There are things we carry and don’t know where they came from.
A way of relating that keeps repeating. A weight we feel for no clear reason. An invisible loyalty to something we didn’t even live through, but that seems to set the pace of our life.
Sometimes the story that explains that didn’t start with us. It started before. With those who came before.
That’s what family constellations are about.
Let’s start with what they’re NOT
I’d rather clarify this first, because there’s a lot of noise around it.
Constellations aren’t magic. They don’t predict the future, they don’t diagnose, they don’t replace medicine or therapy when those are what’s actually needed.
You don’t have to believe in anything for them to make sense, either. It’s not a matter of faith.
They’re a working tool. A way of looking at family systems — those networks of bonds, stories and loyalties we’re born into — and giving them a different place inside us.
So what are they?
We’re all part of a family system. And that system has its own order, its debts, its untold stories: an early death, an abandonment, a secret, someone who was left out.
What constellations propose is that, often, we carry issues that aren’t ours without knowing it. We repeat fates, occupy places that don’t belong to us, feel emotions that actually belong to another member of the system.
A constellation is a space to bring that into view. To look at that web from the outside, give everyone their place, and put back in order what was disordered.
When that happens, something loosens. Not because you understood more, but because something got reordered inside.
What does a session look like?
You can work in two ways: in a group or individually.
In a group, the person chooses other participants to represent members of their family or elements of their story. They’re placed in the space, and from there information starts to emerge: positions, distances, what was hidden becomes visible.
Individually, we do something equivalent using other resources — figures, markers in space, the sensation in your own body. You don’t need a group for the system to show itself.
In both cases, it’s not about talking and analyzing endlessly. It’s about looking, feeling, and allowing something to find its place.
What are they for? Who can they help?
They tend to be useful when there’s something that keeps repeating and doesn’t budge just by understanding it.
Patterns in romantic relationships that come back again and again. Difficulties with a father or mother that you’ve carried forever. A sense of carrying a weight that isn’t yours. Grief that never quite closes. Important decisions where you feel blocked without knowing why.
They’re not the answer to everything. But for certain issues — the ones rooted in family history — they open a door that words alone sometimes can’t reach.
How I work with this
Constellations support my work as a Gestalt therapist; they don’t replace it.
I trained at the Institut Gestalt in Barcelona, and I integrate them with respect and no magical promises. To me, they’re one more way of looking at what holds your patterns in place — this time, from the family fabric you come from.
If you feel like there’s something that keeps repeating and maybe didn’t start with you, this can be a good place to start looking at it.
The first step is a conversation
You don’t need to have it clear what you want to constellate.
Many people arrive with just the intuition that there’s something there. That’s enough.
Message me to talk about what you’re looking for and whether constellations — or Gestalt therapy — are the right path for you.
Family constellations and Gestalt therapy, in Spanish and English. In person in Barcelona (Pl. d’Urquinaona), individual and group, and online for all of Spain and Europe.
You can read more about family constellations work in Barcelona and online, or about Gestalt therapy.