Drawn out of Life
Exploring some of the hidden dynamics behind suicide. Followed by a reflection on walking alongside someone who feels drawn out of life.
When someone suddenly ends their own life, feelings of shock and grief ripple through multiple individual, family and social systems. These can get amplified by societal attitudes and cultural beliefs adding feelings of guilt and shame. The combination of the trauma itself and the great difficulty we have in understanding or processing it as a society can in turn lead to repeating patterns and family system secrets connected to difficult endings and deaths.
Suicide is a universal, pan-cultural human trauma.
Someone, somewhere in the world, ends their own life every 40 seconds. That is around one million people a year, worldwide. Another fifteen million attempts take place each year.
Many of us, it seems, want to end our life. But why?
This is a complex and challenging subject with many layers. This short introductory article just touches the surface as it explores only some of the hidden patterns behind this common trauma, one that’s connected to the most challenging questions we humans have to face. What does life mean and is it worth living?
Whether we are facing into that question ourselves or walking alongside another, a larger picture and understanding of some of the hidden dynamics can be useful. This article explores the role dynamics hidden in the wider relational field may have and then offers some things to think about when we find ourselves accompanying someone who feels drawn out of life.
John Whittington | Lifeloveleadership.com
“Many people believe that they can carry the pain or guilt of another family member through their own death. Sometimes they become ill, or commit suicide because they long to be with other family members that have passed away.”
Bert Hellinger
I’ll follow you
As Bert Hellinger highlights in his words quoted here and what’s seen in the methodology he developed – family constellations – a move out of life is sometimes an act of deep, unconscious loyalty to another family member. A desire to join another, to follow them.
The family member – or, less often, a very close friend – being ‘followed’ is usually missing, in the sense that they are in some way unavailable and excluded – because they have died, or the way they died, but also often by the stories and judgements held over them. In some way they are not held fully in the heart of the family or with other family members. Perhaps their life and their death are not fully included, honoured or grieved – in some way they have given their true place of belonging in the system.
You could say that they have been ‘dis-membered’. This is a violation of the principle of PLACE which creates a strong dynamic in the system, drawing the energy out of it and entangling people in it. This is common when someone ends their own life because of the ‘morals’ and values of some social and religious systems.
The system re-members the missing person in the only way it can – by recruiting a living member of the system, who is drawn to join them. This is perhaps one of the most poignant examples of a family system entanglement, created by loyalty emerging from the need we all share – to belong.
A life sentence
The unconscious and unspoken ‘life sentence’ in this entangled context may be something like this: ‘I will come and join you out of loyalty to the family system, so you belong.’
For example, a woman who has struggled to be in relationship with her mother, then loses her suddenly in an accident and cannot complete or say goodbye. Under chronic stress she may feel a strong desire to connect with her mother. Her unconscious ‘life sentence’ may be something like: ‘We couldn’t connect in life so I will join you in death where we can come into relationship at last. I follow you.’
This same dynamic can be seen in men: for example a man who could not find his way to be in relationship with his father and/or has judged him, may feel at times drawn to be with him in order to ‘resolve’ this. ‘I rejected you in life, so I will join you in death.’ The fact that these ‘life sentences’ are unconscious is what makes them so powerful.
Death by suicide is often on the same date, or time of year, as the person who is being followed died. This kind of repeating pattern happens most strongly when there are attempts to hide or cover up the first death and it is not talked about. This can be held in the body by a ‘life sentence’ like ‘I remember exactly when you died. I will join you on the same day. Then they will talk about us both.’
Many of us may carry these kinds of unconscious dynamics, yet don’t feel suicidal. It is the combination of ‘here and now‘ (present pain like a loss of a relationship, a job, money, dignity) and ‘there and then’ (hidden dynamics in the relational field that come from the long past) that can make this ‘I will follow/join you’ dynamic so dangerous. For many the pull out of life to follow and join another is suppressed and shows itself in much more subtle ways – smoking, excess alcohol, narcotics, over eating etc.
Anyone who strongly judges their parent – in particular their same sex parent – is often left feeling incomplete and disconnected from their source, and ‘joining them’ appears to be a way of resolving this.
The conscious movement is ‘away from’; the deeper unconscious movement is ‘towards.’
Under the pain there is love, a reaching out for love and connection.
The ‘following’ dynamic need not come only where there is judgment, it can also come from love and longing, especially if the person being followed (a parent or sibling) was disadvantaged or dis-abled in some way. Then this unconscious ‘life sentence’ may be present: ‘If you could not live a full life (physical health, mental health, happiness) how dare I?’
Through his thirty years of work as a therapist and facilitator Hellinger saw three strong dynamics underneath the desire to end your own life.
This first one, the draw to follow another into death, is sometimes also expressed in specific circumstances. Some examples follow.
‘Was I not good enough to keep?’
Adoption – the search for home
There are many succesful and joyful experiences of adoption. It can often be a really effective solution to a range of complex challenges and leave adoptees feeling safe belonging, loved and seen. However an existential crisis can sometimes emerge as a result of adoption, especially if the birth parents are not included in the heart of the adoptive family. As a result, being ‘given away’ as a baby or young child can, if not very sensitively held, lead to an inner ‘life sentence’: ‘I’m not good enough to keep.’
If the birth parents are excluded from the origin story, or the adopted individual is not allowed to talk about them, then the adoptive parents have made themselves bigger and better than the birth parents and that can be felt as a violation by the child. As a result, especially if life is difficult in other ways, they may feel drawn to join them: ‘My birth parents are a mystery, so I will find them in the mystery of the other side.’
A substantial article exploring the many possible dynamics connected with adoption is here.
Loyalty – the field of the individual
The pull out of life can sometimes be embodied in a ‘life sentence’ that’s deeply internalised as a very young child. If, for example, the mother didn’t want to get pregnant – maybe she also tried to abort the child – that child may grow up with a deep longing to connect with her and yet also be loyal to her mother’s first wish. The inner ‘life sentence’ that expresses that deep loyalty might be something like ‘Dear mother I will destroy myself, just as you wanted.’
In this example, ‘aborting’ her own life keeps the daughter loyal to her mother’s (usually unspoken) wish and so connects them deeply. As if to say: ‘Mum, you didn’t want me to stay, so I will not. That’s how I show my loyalty to you, by being true to your wish. In that way we will be close’.
A similar dynamic can also sometimes be seen in last born children who are born after a child who died, or were told that they were in some way an ‘accident.’ This can leave the child with an inner sentence ‘I shouldn’t have been born. I will be loyal to my parents’ deeper wish and have another ‘accident’, for them.’
In these examples there is still a clear ‘following’ movement. Not to join someone, but to follow the deeper wish of the parent.
There is love under these movements out of life. We will do anything, make all kinds of contracts in order to belong and be loyal.
“Pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it.”
Stephi Wagner
“The greater soul moves only in one direction and that is to bring into union that which has been made separate..”
Bert Hellinger
Love – the field of the family
In many cases of suicide there is an existential question or crisis evident. However, there is often also an ‘interrupted reaching out movement’, a longing to belong safely and securely in a family system or a way of reaching someone who has died, is excluded or unavailable.
So, although suicide is one of the most shocking and traumatic events you can bear witness to, it is also very often an act of love, a search for connection and unification, an action that is designed to keep the family system whole.
This sounds very strange but is the idea of the ‘family system’ – a field of consciousness, an energetic field (or ‘Morphic field’ as Rupert Sheldrake puts it) that includes all living and all dead members equally. It is only our fears and rational minds that exclude children who died early, those who died accidentally or by their own hand. They all belong, along with the parents, grandparents and their parents and ancestors.
When we include them all, everyone feels safer and can stay.
Everyone has a place and so, if excluded, will be re-membered by the conscience, the morphic field, of the family system.
This principle applies even in the exceptional circumstances where somebody is not a member of the family system but whose actions deeply affected it. For example, someone who saves a family member from certain death or, conversely, someone who kills a family member and alters the family constellation as a result. They belong in the field of the family. In this way we can see that the power of the system as a whole is much larger than any one member.
In the next section we explore the three key dynamics that Hellinger identified. We then explore ways of calibrating our inner stance when we find ourselves walking alongside someone who feels drawn to bring their life to a close.
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