Taking on Suffering on Behalf of Others
Over the years, I have studied with different systemic & family constellations teachers, and also experienced with teachers of other shamanic, spiritual, coaching schools. What I found useful I have integrated into my work to help a client with healing from suffering, seeing what might influence on the result of work that include suffering.
Suffering from loneliness….. or suffering & feeling lost with what I want to do….or suffering from seeing how my children live their life..
These are some of the common issues of the people I work with and
two factors that have a direct influence on the result of liberating themselves from suffering and opening their heart to nourishment from the strongest resources for life’s flourishing.
- The nature of the reason that motivates someone to take on suffering;
Here, I noticed two patterns of invisible loyalty to suffering that needs to be revealed and cleared during a session with a client.
The first one – someone doesn’t have enough strength to look at the suffering of someone his loves. His own health and good luck may feel like a burden to him. In this case suffering is only a form of escape.
The second one – someone who takes on suffering actually identifies with the position of the one who needs help, and in a strange way, claims the other’s sufferings as his own. Having such hidden identification, someone is not able to live his own fate and cannot complete sufferings because it didn’t start with him.
Some time ago I did a private session for a woman whose daughter could’t stay in long-lasting relationships with a man and experienced loneliness. The mother wanted to help her daughter to step out of lonely life she herself left behind. First, the mother had stood in the position of her own loneliness, and was afraid of it. She didn’t want her daughter to know too much of the difficulties, a pain, rejections she faced. Consciously the mother excluded this part of her life, couldn’t find a peace with it and a place into her heart, but unconsciously her inner attention and energy was drown there. Her daughter, unconsciously, took the mother’s loneliness, because only there she felt she could be closed and seen by her mother. This is a pattern of unconscious and destructive shared suffering.
- The ability to be conscious of the fact that the one who need help and he himself are two different people, each leading separate lives.
Taking on suffering on behalf of someone else is unhealthy only when it happens as a result of unconscious loyalties and lack of ability to lead separate lives. However, when it is done with awareness and in a clear context, it may truly be of great help and give strength to both.
