Overview: The Big Picture
I was born on November 19, 1941, three weeks before the horrific bombing of Pearl Harbor. This changed the world and the lives of countless families, including mine. We were one of the millions whose early memories were full of war threats. In times of trouble I, as the oldest sister, had been assigned to look after my two younger brothers and therefore was vulnerable to being concerned about the rest of the world.
I grew up in a southern clan or perhaps in a family cult, where loyalty dominated truth. Influenced by a way of life that was gracious and polite but where no one could speak of what was happening. I reacted to this sort of too-quiet environment. Part of me wanted to fit into my social group and the other part wanted me to speak out with curiosity and humor.
Then, bigger family problems emerged that could not be solved without knowing what is happening in the family. For some reason, I had to be the one to upset the status quo and ask hard questions.
This ignorance drew me into the world of psychiatry. Here people were making all kinds of efforts to address what they called mental health. What were the real problems? What were the solutions? There was a spectrum of thinking which differed greatly and which only added to the confusion.
I needed more factual and even scientific information to find a better life path to deal with my family. If it worked, I could use these ideas to manage myself and communicate well with others. I had a mission and questions.
Fortunately, I met another Southerner, Murray Bowen, M.D., the originator of Family Systems Theory in 1976. I immediately knew he was radically different from those trained in individual thinking. I heard about the family as an emotional unit firsthand and the learning that followed made so much common sense. Bowen saw humans as part of life as it had evolved, having more in common with other life forms than not. He spoke about human behavior as arising from the evolutionary programming in our ancient brain. He saw how understanding relationships could change the world of medicine and psychiatry. When I read Bowen’s papers, I knew that he could see the big picture.
Dr. Bowen used language and stories and the power of paradox to prompt people to think for themselves. In the process, I wanted to make my relationship with him more even. To do this, I had to recognize and then thoughtfully respond to his tricks. Sometimes I would challenge him just as he was challenging me. This made for some scary moments and funny stories, as there was no love and approval for trying to figure things out. Bowen knew that shifting from individual to systems thinking could take years, and he encouraged all of us to go as far as we could.
Bowen was my guide on this mission adventure. He may have seen something about me that suggested I would be an interesting research project. I must have passed some tests as he opened so many doors for me to learn. Both by observing and taking photographs of Dr. Bowen, I found new ways to manage myself with him.
I saw how Bowen got around the system’s pressures to be in step with others. Often Bowen would take outrageous positions to challenge others, and most people did not know what to do with him. I understood it as he was testing his various hypothesis in these relationships.
In time I wanted to be surer of my direction, or as Bowen called it to be more “differentiated.” I did not want to be in all these stimulus-response behavioral ruts. I had to define myself as more separate from Bowen and the rest of the people at the Family Center. I knew there might be a price to pay to go my own way, but I accepted that I walked a thin line between being helpful and annoying.
The use of photography provided an outside position for observing others. From behind the camera, I could see and understand relationships better. Over the years I took many photographs of Bowen and the people who came to learn or to challenge his ideas. On the one hand, I was creating a historical record of Bowen’s teaching style that would be important for the future. On the other hand, I also wanted to keep photographs of those dear people whom I loved deeply with me.
My thought was that if I could work on being less automatic, then I might be capable of changing my part in the family problems. It is humbling to work on oneself. I had to admit to being ignorant about the forces pressuring me and my tendency to automatically fight, run, or give in and in general to be more reactive to the tribe than to accomplish my goals.
I will tell you about my voyage of discovery, how I met Dr. Bowen, how he challenged me, and how I discovered a few tricks to manage relationships with and around him. This is a more personal look at relationships, enlarging on common sense ideas found in my first book, Your Mindful Compass. Without a compass the opportunity to observe and discover how the system works is limited. The automatic responses to emotional messages are just too powerful.
I hope that you, dear readers, will take some comfort in my attempt to remove the psychiatric veil that can overly focus on the individuals and their symptoms and is blind to the system.
The individual is important, and so too is the system surrounding us. My story is about the gradual discovery of the emotional system and how one person can enter a great adventure using knowledge in defining oneself to the multigenerational family emotional system and thereby becoming emotionally a bit more separate from the emotional system, and a bit wiser.