Episode 48. Entangled: How Family Patterns Shape Your Marriage & Emotional Balance, with Dr. Kathleen Smith

Apr 1

As a researcher and educator studying couples' dynamics, I've observed that self-awareness plays a crucial role in nurturing healthy relationships. Recently, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Kathleen Smith, author of True to You: A Therapist's Guide to Stop Pleasing Others and Start Being Yourself, about the importance of knowing who you are and becoming self-aware of the impacts your thoughts and behaviors have in marriage and family relationships.

Understanding External Self-Awareness

External self-awareness involves recognizing how our actions and behaviors impact those around us, particularly our spouses and family members. It's about stepping back and observing our patterns of interaction objectively.

Dr. Smith, drawing from the Bowen Family Systems Theory, emphasizes that our relationships are interconnected systems. Our actions ripple through these systems, often in ways we don't immediately recognize.

The Pitfalls of Over-functioning and Under-functioning

One common pattern Dr. Smith identifies is the tendency for spouses to fall into roles of over-functioning or under-functioning. This dynamic can create imbalance and tension in relationships.

Over-functioning might look like:

Constantly giving unsolicited advice
Taking responsibility for your partner's tasks or emotions
Trying to manage your spouse's relationships with others

Under-functioning, on the other hand, might manifest as:

Relying excessively on your partner for direction
Avoiding responsibility in certain areas of the relationship
Expecting your spouse to handle challenges for you

Breaking Free from Unhealthy Patterns

Developing external self-awareness allows us to recognize these patterns and take steps to change them. Dr. Smith suggests several strategies:

1. Observe Without Judgment

Take a step back and observe your interactions with your spouse. Notice when you tend to over-function or under-function. Resist the urge to judge these behaviors; simply acknowledge them.

2. Reflect on Your "Factory Settings"

Dr. Smith introduces the concept of "factory settings" - our default ways of responding in relationships. These might be influenced by our upbringing, past experiences, or personality traits. Identifying these can help us understand why we react in certain ways.

3. Challenge Your Assumptions

Often, we act based on assumptions about what our spouse needs or wants. Practice curiosity instead. Ask questions and allow your partner to express their own thoughts and feelings.

4. Focus on Self-Change

Instead of trying to change your spouse, focus on changing your own responses. This might feel uncomfortable at first, but it can lead to significant shifts in the relationship dynamic.

"The task of moving towards myself is getting away from those factory settings because they can be limiting. Both of those versions are me. It's just which one do I want to live in day to day?" - Dr. Kathleen Smith

The Impact of External Self-Awareness on Relationships

Developing external self-awareness can have profound effects on our marriages and family relationships:

Reduced Conflict: By understanding how our actions impact others, we can avoid unintentional provocations.
Improved Communication: When we're aware of our patterns, we can communicate more effectively and authentically.
Greater Intimacy: Self-awareness allows us to be more present and responsive in our relationships.
Personal Growth: As we become more self-aware, we open up opportunities for personal development.

Remember, developing external self-awareness is a journey, not a destination. It requires ongoing effort and reflection. However, the rewards - stronger, more fulfilling relationships - are well worth the investment.

As you reflect on your own relationships, consider: In what areas might you be over-functioning or under-functioning? How could developing greater external self-awareness impact your marriage or family dynamics?

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Welcome to Marriage iQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse.
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I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings.
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And I'm Dr. Scott Hastings.
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We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose. To transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed with a little fun.
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Hello, everyone. Welcome back. We are so glad to have you back again.
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I think you really like those buttons. That's a little overkill. They don't stop by themselves.
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We don't have people clapping. It's just our studio sound.
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Oh, just wishful thinking, huh?
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But no, I think that this exciting. Dr. Kathleen Smith here, she. She is an author of this very insightful and impactful book called True to you, A Therapist Guide to Stop Pleasing Others and Start Being Yourself.
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And what's your other book? I know you have one other one, too.
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It's called Everything Isn't Terrible.
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Dude, that's really great. She's a licensed therapist and a faculty member at the Bowen center for the Study of the Family. She also writes about relationships for the popular substack the Anxious Overachiever. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her family. And welcome, Kathleen.
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Thank you. I'm happy to be chatting with you guys.
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We are big fans of the Bowen family systems theory, and I think that's really exciting that you actually work right there at the Bowen Center. Can you explain to our listeners who Bowen is and how his theory matters?
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Murray Bowen was a psychiatrist who is the father of family psychotherapy or family systems theory, and he was curious about. The family is a living, breathing organism. We're social creatures. Our families are built to have goals and accomplish things, but also to manage tension and stress. And so he really thought that you miss a lot when you just look at the person as an individual. You miss a lot of their functioning and what's going on. And you have to look at the broader system. And he was curious about the impact of one or more than one person in a family beginning to function differently, how that had on the whole system and on other people in the system. And so when I was studying to be a counselor, I think my first response was, oh, I'm not interested in my family. They're fine. There's not a lot going on there. And I started to learn about bone theory and family systems and just instantly found it helpful. I started seeing the patterns light up in my own relationships, and it was a lot of fun. It was very interesting to think about my part and what I could do differently. And I Just really appreciated how these patterns are very observable and to some degree are changeable. And I really like helping people think about that. I think of it as like a kind of like post football game, let's say, okay, you went home for Thanksgiving, let's run the tapes. What happened? What do you observe, what did you do, and what do you want to do differently next time? And it's a really fulfilling way of thinking about things. And so I just really appreciate it.
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That's really great. I often get people asking for resources and they'll say, I need a therapist for this child, or I need a therapist for my spouse. But they're not actually looking at the whole family and how that system works together.
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Family therapy was very big in the 60s and the 70s, and he died in 1990. So his life was the scope of the 20th century.
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And then you and others have just taken this theory and expanded on it then, right?
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Yeah.
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And what's wonderful is at the Bowen center, people aren't just clinicians, they're not just therapists and counselors and social workers, they're clergy, they're business folks. Because anything that involves humans, you can use this thinking towards. And so it's fun to have colleagues who are in different fields. Because it's not just about, quote, doing therapy. It's about just helping people think about relationships. It's really fun to see how that gets applied in different settings.
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It sounds to me like you work at an insight center. I love insight. It's one of the greatest tools I think we have as humans.
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And I also think it's really interesting that you can take these same principles like you just said and apply them to business, apply them to other areas of our lives, maybe friendships. But ultimately what we're doing is we're looking at the way we interact with other people, right?
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Absolutely. And I think the level of freedom you have to be who you want to be. How automatic are some of our reactions with our family, with other relationships? It's good to pay attention to what's.
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The difference between being selfish and self focused and what you're talking about.
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There can be a very individual focus on this pressure to be your true self. And I don't think that's helpful. I just think of the distinction between my factory settings and what's important to me. What do I value, how do I want to treat myself and other people, those beliefs that might be different than the factory settings. My factory settings will say, let's just do this on your own. Don't involve Other people in this. Right. But my beliefs are that it's important to work together with other people to accomplish things to help people. Right. And so the task of moving towards myself is getting away from those factory settings because they can be limiting. Both of those versions are me. It's just which one do I want to live in? Day to day, Getting clearer about who you're trying to be and what your best thinking is opens you up to be more interested in other people, to be more responsive to maybe some of the needs of the relationship. Because you're less allergic to everybody. You can actually hang in there versus having to get away from people.
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So explain what you mean about being allergic to other people.
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Yeah, I think it's a great word. I think just that we bump up against people who elicit certain responses out of us and we either take over and want to tell them what to do, or we go along with them and be what they want us to be, or we just get far away from them as quickly as possible. We end up doing one of those three things when we're allergic to people. And there's not a lot of thinking involved. It's just all automatic. What can calm things down as quickly as possible?
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So my husband is a physician and he specializes in part in allergies. That's a fun analogy.
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Maybe it's the wrong word. You tell me.
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I do allergy. I do a lot of other stuff too.
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Right?
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Yeah, I think there's some good analogies there. Learning ways to selves little by little and exposing ourselves to new and different ways of thinking. Ways of thinking. Yeah.
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That is really great.
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What do I value? How do I want to treat myself and other people? Right. Those beliefs that might be different than the factory setting. So to give you an example, I'm an only child. I love to work by myself. I've engineered my entire life to some degree to be able to do that, but that's very limiting. Also, I also value other people and relationship.
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I love the term factory settings.
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Yeah, this kind of sounds like identity that we have in our four cornerstones. You say factory settings. I'm assuming like the set of genetic traits that you came with or nature and nurture.
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Maybe learned behaviors too.
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Yeah, it could be genetic, but also environment. You're the oldest in your family. Or you just love to direct people and tell them what to do. It's not necessarily genetic. That's just the role you played in your family.
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Okay. And then you said believes, counteracts sometimes these factory settings.
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Yeah, Just a more Versatile way of being a person than what we tend to do when we're stressed out, we're not particularly creative. When the anxiety is high, we really only do a couple things.
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And in Bowen theory, I know he does talk about how our emotional patterns get passed from generation to generation. So what would be some signs that someone is repeating unhealthy patterns that come through generations?
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Yeah. When people begin to learn about their families and the past generations, they might find that a lot of people were cut off or estranged, they fell out of contact and they're susceptible to repeating that pattern in their own family. Or they might find that parents were really worried about one kid who had a harder time and they put a lot of anxious focus on them. That can repeat itself. Or you might get this kind of seesaw in a marriage where one person is really over responsible or over functions for the other and that kind of. The kids escape that. It's all caught up in the marriage. And so he noticed that there were three or four patterns that emerged that you could see in any family or in any system.
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I think we first were exposed to that idea when we were in family therapy with one of our children. They had us look at the mental health of our big extended family and addictions and other types of behaviors as well. And that was really insightful.
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Yeah. I just remember thinking, I have a reason now to explain why I'm so messed up.
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But we can't blame it on other people. Explain a lot.
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My grandfather was very eccentric. I could write a book on this guy. But yeah, just going back and seeing where you came from, I think that helps explain a lot. It doesn't explain your future or how to fix things, but it does give us some context. Right. On what we started with.
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I think it does a couple things. I think it helps people be less hard on themselves. If you start to see some of the behaviors not as good or bad, but just adaptive. Oh yeah. It makes sense that things would shake out that way. That helps people be curious about, oh, I wonder what it would take for our generation to do it a little bit better or to do it differently. What I have to be doing, who would I need to move towards? Going back to that sports analogy, I think it opens up the playing field a little bit. When we're very focused on one particular problem like a marriage. If you can zoom out and say, there are lots of ways I could grow up and do better, that takes the pressure off of one particular one to get better as soon as possible, then it actually has the Freedom to maybe do that, where we put our focus and anxiety, it's just harder to shift out of. And so I love this ability to zoom out. And I think that the family diagram helps people do that. Even just like having it up on the screen or up on the wall. When I'm working with people, I feel like it just opens your brain a little bit in a way that. Just focusing on one issue. So it's just. It's helpful for zooming out in that way.
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I like to think of a family system as everybody has their part that they play, and as long as everybody's playing the part that they. It's not even assigned, but that they just gravitated towards, then the machine functions, even though it may be dysfunctional.
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Yeah. There's this idea of what's called functional positions in a family and how if there aren't huge problems, if the stress is relatively low, families can chug along and do okay. Whereas if there's a real challenge or crisis, the wheels fall off the wagon. And it's not helpful that everybody is stuck in one particular position, if that makes sense. And so the idea is the more a person can be flexible, be versatile, outside of that, the family does better because people can be a resource to each other in other ways. So to give you an example, maybe the family stays steady by always worrying about one kid or one person. Right. That's not a great position for that kid to be in. Right. They keep the cost because all of the worry is coming in their direction. So if a parent. Parent can start to manage themselves a little bit differently, that kid has a little bit of freedom. Right. That they didn't have. And so, yeah, it's. It's just saying what's limiting here? And is there a way to move outside that a little bit so that one person doesn't have to pay the price?
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You talk in your book a lot about anxiety and how that impacts our family relationships and our marriage relationships. Can you explain the role anxiety plays within family systems?
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Yeah, that's a good question. Because I think often when people hear about anxiety, they think about, like, the diagnosis of you have an anxiety disorder or different types of anxiety. When Bowen was talking about anxiety, he defined it as just our responses to threats. That can be a real threat. It can be an imaginary threat. And how good is the individual, but also the family at determining what's a threat or what's not has a huge impact on how things go. Right. Let's say you take a family where somebody has a belief or they choose a profession that the family doesn't like. Now, one family might react as if that's a huge threat, and then another family might have a little bit more flexibility in letting the person find their own way. And that's interesting to just pay attention to in your relationships. To say, when have I reacted as if something was a threat when it really wasn't? Maybe your partner, your spouse is a little bit distressed. They come home at the end of the workday and they're upset about something. Right. If you treat them like they can handle it, they're probably going to do a little bit better. Right. But if you go into fixing mode automatically, that makes it a little bit harder for them to manage it. And so we are constantly assessing what we should be worried about in our relationships and it's useful to pay attention to when that gets distorted a little bit. But I think that definition of anxiety is important because it's not often used.
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Can you give us some other examples? Specifically in marriage?
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Sure. Classic example. You go with your spouse to visit your in laws, right? That's a family they're a part of. Maybe they start telling a story or laughing about something or acting a certain way because they're all related. And you identify that as a threat because you feel left out. Or on the outside. Right. Versus somebody can go, that's their family. I'm just feeling a little bit on the outside right now. That's normal. There's nothing to fix here. Huge difference. When a person can say, should the alarm be going off right now or should it not? I make the analogy in my other book about our smoke detectors constantly going off when there's really not a fire in our house. It could be very sensitive. And so in a marriage, if you pay attention to when the alarm goes off, can you stop and say, is this really a problem or am I just feeling reactive right now and I just need to do something about that, calm myself down, take a breath. That's really helpful when a person can do that.
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I see that. I'm just thinking of the times when one spouse says, hey, nothing's wrong. The other spouse is like, something's up. And it turns out that the one spouse was lying about something not being wrong. It can be problematic because there has to be some level of trust in a marital or family relationship to have this pitch and catch kind of a thing. You're right. Like we shouldn't be overly anxious or worried about things that are quite trivial. It's just these times where there is not trust, there's deceit and we don't know it. Wait, are they gaslighting me? It's difficult unless you have really deep trust between each other, right?
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Yeah. I mean, it's not that people shouldn't ever pay attention to their gut, let's say, but I think paying attention to what's going on with you, if you're anxiously focused on your spouse or worried, do you have real evidence that you should be worried about something? Or have you just had a stressful day and that stress gets targeted in their direction? Or to be able to ask yourself, has my anxious monitoring of this other person been actually helpful for them, or has it produced the opposite result and made them distance even more and hide more things from me because it's unpleasant to be around me because I'm so mistrustful? How do we engineer the very things we want to avoid to some degree? So it's not that people never have something to hide or that there can't be threats, but it's paying attention to how because we live in the same house with somebody, they are such a convenient place to put our distress, especially if it's just the two of you, and that's useful to pay attention to.
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What role does mind reading play into that anxiety that we so quickly fall into?
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Yeah, I think we can know people so well. You don't know them at all. You stop being curious about what their thinking is, because you're pretty good at predicting what they think or what they're gonna do. And then those assumptions get in the way and you don't give people a chance to speak for themselves and represent themselves. And it's so much harder to be interested in another person if you've already got them figured out. There's no room to be surprised.
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Pleasantly surprised. Right?
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No, I agree. Curiosity. Major massive force for growth in emerge. Absolutely. Fundamentally agree with that.
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One of the topics I liked best about your book was the idea of over functioning and under functioning. Could you tell us a little bit about what that is and then have you give some examples?
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Yeah. Fusion is just like stuck togetherness, the lack of freedom and individuality in a relationship with another person. That classic saying, if mama's upset, everybody's upset. Going back to that sort of allergicness or the. The need for the other to calm you down or reassure you or believe the same thing you believe. Anything different feels like a threat that is present in every relationship we have with somebody we're close to. And it's just useful to pay attention to. I think people use the word codependent a lot. I don't really like it. And I talk about this in the book. I don't think of it as something you are or aren't. Fusion is something that we all have in relationships. It can go up or down, depending on how much anxiety there is in the system. And it's something to work on. Right. You can work on it in your marriage, if your parents are still alive, you can work on it in those relationships, siblings, kids, which is so cool. And again, that goes back to that idea of taking the pressure off the marriage where all the work has to happen. It absolutely can happen there, but it can't everywhere else. Can you call your mother and tell her what's going on with you and try to deal with that reactivity when she's not as interested in something as you are? Like, she doesn't have to be. That's okay. We all need particular responses out of people. And I think practicing not having to have those and still have a relationship with them is really good for marriages. That idea of the fusion, people tend to think of it in the romantic relationship, but it exists in all of those important relationships.
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Dr. Smith, that means that I might be taking a chance in upsetting my spouse or my family stability by not jumping in with them when they're riled up. Like, they get mad, they get upset if I don't see what they're seeing at the level of anger or fear that they think I should be. And I agree with you 100%. And that's what we're trying to teach people here. It's just. It's so easy to jump in and do whatever our spouse does and meet them at their own level and not rock the boat. But what you're saying, what I'm hearing you saying, and what we're trying to teach to you just in maybe a little bit different ways, is standing away from that. Right. Becoming stronger by not becoming fused or enmeshed or however you want to put it, by establishing your own identity, who you are.
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And really, it's another way to say being emotionally mature.
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If you can hang in there and people start to see that, no, you're not going to calm them down, necessarily, or take on whatever emotion they have, but that you're there, you're not going anywhere. You're interested in what they can do with this challenge, people can calm down a little bit. In the short term, people are going to say, who are you? I don't know you anymore.
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Yeah, it makes it look like we don't care.
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But the relationship can, can adjust, the system can relearn. It's just, it takes some time because people want to see if you really mean it. They're going to try and get you to respond the way you sue because that's steady, that's predictable. Right. It makes sense that people would want that, but just it takes some time to evolve. And I think when people can go in, knowing that, being able to predict, yeah, my wife's really not going to like this, but I think this is the right way. I think I want to hang in there and see what can happen. They're a little more prepared. It doesn't mean that it feels great, but it's a benefit to the relationship.
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It really is hard, especially if you're just trying it out for the first time and you're used to being enmeshed or you're used to just jumping in the pool with them. I keep thinking about the scene from Meet the Parents where they're playing pool volleyball and the girl who's about to get married gets smashed in the face with the volleyball and there's blood all over her. Mom just jumps right in to save her. And how many times we just jump right in to save our spouse or our child. And in reality that's really not helpful. Yeah, relationship, but they don't know it at the time. We might not know it at the time, but like you're saying just consistently over long period of time showing, hey, I'm still here, I still love you, I'm not gonna jump in and save you every time. Yeah, like that's hard, right?
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What's funny to me is I think people know this as parents. They think about it, when do I step in? When do I let my kid fail at something or manage themselves versus scooping in and calming them down? We think about it less with other adults, which is funny, but I think people just need to do that exercise in their marriage. We have that muscle, we know how to use it. It's just, are you on the lookout for all of those relationships where you could apply it?
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So I noticed after reading your book that I over function in several different places. One is that I constantly tell my husband how to drive. He's in his 50s and has been driving for a long time, but he doesn't really have an internal gps. And so I find myself constantly telling.
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Him where to go and my talents lie elsewhere.
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But it's one area that I've really tried to change the last few weeks since reading your book. I try to tell him how to cook. I try to tell him how to load the dishwasher sometimes how I think he should parent. What are some other areas in marriage that you see as common ways that our listeners would be able to identify if they're over functioning in their marriage?
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Sure. And let me say I am also guilty of the driving thing. So I think it's a data point. I try and see it, that it's. To me it's the barometer of maybe how stirred up I am at that moment and can I just pay attention to it and say oh yeah. But as far as other places, I think in general having goals for people that they don't have for themselves, trying to manage their relationships with other people like kids, their family, your family, friends, colleagues, et cetera, and just reminding people about things, needing them to be healthy in the way that you're trying to be healthy. It just, it's, it can be so automatic. We get stirred up. It's one way to manage it. Like I said, it's a convenient way. They're there. Can you just put the focus back on yourself and say what do I want to do with myself in this moment? It's hard to do. But I'll tell my clients just to take 24 hours and write down every time they manage or over function for somebody else. Don't even try to not do it, just pay attention.
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Often one spouse will over function for the other in the bedroom. Often one will with parenting, often one will over function with money.
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So does that mean I'm under functioning then? When I don't tell you to take that exit or I don't know, like how do I know if I'm under functioning? Where's the Goldilocks zone?
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It can go back and forth, right? There are ways I under function every day and expect somebody else to take over and direct me. But it is an interesting question of how do you determine how to be responsible to somebody else and their relationship and when do people genuinely need help and when is it just you trying to manage your anxiety? I think sometimes the under functioner can be the one in charge and the over functioners responding to their kind of helplessness. And sometimes it works the other way and the over functioner is in charge or more dominant and the under functioner has to go along with it. Right. So it's not necessarily the person who's doing more who's in the driver's seat because we can bring out those responses in each other. So often this will play out in a family Parents will have different opinions about how to help a child. An example I give in the book was this couple who had a son who they thought needed a lot of extra help. And the dad was really stepping in, doing a lot for this adult son. And mom had a very different opinion, a very reactive opinion that was like, we need to be harder on him. You're the problem. If you would stop over functioning, then everything would be better in its ways, its own form of over functioning, telling the other person what they need.
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Yeah.
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And people don't see, like I said earlier, how they reinforce the other person's part in the pattern versus stepping back and asking themselves, a, how do I want to relate to my son who has these challenges? B, how do I want to relate to my husband who's trying to think about this too, versus how do I get this person in my family to behave better or to stop over functioning or to stop under functioning? It's going back to yourself and saying, what am I trying to do here? What are my own beliefs about being a mom or being a dad?
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I like that.
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The question I always have for people is, what are you doing? And how's that working out for you? You can do that on your own, but it's certainly useful to have somebody you're thinking with. I was thinking even the value of a spouse who doesn't act like they know what you need to do and they have you figured out, gives you more freedom for the front part of your brain to look at the situation and say, what do I want to do here? But versus taking over and telling you what to do.
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So, Kathleen, how did this couple that you were talking about with over functioning and under functioning for the child, how did you help them look at things in a different way?
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So in this particular family, mom sends dad to therapy because Dad's doing too much. For the adult son, you're the linchpin. You're the one that needs to change. Right. It was hard for him to do that. Uh, and then she was so focused on him that she ended up cutting off contact with the son. She was like, I don't want to have anything to do with you. And there was more distance there. That's not gonna make the dad do less for the son because now there's only one parent in contact with him, but she's asking him to do less. And she could start to see, oh, maybe if I had more contact with our son, there would be less pressure on that relationship. Maybe I play a part in this. Right. Maybe it's very hard for my husband to think about what he wants to do when I'm telling him what he needs to do. Um, but I think the husband also could see that this really intense fusion with the son always helping the son, doing things for him, getting caught in that. Of course, mom would feel on the outside of that. Right. And she would move farther away or try and bust it up. Right. So he could also see how his part had an impact on her. Right. So the cool thing about family systems is it doesn't really matter which one of them starts to shift a little bit. I'm like, do we have any volunteers?
[00:29:21 - 00:29:25]
And so that shift, somebody gained insight.
[00:29:27 - 00:31:13]
And so in this case, it was the mother who was really in a better position to do something differently. She started to connect more with the husband, to get less caught up and, and more interested in what he wanted to do as a parent. And he was able to think about the next time his son called them with an emergency, how he was going to respond, whether he was going to rush and fix it right away or say, you know what? I think you can handle this. Let me know how it goes. But I don't think he would have been able to step back from that over functioning if she hadn't been working on herself, if she hadn't grown up a little bit and said, look, I can't be cut off from my son. Clearly, telling my husband what to do has not been effective, so do I want to try something different? And I think that allowed them to shift out of what's sometimes called a hard, soft parenting split, where people drive each other to the extremes, this kind of polarization in the approach. They could meet more in the middle a little bit. It doesn't mean that they always had the same opinion about how to handle a situation, but there was a little bit more trust that they could each kind of find their way. Uh, and there's this myth, I think, in parenting that people always have to be on the same page about everything. And I don't think that's true. Um, and so just a little bit more freedom and flexibility. It doesn't mean that it made everything perfect, but they certainly had a better chance of each trying to figure out how to relate to their son. And also, they just enjoyed each other more because they were less caught up in managing each other. And so, to me, that's just the simplest example of how this plays out, especially in that triangle with parents and.
[00:31:13 - 00:31:32]
A kid that gives them more time to then spend on their own relationship when they're not having to manage everybody else's. Right. So we were talking about over functioning and how that often leads to distancing in our relationship. Can you tell us a little bit more about what distancing is and what contributes to it?
[00:31:32 - 00:32:25]
Yeah, it's just one of those predictable patterns to manage tension. Right. What's the easiest way to calm down, to get away from somebody? And that could be physically, that could be emotionally. And it's helpful to pay attention in your life of where am I using distance to manage some of that tension? Is there a cost there? Are there people I need to move towards or relate to or connect to in a way that could be useful for me? Because I think there's some degree of distance in any relationship. And a lot of those relationships that are. We talked about earlier, this idea of fusion that are very fused, they often will shift into distance that you go back and forth. It's a little bit like a yo, yo, this sort of intense need for closeness and then that the allergicness kicks in. Right. And you need to be distanced from somebody. So how do you not get caught up in that. That cycle, so to speak?
[00:32:25 - 00:32:40]
Is there a difference between setting a boundary and not wanting to be near someone who you feel has toxic behaviors and then complete emotional cutoff for years?
[00:32:40 - 00:33:06]
I think that goes back to our discussion about your factory settings. It's not that there's never a good reason to distance from somebody. There certainly can be. But is it a choice or is it automatic? And what you do with the anxiety and are there other choices? And I think to me, it's not what the decision is. It's. Is the front part of your brain involved with the decision or is it just all reactivity?
[00:33:07 - 00:33:10]
How can I tell the difference between if I'm using my frontal lobe here or not?
[00:33:10 - 00:34:22]
For one thing, where the family diagram comes into play, can you look at the history of your family and do you see a pattern of cutoff over the generations? Then it might be a little bit more automatic. There's not as much choice involved. And being able to ask yourself too, what do you see as the cost of not being in contact with people? If things are relatively calm, there aren't a lot of challenges. You can get away with it. But when things are really stressful, it's very limiting to not have relationships with people. And the other thing that Bowen observed is that people recreate the patterns in other relationships when they were cut off. Like whether it's somebody's cut off from their entire family, they have a Friend group or a church group, let's say, and they say, these people are my family. Okay, sure, there's nothing wrong with that. But are you doing the same thing? Are you doing the same things in those relationships too? Are you going to end up needing to find new friends, needing to go to church somewhere else? Because of the patterns? It's not about getting away from people, it's about what gets recreated if you don't work on yourself a little bit.
[00:34:22 - 00:34:24]
You use very non judgmental language.
[00:34:24 - 00:34:25]
Yes, you do.
[00:34:25 - 00:34:45]
I do, yeah. You know, I'm sitting here thinking like, this person might be a really big jerk. Really. I mean, nobody likes somebody. They're like, or narcissist or whatever, but you use this very non judgmental language. If I keep running into the people who keep saying the same thing to me, nobody's good enough for me.
[00:34:45 - 00:34:47]
Pretty good indication that maybe I'm, maybe.
[00:34:47 - 00:34:57]
Maybe I'm the problem. But in your way of doing it, it's very non judgmental. I think it's helpful when people don't feel judged when they're talking about these things.
[00:34:57 - 00:35:30]
I think the reality of being a human is that you're going to encounter people with varying levels of maturity and you can't avoid that. You might cut off your entire family, but you're gonna have to work with somebody or interact with somebody who's a little reactive or a little immature. And so if distancing is your only way to deal with that's you're gonna be hopping around constantly between jobs, between relationships, There has to be another way. It can't be the only way to respond to every challenge.
[00:35:31 - 00:35:44]
So in marriage, if you're one who's prone to give the silent treatment or just pull away whenever you're feeling flooded by your partner or hurt by your partner, how do you repair that?
[00:35:44 - 00:36:39]
I like to ask people, what does it look like to you to hang in there? What do you want to try? What's your own definition of that? Is it being able to like ask somebody a question or try and be interested in what's going on with them? Even when you're feeling reactive? Is it being able to say to somebody, you know what, I need five minutes to see what I can do with myself and I will be back. And then honoring that. It's not that you never move away or distance, it's just that you have a plan for going back in versus just being moody or distant kind of indefinitely. And that's a workout. I think that's why it's so helpful to work on this stuff in other relationships, too, not just the marriage. If you think of it as a muscle, I think the exercise translates into the marriage. If you're working on some of that distance with your siblings, with parents, even with extended family, I think it can.
[00:36:39 - 00:36:47]
Go a long way and requires learning to become a stronger itself with the ability to control the anxiety.
[00:36:47 - 00:37:30]
Yeah. Having a plan for what you want to do with your own distress. People get so caught up in there being like one tool or one technique. People are like, give me an exercise I can do to calm down some therapists. That's their job. But the work I do, I just tell people, look, Google's going to give you just as good an answer as I am. It's not what you do. It's the fact that you're trying to be more responsible for yourself. So if you have a breathing exercise or you start meditating, whatever it is, that is a way to be a little more responsible for yourself. So that when you want a distance, you have other tools you can use to hang in there versus doing the immature thing.
[00:37:30 - 00:37:36]
I don't know. I'm pretty bullish on meditation. Just saying. But I get it.
[00:37:36 - 00:37:41]
That's your way to help calm your nervous system down, calm your anxiety and your overreactivity.
[00:37:41 - 00:37:48]
I try to teach my patients about it, and I think it's a really good tool when it's done regularly.
[00:37:49 - 00:38:05]
Yeah. So if it's more significant, cutoff, a distance, and you want to repair or come at it again, and yet that's really hard to do, what do you recommend for that?
[00:38:05 - 00:40:18]
I think just recognizing that cutoff exists for a reason. It is a way to keep things calm to a degree, for better or worse. And so other people might not be invested in having a relationship with you. How do you just stay focused on what you want to do, what you want to try? Right. Not getting caught up so much in one particular relationship, but looking at the distance and cut off in other places, too. There are multiple opportunities and attempts to try and reach out to people. And it's not about getting people to function in any particular way. It's about asking yourself, what do I want to do? How do I want to connect with this person? Maybe you start sending them a Christmas card, or you send them a picture of your kid, or you just leave a voicemail. It's up to the individual to decide that. But it's. The whole point isn't necessarily to bridge the relationship and the cutoff because you only control 50% of that. The point is to exercise that muscle that I just talked about. Right. To be able to do what you haven't been able to in the past. What do you come up against in that? It's very unpleasant, but it's tremendously useful to be able to focus on your part. And so what I encourage people to do is just think about how you want to try to connect with people. It's like fishing. You throw out a couple lines and you see what you get. It might not be the person you expected, but chances are somebody's going to respond and want to connect with you. Bowen had this idea that one of the best ways to work on your own maturity is to start to develop what he called a person to person relationship with everybody in your family of origin. And he defined that as being able to talk about things that aren't superficial. Being able to talk about each other, not focusing on another person like a celebrity or your kid, somebody you both hate. And the third thing was being able to relate without necessarily having another person present also. So, like relating in a clump.
[00:40:19 - 00:40:20]
That sounds kind of hard.
[00:40:21 - 00:40:29]
Yeah, it is hard. I love this test. Let's say you're talking to your spouse. How long can you go without those things?
[00:40:29 - 00:40:30]
Yeah, that's hard.
[00:40:30 - 00:40:39]
I heard somebody this last week say, our family are skimmers, not swimmers. We just have very surface conversations, like, how is your day today?
[00:40:39 - 00:40:41]
You know, everything's good.
[00:40:41 - 00:40:48]
Yep. And then move very shallow. But you're saying that we can dive deeper than that.
[00:40:48 - 00:40:49]
Oh, we should.
[00:40:49 - 00:40:51]
Yeah, we should dive deeper than that.
[00:40:52 - 00:41:03]
What information do you get that's useful to know about a person? Maybe it's easier then to be interested in them and curious about them in a way that it's hard to if you're just talking about the weather.
[00:41:03 - 00:41:08]
So you mentioned the word triangulation. Is that the same as clumping?
[00:41:08 - 00:41:57]
Yeah, so it can be. And in Bowen theory, there's this idea that two people, two person relationships get tense. Right. At some point. And what do we do to relieve the tension? We focus on or pull in a third person to manage the tension. So maybe that means you need another person present. Maybe that means you both worry about your kid a lot. Maybe that means you text your friend and say, you won't believe what my husband did today or what so and so did today. It can take different forms. But this idea that we involve other people, people in our tension in the onetoone. And that's helpful to pay attention to because you don't always have to do that. You can keep it in the onetoone and that's a workout.
[00:41:58 - 00:42:03]
And those are deeper relationships. If you can keep it one to one without triangulating.
[00:42:03 - 00:42:12]
Yeah. How easily do others get pulled in to manage the tension? It's not a bad thing. Like a couple going to therapy is a triangle. Right.
[00:42:12 - 00:42:15]
Can it be bad if the therapist.
[00:42:15 - 00:42:40]
Isn'T doing their job? Right? If it keeps you from wanting to work on yourself in the one to one, it can get in the way. It can be a way of temporarily calming things down without having to do anything with yourself. And so professionals get triangled in all the time to do that. But a good therapist is pretty neutral and is thinking about how the couple relates to each other. But that's a hard game. That's a whole other conversation.
[00:42:40 - 00:42:53]
Do you have any examples or stories about when it's not a therapist that a couple's triangulating with and how that hurt the relationship but then they were able to turn it around?
[00:42:54 - 00:44:23]
Yeah. Other family members can be triangled in. If somebody's telling their mom or dad about their marriage, it's hard, Right. That puts somebody on the outside. If they know everything they do wrong or that they don't like about them is getting reported to somebody else. It's very hard to connect. Then I just have one kid, so I love paying attention to the triangles with my husband and my daughter, who's 6 all day. If I love to tell the story, like if one of us gets up early with her and the other one is sleeping in and there's some sort of conflict or disagreement, she will squawk knowing that it will wake the other parent up to come in and say, what? What's going on here? And so children do this too. Right. And it's so automatic. And so let's say if my husband's downstairs with my daughter and I hear her start to squawk a little bit, I have to stop and think and go, do I really want to intervene here? Is that ultimately helpful for them or do I just roll over in bed and let them figure it out? So it's just fascinating to see how we pull in people to manage the tension. Or if, let's say my husband and I are driving somewhere, let's say I'm telling him how to drive. Right. And he doesn't like it. Our little six year old will pipe up from the back seat and say, it's gonna be okay, she'll put herself in that triangle. Right. It's just, it's so natural for us as humans.
[00:44:23 - 00:45:34]
Well, it's a human desire to, to have allies, right? To have people who think like we do, who act like we do, who are our allies. In a lot of life situations, there's these healthy allies and then when we start triangulating, that becomes more unhealthy, just as you are saying, just neutrally aware, observant of the situation at hand and how I'm interpreting it. Well, Viktor Frankl said it's like a. You're in a court, there's a jury and a judge, and they're just reviewing the evidence of your life completely cold, objectively. And that's how he was able to really deal with the horrors that he dealt with in Auschwitz. And I think in just a much smaller level, just, just very neutral with our conversations, our observations. I like that.
[00:45:34 - 00:46:23]
To me, the goal is just to get maybe two or three seconds worth of time where you can ask yourself, do I really want to send this text complaining about my boss to somebody else, or can I handle this distress that I feel and go back in there and see what I need to do in this relationship? There's another Viktor Frankl quote that I use in my other book where he talks about. I can't remember the exact quote, but it's something like, imagine that you're living your life a second time. Would you do what you're about to do now if you had another chance at it? And I just love that. Right. Just to be being a tad 5% more thoughtful, would you really need to use those triangles in this way or can you handle it? And we're always going to do it sometimes because it feels good and like you said, we like having allies, but you don't always have to.
[00:46:24 - 00:46:50]
I feel like we sometimes get pulled into a triangulation. Maybe it's the third person. Maybe we have that desire to people please that we just feel like we need to be the ally for somebody who's struggling and then it ends up becoming really problematic. So what role have you seen people pleasing play in this and in over functioning and under functioning?
[00:46:50 - 00:47:26]
My goal is always for people to get more interested in their challenges. And that might mean staying together, that might mean not staying together. It's not really my choice, but I think it can give us what called this functional boost to be a helper. In that way you get maybe some dopamine from that in your brain. It makes you feel good, makes you feel important and mature to help other people in that way. And so I think that's just useful to pay attention to it's just so automatic and people can get in sticky situations when they're pulled in that way.
[00:47:27 - 00:47:37]
And do you see it becoming exhausting to the point of maybe impacting other relationships when that happens?
[00:47:37 - 00:47:55]
I work with a lot of clergy, so you see this a lot with folks who are religious leaders. They get a pretty good boost from being pulled in to help with various problems. And that can cause problems in their families because there's some distance there because they're out trying to help everybody else. That's a common thing.
[00:47:55 - 00:48:07]
And how do you approach that with them, whether it's a religious leader or whether it's just anybody? How do you help them pull out of that and become more responsible for their own selves?
[00:48:07 - 00:49:05]
I think people have to have a very clear definition of what they think it means to be responsible to other people and to actually be helpful versus the question I always have as a therapist is like, is this helpful or it am I calming myself down? Does it feel good? It feels good to give somebody advice because their anxiety goes away a little bit and then I don't have to feel that. Right. But that's more about the tension in the moment than it is about actually helping somebody in the long run. I mentioned that barometer earlier of can you get a sense of how reactive you are that day and make a pretty good prediction about how much you're gonna over function for everybody you come into contact with. A good leader can do that and say, I really need to be on guard today because I'm going to try to be all kinds of helpful to everybody and I'm going to get burnout and that's ultimately not going to be useful for people.
[00:49:05 - 00:49:46]
No, I think boundaries, self care. I, you know, just that healthy balance of being able to step back and this healthy for me too, like over functioning. Yeah, that, that happens a lot even in our profession, medical profession too, and a lot more. And the younger physicians who haven't really had that training in learning how to just back off a little bit. That you don't care doesn't mean you're not interested. But it does mean, hey, I got to take a few breaths here, get back on and stabilize so we can work this out long term.
[00:49:46 - 00:50:11]
Yeah, I love some of your lists that you have in your book. You have several of them. If you had to make a list of how to identify if you are emotionally regulating yourself or if you're using over functioning under functioning triangulation distance or people pleasing to regulate, what would be on that list?
[00:50:12 - 00:50:13]
Oh, just day to Day?
[00:50:13 - 00:50:14]
Mm.
[00:50:14 - 00:51:19]
Yeah. I think just going throughout the day, I would think of things, like, for first of all, just this general question of how are you involving others and how you manage distress. Who are you avoiding? Who are you keeping things really superficial with? Who are you managing or directing every day? And he said examples, but I think questions sometimes are more helpful. Who are you pulling in to manage? Who are you texting? Who are you reaching out to to manage the tension moment to moment? Who are you trying to grow up? When are you acting helpless so somebody else will do it for you? I think that about covers it. It's like, when are you managing others? When are you letting others manage you? And when are you just avoiding? I think it's really those three things, those directions that sum up most of our behaviors. When things are tense and what would it look like to not do that thing and just sit with the anxiety of the moment? I wish there were, like, a more appealing way to think about it. That's what it takes.
[00:51:19 - 00:51:23]
That's scary, though, Dr. Smith, to see the moment with anxiety. That's so scary.
[00:51:24 - 00:51:26]
It won't kill you. It won't kill you.
[00:51:27 - 00:51:37]
That's what he says. When our kids have felt like they were having a panic attack or something. That's what you're saying as well. Learning to sit in discomfort. It's uncomfortable.
[00:51:37 - 00:51:55]
I think these are. Yeah, me too. Look, this is a journey for me. It is harder as people are younger and, I don't know, maybe we can do a mass shift and bring this back as a fundamental way of living. Hey, this is a healthier way to live.
[00:51:55 - 00:52:53]
The one thing I'd add to it won't kill you is what I think does happen over time is that your brain starts to learn better what's a threat and what's not. Going back to that idea of anxiety is your response to a threat. And over time, you start to see that a lot of things are more manageable than you thought. And then I do think the anxiety goes down a little bit, because you can say, no, I can hang in there. I can handle this. I can have that conversation with them. I'm gonna feel a little reactive. But that's not a sign that something's wrong. It's just a sign that I'm doing a thing, I'm making a move. And that's a different type of anxiety. That's in Bowen theory, sometimes called the anxiety of progress or progression. And then it can feel good. I tell my clients, where did you get into trouble? What did you stir up and what do they start to see is, oh, I was anxious about that, and that's maybe a good thing because I was doing something different. And that's just a different way of thinking about it.
[00:52:54 - 00:53:07]
That's great. I've noticed that you seem to really enjoy analogies for animal life and use those to look differently at human behavior. Favorite analogy.
[00:53:08 - 00:55:25]
A favorite animal analogy. Okay, yes, I have one. I love learning about locusts. I don't know how much you all know about locusts, but they have these sort of two states of being. They have what's called the solitary state, and then they have what's called their gregarious state, I believe, which is when they swarm and all move together and when the crops are scarce and then they find some food and it's, okay, let's go, we're doing this. And they will switch into this sort of. It's like. Like Jekyll and Hyde, right? And they all march together, right? Because if you stop and there's a locust behind you, he will stop eating you. He will start eating you. He will chew your butt off. And that has been such a great example for me and thinking about how families function or how groups function, because I have been a part of groups where if you don't get with the program, you're going to get eaten, you're going to get your butt chewed because things function a certain way. And just that one example has helped me get a little bit more neutral about how people end up functioning certain ways. Of course they would. They're gonna get a lot of reactivity if they start doing something differently. Right. They might get eaten or it feels like it. Right. And so I think that's what I appreciate about learning about the natural world is it just reminds us that we do what we do for a reason. It does keep things chugging along to a certain extent. But the beautiful thing about being a human is that we have more choice in the matter. We can actually stop and say, do I really, to some degree, do I really want to do this? And that's help. That's helpful. We're not doomed to the fate of the locusts. But so much of what we do is instinctual and automatic because our brains don't have the capacity to be thoughtful about every single thing we do every day. That's exhausting, right? It helps me be less hard on myself because I'm also a creature of habit and I'm also affected by other people. And we function as a group. So I just love learning about animals. And I love using them in as examples in the therapy room because people can laugh a little bit and say, yeah, I see myself a little bit in that creature.
[00:55:26 - 00:55:29]
Yeah, it makes me think, whose butt am I chewing off?
[00:55:29 - 00:55:29]
Right.
[00:55:29 - 00:56:07]
They've moved out of line a little bit. We can play both sides of that. And yeah, just seeing that perspective. So really, what I hear you saying is all this comes down to using our own agency, using our own power instead of blaming other people, taking responsibility for ourselves, seeing our own part, which is so much about what we talk about here@marriage IQ. If you had one last message to give our listeners about this whole process and how we can learn to function better within our marriages, what would that be?
[00:56:07 - 00:57:19]
I talk a lot about being a researcher in your marriage or in your relationship. And I think that's what helps people be curious. Can you have a good hypothesis or a good question? Would that make a difference? If I tried this for a couple of weeks and that's just such a different way of thinking about a problem, then, oh, what are we gonna do about this? Why won't he change? Or why won't she change? And so if you can take in that sort of scientific spirit, let's say, into a relationship, I think people can get somewhere with that. Whereas if you're trying to force a change or force somebody else a change, that doesn't really open things up very much. And so I always tell people, don't act like you have it figured out. Just have a good question or a good hypothesis, and then maybe you're wrong. Maybe it doesn't make a difference at all. But I think the change really starts there with being interested in what could work versus having it all figured out. And so I. I just tell people, where do you want to put your researcher hat on? What's the experiment you want to run this week? Go into the laboratory and see. And so I always like to leave folks with that.
[00:57:19 - 00:57:20]
That's awesome.
[00:57:20 - 00:57:21]
I love it.
[00:57:22 - 00:57:36]
That's great. So if people want to learn more about your awesome ideas, your wisdom, or natural life stories, where can they find you besides in the book True to you?
[00:57:37 - 00:57:45]
I'm on substack. My substack is called the Anxious Overachiever, and people can find me there every week.
[00:57:45 - 00:57:45]
Okay.
[00:57:45 - 00:58:06]
Which I have subscribed to. It's great. I really enjoy it. Well, Kathleen, Dr. Smith, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. This has been fantastic. Lots of great ways of looking at things. And I think for me, one of the big things that I'm going to take away is I just need to chill a little bit. I take it down. Thanks.
[00:58:06 - 00:58:07]
This was a lot of fun. Thank you, guys.
[00:58:07 - 00:58:11]
Thanks for being with us, everybody. We'll see you next week on Marriage iq.

Heidi Hastings https://www.drheidihastings.com