Growing up through the life cycle – these podcasts are deigned to prompt thinking about one’s own life adjustments as well as reflecting on the experiences of members of the broader family.
To listen on iTunes, click HERE.
bowen
Our family of origin – each sibling grows up in a different family
Growing up through the life cycle – these podcasts are deigned to prompt thinking about one’s own life adjustments as well as reflecting on the experiences of members of the broader family.
To listen on iTunes, click HERE.
Episode 1: Our family of origin – each sibling grows up in a different family
An overview of Bowen family systems theory – a different way of thinking
Given how much my book is about applying Bowen’s theory to understanding the commonalities of the families we all grow up in, it’s timely to use this excerpt (from ch. 3) as a mini blog to provide a crash course in family systems concepts. You will recognise them, described in everyday language, all the way through this book. 
Bowen researched his own family over the generations and came to see similarities in coping patterns with those families with more severe psychiatric symptoms. He noticed that there were two forces at work in relationships that drive predictable patterns of behaviour: these are the togetherness force and the separateness force, which are both essential for individuals in their relationships. The core concepts of Bowen’s theory describe the ways that family members react to the threat of loss of togetherness and explain the variations in how different families and individuals manage life challenges. These core concepts are: triangles, which describe how tension between two people gets detoured to a third party, such as when a wife discusses marital grievances with a friend rather than their husband or when a parent discuss parental grievances with a child rather than their partner; differentiation of self, which describes the extent to which family members can stay in their own skin — maintain their individuality — while relating to each other and still being part of the family group; fusion, the opposite of differentiation of self, where boundaries are lost in the pull for family togetherness; the nuclear family emotional system, which outlines the three ways that one generation of a family can reduce individual relationship discomfort — these are the conflict-and-distance pattern, the over- and under-functioning exchange between spouses, and the anxious detour onto a child. The family projection process explains how insecurities in adults can be managed through shifting the focus to the next generation; the multigenerational transmission process describes how parents’ anxieties are not transmitted equally to each child as each gets varying degrees of a parent’s worry focus; emotional cut-off is a common way that family members use distance to reduce the sense of loss of individuality in relationships; sibling position was seen by Bowen as formative in an individual’s relationship sensitivities; and societal regression process showed how the same anxious patterns in families can be seen in institutions in the broader society. All of these ideas, linked together, help show how every individual is part of a much bigger stage of actors in the same improvised play, building a storyline through their interconnections.
To see things from a systems perspective requires getting out of a ‘cause and effect’ way of thinking to seeing how every person’s impulses are part of a circuit of reactions that flow like electric currents around relationships. It’s as if relationships are a kind of dance, with each person responding intuitively to the dance steps of another. These circuits of emotional and behavioural responses in relationships shape how each individual develops. Hence getting real about ourselves in our original families requires us to get honest about how our emotional responses and behaviours flow onto others and influence how they appear to us. The good news, from a systems way of thinking, is that changing our emotional reactions and behaviours eventually flows onto changing the entire circuit of the system. That is if we can hold onto the principles that drive our change efforts in the face of others’ anxiety. This is how we can make a positive difference over time, not just for ourselves but for everyone we’re connected to.
Photo with permission: A Schara
Interventions and Confrontations – REPOST
Interventions and Confrontations – Are they the most helpful ways to respond to severe problems in a person we care for?
Because I view a person’s symptoms as part of their system of relationships I now focus on expressing my own position in the relationship rather than focus on the problems in the other.
Last week a relative called me to talk through their ideas for an “intervention”. They wanted to challenge a friend to admit to their symptoms and agree to get some professional help. I appreciated the deep care behind this request. I heard about how a long term friend had been exhibiting increasingly severe symptoms that were threatening many aspects of their wellbeing. I was happy to be a sounding board for my relative and to share some of my principles for communicating such important concerns to someone we care about. The term ‘intervention’ usually refers to the effort to gather a group of people together and confront a person about their need for help. It is often used in the case of serious drug and alcohol dependence. Web sites on how to do interventions describe the context:
People with serious addictive behaviours are often in denial that they have a problem. When heart to heart talks and other attempts to help prove ineffective, you can join forces with friends, families and a professional interventionist to confront the person with the truth and a detailed plan of action.
Many years ago I was a participant in such a strategy and experienced a long term fall out in the relationship as the years progressed. In more recent years I have come to a different view of such strategies. Because I view a person’s symptoms as part of their system of relationships I now focus on expressing my own position in the relationship rather than focus on the problems in the other. Here are the key principles – some of which I shared with my relative:
- The goal is to express to the other that they are important in my life as opposed to challenging how they are living their life.
- Rather than confront the other with the problems in their life – which evokes intense defensiveness – I want to express my wish to have them as part of my life well into the future.
- In conveying my care for having them as a living and important part of my life I will share some of the observations I have had that have triggered my concern.
- I use the language of “I” rather than “You” in describing what I have observed and what fears for their wellbeing have been activated.
- I describe the effects on me and our relationship and how this is different to the strong loving bond I am committed to as we continue as part of each other’s lives. This is different to describing my view of the effects on their life – positioning self as the expert overseer of another’s life can be heard as patronising and drive a wedge into the relationship.
- I aim to talk one on one with the person rather than pull a group together to confront them. A group confrontation easily leaves a person feeling ganged up on.
- I commit to ongoing contact with the person to show that my care for them is more than words. I don’t expect that just a conversation will change anything. I am committed to addressing my part in any unhelpful aspects of the relationship pattern over the long haul. This means I will not resort to distancing.
- I will be truthful and not accommodating but my effort at honesty will be from my perspective and principles rather than a dogmatic declaration that I am an expert about the other. My effort towards speaking honestly will be grounded in real examples not in my subjective judgements and opinion.
- I will watch my tendencies to be an expert about others rather than staying mindful of my own immaturities. I will stay clear of treating another person as a ‘diagnosis’ but rather will view them as a fellow human being who can be an important resource in my life.
- If I were to focus on just a diagnosis in another it is all too easy to hand them over to an expert program as a way of reducing my own sense of distress- and my responsibility to work on myself in relationship with the other.
I appreciate that it isn’t easy to know how to address serious concerns about another’s life course or symptoms. Are there exceptions? I certainly conveyed to my relative that they know their relationship with their friend and will find their own way to deal with it best. Every situation is different and there may be occasions when a more direct intervention is the most caring thing another can do. At certain times it may be most loving to call in an emergency assessment service. Even in such cases I would aim to be transparent about my willingness to do this if I ever thought that my loved one’s safety or those of another were under threat.
My view is that a group or individual confrontation of another is almost never constructive. It sets up a one- up/one- down relationship where the person feeling challenged is evoked into high reactivity rather than being able to listen. They hear judgement rather than heart-felt concern. They can be fixed into the postion of a ‘patient’ in their relationship system. My system’s lens reminds me that people get into vulnerable symptomatic places in life via their position in their relationship/family systems. This means that if I change how I relate in that system I can contribute to a less regressive and anxious field for the most vulnerable person.
Bowen on confrontation in a family system:
ON CONFRONTING FAMILY MEMBERS
‘As an oldest son and physician I had long been the wise expert preaching to the unenlightened, even when it was done in the guise of expressing an opinion or giving advice….During my psychoanalysis there was enough emotional pressure to engage my parents[others] in an angry confrontation…At the time I considered these confrontations to be emotional emancipation. There may have been some short term gain…but the long term result was an intensification of previous patterns.”
Family Therapy in Clinical practice P 484
ON RELATING TO A PERSON IN THE SICK ROLE
‘In those families in which both parents could eventually tone down the sickness theme and relate to the ‘patient’ on a reality level, the ‘patient’ changed. After one family had emerged from their unreality, the ‘patient’ said, “As long as they called me sick and treated me sick, I somehow had to act sick. When they stopped treating me sick, I had a choice of acting sick or acting well.”’
P 86 ‘Interventions and Confrontations’ – Jenny Brown
A day at the tennis with my husband: Taking responsibility for moments of irritability in my marriage
I have well-honed sensitivities to those I’m particularly attached to, which triggers judgements, followed by intrusive corrections. Such corrections don’t always get verbalised but could be conveyed with a nudge or a look. I wonder, can you identify with this in your marriage or important relationships?
I recently sat next to my husband at the Australian Open Tennis. We were fortunate to have booked all day tickets at the main arena on the first week of matches. Such a treat to have a mini break in cosmopolitan Melbourne and enjoy the atmosphere of a renowned sporting event.
Early in the first match I noticed David scrolling through work emails on his phone. Instantly I experienced a bolt of irritated reactivity, thinking:
“Why isn’t he paying attention to the match? I can’t believe he’s letting his work override our watching the tennis together!”
I pulled my thoughts up quickly and prevented myself saying anything. My message to myself was:
“It is not my business whether or not my mate chooses to look at emails. He has every right to that choice and it doesn’t impinge in any way on my being able to enjoy the tennis.”
With this inner correction I could relax and keep my boundaries. This is something I have been working to improve over many years. Keeping within my own skin when alongside the important people in my life is a real workout. It hasn’t just been a challenge for me in my marriage. My parenting has had a good dose of sensitivity as well. Sitting next to a teenager biting their finger nails was always excruciating for me. I have well-honed sensitivities to those I’m particularly attached to, which triggers my judgements, followed by intrusive corrections. Such corrections don’t always get verbalised but could be conveyed with a nudge or a look.
This is a classic expression of relationship fusion where we monitor the other as opposed to being responsible for self. It is always interesting to consider how different our reactions are when mixing with people we are just associated with – they haven’t become important to our experience of self. Hence they can be checking their phones and displaying all sorts of nervous habits and it doesn’t bother us one bit. I wonder, can you identify with this?
The effort to observe one’s excessive sensitivities to others behaviours is of great value in the “growing up” journey. Dr Murray Bowen set this as the main destination for the counselling process writing:
“The over-all goal is to help individual family members to rise up out of the togetherness that binds us all” (Bowen FTCP 1978, p.371).
I can see the difference it makes to my marriage that I can refrain from reacting to the mannerisms and behavioural choices of my husband (most of the time). I can let him be him and me be me. This enables us to do life side by side as opposed to merged in each other’s emotional sphere. It certainly assists in achieving a relaxed day at the tennis and prevents the spread of irritability into other domains of marriage.
For more on dealing with fusion in a marriage here is an article by myself and Jo Wright: Inviting each partner out of the fusion: Bowen Family Systems Theory and couple therapy
ANNOUNCING NEW REVISED EDITION OF ‘GROWING YOURSELF UP’
‘Growing Yourself Up 2nd Edition’ also available on amazon, book depository and your local bookseller.
“The message of Growing Yourself Up is that you can’t separate understanding the individual from understanding relationships. All of life’s relationships are integral to increasing self-awareness and maturity. And it’s not necessarily the comfortable relationships that promote personal growth. In this 2nd edition of the bestselling book, Jenny examines how to help others without fostering dependency, and how to determine what kind of help you or others want from therapists. This is in response to the many lay and professional people who have found this book valuable personally and want to know how to help others grow.”
What kind of help facilitates the growing up efforts of others?
All this focus on maturing self, begs the question: is it sufficient just to work on growing ourselves up in our relationships? Is such a focus on self the best way to be helpful to others? I am convinced that as we become more responsible people, aware of our own immature reactions, we become a greater resource to those around us. I do, however, see a place for being a counsellor and helper; a place for guiding and supporting others through their troubles. Indeed, much of my over 35-year career effort has been to become a better helper and therapist. Helping efforts can be both helpful and unhelpful to people’s growing up.
Getting past the desire for the quick-fix expert
A theme running all the way through my book is that clear thinking in the face of pressure increases our effectiveness. Each of us can discover that we have a surprising wealth of wisdom to draw on from our human brains that can help us resolve life’s problems. The challenge is to put aside the desire for a quick fix and the tendency to look to others to come up with the instant solution. This quick-fix mentality has created a burgeoning industry of programs that promise a new method to get us out of our difficulties. Some even promise a new you in one week. Within my own profession of counselling and psychology, amidst some sound theories there are plenty of examples of this quick-fix technique trend.
Over my decades of clinical practice, I have observed that people make the best progress when they access their own answers to their dilemmas. I have learnt to refrain from giving directives and answers to client’s difficulties and instead I endeavour to guide their focus away from changing or blaming others to looking at themself. I pay close attention to their descriptions of what they are doing to address their problems and ask them to assess what they think is helping and not helping. From here I can share some ideas about the predictable patterns that all humans get caught in when trying to manage the challenges of relationships. I then encourage clients to research these ideas in observing themselves in their real lives.
When people give up their own capacity to problem-solve, no matter what their intellectual capacity, they are left to either blindly depend on others or to blame and criticise others when their advice does not work. This leads to communities of dependent followers or reactive blamers.
When any one person pulls back from blaming others or trying to be the expert for others, or just going with the flow of others’ opinions, it is possible to emerge as a more thoughtful, mature contributor to society.
What to look for from a helping professional
If you are in a professional therapy relationship or looking for an effective counsellor, It may be useful to ask yourself the following questions about your helping relationship:
- Am I asked questions that get me thinking of new ways to understand and resolve my difficulty? Or are my viewpoints all accepted?
- Am I respected and listened to as a competent person? Or am I being pitied or overly protected?
- Am I given suggestions that build upon the description and ideas I have come up with myself? Or am I given lots of advice?
- Am I encouraged to consider my part, and the way each person affects each other? Or is my view of the problem in others affirmed and agreed with? –
- Do I leave my sessions thinking about my own pain in the context of relationship patterns? Or am I left thinking about how hard done-by I am?
This blog is from excerpts from the 2nd revised edition of Growing Yourself Up pages 217; 238; 241-2. The new sections of this book are focused on the process of mature helping.
https://www.exislepublishing.com.au/Growing-Yourself-Up-2nd-edition.html
Dr Murray Bowen’s Growing Up Years
Jenny Brown in conversation with Dan Papero reveal a fascinating historical context for the development of Bowen theory as well as the world of psychiatry and the family therapy field that emerged after World War 2.
This podcast explores the growing up years of Dr Murray Bowen and his family background. This is all presented from the perspective of Dan Papero PhD, MSW who worked alongside Dr Bowen for several years.
To be Human is to be in Relationships
We can’t survive without them but at the same time it’s in our relationships that we can so easily get unravelled. Either we feel like we lose ourselves or we feel burnt out from futile efforts to make things right for another. In our relationships we can experience the very best of ourselves and the very worst.
One of the most common maturity blocks in our relationships is to lose sight of our part and to focus on changing, blaming or comparing ourselves to others. It’s common to think that others are the ones who need to “Grow up!” We try to push them to be more mature only to discover that our efforts just don’t work and can even intensify the relationship challenges we are struggling with. It’s a huge step of maturity to appreciate that relationships and dealing with others will become more rewarding when we work on ourselves. This growing up effort goes into=
- developing a deep sense of guiding principles for all our relationships
- being responsible for our own problem solving and not take this over for others or allow others to take this over for us
- understanding the family patterns behind a challenging interactions so that we can get beyond blaming
It’s an interesting and rewarding experience to learn to see how to shift our less mature responses in relationships. Learning to recognise when
- we detour to third parties,
- or become overly helpful or controlling,
- or we hand over our responsibilities to others,
- or we depend too much on relationship approval,
- or we’re too quick to distance when tension arises.
Recognising such patterns enables us to make new choices that enable us to bring our best to our relationships.
Genuine maturity is about deepening our understanding of our self in all of your key relationships – from the family we grew up in, through periods of singleness, in the intimacy and trials of marriage, in the vulnerability of our sex life, in the daunting task of raising children, in the midst of competition and performance pressures at work, and adjusting to aging. While the effort is on self and not others, growing up does not happen in isolation but in the pushes and pulls of complex relationships. It’s our important relationships that provide the very best laboratory for growing up. They also provide the best motivation to work hard at being a mature resource for those we care about.
I wonder if this all sounds a bit too much like hard work in your already hectic life; yet if there’s the chance that this effort can unveil a very different picture of yourself in your relationships, it might just be worth giving this journey a go.
The Family Research Behind Bowen’s Theory
This blog summarises key research of Dr Murray Bowen that shaped his theory. It was a key part of my PhD discussion of results. Hence it is timely to post it. I recommend that any who are interested in family and relationships have a read of the quotes from Bowen’s research (this article was originally posted March 2014 www.thefsi.com.au)
A feast of key quotes:
“Anxiety is inevitable if you solve the problem. When anxiety increases, one has to decide whether to give in and retreat or carry on in spite of it. People can even grow and become more mature by having to face and deal with anxiety situations.” p119
The Origins of Family Psychotherapy – Unique insights into the development of Bowen systems theory
Blog post by Jenny Brown
What a satisfying experience to read: The Origins of Family Psychotherapy, This book contains the key research papers from the NIMH* project led by Dr Murray Bowen in the latter 1950s. (Edited by Jack Butler PhD)
Why, you may well ask, was this high on my summer reading list? Don’t I know how to switch off with some good beachside appropriate fiction? Well I did manage to also enjoy a satisfying piece of fiction but I found Bowen and his team’s research papers totally engrossing. They took me on an excursion into how a new paradigm emerged from carefully constructed observational data. It was such a unique vantage point to see how Bowen and his collaborators, over a 5 year period of observing 18 families who were in hospital (averaging a year) with their highly symptomatic young adult member, began to see and document clear evidence of how the family is an interdependent unit. (additionally data was gathered from a number of outpatient families)
I have written copious notes from this book but thought I would try, for this blog, to pick some highlights. It’s not easy to edit out any of my standout quotes but I have chosen some that I think best express the key themes that stood out for me:
Focussing on the family as a unit – more than a group of individuals and beyond the “sick” one:
The observations reveal how the symptomatic individual is wired to the responses of all family members. In the same way each family member, whether responding with distance or with intense helping efforts, is continually shaped by each other. While this research involved people with severe forms of psychosis, the term schizophrenia could be replaced with the term “symptoms in offspring”.
There was “A shift from seeing schizophrenia as a process between mother and patient or as an illness with the patient influenced by the mother to an orientation of seeing schizophrenia as the manifestation of a distraught family that becomes focussed in one individual.” P25
“It was possible to see the broad patterns of form and movement that had been obscured by the close up view of the individual. ….The family view in no way detracts from the importance of the familiar individual orientation. …..the individual orientation can be more meaningful after it has been possible to see the family patterns.” P 158
“On one level each family member is an individual. But on a deeper level the central family group is as one. Our study was directed to the undifferentiated ego mass beneath the individuals.” P 109
Seeing how helpers can become part of the family’s helplessness or alternatively, facilitators of family’s problem solving efforts:
There are valuable insights in these papers about the way the workers can be inducted into being rescuers or experts and the effect of such postures. The worker’s self-awareness comes to be seen as of equal importance of the family’s problem solving efforts.
The therapist aims “to be helpful while staying detached from the other person’s immaturities…It is helping with a problem without becoming responsible for the problem….Our greatest philosophy I would say that our greatest help is in helping people to define their dilemmas. Our greatest energy goes into preventing staff from trying to solve dilemmas.” P 54
“When I feel myself inwardly cheering the hero, of hating the villain in the family drama, or pulling for the family victim to assert him/herself, I consider it time to work on my own functioning.” P 116
The senior social worker/case worker on the research project Ms B Basamania writes:
Anxious family members “didn’t deal with each other but turned to therapist as ‘expert’. The higher the anxiety and tension, the greater they turn to the outside as though the tension decreased with distance.” P141
“The philosophy on the project was based upon a regard for the family and its capacity to nurture human growth…. Therapeutically a guiding principle was to respond to the families in a way that would promote growth.” P143
Seeing how growth comes about from within the family:
The research papers describe the detail of the ‘action dialogue’ of the family member’s reactions to each other (both psychologically and physiologically). The emerging theory is seen in descriptions of repeating patterns such as “the interdependent triad” of parents and “patient” (it was a number of years before Bowen clarified his concept of the triangle), the circuitry of the “over adequate/ strong one and under adequate/helpless one”. There are some clear descriptions of how growth occurs “in-situ” of the family and not in the restorative (healing) relationship with the therapist. This paradigm shift in therapy approach was a direct outworking of the paradigm shift from individual thinking to seeing the family as an interdependent unit.
“The families present a group picture of helplessness and inadequacy. They deal with many life problems as burdens to be endured rather than problems to be solved. Therapeutic emphasis is directed at this helplessness. When either parent is able to become active in solving such a problem, the emotional adjustment of the entire family changes.”P39
“Families are not really helpless. They are functionally helpless. When the family is able to become a contained unit, and there is a family leader with motivation to define the problem and to back his(her) own convictions in taking appropriate action, the family can change from a directionless, anxiety-ridden floundering unit, to a more resourceful organism with a problem to be solved.” P118-9
“The parent’s sureness of themselves may be almost more important than what they do. If they are filled with doubts and apologies, the patient resets adversely; whereas, if they feel sure of themselves, they can behave in bizarre ways without alarming or disturbing the patient, or without upsetting the patient.” pP97
At the heart of systems change is finding a way to tolerate anxiety: If I had to summarise this important research project and its findings it would be:Managing self in relationships in the midst of arousal. (The concept of Differentiation of Self) Or : How families and workers strive to find a way to operate thoughtfully in the presence of the inevitable anxiety generated in close proximity to other human beings; especially when some are reacting out of helplessness (and equally out of anxious helpfulness). This finishing quote I have selected from Bowen is a valuable encouragement in this effort:
“Anxiety is inevitable if you solve the problem. When anxiety increases, one has to decide whether to give in and retreat or carry on in spite of it. Anxiety does not harm people. It only makes them uncomfortable. It can cause you to shake, or lose sleep, or become confused or develop physical symptoms, but it will not kill you and it will subside. People can even grow and become more mature by having to face and deal with anxiety situations. Do you have to go on treating each other as fragile people who are about to fall apart?” p119
Reference
The Origins of Family Psychotherapy: The NIMH Family Study Project. Murray Bowen, MD. Ed Jack Butler PhD. With contributions by Michael Kerr, MD, and Joanne Bowen, PhD. New York,: Jason Aronson, 2013.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Family-Psychotherapy-Project/dp/0765709740
Note: the proceeds of this fine book are being donated to the work of the Bowen Archives.
*National Institute of Mental Health