Healing Family Wounds by Rob Burlinson
There is a well-known saying ‘You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family’. For it to be so well-known suggests this must be a universal truth which so many have experienced before, but what does it really mean? The idea that we can ‘choose’ friends implies the ability to use our free will. With family we have no choice, it is fated. Yet family ties can be the most painful of all.
Whenever we meet someone new in our lives, the ‘F’ word is never going to be far away. What do you do? Where do you come from? Are you close to your family? For someone then to reveal, that they no longer have anything to do with a relation whom they are supposed to love with all their heart, and in fact, would rather this individual take a one-way ticket to the Arctic, can be like an admission of guilt. There can be genuine surprise when family members don’t get on, as if because they are related, then surely they should also be living in harmony and bliss.
Within my own family I have two elderly sister aunts, now both in their early nineties, who haven’t spoken to each other in over twenty years. I also had to do a lot of work on the relationship with my own father. Wherever there are family ties, there can be blame, power issues, and many difficult feelings that may never get resolved. In my experience as a counsellor, there have been many times, no matter what the presenting issue of a client, that the therapy leads us back to the family history.
Yet, if we were able to stand back, what could having family issues mean from a higher perspective? If we accepted the concept that life is like a school and we come here to develop and work on ourselves then what would be the purpose of ‘family’?
An incarnating soul, wishing to learn something would have to make sure they were challenged to develop when ‘down here’. One way would be to incarnate with people that could trigger their issues, acting as mirrors to nudge them in their development. With ‘friends’ or even ‘partners’, these mirrors could be avoidable, they could change either using their free will. A soul would need instead to involve itself in a ‘fated’ situation in which they were attached to their ‘triggers’ for life, just like prison convicts. Whom they could never escape even if they changed their name and flew to the other side of the world. This, in effect, is what we call our ‘family’. The lid of the pressure cooker is on the minute we are born. In many respects, surely it’s a marvel and miracle that any of us get on with our families at all!
Of course, many families are very loving and do get on very well with each other, and from a spiritual perspective, there could be numerous reasons why someone chooses to be within a specific family. Deep loving bonds that last through lifetimes, choosing to clear ancestral issues, karma, or choosing to incarnate in a family because there is a specific task to complete and this family fits our needs. As healers, usually we are different to our family anyway and ‘stand out’. Most likely for all of us there is a combination of reasons.
By looking at our family in this way, it can help us if we are caught within painful emotional situations with siblings, parents or children that feels difficult to resolve. It gives us some detachment from the wounding, which we can instead hopefully see as an opportunity for growth. After all, on some level we have probably had a hand in creating the dynamic. Though it may seem easier, and less painful both to ourselves and the other person, to avoid an issue and leave something unresolved, it’s important to remember ‘the bigger picture’. If we don’t attempt to incorporate the learning now, whilst we have the awareness and opportunity to do it, we are simply delaying dealing with it. We could then be drawn back many lifetimes by this same emotional issue and unrealised growth opportunity. Anything unresolved in this lifetime, is potentially also a drain on our personal power, as, whilst we go about our daily life, there is a portion of our unconscious identity which is trapped by the blocked energy. For example, we may not even realise that our inability to get a job we love, or a fulfilling partner is actually due to being held back by this issue and energetic blockage.
But what does healing a family wound entail? It does not mean we then have to be in harmony with our family the rest of our lives. It may still mean we have nothing to do with someone. The important thing is to work on our part of it, what we may have hoped to learn from this painful situation, take back our projections, and find a place of inner peace with it. Why are we experiencing this from a souls growth point of view? If we can truly grasp and understand this, then I feel we are on the way to true healing. Ill feeling needs to be released so that it no longer prevents us from moving forwards. Remembering that whoever it is we have a grievance with, has also been wounded in some way can help.
Because of our training we are at an advantage with the tools we have available to help us heal this. Meditating on it can be profound. One could ask ‘by going through this painful situation what is it that I am here to learn’? or ‘what can I do to help resolve this for my highest good?” We can also work with the mineral kingdom, for example the deeper crystals, such as Obsidian, Peridot, or Turquoise (which can help with ancestral issues). Healings will no doubt involve work on the mental, emotional and possibly spiritual bodies, and some of the chakras, including the base (linking us to our roots) and heart, may be involved. We may also do Cord Cutting, and Astrology, if seen from a soul perspective is something else that could help us understand ourselves. We can also just step out the front door and ask to be shown what it is we need to work on - just be prepared for the response, and remember detachment - that what we see in the ‘outside world’ is in some way responding to our question.
Even if a person is no longer with us, yet this relationship still haunts us in some way, we can do the work. Wherever the other person’s spirit is, they will feel it positively, and be no longer bound to us by our strong feelings.
We may also choose to do something practical. Perhaps see a counsellor or psychotherapist, or speak or write a letter, with honesty, about how we feel and the impact someone has had on us. Sometimes, this may mean that the other person can still not hear us, but this does not matter, the important thing is we have said what we needed to, with compassion, and not coming from a place of accusation.
Healing deep family wounds is probably never going to be easy, but looking at it from a soul perspective, if we are able to let go of and resolve the conflict, we are potentially also resolving some or all of a deep life pattern that we came in with to heal. The positive impact of doing this will then affect the Grid connecting us all for the highest good. Also, if we are doing the right thing, then I feel we will be supported in our courage by the universe, and that life will get easier as a result. I believe in miracles, and changing a family pattern can become just that.
There is a well-known saying ‘You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family’. For it to be so well-known suggests this must be a universal truth which so many have experienced before, but what does it really mean? The idea that we can ‘choose’ friends implies the ability to use our free will. With family we have no choice, it is fated. Yet family ties can be the most painful of all.
Whenever we meet someone new in our lives, the ‘F’ word is never going to be far away. What do you do? Where do you come from? Are you close to your family? For someone then to reveal, that they no longer have anything to do with a relation whom they are supposed to love with all their heart, and in fact, would rather this individual take a one-way ticket to the Arctic, can be like an admission of guilt. There can be genuine surprise when family members don’t get on, as if because they are related, then surely they should also be living in harmony and bliss.
Within my own family I have two elderly sister aunts, now both in their early nineties, who haven’t spoken to each other in over twenty years. I also had to do a lot of work on the relationship with my own father. Wherever there are family ties, there can be blame, power issues, and many difficult feelings that may never get resolved. In my experience as a counsellor, there have been many times, no matter what the presenting issue of a client, that the therapy leads us back to the family history.
Yet, if we were able to stand back, what could having family issues mean from a higher perspective? If we accepted the concept that life is like a school and we come here to develop and work on ourselves then what would be the purpose of ‘family’?
An incarnating soul, wishing to learn something would have to make sure they were challenged to develop when ‘down here’. One way would be to incarnate with people that could trigger their issues, acting as mirrors to nudge them in their development. With ‘friends’ or even ‘partners’, these mirrors could be avoidable, they could change either using their free will. A soul would need instead to involve itself in a ‘fated’ situation in which they were attached to their ‘triggers’ for life, just like prison convicts. Whom they could never escape even if they changed their name and flew to the other side of the world. This, in effect, is what we call our ‘family’. The lid of the pressure cooker is on the minute we are born. In many respects, surely it’s a marvel and miracle that any of us get on with our families at all!
Of course, many families are very loving and do get on very well with each other, and from a spiritual perspective, there could be numerous reasons why someone chooses to be within a specific family. Deep loving bonds that last through lifetimes, choosing to clear ancestral issues, karma, or choosing to incarnate in a family because there is a specific task to complete and this family fits our needs. As healers, usually we are different to our family anyway and ‘stand out’. Most likely for all of us there is a combination of reasons.
By looking at our family in this way, it can help us if we are caught within painful emotional situations with siblings, parents or children that feels difficult to resolve. It gives us some detachment from the wounding, which we can instead hopefully see as an opportunity for growth. After all, on some level we have probably had a hand in creating the dynamic. Though it may seem easier, and less painful both to ourselves and the other person, to avoid an issue and leave something unresolved, it’s important to remember ‘the bigger picture’. If we don’t attempt to incorporate the learning now, whilst we have the awareness and opportunity to do it, we are simply delaying dealing with it. We could then be drawn back many lifetimes by this same emotional issue and unrealised growth opportunity. Anything unresolved in this lifetime, is potentially also a drain on our personal power, as, whilst we go about our daily life, there is a portion of our unconscious identity which is trapped by the blocked energy. For example, we may not even realise that our inability to get a job we love, or a fulfilling partner is actually due to being held back by this issue and energetic blockage.
But what does healing a family wound entail? It does not mean we then have to be in harmony with our family the rest of our lives. It may still mean we have nothing to do with someone. The important thing is to work on our part of it, what we may have hoped to learn from this painful situation, take back our projections, and find a place of inner peace with it. Why are we experiencing this from a souls growth point of view? If we can truly grasp and understand this, then I feel we are on the way to true healing. Ill feeling needs to be released so that it no longer prevents us from moving forwards. Remembering that whoever it is we have a grievance with, has also been wounded in some way can help.
Because of our training we are at an advantage with the tools we have available to help us heal this. Meditating on it can be profound. One could ask ‘by going through this painful situation what is it that I am here to learn’? or ‘what can I do to help resolve this for my highest good?” We can also work with the mineral kingdom, for example the deeper crystals, such as Obsidian, Peridot, or Turquoise (which can help with ancestral issues). Healings will no doubt involve work on the mental, emotional and possibly spiritual bodies, and some of the chakras, including the base (linking us to our roots) and heart, may be involved. We may also do Cord Cutting, and Astrology, if seen from a soul perspective is something else that could help us understand ourselves. We can also just step out the front door and ask to be shown what it is we need to work on - just be prepared for the response, and remember detachment - that what we see in the ‘outside world’ is in some way responding to our question.
Even if a person is no longer with us, yet this relationship still haunts us in some way, we can do the work. Wherever the other person’s spirit is, they will feel it positively, and be no longer bound to us by our strong feelings.
We may also choose to do something practical. Perhaps see a counsellor or psychotherapist, or speak or write a letter, with honesty, about how we feel and the impact someone has had on us. Sometimes, this may mean that the other person can still not hear us, but this does not matter, the important thing is we have said what we needed to, with compassion, and not coming from a place of accusation.
Healing deep family wounds is probably never going to be easy, but looking at it from a soul perspective, if we are able to let go of and resolve the conflict, we are potentially also resolving some or all of a deep life pattern that we came in with to heal. The positive impact of doing this will then affect the Grid connecting us all for the highest good. Also, if we are doing the right thing, then I feel we will be supported in our courage by the universe, and that life will get easier as a result. I believe in miracles, and changing a family pattern can become just that.