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Connected Despite the Separations --a service for Bowen Theory weekend-- Rev. Mark Stringer First Unitarian Church of Des Moines November 10 & 11, 2007 “A person’s family of origin has the potential to be both a resource and a support system. When people are fairly cut off from extended family, it can be neither of these things.” —from Family Evaluation by Michael Kerr and Murry Bowen
For six years now, I have devoted a weekend of services here to a consideration of an aspect of Dr. Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory. I was first introduced to this theory when, as an intern minister, I was encouraged by my supervisor, the Rev. Barbara Pescan, to join her for a day-long Bowen theory training session. I was instantly drawn to what I still perceive as the wisdom this theory offers for how to thoughtfully reflect upon and participate in the relationships of our lives. In fact, I consider my continued study and application of Bowen theory to my developing understandings of the my relationships and my functioning within them to be not only a spiritual discipline for me, but one of the more meaningful religious endeavors of my life. My theology is one of relationship, of a creative spirit, or God if you will, which emerges via our open, humble, and truth-seeking approaches to the interactions of our lives, so perhaps it is not surprising that I find a theory that attempts to empirically acknowledge life as it truly lived and experienced and that encourages us to be present, accounted for, and responsible within our relationships to be more than just a therapeutic tool, but a holy roadmap for the journey of life itself. You might also understand, then, why I have typically scheduled this annual Bowen weekend just before Thanksgiving. Whether or not we have the opportunity (or some would say “obligation”) to gather with our families during this season of holidays and holy days, our families, both nuclear and extended, tend to be in our minds and hearts, and even at times our knotted stomachs…both for what is life-enriching about them…and what feels life-depleting…both in anticipation for the interactions we will have with them…and for the interactions that we will avoid or do without. It’s that last part…the interactions that we will avoid or do without, that is of particular interest to me for today’s service, which will focus on Bowen’s observations of the conflictual relationships of our lives, particularly the tendency (or emotional pattern) we may have to distance ourselves or even cutoff (to use a Bowen term) from members of our families, and, in turn, from others.
For those of you new to Bowen theory, here’s a brief introduction.
Murray Bowen was a psychiatrist who, before he died in 1990, spent over forty years developing a theory of human behavior that aimed to objectively describe human interaction not as it should or could be, but as it is. Bowen saw that the predominant way people tried to understand human behavior was based in human subjectivity—one person’s experience interpreted by that person…and sometimes by the person’s therapist—an approach based in the belief that the basic unit of emotional functioning is the individual. If an individual has a problem, the traditional approach suggests, an individual is probably to blame: one’s mother, or father, or sibling, or self. Most of us remain well versed in this traditional way of viewing the relationships of our lives. When we think of our own families, whether they be biological, adoptive, workplace, or even church families, we can almost certainly point to a person (or a few people) who “cause” most of the problems. “If this person could just straighten up…or clue in…or get with it,” we tell ourselves, “the family would improve.”
Bowen’s observations indicated to him that focusing on one person or group as the toxic element or “the patient” actually contributes to the perceived problem because the other family members can then avoid their own responsibility as contributors to the family process in exchange for their fascination with the so-called dysfunctional member.
The theory he developed, then, took the emphasis off the individual, and focused instead on the entire family as an emotional unit, as a system where each individual member holds a functioning position and contributes to the working of the whole.
Bowen believed that even if a problem or symptom is evident in only one person, an emphasis on “fixing” or “helping” that person alone would always be misguided, for the whole system—meaning the entire multi-generational family itself and not just a single individual—has inevitably contributed to and/or enabled any symptom that emerges. In other words, in order for the symptom to be alleviated, the system itself must change.
Taking a systems-view of family relationships and interactions can be a radical shift for many of us. We are often so experienced in diagnosing the so-called problem members of our families, and then allowing that diagnosis to govern our interactions, that to attempt to take a larger, more objective view of the entire family as a system, can seem like an unnecessary detour. We can be so certain that we know who needs to shape up that, even if we accept the idea of the family as an emotional unit, we are still left to wonder how we can possibly change the system without assigning blame and without trying to fix other people. Bowen theory has a simple (though certainly challenging) answer for us: Rather than focusing our energy on getting others to be who we think they should be, we can work on improving our own individual functioning within the system. In other words, we can give up trying to change other people and work instead on changing ourselves towards becoming more autonomous, yet still connected, members of the system. Even the most subtle changes in our own functioning toward becoming a more solid self in the system, the theory says, can open up entirely new possibilities, both for ourselves…and for our families. My hope is that today’s service will stimulate us to be thoughtful about and maybe even improve our own functioning within the families of our lives…no matter how unlikely or impossible it may seem. But first, let’s take some time to center ourselves in this community…to bring our whole selves to this place...and to begin to reflect together on the unique collections of people we call our families.
Let’s pause in meditation, reflection or prayer.
O,
spirit of life, creative, imperfect, foundation
of all families…
those complicated
relationship systems from which we all came,
those powerful systems that can pull us together and push us apart.
We know you, spirit of our living, when our family connections are a source of joy, when the loving support of our parents, children or siblings has kept us afloat in turbulent waters… and when we have reached out to support family members ourselves, and have been met with gratitude. We also know you when these same connections bind us up inside with anger, disappointment, resentment… when we might wish we have never known this strange bunch of people we call our family.
Sometimes
we look at our families and wish for happier
times,
Or maybe times that never were but that we long for anyway. We look at our families, whether in person or in our mind’s eye, And we yearn for peace, forgiveness, and redemption, even as we may tell ourselves it’s a lost cause.
Will we ever know why families can be so maddening? Is it possible to be grateful for them, to learn from them, to grow with them even in our disappointment…even in our frustration?
Thank you, spirit of life, possibility in action, For the opportunity to live one more day with these people who drive us crazy, even as they lift us up…these people who challenge us to be authentically ourselves, even as they work consciously and unconsciously against our attempts to do so. And teach us, in all the families of our lives, to see beyond the flare-ups and the failures, the maladies and the meltdowns, and to find the peaceful stillness beneath the surface…the stillness from which we came and to which we will all one day return. Amen.
Sermon Today’s theme can be summed up simply. Bowen theory teaches us that when we cutoff from our families of origin, whether we cutoff from an individual or two or from the entire family system, we are not making the independent stand for self that we may imagine we are making. Rather, we are more emotionally tied (or fused) and less independent than ever, and we are actually doing our part to maintain if not increase and perpetuate the anxiety in the system that led to the cutoff in the first place.
Let me unpack all of that for you.
First of all, what does cutoff mean?
In order to understand cutoff, we need to understand, from a Bowen theory perspective, the emotional system that is the family.
The human animal is one with instinctive, complex and mostly involuntary emotions. We know this because, well, we are human…and we live with our emotions every day and experience how they impact nearly everything we do, whether we want them to or not. Our tendencies to be anxious, or happy, or protective, or defensive, or angry, or nurturing, or a myriad of other emotions are, in significant ways, hardwired in us, the product of things that we ourselves have experienced and adapted to, as well as the experiences and adaptations of those in previous generations of our families, people we may know very little about. Over time some of the emotional tendencies of our families of origin, especially the tendencies in our those highly functioning, emotionally mature (or well-differentiated) families among us, may have evolved into helpful patterns that lead the members to instinctively know how to avoid the pitfalls of reactivity that could otherwise bog down their relationships. And then there are the rest of us, who are in families with not-so-productive patterns that we have inherited and or developed over time that actually get in the way of our ability to manage our own functioning within our relationships, and which, therefore, lead us to further fuel the very anxiety we may be trying to overcome, or even just live through. No matter how hard we try, emotions are very difficult, if not impossible to contain or control. And because we humans tend to be so emotionally influenced, the ability of any family to function effectively during times of stress has a lot to do with the ways in which the individuals within that family function…in other words, the way in which emotion is passed (or not) from person to person within the system.
Family emotional process can be like the children’s game “electricity”, the game in which the players stand in a circle holding hands, waiting until one player gives a squeeze on the hand of the person next to him and then that person either passes the “charge” back or on to the next person, and so on. The charge travels around the circle, back and forth, at least until someone tires of the game and decides to stop. I like the simple image of emotion being passed in this example, but a game of electricity is probably a far-too-simplified representation of how families often process and deal with emotion, particularly intense emotion or anxiety, when you consider that, in a family, the members are connected not only to the person on either side of them, but to people all around the circle…and even to people who are no longer physically standing in the circle, but whose way of playing the game continues to impact those still there. As Bowen students come to understand the emotional process of their families of origin, past and present, the expectation is that they might be better prepared to understand their own emotional patterns and tendencies, not only within the family, but in the other relationships of their lives.
Bowen identified several ways that the exchange of emotion, particularly heightened emotion during times of stress, can be managed within a relationship. Among these are conflict, where the participants exchange emotion back and forth with neither being willing to journey beyond the confines of their own perceptions or adapt to the needs or concerns of the other; distance, which manifests in a variety of ways including avoidance, lack of engagement in any topics beyond the mundane, and substance abuse; and cutoff, an acute posture of distance in a relationship, rendering the relationship non-functional. Cutoff would describe any relationship in one’s family in which the members not only do not interact in any meaningful way, but essentially have created a situation through their distance where that interaction is virtually unthinkable. Distance in this case has little to do with literal physical space between. People can live thousands of miles apart and maintain highly functioning, mature relationships. Distance in Bowen terms can take place with people living in the same town…and even in the same house. Apparent motivation for distance or cutoff may include financial problems or disagreements, religion, politics, or the heightened or chronic anxiety that arises during a family divorce, death, or sudden change in life circumstances.
People who are cutoff often believe they can point to a particular incident that triggered the cutoff, but not always. In fact, sometimes people who are cutoff have no idea how it happened. But those participating in cutoff relationships do know one of the primary reasons for the cutoff—to reduce the discomfort that would come with the emotional contact if it weren’t being avoided.
Bowen theory contends that if we can take an objective look at the family system of someone who is a participant in a cutoff relationship, a pattern of cutoffs will typically be found, a pattern that can be traced through the generations. The present-day cutoff, then, is merely the latest chapter in an old story.
How depressing, right? We like to think of ourselves as autonomous actors in our lives and in our relationships. For example, we may believe we have chosen to not to interact with our brother, or our aunt, or our grandmother because they are “crazy,” or abusive, or diametrically opposed to our lifestyle, religion or politics. Then, if we believe Bowen theory, we discover that what we thought was our brave stand for independence…our attempt to “escape” from a difficult family so as not to “be like them” was determined more, if not fated, by exchanges of emotion that have festered within the family’s emotional process for decades. As it turns out, ours is just the latest example of multi-generational emotional immaturity.
“But,” you may say, “Who cares where or when the cutoff started or if some theory says I’m being immature? I’m happier not interacting with my brother, or my aunt, or my grandmother, or my son, or my entire extended family (as the case may be). Don’t try to get me to do something I don’t want to do.”
Certainly cutoff can be an effective means to minimize anxiety and, therefore, we should not generalize cutoff as “good” or “bad.” There can be little doubt that some difficult family circumstances can be managed more easily if we don’t have to actually talk to or be with our family. However, Bowen pointed out that if we cutoff from our family of origin altogether, we are actually missing out on some potential, if not vital, stabilizing emotional connections. Furthermore, while cutoff may relieve pressure and lower anxiety in the short term, it may also increase the likelihood that more intense anxiety will resurface in the future, because, when we cutoff, we are doing nothing to shift the emotional patterns that led to the cutoff in the first place. In a Bowen sense, then, any attempt at true independence (or self-differentiation) within our family system would have to include some interdependence, some intentional staying in contact with the family so that we could access important information about our tendencies, information that, if we can maintain objectivity, might enable us to improve our functioning in other areas of our lives. If you are having difficulty with your relationships at work, for example, a Bowen suggestion would be to go back to the family of origin and learn something about yourself. In fact, Bowen said, “If you can get a one-to-one relationship with each living person in your extended family, it will help you ‘grow up’ more than anything else you could ever do in life.”[1]
Staying in contact, getting a one-to-one relationship can mean a variety of things, depending on the people involved. It can be as engaging as a semi-regular lunch date or as low-impact as an occasional card or time-limited phone call during which we merely practice being a non-anxious presence. It can be as simple as an e-mail. Anything that serves to remind others that we know they exist…and that we do, too, and that gives us the opportunity to experience and reflect upon the resulting emotional process counts as contact.
This is a good time to point out that Bowen theory is not about making demands on individuals or trying to guilt people into action, and it certainly doesn’t offer connect-the-dots cure-alls for what ails the family. On the contrary, the Bowen approach encourages each of us to be honest about the unique challenges inherent in any relationship system and to acknowledge that an attempt to change the behavior of other people in the system is unlikely to do anything other than increase anxiety for everyone. For example, some of you might interpret what I’m sharing today as an encouragement to go home to your family of origin and get all the family’s problems out into the open. Imagine, you’re sitting at the Thanksgiving table. There is a lull in the conversation and you feel the spirit move you to speak. “I’ve been learning about Bowen family systems theory,” you say, “and it is clear to me know that you, Katie, and you, Charlie are cutoff from each other. You need to work on that. And while I’m at it, Dad, I don’t appreciate the way you distance yourself from the rest of us by watching a football game during dinner. And, Mom, I think we are in constant conflict because you refuse to adapt to my needs.”
This kind of reckless, know-it-all approach will do very little other than bring out the reactivity in everyone else. Anxiety will skyrocket and the pumpkin pie will probably end up all over the walls. Besides, assertions like these made at people are not the point of true Bowen work. The primary assertion of the theory, as I understand it, is that if we can train ourselves to take a research scientist approach to examining our family’s emotional process, we will discover a treasure trove of information about our own tendencies as individuals…tendencies that effectively play out in all the relationships of our lives, oftentimes in the same knee-jerk ways that led to the conflict, distancing and cutoff found in the family of origin. In short, the better we get to know our extended family, and monitor our actions and reactions in those relationships, the better we will get to know ourselves.
Bowen acknowledged that re-engaging in our family of origin relationship may lead us to feel like we have reverted to childhood. However, he pointed out that we are not, in fact, children, but rather people armed with an adult perspective and a “willingness to watch and listen” and develop some objectivity that could lead us to “bridge” the cutoffs in our lives, not because our families are always so much fun, but because they have so much to offer us in our continued search for self-understanding and a more mature approach to our relationships and to life itself. We are never as alone as we can believe we are, a message I hear in this song I will play for you now from Rebecca Martin. Imagine you have recently reconnected with a family member you haven’t spoken with for years. You exchanged simple e-mails and decided to meet for a visit. On your way to the meeting, maybe these thoughts are in your mind.
“At Different Times” by Ron Sexsmith Performed by Rebecca Martin From the album Thoroughfare
In the midst of all this welcome change I can hardly wait to welcome all that was estranged To my life again
I thought I was on my own At different times Just a voice on a cold pay phone At different times
Now I'm taken by these thoughts of how We found you and I In the midst of it all, in a northern town Between the earth and sky
These thoughts of you come around At different times We watch as the sun goes down At different times At different times
I've been tempted by these open doors You turned and I was gone Now I pray that I was spoken for In my absence, in my song
I thought I was on my own At different times Like a stranger in my own home At different times At different times
I imagine that when Ron Sexsmith wrote this song, he was probably writing it for a lost love. But I hear in its words a celebration of the realization that no matter how separate we may want to believe we are, so separate in fact that we can be “like a stranger” in our own homes, we can with patience and practice rediscover the connections that are always there…the family connections that are uniquely ours…both the healthy and the not-so-healthy…the limiting and the transformative… the connections that enable us to find each other despite all the reasons not to… and thereby find ourselves.
Closing Words (Barbara Pescan) Because
of those who came before, we are; Let
us go remembering to praise,
Want to read more?
For an excellent, easy-to-read introduction to Bowen theory consult:
Roberta M. Gilbert, Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking About Human Interactions, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992)
For a more expansive understanding of the theory consult:
Michael Kerr and Murray Bowen, Family Evaluation, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988)
[1] Quote of Murray Bowen, from Roberta Gilbert, Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking About Human Interactions, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992), p. 119.
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