When we think about anxiety, we typically think of something that is generated and felt within an individual. But Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist of the mid-20th century, argued that anxiety was also created by the interactions between individuals and could spread like a contagion in a group, an idea known as “Family Systems Theory.”
Here to offer an introduction to Family Systems Theory and how its implications extend far beyond the family is Steve Cuss, who is a former hospital chaplain, a pastor, the founder of Capable Life, which offers coaching and consultation, and the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs. Today on the show, Steve and I discuss how individuals in both families and organizations can “infect a situation with [their] own assumptions and expectations” and create a sense of anxiety that permeates a group. Steve unpacks the false needs that create chronic anxiety in an individual, how this anxiety spreads to others, and the unhealthy ways people deal with this tension, including becoming fused together. And we talk about how to put this anxiety back where it belongs, and how a single person can change a group dynamic by differentiating from it and becoming a rooted self.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- Murray Bowen
- A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin H. Friedman
- AoM Article: The 5 Characteristics of Highly Dysfunctional Groups
- AoM Article: Becoming a Well-Differentiated Leader
- The Cornerstone Concept by Roberta M. Gilbert
- Sunday Firesides: You Are Not Responsible for Other People’s Feelings
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Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. When we think about anxiety, we typically think of something that is generated and felt within an individual. But Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist of the mid-20th century, argued that anxiety was also created by the interactions between individuals. It could spread like a contagion in a group, an idea known as family systems theory. Here to offer an introduction to family systems theory and how its implications are far beyond the family is Steve Cuss, who is a former hospital chaplain, a pastor, the founder of Capable Life, which offers coaching and consultation, and the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety, Yours and Theirs.
Today on the show, Steve and I discuss how individuals in both families and organizations can infect a situation with their own assumptions and expectations and create a sense of anxiety that permeates a group. Steve unpacks the false needs that create chronic anxiety in an individual, how this anxiety spreads to others, and the unhealthy ways people deal with this tension, including becoming fused together. And we talk about how to put this anxiety back where it belongs, and how a single person can change a group dynamic by differentiating from it and becoming a rooted self. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is/familysystems.
Alright. Steve Cuss, welcome to the show.
Steve Cuss: Brett, thanks for having me on. I’ve been looking forward to this.
Brett McKay: So I have been too. I’ve really enjoyed your work, the books you’ve done as well as the online courses you’ve done. You’re an interesting guy. You have a career where you train organizations and leaders on how to deal with group anxiety and what leaders of groups that have this anxiety, what they can do to calm things down when tensions get high. And your approach to managing group tension is based on family systems theory that was developed by a guy named Murray Bowen back in the 1960s. Tell us about Murray Bowen, because I’m sure a lot of people have never heard of this guy. So tell us about his background. Who was he, and how were his insights into how anxiety works different from how a lot of psychologists think about how anxiety works.
Steve Cuss: Yeah, Murray Bowen was a psychiatrist who specialized in the teenage onset paranoid schizophrenic patients. So, he worked in a 1950s and 1960s psych ward in a hospital, you can imagine, pretty rough back then. And families would commit their children once they became young adults. So, 17 to 23 years old, it was a general rule. And Bowen was the psychiatrist on the floor. And I don’t know if this was the moment systems theory was born, but one of his most famous stories was on family visitation day. This petite mom is coming in to visit, maybe her son, for example. You know, you imagine a boy who’s now a fully grown man, paranoid schizophrenic, pretty strong guy, right? So as the mom is walking toward the son, all this stuff’s going on inside the mother, guilt about handing the son over to the state, failure as a mother, but also some level of fear of her own son. He’s this big guy. He’s a little bit dangerous as a schizophrenic. So, as she’s going to give him a hug, she’s quite tentative. He then reads that tentative body language and gives her a tentative hug in response. And then she pushes him away and says, “What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad to see me?” And that’s what Bowen came to call a double bind and a mixed message.
And he… It kind of awakened in Bowen this idea that anxiety exists between us, not just inside us. So, if you take like a Freud or a Carl Jung, they’re really focusing on what’s going on in the individual. Bowen was, in some ways, not the first guy, but really the first guy to make it famous. “Hey, let’s look at anxiety in us and between us and how they infect each other.” And so, he developed what’s famously known as the eight concepts of Bowen theory. And I was a hospital chaplain in 1996, and one of Bowen’s very first students, George Dobler. George and Bowen’s probably most famous student, Ed Friedman, would study together under Bowen. And so I got a hefty dose when I was a chaplain. But that’s functionally what Bowen did is he shifted the focus from in us to between us. And I find that fascinating in leadership because you take any team, and so much of the anxiety is between people, not just inside people. So it’s a really powerful tool.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I think that’s the big insight that I got. And it’s changed the way I approach whenever there’s a conflict or there’s someone I see as having a problem, instead of thinking, “Well, what’s wrong with this person?” I started thinking, “Well, what’s going on with the dynamic in the group that might be contributing to this person, displaying these certain maybe maladaptive responses?”
Steve Cuss: Yeah. Yeah. If you read Bowen, it’s kind of wild. He didn’t write much. He really only wrote two books, and one of them was actually one of his students kind of wrote it for him. But if you read his very first book, it’s just a series of lectures he gave at universities as he was exploring this new theory, he would bring in not just mom and dad for counseling, but he’d bring in siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Sometimes his therapy office had, like, 30 family members in it. His other big idea was how your family of origin impacts your adulthood. So he just brought the whole family in, like, extended and all. And, you know, he probably overdid it. But of course, he was experimenting with this brand new philosophy. And it’s funny, Brett, not many people know Bowen theory. I think those of us who know him, we would put him on the Mount Rushmore of psychology. I mean, he’d be one of the big three or four names, but he’s still, after all these years, relatively unknown.
Brett McKay: Yeah, it is really interesting. Okay, so, yeah, the big takeaway: Anxiety isn’t just inside you. It’s also in a group, and I think that makes sense. You know, as humans, we’re very attuned to other people. We look to other people to figure out what we need to be worried about, and what can happen is that can just get hijacked and just kind of go off the rails when we look around and start trying to think about, well, maybe this person’s thinking this, and I need to change my behavior so I can just keep things nice and calm and collected here. And it just. That just ratchets up more and more of the anxiety.
Steve Cuss: Yeah. Yeah. So, sometimes we do that, and then depending on how we’re wired, some people, they still focus on someone else, but they’re not worried about what that person thinks. They’re frustrated at what that person thinks. So, if you take the phrase, “What were they thinking?” That phrase, a people pleaser would say, “Oh, no, what are they thinking?” But an irritated person will say, “What were they thinking?” It’s the same focus on the other. And Bowen really did take the attention off of other people. And even though he’s talking about anxiety spreading in a group, his solution is to pay attention to yourself and how you are infecting and catching the anxiety in the room. Once you learn a few of his tools, it’s a literal game-changer for leadership, organizational health. Like, it’s mind-blowing how just a couple of these tools can really help make a difference. Yeah.
Brett McKay: And the idea is, like, he focused on families, and I think if anyone’s, you know, everyone’s been part of a family at some point in their life, you see how that tension can manifest itself in a family. And Bowen argued, well, that’s how we learn how to deal with groups is in our families. We actually take what we learned on how to deal with conflict in our family of origin and also apply it to groups, whether it’s a business, church, etc.
Steve Cuss: Yep. Yeah. He had a number of theories around your family of origin, the multigenerational transmission process. That’s kind of the big name for one of his concepts. Multigenerational transmission process. Simple idea: You don’t just look to your mom and dad and your siblings in your immediate household. You look at the patterns that have been handed down to the third and fourth generation in your family. And of course, we mostly think about it when we were kids. And when you’re a kid, you don’t have any power, so you do kind of make meaning out of your experiences so you can survive. And then Bowen was helping us see how we drag that meaning into our adulthood, and that’s why we stay stuck.
Brett McKay: So you mentioned you got introduced to Bowen theory when you were a chaplain. Your book, Managing Leadership Anxiety, is geared towards pastors. And I’ve noticed that systems theory is really popular amongst people in leadership positions at churches. Why is that, do you think?
Steve Cuss: Oh, it’s a really good question. I mean, I think the most famous student of systems theory was Edwin Friedman. Most people know his book Failure of Nerve, but the book that put him on the map was called Generation to Generation. And a lot of people don’t know that. Friedman was a Jewish rabbi. He was a local rabbi in a local synagogue. And somehow his study of synagogues and churches, that was his first written work. It just caught fire. This is in the early ’80s. So, I think the reason it’s popular among churches is because Friedman wrote Generation to Generation, and then many church leaders, it just made so much sense out of their experience. That’s been my experience with systems theory when I travel around, like, I’ve been in so many different cultures.
Brett, I’ll be in Indonesia in October. I’ll be in Spain. Whether it’s an Asian culture, a Western culture, a developing country like Kenya, systems theory is able to name your experience and, for many people, for the first time, give them a path through what they’re feeling. And I do think a lot of churches and synagogues and mosques struggle with volunteer culture, power mongering, some of those behaviors. And I think system theory really helps a leader survive it and actually even thrive in those difficult environments.
Brett McKay: So, in systems theory, there’s a distinction between acute anxiety and chronic anxiety. What’s the difference between the two?
Steve Cuss: Yeah, I love that you’re asking that, because this is another of Bowen’s distinct contributions. If you’ve ever been chased by a snake, which I have, if you’ve ever almost been in a car accident, if you’ve ever lost a child in a playground, that’s acute anxiety. Acute anxiety is always around physical safety. Your body gets a big dose of adrenaline. Your mind gets really sharp. Chronic anxiety, this is where Bowen really helped us here. Chronic anxiety is not based on a real threat. It’s based on a false threat that feels real in the moment.
And so, for example, in my case, I’m a people pleaser. I can tell you now, Brett, like, I like to make people happy, and I’m not anxious. But if you were to observe me, like, later today or tomorrow, in a situation where I’ve let someone down, you will see me get what’s called chronic anxiety. So chronic anxiety is fascinating because it’s not built on anything real. It’s built on a false need that feels real, and it’s what leads to burnout. It doesn’t give you a massive dose of adrenaline like acute anxiety. It gives you just a little drip, drip, drip of adrenaline.
And, you know, most of my work is with leaders. Most leaders carry unaddressed false needs. Oftentimes we have 30 or 40 false needs every day. And when we don’t get them met, we get chronic anxiety. So I work with a lot of leaders that say, “I’m not anxious because I don’t worry about much.” But chronic anxiety doesn’t look like worry. It looks like reactivity. So let’s say that you’re a leader that really values courtesy and timeliness on your team. And then Jim comes in seven minutes late, like he always does, but he acts like he’s not late. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t seem to be paying the price for being late. And you, as the leader, are having an anger fantasy about Jim. That’s chronic anxiety, because your false need of courtesy is not being met.
Now, when I say that, people might say, “Well, what’s wrong with needing courtesy?” Nothing wrong with courtesy. It’s your massive overreaction when someone is discourteous, that’s the sign. So there are five core false needs in every human. We can get into it if you want, but people pleasing is one of them. And then there’s four others. I’m happy to kind of list them for us, if that’s helpful.
Brett McKay: Yeah, that would be helpful. But just to recap, acute anxiety is about a real danger. It’s about a physical thing, like your safety, etcetera. Chronic anxiety is a worry, or maybe anxiety about a need that’s not real. A false need. And it’s typically about involving the group. Like, other people are involved as well.
Steve Cuss: It comes from within us, and it comes at us from others, and we also put it on others. So it’s the only kind of anxiety that’s contagious.
Brett McKay: Okay.
Steve Cuss: No other kind of anxiety. We don’t catch it. Like, if somebody’s grieving or somebody came home, like, from a foreign war, and they’re carrying trauma, we don’t catch that trauma. But chronic anxiety is the only anxiety that’s contagious, because, yes, it’s in a group, but also it’s in me. Like, my need to make everybody like me, that’s in me. But then I read you, and sometimes you might put an expectation on me that I can’t meet. I used to be a crisis interventionist in Las Vegas, and all of these people with this chronic need coming off the street, well, they are expecting me to solve their problem, but I’m letting them down. So their anxiety coming at me, I’m catching it, and it’s infecting my false need in myself. And that’s kind of how anxiety is spread in a group.
Brett McKay: Okay, so you mentioned that there are five false needs people can have, and if one of these needs isn’t met, that can start causing someone to feel chronic anxiety. And then a person will take that anxiety and try to put it on other people, and then the anxiety will start spreading in the group. And by false needs, what’s meant by that is that someone feels like they need something, but it’s not an actual real need. Like, it doesn’t have to be met for them to survive, for them to be okay. Like, they’re not in any actual danger, even though they can feel like they’re under threat. So what are the false needs people can have?
Steve Cuss: Yeah. Yes. So control. There are certain kinds of people that need to be in control, and if they’re not in control, they do weird things, they manipulate people, or they get really antsy. The second one is perfection. Probably most or many of your listeners are perfectionists. They believe the lie that they should get it perfectly right the first time they ever do something. Like, they don’t allow themselves to be a rookie. Their gold standard is always 100%. And so the example of chronic anxiety, it exaggerates the outcome. So if a perfectionist makes a mistake, like, maybe they put a spelling mistake in an email, their body tells them, man, this is the end of the world. Like, that’s the problem, is these are these false needs, and we stay chasing them because we’re afraid of the world ending if we don’t get them. So it’s control, perfection, having the answer. This is particularly with men. This is one of mine. I need you to know that I know something. And so if you ask me a question and I don’t know the answer, it’s actually difficult for me to say, “I don’t know.”
It even gets weird. If I’m in a meeting and Jimmy asks Renee a question, I have to stop myself from answering it, even though Jimmy didn’t ask me. So knowing the answer is the third one. Being there for people when they’re hurting is the fourth one. And then people pleasing is the fifth that being there for others when they’re hurting again, you might hear that and say, “Well, what’s wrong with being there for people?” The problem isn’t being there for people. The problem is when you can’t tell the difference between their need and your need to be needed. And so all of these have like an extreme version. So perfectionists, when they’re human-sized, they’re not anxious. They’re really good at improving things. They can do that all day long. But that incessant chase of perfectionism, they never get it. Control freaks are often very thoughtful and hospitable, but then when they’re trying to make sure everyone’s having a good time and they feel… They’re taking too much responsibility, that’s when they get chronically anxious. So that’s what we call the big five.
Brett McKay: Something else that Bowen talks about is whenever there is chronic anxiety, people in the group, he says they’re fused.
Steve Cuss: Yeah.
Brett McKay: What does that mean, to be fused?
Steve Cuss: To be fused means that you’ve gotten too close to each other, and you cannot tell the difference between where I end and the next person begins. So another word for fused would be merged or enmeshed. The most famous phrase of being fused is when “mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” We’ve all been in a room… Here. Being an example, Brett. Like, if you’re in a room and there’s, like, eight people and everyone’s laughing, and then Jim walks in and he’s clearly having a really bad day. Jim comes into the room and he packed his bad day and his bad day’s in the room with him. There’s now an unspoken agreement. We’re not allowed to be happy because Jim is sad. Jim’s a bit of an Eeyore, you know, kind of the donkey from Winnie the Pooh.
Brett McKay: Yeah.
Steve Cuss: And he kind of infects the mood and everything gets a little cool. That’s fused. Like, healthy leadership is Jim is allowed to be depressed and we are allowed to be happy and there’s room for everybody to be exactly themselves. But half of the room tends to fuse and then the other half of the room tends to get distance, opposite of fuse. We also call it detached. And that can look like kind of writing someone off, like, “Ah, Jim, there he is being all depressed again.” Sometimes it can look like giving Jim advice when he didn’t ask for it. “Jim, why don’t you read this book on how to be cheerful,” this kind of stuff. So some people get fused when they’re anxious, some go away. And Bowen talks about the togetherness force and the distance force and how we’re always in this dance between the two.
Brett McKay: And we’ll talk about this. One of the goals of Bowen theory is to unfuse yourself like you want to be a self, so that there’s a separation between you and the person, but while still staying connected to the other person. So like, even if someone else is in a bad mood, like it’s not going to infect you, but you’re still able to be with that person. We’ll talk more about how to do that. Okay, so chronic anxiety are these false beliefs that we have about what we need in our lives in order to be calm and collected. The group that we’re in can affect how we manifest or how we experience chronic anxiety when there is chronic anxiety.
Well, maybe we do this. Maybe this would be helpful too, I think. Like give us an example. Like, what would chronic anxiety look like in a group? So, you mentioned, you know, if mom ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy. I’m not sure if everyone, everyone has experienced that. There’s maybe a parent who’s upset and just like puts the whole house in a funk. What else does chronic anxiety in a group look like? How have you seen it manifest itself?
Steve Cuss: Yeah, it’s a great question. We can look at like a fairly simple example and then we could look like a really extreme example. But if we just remind people that chronic anxiety does not look like worry and fear, it looks like reactivity. And so what you’re looking for in a group is reactivity. And when people are reactive, they’re no longer human size. So they get bigger than human or they get smaller than human. So maybe a simple example would be if you’re ever in a group of friends and somebody goes on a political rant, and they just, you’ve seen those people, they just have a strong political opinion. It’s no longer a dialogue, something has shifted in the room. They’re now like monologuing, they’re really angry. One of the simplest way to know that it’s chronic anxiety is anger, particularly in a man. And challenging about it is your average man when they’re ranting. And they’ve become bigger. They’re no longer aware that they’ve shut the room down. There’s no room for conversation and curiosity. There’s no room for connection. Well that would be an example of one person’s chronic anxiety infecting the whole room.
It takes tremendous strength for another person to gently reconnect everybody. So maybe Jim goes on this big political rant and he makes these big generalizations and these broad brush statements. And whatever political persuasion he is, he makes very strong discriminatory statements about the other side. What tends to happen after that is a lot of the group will just go quiet. That’s them getting smaller because he is generating the anxiety. They’re now carrying the anxiety, and they don’t know what to do. Well, a well-differentiated leader can actually reframe the room and put the anxiety back where it belongs on the jerk that generated it. And they don’t have to be a jerk about it. They can just say, “Oh, Jim, I can see that you feel really strongly about that, man. What do the rest of us think? I’d love to make this more of a conversation than a monologue.” Something like that. And they’re just redistributing the anxiety. This is one of the reasons to go back to church leaders. Why church leaders love systems theory, is it helps them lead a group in a whole other gear. So that would be like a simple example.
A more deadly example would be most of us have worked for a boss that behaves badly, but they get away with it because of their position. And it’s just making everyone under them anxious. There’s a lot of staff turnover in the company. This is a situation I work with all the time. Oftentimes I’ll work with a founder CEO who has over-functioned for so long to get the company where it is that they just think everyone else is lazy, when really what’s going on is that boss is generating most of the anxiety. The team are carrying most of the anxiety. And it’s really hard when your boss has all the power to put the anxiety back where it belongs. As you mentioned too, Brett, and I’ll stop after this. Many people were raised in a family of origin where one family member generated all the anxiety. Maybe it was dad’s anger. Maybe it was mom’s addiction. We’re getting a little deep here. But you can also look at what were the secrets in my family of origin. What did everyone agree to never talk about? You know, like, dad had an affair. Everyone knew it, no one talked about it. That’s an example of someone generating anxiety and someone carrying it.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Going back to that family example, one example that I’ve heard, I thought was interesting, I think really can show what chronic anxiety can look like in a family. Let’s say, yeah, dad has an anger issue, or maybe he’s an alcoholic, and the kids have picked that up and they’ve picked up on the idea that, well, if I act, really, if I just walk on eggshells and I just try to do all I can to make dad happy, he won’t start drinking and everything will be fine in our family. And they learn that kind of intuitively. So, like, they’re reacting, they’re very reactive to dad in order to keep Dad happy, because they want to still feel safe. They don’t want to see Dad get drunk and angry.
Steve Cuss: That’s right. And when they become adults, they now have developed that coping skill from a child as a superpower. So they know how to read a room and that’s a good thing. But then it gets a hold of them and becomes chronic anxiety where they overfunction. They take more responsibility than is healthy and let someone get away with bad behavior. One of the consulting tools I use is a simple set of questions, and it’s really eye-opening just to ask these questions in your context. And the first question is, who is generating most of the anxiety? And then the second question is, who’s carrying it? Now, at this point, it gets really interesting. The third question, what micro adjustments are the carriers making that keeps everything the same?
So, like, maybe you were raised in a family with an angry dad. Let’s say he wasn’t violent. Let’s just say he had a red-hot temper and he would blow up and then he would immediately feel better. Like the act of blowing up for him was the relief valve. The problem is he’s generating the anxiety now, Mom and the kids are carrying it and they’re quite hurt.
But the micro adjustments they’re all making is no one talks about it, right? We just run to our room and cry, or we pretend he didn’t just blow up. And so you start, as you go down these questions, it’s eight questions. I won’t do them all on the pod, but just those first three. Who’s generating it? Who’s carrying it? What micro adjustments? Or another way to say, what secret agreements has everyone made to keep everything the same? And that’s what you see in so many families is all of the ways the people are adjusting themselves to keep everything even. That’s often what you will see in these, like, examples of alcoholism. I have a friend whose dad was violently alcoholic and he learned at a young age how to keep Dad laughing because that’s how the family stayed safe. It can get pretty deep.
Brett McKay: I mean going back to the work example, the overbearing boss. A great movie that you can watch to kind of see that in action is “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Steve Cuss: Yeah.
Brett McKay: Our family just finished watching it. So, yeah, Miranda Priestley, right. She’s the powerful and demanding editor-in-chief of the magazine. And she creates all the anxiety and everyone around her reacts to her in order to keep things copacetic, basically. But it actually, in the process, it’s actually dysfunctional for everybody.
Steve Cuss: It’s a great. Miranda, that’s a great example. And what’s fascinating about it is in systems theory, we believe that it’s not best for Miranda either. You know, the temptation is to say, oh, she’s such a jerk of a boss. But systems theory forces you to say, The person behaving badly, that does not serve them well either. And I think “Devil Wears Prada” plays that out really well. You see a bit of a taste of her home life. You see her being sabotaged in her vocation. You kind of catch her when she’s not at work and how miserable she is. The beauty of systems theory is it takes the so-called perpetrator, like a Miranda, and the interns and the employees, and it says, everybody’s complicit. Everybody has a responsibility.
And the reason it’s called systems theory is these people together form a system. They form a predictable pattern of behavior. They do the same dance every day and no one’s getting better. And so the act of putting the anxiety back on the person generating it is, in fact, in the culprit’s best interest. So it would have served Miranda better for her employees to say, “We don’t do that here. I don’t allow people to treat me.” I’ll give a real-time example, Brett. I was in Australia a few months ago visiting my dad and my sister. And as I’m flying back, I’m in the Melbourne… I grew up in the West Coast, in Perth. It takes quite a while to get there. But going back through the Melbourne airport with Qantas and I’m lined up at the customer service desk, I don’t remember what I needed, but the person, two people in front of me, is swearing loudly at the customer service agent.
And she kept saying to him, I was blown away by her. She said, “Sir, I am not allowed to help you when you swear at me. I’ve actually been instructed by my boss that I will get in trouble if I help somebody when they’re mistreating me.” And he’s yelling at her, “I’m not effing mistreating you.” Like, he was so reactive or bigger in my language, he couldn’t get himself regulated. And she kept saying very calmly to him, “Sir, I’ll give you 30 more seconds, and if you can’t, I’m going to have to send you away. And if you won’t leave, I’ll have to call security. But, hey, why don’t you just try to get a hold of yourself? And if you can treat me with respect, I’d be happy to help you.”
That’s somebody saying, “It’s not in my best interest to let you treat me this way. But it’s also, sir, not good for you, either.” Now, that’s next-level systems theory work. But Miranda herself in “Devil Wears Prada” would have been a better human being if her employees wouldn’t have tolerated her bad behavior. Hey, easy for me to say on a podcast, but sometimes you have to leave a job to be well, and that’s okay, too.
Brett McKay: We’re going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
And now back to the show. Okay, so, when someone’s false needs aren’t being met, they start generating anxiety, and then the other people around them have to carry that anxiety. And there are various ways people deal with that anxiety that might not be helpful. And one of those ways that people manage group anxiety that Bowen talks about that I think is really interesting. And once you learn about this idea, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s called triangulation. Tell us about triangulation and how it diffuses chronic anxiety, but not in a helpful way.
Steve Cuss: Good. Yeah. Yeah. Triangulation is one of those great examples of these micro adjustments. Let’s say you have a difficult boss who does not manage his own anxiety. He’s an ass. That’s probably the best word for it. And the team feel powerless to confront him. Like, each individual feels like I can’t confront him. He’s going to tell me off, fire me or whatever. So what I’m going to do instead is get a couple of other people and gossip about him. That would be triangulation. Instead of speaking to him, I’m going to speak about him. Easiest place to see triangulation, and I think the most fun place is middle school. You know, Sally comes to Peter, and she’s like, “Hey, do you like, Jane? Because if you like Jane tell mee and I’ll go tell Jane.”
That’s triangulation. Like why doesn’t Jane and Peter just sit down and define their relationship? Well, it’s because they’re middle schoolers. They don’t have the emotional capacity to have a direct relationship. So triangulation is always an indirect solution to a direct problem. Easiest place to see it is gossip. But usually it’s because the people being affected don’t feel like they have enough power to change. So they kind of recruit a team to be on their side. That would be the simplest version of triangulation.
Brett McKay: Yeah, you can see it in families. Let’s say there’s a couple that are having marital problems. What they’ll do, instead of dealing with their relationship directly with each other, they’ll maybe direct all their attention on their kid. Or maybe a mom will look to the son as maybe a surrogate husband because she doesn’t have a good relationship with her actual husband. And that just puts a whole bunch of pressure on. So, yeah, you bring in a third person to kind of stabilize things.
Steve Cuss: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a classic Bowen systems therapy move. The teenage daughter comes in exhibiting signs of anxiety and the therapist says, “Let me meet your mom and dad.” And then having met the mom and dad, the therapist says to the teenager, “Why don’t you go home? I’ll work with your parents.” And the therapist works with the parents and the teen’s depression goes away. In Bowen theory, they’re always looking for the identified patient who is the person exhibiting the symptoms of a sick group. So it’s quite fascinating. You see it in staff, you see it in families and people misunderstand triangulation. Right now I’ve got three kids. Two of them are out of the house. One is working full time, one’s in college. So it’s my wife and I and our teenage daughter at home. We are a triangle. There are three of us in this relationship, but we are not triangulated. Just by definition of there being three of us, we have a triangle. But if I were to say to Kayleigh, “Hey, here’s what I really think about your mom, but don’t tell her.” Now I’ve triangulated my daughter. I’ve dragged her between what really should be between my wife and I, you.
Brett McKay: When you see triangulation at work, you mentioned gossip, but another one you’ll see is the meeting after the meeting. Right. So you have the meeting and things are said, but, like, you can tell there’s sort of some tension and discomfort in the air, and then someone will pull you aside as a leader and say, “Hey, I didn’t want to bring this up in the meeting because so and so, but I want to talk about it with you.” That’s another example of triangulation.
Steve Cuss: It’s crazy, Brett. I’ve seen it in, you know, small churches and I’ve seen it in multi billion-dollar companies that this behavior happens so often and it does so much damage to the system.
Brett McKay: Yeah. And then also, you see this in other groups as well, where there’ll be a leader and they don’t hear the feedback or criticism directly. It’s always just from a third person. Like, “Well, people are saying this.” It’s like, okay, why didn’t they just tell me that directly? Yeah. So once you learn about triangulation, you’ll start seeing it everywhere. And, yeah, you said, I think in your book, you talk about, just watch teenage soap operas. You’ll see it all the time.
Steve Cuss: And reality… Every reality TV show. Yeah. Richard Nixon had a special advisor named Chuck Colson. He ended up going to jail for Watergate. Kind of turned his life around, came out and became quite a fascinating guy. And he writes about the days of being Nixon. He was in the West Wing, Chuck Colson had a West Wing office. He said he saw this dynamic again and again. People would come into Colson’s office before meeting the president in the Oval Office, and they would give Colson a piece of their mind. They’d say, “When I meet with the president, I’m going to tell him what for. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind, tell him what he needs to do.” And then Colson said, inevitably, “I’m in the Oval Office watching the same person with their hat in hand saying, ‘Oh, Mister President, what a great honor to meet you. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to meet the president,’ like, completely different demeanor.” A lot of leaders can’t stand that. The higher up you are in an organization, Colin Powell teaches this, the harder it is to get the truth. I just used to always tell my people, “If you’re going to rant about me, I would prefer you just rant at me.”
Just give me the dignity and respect to tell me off rather than ranting about me and then coming into my office and being all deferential and flattering. That’s a sophisticated form of triangulation too. And it just generates anxiety because it’s not true. One of the chronic anxiety is always based on something false, and even that behavior has a falsehood to it. So it generates anxiety.
Brett McKay: Yeah, it’s interesting, triangulation. It’s a way people try to manage the chronic anxiety, but using triangulation just increases the anxiety. You bring in the third person because you don’t have the wherewithal to just deal with the issue directly with the person. So I’ll bring in this third person and I’ll feel a little bit more comfortable. But everyone knows as soon as you bring in a third person, there’s just all this gossip and talk and he said this and she said that and it just ratchets it up even more. So it’s a great example of people trying to manage group anxiety and just making it worse. Another one you talk about is over-functioning, under-functioning, what’s that?
Steve Cuss: Yeah, oftentimes in a group you will have over-functioners and under-functioners, and it’s almost like they form a symbiotic relationship. They kind of need each other to survive. And so an over functioner does for somebody what they’re perfectly capable of doing for themselves but are not doing for themselves. Maybe the simplest way to see this is when a teenager gets to the age where they should be capable of getting themselves out of bed for school in the morning, but they don’t. That would be under-functioning. And then the parent is angrily waking them up like five or six times in the morning. So, you know, maybe they go in and say, “Hey, you need to get up for school, it’s time.” But the kid doesn’t get up. And then they come back three minutes, “Hey, you need to get up.” And they do that over and over. That’s the over-functioning and under-functioning dynamic.
That teenager, I’m not going to name an age, but by the time they’re in high school, your average teens should be able to get themselves out of bed. But the over-functioner is staying stuck and blaming the under-functioner when they themselves are partly to blame. Again, this is my favorite thing about systems theory. Everybody takes responsibility for their own behavior. So maybe that over-functioning parent needs to realize, “Well, what if I just let them sleep in today and they have to now face the consequence of being late to school on their own? Maybe the over-functioner warns the kid the night before, ‘Hey, I’ve gotten into this pattern with you where I’m trying to get you out of bed and I’m having to be more and more angry just to get you out of bed, and I don’t like that.
Brett McKay: So I want you to know, tomorrow morning I’m not getting you out of bed, I’m leaving for school at 7:35 a.m. If you’re not ready, you have to find your own way there,’ whatever it is, putting the anxiety back where it belongs.” But that’s a very simple example of an over-functioner and an under-functioner, because that kid knows every morning, “Well, dad’s going to come back three more times, I don’t have to get up.” And then the next day it’s four more times, then five more times. And you see the over-functioner and under-functioner in a symbiotic pattern with each other.
And you see that in work as well. There might be someone who just, who’s just slacking, and then there’s always be someone who’ll pick up the slack even though they shouldn’t. And it just, it keeps things normal, things are still going, but it’s just increasing more anxiety because the person who’s over-functioning is like, “Ah, I’m just stretched too thin and then I’m just stressed out.” And then the under-functioner might think, “Well this person’s just, you know, not respecting my boundaries, blah blah blah.” So again you’re trying to manage the anxiety, but you, you increase the anxiety. And as you were talking, I can see another example of over-functioning like people pleasers. People pleasing, that’s a form of over-functioning. Like you take responsibility for how people feel, so you, instead of saying things just, you know, clearly and directly, you try to massage it in a way so that you don’t hurt the other person’s feelings and et cetera like that.
Steve Cuss: It’s crazy, Brett. I’m a recovering people pleaser and I think it was about ten years ago, maybe twelve years ago, I noticed a pattern. Systems theory really is good at helping you notice predictable patterns in your life. I would run into somebody who I hadn’t seen in a long time in some public setting and that person would say, “Oh Steve, it’s been too long, we should grab coffee.” They would say that, not me. And then I would make sure to chase them down. So we would grab coffee because I didn’t want them to feel let down. They’re the one that suggested we grab coffee, I’m the one carrying the responsibility. That’s crazy. That’s an exact example of a people pleaser over-functioning. I mean, how many of those people didn’t actually want to grab coffee? Now, sure, they shouldn’t have said it to me, but why is it that all they have to do is say, “We should catch up,” and now I’m emailing, texting, getting it on the calendar? That’s a classic example of over-functioning.
Brett McKay: Another way people manage anxiety but actually just increase anxiety. You mentioned it earlier, distancing; you just get smaller, right? Instead of saying how you feel or trying to engage with the person that might be causing or creating, generating the anxiety, you just stop talking to them. You just try to reduce the amount of interaction you have with that individual. But the chronic anxiety is still there.
Steve Cuss: Yeah, that’s right. This is the harder group that when you distance, it’s harder to notice that you’re anxious because it feels like wisdom, or it feels kind of numb. I work with a lot of people that don’t realize that they’re managing anxiety by distancing. They think they’re wise. Like, they think they’re above it all. So the classic distancing is the middle school girl who comes home heartbroken because her boyfriend dumped her and dad says, “Well, there’s plenty more fish in the sea.” That’s not helpful. That’s distancing. That’s not entering into her little middle school chaos where she feels seen and cared for. Another example of distancing is the man cave would be famous, I mean, sometimes the man cave is what you need for relief, but sometimes it’s because you don’t have the emotional capacity to connect to people in their chaos or in their situation. Sometimes distancing can look like short-cutting someone’s conversation. Like, “Get to the point,” right? People are just sharing, but you’re trying to get them to summarize or you’re trying to give them advice. So distancing is more sophisticated, but it is this emotional detachment. You kind of referenced it. The most extreme form is cut off is actually cutting off a relationship and not having anything to do with that person anymore.
Brett McKay: And you say this in the book, and Bowen says as well, sometimes you need to cut off, like if there’s like abuse and things like that, you need to get that person out of your life. But I think often times with things, you know, below that, way below that, we resort to cut offs. Like this whole idea of there’s this trend, cutting out toxic people in your life. I get it in theory, but maybe that’s not helpful. Like, maybe you actually just need to engage with the person and try to figure out a way to create a more healthy relationship.
Steve Cuss: Yeah, that’s right. At least with my organization, Capable Life, we help everybody manage four relationships. The relationship with yourself, with your people. That’s two. The third relationship is with difficult people. And to your point, Brett, there are people that you need to boundary, but it’s usually a lot less people than you think. And so systems theory really does expand your capacity to connect to difficult people. And then for those of us who have some kind of a faith system, the fourth relationship is with God. But that third category, difficult people, I think it’s underrated. I think one great reason to get into systems theory is to learn to increase your tolerance for nonsense and for ambiguity and challenging people. That’s a good skill.
Brett McKay: No, I’d agree. So one of the big ideas from Bowen theory is that a single person can change the dysfunctional system by focusing on themselves and not the relationship or the group dynamic. And they do this by differentiating. This is a big idea, this idea of differentiation. What is differentiation?
Steve Cuss: Differentiation is difficult. It’s the cornerstone of systems theory. It’s getting clear. Well, first of all, it’s deciding to have a posture where you are going to manage your anxiety rather than spill it onto others. And at the same time, you are not going to catch others’ anxiety. So if I know I’m going to meet with a difficult person, part of my differentiation is me doing my work before I walk into that meeting. So I’m not as easily triggered. I can actually sit with that person and listen to them longer before I start getting triggered and reactive. But also, I’ve made the decision as a differentiated person, I don’t need that person to treat me a certain way. They can come at me, however, they’re going to come at me because I’m not going to catch their anxiety. So that’s step one.
Step two is working on actually being connected to that person rather than, to your earlier point, merging in or becoming codependent with them or distancing from them. I’m actually going to stay in proximity. Differentiation increases your capacity. Then the third step and the final step is getting really clear on who you are and what you’re about. So it’s maybe the short way to say it, is you’re defining yourself. The powerful thing for a leader, particularly an organizational leader, when you differentiate as a leader, you do not need your people to agree with you to differentiate. So I used to pastor a church and we did a very controversial affordable housing program in our neighborhood. And a lot of our neighbors didn’t want affordable housing, low income housing in the neighborhood. And so when we would hold neighborhood meetings, they would come very fired up. At our meetings, trying to shut this down.
I had to practice differentiation. So the way I defined myself was, you know, I worked on myself. I wasn’t catching. Some of them were behaving really badly. It was really quite a hostile situation. But my best move was I just said, “Listen, some of you are our neighbors, and you are also our congregants. You live in the neighborhood, and you attend this church. And we know that by putting affordable housing on our land, we’ve put you in a very difficult position. So we just want you to know, as the pastor of your church, if you don’t think our church should have affordable housing, we recommend you vote no at city council.
But here is what we are doing. Here’s why we’re doing it, and we’re moving forward. So the opposite, in that case of differentiation, would be merging, needing my congregants to vote yes. That would be like enmeshment or detaching and deciding they’re all of the devil, you know, writing them off. But differentiating is really working on staying connected to these people while defining who you are and where you’re going. And you can do it in your family, you can do it at work. It’s a complicated and conceptual thing, so people have trouble grasping it. But that’s kind of it in a nutshell.
Brett McKay: Yeah. So it’s being a self while still staying connected with others.
Steve Cuss: Yeah.
Brett McKay: And what’s funny is Bowen doesn’t give too much advice on how to do it. Even like Edwin Friedman in that book, he didn’t have much advice on how to differentiate as well. It’s just more of like a stance you have to take. Like you said, it’s hard to explain it, but once you. But, you know, when you see, you know, those people where you know that they’ve got a point of view, you know, they have a solid sense of self, but they’re not a jerk about it. They’re still connected with you. And like, it’s like a. It’s like a maturity, I would say.
Steve Cuss: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. Just think about the best boss you’ve ever had. She or he probably managed their anxiety, probably had a big capacity for your anxiety, didn’t get wrapped up in you, and were probably exactly themselves. Somehow you could be exactly yourself around them, and at the same time, you wanted to be the best version of yourself. That’s a good example of a well-differentiated leader.
Brett McKay: And something that Bowen says is that differentiation isn’t a destination. You can never say, “I am a differentiated individual.” It’s like a scale. Sometimes you are more differentiated and less differentiated in certain situations, maybe in different parts of your life. Any tips? Like, okay, say someone’s listening to this, like, “Well, I want to become more differentiated. I want to become more of a self.” What can people do to start that process?
Steve Cuss: Well, I would say the first step is researching it more. A podcast is a great introduction. Dr. Roberta Gilbert has an entire book just on differentiation. It’s called “The Cornerstone Concept.” I would say, read that book. I’ve got a whole chapter on it in my book, “Managing Leadership Anxiety.” If you don’t want to read a whole book, you can read my chapter. You can type “Differentiation of Self” in a YouTube channel, a YouTube search, and you’ll see videos on it. I’d start there. Then the next step is you’re always working on grounding yourself first.
So the flight attendant tells us, first, put the oxygen mask on your own face before helping others. So if you know you’re going to go into a meeting that is fairly triggering, you’re doing pre-work to over oxygenate, kind of like bicyclists do, or deep-sea divers, like those free divers. They’re actually doing this breathing exercise to get more oxygen in their body so they can stay underwater longer. That’s a pretty good metaphor for differentiation. So you are making sure you’re well, checking your false needs, your triggers, managing them before you ever walk into the room. I’m often doing that.
In my case, you know, I’m a pastor, so I’m often using prayer for that. But I’m also just trying to remember what’s true. What’s true? Anxiety wants me to turn that person into a monster. But what’s true is this is a human being. They’ve earned my respect. I’m going to respect them no matter how they treat me. I’m going to speak respectfully for them. So some of that self-talk can help. And then you just got to practice, Brett. You just got to get in there and do it badly. And then, over time, you learn how to do it better.
Brett McKay: Okay, so, um, some things to do: Learn how to manage your own anxiety. There are different tactics: Meditation, prayer, exercise you talk about having these, like, life-affirming or life-giving practices. Whether that’s exercise, going out to fish, spending time with your family, like storing up those internal resources. So when you do engage in conflict or there’s tension, you’re able to stay as calm as you can. Then also, just have a clearly identified sense of self. Like, know what you’re about, know what you believe, and like, learn how not to be afraid to share that as well. And I think one of the things that you talk about, and Bowen talks about as well, is as you differentiate, the amount of anxiety in the relationship or the group might actually start going up in the short term. And that’s why people think, “Okay, I stood up for myself, and things are now worse. I should probably just play it small again.” And I think he calls that resistance or sabotage, right?
Steve Cuss: Resistance and sabotage. That’s exactly right. It is part of the differentiation process. The challenge on a podcast is always that people are anxious to dissolve this problem in the next meeting. The goal is to dissolve this problem in the next nine months. This is going to be a series of exercises you’re going to go through. And yes, you can expect, so for example, if you know your boss is easily triggered, one mode of differentiation is to recognize, “Okay, so when we talk about it, he’s going to get triggered. So, I don’t have to catch the anxiety because I know it’s coming. I shouldn’t be surprised when he’s triggered again.”
You can do the same trick with sabotage and resistance. When you see people sabotaging and resisting, you can almost check it off the to-do list rather than shut down. And that’s where Friedman really helps us with a well-differentiated leader, like a Winston Churchill with his war cabinet. If you’ve ever studied that, there is a leader. I mean, I’m sure whiskey for breakfast had to have helped, Brett. But there’s a leader that knew sabotage was coming, expected it, and kept leading through it to help England.
Great example of differentiation. Plus, hey, man, you get differentiation and whiskey, like, that’s great. That’s a great life. So that’s important to notice. But really, it’s important also to test your own assumptions. Anxiety always lives in our assumptions. And I work with a lot of people that are in a toxic work environment, and I’m encouraging them to think about what would it look like to leave? That doesn’t mean you should leave, but just exploring it makes you more free, because a lot of people feel stuck, the paycheck or all kinds of assumptions that are keeping them from speaking up. But for some people, it’s not worth the emotional damage by staying.
Brett McKay: Yeah. So here’s an example of how anxiety might increase in the short term as you try to differentiate. Let’s say there’s a relationship you have where there’s triangulation involved, where someone’s coming to you, a third person’s coming to you to talk about a relationship you have with a person. So let’s say your boss and you have an employee who is upset with maybe a decision you’ve made, and instead of talking to you directly, that employee goes to a third person and kind of talks about, “I’m not liking what Steve’s doing.”
Differentiation would involve, well, I’m just going to go directly to that person, and that can be like, “Oh, my gosh, that causes a lot of anxiety.” The other person could get upset, but I. Bowen says in the process of doing that, in the long term, you’re going to make things better.
Steve Cuss: And depending on the person, you might change their behavior, too. Always a risk. Easy for me to say, but again, back to the “Devil Wears Prada” example, if you are being mistreated, it’s not in the perpetrator’s best interest to get away with it either. And so, learning to put the anxiety back where it belongs takes great risk. But it might be that that person respects you for not being a doormat. Now, I’m always concerned when I’m giving theoretical kind of into the abyss. Usually, if I’m helping people, it’s a couple of hours of conversation to get really clear on what’s going on. And my coaches, I have a number of coaches that work for me. Their job is to listen to assumptions, detangle the anxiety so that the person can get clarity. So, what you and I are talking about now is a great tool, but it’s often several hours’ worth of work to figure it out.
Brett McKay: Oh, for sure. I was thinking, like, if someone is a people pleaser like that, over-functioning people pleaser, maybe a challenge you do is, “Well, I’m going to say no, I’m just going to. I’m going to fight that urge that I have to people please and see what happens.” And what might happen, you might feel really anxious doing that, and maybe it does cause some hurt feelings on the part of the other person, but you just have to learn how to be like, “Okay, you know, that was. But me saying no is reasonable. I wasn’t being mean. It was really uncomfortable. But maybe we’ll be able to fix the system or relationship that we have.”
Steve Cuss: Yeah, that’s a great example because especially when you spend time realizing, “How am I complicit?” You know, it’s so tempting for humans to focus on the so-called perpetrator, but just to remind everybody, a system says everybody is to blame, and so therefore, that gives you a lot of opportunity to take responsibility. So, yeah, that’s right. Like, yes, this person has always asked you to do things, and that’s frustrating to you, but yes, you’ve always said yes. That’s the problem. And so, working on your end of it, we often coach people to actually apologize to the perpetrator. “Hey, I owe you an apology because I’ve been frustrated at you. And I haven’t known how to tell you this because it feels to me like you take advantage of my good nature and always ask me to do things. But honestly, I’m not pointing the finger at you. I’m wondering why I say yes so much. So I just wanted to let you know I’m going to start saying no more because I’m getting exhausted or whatever that looks like.” But when you go to somebody who’s generating the anxiety and your first move is to apologize rather than accuse, it’s really powerful.
Brett McKay: Yeah. It disarms the situation.
Steve Cuss: Yeah.
Brett McKay: So hopefully, this conversation has given people a good intro to Bowen family systems theory. And I think once you kind of grasp these different ideas, you’ll start seeing it in your life everywhere. And there’s a lot more to it. And your book is a great place to learn more. So, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Steve Cuss: Yeah, they can go to my website, stevecusswords.com. My last name’s Cuss. I’m from Australia. Last name Cuss. There’s nothing any of us can do about it. So, my website, stevecusswords.com, and we do a lot of organizational consulting and speaking if there’s a way to inquire about that. But they can get access to the book, I’ve got a podcast, and they can even get some of our courses through that as well.
Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Steve Cuss, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Steve Cuss: Thanks, Brett. Thanks for having me on.
Brett McKay: My guest today was Steve Cuss. He’s the author of the book “Managing Leadership Anxiety.” You can find more information about his work at his website, stevecusswords.com. Also, check out our show notes at AOM.is/familysystems, where you’ll find links to resources. We delve deeper into the topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you’ll find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you take 1 minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the AOM podcast but put what you’ve heard into action.
