FEST Writing Group

The concept of anxiety binders is often used by those using Bowen theory. The concept needs definition, theoretical development, and discussion, in order to have it complement Bowen theory in a productive way.
Anxiety binders are one part of a larger framework of the variety of ways we react to and manage anxiety. These ways include 1) Bowen’s systems ways of managing anxiety. Triangles, family emotional process, cutoff, family projection. 2) anxiety binders. 3) societal projection, societal cutoff, and societal togetherness. 4) placebo beliefs and other beliefs. 5) a focus on goals.
And there are a group of better differentiated ways of managing anxiety. 1) tolerating the experience of anxiety while you proceed with doing other tasks of life. 2) Identifying real threats and then solving them. 3) choosing healthier anxiety binders. 4) pursuing realistic goals that make sense, given the life situations and systems you are a part of.

Anxiety binders
Murray Bowen pointed out the anxiety binding effect which new symptoms can have on a system.
In addition, anxiety binders can be repetitive actions that one fairly automatically takes when anxious or in the presence of system anxiety. Automatically taking this habitual action in response to anxiety directs your attention focus to the action and away from the content of the anxiety. You are distracted from the anxiety and emotionally distanced from the anxiety and its ‘causes’ or triggers. Your perceived anxiety decreases. This can be good or bad; productive or not; self protective or not.
A portion of the anxiety binders also bring with them a direct physiological effect added to the anxiety reducing effect of the repetitive actions. Some examples are meditation, neurofeedback, exercise, dieting, repeated use of psychoactive drugs, any ritualized medical procedure. Anxiety binders all have a systems context. If you are only interested in reducing your individual anxiety and symptoms, they can work very well, provided your anxiety and that of the system you are in is not too extreme and provided that the anxiety binder you have selected does not provoke more anxiety for the system and you.
There are circumstances where that doesn’t work or there are unintended consequences.
Some family process patterns and some anxiety binders can lower your anxiety at the expense of others. That anxiety binder can appear to be successful, as long as you don’t look too carefully at how the larger system is doing. Do you want to bind anxiety by just transferring it to somebody else in the system? If so, be my guest.
With some binders, using them causes a bigger problem than you started out trying to solve. Addictive drugs are one example. Works great in the beginning, but then increasing tolerance requires that you take larger amounts of the drug, in order to get the reduction in perceived anxiety.
All anxiety binders function well with an individual and system that has some decent level of differentiation. That makes a difference in how well the person can manage the anxiety binder. For flexible better differentiation, an anxiety binder is just one option among many for managing anxiety. For lower differentiation, the anxiety binder can become an imprisoning solitary choice. Desperation and panic can easily set in when that single binder is not available.

Some specific anxiety binders

Skills
One very interesting set of anxiety binders is the disciplined practice of a skill. It can be anything; basketball, piano, math skills, meditation, learning a new language, painting, chess, on and on. The repetitive practice is necessary in order to master the skill. At the same time, practice can become a reliable anxiety reducer. People talk about the calm they come to value when they practice. With better differentiated individuals and systems, that calm is an additional benefit of working toward a goal that makes sense for that individual and system. For lower differentiation, practice can become a desperate sanctuary the person flees to when their own anxiety and the chaos of the family become overwhelming.
When you enjoy watching and listening to elite athletes, concert level musicians, or any other person with expert level skills, you can’t tell from just watching the person’s performance of the skill whether this has been achieved from a better differentiated system or from a chaotic family with nasty histories where the goal of becoming highly skilled is a desperate goal.
In better differentiated systems, building a skill and practicing it in a focused way can coexist with an individual and system flexibility which can deal with real threats and tasks without sacrificing the emotional space necessary for the system individuals to differentiate a self. Lower differentiated systems will tend not to have that flexibility. They will either sacrifice others in order to protect the one building expert skills or on the other extreme will sabotage individual efforts to build skills.