Accompaniment is a resonant connection without direct involvement. We often cannot change someone’s life situation but accompanying their experience without reaction or judgment can make a significant difference in their ability to breathe easier and take sustainable steps to safety, freedom and integration.
It can be easier to acknowledge what is when someone is doing it with us. If someone is next to us with their stance of gentle curiosity and patience, not turning away in fear or disgust, we might have more width to acknowledge and feel instead of disassociate and repress. Our vulnerability and their curiosity combine and make an alchemical third witness.
My 1st and 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Coutu, had my brother in her class before me and knew of my parents’ divorce. When she looked at me, I felt her wide and empathetic gaze, as she remembered my context of being a younger sister to a disabled brother and the rupture of my parents’ divorce. As my parents’ court battles ensued, I had aunts and great aunts on both sides of my family reminding me simply that I wasn’t crazy, even when I insisted that “I’m OK! I get two Christmases now!” I was lucky to have people highlighting my strengths and providing playful reprieve. Mrs. Coutu’s gaze and those succinct reassurances made a big difference for me.
Adversity (e.g. loss, neglect, abuse, conflict, violence, illness) does not always become trauma. It is when we experience adversity in isolation that it is more likely to turn into trauma. If we are alone and isolated in our adversity, we might internalize it. We might unconsciously make ourselves wrong or bad for having experienced it, especially if the perpetrator has a position of power over us. We might make a habit of attacking ourselves or sabotaging our successes, punishing ourselves for how we must have been bad to have experienced the adversity.
Accompaniment provides a spaciousness where adversity can be composted for eventual individuation and societal contribution. In this way, we can serve as co-conspirators to one another’s freedom in acts of accompaniment.
Instead of rescuing one another (and risking drowning with them), we can accompany one other, standing side by side in respect of one another’s essential dignity and capacity.
In Family & Systemic Constellations, facilitator, representatives, and participants create an experience of accompaniment for a person and the adversity. Participants witness the realities in a family system whether disassociation, mental illness, sexual trauma, enmeshment or other physical and psychological violence. The adversity is acknowledged as real. The representatives and parts are felt. Ancestors are brought in showing that it started before and to gladly be acknowledged as the width and resource behind a person.
