“Carrying what is yours makes you stronger” – Bert Hellinger
Entanglement is one of those things you may not really understand until you’ve seen it – or felt it – up close. It’s the quiet, unconscious and heavy way we end up holding something that was never ours to carry. And most of the time, we don’t even realise we’re doing it.
Have you ever noticed how someone can be living a life that doesn’t quite match their own story? Maybe they’re weighed down by a sadness or depression that doesn’t make sense. Or they’re struggling with money or love in a way that feels out of place in their family. Or they’re carrying something that feels strangely “too big” for their own biography.
This may point to an entanglement in their family system.
In constellations, I see it again and again: a person carrying the emotional weight, guilt, grief, or fate of someone who came before them. Not out of weakness, but out of love – a deep, unconscious loyalty.
And the tricky part? It often looks like compassion. It feels like helping. It feels like love: “If I carry this, maybe they won’t have to.”
But it doesn’t work that way.
As Barbara Hoogenboom from the Bert Hellinger Institute in the Netherlands says, when we take on someone else’s burden, we don’t lighten their load – we just create a second suffering. Ours. And we rob them of their right to their own life lessons, their own fate. It’s also a kind of disrespect to assume someone else is weaker than us, or that we know better.
Also we don’t take on someone else’s burden because we’re weak or lack boundaries. We do it because we love them. Sometimes it’s the only way we knew how to stay connected. That’s why entanglement is never something to judge – it’s something to see through a different lens, to honour and understand.
As a child, I used to see my dad sitting in his chair for hours. His walking sticks propped nearby. Eyelids closed, his head nodding up and down, side to side. I would sit on the floor and copy his movements. He would sigh. I would sigh. I loved my dad and didn’t know why he was so sad and heavy and cross. I’d have given anything (and probably did give him my nervous system) to try to ease his load. This is the blind love of a child, where we make promises to ourselves to do whatever is needed to try and help someone we love, no matter the cost to ourselves.
Funnily enough, I now think he was meditating, reflecting, releasing some of the ghosts he carried from childhood, school, and his time as a Captain in Burma during WWII. He was doing his inner work so he could dilute what was being passed down to me and my siblings. Little Lucy thought I could help him, but he was already doing what he needed to do.
And it’s such a relief – for me and for clients – when we realise, “Oh… this isn’t mine.” Not in a dismissive way. Not in a spiritual bypass way. But in a grounded, embodied way – the kind that lets the body finally exhale. Like putting down a heavy rucksack after a long walk.
In a constellation exploration, the client doesn’t always recognise what they see. “What? I was carrying my dad’s rucksack load of unprocessed emotions all this time?” It’s as if the constellation is slightly ahead of them. And once the peak of the work is done and they’re in a more resourced place, they can step in and take up their own place. There are often tears and hugs at this point. And some surprise. This is not what the client was expecting. When our family structures are seen with new perspectives and insights, the shift can be transformative, and take a while to process.
Sometimes the shift is subtle. Sometimes it’s huge. Sometimes it’s simply the beginning of a new kind of clarity.
One man I worked with described how his mother was clingy and over‑protective. He desperately wanted to move out of the family home but felt stuck. When we set up the constellation, he told me his mum had multiple miscarriages before he was born. When we placed a representative for his mum and then one for each and every lost baby, and then finally for him, the only one who lived, many of us had tears in our eyes. The amount of hope, loss, and grief was enormous.
He could suddenly see why he – and his life – were so precious to his mother. He could more easily begin to take his place in his line of siblings and honour his life at its full cost. If any one of those little ones had survived, his parents may not have tried again, and he would not have been born.
What I love about this work is that it un‑shames people and sheds light on the entanglement. It reveals the magnitude of what people carry in their hearts and souls. We heal when we are seen and understood. Constellations work is one of my favourite ways of working with trauma.
We honour the love behind whatever happened. And then we respectfully return the burden to where it belongs – not as punishment, but with a deep bow of love and respect.
So in my case, I can leave the burden with my dad, it was his burden to carry and live with. Then I am left with what is mine to carry. My own challenges, disappointments, embarrassments, regrets and traumatic experiences. This is strengthening for me.
Because carrying what is yours really does make you stronger. And carrying what isn’t yours slowly wears you down.
So I’ll ask you the same questions I often ask clients, if I may:
Where in your life do you feel heavy? Where might you be carrying something for someone else? Did your parents or grandparents suffer in ways they could barely talk about? And what would it feel like to put those burdens down?