Family Loyalties, Those Invisible Ties That Tie Us To The Destiny Of Our Loved Ones.
We are born into life with an unconscious feeling of debt towards those who preceded us in our family system (parents, grandparents, great-grandparents…).
Loyalty is a feeling of solidarity and commitment that unifies the needs and expectations of the family, as well as the thoughts, feelings and motivations of each member (E. Corbera). These “family contracts” are fueled by the belief system that provides the family system with an identity and its members with a feeling of belonging and that favors balance in relationships.
Family loyalties are unconscious and what leads us to “accept” that family contract, that commitment, is the unconscious, childish love that binds us to our clan. We are born into life with an unconscious feeling of debt to those who came before because, through them, life has made its way to us. We feel that they have given us the greatest thing they can give us, life, and we will never be able to repay that debt because we cannot give to those who preceded us something of the same magnitude than what they have given us. At the same time, we have a primary need to belong, we need to belong to our clan, to our family and this need is a biological need for survival, we could not survive isolated, alone.
Therefore, this need to belong It is a very powerful inner force, to the point that we take matters that an ancestor could not resolve or conclude in his life and we incorporate them into our destiny, we take charge of emotions and feelings that do not belong to us, for that loyalty, for that feeling of debt and that need to be accepted, to belong. This is the case, for example, of a man who is happy, has everything he wants and needs in his life (a job he likes, health, a partner he loves and who loves him deeply, wonderful children, not has financial debts…) and yet expresses a feeling of “not being worthy of that happiness.” Instead of rejoicing in this well-being that he enjoys, he watches and becomes emotionally involved with people who suffer. In consultation we see that he feels an unconscious need to be unhappy, to suffer, as his mother and his maternal grandmother suffered, who were never happy. There is a blind loyalty towards the mother and towards the maternal grandmother, out of unconscious love for them this client feels that he does not have the right to enjoy all the good that life brings him, as if by enjoying and feeling happiness he was “betraying” his mother and his maternal grandmother and lost the right to belong to the clan, there is a very deep feeling of disloyalty, at an unconscious level.
Are blind loyalties Invisible, they are reflected in all aspects of our lives (illnesses, accidents, self-esteem, work, interpersonal relationships, whether we have children or not, how we relate to money, etc.).
We can be loyal to only one person in our clan, it is a exclusive loyalty For example, when a person is judged a lot in the family (for the way he behaves, for things he did, for his way of living), or there is someone who is not talked about, he is the “black sheep” of the family. and a descendant is born who is modeled after that ancestor, who has a very strong loyalty to the suffering of that ancestor even though he or she has not known him. It is a way of including this excluded ancestor in the system. Or when in the family one of its members suffers a tragedy or drama in his life and there is a feeling of deep sorrow in the clan (unjustifiable deaths such as children who die early or are stillborn, women who die in childbirth…).
In other cases the loyalty is towards the father and mother. It is a way to fulfill the desires and expectations of both parents or to repair the frustrations of the father and mother. For example, the case of parents who cannot study or develop a profession that they like and the son takes over the destiny of the parents and takes charge of the frustrations of both (the father always wanted to be a businessman and could not, the mother would have wanted to study teaching or studied his career and was never able to pursue it. The son studies teaching and sets up an academy. Thus he fulfills his parents’ wish, to be a businessman as his father would have wanted and to teach as was his mother’s vocation).
In families where there have been many abortions and/or high infant mortality, and these dramas are not talked about in the family, these children are not given their place, one form of loyalty is to dedicate oneself to health professions related to “saving children’s lives”. They are people who love children and do not have children of their own and are dedicated to caring for or “saving” other people’s babies/children (pediatricians, daycare caregivers, teachers…). It is an unconscious way of showing loyalty to that family drama that could have been avoided if there had been a doctor or pediatrician who could have saved them. In the same way, if any woman/s of the clan has died during childbirth, a descendant feels a unconscious need to direct their vocation to health professions related to the care and attention of women during pregnancy and childbirth (midwives, gynecologists…).
There are loyalties that are not towards a specific person in our family system, but towards some circumstance that is repeated throughout the generations like a pattern For example, there are economic ruins in the family, scams, deceptions that are repeated as a pattern throughout the generations and one descendant or several feel the unconscious need not to allow themselves to become rich or enjoy a good economic position, out of loyalty to that family. bosses do not allow themselves to enjoy what their own did not have, or on the contrary, they dedicate themselves to “saving” the money of others (bankers, investors, economists…). Or families where many injustices have been experienced, a descendant is born who directs his life towards professions related to dispensing justice (judges, lawyers, police…). It is a loyalty not to what a single person experienced, but to the circumstances that many members of his family experienced.
The healing It involves changing the way we love our loved ones, becoming aware that what our ancestors really want for us is for us to be happy and live in coherence, instead of loving them by repeating their suffering and dramas. It is broadening the gaze, it is changing the gaze of a child to the gaze of an adult. Respect the dramas that our ancestors suffered and honor them from our emotional maturity, consciously cutting those invisible ties that unite us to their suffering and pain, giving them a place in our hearts and making us responsible for our own life, for our destiny. Adult Love does not judge, respects and honors what was, just as it happened.
In my consultation we prepare and study together the client’s family tree to reveal these unconscious loyalties so that the client can heal them. I help my clients become aware of what type of loyalty they are expressing and towards which member or members of their clan. It is a work of deep understanding from a mature Love and from respect for those ancestors, for the circumstances they experienced. It is a work of recognition of these ancestors towards whom the client expresses that loyalty, that blind love; understand and recognize that they did what they could or what they knew with the resources they had at that moment and in the circumstances in which they lived.
