Mark Wolynn

Did your mother lose a child or pregnancy before you were born?

Hellinger teaches that a later child in the system (even one from the next generation) can express what a family has suppressed. That means that the living child could find himself feeling depressed or lifeless, split off from his essence as if he doesn’t exist, similar to how the family perceives the dead brother.

The feelings we hold about our parents are a doorway into ourselves.

Written Exercise #2: Ten Questions That Generate Core Language

Written Exercise #5: Describing Your Partner, Close Friend, or Boss

When we pit one parent against the other, we go against the source of our own existence, and unconsciously create a rift inside ourselves. We forget that half of us comes from our mother and half from our father.

Many of us have become fixated on something we believe our parents have done to us that has spoiled our lives. We have allowed these memories, whether accurate or distorted, to override the good things that our parents gave to us. Parents, in the course of being parents, inadvertently cause their children pain. It’s inevitable. The problem is not what our parents have done to us; the problem is how we’re still holding on to it.

The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.
—Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living

Fear and anxiety shrink your world and drain your vitality, restricting the day in front of you and limiting the life ahead of you.

If the core language map is a tool for locating buried treasure, the core sentence is the diamond you find when you get there.