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Welcome to episode 252 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get into today's episode, I want to ask you if you would help me in two ways. First, if you will share this episode, share this podcast series with somebody you think might be helped as a non-anxious leader. And if you would go on your favorite podcast platform, whether that's Apple or Spotify or something else, and leave a review. It doesn't even have to be a five-star review. Just leave a review because then it helps other people find this podcast. Thanks in advance for helping me out. And now without further ado, let's get into episode 252, How Understanding Symmetry Helps You Manage System Anxiety.

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The concept of symmetry in family systems theory is fairly simple to understand, but more difficult to apply in practice. Symmetry is this. The same cause can produce opposite effects and vice versa. That is, every effect can come from opposite causes. Here are some examples of the same cause causing opposite effects. Parental investment in a child can result in overachievement, that is highly achieving children, or underachievement, that is a child who couldn't care less. Dependency can result in somebody who is helpless, who can never do anything for themselves, or somebody who is controlling, that is, they need to define themselves by actually how well they control others. One that I've often seen in the past is a family who has a lot of smokers can produce a child who is also a smoker or who is vigilantly anti-smoking. And here are some examples of the same effect coming from opposite causes. Somebody who sleeps a lot can either be depressed or contented. Rigid offspring can be produced by an overly rigid parent or an overly flexible parent. Family problems can result from a business success or a business failure. Of course, the same can be true for congregations.

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A narcissistic pastor can produce a congregation that is very docile, that is, they are adaptive, they go along with the leader or a congregation that is aggressive, that is constantly in conflict and is reactive. Likewise, a chronically anxious congregation can result from a pastor who breaches trust or from the departure of a beloved long-tenured pastor. Understanding the concept of symmetry is important because it can help you avoid diagnosis. When things get anxious or start to go astray, it's easy to want to place blame somewhere. But in a systems approach, it's more helpful to look for patterns of anxiety and behavior. Symmetry helps us to understand that we can do this by looking at extremes such as always and never, reactive and adaptive, constant conflict, and peace at all costs. Edwin Friedmann in Generation to Generation contended that anxiety is a zero sum game. When applying the concept of symmetry, if you find something extreme at one end of the spectrum, look for balancing characteristics at the other end. Friedmann likened this to physicists who discovered invisible particles by observing unseen forces and how they influence known particles. This concept of extremes is important because if it is in fact a zero sum game, they come in pairs.

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One pair that hits very close to home to me is the extremes of optimists and pessimists. My wife tells me that I see the world through rose colored glasses, that I'm always optimistic, even to the point of avoidance. This avoidance can also lead to emotional disconnection. On the other hand, my wife has a propensity to worry about what might go wrong. Now, this is an important skill because you need to be prepared for life's invisible challenges. But a challenge can become a problem depending on how you handle things. And the problem for us had to do with raising our children. I was so non-anxious, so lais fair about raising our children that it increased my wife's anxiety. I learned somewhere along the line that if I would worry more, she would worry less. I wasn't perfect at this by all means, but I did get better at showing concern and healthy emotional connection. This helped her to not feel all the responsibility and pressure for raising our children. Some other examples of extremes are when you have a giver and a taker. This can be true in families and congregations. In congregations, I tend to see the giver being a pastor who's trying to please everybody, and there are people who take advantage of that pastor, even to the point of calling the pastor at 10:00 PM to share how their day went.

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This is a real example. Another example of extremes is when you have a pursuer and the pursued. Remember that pursuit and criticism are a push for togetherness. But what is likely to happen when somebody is pursuing is that they vaporize healthy emotional space. And what happens is the pursuer wants to disconnect, wants to get away. So with that brief explanation of the concept of symmetry, let me unpack five principles that Friedmann shares in generation to generation. The first principle is that to the extent that both extremes are present, it will tend to be an uptight area of the system. Going back to my example, childraising was definitely an uptight area of our nuclear family system. We got better as we went along, mainly because I realized I needed to be more emotionally present and engaged. The second principle is that extremes are a zero sum game. That said, I think it's easier to think in terms of 100. In my example, if the total amount of functioning in the system were 100 and I'm worrying at zero, then my wife has to worry at 100. But if I can move to 35 or 40, then she can move to 65 or 60.

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Not completely balanced, but it tends to move the extremes towards the middle. The third principle is that both extremes come from the same source. Again, in my example, the source is raising our children. But this is true for any challenge. It's process, not content. For example, if a denomination is going through a split, this is just a hypothetical example, then the extremes would be those who are overly aggressive and conflictual, that is, reactive, and those who are wanting peace at all cost, that is, adaptives. If the extremes could move toward the middle, that is, if the aggressive ones could be willing to accept the other's positions, and if the adaptive ones could be willing to take healthy stands, then the denomination might have a chance of avoiding a split. The fourth principle is to look for intensity in the system because that's a sign that there are likely extremes. The interesting thing is that intensity can move from one side to the other. So in my example, I could go from being not engaged with my kids to getting reactive and yelling. Instead of going to the middle where I could take a healthy stand and remain emotionally connected, I went to the other side and got reactive.

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The fifth and final principle is, if you see an extreme in the system, the other end is around somewhere. This one is super helpful because it will help you get better at observing patterns in a system. This is akin to the physicist finding unseen particles. You can see certain forces at work, and then you can look for the opposite extreme and where it's coming from. One of the best ways to understand how symmetry works is to look at a case study. Let's do that next. The following case study comes from page 117 of Generation to Generation, and it's called Staying in Touch. A middle age had a younger daughter who seemed to be bothered by any efforts on mother's part to improve communication. She never wrote or phoned, except when she needed something. She was also given to long periods of depression that frightened mother. When asked from where came this need to be in constant touch, mother answered that her own mother, living in a retirement community in Florida, had always urged her to remain friends with her children because she, the grandmother, saw so many women whose children no longer spoke to them.

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It was pointed out to the mother that her family genogram showed a great deal of always staying in touch. Her own sister spoke to all her children every week, and her brother, a builder, had built homes for his sons so they could remain near him. Mother was to explore her own mother's family history for the origins of the pattern. I'm going to stop here and unpack this first part of it, where the mother and the daughter are showing symmetry as pursuer and pursued. And of course, the mother is pursuing because her mother told her to stay in constant touch with her children, and when she did this, her daughter would disconnect. In this case, both extremes are present, and so one is looking for what is possibly the source of this type of functioning, and it's likely that it came from intergenerational transmission. Back to the case study. The mother uncovered the following story. When her mother was a teenager, an older sister had been bitten by a dog. Father took her too late to a doctor who said she would die in a few days from diabetes. Rather than let his wife feel guilty her whole life, it was arranged for the ill child to run away from home, run away from home and, quote-unquote, die in an accident.

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Great grandmother was never told the truth, but grandmother, that is mother's mother, vowed she would always know what was going on with her children, and the anxiety about staying in touch was passed down to the next generation. Supported by this knowledge, mother found it much easier not to pursue her own daughter, who finally did initiate contact several months later. Whereupon the relationship shifted considerably since Mother was no longer the pursuer. To me, there are two important points here that I want to highlight. One is that just looking at the woman's behavior, one might be able to coach her and say, Maybe if you didn't pursue your daughter as much, you might create some healthy emotional space and that would open the possibility for healthy contact when you are no longer the pursuer. This would be applying the concept of symmetry by saying to the mother that by moving away from the extreme, your daughter will likely move away from the other extreme. In other words, you'll move towards the middle, towards healthy emotional space. However, the challenge for the mother is that this is easier said than done. It's easier to say, I'm not going to pursue.

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But in the end, there is something in one's own functioning, in her own functioning that drives her to want to pursue, to stay in contact. And it has to do with what her own mother told her. So the reason for mother to go back to her own mother and ask, Why did you tell me that I needed to stay in touch with my kids? She learns that there is a story behind this. There's a story that has led to this intergenerational transmission, and it has to do with her own mother's older sister being bitten by a dog. The principle here is that understanding the patterns that actually are behind our own functioning behind our own anxiety and our own need to do certain things that maybe aren't healthy in the system, actually frees us to function differently. The concept of symmetry is one of those clues that helps us know where to look and what to try to unpack. That's it for episode 252. You can connect with me at thenon-anxiousleader.com, and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.