Is it possible to transform?
It appears to be part of humanity that we are part of complex webs of victim perpetrator human cycles in our micro and macro experiences of living as a human being. These play out in our daily interactions with others, such as, siblings, parents, closest family members, partners, friends and in work situations. They also extend through the generational family patterns into cultures, religions and the nationalities we are born into. For the most part these are largely subliminal and often feel normal because they are commonly held. Mainly because they appear to have always been there.
In my life I have witnessed this cycle through many turns in a small way in one person.
A woman who grew up in a white Christian culture who found herself attracted to an immigrant man of colour from a different family, culture and religion, to the disapproval of her parents in the mid twentieth century. She became pregnant and was socially shamed and excluded as she married to make a life with her lover. Disapproval was also prevalent in his family too due to marrying outside his culture. Normally for them the new approved wife is welcomed into the family and culture and the couple is often taken into an extended family household. Here they share looking after children, household duties and care of the elderly. In this case the couple were isolated and excluded by both sides of the couple, on many levels.
They went on to have more children and the woman was a very loving and nurturing mother, while her husband’s role was primarily the bread winner and disciplinarian.
The couple had broken unspoken taboos and crossed fatal lines of that time in the 1950’s. Their relationship was shaped by exclusion, shame and deeply embedded traditional beliefs and taboos, as each of their family systems entanglements and taboos played out in their isolated and excluded relationship. Over time the couple became distant, each driven by the sense of taboo and shame emanating from displeasing their original families. The man took on his place in the relationship as the controller in the role without the balancing forces that would have operated in a wider extended family situation, as was normal in his culture. There were no role models to balances or monitor his increasingly overly controlling behaviours and tight financial control. This lead to great emotional distress to his wife who felt isolated and victimised. A perpetrator victim relationship had developed driven by exclusion, lack of family support of both sides and the presence of each of their family dynamics playing out between them.
As divorce laws became available twenty years later, the woman got a divorce and moved away to start again. She left full of righteous anger and eventually remarried a man of her own culture who treated her lovingly and generously. However, so infuriated was she about what had happened in her first marriage, in being let down by her parents and by the man she had loved, she found couldn’t trust her new husband. She always made sure she held the control in her new relationship. Unfortunately, the victim became the perpetrator in her new relationship. A new cycle had been created in her family system.
This swaps from victim to perpetrator is a common dance that takes place when injustice is not processed. When anger crystallises into vengeance and hate, it’s hard to see what’s in front of you. The feeling of injustice and revenge is so powerful it reigns over the prevailing reality, logic and fairness.
This takes place within intimate relationships, generational patterns and the feeling, attitudes and actions of nations too.
Victim perpetrator dynamics are the core part of Family Constellation theory and practice, as developed by the founder Bert Hellinger. For individuals and relationships of all kinds, as well as those that underlie the rise of national dynamics in human systems and politics. He found that exclusion of any group,
“generates systemic imbalances, leading descendants to unconsciously carry unresolved energies. For example, descendants of Holocaust survivors might adopt perpetrator-like aggression or hypervigilance as a form of loyalty to their ancestors’ pain.”
This leads to descendants of excluded perpetrator and victim groups to unconsciously carry unresolved impulses and energy.
The trauma they inherit through epigenetics is manifested into “a collective identity rooted in victimhood.” Leading to justifications for unprocessed victim energy projected into perpetrator violence towards such groups as, i.e. the Palestinians or Ukrainians.
This is also the case for most wars in the world such as the wars raged by Russia, Sudan, Myanmar, and parts of Africa and the concerns about potential escalations in areas like the Korean Peninsula, South China and Thai wan.
Of cause, each war has its own deep and complex underlying original causes, that frequently go back centuries, of clashes and injustices, such as greed, colonisation, genocide, slavery or stealing of land and dignity.
I attended the March for Palestine on Saturday and was over whelmed with the overall conviction in the call for justice to stop the genocide that is taking place now. A horror taking place on a world-wide visible stage. In the face of the findings of the International criminal court on 21 Nov 2024, who called Israeli actions crimes against humanity for,
"intentionally and knowingly depriving Gazan’s of food and directing attacks against civilians.”
It’s hard to believe that now in 2025 what is happening has progressed to genocide, taking place in full view of the world.
You might imagine that the march was full of anger and hatred, but the main overwhelming energy was disbelief, deep grief and sadness and a sense of helplessness that we were at this point in the human race. There were a large number of middle Australians of all ages as well as many people from a wide range of cultures and religions including Israeli groups who oppose Israeli actions. All expressing a need for humanitarian justice and compassion.
It was good to hear a strong compassion for what happened to Israeli people on Oct 2023 and a also condemnation of the punishment of a whole population of thousands of men, women and children for the actions of a relative few.
Perpetrators and victim energy is inextricably linked in human systems forming those who turn unresolved grief into perpetration or alternatively, seek redemption through over identifying with victims in victimhood.
There are also those Jewish people such as Gabe Mate’, who have forged another way of coping with their holocaust past in engaging with alternative deep processing of their genetic traumas, in ways that allow them to look at each person with balance and compassion, as a fellow humans.
This has been a big subject for us all, myself included. I hold Family Constellations workshops if you would like to attend to look at any perpetrator, victim energy with the purpose of processing towards finding balance.