Invisible Threads: The Systemic Stories We Carry

How Expanding Your Lens Reveals What’s Truly Yours and What Has Been Inherited

By Garima Verma, aka The Restfulness Therapist

There are moments in life when we find ourselves stuck — repeating patterns, re-enacting old conflicts, responding in ways we can’t always explain.

A choice that feels irrational.A fear that arrives without cause.A relationship dynamic we keep reliving.

In those moments, it's easy to believe the issue is purely personal — a flaw in our character, a failure in healing, or something we just "haven’t worked through yet."

But the Systemic Approach offers a more generous lens. It invites us to pause and ask:

“What if this isn’t just mine?” “What if I’m carrying a story that belongs to a larger web?”

What Is the Systemic Approach?

The Systemic Approach is a way of understanding life not in isolated parts, but as interconnected wholes. It sees every action, emotion, and event as part of a larger field, influenced by family systems, culture, collective history, intergenerational trauma, and ancestral inheritance.

In the Systemic Approach, nothing exists in isolation.Our choices are not random.Our pain is not rootless.And our healing is never just for us.

This way of seeing honours the wider web — the invisible threads that connect us to those who came before, and to the collective field we inhabit now.

“It’s Not Personal — It’s Systemic”

Many of the struggles we believe are ours may have an origin elsewhere.

• A child who suddenly fears abandonment may be echoing the grief of a grandparent who lost a parent in war.

• A woman who cannot receive support might be unconsciously loyal to a mother who had to survive without it.

• A man who feels an unexplained guilt for success may be entwined with a lineage marked by poverty or loss.

This doesn’t mean we’re victims of the past. It means we are participants in a field. And that field — once brought into awareness — can be reshaped.

The Invisible Loyalties We Carry

In family constellations, a core principle is that of hidden loyalties.

As children, we carry unconscious vows:

“I’ll carry your pain so you don’t have to.” “If you didn’t get to thrive, I won’t either.” “I won’t belong if I choose differently.”

These unspoken contracts are formed not out of weakness, but out of love. The child’s instinct is to stay loyal — even at the cost of their own freedom.

Until one day, the pattern becomes too heavy to carry. That’s when the soul begins to call:

“Is this really mine?”

Widening the Lens: A Guided Reflection

When something in your life feels stuck or disproportionately intense, pause and ask:

“What invisible loyalties or inherited patterns might be influencing my choices?”

“Am I repeating something that belongs to someone else?”

This is not to deflect personal responsibility, but to contextualise it. To soften the judgment. To make space for deeper truths.

Because when we see the web, we see ourselves more clearly, not less.

How Constellation Work Supports This Insight

Systemic Constellation Work, pioneered by Bert Hellinger, is a deeply intuitive method for revealing the invisible dynamics at play in personal, relational, and organisational systems.

In a constellation, people (or objects) stand in for members of a system — a mother, a country, an illness, a decision — and through presence and movement, unconscious dynamics begin to emerge.

Common revelations in constellation work include:

• Someone is carrying another’s guilt, shame, or grief.

• A person is excluded from the family system and needs to be reintegrated.

• An ancestor’s trauma remains unprocessed in the collective field.

• There’s a split between loyalty to love and loyalty to truth.

The result?Profound release.Not just of emotion, but of entanglement.

Systemic Approach in Intergenerational Trauma Healing

Intergeneration Trauma Healing is not about idealising the past, nor is it about blaming it.

It’s about acknowledging what was and reclaiming our place in the web of life.

When we connect with the deeper field of the ancestors, we often find:

• Unspoken grief that never had a witness

• Gifts that were left unclaimed

• Repeating patterns that long to be released

• Blessings waiting to be received

We don’t heal the past by forgetting it. We heal by remembering it with reverence, with conscious detangling, and with clear boundaries.

Collective Trauma as Systemic Influence

Our systems are not limited to the family.

We are also shaped by:

• Colonial histories

• Migration patterns

• Cultural suppression

• War, famine, and forced displacement

• Gender roles and societal expectations

For example:

• The pressure to overwork may come from generations of survival after scarcity.

• A fear of being visible may come from ancestral memories of persecution.

• Emotional shutdown may be a protective echo from times when feeling was dangerous.

Again, this isn’t personal pathology — it’s collective inheritance.And it must be healed collectively, slowly, consciously.

Organisational Systems: The Patterns We Bring to Work

The same systemic principles also apply in professional spaces.

In organisational constellations, we often see:

• Team members unconsciously play out family roles or roles of the ones who acquired the seat before them.

• Founders, entangled with parental figures

• Employees, loyal to outdated company values

• Hidden grief, when a company undergoes a transition

Understanding these patterns can radically shift leadership, culture, and communication.

Systems thinking in business is not just strategic — it’s soulful. It brings depth, empathy, and clarity to the unspoken currents beneath decision-making.

The Restfulness Method: A Sacred Space for Systemic Healing

In the Restfulness Method, we bring together constellation work, intergenerational trauma work, systemic approach, somatic rest, and nervous system repair — because true restoration must include the system.

When a person comes to rest — fully, safely, and without urgency — what rises is not just individual emotion, but often ancestral pain, systemic burden, and relational patterning.

We meet this not with force, but with sacred witnessing. We don't ask the body to rush.

We ask: What are you still holding? And is it truly yours to carry?

This is not just a method — it is a ceremony of return. A way to find your place in the wider web without losing yourself in it.

What Healing in the System Can Look Like

• You stop overworking, not because of productivity hacks, but because the family legacy of survival finally found peace.

• You express anger, not because you forced it, but because the silence around women’s voices was lovingly interrupted.

• You allow support, not because of logic, but because the part of you that vowed “never again” finally felt safe.

• You rest, not as avoidance, but as completion.

This is what happens when we step out of isolation and into the systemic field.

We begin to return what is not ours.We begin to reclaim what is.

The Invitation

You don’t need to carry the weight of the whole web. But you do need to see it.

Because only when the system is seen can it begin to reorganise. Only when you feel your place in the lineage can you take your place in the present. And only when you understand what shaped you can you choose to shape yourself.

You are not broken. You are part of a field. And that field is ready to change through you.

Come,

Rest. Acknowledge & Integrate.

You are not alone in this.