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How Relationships Impact Health

October 27, 2024Anxiety, Define self, health

New research shows how our thinking can impact our gut health and trigger an immune system reaction. Chronic anxiety in relationships can activate this pathway. Define self could be more important to overall health that most people realize.

Radical Acceptance and Bowen Theory

September 13, 2024Anxiety, attachment, cut off

A family system perspective can make all the difference to adopting radical acceptance of a situation. For many people, the shift from an individual model perspective to a family emotional systems perspective is a radical thing to accept. But the core of radical acceptance theory is understanding and acknowledging “what is”. What Dr. Bowen observed, understood and acknowledged was that families operate as an emotional unit.

Can anxiety be bound

July 15, 2024Anxiety, differentiation

YES. And anxiety binding has positive and negative aspects to it.

Dr. Kerr wrote a lot about anxiety binding behaviour. He is the author of Family Evaluation, one of the original “source materials” on Bowen Family Systems. The system’s idea that a behaviour can bind anxiety is important when trying to improve one’s functioning.

What is good emotional contact

April 15, 2024Anxiety, differentiation, emotional system, togetherness

Dr. Bowen and Dr. Kerr have written about the value of having good emotional contact with family members. But what is "good emotional contact"? How is this different from an emotional connection? How does it relate to one's level of differentiation? Is this something a person can intentionally work at increasing the quality or amount of emotional contact with others? And importantly, what would the benefit be to oneself and others of having good emotional contact?

Perceptions Matter

April 23, 2023Anxiety, emotional system
perception of social threats activate social genonmic networks

Perceptions matter - just ask your genes!

A newer field of study in biology is called social genomics. It is the study of how and when different genes are activated based on social interactions. On one level, it is very obvious that relationships affect our physiology. We can get anxious if someone is angry with us, which would show up as an increase in cortisol in our blood. But the study of social genomics goes much, much further and looks at all the genes that get activated. This provides clear evidence for a physiological mechanism of how lower levels of differentiation can negatively impact health. The same mechanism provides for how higher levels of differentiation can promote health and mitigate the effects of stress.

Can defining self overcome languishing?

April 15, 2022Anxiety, Define self

Can defining self help with languishing?

What is languishing and how could defining self help overcome it? A 2021 New York Times article discussed the concept of languishing and suggested that it could be the dominant emotion of 2021. If Bowen Theory is accurate and if languishing is real, then understanding how systems thinking and defining self apply to languishing should be useful.

What is chronic anxiety

March 20, 2022Anxiety, Define self

Chronic Anxiety: something for everyone.

Chronic anxiety is the outcome of the emotional programming that occurs for everyone, mostly from their family of origin. Learning how to be and what to pay attention to early in life programs our type and level of vigilance. Like a shadow, it's always there. For example, there is a large body of research that supports the finding that early childhood adversity affects the programming of the stress response system. To put it another way, our family programmed our level of sensitivity into our physiology. And they taught us what to be sensitive to.