Use the power of regrets to grow.

Regret, like other emotions, can be a useful source of information to help one grow. It is defined as a feeling of sadness or disappointment over some past event. We can use regrets to grow because it can foster reflection on what not to do again and what one could do in the future. 

Don’t let regret keep you in the past.

The emotion of regret can foster a lot of “if only I had” thinking, which can leave one in a more helpless frame of mind. One’s level of differentiation influences this type of thinking. My level of differentiation, my current level of stress, and the significance of the past event can lead to a lot of unproductive story-making. It’s easy to get stuck with stories about “if only I had.” That’s all about the past. This subjective thinking takes me away from future possibilities since it focuses on the “what if I had” of the past.

I’m not perfect – I better have some regrets.

I’m not perfect (as my family will declare), so I should have some regrets. One way to think about regret is as an outcome of one trying to do the best they could, given what they knew at that time. Parenting, for example, can definitely be like this. Unfortunately, many people get stuck in stories about how they should have or could have known better. But they didn’t. Thus, they couldn’t have done better at that time. Or they didn’t believe they needed to at that time. As I learn new information now, in the present, I can recognize what I could now do better next time. Regret is about the past, which I can’t change. The learning it allows is about the present and the future and what I can do differently. 

Reframe regrets with a systems perspective.

Our emotions and our emotional systems influence us more than we recognize. This is an outcome of our level of differentiation of self (and of those around us) and the stressors we are experiencing. These factors influence our thinking to be less fact-based and more subjective (aka stories). This subjectivity allows one to ignore information they shouldn’t, putting too much value on the wrong information. And it fosters a tendency to take the option of least effort, often hoping for a quick solution. It’s as if these emotional forces influence us to function as if we deliberately wanted to do something we would regret. This is one aspect of a systems perspective. 

I wasn’t the only one involved.

Another aspect of a systems perspective is that, as a product of my emotional system, the functioning of the whole emotional system influences my behaviour. I think it’s important to remember that emotional forces involved in wanting attention and approval and meeting others’ expectations can lead someone to act in a less mature manner. Drinking and driving, for example. A person doesn’t decide, “I’m going to drink enough to make sure I have an accident.” What they might decide is “I won’t drink that much, and I’ll drive carefully” because they want attention, approval and to meet the expectations of others. And once they drink, their objectivity gets weaker. They may get the attention and approval they wanted, so they don’t want to stop. A more differentiated individual might decide “I’m driving, so no drinking” based on a conviction that is the best for them. They will accept rejection and disapproval from others to act on their conviction. And they are much less likely to have regrets.

Regret results from an emotional process. Look at the process.

Regret is the outcome of an emotional process. I did or didn’t do something that I now regret. So work to understand the process that led to the “something.” How are things different between then and now? What was the process that lead to doing what I now regret? How was my thinking influenced? Who was I sensitive to for getting attention, approval, and meeting their expectations? Where was I not objective or not realistic in my thinking? What assumptions did I make? How might I have been ignoring things I should have paid attention to? Reflecting calmly on the process leading to the outcome might even show that there was nothing one could have done differently given the situation and information at that time. But often, this reflection reveals important information. 

Use the power of regret to grow. Make your future different.

While it may be hard, an honest review of what happened (a good friend can help) can provide clues for how to prevent it from happening again. Reframe the regret from “if only I had” to “now I will.” For example, I have regrets about not being in better contact with my siblings and extended family. Looking at my family history from a systems perspective helped me understand how this came about (it didn’t just happen). I don’t blame myself, but I do hold myself accountable for making my future different. So I made the effort to have regular contact with family members. My past does not have to define my future, and my regrets can help me change my future. A goal-oriented future is a better place to put my energy. 

Don’t regret your level of differentiation; work on it!

If my level of differentiation is an indicator of my level of mature behaviour and objectivity in my thinking, then clearly, I should regret it not being greater! Alas, one’s level of basic level differentiation changes slowly. But I can work on improving my functional level of differentiation. I do this by getting more clear about how I want to “be.” Spending time to define my principles and developing conviction for them is part of the process. So is learning about emotional systems. Defining and executing self-directed goals is another part of the process. Being a more differentiated and responsible self is the goal. This is part of deciding and acting on the conviction that I am responsible for myself and my actions while I’m also interdependent with others and society.

Don’t regret regrets. 

I don’t believe in the concept of no regrets. The attending doctor didn’t check the “is perfect” box on my birth certificate. So I was born to have some regrets. What’s important is what I learn from my regrets and how I act on those lessons. This is the path to fewer regrets and reducing the negative effects of regrets. Working on my level of differentiation has been valuable to me on this journey. And my regret of not starting sooner motivates me to keep working. I don’t regret the effort!

Dave Galloway

dave.galloway@livingsystem.ca

Dan Pink’s book “The Power of Regret” inspired this post. 

https://www.danpink.com/the-power-of-regret/

Learn more about Bowen Theory here.

Check out the Bowen Center YouTube channel here.

Distress behaviour is a signal for help

Why would anyone like me more if they think I’m stressed? I certainly don’t have big puppy dog eyes. Recent research suggests that evolutionarily, signalling distress to others would be an adaptive trait. But before we look at that, let’s understand a few aspects of human behaviour and stress. Humans and other species, when stressed, show typical behaviours. Scratching, for example (aka self-grooming). It’s referred to as displacement behaviour because of the energy it is displacing. Rats have regular stress behaviours which allow us to learn about stress and behaviour. Wringing one’s hands is another example. The sources of this “displacement” behaviour are also interesting. 

The stress of being caught in the middle 

One aspect of stress behaviours is that they are thought to arise from being frustrated by a situation that could be conflictual and affiliative at the same time. That’s the scientific wording for “maybe having a fight with your partner”. It sounds like a moment for defining self. I have a choice to be affiliative, i.e. submissive, or to define self and maybe have a conflict. Sound familiar? The study suggests that displaying distress is useful. Why? It invokes more like-ability! 

Distress is a sign of weakness. The weak make friends 

Remember, we are thinking about evolution. What would be the value of developing signals that showed one’s stress and weakened state? If you want to be the alpha-one, you need to look strong! Well, if you are living with extended family, like early humans and other social species did, then stress behaviours communicate you are not a threat and that you could use some help. Others, knowing that the group does better when its members are less stressed, would benefit in helping you. There is also research on primates supporting the idea that the stressed individual will reciprocate helping behaviour in the future. 

Reading distress improves with social network size

Another interesting finding suggests that the larger one’s social network, the better one is at reading stress signals. This makes complete sense as well. As one gets older, they meet more individuals, in more situations, thus building up the experience of understanding stressful behaviours. Importantly, noticing these behaviours is part of our wiring and is another example (see the previous post) of our embedded emotional sensitivity to others. 

Distress is one of the “top four” social signals

Dr. Kerr has proposed that humans are very sensitive to four social cues. These are attention, approval, distress and expectation. This research supports his idea. We exhibit distress and get attention. If it makes us more likeable, then we are going to get more approval and attention. So once again, our biology is automatically running more of our behaviour than we might realize in the moment. 

Signal your distress. Make new friends! 

In relationships, not hiding distress, but communicating it was the solution mother nature came up with. This must have an adaptive function, which it does: the stressed individual gets help and the group does better. Notice that distress signals to not blame anyone. They merely signal one’s distress. One aspect of being more differentiated is being able to share things that are important to oneself, like a situation that is creating stress. This aspect of being more differentiated fosters fewer secrets, leverages resources of the group, and helps lower the system’s level of stress, without blaming or making demands on others. For our non-verbal social ancestors, this “vulnerability” of simply communicating “I’m distressed” was useful. I’m glad we have this trait as well.

Dave Galloway 

dave.galloway@livingsystems.ca 

This post was inspired by this research https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.04.001  Jamie Whitehouse, Evolution and Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.04.001 

Find Michael Kerr’s book, Bowen Theory’s Secrets: Revealing the Hidden Life of Families here: https://bowentheoryacademy.org/  see p. 5 for primary social cues.

Read more about Bowen Theory here: https://livingsystems.ca/bowen-theory/

Blame is about cause and effect

When one is in pain or discomfort, it’s useful to understand what caused it. That’s how we can stop the cause and get back to normal. The body has lots of processes that identify a “cause” and puts it into action to get back into our normal state. If a bee stings us, we associate the bee with the sting and learn to avoid bees. We might even learn to associate bees with flowers and learn to be extra careful around flowers. This way of thinking, this paradigm, is cause and effect thinking. It can be very useful. But families are different.

Families are systems. Emotional systems.

There is a different way to think about families. That way is to think about a family as an emotional system. It’s a system because all the family members act and react to each other and influence each with their actions. It’s an emotional system because each family member’s emotions influence each other family member. The feedback loop, the influencing, is constantly operating. It’s what makes us a social species. For example, clients have spoken of “walking on eggshells” around the home. This is an example that the emotions of one or more individuals are influencing, and governing the behaviour of, the other family members.

Substance use is another example where the distress of one individual, the one using a substance, can lead to distress in other family members. The family members want the problem to go away. They want to find a cause to blame and then find a fix. So everyone can feel less distressed. And resolve the “problem”. This is natural and cause and effect thinking does work in other areas. But systems are different.

Problems are actually UFOs – unwanted functional outcomes in systems

IF, a system has parts that influence each other, THEN how the system functions, and its functional outcomes, are just a result of how the parts are working together. It takes years, perhaps generations, to produce outcomes in biological systems. If one part of a system isn’t functioning as we expected it to, then you look at how the parts are working together. If a tire’s tread is worn low on the outside edge, it’s not the tire’s fault. It could be a fault in the tire. It could be the alignment or the route taken every day. Maybe it’s the driver. If fact, ALL of these are contributing different amounts to the functioning of the car that produces the “problem” with the tire. The tire is just a symptom of the process of how the car functioning

Move beyond blame with systems thinking.

In systems, it can take a long time to produce a level of functioning that surfaces a problem. For example, relationships don’t really end with one event, nor does Substance use “just happen”. It takes the process of two teams playing a game to produce an MVP at the end of a game, and it takes an entire sports industry to create the game itself. Thinking about something from a systems perspective leads one to ask questions like how, where, when, how often, with whom, and how much in order to understand the process resulting in an outcome. The opioid crisis is a system-level issue. What kinds of things have to be in place, and what is the process that ends up with thousands of opioid deaths? It is complex and doesn’t have one quick fix. In fact, some quick fixes make things worse, especially over time.

I’m not to blame, but what is my part?

With a shift to systems thinking, family members can get curious about what part they might have played in any issue. They don’t blame themselves, because no one person is at fault. The premise with systems, especially emotional systems, is that everyone contributes something. So each individual can get curious about the part they have played because that is the ONLY part they can change.

Move beyond blame, not responsibility.

Because of the discomfort many “problems” cause, it can be very easy to want to blame something so it’s not one’s fault.   This often includes wanting a quick fix, to reduce one’s distress. But quick fixes can easily do more harm than good. And blaming just says “It’s not my problem, I’m not at fault”. It’s not responsible behaviour to go for a quick fix just to soothe one’s anxiety. This is where the saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” comes into play. It’s certainly not effective behaviour to just go “it ain’t me”. A systems perspective holds that each family member is responsible for acting as maturely as they can. Each family member is responsible to others, but not for others.

It’s hard to think of issues in terms of systems. But it can bring down the reactivity and increase the level of productive thinking.

I’m not to blame. You’re not to blame. No one is to blame. But poor functioning does have consequences. We all have a part to play, apart we can address. We all have room to improve our own level of differentiation.

That’s a paradigm-level shift in thinking.

Dave Galloway

dave.galloway@livingsystems.ca

To understand more about family systems, check out Family Ties That Bind

Read more about Bowen Theory here