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Welcome to Episode 137 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama, and today's episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 59, which is chapter four of my book. If you met my family, you'd understand a Family Systems Primer. And the chapter title is Triangles. If you don't understand Triangles, you will have a difficult time being a non Anxious presence. You will have a difficult time growing a self differentiated leader if you weren't aware. All ten chapters of the book are available in podcast Episodes 56 through 65, and that makes a great segway in that.

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The next section of a study group on this book will begin on Tuesday, September 28. The Family Systems Book Study will be every Tuesday evening at 07:00 p.m.. Eastern Daylight Time and will run through December 14th. It's led by Dr. Brian Ivory, who has led the first two sections of this book study, and he does amazing visuals that help describe the concepts that I cover in my book. If you want to learn Family Systems theory, this is the way to do it. It is free to join.

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It takes place in the Non-Anxious Leader Network, which is also free to join. I will include a link to get you into the course in the show notes, and now without further Ado, here is Episode 137, Triangles, what they are, how they work and how to manage them.

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You can change yourself and you can change the situation, but you absolutely cannot change other people, only they can do that. Joanna Trollop A triangle occurs when two people become uncomfortable in their relationship and they focus on another person or issue to stabilize it. For example, when two spouses are uncomfortable in their relationship, they might focus on the work of one of the spouses. As the third side of the triangle, one spouse may work long hours while the other spouse complains about it. By focusing on the work, they avoid having to deal with their own relationship.

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This also highlights the example that a triangle does not have to include three people. It can be any combination of persons and issues. If all change is lost and somebody finds a replacement for that loss before they have a chance to grieve, that is a triangle between the person what is lost and the replacement. The most stable form of relationship. Murray Bowen, the pioneer of family systems theory, believe the triangle to be the most stable form of human relationship. This is because a two person relationship is inherently unstable.

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Why? Because the best we can hope for is to be self differentiated 70% of the time, and most of us function that way less than 50% of the time. When people are not functioning in self differentiated ways, they are less willing to take responsibility for themselves. They are unable to tolerate tension in their relationship before resorting to Triangling a third person, or issue for stability. This ultimately leads to triangles. There is a paradox in triangles, they are more stable than a two person relationship, but they can create an odd person out.

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People don't like being excluded. The anxiety generated by this kind of exclusion makes triangles both explosive and difficult to break. In the example, given the odd person out is the spouse who feels excluded by the others investment in her work. This creates tension and can ultimately lead to conflict. It can also lead to emotional withdrawal. Each of these is a response to being excluded via emotional triangle. If the triangle is used to stabilize an uncomfortable relationship, there are several ways this can occur. One is when a person feels like they need more attention or approval from the other and reacts automatically in immature ways.

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In this example, the spouse who feels excluded erupts in anger every time the other comes home late from work. Instead of self differentiating and saying how he would like to spend more time with his wife, he focuses on his wife's job. Another is when someone has unrealistic expectations of herself or another. In our example, the wife might be using her work to bolster her own self image. Instead of being comfortable in her own skin that is, being self differentiated, she uses the external motivation of succeeding in her work to justify herself.

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Conversely, she might have unrealistic expectations of her husband but can't express herself so she buries herself in her work. People are a mess, and we use endless ways to avoid dealing with our own issues. Nobody gets the problem they can handle. Another is difficulty in maintaining appropriate boundaries. When one is feeling stress or tension, she might distance herself from the other or become overly intrusive with the other. In our example, the wife could have initially used her job to distance from her husband, or the husband might have allowed his own anxiety to spill into their relationship the first time she came home late from work.

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Either of these could have occurred first. Both could be occurring to maintain the triangle. She comes home late, he reacts. She distances herself even more to avoid dealing with him. Did I mention the people are a mess? Either of these responses is subconsciously intended to relieve anxiety, but instead they increase the discomfort in the relationship, which can result in forming than maintaining a Triangle. Here are some other examples of triangles. One example is two spouses and a child to avoid self differentiating with each other. One of the parents, typically the mother, fulfills the unmet emotional needs from her spouse by investing in her child.

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This leaves the husband on the outside, who usually be supportive of the over involvement. In this case, the mother's over functioning with the child is complemented by the father's under functioning. Another form of parent-child triangle occurs when both parents focus all their efforts on developing a skill or talent in a child this could be dance, music, sports, or academics. Fill in the blank. It's process, not content, which I'll unpack in the next chapter. It is their focus on their child that stabilizes their relationship with each other.

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A second example is a parent and two children. The parent is not comfortable with self differentiating with either of the children, so she calls one whenever she has a problem with the other. Tell your brother that I don't like how he is handling the family business, or did you know your sister is letting her son do whatever he wants? Or I'm really angry that your brother is choosing to go to his wife's house for Christmas instead of being with us. You get the picture again. The content can be anything.

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It's process, not content. And the process is the inability to deal with one's own anxiety in a self differentiated way resulting in an emotional triangle. You can't change the relationship of others. A guiding principle of emotional triangles is that you can't change a relationship to which you don't belong. You probably have learned by now that you can't change other people. This applies to triangles. In the first example, where the husband is complaining about the amount of time his wife spends working, the complaints will likely not change the situation.

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In fact, the more time he spends trying to convince her to work less, the more likely it will be that she doesn't. This is an example of another principle of emotional triangles. When you try to change the relationship of the other two sides of a triangle and not only strengthens the triangle, but you also will end up with the stress of the situation. The husband will be the one who is feeling left out. The wife will be fine because she has her work to distract her.

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Paradoxically, if he got out of the triangle in between his wife and her work, he might have a chance. We'll cover that in more depth in the next chapter, so it won't be the wife who works too much that feels the stress. It will be the husband who complains. This will likely result in a workaholic wife and a husband who dysfunctions in some other way, which leads to the final principle of triangles, which is that triangles interlock. When the complaining spouse gets tired of complaining about his wife's work, he will find something else to do to stabilize that relationship.

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Perhaps he will focus on complaining about his pastor, or maybe he will turn to drinking. The least likely thing he will do is to take responsibility for himself. This final point is our first clue and understanding how to deal with triangles.

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Dealing with triangles the best way to avoid a triangle is to take responsibility for yourself and nobody else. This is the essence of self differentiation. But remember, self differentiation includes both self definition, which is taking responsibility for oneself and emotional connection, which is the presence part of being a non-anxious presence. When someone is Triangling you. A helpful way to look at it is to think she is uncomfortable with this other relationship. So she is triaging me. By doing this, you can avoid taking it personally and avoid trying to fix the situation.

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Either action would draw you into the triangle. The second thing you can do is to give her back responsibility for her problem. Instead of taking on her anxiety, you can give it back. Let's say that a coworker comes to you and complains about another coworker. Alarm should be going off in your head. She is defining your coworker, not defining herself. She is not acting in self differentiated ways. She is not comfortable with her relationship with your coworker, so she is coming to you. Here are some things you could say to give the problem back to her.

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Sounds like you really have a problem. You're really struggling with this. Have you told her how you feel? The best thing you can do is not argue and not agree. If you argue with her, you are basically trying to convince her that she's wrong about the other. If you agree with her, you've been brought into the triangle as an accomplice. I'll go into this further. In chapter seven, I recently had a colleague text me to say he had received a snarky email from someone he served with on a committee he wrote, I realized that she was defining me, not herself.

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What he understood was that when someone is defining you, she is avoiding something in herself. Recognizing this process is essential to avoiding triangles and responding to them in a healthy way. That's the focus of the next chapter. Questions for Reflection, how do you handle an uncomfortable relationship? Are you able to take responsibility for yourself or do you triangle someone or something else? How are others Tri Angling? You? What can you do to stay connected to those who triangle you without trying to change them?

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That's it for episode 137. Don't forget to go to thenonanxiousleader.com to find more resources on how to be a non-anxious presence. And also don't forget the Family Systems Book Study starting on September 28. You can find out more information at network.thenonanxiousleader.com or you can go ahead and join using the link that is in the show notes until next time. Thanks and goodbye.

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