Head Inside Mental Health
Todd Weatherly, Therapeutic Consultant and behavioral health expert hosts #Head-Inside Mental Health featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care.
Head Inside Mental Health
Navigating Young Adult Independence: How Family Systems Theory Changes Lives
What happens when we shift our focus from "fixing" young adults to understanding the family systems that shape them? Dr. Vaughn Heath and Steve Roth of the Arise Society join host Todd Weatherly in this groundbreaking conversation exploring how anxiety moves through family systems like electricity through a circuit, with parents often functioning as "capacitors" and struggling young adults becoming the "grounding wire" for family tension.
The experts dive deep into Bowenian family systems theory, explaining four emotional regulatory mechanisms that families use to manage anxiety: distance, engagement, triangulation, and reciprocal positioning. When these mechanisms become rigid rather than flexible, young adults develop symptoms like depression, anxiety, and motivational issues.
This episode challenges conventional treatment models by showing that accountability-based approaches often carry implicit judgment and shame. Instead, pattern recognition empowers young adults to understand the gap between their intentions (wanting connection) and effects (pushing people away). The goal isn't perfect independence—which no one truly achieves—but building healthy support systems and family relationships. This conversation offers profound insights for parents, mental health professionals, and anyone interested in how family dynamics shape our lives and relationships.
Hello folks, thanks for joining us on Head Inside Mental Health, featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment, with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care. Broadcasting on WPBM 1037, the voice of national independent, commercial-free radio. I'm Todd Weatherly, your host, therapeutic consultant and behavioral health expert. Joining me today are Dr Vaughn Heath and Steve Roth with the Arise Society, a program in Orem, utah, that provides support for young adults between the ages of 18 and 26 struggling with anxiety, depression, gaming and other motivational issues, helping them work through emotional setbacks to achieve independence and college or vocational success, empowered with the confidence and skills to lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives. Dr Vaughn Heath is the founder and CEO of the Arise Society.
Speaker 1:Vaughn is his PhD in marriage and family therapy from Brigham Young University. He began specializing in issues of trauma by working with women who were the survivors of trauma and then worked with the perpetrators of trauma. In 1998, he co-founded the Second Nature Wilderness Program, one of the most prominent wilderness programs in the field. Shifting his focus from treatment to the transition from residential care, vaughn founded the Arise Society as a vehicle through which the focus of treatment might shift from mental health issues to real-world issues like academic and vocational success. Steve Roth, on the other hand, has to work with Vaughn. He's the executive director. His experience includes therapeutic rock climbing, teaching in South Korea and obtaining a master's in social work from the University of Tel Aviv.
Speaker 1:Steve's decade of experience in various therapeutic settings, such as residential, transitional and wilderness therapy programs, has equipped him with the expertise to address a wide range of mental health issues. He has worked with individuals struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, personality disorders and autism, among others. Steve is also a certified personal trainer and a certified nutritional coach, believing in adding movement and proper nutrition alongside evidence-based therapeutic approaches. Working with his clients At the Arise Society is leadership and diverse expertise in transitional settings, enhanced program development, mentorship, helping young adults overcome barriers and achieve success. That's the whole point. Young adults achieving success. It's kind of a big deal these days. We see so many that are floundering and everything else. Guys, first of all, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining me Thank you, we, we, you know we pitched at it for a while, like back in san diego. San diego, we were talking about getting together and doing. This is like hey, you sound like a guy that I could do a podcast. I think we should jump on the radio and do it.
Speaker 1:He's like yeah let's do it and you know, like us brothers, six months later we were able to make it happen and you know the the. I think the big thing, one of the things that we were talking about back then, we talk about a lot today is that you know you're you're not, you're never, regardless of your location, dislocated from your family system. Your family system is something that follows you wherever you go. Parents remain, for young adults and even beyond young adulthood, they remain this pivotal feature to your success and the way that you navigate an independent life. And you guys are experts in Bowen family systems theory. You guys apply that in very instrumental ways and working with the families that come to you. And a lot of the students that come to you have completed some form of residential care and now they're working on transition.
Speaker 1:One of the things we've always said about wilderness work is that we're really good about making kids and young adults successful in wilderness. But then after that and I think that that's part of what drove Vaughn to start the Arai Society and provide programming that allows these folks coming out of residential care to kind of re-find identity, identify family systems issues, help the family figure out how they're working with one another and then start to achieve some of those success markers that they've been trying for so long. You know where. Where are we? This world has changed a lot when, like, has your work changed? Like is this? Like? Tell me about how it's landed on the ground for you right now, maybe in comparison to how it was before, where the family systems piece really comes into the model for you guys. Like, how's it rolling right now?
Speaker 3:Well, todd, you know, I think that back in the day I guess I'm old enough to say that now I thought about it sort of medically and diagnostically in terms of what the problems were and where the focus really needed to be in terms of intervention and change.
Speaker 3:I think that what's happened has been that we've realized that that's probably more looking at symptoms in terms of functioning and in terms of the kind of stress and the kind of productive lives that our young adults want to lead. However, in terms of support and being realistic about how we as human beings need relationships and we need the right kind of relational support in our lives, I think that what's happening is we're looking a little deeper as professionals and understanding that this idea of imprinting and definitely imprinting with connection in our family systems really sets us up for how we connect in our lives with our peers and out in the real world. And so trying to understand how the family system affects and sets us up and the implications of our relationships and our families, not only for romantic relationships and intimacy, but even for connection and friendships not only for romantic relationships and intimacy, but even for connection and friendships is really what we're trying to use a relationship model at the program. That's how we're really trying to use it.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, I think over the last decade it's certainly shifted from, you know, let's cure these kind of ailments or these symptoms, let's cure depression, let's cure anxiety to more of an understanding that we're not really here to cure these diagnoses. We want to reduce the symptoms, of course, but how do we help our young adults, how do we help the students, as we call them, learn how to build social supports around themselves so that when life gets hard, when these symptoms maybe flare up because they're never truly cured, how do they understand how to pull people in to want to help support them, rather than kind of pushing people?
Speaker 1:away.
Speaker 2:Exactly and so like, if you, you know, todd, if you think about it, as all of us on screen and any adult out in your life, one thing that we've all had to learn how to do is to build support systems around us for when times get hard, forming those close connections and those relationships to pull others into want to support them and then also reciprocating that support is really difficult for them to achieve that.
Speaker 3:Well, and, steve, I think that you know, especially young adults and other people who are struggling with neurodiverse issues really sometimes struggle to understand how they're affecting other people and really perceive whether they're pushing people away or pulling them a little closer. And so we really think about the family as a way of setting individuals up. Sometimes they come out highly functional and really have a great ability to pull people closer and develop that support. But many of the young adults that we work with really are not aware of the effect that they're having on other people, and so when there's social distance and when somebody is pulling away because they've been affected in a negative way, our young adults have a hard time understanding that effect.
Speaker 3:And I think this is also a problem, sort of a side effect with technology, which is understanding in-person relationships and how you're affecting somebody else is not something that really can be explored in a regular social setting and maybe even in a family. And so therapeutically, we're really trying to pause the interaction and say, okay, so what happened here in terms of did you bring somebody closer or did you push them away? Not so much the right or the wrong of their view or the morality of it, but more about? Are you developing social support around yourself? What we see is based on young adults coming out of their own families of origin, oftentimes in the family. That bid for closeness, if we can use that language, has worked. The young adult has been in distress. The mother or father has become involved, sometimes overly so, but it has been a bid for connection. While you try and take that show out into the world.
Speaker 2:I don't think it translates, especially not to peers. You know, if it's not your family, there's no obligation to kind of stay in there and keep that closeness there versus our friends. You know, enough pushes, they start to distance and we're left alone again, which I think you know. We've all been through COVID and I think one of the things that COVID exacerbated more than anything else is this pervasive loneliness that we see in our students that come into Arise and this lack of a skill set to be able to pull those peers in, and I think it even ingrained our students more within their emotional system, within their families, in terms of how you bid for closeness.
Speaker 1:Well, there's also, you know there was a lot of kind of detachment as a model for engagement. You know you're all sitting in front of screens. Nobody really knows what's going on with one another. Kids are complaining about teachers and each other. They don't get to see each other in person. You guys have seen the.
Speaker 1:You probably have the blank face experiment, which is, I find, almost unbearable to watch, and I think that we're that's what we get from our screens. We get blank face kind of stuff, and so these kids are coming out and I completely, from a mental health standpoint, being able to symptom manage. You know, if you have a, if you have a traumatic event let's say you had a car accident and every time you get in the car you suffer from a little bit of anxiety because that car accident kind of follows you wherever you go, whenever you're in a vehicle. Now you can do all kinds of things around symptom management, but if you didn't know that it was the vehicle that was the associative element in your reaction, it would be hard for you to be like I don't even know where this is coming from. You know you would be lost. And so for these you know a lot of kids.
Speaker 1:A lot of young adults are coming out and they, they exist somewhere on this neurodiverse spectrum a lot more these days because of all this environmental stuff, and I think that that's what they're suffering from.
Speaker 1:There's this society stuff, and I think that that's what they're suffering from. There's this society, there's this social anxiety, but they can't identify where it stems from. And what you guys are doing is is not only you know, from a DBT standpoint, right Teaching them how to do some symptom management, how to feel less anxious or how to manage depression if it shows up, or do some of the very good practices that are part of mental health treatment, but you're also working with these folks just like let me recognize my environment, this is not how it was at home. There is a world out there. I have to figure out how to interface with it, and there's a lot of theory that's going on around about the neurodiverse environment, about how people engage with the real world, where they find environment, where do you guys get the most traction in getting them an opportunity to find their way there? Like, where's the work really seen? You know what I'm asking, like, where's this really taken off for these?
Speaker 3:So I think what we've really tried to do is shift away from this, if I can say, old school mentality of accountability and really trying to transition into something that's a lot more relevant for young adults, that they can really get a grasp on intellectually and emotionally.
Speaker 3:And so we're talking about pattern and we're talking about that pattern that happens when their intention is to create closeness but the effect is actually distance. And so a lot of the group process and a lot of the relational therapy kind of process is that exploration of the discrepancy or dissonance between intention and effect and then understanding that over different people, circumstance and time, they're carrying that same pattern of what we use, kind of a sexy word, parataxic distortion, which is something that adults can start. Young adults can start saying, okay, so this is my parataxic distortion, I'm bidding for connection, but I'm actually pushing people away and I'm doing it at different times in my life with different people and over different circumstances. That's something that I think is a tool that they can really take out into the world and it's not just contained within a therapeutic environment. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I really do, and I have a really fun example. I'll be a little vulnerable with you guys. I was a managing director. I was working for Cooper East at the time and we were opening a new program. I had to be part of the board meetings and everything else. And you know the board and founders were pretty you know big personalities and that kind of thing. I love them to death. But there was some issue that we were in disagreement about and I said no, it's got to be this way. And they're like. I said no, it's got to be this way. And they're like well, no, it's got to be this way.
Speaker 1:And we sat there in the meeting and then you know, virgil pulls me around, he's the executive director, he's my boss and he's like so I'm not trying to argue whether or not you're right or wrong. You know you've got experience that's valid, et cetera. What I want to ask you is did you achieve what you set out to achieve in making the statement that you made? And it just it hit me. It just it hit me in the face. I was just like duh, because I failed miserably. I may have said something that was true, but failed miserably in achieving what I wanted to achieve Exactly. There's my parataxic distortion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right there too.
Speaker 3:You know, of course, active and communicate with Steve, and sometimes Steve is great. He'll step out of the process and say do you realize the effect that you're having right now? And I hate it when he does it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, ceo changes the temperature of the room. You got to practically sit on. You got to allow your back in the floor just so you don't say something, right?
Speaker 2:You know, todd, I think that in terms of because I loved your question about the traction and where do our students get that traction there is a shift when we start talking about their pattern and then they start referencing their pattern versus that accountability. But at the same time, the traction really takes hold within their social relationships at Arise versus it's you know, vaughn or myself, your therapist or program directors, kind of saying you know, talking about your pattern, versus their friends, starting to get this level of closeness where they understand each other's patterns and they start talking to each other about that process, you know, and they they're able to open up and say, you know, when I'm doing this, you know, I guess it's like how do you see me, how do I come across to you guys, and it's they're not asking a quote, unquote, authority figure, they're asking someone that has an authentic friendship with and that's really that traction, it really locks in for them of this is relatable and valuable for me versus. I can explain six ways of Sunday why this therapist is wrong.
Speaker 1:What you're telling me is you have an experience, you're having them reflect, they're getting some generalization and getting the opportunity to apply. Sounds like a cycle. What is that cycle? I forget what it is, but you guys are using the real world, as opposed to the experiential cycle that we use in these kind of microcosm but essentially fabricated environments and or experiences not that they lose their value, they're getting a lot of that in wilderness.
Speaker 1:You guys are taking this model, kind of, I'd say, to the next level where what they get to do is interface with a real social environment. They get to be in, they get support being in awareness or recognizing their own patterns and after recognizing it, they can be like oh wait, you know what? Let me process, let's experiment with this a little bit. Let me see if I can get some successes, shifting from the pattern I know is not working to a pattern that I think can work, and build that and work with it with my peers Continue to have this support, but they it sounds like, like they just pick it up and they take it and they're able to use it in a way that causes it to be successful out in the real world, and the more of those successes they have, obviously, the more confident they feel. How do families? Going back to family systems, what do you see? What do you like? How do you see families responding to this? Because we know, you know, the my new favorite term is the Zamboni parent. Have you heard this expression?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The Zamboni is the ice, the thing that like packs down the ice on an ice rink. You're like the Zamboni parent. That's how close they are, on top of their kids. How does it work with? You may be supportive, potentially overly involved parents and the family system. Where do you see that? Where's the traction there? Like, where do parents start to make the shift and what does it look like when you see these things start to happen?
Speaker 3:I can start Sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, we both do this all day, every day.
Speaker 3:So I think that this is where the theory really comes to play, because we work with intelligent people who are not just listening to a therapist's recommendations but can challenge us and really want to understand a methodology. So if you'll bear with me for a minute, we'll talk a little bit about Winnian systems, because it's really what I needed to sort of bring the parents along and bring the emotional system along in the family. Bowen really thought of problems and symptoms being associated with anxiety and he took an ecological model, which is we're not very different than primates in terms of yeah, we've got a prefrontal cortex. That's very different than primates in terms of, yeah, we've got a prefrontal cortex that's explaining things, but in general, we're reacting to anxiety as a physical experience the same way animals are, and so he talked a lot about how-.
Speaker 3:Hearing it in the limbic system. You know yeah, yeah, yep. So he talked and came up with ideas around how these two forces in our interpersonal world act together and sometimes against each other, and he named them individuality and togetherness. And those two forces work very well together when the system is not stressed and it's calm, system is not stressed and it's calm. And as we interview parents and as we work with understanding their interaction with each other, we start to get a sense about how parents are managing the emotional proximity between each other and how anxiety is a little bit like an electrical impulse moving through a circuit.
Speaker 3:So if you think about, I like that analogy the parent relationship system being a capacitor, it carries emotional load from the stress and that's what it's really meant to do. And so we really validate parents in terms of they've gotten together, they blended their families, they paid student loans, they've gone through school, they bought homes, they've had kids, they've gone through a lot of these lifetime milestones of stress, and that parent system, that relationship system within the parents, has really carried a lot of emotional load. So we don't blame them when they keep doing the same thing over and over again because it's been so effective in their history in terms of who drives and who sits in the passenger seat, or however they manage that stress.
Speaker 3:Bowen had the idea and came up with the idea of four emotional regulatory mechanisms, one being distance, which calms the system down, and then another being engagement, which is oftentimes associated with conflict. That really gets the system going and is necessary to get things done. He also had the idea that triangles are really the blueprint or the patterning for which the emotional circuitry moves through, and that was the balancing or the most stable relationship molecule is what he called it.
Speaker 3:And then fourth, he really had the idea that there was this reciprocal positioning where somebody drives and somebody sits shotgun in the parental relationship and through those four systems they really manage the closest and distance between each other or the emotional proximity. As long as all of those mechanisms are flexible and they're at play, it handles stress amazingly well with primates and they're at play. It handles stress amazingly well with primates. But the moment that one of those becomes the primary way that the parents are managing stress you take care of the kids, I'm going to go out and work, I'll sit on the emotional periphery you become over-involved with the children. This is what we would call reciprocal positioning. It becomes problematic when the kids grow up and there's new emotional stressors that are impinging upon the family. And just as a tail end of that, I think Steve and I can say after a decade of doing this in this program we have not met one family we've worked with that doesn't have a two to four year clustering of stress. That's happened to them.
Speaker 2:That's put the parent system underwater, floods the system with that electricity, with that anxiety, put the the parent system underwater, floods, floods the system with. You know that electricity, with that anxiety, and then the system becomes rigid, to, to uh, to work through that process together.
Speaker 2:But then, even once that anxiety has been dispersed, the system stays rigid and so anxiety or, if we want to, you know, continue to use the electrical metaphor there's almost like a grounding wire for that anxiety to get fed through, to dissipate, which oftentimes is one of the children and so you know I would call this identified patient right, but reality is it's one of those mechanisms.
Speaker 3:It's a triangle where the parents are now probably in some degree of emotional separation between each other because there's just so much to do and so much to handle, and they connect over their children, and so this is the way that the triangle works, which is the parents are close but not really in a relationship with each other anymore.
Speaker 1:It's about the kids and getting them to soccer practice. You have kids, right.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and so you gave that example or the metaphor of the car and the trauma, and it's like how do we kind of zoom out to understand what the car is doing or how that's sparking that trigger, the triggering response, and for us that zoom out to help us understand the student, the child that's with us is within this dynamic, within this family system that tends to create these symptoms. Right, and there's different kinds. There's physical symptoms that sometimes we see, whether that's migraines or stomach aches or asthma, whatever that there's social.
Speaker 1:Neck addiction and all those other pieces like.
Speaker 2:Yep Social, physical and emotional issues that come out of these systems, and we don't only see them with the students that we have with them obviously with the parents as well.
Speaker 1:That's staying up late gaming too, right, obviously with the parents as well.
Speaker 2:That's staying up late, gaming too, right, right, you know it's so interesting because a lot of the students that we have who have siblings when Vaughn's talking about the reciprocal positioning that we see in terms of mitigating this anxiety a lot of their siblings are really high achievers Harvard, yale, you know doing amazing in their jobs.
Speaker 3:And then we have the student, the child that actually insulated in a way their siblings from where that anxiety pooled around Because all the parents over anxious and worry and focuses on that child and I think if we're not careful we as a program can replicate and perpetuate the same kind of worry and concern that the parents have. So you know, sitting in the middle of that triangle as a program, creating some distance to calm the system down, I think, is what programs have been doing and what they're effective with, but reconfiguring the family system so that when closeness starts to develop again between the young adult and their family it's a different pattern of connection. That's where I think the real important work is in front of us.
Speaker 1:Well, I like the idea of the shift away from accountability, which kind of comes laden with judgment and everything else. There's this self-esteem piece that's wrapped up in it, even if you don't mean it to be right. And then all of a sudden it's like no, here's what I want you to do. I want you to recognize the pattern. I want you to. Let's, let's work on this. And then the family recognizes the pattern and all of a sudden they start to see this car. It's like oh, it's a car, you know this thing that's triggering everybody. Then they have the opportunity to do something about it.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's in many ways, I think, that some of the direction that we go not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's not that we don't want a person to be accountable Of course you do but it's really a lot more about going toward something what you want in your life being able to be functional and everything else than away from something which is this shame from having not been accountable in the past and things that you needed to have done better, like it's a. It's just a far better outlook when you're doing treatment honestly and for a person to land on the ground Outcomes wise like what are you seeing outcomes? Wise, like, what are you seeing, like, by the time, a person I'm sure that you guys are communicating with, folks that are that are, you know, graduating and they're going out into their own lives what are you hearing back? A little bit Like, what do you, what's the what's the success story look like for you guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, todd, I think that a couple of things in response to that question, one of which is Vaughn and I sat down and really tried to figure out. What does success look like In a transitional program? What does 100% independence mean? Is that even our goal? Has anyone in our lives achieved whatever 100%?
Speaker 1:independence. I'm still not independent. I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, lives achieved, whatever 100%, I'm still not independent. I don't know what you're talking about. Right, exactly, it's we. We utilize our support systems and we we have our relationships to help us get through life. So, in terms of our students and their independence, the thing that we're really trying to work towards at Arise is our parents, the parents that we work with, still utilizing Arise to maintain the closeness with their child. Are the parents using the program so that they can still feel close to their kids we want? Well, let me explain that for a moment.
Speaker 3:So you know, in our and we all know this regularly therapists will get on the call with the parents once a week and they'll talk about how their young adult or their adolescent is doing. But in the subtext, I think for that is that the parents develop a degree of emotional closeness and safety and understanding from the therapist in terms of a little bit of what they're going through. But that relationship has really that pattern or that connection has really been developed through the young adult, not between the therapist and the parent directly, developed through the young adult, not between the therapist and the parent directly. So one of the things that we're changing is that we're establishing a relationship with the parents.
Speaker 3:Sorry, we're establishing a relationship with the parents directly where we talk about their history, their upbringing and how they connected in their own families, and so instead of thinking about it like marital therapy, we really think about it a lot more vertically in terms of taking the parents back to their own growing up years, their relationship with their siblings and mostly Todd, how they are adjusting to how their parents were managing anxiety between themselves. They take that into their marriage and there's a blending. So then you get this perpetuation intergenerationally anxiety between themselves. They take that into their marriage and there's a blending. So then you get this perpetuation intergenerationally. But I think parents feel a lot closer with us and trust us a lot more when they feel like the relationship is direct and we get a lot better sense about how they're interacting and connecting and supporting their children in general and that sort of emotional system that's going on in the family but you know, I just had just had jack him and you know dr jack on the show and we were talking about.
Speaker 1:We were talking about intimacy, relationships and attachment styles. You know that's uh, you know it sounds, even though that that's not necessarily the thrust of what you're talking about. It's certainly, it's certainly lurking in the background the Bowen system stuff. You know where, the way that this person came about in the world and formed relationships and their attachment style and everything else, it's all playing out on the other side and you know the let's call it the named patient right is has got some configuration of these things. They don't understand them all. It's hard for them to witness the pattern Uh, the parents are having, are struggling with changing it up because they they're not witness to their own stuff. And it sounds like what you guys are doing. It's just like, look, it's like Sherpa-ing the whole thing. It's like I want to show you where we're going. I want to show you where we're going. I want to show you what kind of map you're working with so that you can navigate this yourself. But through that I would still turn.
Speaker 1:You know, a person who can give you good direction is somebody you cultivate a lot of trust with, and we all know that Therapeutic Alliance is one of the strongest features to a successful program and it sounds like the thrust of some of this, the thrust of some of the success that you're seeing, is in the therapeutic alliance that you're giving by not only identifying the pattern and an ability to adjust the pattern, but also this piece about there's no judgment here.
Speaker 1:You know, we're looking at the source of these things, we're looking at the things that occurred. We're going to take the judgment out of it just so that we can observe it as information. It's information, let's use it to our, to our benefit, and I think that it's been a real. It's been a real road, you know, since you know the, the forties and fifties for therapy as a whole and treatment for sure, to land in this place where that's a central, that becomes now a central feature to what's going on. Judgment you know, back in the day of the analyst right, a person who could tell you everything about it and judges your stuff and make sure that you know what's wrong and sends you out the door.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, the doctor, you know it's a, it's a far, I mean. I mean we've just we've come a long way. I'm I love to see this landing on the ground, the. The last thing that I'll ask you guys, before we have to agree to have another show about all this, is, um, when you see parents coming to you after the fact, are you see, are they reporting anything about the relationship they have with one another, either improving or having some changes that they were able to recognize? What's going on between parents, not just between them and their children, but between the intimate partners themselves? Do you see anything that's happening there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want to say a couple things on that, Todd. So Carl Whitaker, master of therapy, said it was all in the setup, and I think that parents come in with the expectation that they're sort of going to drop their young adult off and then we're going to do the fixing, this old way of thinking.
Speaker 3:You know, it really doesn't change in terms of we've created some distance, the parents calm down, we work with the kid, they learn about themselves in the program and how to develop those relationships.
Speaker 3:But then, after therapeutic treatment is over and the child moves closer back into the family system, the pressure to rejoin the system that has not changed is so intense that oftentimes we see regression. That has not changed is so intense that oftentimes we see regression. Now, oftentimes, when parents are able to really get involved with us and change that dynamic in what we call the triangle, then at some point we do see actual change happening for the young adult, where they're developing a different kind of connection with their parents. But if we're not careful, what will happen is that somebody else will move into what we call the outside position of the triangle and oftentimes that's mother, because the predominant majority of our families are dad on the emotional periphery, mother over-involved with the children, right? So then, as we try and change that, the mother moves out of that overinvolvement. But then where does all of that anxiety that she's been dispersing onto her child through the connection go? And that really is difficult for the parent that's been overinvolved.
Speaker 1:She ends up overcompensating, or sometimes it's a he, but more often the she. Right, right.
Speaker 3:So then the person usually dad on the emotional periphery really doesn't want to get that much closer. He's a really good agent to support mom. He'll give rides, he'll do everything else, but he doesn't want to be emotionally in that entanglement with the child and so he stays on the outside. Then mother's going to do something else in terms of a friend or a different child, or even a parent or a sibling, but that anxiety has to go somewhere else until we really teach parents about differentiation, which was a term that Bowen coined, which is really really important in terms of how we deal with stress and we don't transmit it on through the emotional system. So there's a lot of complexity here, but the overall message is nobody's a bad guy, everybody's just learned from their own families how to manage that anxiety. And then the beat just goes on and on and on, and we have a lot of passion about this intergenerational pattern that goes on from each generation in the family pattern that goes on from each generation in the family.
Speaker 2:So I mean Todd, we'll meet with and we used to meet with parents together on screen and do the genogram. We realized that oftentimes the dad was answering questions but then looking over at his wife to make sure he was answering them correctly.
Speaker 3:So we we call this the puppet dictator syndrome.
Speaker 2:So we started interviewing them separately to do their own family of origin and I think it's the first time in what has typically been a really long line of treatment that both the child and the family has been through, where the parents start to feel one like individuals, not like a unit, this amalgamous unit, right.
Speaker 1:And differentiated unit right.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and they also start to get their own day in the spotlight, if you will, where they're getting their own therapeutic experience, not through the lens of their child, but through their own, you know, working with me and Vaughn, and they're also. We're not talking to parents, we're talking to children of parents, because we're working into their family of origin.
Speaker 1:So it really starts Do you see, when you do that, do you see like, does dad hate it and mom loves it? Is that? Do you see that sometimes it's more?
Speaker 3:about a different perspective. So we talked about this cluster of stressful events that hits the family system. When we interview them independently, it is amazing either their different take on it or even different stressors that each one of them leaves out and other stressors that they add in because they see it as an individual rather than as a unit, and it's really interesting. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:Todd, Interesting. Go ahead, Todd. I was going to say to your point, Steve, in some ways it's got to feel really relieving for them to come in and be like this is about me and who I was as a child coming into this and not about this relationship. And I thought it was going to be about our marriage. But instead I've got to like personalize it, Like that's got to feel really unique.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't think it's so daunting for them. I mean marital therapy and us, coming in from their perspective, kind of monkeying around with the relationship system that they've used so well over so many life events. At some point it's, I think, a lot more relieving yeah, Relieving for them to work back into their own family system.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, and I think and I'm not sure if I'm going to make any friends with this statement but within the last decade we've the field in and of itself has really shifted away from the identified patient, but I don't really see that there's been a methodology around doing that. I see a lot of Like how to change it Right. I see a lot of Like how to change it Right. I see a lot of family involvement, but the involvement still focuses around the kid that's in the program, versus having this Bowenian framework to operate with the parents within their own families of origin. So the calls that Vaughn and I are on, we don't even talk about their children that are with us. We're solely focused on what each of these parents' lives have been through and the patterns that they have taken from their own families of origin into their nuclear family.
Speaker 1:We got it. Let's talk about you.
Speaker 2:Right exactly. And you know you asked about if sometimes the dads are a little bit resistant, or moms Right now. What we found out is they are thrilled to get their time with us.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 2:You know, we even had a dad recently who the effect of the conversation, you know, I wasn't even asking a lot of questions, he was just kind of spilling everything out.
Speaker 1:You knocked the dam and he yeah.
Speaker 2:well, the effect of it was oh man, I don't really think he's gotten a lot of opportunity while his kid's been in treatment to really talk about what's gone on for him and what really is like, moved him around from his own growing up as a kid and how that is transferred over into his life as a father, and so it was a really kind of powerful process to see play out of him just opening up in that way without a lot of prompting.
Speaker 3:But, I think the application of it is that we then see how the young adult can become aligned with the parent. That might be on the emotional periphery, but again, if we're not careful, that moves the other parent to the outside position and that's no good either.
Speaker 1:You've got to be constantly aware of the balance it's very technical the balance of the system. Right yeah, very technical. That makes a lot of sense when.
Speaker 2:Vaughn's talking about this togetherness and individuality force. This togetherness and individuality force we are you know me and you Todd, me and Vaughn. We are always moving back and forth along that continuum, kind of mitigating our own anxiety. As you know, if I feel that me and Vaughn are too much togetherness force and my anxiety goes up, then I'm going to back off a little bit and we're just doing this unconsciously constantly. But within families, that kind of get this influx of anxiety, they get that rigid kind of I'm only only the togetherness force will work or only the individuality.
Speaker 1:Right, well, I hope that this interview hasn't thrown your balance off, gentlemen.
Speaker 2:I really know it would take more than this interview, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, I am sure glad that you guys were able to make it and be here together on the show. I am absolutely thrilled about the work that you're both doing. I've had Dr Vaughn Heath and Steve Roth here on the show with the Arise Society. This has been Head Inside Mental Health with Todd Weatherly on WPBM 1037, the Voice of Asheville. We'll be with you folks next time. Steve Vaughn, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much. I found you in this web. Thank you, bye. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home.
Speaker 3:I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here.
Speaker 2:I need to find my way home. Find my way home.