Navigating Emotional Distancing and Differentiation

When we think about anxiety, we typically think of something that is generated and felt within an individual. But Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist of the mid-20th century, argued that anxiety was also created by the interactions between individuals and could spread like a contagion in a group, an idea known as "Family Systems Theory."

Here to offer an introduction to Family Systems Theory and how its implications extend far beyond the family is Steve Cuss, who is a former hospital chaplain, a pastor, the founder of Capable Life, which offers coaching and consultation, and the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs. Today on the show, Steve and I discuss how individuals in both families and organizations can "infect a situation with [their] own assumptions and expectations" and create a sense of anxiety that permeates a group. Steve unpacks the false needs that create chronic anxiety in an individual, how this anxiety spreads to others, and the unhealthy ways people deal with this tension, including becoming fused together. And we talk about how to put this anxiety back where it belongs, and how a single person can change a group dynamic by differentiating from it and becoming a rooted self.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Murray Bowen
• A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin H. Friedman
• AoM Article: The 5 Characteristics of Highly Dysfunctional Groups
• AoM Article: Becoming a Well-Differentiated Leader
• The Cornerstone Concept by Roberta M. Gilbert
• Sunday Firesides: You Are Not Responsible for Other People’s Feelings

Connect With Steve Cuss

• Steve's website