Bowen and Emotional Forces

Emotional forces are regulating us just like they regulate nature. They are automatic and they are affecting you whether you are aware of them or not. These forces affect systems like families and they affect everyone’s functioning.

Togetherness and individuality, anxiety, and survival are all forces that affect a system. Togetherness and individuality go hand in hand. I wish I could make diagrams on here but you’ll just have to imagine what I am about to say. Imagine a line. On one end is togetherness and on the other is individuality. Both are needs that we fulfill automatically. They are the same coin with different sides. I think, in general, America is individualistic geared. I say that, knowing, that there are many cultures within America who are collectivistic. Generally, America is about individuals finding their own path and traveling it. Moving away from family and no longer needing them. Togetherness can even be seen as a weakness. I know I was affected by that. Before Bowen, I believed that people needed to be alone for an extended period of time and that too much togetherness was a problem. That was a bias I had to work through. I now have a much different outlook on togetherness and individuality. All humans are born with a need for togetherness. We need support for a long time (a life time?) compared to other animals. Whether we get that support and whether it is stable and nurturing support is a different topic but we all need togetherness for our survival. And that togetherness need is not something we shed. We will all have varying degrees of desire for it. At the same time, once we are born and connect to our caretakers, we automatically find ourself growing away from those caretakers. They influence how we grow away. They might not want us to grow away and that topic along with the emotional environment we grow up in will be a different post.

Side note: that diagram I mentioned with togetherness on one end and individuality on the other end. Differentiation of self can be thought of as a management of both. Individuality is not synonymous with differentiation. Differentiation is how to be together but separate. It is how to belong to a group without losing your identity which is a life long process. A moment to moment process.

We are born into togetherness and then almost instantly have the need to want our own space (individuality). They happen together and at the same time. We don’t need to think about it which by that I mean we react to one another within those forces. We need both forces to survive.

An example I will give is the pandemic. For most people, there was a quarantine. For some people that meant they were by themselves in their homes (or homeless). For others, that meant they were with people like their partners, families, friends, or roommates etc. Now some people did just fine in both environments. But for others, it was extremely difficult.

Being by themselves, not being able to connect with others, was detrimental to their mental and physical health. I know there was zoom that some were fortunate to have however, it is not the same as seeing people face to face and being able to hung, dance, laugh, cry, and share moments. The energy is different. On the other side, being together with people for an extended amount of time, like a family, can be extremely difficult. Family has the ability to get under your skin like no other. Something about being born into a family, that kind of togetherness, affects us differently than other relationships. A close second is intimate relationships although for some, it is the main difficulty in their life. Anyway, for people that were surrounded by others, without their ability to get their own space/individuality, proved to be a struggle.

What it means to have too much togetherness or too much space is different for everyone. That is something that changes from moment to moment and over time. During 2020, both of those forces intensified along with anxiety and survival (clinging to beliefs and groups to cope with uncertainty). We saw mental health issues rise along with family and relationship conflict, abuse, and neglect. I think this is what led to emotional cut off to rise as well. We were in (and still are in) an intense system during 2020 and we saw the affects of the forces that regulate us such as togetherness and individuality intensifying.

Survival and anxiety are other forces that regulate us and they go hand in hand. As animals were are all trying to survive however, our survival is never guaranteed (death is). This automatically brings anxiety and uncertainty into our lives and we do what we can to survive. “To be alive, is to be anxious” Dr. Burnett. The anxiety that Bowen is talking about is not something to diagnose and toss out. It is neither good or bad. It just is. Anxiety and survival regulate all of nature. Like nature, we have instincts to eat, sleep, protect ourselves and our group, and reproduce. As humans, we are able to conceptualize our deaths and think about it abstractly (maybe this has something to do with our evolution and our ability to look up at the stars and contemplate our existence). Not everyone has that privilege because how survival manifests looks different for everyone and some people are living only in their sympathetic nervous system. But for some humans they can ponder their survival and the ways their lives are being led. I mentioned reproduction as an instinct, however, that might mean actually having children or it can mean a person’s legacy. How will their name be remembered. For example, that can be done through creative means like stories, art, and mentorship.

Anxiety binders are ways of managing the anxiety of being alive. Relationships, activities, symptoms, beliefs, etc., are ways of surviving.

Survival is dependent on being a part of a group such as family, friends, work, and culture. Groups are manifestation of anxiety. They are a way of managing the anxiety of being alive (along with other Bowen concepts such as relationship patterns, triangles, and emotional distance/cut off). That is why, for the most part, becoming an outsider to a group can be so threatening (and detrimental to our mental health and physical health). We depend on others and they depend on us (to function in a certain way). Each group dictates what makes its members insiders. Think about your family. They have rules, expectations, beliefs, and assumptions (emotional transmission) that are passed down from generation to generation that specify what is accepted and what is not. For some, it is easy to go along with what is expected but for others it is difficult. For instance, if the expectation is that you are heterosexual but you are gay, this can be overwhelming and create an existential crisis within you. If cut off is a result of coming out to your family then finding another group to belong to is automatic. Maybe it is your friend group or a group you find on MeetUp. Whatever group, most likely, it is accepting of who you are and you feel welcomed (rather than threatened).

Culture is another manifestation of anxiety. Survival looks different from culture to culture. Expectations are passed down through stories and non-verbal communication. People learn how to remain insiders and that also means designating who are outsiders. Every group has this process. A group might say they accept everyone but there is an emotional process happening where if a person threatens (actual threat or imagined threat) the survival of the group then they become outsiders. If that did not happen, the group would fall a part. I am not sure who would want to be part of a group where its members did not feel protected and taken care of. Members of a group look toward the group leaders for answers, guidance, and protection. That helps manage the anxiety of being alive. It is part of our relational self (the part of us that is dependent on a group or relationship). Real quick; solid self is the part of you that is your identity that is not changed by others. Everyone has differing degrees of solid self and relationship self.

The emotional system is anxiety, survival, togetherness, and individuality influencing us. The emotional systems regulates us and we regulate it. The emotional system is how we manage the anxiety of survival. How we manage togetherness along side defining who are as a person. These forces are happening to us whether we are aware of them or not. They are not something we can control or get rid of. I can see someone within their emotional system and understand the universalness of the emotional system (those forces) and how it is manifesting uniquely for them (their personality, growth, and suffering).

I think this is all I want to post for now. The emotional system a complex concept and there is more to be said about it. However, I don’t need to write a long explaining post to get my point across. This is a summary. A peak into what the emotional system entails. If you are interested in reading more, check out Murray Bowen and Michael Kerr's books!