So it’s about bringing awakening consciousness, bringing a meta lens to what works and what doesn’t to serve love Barbara. I think that answers your question.
Barbara La Pointe
It’s a question to serve love and I think it is such a liberating lens.
Andrew Folkler:
Reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect, you know, it’s kind of unfortunate that it applies in this scenario too, where the incompetent don’t know that they’re incompetent and that early on in our journey and anything, whether it’s learning a skill or even in this case being in the role of a parent or a friend or in a relationship where that confidence is super high at the beginning until you realize once you get deep in that it’s a very slow journey to mastery.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, I definitely can see where that’s where you’re coming from with that. And what we don’t see, we don’t know exists or what we don’t perceive, we don’t know exists.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yes. I love that conscious unconscious, conscious confidence, exactly. And very often as I say, we don’t know that we don’t know. I didn’t know that I didn’t know worse still though. We think we do.
Barbara La Pointe:
It becomes a problem because of the lack of love that’s going on. I might pose the question, why can’t we all get together and go to soccer? But there’s such a conflict at the heart of it that that becomes not possible. And I think that’s the deeper underlying issue.
Barbara La Pointe:
Right.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
I think that’s the biggest trap. I thought I was so clever. I thought I was like really, you know, this cosmic mother partner, really doing all this good shabang and when I look back, I think, oh my Lord bless that younger me because seriously, oh my gosh, my first experience of step parenting. Yes, I’ve learned a great deal since then, but I agree. And but so I think there are some symptoms that we that tell us that all can wake us up to not knowing to to to bringing the unconscious to the conscious and to okay and in actual fact, the most beautiful thing about systemic constellations is the simplicity of the method is such that it actually probably the primary purpose of it is to reveal the hidden or unconscious dynamics operating in a relationship system, a family system, or an organization that are hindering the flow of love.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
My very first experience was such a profound experience. And it was a real indication of I was operating from not only did I not know, I didn’t know, I thought I did. Because I actually, is it appropriate to talk about an example here?
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Is that okay? So my very first experience, I come from a large family on the second eldest in a family of nine. So I was at a conference, you know, for breath because that’s the other thing that I do somatic breath work. And this woman, as I say nearly 30 years had come back from Poland and Germany and she said, Oh, I really found this beautiful new therapeutic approach. And I think it’s, it’s very soulful and lovely, would you like to experience it?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And so it was a large gathering and being one of nine, what’s involved while you set up your family members and I thought, Oh, great, it’s a conference, lots of people, I’ve got a large family. Yes, I’d love to do that. And I won’t speak of the exact dynamic, it’s very personal and very powerful influence in my life. But I thought that I would. So what a client does is bring an issue to the, to the, much like therapy, bring an issue to the table that they’d like some insight or resolution around.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So I bought a dynamic to the approach and the facilitator, my colleague who’d come back from Poland and Germany said, okay, so who’s involved and I said, we’re really my whole family. So she asked me to set up the members of my family, which I did and then I sat down. Now the particular dynamic that I was working on, I thought I was incredibly clear on, like I’d done a lot of work on it. I was really clear in the dynamics around it.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
I actually thought I was kind of like the, I use this, the, like the cosmic guru on it is like, oh yeah, I’m so, I’m so sorted on that. That’s one thing in my life that’s really sorted. I just want to have a look at this other thing. When I set the dynamic up, I sat down and realized, oh my Lord, oh my God. Here I was, I thought I had this dynamic really clear in my mind. And I’d actually completely left out, completely not included them at all. The person that was most important in this dynamic to acknowledge.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And I thought my understanding was I completely acknowledged this person’s position. When I looked at what I’d set up, I didn’t even have them in there. They were the only person I didn’t have in there. So consciously, oh yes, I’m so in love and acknowledging of this person unconsciously. I don’t even want you to exist. It was so profound. I can’t even begin to tell you how profound it was.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And part of the process then was for me to acknowledge this person that I’d excluded and we’ll talk about some of the basic orders that you referred to before Barbara and this is one of them, that we suffer and everyone in the system suffers when we exclude someone that has a right to belong. This person had the most profound, profound beyond words right to belong. And in my conscious mind, I totally did and had profound love for her. Unconsciously, don’t want you to exist.
Barbara La Pointe:
It was a blind spot for you.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
It was a blind spot. That’s exactly it. And I’m so mindful and so humbled ongoingly Barbara, and you guys probably realise this too in your work, of just how ongoingly we discover these blind spots. And God love us. You know, we’re all operating with good intention, but that’s my passion for this process because it actually illuminates so beautifully our blind spots.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And for me, that was profound. Now, if that hadn’t happened nearly 30 years ago, I hate to think of how that would have impacted several people involved in that, particularly this person, you know, myself. And my daughter, it would have had a huge impact and so and it would have inhibited the flow of love and the flourishing of connection and the deep acknowledgement and respect that it wasn’t just words, but was deeply, deeply felt. So it was it was profoundly life changing for me. And I’ve seen it happen again and again and again and again.
Barbara La Pointe:
What I find really fascinating, I’m curious if this happened for you, is when you acknowledged that that person that was left out of your constellation, did she feel it?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yes
Barbara La Pointe:
Because I know, right, she did. And sometimes that will happen, right, like the whole system will feel the work that you’re doing, even though you’re not calling up Andrew and saying, Andrew, I’m doing a constellation for a relationship, but he’ll he may feel it.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Exactly. That’s so true. You walk out of anything. Oh, gosh, everybody else has done the workshop too. But of course, you know, it’s a reminder that, you know, what flows from our energetic field is, you know, the, you know, the deeply unconscious felt sense of our experience of the world. So you know, even though we might be wanting to be expressing, you know, profound love and respect and acknowledgement, if that’s actually unconsciously blocked, then it’ll show up in our energy field and will not attract things and or block dynamics happening in our life because of it. So yes, it’s amazing.
Andrew Folkler:
So I think the core lesson here, and especially for the audience members who might quite not grasp the whole thing is that it’s these conflicts that are the in your face splash of water that says something is unresolved and you need to look deeper within to find the answers. Because I imagine a lot of people, like you said, will be in that situation where they say, you know, how do I know what I don’t know, you know, how am I supposed, how should I know what I don’t know, I can’t see it, I can’t touch it, I can’t hear it or breathe it or anything.
Andrew Folkler:
And so they walk in and they’re it’s like they’re in survival mode most of the time from the wounds of their past and they’re walking in into problem after problem and why is my life full of problems is what they say. And without realizing that it is these problems that will help them look deeper within themselves and find those answers that they’re looking for.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
That’s it, Andrew. So what happens, of course, is the reason that what will, you know, if we’re fairly clear energetically within our family systems, then we’ll just be ticking along and really life will be flourishing and will be creative and will be fairly joyful and will be fairly healthy and our relationships will be maintained and they’ll be respectful. So it’s the symptoms of those things not happening.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
It’s the symptoms of disharmony or disorder or dysfunction. As you say, Andrew, that have us go, if we care and value ourselves and more and more, you know, people are inclined to go, I think I need help here because this is about the 10th year that this recurring pattern has been in my relationship or my fourth relationship that’s been like this, or I’ve been to every doctor in naturopath, I work a lot with health issues as well as relationships, I’ve been to everyone and I take all the healthy supplements and I do everything they say and still my condition doesn’t clear up. It’s those sorts of symptoms, those recurring patterns of dysfunction or disharmony, those recurring health problems, the recurring issues with success and money and or relationship break up as you would experience, Barbara.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
It’s those recurring patterns that tell us, you know, symptoms like that are an indication that there’s an unmet need or an entanglement or a dynamic that we’re not aware of and that if we’ll take care of it. And I often tell people it’s like, well, what’s a key indication of maybe sort of that we’ve got unresolved trauma or inherited trauma and because what we know is that, you know, we inherit a certain amount of intergenerational trauma.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And then in our biography, particularly our early childhood patterning, if there are traumas and hurts and events, we’ve learned culturally to suppress that. And a key indication of just what level of suppression we’re at is, I always tell people the degree to which you are reactive in your life to traffic partners, sensitivity things, the degree to which you’re reactive, I trigger off or shut down in response to external events is the degree to which you’re unresolved with the password. No question about it. None. Zero.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
That’s like, I’ve got a runny nose, I need a tissue and I’ve got a cold. It doesn’t take you five years to go, you know what, I’ve been reactive and firing off, you know, we’re shutting down for 35 years, I wonder what that could be about. No. Hello. Wake up. It’s like a runny nose tissue. I see all the time firing off or shutting down, ah, unresolved trauma.
Barbara La Pointe:
We met in Mark Wolyn’s work and in his training, and he talks a lot about breaking the bond with the mother, but how I initially heard that prior to Mark was a mother wound. So whether it’s a mother wound or breaking the bond with your early parents, you’re breaking the bond with your mum, how can that relate to what we’re talking about today in terms of symptoms?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Well, I think the set, well, if Mark’s work is so beautiful and profound, I love it dearly and I’ve bought into Australia for a number of years and he’s going to be on the faculty, he does three presentations for the conference, we’re so blessed with his presence, so profoundly blessed because he’s actually on sabbatical for six months taking a rest after a really hectic schedule and completing his next book, but he’s presenting at the conference, which we’re profoundly grateful for.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Mark’s one of the most generous and concise and clear trainers that work with understanding the four unconscious themes and inherited traumas, why his books called, it didn’t start with you because he realizes it starts generations back. So when you talk about symptoms, so it could be, Mark talks really specifically in his book, It didn’t start with You, about how to identify, specifically breaks in the bond with the mother, but and he speaks beautifully to my own core belief that unless, and Hellinger’s, that unless we are at peace with both our mother and father, irrespective of how horrendous they have been or might continue to be, unless we are at peace, hold them in a good place within ourselves, we’re likely to have all kinds of symptoms from the spectrum of really mild to really profound, unless we arrive at that place.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And Barbara, you would know really well that it’s not about saying, oh, it was so fine. What happened, you know, it’s just making peace with the fact that it did. It’s that acceptance, it’s like, yeah, because what’s the alternative, the alternative to accepting that what happened happened is to deny it and you can spend the next 50 years of your life and believe me, people try to do it denying that it did happen, wishing that it didn’t happen, demanding that it should never have.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And still you can do that forever and will it make the slightest sort of difference? Zero, zip, zilt, you can do it for the next 50 years energetically. And many people are energetically, even if not physically, walking through life like this, stomping their feet energetically, you know, not physically, but you know the deal. They come from that internal stance. And it’s all about it shouldn’t have, it’s unjust, it’s unfair, I demand that it didn’t and you didn’t give me what I wanted and needed when I was a child and I still demand that you do it now.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And if you don’t give it to me then someone else should and God love us, you know, we all do need to deserve that love. But if you’re over 18, certainly if you’re over 21, guess whose job it is now to take care of that? That would be you, that would be me, end of story, not mom and dad’s job anymore. I like telling people, you know, you got what you got. That’s it, you got what you got and your job, our job is to make the best of things.
Barbara La Pointe:
By just acknowledging, even if it’s just that small, good part and just running with the best little part of that 2% of good of mom or dad and that’s strengthening on that.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
That’s exactly right. And Mark has a beautiful expression that he uses around that. I don’t know if you’ve heard him say it, it’s like so often we aren’t happy with what came from our parents and so, you know, we reject or we don’t like the flavour of the love that they are able to give us and so we just sort of reject it out of hand.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And I’m not sure how much this is, but it says, you know, like so, so there’s an arrogance and a hubris in that, it’s like, you know, you’re not giving me, we want acceptance for who we are, but we’re not accepting our parents for who they are in all this shabbiness and whatever it is, it’s still about acceptance. And we reject the love that is available, which might be through deeds or words or finance or food or whatever it is.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And Mark says, I think, you know, you, if you put it, at least if you put a cup under a dripping tap, it’ll gradually fill up, but if you don’t put the cup there and never fill up and that drip, even though it might be a drip, just falls on the ground and is wasted. And I think there’s an arrogance in that and many of us, and certainly I had to come to terms with an arrogance and a hubris and a yes.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And again, that blind spot, Andrew, where we don’t realize that we’re sitting in demand that people shouldn’t ought to and ought not to have. And they don’t love me in the way that I want or need it. I want them to accept me and love me. It’s like, hmm, how is what we’re not doing towards them the same as what we’re so angry at about that they’re not doing for us?
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely right. And just as a quick anecdote, because this reminds me, just sometime last year, I read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, and for the average reader who doesn’t know what the story is about, it starts with where a young man is sent to prison on false charges and he suffers prison time and when he breaks out, he stumbles upon a large amount of wealth and then returns to Paris to punish the people who imprisoned him as The Count of Monte Cristo.
Andrew Folkler:
And I was reading this book because my dad recommended it to me because this was the persona I was taking on as somebody who is coming back, trying to come back through a history of parental alienation. And I remember just how much this is one of the first characters in my entire life I’ve really related to and I say that as someone who reads a great deal, both fiction and nonfiction.
Andrew Folkler:
And so reaching towards the end of the book where the character, The Count of Monte Cristo was realizing that vengeance was not going to solve his problems and that even after enacting some vengeance on the people who had unfairly put him through 14 years of prison, it led me to realize the errors I was making and that I was also walking down this path. And mind you, this was three years into a very, very detailed 10-year plan of how I was going to and how I was going to make my return.
Andrew Folkler:
It wasn’t going to be anything remotely illegal. I’m not trying to be scary or anything like that, but in a sense where I was going to push myself to become maybe more of like a Heathcliff rather than Count of Monte Cristo. I was going to come back as this financial entrepreneur who was going to bring about all these changes and was going to fix everything and get my family back together.
Andrew Folkler:
And there was going to be nothing they could do about it. But as I realized that a lot of that was the anger that I was taking on that was in a sense imprinted upon me growing up due to the abusive nature of my stepmother.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Wow. So that’s a really strong experience, isn’t it? Yeah. And so did it really hit you? You just went, wow, like all this energy, all this energy I’ve put into this and really what it was.
Andrew Folkler:
Well, ironically, I ended up taking the same, not trying to spoil the book, but for the people who haven’t read it, but I ended up kind of adopting the similar approach to what Monte Cristo does at the end, where he realizes that vengeance is not to be within his hands. It’s within either the hands of the divine or just within the hands of the invisible forces that whether you believe in karma or what have you.
Andrew Folkler:
And so what Monte Cristo does at the end is he finds the people that do love him, the people that he is happy with, and he moves on from the previous love that he had that had already moved on from him. And he just goes on and lives his life. He adventures, he enjoys himself, he still has his traumas to work through, but he’s not going to be defined by them anymore.
Andrew Folkler:
He is no longer wearing the costume of Monte Cristo because that’s the personification of his vengeance, rather, he’s going to go back to being a, you could say a reborn version of Edmund Dantes, which was his actual name.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Beautiful. And I think sometimes that that vengeance mode initially is something that’s valuable to work through because it is the sense of injustice and the anger and the hurt and the deep grief. And sometimes that can propel us to do better and be stronger and achieve. And so that has a positive influence. But if that’s what continues to drive us as you’re getting that insight, then it’s driven, the source of it is vengeance.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And so, you know, it’s really wasteful energy and it consumes a lot of our life force energy and my belief is it consumes a lot of our joy and aliveness because it’s very difficult to feel joy and a deep sense of creative aliveness when the driver, the impulse for your doing well and achieving in success is actually revenge.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Let it be instead acceptance of what happened and I will do the best, make the best of things and he’s me making the best. Talking about imprisoners. So I don’t, I’ve never read Count of Monte Cristo. You inspire me to read it and I love that you’re an avid reader.
Andrew Folkler:
Yes.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
But Nelson Mandela says something interesting on that too, because as we know in his long road to freedom, he talked about, you know, there’s no point my staying in anger with the imprisoner, those that imprisoned him and we know what it cost him. Everybody knows that, but he said for me to stay in vengeance is like drinking, drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemy.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, whenever I described the feeling to people, at least internally, it would I would start with, you know, it’s a very strong fire, but it’s not an uncontained billowing orange fire. It was a very focused blue fire that I had within me and it drove me for, like I said, three years into this 10 year plan and I went in, I went from having no, no money, no nothing really to my name to working my way up through this retail job and buying my own house on my own, you know, and just slowly building up this, this vision for the future.
Andrew Folkler:
But at the cost of many things at the cost of potential relationships with people at the cost of having meaningful relationships with just friends in general, I shut down my emotions as well. I was not, I won’t say I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t feeling anything. I was this robotic personality just driving towards this one singular goal.
Andrew Folkler:
And it wasn’t until I spent more time thinking about one, you know, what is it that I’m really going to try and become towards the end into, there was a second realization where in between while I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo where I accomplished one of the goals that I needed to accomplish within that 10 year frame or at the end of that 10 year frame. And all of a sudden, the rest of the 10 year plan didn’t feel like it mattered anymore, which to be vague, yet more specific, I built a relationship with somebody that I was estranged from.
Andrew Folkler:
And so at that time, it was like, okay, I thought this was going to take 10 years, you know, a million dollars and a personal private jet. It didn’t. It took just a little bit of genuine emotion and just being emotionally there and present for somebody. Now, I did this in three years instead of 10, what do I do now?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Well done. Well done. But isn’t that beautiful that gift was the presence? Yeah. But it sounds like you operated less from revenge and more from a desire to make a difference, which I think was a very different motivating factor, wasn’t it? Like you were going to do well in spite of what happened or something like that seemed to be your motivator, which was a pride element.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah. There was a pride element there, so I might be hyper criticizing myself, but there was a pride element. There was the desire to stand there and say, I have done, to stand there to the abuser, I have done everything you said you would do yourself and where are you? And so that was part of that pride motivation and don’t get me wrong, that’s not healthy either.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Sure. Still, it’s healthier than some options. Yes, you do about yourself. So it’s really, really wonderful.
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Good job. How are we doing, Barbara?
Barbara La Pointe:
I think we’re doing good. Let’s dive a little bit into inherited family trauma. So if you were to look at Andrew or a character in a book or any soul walking this planet, can it be that their destiny is inherited or biologically passed down to them?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yeah. I think that is a lovely expression by Hellinger, what does he say, a tree doesn’t get to choose where its seed lands and where it grows and the same for us as children. We don’t get to, well, we can say that on a soul level, many of us believe that on a soul level, we do choose the family that we come to, I’m of a view that I’ll operate my life by the best, the most creative and life enhancing beliefs, because no one can prove them true or otherwise really.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So with a child, so we land in a family and we have to grow there, a bit like the seed that was planted, that it doesn’t choose where it lands, it has to adapt to the environment. I think that’s true for us. We come from our inherited family traumas and we arrive in a family system, whether our soul chooses that or not, as a person, as a human, we’ve got to make the best of things within that environment and it is, there’s no value in wishing it were otherwise.
Barbara La Pointe:
Sometimes we, back to Mark again, he talks about something called the ancestral alarm clock that goes off and I thought we might address that.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Sure. I don’t know that I’ve heard him say that particular thing, I’m elaborate, I’ve heard him say a lot of things, but I’m not that particular quote.
Barbara La Pointe:
Oh, okay, but it’s kind of like, you know, something comes up in your life like a divorce or you come, God forbid, suicidal and it happens that, for example, 45 years old and so when you start shaking the family tree and looking up the family tree, we might come to see that in our lineage, this happened to our mother at 45, the exact same age where it’s now expressing in our lives that trauma is, you know, expanding out and looking for healing.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yes. Now I understand what you’re saying, yes, the need to shake the family tree, yes, when things happen in our life, it is helpful to understand what hidden dynamics or entanglements might be there and as Mark said and certainly is the philosophy within constellations that unless we resolve and integrate and heal past traumas, the patterns of that will play out ongoingly because all systems seek balance and when it feels like someone’s been excluded or there’s been an entanglement in one generation, there’s often a desire for children in the next generation to address that balance.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And how that can happen sometimes in families, Barbara, is that and another reason for us as adults and parents to clear up where we’re at with our parents and hold them in a good place because if we attempt to exclude our parents within our family and ongoing children because, you know, they weren’t the parents we wanted and they were, you know, not very healthy and helpful, the children, our children will often feel that exclusion and feel an overly strong connection to that excluded mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, sibling because systems always seek balance and so when there’s an imbalance or an exclusion someone will pick it up and they’ll often act out the unresolved of that previous generation.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yeah, so it’s really, really important. Another reason really important to resolve but also just to, you know, if there’s something happens in a life to look for potential patterns from previous generations can often help us clear that up sooner rather than later rather than sort of strangle you around the dark like why is this happening could be because of this.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So if we look and as Mark does beautifully in the he’ll do the the genogram and we’ll go and he’ll go back two and three generations which is which we do in constellation work and look for the signpost, you know, like what was happening here so when I see a client and you probably do it in your work too when I see a client I’ll often ask so tell me a little bit about mom tell me a little bit about dad any unusual or heavy faiths in your family system and so by heavy faiths as you were talking about Barbara we’re talking about you know was there war was there you know poverty or starvation was there an early death did someone go to war was there an abortion or stillborn was there had to get there are a number of things that we can look to to realize and link and connect to what might be showing up now.
Barbara La Pointe:
So true.
Barbara La Pointe:
You know we were fortunate enough to have a film producer on last week and she produced a Erasing Family and she interviewed a dad in Argentina who was divorcing his wife and she wouldn’t let him see or he was remembering his remembering his mom and dad and they had a violent divorce and a lot of fighting and he didn’t get to see his dad and now in current day he was getting divorced and his wife would not allow him to see his daughter and it was just like he was experiencing this two times in his life and really suffering but this this carry down patterning that we’ve been talking about was so apparent in this story I don’t know if he was conscious enough but it really struck me in that in that documentary.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And yes Anne Winston just is a traumatologist and she’s another presenter at the the international conference and she talks a lot about the the the fractals that happen in family systems so the repeat patterns and how to unpack those so again it how often the same pattern happens on a similar age or day the same dynamic and again it’s that mindset’s passed down so really understanding the harm that we do to children in separation and divorce is really important.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
How are we doing four time guys?
Barbara La Pointe:
We’ve got about five minutes left so why why don’t you invite us to just you know maybe you’d like to highlight you know just a couple of presenters that might be very attractive at your upcoming conference.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Wow there’s there there are really quite a few. Certainly I’ve talked we talked a lot about Mark and I mentioned Anne Winston just there’s a whole stream of organizational constellation facilitators that work with business so even if you’re not working in business but a coach that works with people in business. Yann Yacob Stam from the Netherlands, Cecilia Fernandez-Rejojo from Portugal both outstanding Philippe Belieu from Belgium, Sarah Connelly one of our Australian organisational facilitators is really amazing and then we have we’ve got actually a two-day weekend coming up this coming weekend and during that some of those presenters are offering as well as a medical doctor Dr Karl Heinz Rauscher who works with understanding symptoms.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So he specifically hones in on looking at symptoms and understanding their root cause so that that’s really quite marvelous because he sort of mixes these worlds of you know medical doctor and Charmin and Constellator and yeah so there’s there’s there’s there’s so many things that topics and subjects that we cover in the in the conference from relationships to health to family systems to success.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
A big focus of mine is given that I’ve spent nearly 30 years working with healing trauma is joy. Sometimes the most profoundly suppressed emotional internal stance that we have is joy and yet it’s the source of our deepest creativity and aliveness and if we’re looking to attract people events success abundance certainly relationships having an abundance having a really good healthy relationship a soulful relationship not a la la la I’m happy happy happy but a deep joy that’s an awe.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
A sense of awe and gratitude at the wonder of life itself that’s the kind of joy I’m talking about when we have a really strong sense of that internally despite whatever might have happened for us that’s a seriously attractive field we’re operating in versus opposite the trauma it shouldn’t have it caught and have I know they should they shouldn’t I’m gonna freeze I’m gonna shut down which is a seriously resistible energy field it’s seriously resistible we can stay away from that energy field in droves it’s like okay I’m not going so I have a so a lot of the work that I do is about and our focus really so of course trauma is part of the work but my actual internal stance and positioning is more on joy.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So I’ll be sharing that at the conference as well but addictions are also a huge part of what people are dealing with and certainly the the pandemic has really raised those issues and one of my dearest colleagues and has been a past organizer with the conference with me Maria Dons has a huge history and a very rich source of skills and insights that she brings to understanding addictions in relationships so that’s another another insight that you look it’s just endless it’s completely marvelous so I really invite anybody to come you can come for one day you can come for three days you can come for the eight days but it do come it’s just completely wonderful.
Andrew Folkler:
How would people sign up for this conference? And what are the dates for it I should probably add?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
So there’s there’s a brief and very inexpensive weekend coming up February 20 and 21 and that’s only I think it’s 190 us or something like that and it’s actually two for one so two full days you can bring two things you don’t have to have the same computer because they can be wherever and then the big conference the eight days 17 18 hours a day four options in each workshop session starts on the 25th of February and goes to the 4th of March so you can attend any number of days within that and the recordings will be available for two weeks after the conference to view not to download but to view so it’s a really good deal and the and the link for that um should I give you that here or will you just post it later
Andrew Folkler:
Yeah go go ahead.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yeah so you can go to www.constellationintensive.com and find an extraordinary wealth of information there and if you um I’m having to give you guys also a discount code and a potential offer for an upgrade purchase the three-day um and get upgraded to eight days so but that’s an exclusive for the podcast yes definitely that’s amazing I thought I’m going to be there yeah just to just to verify the access to recordings are that’s is that lifetime or like no they’ll only be available for two weeks yeah we’re looking at we will we will discuss we’re actually I’m actually hoping that part of this because there’s so many first-generation constellators.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Andrew I’m actually hoping to weave it together to be a bit of a documentary on Hellinger and the life history the evolution of um family systemic um therapy so it will probably be woven into um a documentary okay that will then be um purchasable so and that will be in discussion with faculty members and so forth but yeah I’m kind of excited about that as a possibility so yeah at this stage and then they’ll return that’s then we may have them available for purchase but the um royalty and income for that will need to go to the presenters yeah yeah absolutely cool
Barbara La Pointe:
Okay well I’m just going to jump in and say I really find that you truly embody joy!
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yeah I hope so! If you’re going to sell a product you better have it you’ve abundant exactly but you know and you know I often tell people that you know that the pathway to joy is about a thousand and fifty deeply excruciating painful mind body stretching steps to arrive at joy you know it’s not like I’m going to we’re a joy done and but it’s also then in elevating it in our life giving it a position of value I think culturally and planetarily we don’t give it importance we treat it as something that’s on a Christmas card or something like that or joy oh yes it’s a nice light fluffy thing yeah exactly but I’m talking about a joy and or as I say the wonder of life even in those most excruciating moments you know I can connect to a deep sense of gratitude that you know it’s gratitude even that we have the quality of challenges that we have that’s the kind of joy I’m talking about.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
It’s gratitude extreme extreme sport gratitude brings about joy and I’m crying I just I just thinking about my own journey of lostness and so forth to arrive at this state power it brings me deep gratitude it’s like I’m so grateful to my younger selves for doing the hard yards you know being able to say yes okay I’m going to resolve that I know it’s an issue I’m going to resolve that I’m going to resolve that and I had to go through divorces. I had to go through step parenting and I had to keep showing up and showing up and showing up for myself and I’m reaping the rewards of this age and stage of life.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
And it is quite delightful to live in this body I have to say but it’s a it’s a pretty good deal yeah being alive and being human I’m so glad I got to be you know a person and a woman and living in this country you know I’m not a tree or a rock or a frog you know they don’t get to do half the cool stuff that we get to you know to be to be human it’s a good gig I don’t know if a better one
Barbara La Pointe:
Well yeah that’s where the miracles can can happen right?
Jonine Lee Gabay:
That’s it exactly be the force field that attracts it that’s the deal clear up all the crap in your field just go around pick up all the poop and just clear it up and create a force field that contributes because this is the other thing too talking about you know gratitude and contribution unless we clear up energetically the unresolved we are contributing nothing to the world we are actually taking and we didn’t talk about maybe another time we’ll talk about the specific orders of balance of giving and receiving in that barber it’s really valuable to talk about but we are taking we are using up life resources if we’re not unresolved because we’re needing to be taken care of and we’re reactive and we’re not being our most creative potential cells.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
When we clear up the past we’re actually contributing energetically our spirit our aliveness our creativity and we are as you talked about it we’re a gift when we’re that present to ourselves and to others and we’re a gift. We contribute to the greater whole and let us all do that as best we can. Bless you both. thank you so much for such a soulful time. I’ve had such a delightful joyful and soulful time with you both thank you very much.
Andrew Folkler:
Absolutely, so Jonine, before I do our wrap up speech uh where could people reach you if they wanted to either learn more about you or if they wanted to contact you.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Jonine Lee Gabay. So I’ve got the most ancient website still still happening but after 30 years it’s all referral so there’s an ancient website under my name Jonine Lee Gabay but probably go to constellation intensive you’ll find um me there and um the most resourceful I’ve found even though I still did um a lot of one-on-one work um wanting to reach the greatest point of leverage I find is in the conferences and in training people if we upskill people and increase their awareness then that’s a greater point of leverage.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
The more we can do that in collaborative learning groups the more we can contribute to the evolution of humanity to a kind and more resilient creative planet let’s go that I consider my job to be contributing to world peace world peace love and joy you know like the Christmas card thing I consider my job to be contributing to peace love and joy um session by session, conference by conference.
Barbara La Pointe:
And it just ripples out beautifully.
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Yeah is that your wrap up speech and true
Andrew Folkler:
Well no it’s a little bit it’s a little bit more formal than that okay but uh yeah all right but everyone thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today uh once again if you enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe to our channel either on YouTube or through our podcast through the various channels.
Andrew Folkler:
Don’t forget to use the downloadable document below to help you and your loved ones deal with these various challenges trauma and inherited family trauma for that matter if you have any further questions there you want to suggest a future podcast idea feel free to reach out to us Barbara what would be the best way to reach out to you?
Barbara La Pointe:
barbaralapoint.com
Andrew Folkler:
And if you’ve got any questions for me feel free to reach me on my website at andrewfolkler.com or email me at startnow@andrewfolkler.com as always everyone thank you for taking the time to be with us today at the broken family podcast where we discuss and help you find solutions to divorce parental alienation and high conflict relationships have a wonderful day everyone
Jonine Lee Gabay:
Thanks everyone
Barbara La Pointe:
Thanks for joining us bye
Barbara La Pointe:
So if I might close this podcast with something positive and something hopefully healing.
End of Transcript
Note: This podcast was produced in 2021 in collaboration with Barbara La Pointe Coaching. The downloadable summary for this episode was created for Barbara’s divorce coaching practice. If you would like a copy of the downloadable summary, please go to barbaralapointe.com/podcasts.
To learn more about how divorce coaching can help you, visit Barbara’s website at barbaralapointe.com
To learn more about Jonine Lee Gabay, visit her personal website or visit the Constellation Intensive Website.
