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.
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.
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:
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
Dr Murray Bowen wrote, “A goal of this therapy is to help the other make a research project out of life” (Bowen, 1978, p. 179). What do you think of this as a counselling goal? – Not to fix, but to motivate a person’s learning journey about themselves in their family system. Nurturing a posture of curiosity through gathering as many facts about your family challenges and life course as possible is a worthy effort in growing a more aware and resilient self.
The personal research project below has been developed by a teaching psychologist in Washington DC, Dr John Millikin. It appears with his permission in the Appendix of the second edition of my book: Growing Yourself Up. I think it is a helpful template for learning to understand self in the bigger picture of one’s family of origin. It is a very different direction to the conventional mental health approach to focussing on symptoms. My own experience in life and clinical practice is that the effort to gather data about family is much more productive than investing in “fixing” effort directed at an individual or a relationship. Paradoxically the bigger picture approach can actually result in sustainable reduction of symptoms.
Perhaps you might like to begin your own family systems research project using the example below as a springboard. It requires a patient effort over time but may be one of the most growth enhancing projects you will undertake:
Another example of an excellent self -research template is:
Appendix 6
An overview of human development across the lifespan from a Bowen family systems perspective
A learning project for individuals and academic groups. Adapted from curriculum developed by John Millikin, PhD, LMFT, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Department of Human Development.
Cast of family and important people
Nodal events (births, deaths, illness, leaving home, marriages, divorces)
Stressors
Other changes and emotional events
The Family Emotional Unit Relationship System
The primary triangle (parents/self)
How were they involved with each other? (Also think in terms
of conflict, distance, over- and under-functioning/involvement)
»»Who did you take sides with more? (Your common triangle position)
»»Did you help one parent in difficulties with the other? How?
»»Who generally gave you positive attention? How much?
»»Who generally gave you negative attention? How much?
»»Who gave you approval? How much?
»»Who did not provide attention or approval?
»»What was each parent’s involvement like with their own parents (briefly)?
Siblings and sibling position
General family emotional process (nuclear and extended)
Together and separate
Feelings, reactivity and sensitivities
Medical, health and addictions
Autonomy, Effectiveness, Principles and Defining a Self
Autonomy and acts of self
Personal and interpersonal effectiveness
Principles and defining self
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
Gathering with extended family for any holiday season or milestone event reveals both what we share in common and the significant differences between us. I wonder if you’ve ever sat at the family festive dinner table and listened to a relative express a viewpoint that really irritated you. Do you walk on egg shells waiting in expectation for that relative to take offence? Have you observed how challenging it is for a family member to participate in the socialising? Perhaps you have observed how much a family member relies on alcohol to manage the occasion? Or do you have a relative who uses humour (somewhat inappropriately) as their method of conversing?
I often hear people declare that they just don’t like their sibling or aunt/uncle….. They consider that their life and values have taken a different direction and they would prefer to not have to continue an effort to be in contact.
A family systems view opens up a different way of thinking about the variations amongst family members. The young person in the family who was most focussed on (negatively or positively) will be the one who absorbs more of the immaturity of the whole family system. The more anxiously focussed on child may be the one born at a particularly intense time for parents, or is the same sibling position as a parent (or a parent’s troubled sibling), or who was the only child of one gender, or was a sick infant. Not all siblings leave home with the same capacities to cope in life. In turn, this means that others enter the challenges of adult life with greater or lesser emotional resources. The sister or brother who seems so different from you may simply represent what could so easily have been your own path if the family circumstances were a little different.
Can you see how this opens up compassion and grace towards the more challenging family members. It also enables us to reduce our reactive responses to the apparently more immature members of our family – previous responses which have contributed to fixing oversensitive patterns in place. If you are the member of your family that others seem to struggle to accept, it may be useful to understand how your position, in relation to your parents insecurities, have added to your heightened sensitivity to others. It can make sense of how quickly you take things personally when you are with family and how others distance when you get upset. This awareness of us and others can be helpful to refocus on managing our part and to shift away from blaming others.
Perhaps a good gift to yourself and your family at this year-end is consider your extended family as part of a system that has enabled some to manage stress and relationships more effectively than others.
You may wish to re- read Chapter 3 of my book Growing Yourself Up, titled:
Family ties that bind: Understanding our family of origin
In particular the section- Each sibling experiences a different family
An excerpt:
Have you ever paused to appreciate that each of your siblings experienced a different family to you due to the variations in the degree and tone of attention each received from your parents? Some siblings get a balanced amount of attention and assistance in line with their logical needs, while others get an exaggerated degree of positive or negative attention….
The useful thing to appreciate in your growing-up efforts is that you can’t have the same expectations of each sibling that you have of yourself. Each family member’s pathway to maturity is inevitably different from your own.
Before we move into blaming our parents for any challenging siblings, it is worth remembering the influence of our parent’s family systems:
Much of a parent’s reaction to each of their children comes out of an unconscious effort to relieve their own uncertainties and anxiety, not from a deliberate attempt to mess up their children. Our mothers and fathers came out of their own families with a level of tolerance for upset, discord, involvement and demands. In turn this is played out in their marriage and their reactions to each of their children. None of us, or our parents, has any say in the hand of maturity cards we are dealt as part of the inheritance of generations of families.
(Growing Yourself Up p.39-40)
Whatever your family heritage and tradition for gathering at this time of year,
I wish you a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays, filled with grace for each family member.
*A CHRISTMAS REFLECTION: Systems theory assists me to cultivate more compassion and understanding towards other family members. Additionally and even more importantly, the Christmas message of God’s grace shown in coming down into our struggles as the son, Jesus of Nazareth, demonstrates an extravagant dose of undeserved favour and compassion towards us. In response to this I am compelled to nurture the same compassion towards others.
Once in Royal David’s City – Mary Chapin Carpenter.
Verse 2:
He came down to earth from heaven,
Who is God and Lord of all,
And His shelter was a stable,
And His cradle was a stall;
With the poor and meek and lowly,
Lived on earth our Savior holy.
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=
It’s an interesting and rewarding experience to learn to see how to shift our less mature responses in relationships. Learning to recognise when
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.
I received the following question via Facebook. I have changed some of the details in order to write up my reflections as a public blog.
“My question relates to my mum and my younger sister who have been in conflict. My mum is avoiding my sister because she doesn’t want to have a difficult conversation and also believes my sister is in the wrong. I’ve encouraged her to try and stay connected to my sister and to have another conversation with her to see if they can resolve things, but she isn’t willing. She still feels very hurt by things that were said in the past. Any ideas of how else to encourage her to resolve things with my sister? What’s a mature action I can take in this situation?”
It can be heartbreaking to witness ruptures within our families – to have 2 people that we love dearly not talking to each other. The more that they avoid each other the stronger the ill-will seems to grow. Both family members can triangle us into their complaints about the other and we can find ourselves impossibly sandwiched in the middle. We can try hard not to take sides and to encourage each family member to reconnect and talk through their misunderstandings but predictably this mediation effort hits dead ends. Neither party is willing to give up their position about the wrong they feel has been done to them.
Observations of such circumstances reveal that the effort to change others and convince them to make amends is rarely productive. Relationship hurt and the resultant anxious defensiveness is unlikely to shift in response to another’s pressure. If there have been intergenerational patterns of people cutting off in the face of disagreements it will be especially hard for such programming to change. Distance and avoidance has become the default in the face of tension.
A family is an emotional unit – like a single organism. This means that any change one person makes will affect other’s experience of the family. So what can one family member do to bring some maturity to a system where ‘cut off’ is occurring? The following are some examples of options. It must be remembered however that each family has some unique ways of playing out tensions and alliances. Hence each of us has to work out what particular adjustments are useful to make in how we respond to each family member in the strained side of the triangle (in this instance the sister and mother are the strained side of the triangle with both aligned with the person who asks the question about the dilemmas they face). None of this can be rolled out as a technique.
Rather any change effort needs to make sense to the person seeking to make adjustments; and it needs to connect with their inner convictions if they are to contribute to the wellbeing of the unit.
The key is to remember is that ‘cut offs’ are a common way of relieving intense negative emotions in a relationship. A period of distance is just predictable in families with a tendency to handle offences with stonewalling. The distance provides substantial shorter term reduction in anxiety and over whelmed emotions. If you get caught in being the triangle ‘meat in the sandwich’ you contribute to fuelling the ‘cut off’. Similarly if you participate fully in events and conversations that exclude the other you are accommodating to it. Above all be patient – these patterns are embedded in the ways previous generations dealt with transitioning from family of origin to family of creation. There is no quick fix to a pattern that has helped (albeit not maturely) families to cope with relationship stress over centuries.
Emotionally cutting off to relieve internal discomfort has its roots in the way people leave home. If they distanced from their parents in establishing their adult life- not being real and open in negotiating this life transition with each parent- the foundations for future impulsive ‘cut offs’ are laid down. (We all have varying degrees of this with our parents – Bowen called this: unresolved emotional attachment) Working on meaningful relating back to parents can reduce the likelihood of this pattern being repeated in the current generations.
Dr Bowen writes: “The concept deals with the way people separate themselves from the past in order to start their lives in the present generation (FTCP : 382).”
Dr Kerr writes: “People reduce the tensions of family interactions by cutting off, but risk making their new relationships too important. For example, the more a man cuts off from his family of origin, the more he looks to his spouse, children, and friends to meet his needs.”
For a full description of this pattern read: Bowen Theory Eight Concepts or Kerr, Michael E. “One Family’s Story: A Primer on Bowen Theory.” The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family. 2000.
Joe was beginning to see how his best efforts to help his daughter and family to have happy times together were actually contributing to a lowering of Chloe’s resilience.
This is the next instalment in the story of one parent, Joe, as he worked to figure out how he could be a resource to his defiant 13 year old daughter Chloe. Previously Joe described in detail the interactions of all the family at a recent outing to a pizza restaurant (see blog May 10). Having clearly laid out the different family responses during this typical problem interaction with Chloe, his next effort was to think back over his interactions to consider if:
In looking back at the Pizza restaurant blow-up, Joe noted how much he tried to get Chloe to be pleasant and co-operative by appealing to her with his positive voice. He was putting his energy into trying to manage her mood and it was backfiring. The more he tried to convince Chloe to be co-operative the more she would retort with her complaints. Joe noticed that this would pull his wife into being tough with Chloe which he would respond to with even more effort to calm Chloe down to avoid a bigger outburst. Chloe was not learning to manage her reactions at all. Joe was trying to do it for her. As other family members (Mum and brother) started to give Chloe a piece of their mind about her behaviour, Chloe was being given even more emotional opposition to react to. Joe acknowledged that he then moved into more drastic efforts to calm Chloe down by giving into her (allowing her to only order gelato) and offering her incentives ( a phone upgrade). Joe saw that this was contributing to his daughter expecting that others would make her happy rather than learning to tolerate not getting her own way. Chloe was becoming increasingly dependent on others to remove her frustrations. On the surface her defiance sounded like a kind of rebellious independence from her family but Joe was coming to see that this was actually a picture of a very dependent child who hadn’t learned to calm herself down when she didn’t get her own way.
Joe was beginning to see how his best efforts to help his daughter and family to have happy times together were actually contributing to a lowering of Chloe’s resilience.
If the child/young person is beginning to calm themselves down and be more thoughtful and reasonable during or after the interaction, they are growing in resilience. If the child is agitated and either leaving the parent to work things out for them, or leaving the parent equally agitated, they are NOT growing in resilience and independence.
The pattern of both parents rushing in to smooth things over for Chloe had been happening for many years. Over this time her defiance gradually increased. This was now being amplified by the hormone charges of early adolescence alongside the stressful transition to high school (junior high). Joe couldn’t find anything in his pizza restaurant interaction with Chloe that was promoting her growth in responsible independence. He accepted that changes for Chloe would be slow but that the first step he could make was to stop calming and bribing Chloe. He had some more work to do to figure out what to do instead but his stepping back was the beginning of him becoming a more hopeful parent. Joe was starting to shift his focus from trying to change Chloe to a focus on what he could change. He felt hopeful that he could make a contribution to his daughter growing in responsible relating.
Getting caught in becoming a third party detour is a central pitfall of any helping relationship (professional, family, friendships, congregations, work). Any struggling person will feel better when they find an empathic listening ear to their problems within another relationship.
Daniel is a committed helping professional in adolescent mental health services. He engages with young people well and is skilled at drawing them out to discuss the issues that are troubling them. One of the most common complaints he hears from his young clients is that parents or step parents just don’t understand them. They are too pushy and always on their back. They expect too much, they are disapproving of friends, they don’t convey trust, they set impossible limits, and they are intrusive. In hearing about the negatives of the adolescents’ adult carers Daniel would invite his clients to talk in more detail about the effects of these experiences of their parents. He asked about what they needed to feel better supported and conveyed that he appreciated what they were up against. He affirmed their strengths and sought to build their self-esteem as well as suggesting techniques for reducing negative thoughts and anxiety symptoms.
The problems arose for Daniel when he invited parents to counselling sessions. Having already conveyed assent for the young person’s criticisms of the parent he found that he was immediately biased towards parent blame. He worked to convey warmth towards the parent in order to engage them in exploring their relationship with the child but he was quick to be annoyed by what he perceived as their invalidating approach to their adolescent. Any slight gesture of negative body language from a parent would push Daniel’s emotional buttons of defence for his young client. Daniels focus would be on trying to help the parent see what their adolescent needed from them. There was little curiosity for what the parent was up against in relating to their adolescent or for the many years invested by the parent in trying to help their child. All he could see was the current conflict in the relationship and how this seemed to be causing emotional distress for the young person. Daniel was caught in a common helper’s triangle. He was on the side of his client and was unable to see the broader patterns of interaction as part of a complex backdrop to the adolescent’s current symptoms. Daniel genuinely believed in conveying warmth and respect for the parent but his side taking meant that the parent sensed that they were the focus of a blame and change effort. In turn the parent would be edgy with Daniel which gave him further confirmation of his biased view of their dismissive parenting style.
You may be wondering if it is ever possible to counsel one person without forming an alliance with their view of things. Without an understanding of relationship systems it is very difficult to avoid side taking. In particular, without an appreciation of the invitation to triangle, a helper inevitably falls into validating one person while blaming others – sometimes in subtle ways. A triangle is when a third party is used as a detour for dealing with an issue in the relationship between two people. When we are upset with another it is comforting to find a third party who will listen to our distress. The act of telling an outsider about our worry effectively calms us down. The predicament however is that the person is not working on their problem in the relationship in which it belongs. Additionally the third party now has a different view of the person who has been complained about. This infects a negative tone to the way they now relate to this person, as was happening with Daniel in his stance with his client’s parents.
When we construct our picture of a problem through the complaints and distress of an individual, it is natural that our focus will be helping them recover from what we perceive others have inflicted upon them. This forms the basis of the common helping triangle. Such side taking or triangling can be averted when the problem is explored through descriptions of patterns of interaction and how these relationships have adjusted to pressures of adverse circumstances over time. Exploring patterns of how each person has affected each other’s way of relating enables us to appreciate that every family member (or group member) has played a part in constructing current dynamics. Rather than draw out more details of a person’s complaint the helper asks: when does this happens, who is involved, how do they each respond, what is the effect of this?
Daniel was concerned about the blocks he experienced in working with parents of troubled adolescents. He knew their relationship with the young person was important to the adolescent recovering their wellbeing. As he came to see how he was getting caught in a triangle with the parents on the outside of his alliance with their child he began to work out ways to prevent this occurring. Rather than ask his young client to expand on their feelings of angst about their parents he would explore what they were doing to deal with their frustrations in their relationship. He tracked carefully the interactions the young person was regularly part of when conflicts or symptomatic behaviours escalated. As he saw a more objective view of parent-child relationships over time he began to appreciate how important it was to include parents in his counselling right up front. When parents expressed their grievances about the child (or the other parent) in counselling, he discovered that he could draw out how they were trying to address this in the relationship. This replaced his previous approach that provided a platform for making a case that another was the problem.
Getting caught in becoming a third party detour is a central pitfall of any helping relationship (professional, family, friendships, congregations, work). Any struggling person will feel better when they find an empathic listening ear to their problems within another relationship. The helper can also feel competent as they sense appreciation for providing positive validations that are missing from an important relationship. The short term relief of this alliance can easily give way to a helping impasse. While the upset person wants to feel supported, they have not been assisted to work their difficulty out in the important relationship in their life. When a helper shifts from encouraging venting about others, to identifying patterns in relationship with others, they can become a valuable resource for a person’s change process. They still convey respect and concern for the weight of the difficulty but they resist the invitation to side taking.
‘Side Taking or Triangling in a Helping Relationship’ – Jenny Brown