How to Resist Group Anxiety and Become a Differentiated Self
Episode Stats
Summary
When we think about anxiety, we typically think of something that is generated and felt within an individual. But Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist of the mid-20th century, argued that anxiety was also created by the interactions between individuals. It could spread like a contagion in a group, an idea known as Family Systems Theory. Here to offer an introduction to this theory and how its implications extend far beyond the family is Steve Kuss, a former hospital chaplain, a pastor, the founder of Capable Life, and the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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When we think about anxiety, we typically think of something that is generated and felt within
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an individual. But Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist of the mid-20th century, argued that anxiety was
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also created by the interactions between individuals. It could spread like a contagion
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in a group, an idea known as Family Systems Theory. Here to offer an introduction to Family
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Systems Theory and how its implications extend far beyond the family is Steve Kuss, who is a former
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hospital chaplain, a pastor, the founder of Capable Life, which offers coaching and consultation,
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and the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety, Yours and Theirs. Today on the show, Steve and I
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discuss how individuals in both families and organizations can infect a situation with their
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own assumptions and expectations and create a sense of anxiety that permeates a group. Steve
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unpacks the false needs that create chronic anxiety in an individual, how this anxiety
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spreads to others, and the unhealthy ways people deal with this tension, including becoming
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fused together. And we talk about how to put this anxiety back where it belongs, and how
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a single person can change a group dynamic by differentiating from it and becoming a rooted
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self. After the show is over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash family systems.
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Brett, thanks for having me on. I've been looking forward to this.
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So I have been too. I've really enjoyed your work, the books you've done, as well as the
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online courses you've done. You're an interesting guy. You have a career where you train organizations
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and leaders on how to deal with group anxiety and what leaders of groups that have this anxiety,
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what they can do to calm things down when tensions get high. And your approach to managing group
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tension is based on family systems theory that was developed by a guy named Murray Bowen back
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in the 1960s. Tell us about Murray Bowen, because I'm sure a lot of people have never heard of this
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guy. So tell us about his background. Who was he and how was his insights into how anxiety works
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different from how a lot of psychologists think about how anxiety works?
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Yeah. Murray Bowen was a psychiatrist who specialized in teenage onset paranoid schizophrenic
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patients. So he worked in a 1950s and 1960s psych ward in a hospital. You can imagine pretty rough back
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then. And families would commit their children once they became young adults. So 17 to 23 year old,
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it was a general rule. And Bowen was the psychiatrist on the floor. And I don't know if this was the
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moment systems theory was born, but one of his most famous stories was on family visitation day,
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this petite mom is coming in to visit maybe her son, for example. You know, you imagine a boy who's now
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a fully grown man, paranoid schizophrenic, pretty strong guy, right? So as the mom is walking toward the
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son, all this stuff's going on inside the mother, guilt about handing the stunt over to the state
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failure as a mother, but also some level of fear of her own son. He's this big guy. He's a little bit
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dangerous as a schizophrenic. So as she's going to give him a hug, she's quite tentative. He then
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reads that tentative body language and gives her a tentative hug in response. And then she pushes him
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away and says, what's the matter? Aren't you glad to see me? And that's what Bowen came to call a
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double bind and a mixed message. And he, it kind of awakened in Bowen this idea that anxiety exists
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between us, not just inside us. So if you take like a Freud or a Carl Jung, you know, they're really
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focusing on what's going on in the individual. Bowen was in some ways, not the first guy, but really the
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first guy to make it famous. Hey, let's look at anxiety in us and between us and how they infect
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each other. And so he developed what's famously known as the eight concepts of Bowen theory.
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And I was a hospital chaplain in 1996 and one of Bowen's very first students, George Dobler,
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George and Bowen's probably most famous student, Ed Friedman, would study together under Bowen. And so
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I got a hefty dose when I was a chaplain, but that's functionally what Bowen did is he shifted the focus
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from in us to between us. And I find that fascinating in leadership because you take
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any team and so much of the anxiety is between people, not just inside people. So it's a really
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powerful tool. Yeah, that was, I think that's the big insight that I got and it's changed the way I
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approach whenever there's a conflict or there's someone I see is like having a problem instead of
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thinking, well, what's wrong with this person? I started thinking, well, what's going on with the
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dynamic in the group that might be contributing to this person displaying these certain maybe
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maladaptive responses? Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you read Bowen, it's kind of wild. He didn't write
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much. He really only wrote two books and one of them was actually one of his students kind of wrote
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it for him. But if you read his very first book, it's just a series of lectures he gave at universities
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as he was exploring this new theory. He would bring in not just mom and dad for counseling, but he'd bring
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in siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Sometimes his therapy office had like 30 family
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members in it. His other big idea was how your family of origin impacts your adulthood. So he just
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brought the whole family and like extended it all. And you know, he probably overdid it, but of course
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he was experimenting with this brand new philosophy. And it's funny, Brett, not many people know Bowen
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theory. I think those of us who know him, we would put him on the Mount Rushmore of psychology. I mean,
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he'd be one of the big three or four names, but he's still after all these years, relatively unknown.
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Yeah, it is really interesting. Okay. So yeah, the big takeaway, anxiety isn't just inside you. It's
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also in a group. And I think that makes sense. You know, as humans, we're very attuned to other people.
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We look to other people to figure out what we need to be worried about. And what can happen is that can
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just get hijacked and just kind of go off the rails when we look around and start trying to think
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about, well, maybe this person's thinking this and I need to change my behavior so I can just keep
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things nice and calm and collected here. And it just, that just ratchets up more and more of the
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anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes we do that. And then depending on how we're wired, some people,
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they still focus on someone else, but they're not worried about what that person thinks. They're
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frustrated at what that person thinks. So if you take the phrase, what were they
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thinking? That phrase, a people pleaser would say, oh no, what are they thinking? But an irritated
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person would say, what were they thinking? It's the same focus on the other. And Bowen really did
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take the attention of other people. And even though he's talking about anxiety spreading in a group,
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his solution is to pay attention to yourself and how you are infecting and catching the anxiety in
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the room. Once you learn a few of his tools, it's a literal game changer for leadership,
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organizational health. Like it's mind blowing how just a couple of these tools can really help
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Yeah. And the idea is like he focused on families. And I think if anyone's, you know, everyone's been
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part of a family at some point in their life, you see how that tension can manifest itself in a
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family. And Bowen argued, well, that's how we learn how to deal with groups is in our families.
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We actually take what we learned on how to deal with conflict in our family of origin and also
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apply it to groups, whether it's a business, church, et cetera.
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Yep. Yeah. He had a number of theories around your family of origin, the multi-generational
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transmission process. That's kind of the big name for one of his concepts, multi-generational
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transmission process, simple idea. You don't just look to your mom and dad and your siblings in your
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immediate household. You look at the patterns that have been handed down to the third and fourth
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generation in your family. And of course, you know, we, we mostly think about it when we were
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kids and when you're a kid, you don't have any power. So you do kind of make meaning out of your
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experiences so you can survive. And then Bowen was helping us see how we, we drag that meaning into
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So you mentioned you got introduced to Bowen theory when you were a chaplain,
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your book, managing leadership anxiety is geared towards pastors. And I've noticed that systems
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theory is really popular amongst people in leadership positions at churches. Why is that?
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Do you think? Oh, it's a really good question. I mean, I think the most famous student of systems
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theory was Edwin Friedman. Most people know his book failure of nerve, but the book that put him on the
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map was called generation to generation. And a lot of people don't know that Friedman was a
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Jewish rabbi. He was a local rabbi in a local synagogue. And somehow his study of synagogues
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and churches, that was his first written work. It just caught fire. This is in the early eighties.
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So I think the reason it's popular among churches is because Friedman wrote generation to generation.
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And then many church leaders, it just made so much sense out of their experience. That's been my
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experience with systems theory when I travel around, like I've been in so many different cultures,
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Brett. I'll be in Indonesia in October, I'll be in Spain, whether it's an Asian culture or Western
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culture, a developing country like Kenya. Systems theory is able to name your experience. And for
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many people, for the first time, give them a path through what they're feeling. And I do think a lot
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of churches and synagogues and mosques struggle with volunteer culture, power mongering, some of
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those behaviors. And I think systems theory really helps a leader survive it and actually even thrive
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in those difficult environments. So in systems theory, there's a distinction between acute anxiety
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and chronic anxiety. What's the difference between the two?
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Yeah. I love that you're asking that because this is another of Bowen's distinct contributions.
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If you've ever been chased by a snake, which I have, if you've ever almost been in a car accident,
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if you've ever lost a child in a playground, that's acute anxiety. Acute anxiety is always around
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physical safety. Your body gets a big dose of adrenaline. Your mind gets really sharp.
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Chronic anxiety, this is Bowen really helped us here. Chronic anxiety is not based on a real threat.
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It's based on a false threat that feels real in the moment. And so, for example, in my case,
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I'm a people pleaser. I can tell you now, Brett, I like to make people happy and I'm not anxious.
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But if you were to observe me later today or tomorrow, in a situation where I've let someone
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down, you will see me get what's called chronic anxiety. So chronic anxiety is fascinating because
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it's not built on anything real. It's built on a false need that feels real. And it's what leads
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to burnout. It doesn't give you a massive dose of adrenaline like acute anxiety. It gives you just
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a little drip, drip, drip of adrenaline. And, you know, most of my work is with leaders. Most leaders
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carry unaddressed false needs. Oftentimes we have 30 or 40 false needs every day. And when we don't get
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them met, we get chronic anxiety. So I work with a lot of leaders that say, I'm not anxious because
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I don't worry about much. But chronic anxiety doesn't look like worry. It looks like reactivity.
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So let's say that you're a leader that really values courtesy and timeliness on your team.
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And then Jim comes in seven minutes late, like he always does. But he acts like he's not late. He
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doesn't apologize. He doesn't seem to be paying the price for being late. And you as the leader are
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having an anger fantasy about Jim, that's chronic anxiety because your false need of courtesy is not
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being met. Now, when I say that, people might say, well, what's wrong with needing courtesy?
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Nothing wrong with courtesy. It's your massive overreaction when someone's discourteous. That's
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the sign. So there are five core false needs in every human. We can get into it if you want.
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But people pleasing is one of them. And then there's four others. I'm happy to kind of list them for us
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if that's helpful. Yeah, that would be helpful. But just to recap, acute anxiety is about a real
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danger. It's about a physical thing, like your safety, etc. Chronic anxiety is a worry or maybe
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anxiety about a need that's not real, a false need. And it's typically about involving the group,
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like other people are involved as well. It comes from within us and it comes at us from others.
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And we also put it on others. So it's the only kind of anxiety that's contagious.
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No other kind of anxiety, we don't catch it. Like if somebody's grieving or somebody came home
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like from a foreign war and they're carrying trauma, we don't catch that trauma. But chronic
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anxiety is the only anxiety that's contagious because yes, it's in a group, but also it's in me,
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like my need to make everybody like me, that's in me. But then I read you. And sometimes you might
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put a expectation on me that I can't meet. I used to be a crisis interventionist in Las Vegas.
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And all of these people with this chronic need coming off the street, well, they are expecting
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me to solve their problem, but I'm letting them down. So their anxiety coming at me, I'm catching it
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and it's infecting my false need in myself. And that's kind of how anxiety is spread in a group.
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Okay. So you mentioned that there are five false needs people can have. And if one of these needs
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isn't met, that can start causing someone to feel chronic anxiety. And then a person will take that
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anxiety and try to put it on other people. And then the anxiety will start spreading in the group.
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And by false needs, what's meant by that is that someone feels like they need something,
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but it's not an actual real need. It doesn't have to be met for them to survive, for them to be okay.
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Like they're not any actual danger, even though they can feel like they're under threat. So what
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are the false needs people can have? Yeah. Yes. The control. There are certain kinds of people that
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need to be in control. And if they're not in control, they do weird things. They manipulate
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people or they get really antsy. The second one is perfection. Probably most or many of your listeners
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are perfectionists. They believe the lie that they should get it perfectly right the first time they
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ever do something. Like they don't allow themselves to be a rookie. Their gold standard is always a
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hundred percent. And so the example of chronic anxiety, it exaggerates the outcome. So if a
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perfectionist makes a mistake, like maybe they put a spelling mistake in an email, their body tells
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them, man, this is the end of the world. Like that's the problem is it is these are these false
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needs and we stay chasing them because we're afraid of the world ending if we don't get them. So it's
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control, perfection, having the answer. This is particularly with men. This is one of mine.
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I need you to know that I know something. And so if you ask me a question and I don't know the answer,
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it's actually difficult for me to say, I don't know. It even gets weird. If I'm in a meeting and
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Jimmy asks Renee a question, I have to stop myself from answering it, even though Jimmy didn't ask me.
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So knowing the answer is the third one. Being there for people when they're hurting is the fourth one.
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And then people pleasing is the fifth. That being there for others when they're hurting. Again,
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you might hear that you might say, well, what's wrong with being there for people? The problem
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isn't being there for people. The problem is when you can't tell the difference between their need
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and your need to be needed. And so all of these have like an extreme version. So perfectionists,
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when they're human size, they're not anxious. They're really good at improving things. They
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can do that all day long, but that incessant chase of perfectionism, they never get it.
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Control freaks are often very thoughtful and hospitable, but then when they're trying to make
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sure everyone's having a good time and they feel anxious, they're taking too much responsibility.
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That's when they get chronically anxious. So that's what we call the big five.
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Something else that Bowen talks about is whenever there is chronic anxiety, people in the group,
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he says they're fused. What does that mean to be fused?
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To be fused means that you've gotten too close to each other and you cannot tell the difference
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between where I end and the next person begins. So another word for fused would be merged or
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enmeshed. The most famous phrase of being fused is when mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
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We've all been in a room. Here'd be an example, Brett. Like if you're in a room and there's like
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eight people and everyone's laughing and then Jim walks in and he's clearly having a really bad day.
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Jim comes into the room and he packed his bad day and his bad days in the room with him.
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There's now an unspoken agreement. We're not allowed to be happy because Jim is sad. Jim's a bit of an
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Eeyore, you know, kind of the donkey from Winnie the Pooh. And he kind of infects the mood and
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everything gets a little cool. That's fused. Like healthy leadership is Jim is allowed to be
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depressed and we are allowed to be happy. And there's room for everybody to be exactly themselves.
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But half of the room tends to fuse. And then the other half of the room tends to get distance,
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opposite of fuse. We also call it detached. And that can look like kind of a writing someone off,
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like, ah, Jim, there he is being all depressed again. Sometimes it can look like giving Jim
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advice when he didn't ask for it. Jim, why don't you read this book on how to be cheerful? This kind
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of stuff. So some people get fused when they're anxious. Some go away. And Bowen talks about the
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togetherness force and the distance force and how we're always in this dance between the two.
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And we'll talk about this. One of the goals of Bowen theory is to unfuse yourself. Like you want to be a
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self so that there's a separation between you and the person, but while still staying connected to
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the other person. So like, even if someone else is in a bad mood, like it's not going to infect you,
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but you're still able to be with that person. We'll talk more about how to do that.
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Okay. So chronic anxiety are these false beliefs that we have about what we need in our lives in
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order to be calm and collected. The group that we're in can affect how we manifest or how we
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experience chronic anxiety when there is chronic anxiety. Well, maybe we do this. Maybe this would
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be helpful too. I think like, give us an example. Like what would chronic anxiety look like in a
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group? So you mentioned, you know, if mom ain't happy, ain't no one happy. I'm not sure if everyone
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has experienced that. There's maybe a parent who's upset and just like puts the whole house in a
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funk. What else does chronic anxiety in a group look like? How have you seen it manifest itself?
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Yeah, it's a great question. We can look at like a fairly simple example, and then we could look
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like a really extreme example. But if we just remind people that chronic anxiety does not look
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like worry and fear, it looks like reactivity. And so what you're looking for in a group is reactivity.
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And when people are reactive, they're no longer human size. So they get bigger than human or they
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get smaller than human. So maybe a simple example would be, if you're ever in a group of friends and
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somebody goes on a political rant and they just, you've seen those people, they just have such a
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strong political opinion. It's no longer a dialogue. Something has shifted in the room.
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They're now like monologuing. They're really angry. One of the simplest ways to notice chronic anxiety
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is anger, particularly in a man. And what's challenging about it is your average man feels
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strong when they're ranting and they've become bigger. They're no longer aware that they've shut the
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room down. There's no room for conversation and curiosity. There's no room for connection.
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Well, that would be an example of one person's chronic anxiety infecting the whole room. It takes
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tremendous strength for another person to gently reconnect everybody. So maybe Jim goes on this big
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political rant and he makes these big generalizations and these broad brush statements and whatever
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political persuasion he is, he makes very strong discriminatory statements about the other side.
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What tends to happen after that is a lot of the group will just go quiet. That's them getting
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smaller because he is generating the anxiety. They're now carrying the anxiety and they don't
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know what to do. Well, a well-differentiated leader can actually reframe the room and put the anxiety
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back where it belongs on the jerk that generated it. And they don't have to be a jerk about it. They can
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just say, oh, Jim, I can see that you feel really strongly about that. Man, what do the rest of us
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think? I'd love to make this more of a conversation than a monologue, something like that. And they're
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just redistributing the anxiety. This is one of the reasons to go back to church leaders, why
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church leaders love systems theory is it helps them lead a group in a whole other gear. So that would
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be like a simple example. A more deadly example would be most of us have worked for a boss that behaves
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badly, but they get away with it because of their position. And it's just making everyone under them
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anxious. There's a lot of staff turnover in the company. This is a situation I work with all the
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time. Oftentimes I'll work with like a founder CEO who has over-functioned for so long to get the company
00:21:40.760
where it is that they just think everyone else is lazy. When really what's going on is that boss is
00:21:47.800
generating most of the anxiety, the team are carrying most of the anxiety, and it's really hard when your
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boss has all the power to put the anxiety back where it belongs. As you mentioned too, Brett, and I'll stop
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after this, many people were raised in a family of origin where one family member generated all the anxiety.
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Maybe it was dad's anger. Maybe it was mom's addiction. We're getting a little deep here, but you can also
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look at what were the secrets in my family of origin? What did everyone agree to never talk about?
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You know, like dad had an affair. Everyone knew it. No one talked about it. That's an example of someone
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generating anxiety and someone carrying it. Yeah. Going back to that family example, one example that
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I've heard that I thought was interesting, I think really can show what chronic anxiety can look like
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in a family. Let's say, yeah, dad has an anger issue, or maybe he's an alcoholic. And the kids have
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picked that up and they've picked up on the idea that, well, if I act really, if I just walk on
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eggshells and I just try to do all I can to make dad happy, he won't start drinking and everything
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will be fine in our family. They learn that kind of intuitively. So like they're reacting, they're
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very reactive to dad in order to keep dad happy because they want to still feel safe. They don't
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want to see dad get drunk and angry. That's right. And when they become adults, they now have developed
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that coping skill from a child as a superpower. So they know how to read a room and that's a good
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thing. But then it gets a hold of them and becomes chronic anxiety where they over function. They take
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more responsibility than is healthy and let someone get away with bad behavior. One of the consulting
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tools I use is a simple set of questions. And it's really eye opening just to ask these questions in
00:23:33.200
your context. And the first question is who is generating most of the anxiety? And then the
00:23:38.040
second question is who's carrying it? Now, at this point, it gets really interesting. The third
00:23:42.960
question, what micro adjustments are the carriers making that keeps everything the same? So like maybe
00:23:50.800
you were raised in a family with an angry dad. Let's say he wasn't violent. Let's just say he had a
00:23:56.100
red hot temper and he would blow up and then he would immediately feel better. Like the act of blowing
00:24:02.260
up for him was the relief valve. The problem is he's generating the anxiety. Now, mom and the kids
00:24:08.900
are carrying it and they're quite hurt. But the micro adjustments they're all making is no one talks
00:24:15.660
about it, right? We just run to our room and cry or we pretend he didn't just blow up. And so you start,
00:24:23.640
as you go down these questions, it's eight questions. I won't do them all on the pod, but just those first
00:24:27.320
three, who's generating it, who's carrying it, what micro adjustments are another way to say, what secret
00:24:33.300
agreements has everyone made to keep everything the same? And that's what you see in so many families
00:24:40.120
is all of the ways that people are adjusting themselves to keep everything even. That's often
00:24:46.560
what you will see in these like examples of alcoholism. I have a friend whose dad was violently
00:24:53.160
alcoholic and he learned at a young age how to keep dad laughing because that's how the family
00:24:58.880
stayed safe. It can get pretty deep. I mean, going back to the work example of the overbearing boss,
00:25:04.280
a great movie that you can watch to kind of see that in action is The Devil Wears Prada.
00:25:09.440
Our family just finished watching it. So yeah, Miranda Priestly, right? She's the powerful and
00:25:13.820
demanding editor-in-chief of the magazine. And she creates all the anxiety and everyone around her
00:25:19.720
reacts to her in order to keep things copacetic, basically. But it actually, in the process,
00:25:28.460
It's a great, Miranda, that's a great example. And what's fascinating about it is in systems theory,
00:25:34.660
we believe that it's not best for Miranda either. You know, the temptation is to say,
00:25:40.300
oh, she's such a jerk of a boss. But systems theory forces you to say,
00:25:44.660
the person behaving badly, that does not serve them well either. And I think Devil Wears Prada
00:25:51.660
plays that out really well. You see a bit of a taste of her home life. You see her being sabotaged
00:25:57.020
in her vocation. You kind of catch her when she's not at work and how miserable she is.
00:26:04.600
The beauty of systems theory is it takes the so-called perpetrator like a Miranda
00:26:09.240
and the interns and the employees. And it says, everybody's complicit. Everybody has a responsibility.
00:26:17.200
And the reason it's called systems theory is these people together form a system. They form a
00:26:22.380
predictable pattern of behavior. They do the same dance every day, but no one's getting better.
00:26:28.240
And so the act of putting the anxiety back on the person generating it is in fact in the culprit's
00:26:35.060
best interest. So it would have served Miranda better for her employees to say, we don't do that
00:26:41.280
here. I don't allow people to treat me. I'll give a real-time example, Brett. I was in Australia a few
00:26:46.320
months ago visiting my dad and my sister. And as I'm flying back, I'm in the Melbourne. I grew up in
00:26:52.980
the West Coast in Perth. It takes quite a while to get there. But I'm going back through the Melbourne
00:26:56.980
airport with Qantas. And I'm lined up at the customer service desk. I don't remember what I needed,
00:27:02.800
but the person, two people in front of me is swearing loudly at the customer service agent.
00:27:09.460
And she kept saying to him, I was blown away by her. She said, sir, I am not allowed to help you
00:27:14.400
when you swear at me. I've actually been instructed by my boss that I will get in trouble if I help
00:27:19.800
somebody when they're mistreating me. And he's yelling at her, I'm not effing mistreating you.
00:27:24.800
Like he was so reactive or bigger in my language. He couldn't get himself regulated.
00:27:29.500
And she kept saying very calmly to him, sir, I'll give you 30 more seconds. And if you can't,
00:27:35.900
I'm going to have to send you away. And if you won't leave, I'll have to call security. But hey,
00:27:40.420
why don't you just try to get a hold of yourself? And if you can treat me with respect, I'd be happy
00:27:44.360
to help you. That's somebody saying, it's not in my best interest to let you treat me this way,
00:27:49.540
but it's also, sir, not good for you either. Now that's next level system theory work. But Miranda
00:27:56.380
herself in Devil Wears Prada would have been a better human being if her employees wouldn't
00:28:01.240
have tolerated her bad behavior. Hey, easy for me to say on a podcast, but sometimes you have to
00:28:06.720
leave a job to be well, and that's okay too. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our
00:28:11.060
sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay. So when someone's false needs aren't being met,
00:28:21.000
they start generating anxiety. And then the other people around them have to carry that anxiety.
00:28:27.360
And there are various ways people deal with that anxiety that might not be helpful. And one of those
00:28:33.620
ways that people manage group anxiety that Bowen talks about, I think is really interesting. And once
00:28:39.800
you learn about this idea, you start seeing it everywhere. It's called triangulation. Tell us
00:28:44.980
about triangulation and how it diffuses chronic anxiety, but not in a helpful way.
00:28:50.100
Good. Yeah. Yeah. Triangulation is one of those great examples of these micro adjustments. Let's
00:28:56.180
say you have a difficult boss who does not manage his own anxiety. He's an ass. That's probably the
00:29:01.160
best word for it. And the team feel powerless to confront him. Like each individual feels like I
00:29:08.360
can't confront him. He's going to tell me off, punish me, fire me, whatever. So what I'm going to do
00:29:12.760
instead is get a couple of other people and gossip about him. That would be triangulation. Instead of
00:29:18.640
speaking to him, I'm going to speak about him. Easiest place to see triangulation and I think
00:29:23.940
the most fun place is middle school. You know, Sally comes to Peter and she's like, hey, do you
00:29:28.840
like Jane? Because if you like Jane, tell me and I'll go tell Jane. That's triangulation. Like why
00:29:33.460
doesn't Jane and Peter just sit down and define their relationship? Well, it's because they're middle
00:29:38.480
schoolers. They don't have the emotional capacity to have a direct relationship. So triangulation is
00:29:44.220
always an indirect solution to a direct problem. Easiest place to see it is gossip. But usually it's
00:29:52.020
because the people being affected don't feel like they have enough power to change. So they kind of
00:29:57.820
recruit a team to be on their side. That would be the simplest version of triangulation.
00:30:03.860
Yeah, you see it in families. Let's say there's a couple that are having marital problems. What they'll do
00:30:09.860
instead of dealing with their relationship directly with each other, they'll maybe direct all their
00:30:14.460
attention on their kid. Or maybe a mom will like look to the son as maybe a surrogate husband because
00:30:22.040
she doesn't have a good relationship with her actual husband. And that just puts a whole bunch
00:30:26.040
of pressure. So yeah, they're bringing it. You bring in a third person to kind of stabilize things.
00:30:30.700
Yeah. Yeah. It's a classic Bowen systems therapy move. The teenage daughter comes in exhibiting
00:30:38.040
signs of anxiety. And the therapist says, let me meet your mom and dad. And then having met the mom
00:30:44.500
and dad, the therapist says to the teenager, why don't you go home? I'll work with your parents.
00:30:50.780
And the therapist works with the parents and the teen's depression goes away. In Bowen theory,
00:30:56.980
they're always looking for the identified patient. Who is the person exhibiting the symptoms
00:31:02.720
of a sick group? So it's quite fascinating. You see it in staffs, you see it in families,
00:31:09.360
and people misunderstand triangulation. Right now, I've got three kids, two of them are out of the
00:31:14.960
house. One is working full-time, one's in college. So it's my wife and I and our teenage daughter at
00:31:20.180
home. We are a triangle. There are three of us in this relationship, but we are not triangulated.
00:31:27.240
So just by definition of there being three of us, we have a triangle. But if I were to say to Kaylee,
00:31:33.940
hey, here's what I really think about your mom, but don't tell her. Now I've triangulated my daughter.
00:31:38.660
I've dragged her between what really should be between my wife and I.
00:31:43.360
And you see triangulation at work. You mentioned gossip, but another one you'll see is the meeting
00:31:48.440
after the meeting, right? So you have the meeting and things are said, but like you can tell there's
00:31:53.760
sort of some tension and discomfort in the air. And then someone will pull you aside as a leader
00:31:58.780
and say, hey, I didn't want to bring this up in the meeting because so-and-so, but I want to talk
00:32:04.320
about it with you. That's another example of triangulation. It's crazy, Brett. I've seen it in
00:32:09.800
small churches and I've seen it in multi-billion dollar companies that this behavior happens so
00:32:18.840
often and it does so much damage to the system. Yeah. And then also you see this in other groups
00:32:26.280
as well, where there'll be a leader and they don't hear the feedback or criticism directly.
00:32:31.860
It's always just from a third person. Like, well, people are saying this. It's like, okay,
00:32:36.900
why didn't they just tell me that directly? Yeah. So once you learn about triangulation,
00:32:41.060
you'll start seeing it everywhere. And yeah, you said, I think in your book,
00:32:43.860
you talk about just watch teenage soap operas. You'll see it all the time.
00:32:48.940
And reality, every reality TV show. Yeah. Richard Nixon had a special advisor named Chuck Colson.
00:32:55.240
He ended up going to jail for Watergate, kind of turned his life around, came out and became quite
00:33:00.520
a fascinating guy. And he writes about the days of being Nixon. He was in the West Wing. Chuck Colson
00:33:05.680
had a West Wing office. He said he saw this dynamic again and again. People would come into Colson's
00:33:10.420
office before meeting the president in the Oval Office. And they would give Colson a piece of
00:33:16.040
their mind. They'd say, when I meet with the president, I'm going to tell him what for.
00:33:20.160
I'm going to give him a piece of my mind, tell him what he needs to do. And then Colson said,
00:33:23.880
inevitably, I'm in the Oval Office watching the same person with their hat in hand saying,
00:33:30.680
oh, Mr. President, what a great honor to meet you. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to meet the
00:33:34.240
president. Like completely different demeanor. A lot of leaders can't stand that.
00:33:39.080
You know, the higher up you are in an organization, Colin Powell teaches this,
00:33:43.640
the harder it is to get the truth. I just used to always tell my people,
00:33:47.860
if you're going to rant about me, I would prefer you just rant at me. Just give me the dignity and
00:33:52.700
respect to tell me off rather than ranting about me and then coming into my office and being all
00:33:57.740
deferential and flattering. That's a sophisticated form of triangulation too. And it just generates
00:34:04.420
anxiety because it's not true. You know, one of the chronic anxiety is always based on something
00:34:09.160
false. And even that behavior has a falsehood to it. So it generates anxiety.
00:34:13.980
Yeah. It's interesting. It's triangulation. It's a way people try to manage the chronic anxiety,
00:34:18.260
but using triangulation just increases the anxiety, right? Because you bring in the third person
00:34:23.040
because you don't have the wherewithal to just deal with the issue directly with the person.
00:34:27.200
So I'll bring in this third person and I'll feel a little bit more comfortable,
00:34:30.180
but everyone knows as soon as you bring in a third person, like there's just all this gossip
00:34:34.020
and talk and like he said this and she said that and it just ratchets it up even more. So it's a
00:34:38.900
great example of people trying to manage group anxiety and just making it worse. Another one you
00:34:45.160
talk about is over-functioning, under-functioning. What's that?
00:34:49.300
Yeah. Oftentimes in a group, you'll have over-functioners and under-functioners and it's
00:34:54.240
almost like they form a symbiotic relationship. They kind of need each other to survive.
00:34:59.320
And so an over-functioner does for somebody what they're perfectly capable of doing for
00:35:05.780
themselves, but are not doing for themselves. Maybe the simplest way to see this is when a
00:35:11.720
teenager gets to the age where they should be capable of getting themselves out of bed for
00:35:16.580
school in the morning, but they don't. That would be under-functioning. And then the parent
00:35:21.780
is angrily waking them up like five or six times in the morning. So, you know, maybe they go in
00:35:29.180
and say, Hey, you need to get up for school. It's time. But the kid doesn't get up. And then
00:35:32.980
they come back three minutes. Hey, you need to get up. And they do that over and over. That's
00:35:37.840
the over-functioning and under-functioning dynamic. That teenager, particularly, I'm not going to name
00:35:42.840
an age, but by the time they're in high school, your average teen should be able to get themselves
00:35:46.720
out of bed. But the over-functioner is staying stuck and blaming the under-functioner when they
00:35:53.080
themselves are partly to blame. Again, this is my favorite thing about systems theory. Everybody
00:35:58.280
takes responsibility for their own behavior. So maybe that over-functioning parent needs to realize,
00:36:03.660
well, what if I just let them sleep in today? And they have to now face the consequence of being
00:36:08.720
late to school on their own. You know, maybe the over-functioner warns the kid the night before,
00:36:14.900
Hey, I've gotten into this pattern with you where I'm trying to get you out of bed and I'm having to
00:36:19.060
be more and more angry just to get you out of bed. And I don't like that. So I want you to know
00:36:23.320
tomorrow morning, I'm not getting you out of bed. I'm leaving for school at 7.35 AM. If you're not
00:36:28.540
ready, you'll have to find your own way there, whatever it is, putting the anxiety back where
00:36:32.600
it belongs. But that's a very simple example of an over-functioner and an under-functioner
00:36:38.080
because that kid knows every morning, well, dad's going to come back three more times. I don't have to
00:36:43.340
get up. And then the next day it's four more times and five more times. And you see the over-functioner
00:36:49.040
an under-functioner in a symbiotic pattern with each other.
00:36:53.380
And you see that in work as well. There might be someone who's just slacking and then there's
00:36:58.320
always be someone who'll pick up the slack, even though they shouldn't. And it just, it keeps the,
00:37:02.960
it keeps things normal. Things are still going, but it's just increasing more anxiety because the
00:37:07.260
person who's over-functioning is like, ah, I'm just stretched too thin. And then I'm just stressed
00:37:12.200
out. And then the under-functioner might think, well, this person's just not respecting my
00:37:16.340
boundaries, blah, blah, blah. So again, you're trying to manage the anxiety, but you,
00:37:20.140
you increase the anxiety. And as you were talking, I can see another example of over-functioning,
00:37:24.720
like people pleasers, people pleasing, that's a form of over-functioning. Like you take responsibility
00:37:29.360
for how people feel. So you, instead of saying things just, you know, clearly and directly,
00:37:34.840
you try to massage it in a way so that you don't hurt the other person's feelings and
00:37:40.160
etc. Like that. It's crazy, Brett. You know, I'm a recovering people pleaser. And I think it was about
00:37:46.580
10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago, I noticed a pattern, you know, systems theory really is good
00:37:51.480
at helping you notice predictable patterns in your life. I would run into somebody who I hadn't seen in
00:37:56.500
a long time in some public setting. And that person would say, oh, Steve, it's been too long.
00:38:02.620
We should grab coffee. They would say that, not me. And then I would make sure to chase them down.
00:38:09.120
So we would grab coffee, because I didn't want them to feel let down. They're the one that suggested
00:38:14.860
we grab coffee. I'm the one carrying the responsibility. That's crazy. That's an exact
00:38:19.800
example of a people pleaser over-functioning. I mean, how many of those people didn't actually
00:38:24.680
want to grab coffee? Now, sure, they shouldn't have said it to me. But why is it that all they
00:38:29.680
have to do is say, we should catch up. And now I'm emailing, texting, getting it on the calendar.
00:38:37.780
Another way people manage anxiety, but actually just increasing anxiety, you mentioned it earlier,
00:38:42.660
distancing. You just get smaller, right? Instead of saying how you feel or trying to engage with
00:38:48.240
the person that might be causing or creating, generating the anxiety, you just stop talking
00:38:53.420
to them. You just try to reduce the amount of interaction you have with that individual.
00:38:59.680
Yeah, that's right. This is the harder group. When you distance, it's harder to notice that you're
00:39:05.460
anxious because it feels like wisdom or it feels kind of numb. I work with a lot of people that
00:39:11.960
don't realize that they're managing anxiety by distancing. They think they're wise. They think
00:39:17.300
they're above it all. So the classic distancing is the middle school girl who comes home heartbroken
00:39:24.700
because her boyfriend dumped her. And dad says, well, there's plenty more fish in the sea. That's not
00:39:30.120
helpful. That's distancing. That's not entering into her little middle school chaos where she feels
00:39:36.840
seen and cared for. Another example of distancing is the man cave would be a famous... I mean,
00:39:42.920
sometimes the man cave is what you need for relief, but sometimes it's because you don't have the
00:39:48.160
emotional capacity to connect to people in their chaos or in their situation. Sometimes distancing
00:39:55.900
can look like short-cutting someone's conversation, like get to the point, right? People are just
00:40:01.940
sharing, but you're trying to get them to summarize or you're trying to give them advice. So distancing
00:40:07.480
is more sophisticated, but it is this emotional detachment. You kind of referenced it. The most extreme
00:40:14.340
form is cut off is actually cutting off a relationship and not having anything to do with
00:40:19.880
that person anymore. And you say this in the book and Bowen says as well, sometimes you need to cut
00:40:24.640
off. Like if there's like abuse and things like that, you need to get that person out of your life.
00:40:28.180
But I think oftentimes with things, you know, below that, way below that, we resort to cutoffs. Like
00:40:34.020
this whole idea of there's this trend, cutting out toxic people in your life. I get it in theory,
00:40:39.500
but maybe that's not helpful. Like maybe you actually just need to engage with the person
00:40:43.820
and try to figure out a way to create a more healthy relationship.
00:40:48.040
Yeah, that's right. At least with my organization, Capable Life, we help everybody manage four
00:40:54.080
relationships. The relationship with yourself, with your people, that's two. The third relationship
00:40:59.100
is with difficult people. And to your point, Brett, there are people that you need to boundary,
00:41:05.660
but it's usually a lot less people than you think. And so systems theory really does expand your
00:41:11.500
capacity to connect to difficult people. And then, you know, for those of us who have some
00:41:16.060
kind of a faith system, the fourth relationship is with God. But that third category, difficult people,
00:41:21.880
I think it's underrated. I think one great reason to get into systems theory is to learn to increase
00:41:28.000
your tolerance for nonsense and for ambiguity and challenging people. That's a good skill.
00:41:34.020
No, I'd agree. So one of the big ideas from Bowen theory is that a single person can change the
00:41:42.780
dysfunctional system by focusing on themselves and not the relationship or the group dynamic.
00:41:50.220
And they do this by differentiating. This is a big idea, this idea of differentiation. What is
00:41:56.900
Differentiation is difficult. It's the cornerstone of systems theory. It's getting clear. Well, first of all,
00:42:03.960
it's deciding to have a posture where you are going to manage your anxiety rather than spill it onto
00:42:10.460
others. And at the same time, you are not going to catch others' anxiety. So if I know I'm going to
00:42:17.960
meet with a difficult person, part of my differentiation is me doing my work before I walk into that meeting
00:42:23.640
so I'm not as easily triggered. I can actually sit with that person and listen to them longer before I
00:42:29.960
start getting triggered and reactive. But also, I've made the decision as a differentiated person,
00:42:34.800
I don't need that person to treat me a certain way. They can come at me however they're going to
00:42:39.060
come at me because I'm not going to catch their anxiety. So that's step one. Step two is working on
00:42:45.920
actually being connected to that person rather than, to your earlier point, merging in or becoming
00:42:53.740
codependent with them or distancing from them. I'm actually going to stay in proximity. Differentiation
00:42:59.580
increases your capacity. Then the third step and the final step is getting really clear on who you are
00:43:06.900
and what you're about. So it's maybe the short way to say it is you're defining yourself. The powerful thing
00:43:12.960
for a leader, particularly an organizational leader, when you differentiate as a leader, you do not need your
00:43:19.800
people to agree with you to differentiate. So I used to pastor a church and we did a very
00:43:26.860
controversial affordable housing program in our neighborhood. And a lot of our neighbors didn't
00:43:31.760
want affordable housing, low-income housing in the neighborhood. And so when we would hold
00:43:35.460
neighborhood meetings, they would come very fired up at our meetings trying to shut this down.
00:43:41.640
I had to practice differentiation. So the way I defined myself was, you know, I worked on myself,
00:43:47.880
I wasn't catching. Some of them were behaving really badly. It was really quite a hostile situation.
00:43:53.520
But my best move was, I just said, listen, some of you are our neighbors and you are also our
00:43:59.560
congregants. You live in the neighborhood and you attend this church. And we know that by putting
00:44:05.520
affordable housing on our land, we've put you in a very difficult position. So we just want you to
00:44:10.220
know as the pastor of your church, if you don't think our church should have affordable housing,
00:44:15.640
we recommend you vote no at city council. But here is what we are doing. Here's why we're doing it.
00:44:22.560
And we're moving forward. So the opposite in that case of differentiation would be merging,
00:44:28.860
needing my congregants to vote yes. That would be like enmeshment or detaching and deciding they're
00:44:35.340
all of the devil, you know, writing them off. But differentiating is really working on staying
00:44:40.300
connected to these people while defining who you are and where you're going. And you can do it in your
00:44:45.060
family. You can do it at work. It's a complicated and conceptual thing. So people have trouble
00:44:50.060
grasping it, but that's kind of it in a nutshell.
00:44:53.040
Yeah. So it's being a self while still staying connected with others.
00:44:58.460
And what's funny is Bowen doesn't give too much advice on how to do it. Even like Edwin Friedman in
00:45:05.660
that book, he didn't have much advice on how to differentiate as well. It's just more of like a
00:45:10.660
stance you have to take. Like you said, it's hard to explain, but you know when you see it. You know
00:45:16.200
those people where you know that they've got a point of view, you know they have a solid sense of
00:45:21.140
self, but they're not a jerk about it. They're still connected with you. It's a maturity, I would
00:45:28.660
Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Just think about the best boss you've ever had. She or he probably
00:45:35.400
managed their anxiety, probably had a big capacity for your anxiety, didn't get wrapped up in you,
00:45:41.420
and were probably exactly themselves. Somehow you could be exactly yourself around them. And at the
00:45:46.340
same time, you wanted to be the best version of yourself. That's a good example of a well-differentiated
00:45:51.860
And that's something that Bowen says is that differentiation isn't a destination. You can
00:45:55.920
never say, I am a differentiated individual. It's like a scale. Sometimes you are more differentiated
00:46:01.500
and less differentiated in certain situations, maybe in different parts of your life. Any tips?
00:46:07.640
Like, okay, say someone's listening to this, like, well, I want to become more differentiated. I want
00:46:10.520
to become more of a self. What can people do to start that process?
00:46:15.460
Well, I would say the first step is researching it more. A podcast is a great introduction, but
00:46:20.900
so Dr. Roberta Gilbert has an entire book just on differentiation. It's called The Cornerstone
00:46:26.380
Concept. I would say, read that book. I've got a whole chapter on it in my book, Managing
00:46:31.440
Leadership Anxiety. If you don't want to read a whole book, you can read my chapter. You
00:46:35.580
can type differentiation of self in a YouTube channel or YouTube search, and you'll see
00:46:40.860
videos on it. I'd start there. Then the next step is you're always working on grounding
00:46:45.920
yourself first. So the flight attendant tells us, first put the oxygen mask on your own face
00:46:52.160
before helping others. So if you know you're going to go into a meeting that is fairly triggering,
00:46:58.220
you're doing pre-work to over-oxygenate, kind of like bicyclists do or deep sea divers, like
00:47:05.960
those free divers. They're actually doing this breathing exercise to get more oxygen in their
00:47:11.080
body so they can stay underwater longer. That's a pretty good metaphor for differentiation. So
00:47:15.240
you are making sure you're well, checking your false needs, your triggers, managing them before
00:47:22.280
you ever walk into the room. I'm often doing that. In my case, I'm a pastor, so I'm often
00:47:26.780
using prayer for that. But I'm also just trying to remember what's true. What's true? Anxiety
00:47:32.800
wants me to turn that person into a monster. But what's true is this is a human being. They've
00:47:37.820
earned my respect. I'm going to respect them no matter how they treat me. I'm going to speak
00:47:41.840
respectfully for them. So some of that self-talk can help. And then you just got to practice,
00:47:47.120
Brett. You just got to get in there and do it badly. And then over time, you learn how to
00:47:51.920
do it better. Okay. So some things to do. Learn how to manage your own anxiety. There's
00:47:57.260
different tactics. Meditation, prayer, exercise. You talk about having these life-affirming
00:48:02.820
or life-giving practices, whether that's exercise, going out to fish, spending time with your family,
00:48:09.100
storing up those internal resources. So when you do engage in conflict or there's tension,
00:48:15.120
you're able to stay as calm as you can. Then also just have a clearly identified sense of self.
00:48:20.380
Know what you're about. Know what you believe. And learn how to not be afraid to share that
00:48:25.720
as well. And I think one of the things that you talk about and Bowen talks about as well is
00:48:30.220
as you differentiate, the amount of anxiety in the relationship or the group might actually start
00:48:36.420
going up in the short term. And that's why people think, okay, I stood up for myself and
00:48:41.300
things are now worse. I should probably just play it small again. And I think he calls that
00:48:45.900
resistance or sabotage, right? Resistance and sabotage. That's exactly right.
00:48:50.380
It is part of the differentiation process. The challenge on a podcast is always
00:48:55.200
that people are anxious to dissolve this problem in the next meeting. The goal is to dissolve this
00:49:03.860
problem in the next nine months. This is going to be a series of exercises you're going to go through.
00:49:09.240
And yes, you can expect. So for example, if you know your boss is easily triggered,
00:49:14.220
one mode of differentiation is to recognize, okay, so when we talk about it, he's going to get
00:49:19.660
triggered. So I don't have to catch the anxiety because I know it's coming. I shouldn't be surprised
00:49:23.880
when he's triggered again. You can do the same trick with sabotage and resistance. When you see
00:49:29.560
people sabotaging and resisting, you can almost check it off the to-do list rather than shut down.
00:49:35.860
And that's where Friedman really helps us with a well-differentiated leader, like a Winston Churchill
00:49:40.820
with his war cabinet. If you've ever studied that, there is a leader. I mean, I'm sure whiskey
00:49:46.880
for breakfast had to have helped Brad, but there's a leader that knew sabotage was coming,
00:49:52.880
expected it, and kept leading through it to help England. Great example of differentiation. Plus,
00:49:58.600
hey man, you get differentiation and whiskey. Like that's great. That's a great life.
00:50:02.260
So that's important to notice, but really it's important also to test your own assumptions.
00:50:09.280
Anxiety always lives in our assumptions. And I work with a lot of people that are in a toxic
00:50:15.220
work environment, and I'm encouraging them to think about what would it look like to leave.
00:50:20.520
That doesn't mean you should leave, but just exploring it makes you more free because a lot
00:50:25.940
of people feel stuck. The paycheck or all kinds of assumptions that are keeping them from speaking
00:50:31.440
up. But for some people, it's not worth the emotional damage by staying.
00:50:37.600
Yeah. So here's an example of how anxiety might increase in the short term as you try to differentiate.
00:50:43.740
Let's say there's a relationship you have where there's triangulation involved,
00:50:47.960
where someone's coming to you, a third person's coming to you to talk about
00:50:52.580
a relationship you have with a person. So let's say your boss and you have an employee's upset with
00:50:58.300
maybe a decision you've made. And instead of talking to you directly, that employee goes to
00:51:02.880
a third person and kind of talks about, I'm not liking what Steve's doing. Differentiation would
00:51:07.780
involve, well, I'm just going to go directly to that person. And that can be like, oh my gosh,
00:51:12.440
that causes a lot of anxiety. The other person could get upset. But Bowen says that in the process
00:51:16.640
of doing that in the long term, you're going to make things better.
00:51:19.780
And depending on the person, you might change their behavior too. Always a risk. Easy for me to say.
00:51:28.480
But again, back to the Devil Wears Prader example, if you are being mistreated, it's not in the
00:51:35.220
perpetrator's best interest to get away with it either. And so learning to put the anxiety back
00:51:40.780
where it belongs takes great risk. But it might be that that person respects you for not being a
00:51:47.540
doormat. Now, I'm always concerned when I'm giving theoretical kind of into the abyss. Usually if
00:51:53.960
I'm helping people, it's a couple of hours of conversation to get really clear on what's going
00:51:59.380
on. And my coaches, you know, I have a number of coaches that work for me. Their job is to listen
00:52:04.260
to assumptions, detangle the anxiety so that the person can get clarity. So what you and I talk about
00:52:10.860
now is a great tool, but it's often several hours worth of work to figure it out.
00:52:16.380
Oh, for sure. I was thinking like if someone's a people pleaser, like that over functioning people
00:52:21.040
pleaser, maybe a challenge you do is, well, I'm going to say no. I'm just going to, I'm going to
00:52:27.400
fight that urge that I have to people please and see what happens. And what might happen, you might feel
00:52:33.560
really anxious doing that. And maybe it does cause some hurt feelings on the part of the other person,
00:52:40.640
but you just have to learn how to be like, okay, you know, that was, but me saying no is reasonable.
00:52:45.220
I wasn't being mean. It was really uncomfortable, but maybe we'll be able to fix the system or
00:52:51.580
relationship that we have. Yeah. That's a great example because especially when you spend time
00:52:57.180
realizing, how am I complicit? You know, it's so tempting for humans to focus on the so-called
00:53:03.520
perpetrator, but just to remind everybody, a system says everybody is to blame. And so therefore that
00:53:10.660
gives you a lot of opportunity to take responsibility. So yeah, that's right. Like, yes, this person has
00:53:16.840
always asked you to do things and that's frustrating to you, but yes, you've always said, yes, that's the
00:53:23.440
problem. And so working on your end of that, we often coach people to actually apologize to the
00:53:29.300
perpetrator. Hey, I owe you an apology because I've been frustrated at you and I haven't known how to
00:53:35.640
tell you this because it feels to me like you take advantage of my good nature and always ask me to do
00:53:41.400
things. But honestly, I'm not pointing at the finger at you. I'm wondering why I say yes so much. So I just
00:53:47.580
want to let you know, I'm going to start saying no more because I'm getting exhausted or whatever that
00:53:51.900
looks like. But when you go to somebody who's generating the anxiety and your first move is to
00:53:56.540
apologize rather than accuse, it's really powerful. Yeah. It disarms the situation. Yeah. So hopefully
00:54:03.020
this conversation has given people a good intro to Bowen family systems theory. And I think once you
00:54:09.560
kind of grasp these different ideas, you'll start seeing it in your life everywhere. And there's a lot
00:54:14.680
more to it and your book is a great place to learn more. So where can people go to learn more about the
00:54:19.240
book and your work? Yeah, they can go to my website, SteveCussWoods.com. My last name's Cuss. I'm from
00:54:24.400
Australia. Last name Cuss. There's nothing any of us can do about it. So my website, SteveCussWoods.com.
00:54:29.920
And we do a lot of organizational consulting and speaking if there's a way to inquire about that, but
00:54:34.940
they can get access to the book. I've got a podcast and they can even get some of our courses through
00:54:39.440
that as well. Fantastic. Well, Steve Cuss, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Brett. Thanks for
00:54:43.780
having me on. My guest is Steve Cuss. He's the author of the book, Managing Leadership Anxiety. You can find
00:54:49.220
more information about his work at his website, SteveCussWoods.com. Also check out our show notes
00:54:53.820
at AOM.IS slash Family Systems. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into the topic.
00:55:05.620
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:55:09.540
artofmanliness.com. We find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we've written
00:55:13.560
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00:55:27.680
support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to not listen to the AOM podcast,