Activating internally as “constellating”

Imagining things like harsh public criticism, or praise from a respected peer, can stir familiar feelings, thoughts and even bodily sensations — a sinking feeling in the stomach, for instance, or a sense of relief in the shoulders.

If you’ve been stirred in familiar ways when recalling something emotionally evocative – that’s a phenomenological instance of “constellating” internally [1].

Technical descriptions vary, but you could say that we have ingrained patterns of ‘lighting up’ or ‘activating’ in response to things real and imagined. This can happen in particular when calling to mind, anticipating and directly having experiences that stoke intense personal resonance [2].

These activated aspects within us are often structured by a ‘cluster’ of things in our psychology, including our beliefs, emotional patterns, perceptual schema, conceptual associations, etc. [3].

For example, if difficulties expressing myself in writing were only a tactical matter of finding the right words, then perhaps I’m not stirred much internally. But of course, expression is often about far more than a tactical sticking point [4]. Many clusters can awaken when I feel blocked in communicating.

It isn’t simply random things in random sequence that stir within us each time. Several clusters may get activated in ways that we recognize from before [5]. The same, or very similar, clusters get repeatedly activated. This repetition or patterned aspect is why the language of a “constellation” and “to constellate” is apt.

 

We can recognize familiar emotional reactions within ourselves, particularly in times of emotional unbalance. Common phrases that we use reflect this. Many of us "know how we get" in certain situations, in response to certain people, etc. How it might feel to “fall down a rabbit hole” is another referent. 

Going back to the writing example, both surfaced and unrealized fears about how my work will be received can connect to familiar constellations regarding my self-presentation and identity, social belonging and perhaps even more existential questions including, “what am I doing with my life?” and “what meaning is in this?” potentially expressed in this context as, “how does revealing these thoughts to people relate to how I think I should be spending my time on this earth?”[6]

Insofar as what constellates within us isn’t exactly conducive to a smooth process of creative output, we typically find that the biggest impediment to putting something out there is ourselves.

Differences in constellating

The patterned activations of internal content that make up our constellations don't just happen in exactly the same form with the same intensity, but in multiple forms with differing intensities. [7].

Have you ever found that doing a simple task at one point in time can feel like an impossibly heavy lift, yet at another point in time is nearly effortless?

How about being emotionally swamped by the tragedy of a breakup in one moment, but hardly bothered in the next?

What’s up with that? How is it that we weren’t constellated in the same way between those two situations?

It may be because we constellate differently based on the overall state of the psyche [8].

We can see this in how “mood” mediates how we feel and what we do. Being in a super productive mood doesn’t necessarily erase our negative associations to a task at hand (though we may forget in the moment), but it may allow us to temporarily relate in a different way to the task, making it easier to take on. 

Conversely, we haven’t erased what it was like to relate productively to a task at hand, yet our negative mood might be activating all sorts of fraught associations that get in the way.

This suggests that certain broader psychological states can be predominant and play an important role in how we’re constellated and how we might act as a consequence [9].

The obvious solution for the example above would be to wait until another productive mood comes along in order to make headway on the task in question. This is certainly undervalued as an approach! Many people forcibly throw themselves headlong at things for extended periods in ways that may be counterproductive.

However, moods are rarely enduring. They’re often fickle and fleeting, so basing an entire system of consistent movement towards a goal on mood states seems like a brittle strategy.

The Reconstellation approach would be attempting to reorient how we interpret and feel about the task in question more broadly (in addition to potentially other structural changes, including harnessing mood), that could refactor the constellation(s) away from being something that blocks doing the task.

The inner multiplicity of reconstellation

Refactoring how we’re constellated, even in cases where people find some success in it, doesn’t necessarily mean “job done.” As some of those who’ve found limited success with CBT or other rational forms of reframing and justifying, promising new outlooks can sometimes get swamped by other aspects of the psyche [10].

Here is where theories of “inner multiplicity”[11] may carry functionally useful explanations about how our constellated patterns may activate differently, and ultimately how we might be able to shape them [12].

Traditions that invoke notions of inner multiplicity observe that the mind doesn’t appear to work with uniform or monolithic coherence. We often have multiple, and sometimes conflicting, senses of things. We’re commonly undecided or confused about which action to take, and often even what interpretation to choose. It’s as if different parts of us feel, receive, plan and are inclined to act differently.

The idea that the psyche is composed of several active parts, which operate all the way from the fully explicit thought to chains of unconscious logic, has long been referred to historically [13], and investigated in modern empirical research for several decades now [14].

Multiple therapeutic disciplines and coaching approaches are premised upon, or at least implicitly invoke, concepts of inner multiplicity. Inner conflict can be thought of as some kind of disharmony or inner friction between these parts of self. Resolution often looks like exploring, coming to understand and attempting to reconcile these parts [15].

Finding yourself being “in two minds” about things, feeling conflicted, having clashing feelings and interpretations about things that all seem plausible, understanding yourself as “acting from” different places from time-to-time – these are very common human experiences that hint at the existence of these underlying parts of us.

These “parts” or “forces” within us are often differentiated from one another in various ways. You might get the sense that some parts of you receive, perceive, interpret, and would have you take actions differently than other parts of you. In some cases, it can be very clear to people that these various parts have their own desires, plans and aspirations for us [16].

Coaching, therapy and other means of deeper internal change often attempt to mediate or reconcile these parts of you in some way, often via some form of dialectical and reciprocal engagement [17]. A shorthand description – two conflicting parts of you can be thought of as conflicting co-workers. Imagine hashing it out between them.

The phrase “a house divided cannot stand” is a core assumption of approaches that work at this level. When there’s less inner conflict, when important parts of ourselves work better with one another, much of what affects us negatively resolves or falls away.

A very relevant aspect of inner multiplicity is not only that the mind is composed of parts of ourselves that have different feelings, perceptions, interpretations, wants, needs, etc., but that they make bids to shape our intentions and actions.

In other words, they carry differing strategies for the self. To the degree that it is important to clarify, coordinate, reconcile and harmonize a boardroom of multiple people holding their own strategies and motivations, so too it is for our different parts of self with distinct and sometimes conflicting strategies.

Reconstellating to revise our life strategies

When we find ourselves unsure of what to do or stalled in implementation, these clusters of constellations that generate, inform and guide our personal strategies are often hardly or unsatisfyingly addressed.

Many of the popular approaches to put things out there impose deadening and alien forms of “discipline” or “action bias” or “just do it”-ism that take a toll on your internal state and/or other areas of your life.

For some people, “just do it”-ism straightforwardly works. For many others, that outlook forces an output, but at a high price. And if it’s poorly conceived, how likely is it that the costs to you would be worthwhile?

What good is a masterclass on Youtube video production when hindrances exist like being unsure how to organize your life to set aside the time, having uncertainty about what you want to say, not knowing what effect you hope to have, or possessing unrealistic expectations about the response from others?

These “just do it”-ist types of programs are decidedly agnostic about, or even encourage us to ignore, what constellates for you when attempting something.

When these programs fixated on discipline and hustle end up not working for us, what is often inevitably concluded about ourselves? Do we double down? Should we say that we’re simply undisciplined?

To us, these questions are red herrings, derived from the bad conclusions, in response to poorly imposed tools, leading to unfavorable circumstances. An unhealthy sequence to be pulled into. 

 

Hustle and “just do it” culture are blunt instruments that may work to some degree, but affect us internally whether we acknowledge it or not. 

Doing the appropriate self-discovery and inner work – what we call the process of Reconstellation – can have important tangible effects on how we constellate, affecting our strategies and actions in an enduring way.

There are numerous ways that a process of inner work and altered outward expression can bring us much closer to a life where striving feels much more natural, fluid, energizing and purposeful. Hustling isn’t the only or best way forward into a better life.

Based on real client situations, here’s a very small sample of stories where reconstellation affects generating creative content:

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• Video production – the hurdle: hesitations I have about releasing low-quality production or performances in my initial videos. 
   

• I may get over this by recognizing that other creators that I admire and respect have early videos with low production value. I may actually appreciate that about them and feel like it’s part of the lore of their career progression. Why couldn’t the same be true for me? 
   

• Among many other constellating elements, this touches on content in the psyche related to internal and external standards, esteem of (potential) peers, models of career trajectory, my understanding of forms to transmit valuable content, and how form may filter my intended audience.
   

• More consistently producing blog posts – the hurdle: I am frustrated and discouraged by how long it takes me to produce a blog post. It’s also getting in the way of consistently publishing. 
   

• After discovering and exploring expectations with how long the writing process should take, which caused parts of me to be in conflict about how I spend my time and attention, I may come to some acceptance of how my creative process unfolds allows me to make realistic allowances in my life for the writing. 
   

• Among many other constellating elements, this touches on assumed models of (one’s own) creative process and output production, reconciling process expectations with reality, and negotiating with other territories of life to make space for the process.

Feedback from the different actions and/or ways of being (e.g. less anxious in doing something), are interpreted internally and may reinforce more internal change that can manifest outwardly in similar ways.

Intense endeavors to stoke reconstellation

Somewhat contrary to occasions where we change internally to meet intense experiences that happen to us, what can also provide the amount of force needed for consistent and meaningful internal change is the ardent pursuit of something [18].

Informed by our experience and coaching practices mentioned above [19], our approach on personal development and the agentic shaping of one’s life emphasizes the importance of familiarity and fluency with what’s happening for us internally, particularly while in spirited pursuit of something.

This “while in spirited pursuit” of something distinguishes the approach from directionless inner work. But also for those driven to achieve, it advocates for striving in a way that isn’t divorced from our internal state, and/or at the expense of other important people and areas of our lives. Tradeoffs are very real, but we’ve consistently found that most people make surprisingly quick judgments about this and assume there to be more than may actually be the case.

What comes with challenging pursuits often requires consistent engagement that stokes us internally, which subsequently often leads to changes in behavior and action.

These changes in behavior and action likewise often result in different responses from the world, in many cases mostly about relevant and surrounding people, that can influence further internal change and/or solidification.

A crude overview: internal changes → different presentation/actions → different response from the world (usually other people) → crystallization or further perpetuation of internal changes [20].

This is what we refer to as the “Reconstellation” process.

Shaping environments to sustain reconstellation

Critical to successfully generating something worthwhile during the program, but more importantly after Reconstellation ends, is how the creative production process fits within your surrounding environment and circumstances.

This can take many forms on many levels. In terms of life arrangement and structure, it can mean scrutinizing how to set up your life routines, spaces, daily rhythms, etc. to accommodate sustained creative work.

In terms of planning and execution, it could mean organizing your efforts and attention for different “phases” or “periods” where different aspects of the creative process can take shape.

It can mean considering how to tap into larger forces already unfolding outside of your control, such as momentum, timing, seasonality, evolving popular tastes, technological developments, major events, etc.

And on a more fine-grained emotional level, how feedback is received (detected, privileged, interpreted), which types of feedback cycles are experienced, sought and avoided, and how call of that composes our perception of what we’re doing, how it’s going and why we’re doing it. All of this shapes our emotional systems in critical ways that could mean the difference between efforts that endure and those that don’t.

An important part of preserving and reinforcing internal changes (reconstellation) is seeking hospitable and encouraging environments. In addition, because we can’t choose every environment we find ourselves in, having the understanding and agency to influence surrounding environments is also a big part of reinforcing internal change.

Reconstellation is a program for kickstarting fluency in the arenas of change that touch every part of your life.

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[1]  Carl G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, vol. 8 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), §198.

The notion of ‘constellation’ was refined and popularized by Carl Jung, analogous ideas of dynamic, patterned co-activation of affect, belief, and perception can be found across otherwise distinct research traditions, each operating at its own explanatory level. 
 

You can find relative parallels in affective-neuroscience accounts of a layered self (Damasio 1999); in embodied predictive-processing models (Friston 2010; Seth & Friston 2016) and the embodied predictive-self framework (Tsakiris & Fotopoulou 2023); in narrative-identity research (Singer & Blagov 2004); in cognitive-clinical schema theories (Beck 1976; Young et al. 2003); in modular-mind frameworks (Tooby & Cosmides 1992; Kurzban & Aktipis 2007); in evolutionary accounts of social mentalities (Gilbert 2000); in humanistic models of subpersonalities (Rowan 1990); and in therapeutic systems models that treat the psyche as an internal ecology of interacting parts (Schwartz 1995).

[2] While much of this is directionally supported by several lines of empirical research, our standard for building a case for our understanding and approach could be said to be “functional-level” in which acting with this heavily informing one’s theory-of-mind is often appropriate and useful. We leave it to the researchers and theorists to explore and define the boundaries of gears-level and biological validation.

[3] Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko, and Marjorie E. Weishaar, Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide (New York: Guilford Press, 2003). 37.

[4] Things can get conceptually hazy at this level of granularity. One direction of scrutiny could be, “is it ever a ‘single cluster’ of content activated within us, even if it’s a single point of a process where we are the sole audience?” For example, my struggles articulating myself may call to mind moments in the past when I was embarrassed publicly by being unable to do so. It’s tricky to cleanly delineate. What seems to hold across several mediums of empiricism over the years is the recognition of the patterned activation of internal content. What constitutes a “cluster” or “node” comprising a constellation a scientific and philosophical point of contention and beyond the scope of this program description.

[5] Carl G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, vol. 8 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), §198. Plenty of evidence for this in recent experimental and neuroimaging research, notably fMRI studies showing patterned co-activation of emotion, memory, and control networks, even during mind wandering (Smallwood and Schooler, “The Science of Mind Wandering,” Annu. Rev. Psychol. 66 (2015): 31.14–31.15.).

[6] A more socialized line of inquiry could be, “what might people conclude about what I’m trying to do with my life? (How) will that inform what I think about myself?”

[7] Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), pp. 11 - 36, particularly pp. 11-19. 

[8] Julius Kuhl, “A Functional-Design Approach to Motivation and Self-Regulation: The Dynamics of Personality Systems Interactions,” in Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications, ed. Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs (New York: Guilford Press, 2004), 167–168.

[9] Antonio R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt, 1999), 52.

[10] Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko, and Marjorie E. Weishaar, Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide (New York: Guilford Press, 2003).  pp 37, 123, 141, 306-307.

[11] See “ Many therapy schools work with inner multiplicity (not just IFS) ”

 

[12] We are gesturing at the usefulness of self-exploration while holding the concept of inner multiplicity generally, not necessarily endorsing any in particular. This is because we are aware of documented instances of apparent harm from the practice of Internal Family Systems, for example. 

[13] From psychology, philosophy & religion:

– “The same thing will not, at the same time, do or suffer opposites in the same respect.” — Socrates’ hinge for dividing the psyche into parts with conflicting aims. —  Plato, Republic  IV, 436b–c.

– “I neither willed entirely, nor was entirely unwilling. Therefore I was at war with myself.” — Augustine names two contrary wills, possibly shaped by unconscious forces, making inner division explicit.— Augustine, Confessions VIII.10.

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– “The ego is not master in its own house.” — Freud’s headline claim: the conscious self is contested by other agencies. — Freud,  Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis  (1916–17), “A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis.”

 

From literature:

 

– “I always want to know the things one shouldn’t do.” / “So as to do them?” /  “So as to choose.” — Isabel frames her life as competing options, emphasizing deliberate choosing among inner pulls. — Henry James,  The Portrait of a Lady.

 

– “I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.” — Esther names the paralysis of competing possible selves and mutually exclusive life-paths. — Plath, The Bell Jar. 

 

– “With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth,” — Jekyll explains his two inner faculties pulling toward a realization that (he adds) would wreck him—a “partial discovery” of divided selfhood leading to ruin. — Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (“Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case”).

[14] See footnote [ 1 ] above with an overview of relevant empirical research

[15] Paul Gilbert, “Social Mentalities: Internal ‘Social’ Structures and the Regulation of Interpersonal Relationships,” in Evolutionary Social Psychology, ed. Jeff A. Simpson and Douglas T. Kenrick (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997). pp. 118 - 143.

[16] Richard C. Schwartz,  Internal Family Systems Therapy  (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 34, pp. 40-41.

[17] Hubert J. M. Hermans and Agnieszka Hermans-Konopka, Dialogical Self Theory: Positioning and Counter-Positioning in a Globalizing Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 19-20.

[18] An excerpt from the report: ​ ​​" ...it's important to grapple with thorny emotional issues relevant to the path of pursuing what you want and being how you want to be.  “ In other words, working through emotional and perceptual tangles is critical for your aspirations.  That means not neglecting emotional issues as you pursue various missions in life. And in the other extreme, not getting caught up in endless and directionless emotional work. In this way, you could think of efforts to address these emotional "cruxes" as prerequisites to moving or continuing forward because they carry existential implications for the journey ahead.  “...without taking stock of what unresolved internal things are pulling at them and affecting their decisions, [people] can will themselves forward in a way that’s not only compromised in the present day, but almost certainly sowing the seeds for significant issues to surface down the line. Attempting to come to resolution on these internal cruxes at a later time can be far more expensive and less likely to be successful. “
 

[19] Though we hadn’t quite phrased it this way in our sprawling write-up of the coaching training program in 2023. 
 

[20] Though we particularly emphasize the internal, this is similar to known cycle-related forms of learning, such as the Kolb learning cycle.