Episode 486: Bowen Family Systems Theory - Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast)

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you're here for another episode. You know, today is a little different because I don't have a guest. I'm not using the usual intro music and introduction, letting you know where you can find me online. A lot of you probably know. I'll just tell you real quick, rickleejames.com is probably the easiest way to get my information. If you go to all social media sites, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you can just do @RickLeeJames, no spaces. It'll take you to me. Um, and the podcast, of course, you can find wherever you listen to podcasts. They're everywhere now. They're ubiquitous. Spotify, uh, Podbean, Apple. I mean, they've got them. So if you're listening now, chances are you don't need me to tell you how to get in touch with me. You could send me an email if you'd like, rick@rickleejames.com. But let's face it, we're in the age where you can look up my name and Google has me there. So welcome back to Voices in My Head. Welcome to another episode that, you know, I wanted to do this for a while, but I wasn't sure I was ready to do it. And we'll see if I am. As you know, if you've been listening for a while, I've been working as a hospital chaplain and I've been doing this since June. And I'm in what is called CPE, which is Clinical Pastoral Education. And in Clinical Pastoral Education, there's something that's very important, at least in the particular CPE program I am. I am in, and it's called Family Systems Theory. And it was something that was developed by Murray Bowen. It really is something that is very important in the way that we think about interacting with each other. It has to do with the way that families and people carry their anxieties and the way that their anxieties bounce off of each other and how we react to each other. And I thought something that that might be good is to actually help me and all of my listeners at the same time, possibly, maybe kind of go through Family Systems Theory, which was developed by Murray Bowen, and kind of talk about it on the podcast this week as its own episode where I can kind of explain a little bit of what it means and the concepts, how they work, and As I'm doing this for my listeners, hopefully it'll help kind of reinforce it for me as well, as I am trying to listen in service of my patients and service of self. The thing is, we all carry anxiety. Everybody. Anxiety isn't good. Anxiety isn't bad. Anxiety is just there. It's what we do with this anxiety that decides whether or not we are going to be healthy or unhealthy. Again, it's something everybody has. There is, you know, kind of a bad view sometimes in the church that if you have anxiety, you haven't given things to God properly. It's not true. Anxiety can work for you. Anxiety can be a good thing at times when you have it. It's when anxiety overcomes you that we have these things happening that we're going to talk about today in family systems theory. So these are just some of my notes. I'm kind of doing this off the cuff, but looking at notes I've taken not only from class, also from reading books about Bowen theory, discussing, and then making my own notes from other sources. So Here we go. When talking about anxiety, here is the concept that we have. Concept 1: The nuclear family emotional system. We are all hardwired together. Each family member is like a cell in the body. We all have anxiety. And I have anxiety because— and because I have anxiety, I share it with other members of my family. I pass it on to them. Anxiety is not a disorder. Anxiety is the human response to change. It's primarily invisible. It's primarily unconscious. So it's something that you may or may not know is there. In families with marriage, the two become one, but the question is often asked, but which one will they become? Each individual carries into their family's fused system— sorry, they carry their family's fused system into the marriage. So how do we make these invisible anxieties visible among our marriages and among our families? Our emotions and feelings and thoughts, how do we name them and differentiating them? So here are the postures that we begin to take based on these anxieties within our family systems. There is distancing. Distancing is what it sounds like. We react to the anxieties by staying away from people, even emotionally. It's not just a physical being in the same room or not in the same room. It's emotionally distancing ourself as a protection mechanism. Next thing is conflict happens. It's a second posture. We react both physically and emotionally with conflict. Both distancing and conflict, by the way, they cut off communication and refuse intimacy. You may have seen this in your own life. Someone that you're distancing from, you're refusing intimacy with them. Physically or emotionally. Overfunctioning, underfunctioning— these are two concepts that go together as the third posture. What I have learned about myself in CPE, just to confess, I am an overfunctioner. Overfunctioning is, is when I tell you what to think, when I tell you what to do and how to do it. In some people, that doesn't tend to be what I do. Some people react that way in overfunctioning. And they— where there is overfunctioning, there is also underfunctioning, where people are letting others do things for them. This always happens. My version of overfunctioning personally is not that I tell you what to think or how to do it. My version of overfunctioning is I tend to over do. If the paper is supposed to be 3 pages long, I write 9 pages. If I'm supposed to work out and it says I need to do 3 miles today, I do 7. If, if I'm supposed to have a song in by a certain deadline for a publisher, I have 30 days to do it, I do it in the first day. Things like that is over-functioning. And what happens is under-functioning is a result on behalf of other people. Anytime we over-function. So under-functioning, we will likely never change, by the way, by people telling us what to do and what to believe. We change when we have ideas to consider. Positions to evaluate, and concepts to explore, things to explore for ourselves. So a good example of over-functioning is what we often do in church and in families. We tell someone what to believe. We tell them how to think. We don't give them room to think in any other ways, and our over-functioning in churches will lead to under-functioning in people because people do not respond well to being told what to believe. Moses goes up the mountain to get the commandments. He does all the work while the people below fall into laziness and orgies of idol worship. This is a great example in scripture of over-functioning and under-functioning. Pastors who will hide away in their study, doing a lot of reading, is under-functioning by being distanced, not staying in contact with the whole system. That's just one way they can do it. So these are big concepts, and I hope I'm not going too fast, but that's kind of what we do oftentimes. We over-function, causing under-functioning in others. I tend to over-function because I have this myth of a loner. I tend to over-function so that people won't get too close to me, so that they won't have to do the job, so they won't get near to me, or so I don't want someone to come close to me because I don't want to get hurt again. This is something I'm learning about myself, just being confessional here. On the show tonight. I'm going to move on to the concept, the next concept, the next posture rather. This is the fourth. We've had distancing, we've had conflict, we've had over-functioning, under-functioning, and then we have triangles. And triangles is probably the most interesting part, posture that we can take in the emotional family systems. When triangles happen, It does happen in our churches and it happens in our families. Two people in a church getting together to worry about the actions of one of the pastors. This is triangle. The third person is where the worry is focused and that person suffers for it. Two people have a concern, have a conflict going on, so they try to bring a third person into the party to alleviate the anxiety. Let's say there was something going on in your work. We'll not get family just yet. We'll talk about work. So instead of going to the person the problem is going on with, let's say that there's two people butting heads or just not seeing eye to eye at work. Rather than try to work it out with that person, They may try to bring a third party in. Let's go to the boss. Or one person will just go to the boss and make this third triangle. Tell the boss everything that's going on with this other person and why they're so bad and what they're doing is wrong. And they're hoping to bring that person into the triangle. Well, self-awareness and self-differentiated people will learn that's what's going on, and they won't allow themselves to be pulled into that triangle. And they might say, "You know what? Here's what you're telling me, and I think you need to go back and talk to that person. I'm gonna be an objective observer." We do this in families too. Parents will do it. Sometimes they will expect their children to become the parents. They may go to Maybe husband and wife are having a hard time, so they turn to the child. One of them does. And it can work in ways where, like, that child has to carry anxiety that the parent is carrying, which is not the way it's supposed to work. But sometimes we do it not realizing it. Sometimes we do it in ways that harm the child. You are just like your father. Things like that, which, which is not a good posture for us to be in. But those triangles do happen. So what we learn through this Family Systems Theory is that we have to disrupt the pattern. And disrupting the pattern will give us other postures than just these simple fours. The four that we have— and you don't just stop one day, by the way, with these patterns I'm talking about. When you see the pattern You begin to start to do the opposite. When you see yourself distancing, you learn to get back in. When there's conflict, you try to look at the source of the conflict. When there's over-functioning and under-functioning, you have to look at how do I stop over-functioning, or how do I stop under-functioning? How do I get back in? When there's triangles, we try to cut out the third person in the triangle. And, you know, sometimes, by the way, it can be a movie or something. I mean, you can turn the conversation somewhere else that's not the two of you. But it happens. So when relationships aren't going well, that's what we do. Concept 2 is differentiation of self. The first concept was the nuclear family emotional system, and that shows up in churches, as we talked about. Concept number 2 is differentiation of self. Most people are not very differentiated, not very high on the differentiation scale. If it goes from 1 to 100, 100 being the most differentiated and 1 being the least differentiated, even the most differentiated people are not 100. We may be— have a healthy differentiation of self, which which I'm gonna talk about a little bit, but most people don't go super high on this. So when I wanna believe something different from my family, I will feel the force pushing against me to not stay in. If you have a disagreement, you know, you can be called selfish when you stand against that family force. And maybe you need to. Maybe there's something unhealthy, a pattern that needs to be broken. But you will start to feel that tension if you are trying to differentiate yourself in a family that has been triangling and trying to keep you in. But we find our identities in being different parts of the body, don't we? Not in all being the same. So it is the individuality force, self-differentiation force that actually helps us to be connected to other people. Even though we are differentiating ourselves, the more differentiated you are, the more connected you are to other people. The less differentiated you are, the less you are actually connected to them. In the lower levels of differentiation, we are fused to everyone. We are just stuck. We are focused on pleasing people and getting others to please us. When I think about people in scripture who were the best differentiated, who had the most differentiation— Jesus. He's clear about his mission, his vision, and his purpose. He doesn't change course based upon the crowd. He doesn't change course based upon what the disciples want. This causes tension. —to the point that he was crucified. He was so differentiated, so defined, but, you know, in his purpose. And that caused trouble. And it will cause trouble at first when we start differentiating ourselves from the group. Defined but not connected. If you're this kind of a person, if you are well-defined but not connected, you'll become a bully. And you'll try to enforce your views on others. This is only okay if everyone else sees it like I do. Defined but not connected, that's what that means. Connected but not defined people will do everything they can to be connected, but you never know what they really think or where they really stand. They're scared to give their opinion. So both of these are low levels of differentiated— differentiation, I should say. Developing a one-on-one relationship with every person in your community, in your family, this is the best way to be more differentiated. But it's hard to get there. So that's differentiation. That's concept 2. Concept 3, triangles, which we already talked about. We are always in a triangle. The trick is to recognize which triangles we are in. So the unhealthy triangles that we had been talking about, they don't have to be unhealthy, but we are always in a triangle. We are always in a triangle. A triangle is any relationship that has 3 people in it, but that should only have 2. It doesn't mean it won't happen because it will. But it's healthier when you're not triangling like that. So when our two-person relationships become unsustainable, as I talked about before, we naturally draw a third person in, or a third person will insert themselves. So— excuse me, I'm a little stuffy today. Example is when three people in an office go on a retreat together, a fourth person who didn't go feels kind of on the outside of the triangle because they weren't there. They didn't experience the same thing. So when the 3 people who did go to a retreat or an event or something, they have something shared in common. And so they are this triangle. This is an example of maybe a good triangle for those that are in it, but the one on the, the fourth feels like one on the outside. So when that 2-person relationship becomes unsustainable, then they need to work it out between them. Rather than draw a third person in. So what might happen when you have 3 people and there's a fourth one on the outside, that fourth one may start to try to triangle with other people who didn't go to the event. And it creates another triangle, and that triangle causes a disturbance because the 2 triangles are not meshing. It's interesting stuff. So whatever that conflict is, it's theirs, not yours. That's kind of how we think about it. It's their conflict, not yours. But the truth is it's ours too. So neutrality, it doesn't mean that we don't have thoughts and opinions of our own, but it does mean that we don't insert ourselves into a side as leaders. That's one thing that we have to, to be careful about. We can be neutral. Again, it doesn't mean we don't have thoughts or opinions, but if we're not careful, we can pull ourselves into these triangles and find ourselves on the outside in a bad way. Interesting thing to do is to think about all the triangling that happens in scriptures between characters there. So I'm gonna move on to concept 4 because we're already at about almost 20 minutes of this podcast. Concept 4— excuse me— is cut off. Cutoff is the most extreme kind of distancing a person will do. There are generational cutoffs that happen where there is unresolved detachment, things that haven't got resolved. So one generation may disconnect from another. Christianity is a faith of cutoffs when you think about it. How many denominations are there because one denomination has cut off from another one? They've decided, uh, okay, Methodism, we're going to break off and create the Church of the Nazarene. There are ones that have broken off from there. There's the, the Protestant churches that broke off from the Catholics. Catholics cut off from the Orthodox Church. So all these things happen. Cut off happens all the time. We often leave when things are intense. Sometimes cutoffs serve you. Because you need to not be in unhealthy relationships that cause you harm. There are benefits to that, but we should try to notice what the consequences are when cutoffs happen. We don't force people to bridge a cutoff, like to end a cutoff with a person. That doesn't do any good. We just try to support them back into it if there's any way, and if there's a healthy way to get back in. We tend to pull away from people whom we consider toxic. But what if we have some patterns of behavior together that are toxic? What would it be like to go back into the relationship as just an observer instead of one that has so much at stake? In the relationship. If you're constantly criticized by a member of your family, can you step back in somehow as an observer instead of someone who has a lot at stake? Doesn't matter what that other person thinks of you. You can still be in the relationship. Can you still be in it and not be hurt by those things that people might say? So this is a way of bridging a cutoff. So how do we handle when people are cutting off from us is a good question to ask. Well, the answer is you can't make a person bridge that connection again. You just have to stay open rather than pursue it. Let that person that's cut off be the one who bridges the relationship again because there's something that has hurt them that is not allowing them to make that connection right now, and they need need that distance. So let's move on into concept 5: family projection process. Or projection. That's something we're probably familiar with. In a family of, let's say, multiple children, one child will get the focus of the anxiety of the mother and father, but the other children don't necessarily. When a parent or parents are focused on one child, They focus on a different child to different degrees. This is an automatic reflex. It's not something intentional that people do. Again, none of these things are intentional that are done. These are all things that are just happening underneath the surface that we don't even realize sometimes. So children will tend to play different roles based upon what they sense from the anxiety of of the parents. This is about a child's functioning, not their personality. So a child may take on a role of, "I'm the rebel," or, "I'm the one that holds the family together," or, "I'm the one with health problems." Or someone might say, "You're going to be the pastor of our family," things like that. They may pick up these signals that they need to be this for the parent. This shows up in leadership organizations when a pastor may be focusing on specific people or ministries and neglect other ones. Different people often receive the anxious focus of ministers, while children receive the anxious focus of their parents at times. We and the people in our churches and our businesses, places we go to work, will often repeat family patterns with people in the church. So it's that projection process where we will project things onto people that may or may not be fair. They may be good things, you know, "You're gonna be a great songwriter one day." And that person might feel pressure to do that even if it's not within them. That's just one example. So The, the concept 5 was family projection process. Concept 6 is the multi-generational transmission process where things are not only passed on in the nuclear family but over generations. So trying to get connected to generations of family that we are not connected to can create more anxiety. So that's just number 6, just real quickly, because I'm running out of time here and I want I want to kind of buzz through this. Concept 7 is sibling position— sibling, I should say— position, birth order of self, birth order of parents. This wasn't originally going to be a part of Bowen's theory, but Bowen added it later because nobody picks when they are born, but the moment of your birth carries implications with it. Even siblings kind of grow up in a different family because they experience the parents differently. It's almost like they're in a different place. So here's some examples of how sibling position shapes our behavior and our functioning. Oldest children, they tend to gravitate to leadership positions. Youngest children tend to often prefer— they prefer to be followers. A spouse's sibling position affects their chance of their divorcing. And sibling positions are complementary. Not good or bad. Middle children, another example, they exhibit the functioning characteristics of two sibling positions. So it's interesting the way that we will react. And then concept 8 is emotional process and society. You're going to move right on into concept 8, how the emotional system governs behavior in whole societies. And this is what I find most interesting as we start wrapping up what I'm talking about tonight with these different concepts. The emotional process in society is fascinating to me to see right now. Because how the emotional system governs behavior in, in societies as a whole, it mirrors the way that families handle anxiety. So think about that for a second. Things that families will do. They will, they will scapegoat a person sometimes, intentionally or not intentionally. Churches will do this. They will scapegoat, make someone the problem, and they may or may not be the problem. We did this to Jesus, scapegoated him. If we just kill the problem, things will get better. Things like not sticking to facts. Because we react out of emotion, not facts. So the systems of societal regression include a growth of crime and violence, an increasing divorce rate. They include a more litigious attitude— people suing all the time— a greater polarization between racial groups. They include less principled decision-making by leaders. Increased drug abuse, bankruptcies, and a focus on rights over responsibilities. It's very interesting, isn't it, as you think about society now. As we think about all these things that are happening and the way that anxieties in our families mirror what's going on in society. And I suppose, and vice versa in some ways. So when we think about all those things that are happening, makes me think how unhealthy we are as a culture. And I'm afraid that church culture is the most unhealthy place sometimes because we just say everything's spiritual and we don't deal with emotional problems that are actually there, which I find fascinating. You can see all these things, you know, letting emotion take over, not sticking to facts. We see it right now in people that think the election was stolen from President Trump when he was running. And it doesn't matter that, you know, every single case was thrown out of court. There was nothing to stand on. It doesn't matter that the election fraud that was found was all on the GOP side, almost all exclusively. And the people who voted more, which there was only, you know, handfuls of cases here and there. Doesn't matter that the lie was continued to tell about thousands and thousands or millions or whatever. It's the lie we make about people. It's the same thing that was done in, you know, the Nazis are an easy example. The Jews are the problems of everything. Thing. In our country, we do it with immigrants. And so that's why every time before there's an election, there's like these invisible caravans of migrants and everybody, and they're coming and they're gonna kill us and rape us and do all these different things. And then as soon as Election Day happens, voting is done, and those caravans of people just mysteriously disappear. The only place you hear about them is on certain news networks, and somehow it just disappears. Peers. So it's interesting to me that those anxieties are played out, and they're played out on both sides. Those are just some examples that are so easily seen. But it doesn't matter how many facts are there. Facts will be ignored instead of emotions. This, this is why we need to focus in on it though a little bit, because emotional systems are ways people back in to help people back into truthful places, relationship, rather than cut off. But it seems like what we're doing mostly is cutting off instead of trying to nurture those relationships. So it's interesting to see how Family Systems Theory is working it out. It's helping us see what's happening in society. So, um, another— a 9th concept which Murray Bowen— and this will, this will wrap it up tonight— actually didn't really develop before he died, but he was getting into the supernatural, asking questions about our faith, objective and subjective, and learning to let a person have their own beliefs without trying to persuade them differently. Bowen was found finding that this was freeing. And I have found it freeing in my own life too as a chaplain. Letting a person have their own beliefs without trying to persuade them. When we can do this, this means we are growing in differentiation. And this means we are healthy in our emotionality and our spirituality. People who are very undifferentiated who seem to have emotional instability are people who just constantly are trying to convert you. Even people who are already converted, they aren't converted enough, so I got to keep trying to change them, and I can't have a conversation without bringing faith into it, and I can't have a conversation without talking about Jesus, and if it doesn't say Jesus enough in something, then it's not Christian enough. And this is actually a very unhealthy example of what we often do in churches—ways that we show that we are not differentiated, ways that show that we are not like Jesus. It's interesting to think about that, but the more that we try to sway people to follow Jesus by persuading them into it and not letting them have their own room for questioning, we are actually becoming less like Jesus. Isn't that fascinating? It's very hard to see that sometimes, but you'll see this in example of people who wonder, you know, why am I turning so many people away in my life? The answer might be, if it's your faith that is not well differentiated, your insecurities in it are actually showing up in that you can't have a conversation without constantly bringing bringing up God or Jesus or conversion or things like that. I know this sounds like that's the opposite of what it is, but it actually proves that you have a less differentiated faith when you are insecure about that, when you're insecure about others having beliefs that are different from yours. So it's very interesting. I wish Bowen would have been able to continue before before he passed away. But being defined and connected— what we talked about before, we talked about people who are connected but not defined, and people who are defined but not connected— being able to hold on to self while relating to others is the way of Jesus in the world. Now I'm gonna say that one more time: being able to hold on to self, the self you were made to be, your true self, what Mr. Rogers would say, "There's no one else in the whole world like you." Holding on to your true self, just being, being that good creation that God made, that is a recapturing of Eden. Becoming the good, allowing yourself to just be while relating to others is the way of Jesus. It's not anxious. It's not judgmental. It's the way of being like Christ in the world. So I have discovered that being defined and connected is a great way to be a chaplain. See, it all comes back to chaplaincy once again. Learning to differentiate between what we are thinking and what we are feeling is essential. Thoughts are our ideas, perceptions, or opinions about the world around us. That's what thoughts are. Feelings are our reactions to emotions or sensations. So feelings being reactions to emotions and sensations, thoughts are ideas and opinions about the world around us. So Feelings come first and thoughts later as we grow up. Feelings tend to be simpler than many thoughts that we have. But it's important for us to begin to learn, if we want to be well differentiated, to learn between our thoughts and our feelings. Figuring out ways to be both defined and connected with others. This is— excuse me— this is why we are able to, as Christians, have very good interfaith relationships with people that don't believe exactly as we do. Because they don't have to believe exactly as we do. That person needs to be free to discover who they are in their true self. Now, Christians have a different understanding of what this means, If we believe in Christ as fully as we say we believe in Christ, then we will give others the freedom to be found in Christ and not force them into following Christ. It's an interesting thing. It's almost like the opposite of what we were told about evangelism sometimes, like you got to go door-to-door, you got to pass this on, you got to, you know, almost shove Jesus down people's throat. In actuality, what that does is it might make you feel better, but it often turns other people away. Isn't that fascinating? And so that's why in our work as chaplains, it's actually considered unethical for us to try to make conversions in a hospital room. What we are there to do is to witness others, not to witness to others. We are to help them find a way to be heard and to be seen and to be listened to. It's amazing how much people just want to be heard and how seeing them— which, by the way, if you look up the Great Commission in the Greek, when it talks about being witnesses, uh, to all the world, it's very ambiguous in the Greek whether it's saying witness to them or being witnesses of them, because Jesus would come in and just He would just start asking questions, and those questions would lead people to begin thinking in new ways. Well, that's what chaplaincy is. I don't come in and give people answers. I don't tell them how to think. I listen. I ask questions. I try to probe where they are. And you know what? It is amazing to me how God just seems to show up again and again. I never push Jesus on anybody, but Jesus seems to find his way into the conversation. Isn't that fascinating? The better differentiated we are, the more defined and connected we are. It's a great way to be a chaplain, I think. Well, I've talked longer than I should have. I hope this hasn't bored you to death. This was almost for me though, just a way to help reinforce in my mind what I'm studying and what I'm learning. If it was a help to you, that's fine. If it wasn't, you know, don't go back and listen to this one again. But I hope it was something that was beneficial to you. I want to thank you for listening. I'm in a very busy time in life right now. I'm in the midst of not only 40 hours a week as a chaplain, but also doing work at church. Being a husband, being a dad, while also still doing some traveling and leading retreats, doing concerts, things like that. So there I am over-functioning, and I realize I am, but I'm trying to find ways to do less so that I can have more Sabbath. I am seeing this about myself. I'm seeing my over-functioning, and I am seeing that it is freeing to begin to work on ways to get out of it. To be able to find times of Sabbath. So much love to you. I'm actually at the hospital right now on a 24-hour shift. I had a few minutes which thankfully the pager did not go off. It's been a busy day. I'm on about hour 13 of 24 right now. So if I'm rambling, not making a lot of sense, you understand. But this is what I've been thinking about, what I've been dwelling on, what I've been studying. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed being able to talk a little bit about it. I hope it made sense. So with that, let's do the outro. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. I am your host, Rick Lee James. I want to leave you this week with a thought, and I want to recommend, by the way, that you go— if you want another podcast to listen to that has interviews, uh, go to my other podcast Welcome to The Neighborhood of Mr. Rogers Jiffy Podcast. Had a great interview this week with Dave and JJ Heller, both wonderful songwriters. And JJ is a fellow musician who has also songs in consideration for the Grammy Awards right now. First round voting is happening, and so it was wonderful to know some of the people this time we are having a Rick Lee James interview. He's sitting with two Grammys and it's a good conversation, so that's the one that we just recorded. It looks like I'll be having some other people connected with the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood television show on that other podcast very soon. So if I miss a week here or there like I did last week with Versus in My Head, don't fret, I'll be back. It's just I'm trying to learn to be less of a total klutcho. So thanks for listening this week. God bless you. Wish you well.