What the phenomenon before the session can tell me about the session

At 9:30 in the morning, I received a WhatsApp message from one of the representatives in the session:

“The traffic is terrible. I see that I’m going to be fifteen minutes late, and I feel bad about it. I think I’ll go back home.”

I immediately write back:

“I don’t have a problem with people arriving late. If it feels right for you, you’re welcome to come.”

The session begins at 10:00.

At 9:45, I received another WhatsApp message. This time from another representative:

“There are traffic jams — I’m going to be late.”

I give her the same response.

At 9:55, I received another WhatsApp message from one of the male representatives:

“The car overheated — I’m going to be late.”

Again, I give him the same response.

Three representatives out of eight letting me know they are late — that is already a phenomenon.

The constellation field begins to work even before the session starts.

Some would say it begins working from the moment the appointment is set. I tend to see it as beginning to work the evening before the session, or a few hours before the session begins.

The question I ask myself is:

“Who are the ones who did not arrive? Who are the latecomers?”

And later, when the representative who texted me at 9:30 arrives after taking two buses from Holon — meaning, she really made a great effort to come — I ask myself:

“Who made an effort to arrive?”

First, I ask these questions within myself, and later I ask them, in a different way, to the client.

Without going into the client’s issue, there are two representations in the field. One for “I” and another for “Self.”

The moment the representation of “Self” is placed in the field, the representative who had texted me at 9:45 enters the room.

And this leads me to ask the client how many siblings he has, and how many pregnancies his mother had.

They are three children.

Actually, before the eldest daughter, there was another baby who died at birth.

Here are the ones who did not manage to arrive.

There are others in the field who did not manage to arrive as well — there is the Holocaust, there are those who were left behind, and there is a great deal of pain around those who did not make it.

And there are also those who fought very hard to arrive — those who immigrated to Israel from different places in the world and succeeded. Not without paying a price.

But at this moment, the loss of the first son overshadows everything.

We do a work of acknowledging what exists. We restore the order.

The client, who has been in emotional therapy for many years, tells me that he has never worked on this issue. That this baby had never come up and had never been spoken about in any therapy.

I don’t know how the constellation will affect the client, but I have no doubt that after years of emotional therapy, the acknowledgment of the first brother is a meaningful step toward life change and toward healing the wounded part of the client’s soul.