This is part one of at least two notes that record what I've been learning through my study of Bowen Family Systems. I took a class on Systems Theory in seminary, and it deeply impacted me. I returned to its study recently while preparing for my teaching sessions at La Vida and Mundo Vista. Talking about this yesterday is what prompted my friend to tell me that I needed to be a motivational speaker :-).
---------
Our families of origin play a profound influence on who we become in life. Whether we recognize it or not--or whether we desire it or not--we are deeply connected to our families. In fact, how we learn to relate to one another within our families impacts how we relate to the rest of this world.
The emotional interdependence of families develops to promote the cohesiveness and cooperation that families require to protect, shelter, and feed their members. Heightened tension, however, can intensify the processes that promote unity and teamwork, and this can lead to problems. When family members get anxious, anxiety can escalate and spread infectiously among them. As anxiety goes up, the emotional connectedness of family members becomes more stressful than comforting. Eventually, one or more members feels overwhelmed, isolated, or out of control.
One way people deal with emotional anxiety is the "cut-off." A cut-off is a strategy used to cope with the intensity of anxiety in a system by creating emotional distance. Sometimes cut-offs are temporary and are needed to create the space and time to garner strength for future work that needs to be done. Sometimes cut-offs are more permanent and result in writing someone out of one's life. Cut-offs are oftentimes easier than doing the hard work of dealing with difficult emotions, but the challenge is to stay connected…as a mature, self-differentiated self.
A mature individual is one who takes responsibility for the emotional and spiritual health of self.
A self-differiented individual is a mature individual who has learned to define yourself apart from, yet as part of, her surroundings.
A mature, self-differentiated self will work to understand what she thinks and believes. She will observe, listen, and explore outward and inward thoughts and actions to determine where she stands in in thought and opinion. As she does this, she will learn not to feel threatened by people who differ from her.
As she learns to embrace herself--both virtues and flaws included--she becomes more accepting and forgiving of others, realizing that they are them and that she is she, and that no one can force emotional change on another. Knowing where she stands, the mature, self-differentiated self can make decisions based off of her convictions and desires, even when they're difficult, and not allow "group think" or "mob mentality" to suck her in and influence her to act in a way that is not consistent with who she is. Furthermore, she has the ability to act as a non-anxious presence, thus lowering the anxiety of those around her.
Are you working toward becoming a mature, self-differentiated self?
Have you cut-off someone off in the past but realize that it's time to take steps to reconnect?
The beauty of thinking of yourself as part of a larger system is realizing that you are not alone. In a system, there is little use for cause and effect. Blame is not in the vocabulary. All actions and behaviors are part of the larger whole and are influenced by layers of life that we cannot see; therefore, one life is always influencing other lives and vice versa, and all we can do is do the best with what we have in the moment in which we have it.
And that moment is now.
-------
Information taken from http://www.thebowencenter.org/pages/theory.html; Review and Expositor, Vol. 102, No. 3; and "Family Systems and the Power of Roles, Secrets, Myths, and Lies" By David Stoop, PhD
No comments:
Post a Comment