A healthy group is one where belonging is worth what it costs, everyone takes responsibility for themselves, the Adults make the decisions whilst the EldersElder (True Elder). The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. More about this advise, nobody plays the blame-game of the drama triangleDrama triangle. The persecutor–rescuer–victim pattern; the poison of unhealthy groups. More about this, and every member and every part of the group’s history is acknowledged. Therapeutic Shamanism sets this out as the Patterns of healthy groups, drawn from how hunter-gatherer tribes lived and first worked out by bringing what a psychotherapist found in families together with hunter-gatherer shamanism. The Patterns apply to families, workplaces and communities as much as to tribes.
What are the Patterns of healthy groups? #
A set of twenty-five descriptions of how healthy human groups work. “Most of what follows applies to healthy tribes and to modern-day family units. However, much of it can be applied to other human groups, too, such as workplaces and larger communities.” Where they speak of parents, in a hunter-gatherer tribe the ‘parents’ would generally have been all the adults in the tribe.1
They came from two directions. The German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger noticed that families that healed followed certain patterns, which he called the Orders of Love; but as he described them they rested on the nuclear family, and only when they were thought through in terms of hunter-gatherer tribes did the Patterns become clear.2 They are not a claim that every tribe lived this way: “Not all tribes would have conformed to all the Patterns.” But on a psychological level, “the more a tribe followed these Patterns, the healthier the tribe (and the individuals within it) would have been.”2 See What can Family Constellations offer shamanic work?
What do the Patterns say about belonging and fairness? #
That costs and benefits have to balance, for everyone. The first Pattern is that the costs of belonging do not outweigh the benefits, and the fourth is its other side: “When people take the benefits of being in the group, then they are willing to meet the costs (responsibilities).” A member who takes without paying makes the whole group dysfunctional, “because inequality is toxic to communities.”3
Responsibilities and rewards grow together as children grow up, with more authority, voice, respect and autonomy coming alongside more responsibility. Once children are grown, “All adults are equally Adult”; the youngest is not kept a child for ever, and the eldest does not carry extra duties and privileges for life.3
What do they say about responsibility and conflict? #
That everyone grows up and owns what they do. “Everybody takes responsibility for their own actions and their consequences”, including their thoughts, feelings and behaviour. And the drama triangle, the endless swapping of victim, persecutor and rescuer, “is not a game that people play”: drama triangles “poison groups and simply have to be stopped (or, ideally, never allowed to develop in the first place).” Stopping them is often the role of the Elders, people “old and wise enough to put aside their own grievances and see what is good for the group as a whole”.4 See What is the drama triangle?
What do they say about children, Adults and Elders? #
That child, Adult and Elder are three different roles. Parents give more to children than they get back, because becoming a parent was their choice; children have the right to expect love from their parents, whilst all other love in a group is earned by behaviour. Children are allowed to be children, and are not made into a parent’s emotional support or used as weapons in disputes between the adults. “The Adults are the people in charge”, and in relation to children the elders step back behind the parents and support them: “Adults decide, elders advise.”5 See What is an Elder?
What do they say about respect and acknowledgement? #
That nobody and nothing is written out. The masculine and the feminine are honoured and respected equally, “because inequality leads to dysfunctional groups.” All sides in a group are given equal respect, which may still mean drawing boundaries; previous partners and the biological parents of adopted children are honoured. “Every member of a group is acknowledged (even the dead)”, and people’s histories are acknowledged too, because “repressing histories damages groups, and acknowledging histories opens up the possibility of healing.” Last, “Endings are resolved and honoured”: the end of relationships, of stages of life and of old roles, as well as deaths.6 See Why do healthy endings matter?
Did healthy tribes need leaders? #
Not hunter-gatherer ones. People often picture tribes ruled by a chief because they are thinking of agricultural tribal societies, which are very different. The rare exception among hunter-gatherers was the settled, “complex” hunter-gatherers of places such as the Pacific North-West coast of America, where plentiful food allowed large settled populations, and hierarchy, inequality and chiefs followed.7
In egalitarian band societies, “There were no permanent leaders or followers in hunter-gatherer communities. Instead, people temporarily took the initiative, or were temporarily assigned authority, by consensus and according to the task at hand.” Order came from respectful discussion and consensus, which worked “because the people involved were Adults”, guided by Elders. Against the common fear that without top-down government the result would be anarchy in the sense of chaos, the reply is that “anarchism is order without top-down government”, and that hunter-gatherer tribes governed themselves that way.7 Their equality was also actively defended. See How does animism understand power and hierarchy?
Can these Patterns work in modern organisations? #
To a degree, and some already are. Hierarchical institutions disempower most of the people in them, which leads to low self-esteem, frustration, anxiety and depression: “It is not good for the Soul.” The writer Frederic Laloux, in his book Reinventing Organizations, describes pioneering organisations that have moved away from hierarchy, which he calls a “soulful revolution” in the workplace. Others experiment with cooperatives, flat organisations and holacracies, and find that each has its pros and cons and that “no one size fits all”. In large organisations there may need to be a balance between hierarchy and non-hierarchy.8
Are the Patterns rules? #
No. “They are simply descriptions of how healthy groups operate. They are not rules, but a set of guidelines or principles for consideration. There is no judgement about whether you follow them.” Nor are they all-or-nothing. They are ideals, and “the closer a group is to the Patterns, the healthier the group will be.” They are clearly not impossible, “because, to a large degree, they are how we used to live”, though how far a particular modern group can reach them depends on things like mental health, abuse and family history.9
People meeting them for the first time often nod along, because they are mostly common sense, and then realise with a shock how far their own families and groups have been from them.9
What if the groups I belong to will not change? #
Then living by the Patterns ourselves is enough. Knowing them, we may be able to nudge a family, workplace or other group towards healthier ways, or we may not, because sometimes people in groups do not want to change. In that case, if we model our own lives on the Patterns, “We will have tried to live an honourable Human life. And when death comes, we will be an honourable ancestor.”9
There are also exercises for reflecting honestly on the patterns of the family and school we grew up in, how we coped with them, and the groups we belong to now, and for healing the wounds they left; they are not given here. The same Patterns help in meeting the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer Tribe, because they show what a healthy Tribe is like. See What is the Lower-World Tribe? and What do tribe and belonging mean, and what is the shaman’s role in a community?
