Some people give easily but find it hard to receive. Praise confuses them, help makes them uncomfortable, money does not stay, and love always seems to come with conditions. They often try harder than others, and yet they feel that something keeps slipping away.
Here the systemic view asks an unexpected question: what is your relationship to what was given to you by your parents, above all to life itself? According to the teaching of Bert Hellinger, the capacity to receive begins right there.
This text draws on the book Decoding the Soul and explains why gratitude for life is the foundation of all other receiving.
Receiving comes before giving
At the heart of Hellinger’s teaching, as the book Decoding the Soul describes it, lies the belief that receiving comes before giving. We must first receive something, love, attention, care or material goods, before we are able to give the same onwards. This cycle begins at the moment of birth.
“The first thing we receive from our parents is life itself.” (from the book Decoding the Soul)
Life is a gift that no child can repay in equal measure. That is why the relationship between parents and children is not one of balance but of asymmetry: parents give and children receive. Children cannot give their parents back as much as they received, but they can express gratitude by accepting life and respecting their parents, and pass on what they received.
Gratitude as a foundation
The book Decoding the Soul calls gratitude to our parents for life the foundation for all other forms of receiving and giving. If we are not grateful for life itself, we will find it hard to successfully receive or value anything else life offers us.
According to the book, an inability to value the life our parents gave us can block the capacity to receive in other areas too. This can mean difficulties in receiving love from others, problems with finances or a general sense of dissatisfaction and unfulfilment. Conversely, gratitude lays the foundation for accepting money, love and attention in everyday experience.
Accepting your parents as they are
Gratitude does not mean that your parents were perfect. The book Decoding the Soul emphasises that children should respect their parents and accept them as they are, regardless of their faults or mistakes. This acceptance is key to emotional release and to building an identity of your own, unburdened by the past.
When a child cannot accept a parent, this is often expressed in sentences such as “You are not my father” or “You are not my mother”. According to the book, such rejection creates emotional barriers that are then carried into all relationships in life. It can lead to emotional emptiness and listlessness, because the child cannot receive from the source from which their life came.
The book also gives sentences that help change this relationship in a constellation: “You are my mum. Just as you are, you are the best mum for me. I have no other mum.” The same sentences are spoken to the father. They do not deny what was hard. They simply return the parent to their place, as the source of life.
If these words do not bring relief, the book suggests repeating everything from the beginning and adding at the end a sentence that leaves room for what is still unresolved: “I will be angry a little longer, and then I will let you love me.” Acceptance is not a moment, but a process with its own rhythm.
Giving for the sake of giving
Decoding the Soul describes the relationship between parents and children as giving for the sake of giving. Parents give without expecting to be repaid in equal measure, and children receive with gratitude and pass it on, to their own children or into what they create. In this way giving becomes a chain that carries vitality through the generations.
The book points out that this kind of giving creates a space in which those who receive can grow unburdened, which is the basis for the development of healthy, independent and capable people. The problem arises when this flow is reversed, when a child tries to give back to the parents more than they can, or when a parent asks of the child what they did not give.
The book sees the same principle of asymmetry outside the family too: between teacher and student, between professional helpers and those who need help. Those who have received one day become givers themselves. In this way each following generation has a foundation on which it can build and give onwards, and also receive.
How to begin
One of the sentences in the book is simply: “Thank you for life.” You can say it inwardly, imagining your parents in front of you, and observe what happens. If resistance, anger or sadness appears, that is all right. It is a sign that there is something to be seen before gratitude becomes possible.
Gratitude for life cannot be forced. It matures when the hard parts of the story are acknowledged and when the burden that is not ours is returned to those it belongs to. Then receiving becomes natural, like a river that flows again.