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Welcome to Episode 397 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get into today's episode, I want to remind you about two upcoming offerings to grow as a non-anxious leader. The first is What Is a Failure of Nerve, a 4-week book study that runs from September 8th to the 29th. It's every Tuesday for 4 Tuesdays. From 5 to 6:30 PM Eastern Time. The sessions will be recorded if you can't make one or more of them, and the cost is $99. We will dig deep into Edwin Friedman's seminal work, and you will take away a workbook that will help you to lead as a non-anxious presence personally and professionally. The second opportunity starts in October. It is the Differentiated Leader of Family Systems Theory Community of Practice. This is an 8-session community of practice that will meet once a month on the second Monday of each month from 7 to 8:30 PM. Again, the sessions will be recorded if you can't make it in person. This is a free community of practice where we will dig deep into Murray Bowen's family systems theory, and you'll have a chance to ask questions and to discuss it with others who are growing as a non-anxious presence.

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I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. 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 speaking engagements, coaching practice, 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 397, 5 Steps to Rework Your Primary Triangle. Two weeks ago, I did an episode on the primary triangle from your family of origin. If you haven't listened to that episode, I encourage you to do that first. In his book, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Murray Bowen describes a turning point in his teaching. He introduced a stronger focus on the primary triangle, the relationship between a person and their two parents, to his trainees.

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They began to see themselves more clearly and to observe themselves inside those triangles. Without being instructed to do so, they started visiting their parental families and applying the concepts directly. Those visits became a part of the teaching format, and the group quickly showed more maturity in how they understood emotional process, person-to-person relating, and detriangling. What began as a shift in emphasis after a 1967 conference became a new, enduring way of teaching family systems theory. As Bowen watched this unfold, he noticed something unexpected. The residents who engaged most seriously with their own parental triangles were also becoming the strongest clinicians. They reported that family systems stopped being just another theory once they saw it operate in their own families. Their personal experience made the concepts practical and transferable. They could recognize patterns in clinic families because they had already recognized them at home. They could help families avoid unproductive moves because they had confronted these same things in their own relationships. Bowen realized that working on one's own family of origin was not a side activity. It was central to developing clinical competence. An even bigger surprise came later when Bowen asked about their marriages and children.

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He found that these residents had made as much progress in their own current nuclear families as residents who were in formal therapy. They had spontaneously applied what they learned from their parental triangles to their spouses and children. This discovery that personal work in the family of origin naturally improves functioning in the nuclear family and strengthens clinical skill became a turning point in Bowen's professional life. It confirmed that the primary triangle is foundational and the genuine learning in family systems begins with one's own family of origin. Edwin Friedman, of course, in Generation to Generation, applied this to leadership when he said that when you do your own work in your family of origin, it will help you to lead as a non-anxious presence. According to Bowen, with all other things being equal, the life course of people is determined by the amount of unresolved emotional attachment, the amount of anxiety that comes from it, and the way they deal with this anxiety. And it starts with the primary triangle. Before I get into the 5 steps to rework your primary triangle, let's review what that is. The 3 parties in this primary triangle are the child, the person most involved in raising the child, and that caretaker's primary attachment.

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Typically, these 3 parties are the child and the 2 parents. Other possibilities are the child, parent, and another family member, such as a stepparent or grandparent. For the purposes of this podcast, I'll use the term parents. You can apply the principles to your own primary triangle. It's important to note that every child is in a primary triangle with their parents. The question is, in what position are they? The healthiest position is to be on the outside with the parents on the inside position. In other words, the parents relate primarily to each other and the child is on the outside emotionally. This is as it should be. Two families can experience the same level of parental conflict yet raise children who turn out very differently. The key difference isn't the intensity of the fighting, it's whether the child is drawn into the tension as a messenger, confidant, or emotional ally. When a person turns to a child to manage their anxiety, they are bringing the child with them into the inside position of the triangle and putting the other parent on the outside. When this happens, they begin carrying responsibilities that don't belong to them, and those early role confusions often shape how they relate to others later in life.

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The way adults who were triangled as children carry these patterns forward can vary. Some become chronic mediators in their friendships and romantic relationships, always smoothing things over because they learned early that harmony depended on them. Others avoid closeness because that once meant being used as a buffer between the parents. A child who had to soothe a distressed parent often grows into an adult who struggles to express their own needs. Many describe a persistent sense of responsibility for their parents' emotional states. This is a burden that was assigned to them long before they had the capacity to refuse it. These patterns don't just affect the current generation, they echo into the next. Triangling tends to repeat unless someone consciously interrupts it. When an adult recognizes and names the role they were given, they create the possibility of doing something different with their own partners and children. Breaking a longstanding pattern in one generation can prevent it from reappearing in the next, which not only increases one's self-differentiation, it can also increase the emotional health of the system as a whole. The way to do this is to go back to one's own family of origin, to your primary triangle, and rework it.

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This is simple to understand but difficult to do. You are changing your functioning with each of the two people who shaped your earliest emotional patterns. The steps I lay out aren't about confronting your parents, fixing your parents, or healing your childhood. They are about changing your position in the triangle so you can relate as a non-anxious presence, that is, with less reactivity. Creativity, and a greater sense of self. So here are the 5 steps to rework your primary triangle. And as I said, they are simple to understand and difficult to do. Step 1 is to develop a person-to-person relationship with each parent. You work towards a relationship that's based on directness rather than triangling. When you do this, you stop relating to one parent through the other, and you stop functioning as the emotional go-between. This helps you to stop absorbing their anxiety. In practice, this means talking to and/or visiting each parent directly, asking what they think, not what the other parent thinks, and defining yourself with each one separately, calmly, and consistently. This alone will begin to rework the triangle. Step 2 is to share secrets. This is the step that is the hardest for most people, and it's the one that changes the triangle fastest.

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When Murray Bowen's mother wrote him a letter criticizing his father, he wrote to his father and said, quote, "Your wife just told me this story about you, and I wondered why she told me instead of telling you," end quote. Notice the non-anxious and neutral tone of Bowen's letter. His father showed the letter to his mother, and she fussed about not being able to trust him, and the triangle began to loosen. The principle here is straightforward. Triangles depend on secrets, indirectness, and one person carrying information that belongs in the original relationship. When you stop holding secrets, you stop being the third leg of the triangle. This doesn't mean exposing private information or confronting anyone. It means refusing to participate in indirect communication. If one parent tells you something about the other, you redirect it in a non-anxious way. Bowen noted that during this period, his mother accused him of reading too much between the lines, and he replied that she was writing too much between the lines. Notice the response. He didn't argue, didn't agree, and was even a little playful about it. Step 3 is to find new ways to connect. This is about expanding the relationship beyond the old patterns.

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Think of it as shifting from a child-adult to an adult-adult relationship. An example that Bowen shares is that he discovered a part of his father's family that his father had never known about. He arranged 2 trips to visit the land and the old houses. He wrote that the time together was so enjoyable that, quote, there was not time to talk about all the issues that came up automatically. End quote. The relationship deepened, the conversations broadened, and he realized he had never fully understood what a solid person-to-person relationship with his father actually felt like. So how do you get started? Ask a parent about the family history, their childhood, and extended family. Ask them about their work, their losses, and the turning points in their life. This is more art than science. You might not be sure which topics will get them talking, so it's important to keep trying until they do. These conversations create new pathways for connection that aren't built on the anxiety of old roles. When you relate to a parent as a full human being, not just as the parent in your childhood triangle, the system will change for the better. Step 4 is to take advantage of anxious moments.

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This is the step that most requires you to be a non-anxious presence. Bowen wrote, quote, the overall goal is to be constantly in contact with an emotional issue involving two other people and self without taking sides, without counter-attacking or defending self, and to always have a neutral response. End quote. When anxiety is higher, the challenge is to stay present and neutral without getting defensive or aggressive. Bowen also warned that going silent is often perceived as an emotional response. That is, it is a form of distancing. Illness, death, homecomings, and holidays are the times when the family's chronic anxiety rises to the surface. These are times that, if you are present, you have a chance to rework your primary triangle. When the system is calm, it's easy to keep emotional issues buried, but when anxiety rises, the patterns become visible, and that's the time to practice new functioning—to be in the system without getting absorbed by it. If there's no natural emotional issue, Bowen advised introducing small ones from the past, not to stir conflict, but to create a context in which you can relate thoughtfully rather than reactively. This is because self-differentiation is only possible around an emotional issue.

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You need something real to work with. I'll unpack what this might look like in the next episode. For now, I'll say that whether you are introducing an issue that increases anxiety or going to one where this will naturally occur, you need to be prepared. It's essential to identify the response patterns of those involved and to prepare your non-anxious responses. If you can't do this alone, then work with a therapist, a coach, or a group of others who are also doing their own work. They will help you recognize these patterns and roleplay your responses. Step 5 is to keep it to yourself and do it only for yourself. This is the step that protects the whole effort of reworking your primary triangle. Bowen wrote, quote, "From long experience, I have found that a differentiating effort routinely fails if anyone else knows anything about it. To discuss the plan with another person who is part of the system invites a certain failure," end quote. The thing to remember here is you are not doing this to fix the family, to change your parents, or to get credit from others in the system. You're doing it to change your own functioning.

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If you share your plan with someone else in the system, you pull them into the triangle. If you share it with someone outside the system, you risk shifting your effort from self-definition to emotional validation. This work has to come from within you, and when you keep it to yourself, you are emphasizing that you are taking responsibility for self. Reworking your primary triangle is not a project, it's a way of relating. It's a shift in how you define yourself, how you stay connected, and how you manage your own reactivity. When you develop direct relationships, stop holding secrets, find new ways to connect, stay present in anxious moments, and keep your effort grounded in your own functioning, you grow in your self-differentiation. But before you get started doing this, you need to understand that you can't rework your primary triangles unless you understand how to deal with interlocking triangles. I'll cover that in the next episode. That's it for episode 397. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and you can 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.

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Thanks in advance. For your help. Until next time, go be yourself. Thank you for listening.

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