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Welcome to Episode 119 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama, and we are going to get right into today's episode on four automatic responses to system anxiety.

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I learned of these four responses in a lecture I heard recently by Andrea Maloney

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Schara, who worked with Murray Bowen at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family at Georgetown University back in the 1970s and 80s. As you probably know, Murray Bowen is the founder of Family Systems Theory. One of its most significant findings is that because we are relational beings, we cannot separate our own functioning from that of the system. This idea of an emotional field where people are sensitive to one another, automatically acting on relationship cues in the system.

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These things develop as patterns. Over time they become habits, if you were, and we become automatons. We become people who respond automatically to certain stimuli.

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A key understanding for leadership is that then when we are outside our own family of origin in other relationship systems like a congregation or organization, those same types of stimuli, these same patterns of anxiety can trigger the same automatic responses in us. This is why self-regulation becomes so important.

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According to Andrea Schara, Bowen described family patterns as the way he saw how anxiety moves through a system. Think about that. When we look at patterns of behavior in a system, we are looking at how anxiety is transmitted, how anxiety moves through the system.

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Schara made a statement in this lecture that I attended that really struck me, and that is anxiety is distributed unfairly in any system. As I listened to this, I thought of a situation that we are going through in my own family of origin. My mother is 97. She will be 98 next month. Up until last March, she was living in a retirement community about an hour and 20 minutes from me. And my sister lives about an hour on the other side of where my mother was living.

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Early in 2020, we decided we did not want her living in a retirement community with a nursing home attached because of covid. Remember. At the time we did not know the risks completely. But we went and got her out of there. And since March 9th of 2020, she has been living alternately with my sister and with us. Last fall we convinced her to sell her apartment.

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Now, I can't attest to the exact timing of this, but what I do know is over this past year, my mother has gotten more critical of my sister. I have heard her use a tone of voice with her that she doesn't use with me. My sister has confided in me that there are times when it's very difficult for her to have our mother around because of the way that she criticizes. Remember Schara's statement? Anxiety is not distributed fairly. It is distributed unfairly.

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Something is going on in our system, most likely to do with my mother's transition from being independent and on her own in an apartment to now living with her children. That has changed the dynamic. We know that all change is loss and loss results in grief. Grief tends to create a situation where anxiety may be more present. The question is, what are the four automatic responses to the presence of system anxiety?

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The first automatic response to system anxiety is emotional distance. It is natural to want to pull away from somebody who is unleashing or spreading anxiety towards you, whether it is in the form of criticism or complaining about somebody else.

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It is natural to want to withdraw, which creates emotional distance. In my sister's case. The criticism from my mother makes her less likely to want to connect with her. And in my case, I might want to distance myself from my sister because it's not my problem and I don't really want to have to deal with it. Now I know better than that. And I have tried to be supportive of my sister, but I also know that I can't get involved in the triangle.

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I can't go to my mom and tell her to try to treat my sister better. That would only have the effect of engaging my mother in a conflict of wills with me about whether she treats my sister well enough or not, and that would make it even less likely that the situation would get better. Going back to this idea of creating distance, if my sister withdraws from my mother, that would create more anxiety. If I withdraw from my sister, that would create more anxiety. I know in my situation what I need to do is stay connected with my sister and stay connected with my mom (separately) without getting involved in the triangle.

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It's also important to understand that denial is a form of emotional distance. When we are in denial about something, we automatically create emotional distance because we are not engaging reality for what it is, and denial will increase anxiety, as well. So regardless of how emotional distance is increased, when it is increased so much that it becomes unhealthy, it increases the anxiety in the system, which can lead to the second type of automatic reaction, and that is conflict.

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The other way that my sister could respond to my mother's criticism would be to defend herself or to even lash back in reactive behavior, but we know that this would create a conflict of wills, and that is never helpful. Conflict is most likely to occur when we are unable to self-regulate our own reactivity, when we are in an anxious situation and we lash back at somebody else's anxiety.

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If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that that is not going to be helpful. It's going to increase anxiety in the system and make it hard for people to function in healthy ways. As a leader, it will make it harder for you to function as a non-anxious presence, so neither emotional distance nor conflict are going to be helpful.

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But both are automatic responses that people will tend to turn to without thinking. I find it helpful to reflect on what my automatic responses are. Just by understanding it, just by having that self-awareness, it makes it easier to be more intentional in situations where I'm likely to become reactive, where I'm likely to respond automatically.

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The third automatic response to system anxiety is reciprocity. This is where one person is dominant and the other is more submissive. So you might think of this in terms of somebody who is using their anxiety to try to overfunction and then somebody whose automatic response to that anxiety is adaptivity.

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If my sister were to respond to my mom through reciprocity, she would adapt by just putting up with what my mom says and without taking a stand for herself. Fused relationships are often characterized by this kind of reciprocity where one person is dominant and the other is submissive. That's not the case here.

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I've encountered multiple situations where young adult women end up in serious conflict with their mothers because they have been in this reciprocal relationship most of their lives, always being a good daughter. But when they try to become their own person, it creates conflict and anxiety in these situations. I've coached the young women to move closer by taking non-anxious emotional stands to define themselves. So notice, don't distance. Don't get in conflict, but move closer, stay connected and take non-anxious emotional stance. The end result has been that after a period of time where the mother's anxiety increases, gets even worse, the relationship moved to a new and better place where mother was able to accept daughter as an adult.

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The fourth automatic response to system anxiety is projection onto others. This most often takes the form of child focus. In fact, at the Bowen Center, the definition of projection involves intense focus on a child. They lay out three steps for this kind of child focus, this kind of projection. The first is an overly intense focus on the child fearing that something is wrong with the child. The second step is that the child's behavior confirms the parent's fear. And the third step is the parent then treats the child as if there is something really wrong with the child.

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In other words, it is the intense focus on the child that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This intense focus comes out of the parent not being able to deal with their own anxiety from other parts of the system, and they project onto the child. It is a form of triangling and it is very, very common among parents and among families.

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In fact, Edwin Friedman has an entire chapter in Generation to Generation on child-focused families. As I mentioned, projection often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the intensity of a parent's focus on their child makes it almost impossible for the child to function in healthy ways. This results in the child acting out to get some emotional space, which will make the parent even more anxious.

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Now I use the example of my mom and my sister to illustrate the possible automatic responses to system anxiety. Fortunately, my sister is reflective. She is a thoughtful person. She understands how some of this works. And so she's been trying to work through it with self-awareness and intentionality and we have conversations about it. I'm not able to coach my sister. I'm too close to the situation, but I will offer what I think might be helpful suggestions.

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Regardless, these automatic responses are things that we want to avoid. These are the things that, if we understand could happen because we are not thinking, we are not self-regulating, we are not self-aware and intentional, then the question is, what can we do to avoid the automatic response? How can we respond instead to system anxiety?

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Of course, you know the answer to that question, the first thing to do is to self-regulate. I've done enough episodes on self-regulation that you can look those up. You can learn how to pause, to reframe the moment, to breathe, how to manage your anxiety in a way that you can then have a thoughtful and healthy response to system anxiety.

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More importantly, the goal here is to remain a non-anxious presence; to be non-anxious, to regulate your own anxiety, but to be present, to be emotionally present, to stay connected and if necessary, to be able to self-defined, to be able to say what you believe, even in the midst of the anxiety that is going on.

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Some of what is going on with my mom came to light recently as we were talking to her about an offer that was received on her apartment. She started talking about how she doesn't want to be a burden on us and she doesn't want us to see her when she is failing, when she is going to be needing assistance, changing her clothes and bathing. And maybe she's incontinent and we have to change her diapers. We talked about all of that.

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She talked about how it was going to be hard on us and we shouldn't have to take care of her. These are all roundabout ways of her expressing her own grief. Her saying maybe I don't really want to live with you, maybe I don't really want to give up my own place. But we had already decided as her children that we didn't think she should live alone and she had agreed to sell the place.

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It's natural to have second thoughts. It's natural to grieve over that change. And so those are things that understanding family process, understanding systems, thinking I can try to respond in ways that will help move things forward.

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One thing I have done is to try to reason with her and tell her that she should be staying with her children. But I realize that engages in the content. Remember, this is an emotional process, not content. So if I engage in that and try to convince her that she should agree with us, I'm engaging in a conflict of wills.

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And that's important to remember that even when we've studied this for a long time, even when we've practiced this, there are going to be times when we don't get it right. In in these situations, there are times when I don't get it right, where I get involved in the content with my mom about this situation.

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In other instances, I've kept my wits about me, and I know that one of the first things I need to do is to connect, is to remain emotionally connected. So I'm able to respond empathetically. "I know this is hard, Mom, but we are glad to have you." So notice that I am connecting with her emotionally. But I'm also expressing my own position, which is we want to have her here with us. I've also been able to take a non-anxious emotional stand and say, "You know what, Mom, I know you may not want to do this. I know this is hard, but please understand that being in a nursing home will be harder for us than you being here."

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We know this to be true because my father-in-law was a stroke victim. We cared for him alternately for over three years. And the times that he was in a hospital or rehab were difficult because you have to go there on a regular basis. Sometimes every day, every other day. We would much rather have my mother in the home with us and perhaps bring in help if we need to.

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And then finally, I've been able to use paradox and playfulness. When my mom will say something like, "You are not going to want me here when I can't care for myself. What are you going to do then?" And I will say something like, "Well, we'll just put you out on the curb then." That actually does draw a pretty big smile from her. The idea here is that by understanding the automatic responses to system anxiety, we are better able to then develop thoughtful responses, healthy responses, responses that don't increase the anxiety, but actually reduce the anxiety level in the system.

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You can transfer this to your leadership. In any relationship system, whether it's a congregation or organization, there are going to be similar kinds of system anxiety. Make sure that you don't respond with distance or conflict or reciprocity or projection onto a staff or team member. Instead, think about how you can remain a non-anxious presence, how you can connect empathetically, how you can self-define in a non-anxious way, how you can be playful and paradoxical. If you can do those things, you can be the kind of leader that helps people develop their own healthy responses. That's what non-anxious leaders do.