Within the core of my work with individuals is to help you explore, uncover and feel into unconscious and conscious unhealthy loyalties you may have to parents, ancestors and siblings.
For example, it is rarely our relationship to the ‘bad’ parent that keeps us stuck, it is our distorted loyalty to the ‘good’ parent. Additionally, it takes a very courageous individual to be happier than their parents and to allow themselves to be fully happy when others in their family system have suffered.
To whom are you loyal? Are you the champion of a cause? Are you the peacemaker in the family? Have you sided with the ‘good’ parent, no matter the cost? Are you reluctant to allow your own happiness out of loyalty to the suffering of others?
Unhealthy bonds of loyalty can keep us re-living the same suffering over and over and over again until we allow ourselves to be truly free of the suffering of others. This can be a challenging process; we may even feel like a traitor, or even that we are bad for allowing others their fate.
To what are you loyal? Your mother’s depression or disappointment in life? Your father’s lost love or broken heart? Someone’s illness or disability? The suffering of your ancestors? To someone who died young? War dead? The sick, poor or lost?
When we thrive, the ancestors smile. When we suffer for another, then we, together with the other are caught in hell.