IndividualsCouplesFamiliesFamily of Origin and Clinical Coaching for Professionals

The Role of Anxiety

Q. I have a good life. A loving husband, healthy kids, a nice house and a good job. Sure, we have money problems and family issues, but overall we’re blessed. I even get along with my parents and my brothers and sisters. But I know I don’t enjoy my life enough. I’ve struggled with depression at times, and am often critical and irritable with my husband and kids. Medication helps a little, but doesn’t solve my problem. I don’t like taking it anyway. I often feel like I’m faking it and just going through the motions. What I really want to do is stay in bed and pull the covers over my head. I must be really messed up, right? Maybe my mother was right and I’m just spoiled because I’m the youngest.

A. It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on without knowing your specific family history and other details of your life, which we will gather if you come in for therapy, but there are some principles that apply to all of us:

Individuality and Togetherness

All people struggle with a tension between the emotional forces for Individuality and Togetherness. The togetherness force is a biologically rooted life force that pushes individuals to be part of the group. The togetherness force encourages dependence, agreement, following, and harmony. The togetherness force is always operating in dynamic tension with the force for individuality, “a biologically rooted life force that propels an organism to follow its own directives to be an independent and distinct entity” (Kerr and Bowen, 1988, p. 64).

More pressure for togetherness often exists than room for individuality. When the forces get out of balance, this contributes to Chronic Anxiety. In your case, it may be that the pressures of being a wife, mother, homemaker, daughter and employee are making it difficult for you to honor your need to be an individual among your loved ones. This might explain your desire to separate yourself and “pull the covers” over your head.

Chronic and Acute Anxiety

The level of chronic anxiety you inherited and carry may be contributing to your symptoms of mild to moderate depression: Anxiety is an organism’s response to a real or imagined threat. Anxiety triggers physical reactions including heart rate and blood pressure changes, gaze aversion, fight or flight responses, and heightened alertness or fear sensations. Though a certain level of anxiety mobilizes physical and mental resources necessary for human adaptation and survival, some reactions to threat in modern life may not be adaptive.

Chronic anxiety differs from acute anxiety. Acute anxiety is usually a response to a real threat and of short duration. Chronic anxiety arises within our relationships, is related to the tension between the togetherness and individuality forces, and has a more enduring quality. Chronic anxiety often exceeds a person’s ability to cope with it and can lead to the development of physical or emotional symptoms in vulnerable individuals.

Differentiation of Self

Differentiation of self is defined as your ability to distinguish between your thoughts and feelings in your emotional relationship systems. Ultimately, the goal of therapy is to increase your level of differentiation of self. DOS determines your level of sensitivity in the following four arenas:

Approval from and toward others
Attention from others
Distress within self and others
Expectations of self and others

A high level of relationship sensitivity will prompt you to either adjust what you think, say, and do to please others or, conversely, decide what others should be like and pressure them to conform. Can you relate to the idea that you are too sensitive to the people around you? That their behavior can have too big of an effect on you, sometimes driving you “under the covers”? Working on raising your level of DOS means getting more objective about the motives and behavior of the people around you, and learning how think things through even when the emotional intensity around you gets high.

According to Ed Friedman (Friedman, 1999, p. 183):

Differentiation refers to a direction in life rather than a state of being:

Differentiation is the capacity to take a stand in an intense emotional system.
Differentiation is saying “I” when others are demanding “we”.
Differentiation is containing one’s reactivity to the reactivity of others, which includes the ability to avoid being polarized.
Differentiation is maintaining a non-anxious presence in the face of anxious others.
Differentiation is knowing where one ends and another begins.
Differentiation is being able to cease automatically being one of the system’s emotional dominoes.
Differentiation is being clear about one’s own personal values and goals.
Differentiation is taking maximum responsibility for one’s own emotional being and destiny rather than blaming others or the context.

A. Remember how easy it was to get along in the beginning of your relationship? It seemed like you could talk about anything without fear of being judged. You were excited to see each other, but open and honest about all kinds of personal subjects. Now it’s changed between you. You worry more about saying or doing the wrong thing. And you also find yourself being more critical, more easily irritated by what your partner says and does. Maybe you are the kind of couple who argues, or maybe you avoid each other when you’re upset but either way, sometimes you just wish it was how it was in the beginning of your relationship; fun and easy.

It is normal for emotional intensity and sensitivity to develop between two people who are physically and emotionally close to one another. There is always a dynamic tension between the normal human needs for closeness on the one hand, and individuality on the other. Often, one of you will “carry” more of the need for closeness while your partner “carries” more of the need for separateness; balancing these opposing forces is a challenge for everyone in relationships.

Because few of us understand the normal relationship process as it happens, we try our best to manage the growing intensity and sensitivity, but end up getting stuck in repetitive, sometimes dysfunctional, patterns. You should recognize your own relationship in one or more of the patterns described below:

Conflict

This relationship pattern is characterized by periods of intense closeness followed by conflict, followed by distance or making up. During the conflict phase, neither partner wants to give in. People who engage in conflict tend to become critical when their anxiety or stress is high. They blame others, project their problems onto others, focus more on the faults of other than the self, and sometimes become verbally or physically abusive.

Distance

Distance can look like two people living parallel lives. Sometimes the distance takes the form of the “pursuer-distancer” relationship. (Because in fact both partners have difficulty with intimacy, the pursuer will likely begin to distance if the distancer comes in closer.) Distancing can be seen in periods of being “not on speaking terms,” workaholism or any other “ism” including drug and alcohol use, excessive time spent on hobbies, withdrawing into silence when upset, superficial communication with significant others, and difficulty relating to family members.

Over functioning/under functioning reciprocity

Signs of over-functioning include: Advice-giving, doing things for others that they could be doing for themselves (co-dependence), worrying excessively about others, knowing what is best for others, feeling responsible for others, talking more than listening, having goals for others they don’t have for themselves. Over- functioning causes people to feel burnt-out or as though they’ve “lost themselves” in the relationship. Signs of under-functioning include: Asking for advice rather than thinking for yourself, asking many people for advice and not taking it, getting others to do things for you, acting irresponsibly, listening more than talking, being without personal goals, not following through with goals, often becoming physically or mentally ill, tending to become addicted.

Sometimes people switch from an over-functioning to an under-functioning position depending on their life circumstances. An example is someone who adopts an under-functioning position in his relationship until his partner (who has been in the over-functioning position) get ill. At that point, the partners flip roles. It is a common misperception to think of the over-functioning partner as more healthy, independent, or mature than the under-functioning partner but in reality each is anxiously reacting to the other. At times the over/under-functioning reciprocity leads to dysfunction in one or both partners. The toll of chronically anxious coping styles can contribute to or trigger physical or emotional illness.

Triangles

Emotional triangles form when any two people react to the tension between them by “triangling” in a third person. Triangles are evident whenever two people are gossiping, complaining, worrying about or bonding over a third person. Triangles are normal and only become problematic when they get “stuck” or they prohibit you from being able to resolve your issues.

An example of an extremely problematic emotional triangle is an affair. Broadly speaking, someone has an affair in reaction to emotional distance that is itself a reaction to chronic tension between the couple. It sounds like if you don’t attend to the growing distance with your girlfriend you could be at risk for having an affair. That won’t solve anything. Coaching with a therapist who understands triangles can help you to find better ways of handling the stress in your relationship.

When you decide you are ready for change you can initiate therapy by yourself or with your partner. If your partner doesn’t want to participate, you can start on your own. It is likely that when the changes you are making become evident, your loved one will decide to join the process.

When I work with a couple sessions alternate between joint and individual meetings. This facilitates the ability to learn from the thinking of the other partner while allowing space for focusing on individual goals.

Family Health

Q. Help! I am married and have three kids. The middle one, a son, and my daughter, the baby, are doing well. The problem is the oldest. He’s 14 and has always been difficult. He won’t do chores, gets into trouble at school, talks back, and hangs out with kids his father and I disapprove of. But the biggest problem is the arguing between him and my husband. They go at it all the time, and have even gotten into fist fights. No one gets hurt, but as my son gets older, I worry what will happen. I tell his dad he’s too hard on the boy, but he won’t listen. Sometimes I think this is related to my husband also being an oldest. He had difficulty getting along with his father. They haven’t talked for the past 12 years. Will that happen to my family? What should I do?

Triangles

Children are commonly triangled into emotionally reactive marriages. When you and your husband argue about how to handle your son, you are triangling him into your marriage. This is a predictable result of emotional tension and distance developing between you. Triangles are universal, and there will be many interlocking triangles in any emotional system, but they are more visible when anxiety is high and less evident when anxiety is low or being managed. You want your husband to see that he is too hard on your son, while he probably insists that you are too soft with him. The stuckness of this reciprocal pattern, and the fact that a marital conflict is being fought “through” your son is what makes this triangle a problem.

It is incumbent upon the adults in the family to take responsibility for how they manage themselves in the interlocking triangles. Trying to change each other will only make the situation worse. Look at the ways you might be parenting out of anger, fear, pity and the anxiety of the moment. Work instead toward making parenting decisions based on your personal values and beliefs, keeping your long term goals in mind. Focus on being a mature and responsible family leader and everyone will benefit.

Cut Off

Cut off is the term used when family members stop interacting with one another or become extremely distant, like your husband and his father. Surprisingly, cut off is not the result of a lack of feeling between family members, (despite what people may protest to the contrary.) Cut off results from too much unresolved emotional intensity between the generations. Often, people cut off because they feel they cannot “be themselves” around certain family members. Many young people believe that cutting off by moving far from the family is the road to independence. But you cannot be dependent on distance to achieve true independence, which only comes from being yourself while also staying emotionally close to important others.

The tendency to cut off is more prevalent in some families than in others. If there is a pattern of cut off in your family the result will predictably be more emotional pressure on your remaining relationships, thereby increasing the risk of future cut offs. If you are also cut off from portions of your family it would be a good idea to work toward establishing some level of contact with them. If the people you are cut off from tend to be very difficult to deal with, this re-connection may best be accomplished with the help of a therapist who can help you to develop the relationships in the most thoughtful way. If your husband will not work toward a rapprochement with his father, you can discuss with a therapist the pros and cons of reaching out to your father-in-law yourself. This may be an important first step in eventually lowering the level of chronic anxiety in your family.

Family Relationship Patterns

This concept describes the observable patterns of emotional functioning in a family in a single generation. Family members react to varying amounts of anxiety in the family system yet tend to maintain the status quo by engaging in repetitive patterns of behavior, even when the status quo is very unsatisfying. These patterns are: marital conflict, dysfunction of a spouse, and impairment of one or more children through the family projection process. The nuclear family relationship patterns of the current generation are highly related to the emotional process of past generations and will likewise influence future generations.

Family Projection Process

The Family Projection Process is one of several possible emotional patterns employed in reaction to chronic anxiety in families. If you worry excessively about your child you will project that anxiety onto him which he will then absorb and act out. (In some families parental anxiety can result in neglect, abuse, or over-focus in an overly positive way which can create its own kind of pressure.) It sounds like your oldest son is absorbing the lion’s share of the family anxiety. He reacts by rebelling, which increases the anxious focus on him, in a circular pattern. You can modify this by learning about similar patterns in other branches of the family, including yours and your husband’s families of origin. This will enable you to deal more effectively with the situation you are currently facing.

Multigenerational Transmission Process

This concept describes the transmission of the family relationship patterns through multiple generations. You can see this process at work in your own family; your son has adopted the same position in the family that his father had. There are undoubtedly similar patterns inherited from your own family tree. All families are heavily influenced by the many generations that have come before them. Understanding this and taking the time to learn about your own family history is a vital part of therapy. This point cannot be emphasized enough!

Sibling Position

Certain personality and behavioral traits can be heavily influenced by the combination of a child’s birth order and gender. More is often expected of oldest children, like your son, while youngest children might be babied more. It can be helpful to heighten your awareness of how you parent each child differently, based on their birth order and personality characteristics that are in part projected on to them based on your and your husband’s expectations.

The good news is that it only takes one motivated family leader to make significant changes in the family system over time. If you can recognize when you’re stuck in an unhelpful relationship pattern you can figure out different, more productive ways of relating. A therapist who works from these concepts will help you to understand the patterns at work in your home, to define your position in your family, and to hold firm when there is internal or external pressure to return to old patterns.

“If the therapist is to develop the capacity to stay relatively outside the family emotional system in his clinical work, it is essential that he devote a continuing effort to differentiate his own self from the emotional system of his own family…” (Bowen, 1978, p. 250).

After being introduced to family systems theory through an academic program, at work or through personal therapy, motivated people take up the formal study of Bowen theory. Once that process begins benefits quickly become apparent. However, no study of Bowen theory through reading, attending conferences, or group consultation is adequate without individual coaching oriented to the family of origin and extended family work.

Other psychotherapeutic disciplines emphasize therapeutic techniques employed by the clinician to treat the client and the therapeutic relationship to provide a healing environment. Uniquely, Murray Bowen maintained that the primary change agent is the clinician’s focus on their differentiation of self.

In addition to her private psychotherapy practice, Lorna offers a yearly small group consultation based on the format developed by Murray Bowen at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family. Contact Lorna regarding coaching and for information about the consultation group.

Family of Origin and Clinical Coaching for Professional

The Role of Anxiety

Individuality and Togetherness

Chronic and Acute Anxiety

Differentiation of Self

According to Ed Friedman (Friedman, 1999, p. 183):

Relationship Patterns

Conflict

Distance

Over functioning/under functioning reciprocity

Triangles

Family Health

Triangles

Cut Off

Family Relationship Patterns

Family Projection Process

Multigenerational Transmission Process

Sibling Position

Contact Lorna to Schedule an Appointment

Join Our Mailing List