Genogram · How to draw your tree

Before doing a constellation, before seeking out a systemic therapist, before even reading more on the subject — there is a simple exercise that already begins to heal: drawing your own family tree.

Not the pretty tree made at Christmas. A therapeutic tree. A genogram, in Monica McGoldrick's language. Or a genosociogram, as Anne Ancelin Schützenberger called it, adding to the classic tool dates, historical contexts, traumas, secrets, and exclusions.

This article is a practical guide so you can create your own in 30–60 minutes, without a therapist present, with nothing more than a large sheet of paper and a good stretch of silence.

Materials you will need

• A large sheet of paper (A3 or cardstock is ideal) or several A4 sheets joined together with tape.
• Colored pencils in several colors (black, blue, red, green — each will serve a specific purpose).
• An eraser.
• Time: 1 uninterrupted hour the first time. You will continue filling it in over the following days.
• An hour where no one will interrupt you.

Basic genogram symbols

These are the universal symbols that any Psychogenealogy practitioner reads the same way:

• Woman: circle. Man: square.
• Deceased person: X inside the circle or square.
• You: double line (thicker circle or square, or a small "I" inside).
• Marriage: horizontal line between the two members.
• Unmarried couple (common-law union): dotted horizontal line.
• Separation: two diagonal slashes crossing the horizontal line.
• Divorce: two diagonal slashes + line broken with an X.
• Children: vertical lines descending from the couple's horizontal line, ordered from left (oldest) to right (youngest).
• Adopted children: dotted vertical line.
• Miscarriage: small filled black triangle.
• Voluntary abortion: small triangle with a cross.
• Stillbirth: small square or circle with an X.
• Twins / identical twins: two lines starting from the same point, forming a V.

Step 1: start with yourself — and three generations back

Draw yourself at the lower center of the page. If you have a partner, draw them to your right (men are conventionally placed on the left, women on the right, but you can adapt this to your needs). If you have children, draw them below you, ordered by age from left to right.

Now move up to your parents. Your mother and father are connected by a horizontal line above you. Important: if either parent had previous partners before your other parent, draw those partners as well — to the right (for your father) or to the left (for your mother) of the union. If there were children from those relationships, include them too.

Move up to your grandparents. Four grandparents: two on the Maternal lineage, two on the Paternal lineage. And, if you can, go back as far as your great-grandparents (eight people). Even further if the information allows.

Step 2: siblings and the horizontal line

Next to you, draw your siblings — both living and deceased. Don't forget your mother's miscarriages before or between your siblings. Those also belong to the system. If your mother ever told you "I lost one before you," or "there was a pregnancy between your sister and you that didn't make it," mark that lost pregnancy in its birth-order place.

Repeat with your parents' siblings and your grandparents' siblings. The rule: leave no one out. Not even the uncle the family "never talks about." Not even the aunt who left home. Not even the brother who died as a baby and no one wants to remember.

Step 3: add dates (this is where the magic appears)

Under each member, write:

• Year of birth.
• Year of death (if applicable) and age at time of death.
• Year of marriage or union.
• Year of separations.
• The person's key ages at important events (when they became seriously ill, when they lost a child, when they emigrated, when they went bankrupt).

This is where the tree begins to speak. Look at the age patterns. Did your mother fall ill at 38? Are you experiencing symptoms at 38? Did your grandmother lose a child at 32, and did your aunt also lose one at 32? Did your father go bankrupt at 47, and are you fearing the same at 47?

Schützenberger used to say: "dates don't lie". The body, without knowing it, remembers the ages of the great family traumas.

Step 4: mark the major events with colors

Here you switch pencils. Use colors to mark:

• Red: traumatic deaths, serious accidents, suicides, murders, abortions.
• Blue: major financial losses, bankruptcies, extreme poverty, exiles.
• Green: migrations, changes of country, lost languages, severed roots.
• Yellow or orange: great unrealized loves, significant past partners, unacknowledged children.
• Black: secrets —things the family never talks about but everyone knows.

When you're done, look at the page from a slight distance. You'll see, without anyone having to tell you, where the knots in the system are.

Step 5: the questions that open the tree

If you live with your mother, your father, your aunts and uncles, your grandparents —ask them. Not to dig up pain: but to acknowledge. The most useful questions:

• "Was there any pregnancy my mom lost before or between us, the children?"
• "Did my dad have an important partner before my mom?"
• "How exactly did grandma die? How old was she?"
• "Is there a family member we never talk about? Why?"
• "Did the family ever lose everything —money, land, home— all at once?"
• "Were there wars, exiles, or persecutions that our generation or previous ones lived through?"
• "Do we know the names and dates of our great-grandparents? Why not?"

What you'll feel while doing it

People who draw their genogram for the first time describe specific sensations:

• Strange fatigue. As if the body had begun processing something immense.
• Tears with no identifiable cause. Especially when drawing an excluded member or an abortion no one had ever named.
• Recognition. "Ah, so it wasn't just me — there is a story behind my story".
• Calm. A rare, underlying calm, as if something within the system were already beginning to settle into place.

What to do once you see it finished

The genogram is not an end in itself. It is the map. Once you have the map, the next step is to decide which knot you want to work on first, and with which tool:

• If there is an excluded member: a constellation of inclusion.
• If there is a repetition of date or age: work on anniversary syndrome.
• If there is a visible maternal or paternal wound: systemic movements of reconciliation.
• If there is a heavy secret: respectful work with the crypt and the phantom.

And if you can't find the way on your own—which is completely normal and not a failure at all—the genogram becomes the perfect tool to arrive at a first session with a constellation facilitator. You bring your map, we look at it together, and the work begins.

But the first step—the one almost no one takes, and which is already enormous—is daring to put down on paper everything that the family, across generations, avoided looking at. Picking up the pencil. Drawing the first circle. That one is you. And from there, with respect and patience, unfolding the entire system until you see it, for the first time, complete.