FEST Writing Group

Are you curious about the family you live in?

One way to see how one’s system operates is by drawing up the family diagram. The questions Dr. Andres posed when I began the supervision portion of my postgraduate training started to shift my perspective—these family deaths were not just isolated losses. A system was operating—acting and reacting, and in its most basic form, quietly influencing each of us to move closer or to run away.

Death alters relationships in ways that are not always obvious. People might say, “Oh, you experienced a death, so now you are grieving.” But that explanation never really helped me understand the chain reaction a death can set off within a family. Stress seeps into important relationships, often unnoticed, shaping interactions without awareness. I think of dominoes—one falls and the others, who are vulnerable, may follow too and the connections are not always obvious. In my family, the system’s reactivity to successive deaths contributed to more distance, making real connection even more challenging.

Perhaps, by looking at death through a systems lens, it becomes possible to reduce one’s own reactivity and work toward deeper, more meaningful relationships with all kinds of people. The ways families manage death is different from all other challenges to the family dynamics–it’s about a permanent loss and the unresolved issues that surface.

Fortunately, I learned a little bit of systems theory and was able to step back—to observe rather than be completely hijacked by the emotional currents that were swirling about. Maybe the past does not, or cannot control one as much if one can see the emotional process and its mechanisms at work. The more I recognized these patterns playing out in families, not just in my little “special” family, the less reactive I became to the need to be part of the family ego mass.

I found new ways of relating to my family and it was not easy to maintain myself in the midst of highly charged togetherness. Observing the emotional process made me feel sick, as I realized that I, too, was part of the way one person was focused on and carrying the symptoms for the family, absorbing the anxiety in the system. Seeing the system itself—rather than just reacting to it—opens a different pathway forward.

Storm Brewing and Butch
I was unaware of the impact of the family deaths on myself, let alone on Butch. He had been busy building his own life and living part-time even further away than our mother—in his new “motherland”, Australia. He would return to Virginia Beach in the spring and summer, and in the fall and winter, he surfed where it was warm. “Accidentally” or “on purpose”, he was distant from the family for extended periods of time. Butch would say, “I have my own life. I wouldn’t change anything about my life given the chance.” He seemed so certain that I and everyone else were the problem. And in a way, he wasn’t entirely wrong. The evidence of me trying to change Butch to be how my grandparents wanted him to be, was part of what was making me sick.

Butch was a character. His friends admired him. He appeared in surfing movies and had his surf shop for a few years. Making friends with a flight attendant, he was freer to travel without worrying about money. He appeared to be good at figuring out how not to work and seemed to be good with numbers, but getting along with people was a bigger part of the problem, and he was often having difficulty relating to women.

“Punkin, what do women want? I go out to a bar, meet a good-looking woman, we smoke cigarettes, drink some beer, go back to my place, have sex, and in the morning, the woman says, ‘When are you gonna quit smoking and drinking beer in the afternoon?’ And I say, ‘Never.’ I do not understand women. They like you at night and in the morning, they want you to change.” 

I hadn’t realized how out of touch Butch was from our family. There’s appeared to be a disconnect between what the family expected and how Butch was functioning. For example, it took him nine years to finish college, and for a long time, I just saw that as his struggle. But now, I was seeing and thinking that he might be reacting to the emotional current running underneath everything—something no one talked about, but that was shaping all of us. I was seeing that perhaps these delays weren’t personal; they were part of the emotional field we were all swimming in. The pressure in the system was real, even if it was unspoken.

After graduating, he started working as a teacher. I thought he was going to be fine, but I could not see how the anxiety in the family was shifting toward him—mostly because he was so distant and led an unusual lifestyle far from the Country Club people he was supposed to play golf with. Eventually, Butch was fired from his teaching job for laying his hands on others, claiming to be able to heal them, which “scared people to death.” It was not until Butch became Jesus that I realized things were totally out of control, and I could not communicate well with him about the reality of the situation that we were both in. 
  
Interrupting the Family Commands: Dragging A Fish Across the Road
After a little over a year and a half into my studies at GUFC, I had gained a better understanding of family relationships. I could see and write about my life; I was becoming a bit more objective. As I began to understand the profound ideas around the nuclear family as an emotional unit, I saw the constant adjustments by people in my family to the stressors. There is it was—the anxiety from the past and/or the fear of the future.  Who was going to deal with it?
   
Dr. Bowen called the system that “we” are a part of “the family emotional force field.” Going along with others is expected. With my new knowledge, my goal was to subvert these automatic expectations that told me what to do and what to say. I wanted to disrupt the anticipated and predictable flow of these uptight conversations. If I could pull it off, I would be slightly altering the family system’s wired-in set of responses. This was my radical act of self-definition—an effort to interrupt and rewire the automatic emotional circuitry of the family by shifting my functioning. Drawing attention to the emotional process in the family was the goal. What people were going to do about it would be the mystery.

I began to notice something: as people told me their stories of woe, they almost always had to repeat them. It was like watching mice running in a wheel—spinning, complaining, going nowhere. I could hear the familiar emotional back-and-forth. The repetition was so automatic it seemed like no one even noticed they were stuck repeating. I observed that I was part of this stimulus-response world.

After thinking about this, I began to hypothesize that if I could get out of responding in such a predictable way, then whomever I was talking to might benefit. In thinking about this, I recalled how Dr. Bowen used reversals in the letters to his family, which shocked them. My hunch was that if I worked on being more separate, something new might emerge. A surprise. A different way of thinking and doing something about the part I was playing.

When I noticed something strange or unexpected in the repeated stories, and if I said something about it, a few people would object. The “the mice” would sometimes stop and look at me. Some would get mad, and I had to be ready for that. Sometimes I said nothing, just managing the upset. Other times I would gently point out that their story was going round and round. I was just dropping in a different thought—like putting a stick into the wheel—to make it stop spinning.

I wondered, “Would this interruption give enough emotional space for people to observe what was going on, that they were repeating the story of rejection or of entangled love over and over? Could I interrupt the automatic flow of anxiety?” Often, I observed that these kinds of interruptions would free people up to think differently about the problems they were living with, and I became more aware of the importance of managing myself. Over time, I found ways to decrease my emotional reactivity. I became more neutral, not getting as mad or going silent. I’d put in oddball ideas and loosen myself up.

In doing this kind of field research, I considered this interrupting as a theoretically driven shock to an anxious system. I was making an effort to shed light on how people, me included, become trapped in repeating what appeared to be wired-in responses to keep things the same. Were they passed down like primitive reflexes through unspoken rules and an instinctive emotional history? This constant repetition of old information may have been hindering self-development. For some, it’s enough just to repeat. But for others, who realized they could think and speak differently, interruptions can be challenging yet liberating.

As I observed the usefulness of this interrupting method, surprising shifts began to emerge. I started to see new ways to change my part in the system—how I listened, how I responded, how much I tried to manage or explain. From a systems perspective, these shifts weren’t about personality—they were about patterns, roles, and emotional circuitry shaped over generations. Then, to some extent, as I changed how I related, others began to shift too. The conversations weren’t entirely predictable. People paused. Defensiveness softened. The urge to convince or fix others diminished and I was seeing what had always been there.

What was at stake was clear: if I didn’t shift my functioning, I’d be stuck in the same patterned conversations, trapped in a trance of politeness, with genuine connection just out of reach. My goal wasn’t to persuade the other—it was more about maintaining integrity. I wanted to listen and think with another, while monitoring my level of reactivity.

I often referred to these interruptions which broke up the automatic patterns as “dragging a fish across the road.” This was a disruptive image. People might ask ‘why’ I said such an off-the-wall thing. The point wasn’t to confuse for confusion’s sake but to shock others to think for self. By inserting something slightly absurd or unexpected, the system couldn’t follow its usual script. In a way, not to win, I was tossing a curveball into the field of expectations.

I had seen Dr. Bowen interrupting and disrupting the flow firsthand. One evening, while I was innocently standing next to Dr. Bowen, a kind woman and client of mine approached us and said, “Andrea has been so helpful to me.” Without missing a beat, Dr. Bowen looked at her—as if she were from another planet—and replied, “Why don’t you just believe everything Andrea says?” Then he walked away. The woman turned to me and said, “Did I say something wrong? What did I do?” I replied, “It seems like Dr. Bowen doesn’t like praise.” At another level, I saw Dr. Bowen exposing the triangle.

As I understood it, Dr. Bowen was drawing attention to the lack of one-to-one contact. The woman was talking about me to him. He was not going to take her side or pretend that this was helpful information for him. Instead of being polite he was shockingly real and told her his way of seeing what she might be vulnerable to—taking sides. His comment wasn’t warm or fuzzy, but it was sharp. And it worked. He left the emotional responsibility where it belonged and walked away.

As I saw it, Dr. Bowen’s refusal to participate in side-taking left me and this other woman responsible for how each of us were going to relate to each other. It was less about liking and more about shifting responsibility for one’s own life decisions. He made the emotional circuitry of praise visible and costly—just long enough for each individual to reset or for the interaction to be questioned. This interaction pointed out how it was possible to put two anxious people together and be a little bit freer—not being drawn into the praise and criticism world. How could I do this?

I wanted to comment on what might happen between people without trying to overly control them. Trying to be direct with people while setting them free was very hard. I decided to try out these ideas on my children. My “annoying” effort was to shift away from my old worry and/or criticism and move toward greater openness about what I expected and the logical consequences if things fell apart.

I’d say something like, “I’ll drive you to school today, but then tomorrow you’ll need to set your alarm, get yourself up, and catch the school bus as I need to go to work. If you don’t wake up in time and miss the bus, you’ll have to walk to school,”—which was about three-quarters of a mile away. I stopped waking them up. If my memory is somewhat accurate, there was only one time they missed the bus. I might have been late to work, but I followed behind in the car as they walked, ensuring they were safe.

As part of the shift to logical consequences, I asked if they could wash their own sheets, help take care of the dog and go to the grocery store with me. Since I was often working the night shift, I would sometimes make a list and sleep in the car while they did the shopping. I wasn’t the best cook, but they would help prepare dinner or make their favorite dessert: crepes. I was transitioning from giving my children too much freedom to encouraging some form of self-responsibility. At some level of awareness, I was developing hypotheses, making predictions, and observing outcomes. I was focusing more on strengths than weaknesses.

This time was tough, on my children and on me. Once every three months I had to leave for roughly four days to go to Washington D.C. for the post-graduate program. They would stay with the Karnitschnig or the Mednick family, in these years from 1976 to 1978. I was hearing: You are too laissez-faire. You didn’t leave enough food in the refrigerator. Complaints were filed. But I was reflecting on the memories of how strict my grandparents were and how that didn’t work out for my mother or for Butch, and how much excessive freedom my parents gave us, which also didn’t work.

I tried to figure out how Dr. Bowen applied his natural systems theory to his life with his family. What might the application of what I was learning look like in my family? My way was far, far from perfect, but the main thing was that our little family was still together. I was not going to lose my children as my parents had.

I was working on my role in the family to become a more responsible self and I could see that the multigenerational family was changing. To some extent, each of us, my children, brothers, grandfather, and Gudrun, were getting better at communicating. There appeared to be better contact with one another about what was real and important to discuss.

As for my friends, they still wanted me to spend time with them, but I told them I had to work. I was not a care-free woman without responsibilities. I began to shift my focus away from time with my friends toward something deeper: studying, thinking, and writing, all in the service of better understanding the family as an emotional unit. One friend’s response was to cry, “Oh, Punkin. Don’t tell me that. I need you.” I guess I just did not want to be needed in that way. What I needed was a deep understanding of what happened to my family. I wasn’t turning away from my friends because I didn’t care, I was turning toward something that mattered more to my own direction with my own little life.

For Whom Does the Bell Toll?
I had learned and observed a simple fact that all families face: when anxiety goes up, people will look for unbelievable ways to explain it, distance from it, and crucify it. For most, this is explained by blaming the person with the symptom, which misses the complexity in the surrounding system. Over time, I found that trying to talk people out of blaming others, whether to lower their anxiety or mine, didn’t really get anywhere. Blame just wasn’t useful in the long run, but it sure was hard to eliminate.

Social systems are built to absorb and express anxiety through a set of basic, almost primitive mechanisms. Dr. Bowen identified four primary ways families manage rising tension: conflict, distance, reciprocity, and family projection process. I remember hearing him say that it was better if the families could use all four mechanisms as opposed to just one over the other options. Once I understood these, I saw that I had at least some flexibility. I was beginning to notice when I was getting swept up in one of these automatic responses. Could I move differently in the middle of these anxious reactions, or was I just stuck? I could see and feel the memories of the fighting between my parents. I could see and feel the distance with my grandparents. These were easier to spot, as conflict is overt, and distance more visible.

More difficult to understand and see, for me, was reciprocity, where one person thrives while the other falters. Reciprocity can be less disruptive if it’s not extreme and to some extent increases and decreases depending on the surrounding culture. Reciprocity maintains surface harmony, even as it quietly manages to absorb anxiety. But in some families, it’s terrifying to see someone else doing better—it threatens the emotional balance they’ve come to depend on.

A classic example: one spouse becomes an alcoholic while the other becomes highly successful. On the surface, it looks like imbalance. But underneath, there’s some evidence that each person is benefiting. People report that alcohol replaces the loss of real person to person contact and that the alcohol provides some sense of relief to both people. Sometimes it is easier to get drunk than face the fear of a real one-to-one conversation. The real challenge is managing the anxiety of being willing to be open and vulnerable to the other person who is really important. As I recall, Dr. Bowen said that an attempt to speak to the other and keep the focus on self for even five minutes would be a testament of emotional strength. No feedback was needed, just saying what was on one’s mind was useful.

I understood that the family projection process was the most difficult mechanism for the family’s future. The process is selective—the mother focuses and worries about a particular child and the child focuses and worries about the mother. In more intense versions, they worry about each other to such an extent that neither of them can grow out of symbiosis, the need for the other, and in some cases they can’t live without each other. However, the child is at a higher risk of developing serious problems.

The projection process is universal, present in all emotional, even primitive systems—found in every family to some degree. Everyone is participating in it – there are no “innocent” people. Dr. Bowen began to see this symbiosis between the mother and the child much more clearly once he brought the fathers into the research project. It was then that he observed that the intensity between the mother and child would, to some degree, diminish once the father began to define what he would and would not do. The symbiosis is bigger than two, it occurs in a triangle, multigenerational interlocking triangles. Each generation working to relieve the unresolved anxiety of the past—but at the cost of transmitting it forward, unresolved, to the next.

The four mechanisms are just part of life, but when these get used more intensely, there’s little to no freedom for anyone. However, there is a fifth option—Differentiation of Self. And that’s the one I began to pursue.

Dr. Bowen developed a scale of differentiation—from 0 to 100—to conceptualize the range of emotional maturity a person might have upon reaching adulthood and leaving home. He referred to a person’s level of maturity as their solid self: the part of self made up of guiding principles that remain steady, even under relationship pressure from others. In contrast, the part of self that shifts in response to the influence or approval of others was termed: pseudo self.

At the lower end of the scale, individuals are more guided by emotion, with intellect having little influence over the feeling system. Those functioning between 25 and 50 have more capacity to manage their emotions, while those above 50 are generally able to communicate more complexity and even upsetting ideas without provoking anxiety or fear in others. More mature individuals are often able to speak to the emotional process itself without needing others to change or behave differently. Their presence alone can bring clarity without coercion.

There appears to be an equilibrium in each family as to how much openness the system can tolerate at any given time. A family with a more closed emotional system will find it difficult to say how one sees things if it’s different from other members of the family. There’s some evidence that there are health benefits for those who can maintain a more open family relationship field—especially if there is some connection that is maintained with the multigenerational family.

My overall goal was to think carefully about my values and decide where I wanted to put my energy. As I saw my grandfather growing weaker, I was ready to take action—to become a better-defined self. I knew the anxiety would rise around his inevitable death, and I wanted to meet it with clarity. I began to make decisions about how I would manage that anxiety by defining myself to others—what I would and would not do. I was determined to stay focused on my goals and prepare myself for whatever future might come.

Continued Work at Tidewater Psychiatric Institute (TPI)
Back at TPI, I was full of research ideas. I noticed how many patients were coming in for drug treatment around the time of a death of an important family member. My TPI supervisor told me, “Do not put a family diagram in the patient’s chart”, as it drew attention to “something weird.” He said the diagram reminded him of forecasting the future, like doing a horoscope. Then, he reminded me that I was not a social worker and was not trained to write up the family diagram. Not even the social worker would write up such a family diagram. 

Perhaps it was too far from psychodynamics and Freud’s ideas as to “the cause” of problems. Bowen Family Systems Theory appeared to be too far outside the comfort zone as it challenged much of what had been taught in professional psychology training. I continued to notice how things were going in the lives of the patients and the way the mental health world seemed content with just diagnosing the individual.

At first, I became less vocal about my research efforts, and for a while, I told no one about my observations about the role of the family. I changed my focus to being more useful to the nursing staff. The head nurse thought I had potential and let me lead a Tuesday evening program for families. I titled the talks, Are There Good Guys and Bad Guys in Your Family? I was kind of a preacher, and at first, I was not even noticed, but as more and more people attended and the word spread, I was then replaced with a doctor who showed slides of liver damage.    
     
Grandfather’s Final Chapter   
It was very early spring of 1978 when Gudrun announced that she would retire and return to Norway. I had thought she would be with me forever. She said that she had owned this tiny apartment in Norway and wanted to go back and live there, as she had been paying for it all these years that she had been with my grandparents. Something had made it possible for Gudrun to retire finally. My guess was that she was too emotionally close and was not able to care for my grandfather for the final few months of his life. It was also important that I was now more capable of getting close to my grandfather—my ability to tolerate his reactivity had grown.    
  
I approached my grandfather and said, as I see it, there are at least three choices available: around-the-clock nurses, a nursing home, or coming to live with me. He thought about it and picked coming to live with me in “the jungle.” He called it a jungle, as I had plants in all the windows.   
  
I asked my brothers to come over and talk about where Grandaddy would go to live. Without discussing it with him, they voted for the nursing home and primarily focused on the fact that Gudrun was leaving. I said, “Well, grandaddy said he would rather live here with me.” Butch said he could trip and fall and that it would be all my fault. “Ok,” I said, “I will take responsibility, but what are you going to do if he falls in the nursing home or anywhere?” I asked each of them to talk to Grandaddy directly about where he preferred to live, and not just talk to me. They looked at him and said nothing. So, plans were made, his essential belongings were brought to my house, and the rest was put into storage.   
  
Pretty early on, I noticed that life seemed better with Grandaddy around than it had been without him. At dinner, if my children were ignoring him and just talking to each other, he’d pound the table and say, “Do you think I’m an invisible man? Speak to me.” I thought that was a good message—they could hear it, and it reminded them not to leave him out. I watched the conversation shift as they began talking to him directly. I also noticed my grandfather watching them as they did their homework, and, despite the stress of living with their dying great-grandfather, their grades began to improve.  

I saw changes in Butch too. He had been the object of my grandfather’s criticism more times than I can remember. Typically, Butch was on the outside as the one who needed help, while my grandfather and I were on the inside trying to help him. My habitual response was to defend Butch to my grandfather, but as I learned more about how triangles worked, I could see I was doing the same old thing.
  
One day, Butch came over to my house and showed our grandfather some fish he had caught, suggesting they might be suitable for dinner. When my grandfather looked at them, he said, “They are too small.” Butch got mad and started to leave. I went in the other room and said, “Butch, it is up to you to deal with him. He is not going to be around that long. Do you think the fish are too small to eat?” He looked at me and said, “No.”   
  
Butch went back into the kitchen and said to our grandfather that the fish were good for eating, and that if he did not want them, he would find someone else to take them. Granddaddy looked at the fish and said, “I will show you how to clean them.” Butch had cleaned fish hundreds of times, but this time, he did not put out the obvious information and went with the flow. This moment was more about being close to our grandfather despite the threat of more criticism. Now, these two were on the inside, and I was on the outside, just watching. Clearly, now I could see that I did not have to be in charge of their relationship. It made more sense to me as to how triangles work to guide all, but it did not feel that great to put myself outside of the now comfortable twosome.
  
When he was ready, my grandfather informed us that he was not going to eat or drink as he was prepared to die. He looked at Martin and Michelle and said, “You all will miss this wheelchair.” They were able to say that they would miss him too.
  
Walter Maher had long been the center of family financial support, but until then, neither he nor I had much understanding of emotional support. The idea of becoming a more separate self hadn’t really been available to me before my time in the postgraduate program at GUFC. By then, I knew a little about Bowen Family Systems Theory—and that gave me a beginner’s compass to help guide my decisions. With even that small amount of knowledge, I was able to talk more easily with this red-headed Irishman. While he was dying, I could feel his energy moving around, and it struck me as funny that the time of his death would feel so energizing.

Walter Maher died of complications from skin cancer on August 16, 1978, at the age of 86, but I had the sense that this death was more of a positive transition for the whole family. It was in sharp contrast to the deaths of my father, mother, and my three other grandparents who were more isolated from others when they died. My grandfather defined how and when he was going to die and was comfortable talking about his decision to great grandchildren. I was observing the death process, and I thought, “He’s approaching death on his terms.”

After my grandfather’s death, I had both the space and the motivation to take the next step. I decided to learn more about my parents’ lives and the impact that living with them had on each of us as children. Who were they, really? How could they give up their children? What happened to them? Would these discoveries soften the fear and bring some warmth to how I saw their struggles? And could Butch and I finally let go of the roles we had taken on—trying to be the saviors of our family?

Reflection
Life itself might have been quite different if I had known more about the emotional system. It was and is difficult to make better or different decisions when I lacked information about the system. I could see that Butch and I were navigating forces within the family that we were both utterly blind to. Neither of us knew how the emotional process would impact our lives in a significant way—forces beyond Butch’s control and outside of my awareness.

Could it be that Butch collapsed under the weight of multiple, successive deaths—especially given that, from a very young age, he seemed to be the vulnerable one the family focused on? Was it possible, that somehow, Butch knew his family needed help, that he was in service to the survival of the family unit? I believe that at some level, “the white knight” was willing to sacrifice himself.

When anxiety rises, the family unit decides who will take the hit, focusing on that person. This is an evolutionary-based behavior that tracks back 4 billion years to the hydrocyst. For the hydrocyts, there must be one who “fixes nitrogen” for the group and that individual cell no longer reproduces. To me, it looks like a role accepted rather than chosen. Instinct? Metaphor? A question for evolutionary biology?

The way the system organizes itself around symptoms can reveal a great deal—whether the system itself is weak, mature, immature, or strong. If the system is weak, the motivated one, whoever that may be, has to be strong. Symptoms often manifest in one person’s life, but they belong to the system as a whole.

Humans seem to have a knack for sorting people into good guys and bad guys—to apply moral labels to behavior that is fundamentally a product of the system, not personal. When one observes without applying “good” or “bad” labels, a different picture emerges. Every person, whether dominant or not, navigates a complex emotional landscape—ranging from automatic, stimulus-response reactions to those who, through awareness, can manage themselves in social interactions with greater clarity and less irrational fear.

Early on, I began observing how triangles—the basic building blocks of emotional systems—promote side-taking and dominance behavior. All social animals engage in this, but humans seem to believe they’re the ones and take status interactions personally. It isn’t personal. It is nature’s design. In every social system, a hierarchy emerges—not because those at the top are wiser, but because they lucked out. Some might see dominance as a great achievement, but it is often just another burden.

Dominance itself can become an emotional tool for pressuring others to conform, shaping behavior to align with the needs of the system. Everyone is subject to these pressures, but once I could see the triangles, I could begin disrupting them. I found ways to break the alignment—what I later called “dragging a fish across the road.” This was one method I used to disrupt emotional patterns, but I know there are countless others yet to be discovered—waiting for those willing to be pioneers in freeing themselves from the emotional system of their families, a system they are inherently part of, however one may be participating in it.

Looking back with some clarity, I’m still struck by how profoundly my life changed after meeting Dr. Bowen. During the postgraduate training, it became even more apparent just how significant that encounter had been. Bowen Theory made my life more understandable.

Learning Bowen Family Systems Theory and developing a more open relationship with my grandfather laid the groundwork for a more open relationship with Dr. Bowen, who, in some ways, resembled my grandfather, perhaps emotionally. By defining myself to my grandfather, it became easier to relate to Dr. Bowen more as a real person and with less emotional junk.

It’s reasonably predictable that when someone defines a self, the family will react—though the nature and intensity of that reaction can vary. No matter what, big or small, the cost and the benefit of defining a self to important people in one’s life is real.