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.
Why is forgiveness important? Because it's good for us, whether it's forgiving someone else or yourself. But adopting a systems perspective around a wrongdoing is a big shift for anyone. The more intense the situation, the harder it can be. (Before you continue, please note that extreme events can be very hard for individuals to put into a systems perspective. A systems perspective can involve a long time frame and societal level processes preceding the event that affects an individual. A systems perspective doesn't ask why or if something is fair.)
Emotional demands and expectations go together
For most organisms, including humans, the developmental trajectory involves an individual becoming more and more capable and responsible for taking care of their own needs. Maturation is associated with the ability to function independently. As a social species, humans needed to find a partner and have children in order to survive as an extended family unit. Single families would have had a very hard time surviving on their own. This creates the need and expectation that members of the group would care for each other. A mature understanding of this recognizes the benefits and costs of interdependence so the group can survive. An immature understanding of this has unrealistic expectations of others and makes demands of others. This is pretty clear when one is talking about physical needs like food, shelter and protection that protect our physical self.
Can one be selfishly wise?
Dr. Kerr has a phrase that is familiar to those in the Bowen community: "How does one be for self without being selfish and be for others without being selfless? "
Function UP in 2023
It's that time of year when I think about my intentions for functioning up in the coming year. A systems perspective has me thinking about how I'm functioning in my family and workplace systems. The concept of functioning is an important one in Bowen family systems theory. It came from Dr. Bowen's goal to understand human behaviour by recording what he called functional facts. Function facts are what independent observers might record about an interaction between two or more people. For example, a parent, after having an argument with a child, then complaining to their partner is a function fact regarding triangles. The content of what they said might be a fact, but we can observe their behaviour of talking to a third person objectively. Dr. Bowen and his team did this over a period of five years during his NIMH research project with families.
Defining a self - always do this.
Defining one's self is a lot of work and a lifelong process. However, one can improve their functioning at any time. Here are some ideas, from a system's perspective, that can increase one's level of differentiation, albeit over time.
The Immune System defines self
Nature has a way of defining the physical self for all organisms via the immune system. Evolution built our immune system to recognize non-self from self. Accordingly, mechanisms like the immune system are the root of the physical self defining itself to other organisms. What can we learn about defining self from our immune system?
Personal growth: Individual Effort in Social Systems
Does an individual's anxiety level vary when embarking on a journey of personal and spiritual growth? How would the existing social system react to the change? Would the level of anxiety vary over a long period? What sustains the individual on their journey? With these questions, I did a research project including in-depth interviews of ten family systems from different cultural backgrounds and localities. Here are some key lessons.
Systems view of problems.
A system view of a problem differs from how most people think of a problem. The common way of thinking stems from an individualistic cause-and-effect model. In our current culture, there is a quick-fix desire as well. Thus, the result of the cause and effect, quick fix approach is that the fix can be worse than the problem.
Emotional pain does “hurt”.
There is a difference between pain and suffering, and sometimes individuals create more suffering than the initial pain warrants. Emotion pain literally hurts because it can fire the same brain areas that are activated for physical pain. This brain functioning shows the reality of emotional pain. This makes sense evolutionarily because physical pain came first, so the emotional parallel evolved to just use the same brain circuits.
