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Welcome to episode 395 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get into the episode, I want to let you know about two opportunities to learn and grow with others that are coming up this fall. The first, I think you've heard, is What Is a Failure of Nerve? It's a 4-week book study every Tuesday from September 8th to the 29th at 5 to 6:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time. I am going to break down Friedman's seminal work. The cost is $99 and each session will be recorded if you can't make it in person. Also, starting in October, the Differentiated Leader: A Family Systems Theory Community of Practice will begin. It will be 8 sessions on Monday night, the second Monday of each month from 7 to 8:30 PM Eastern Time. And it is free. This is an opportunity to go deeper into Bowen theory. Each session, we will have a brief presentation on an aspect of Bowen theory, and then we will have time for Q&A and discussion as a community of practice. I will put a link to both opportunities in the show notes so you can find out more about it and sign up.

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And if you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions comments, and suggestions for future episodes. And you can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com where you can find out about my coaching practice, speaking engagements, books that I've written, and courses that I offer. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter and get your free AI family systems coach at the website or at the links in the show notes. Finally, if you would like to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you can get more information and sign up at the link in the show notes. Thanks in advance for your consideration. And now, without further ado, here is episode 395, 3 Ways Your Primary Triangle Influences Your Functioning. A coaching client asked me what Murray Bowen meant when he said the triangle is the most stable form of relationship. It doesn't mean that two people can't have a relationship without triangling in a third person or issue, at least at at times. It does mean that because people only differentiate half of the time at best, and most people self-differentiate about a third of the time or less, that triangling is the go-to human response when there is anxiety, tension, or discomfort between two people.

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It's important to note that even when two people are more differentiated, increases in stress and anxiety in the relationship can make triangling more likely. Sometimes, maybe often, they handle things directly, but when things get really difficult, they are more likely to triangle to stabilize things. Bowen wrote,"The triangle between self and parents is the most important primary triangle in life and the one in which a person develops the triangle relationship patterns that remain relatively fi xed in all relationships." In other words, when you are stressed, when you're experiencing anxiety and triangling is your go-to to stabilize a relationship, it's going to be influenced by your primary triangle. Now, this primary triangle is typically the child and two parents, but the more generic way to describe it is it is the child, their primary caregiver, and that caregiver's primary attachment. For example, in a single-parent family, it could be a child, the child's mother, and the child's mother's mother. The primary triangle is the place where you first learn the relationship patterns you'll carry into adulthood. The level of anxiety in the three relationships in the primary triangle and the way each person reacts to that anxiety shapes how an adult child later responds to a spouse, to children, and to other important people.

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This primary triangle influences emotional development in 3 ways. First, it shapes your level of differentiation. Through everyday interactions with the 2 people who raised you, you learn—sometimes well, sometimes not so well—how to integrate thinking and feeling, and how to be a self while staying responsibly connected to others. Here's an example. A child grows up with two parents who relate to each other in a fairly steady way. They can talk through differences without pulling the child into the middle. They encourage the child to think for themselves, to name what they want, and to manage their own emotions without making them responsible for the parents' emotions. In that kind of triangle, the child gradually learns how to integrate thinking and feeling, how to be a self and stay emotionally connected. They can stay connected to their parents without losing themselves in the process. They develop a more solid sense of self because the triangle gives them room to practice being an individual while still being a part of the family. Now imagine a different triangle. One parent is more reactive and the other tends to smooth things over. Because of this, the child learns to read the emotional temperature in the home and adjusts themselves accordingly.

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Maybe they become the easy one who doesn't make waves, or the helpful one who tries to keep everyone calm. They stay connected, but at the cost of their own self-definition. Thinking and feeling don't work together as well because they're busy managing the emotional intensity around them. In that triangle, it's harder to develop a solid sense of self. The child learns connection, but not individuality. In each of these examples, the children grew up loving their parents, and they grew up doing the best they could in the triangle they were given, but the level of differentiation they carry into adulthood is shaped by those everyday interactions—how much room they had to think, feel, and define themselves while staying emotionally connected to the people who raised them. Now let's go to the other extreme, from emotional intensity to distance. Picture a child growing up in a family where the parents relate to each other with a lot of distance. They aren't in conflict, but they aren't especially engaged with one another either. Each parent handles life mostly on their own. They care about the child, but they don't spend much time helping the child think through decisions or talk through emotions.

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The triangle is quiet, but it's thin. In that environment, the child learns to operate independently very early. They figure things out for themselves because that's what the triangle requires. They become self-sufficient, maybe even competent beyond their years, but they don't get much practice staying connected while also staying themselves. Thinking and feeling develop in parallel tracks rather than in conversation with the people raising them. As an adult, they may be good at standing on their own two feet. They may make decisions easily and handle stress without leaning on others, but when relationships require both self-definition and connection at the same time, naming what they think while staying emotionally present, they may feel less sure of themselves. The triangle taught them individuality, but not emotional connection. I will say that this is the primary triangle that I resonate with. It's not that my parents didn't love me, but they gave me a lot of freedom and they didn't show me a lot of things about growing up. I realize when I understand how primary triangles work, that this is why I'm very good at self-definition, but emotional connection is harder for me, and I've had to work on that over the years.

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The second way that your primary triangle influences how you function as an adult is in how much chronic anxiety you absorb. Chronic anxiety grows when you depend heavily on relationships for stability, or emotional regulation. The more you rely on others for a sense of security, the more fear you carry about change in closeness, distance, or your position inside or outside a triangle. An example would be a child growing up in a home where one parent leans heavily on the child for emotional steadiness. Maybe the parent feels uncertain in the marriage, or maybe they're simply more comfortable turning to the child rather than to their spouse. Over time, the child learns to monitor that parent's mood, to stay close when the parent seems uneasy, and to pull back when the parent seems irritated or overwhelmed. On the surface, it looks like closeness, but underneath it's a high level of dependency. The child's sense of stability becomes tied to how the parent is doing in the moment. When the parent is calm, the child relaxes. When the parent is tense, the child tightens up. This is how chronic anxiety begins to grow. The child becomes more sensitive to small shifts in closeness or distance.

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Did I upset them? Are they pulling away? Do I need to move closer? Am I on the inside or the outside right now? None of this is conscious. It's just how the triangle teaches the child to regulate themselves through the relationship. That same pattern can show up in adult relationships with a heightened sensitivity to changes in tone, a fear of disconnection, or a tendency to overfunction when someone else is uneasy. The third way the primary triangle influences adult functioning is through the way parents project their own anxieties toward a child. When a parent channels more attention toward the child and less toward a spouse, themselves, or another sibling, that child absorbs the intensity. Over time, the child may operate with more chronic anxiety, with less ability to integrate thinking and feeling, and with a less solid sense of self than the parents. Bowen called this the family projection process. Bowen also noted that anxiety is neither evenly nor fairly distributed in any relationship system. When there is more than one child, it is likely that one will get more focus than the others. That attention is less a blessing than a curse. Here's an example: one parent carries a lot of worry about work, about the marriage, about life in general.

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Instead of dealing with that tension directly with their spouse or managing it within themselves, they turn toward the child. They check on the child constantly, correct them frequently, or worry out loud about how the child is doing. None of it looks dramatic, but the parent's anxiety is now flowing toward the child rather than toward the other relationships in the triangle. Over time, the child absorbs that intensity. They become more alert to the parent's mood, more cautious about making mistakes, and more focused on staying in the parent's good graces. Thinking and feeling don't work together as smoothly because the child is busy managing the parent's tension. Their sense of self is shaped more by their parent's anxiety than their own sense of self-definition. This is the family projection process that Bowen described, a parent's unresolved anxiety landing on a child who then carries more chronic anxiety and less freedom to be a self than the parent ever intended. I am the youngest of 3 siblings. The oldest is my brother and the middle is my sister, and my brother was the focus of my parents' anxiety, especially my mother's. And so it wasn't that they were not caring about me.

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It wasn't that their distance from me was that they didn't love me. It was more that the focus was on him. This actually made life harder for him. And in that projection process, he rebelled, which is typically what happens. One of the parents or both of the parents focuses on a child out of fear that something is wrong with the child. Parent then interprets the child's behavior as confirming the fear, and the parent treats the child as if something is really wrong with the child. That's what happens in the projection process. What it meant for me was that I was not the one where the anxiety was focused. And because there was more emotional distance, it helped me to learn to self-define. But as I've mentioned, I've had to work on emotional connection over the years. And I think what this illustrates is that even within a nuclear family, the primary triangle will function differently for different children. I often say that family systems theory helps you understand what makes you tick without blaming yourself or others. Understanding your primary triangle is not about blaming your primary caregivers. That would be avoiding taking responsibility for self.

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Rather, the more you understand, the better chance you have to rework the relationships in your primary triangle from adult-child to adult-adult. Adult. I'll cover that in the next episode. That's it for episode 395. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com and find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. And if you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who would benefit and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks in advance for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.