On Feedback Loops

As I was driving in this morning, I started thinking about feedback loops. There, sitting in her carseat in the row behind me, was my daughter Anna. At eight and a half months, Anna is, by most accounts, a remarkably good baby. She travels well (once we figured out she doesn't like feeling alone in the back seat on long car rides), has been great as we've hauled her along to numerous conferences and meetings, and just generally has a great disposition. Which is what has perhaps made this week so rough. She's just been, well, a bit fussier than normal. Not ridiculous. I suspect she's probably still been better (thank God) than many of her peers :-)

Last night, in keeping with her mood this week, was just kind of ridiculous. She's been stirring more at night, but then, we've only recently finally ditched the swaddle, and have been trying to ditch the sleep sac too and just adjust her pajamas and the thermostat accordingly (gives her a bit more ability to move around when she's awake--which is probably a mixed blessing). She's (hopefully) finally getting over a cough that's dragged on a bit, and who knows what else is going on in her body and life right now--she's hitting all sorts of milestones lately, and seems to be able to do something new each day! All of this is fertile soil for sleep disturbances, for sure. Not to mention the general stress level in our house that usually accompanies (or has built towards) the end of summer camp--and things ramping up for me at church.

Thinking back on last night, though, I must admit I thought I was quite beyond the early days with her of getting mad AT her. I mean, I've been frustrated with being woken up, for sure. But last night, as it began to occur to me that I (and Chris) had perhaps been awake with her more than I'd been asleep, it was impossible for me to not feel upset. At her. Which is silly. Chris and I learned in her early weeks that when that feeling crept up on one of us, it was a good time to switch off. Much better to tag team than to stay together with her and both get equally stressed at the same time. Some nights, though, when there is such a gap between expectations and reality (that's how I always understand when I'm most upset--last night there was the expectation of perhaps one wake up, not a whole series of them) it's hard not to be drawn into a feedback loop.

Feedback loops can be great when the feedback is positive. God bless positive feedback loops--when joy and happiness and even success just feed more of each.

But then there are the not so great feedback loops. Like tired parents on just such a night. Or family members in the midst of crisis. Or coworkers caught in negative attitudes about others or their work.

Several years ago, when I was doing my second field education placement while at Duke (think ministry internship) during the summer before my third and last year there, I worked with Scott, a pastor who was a wonderful mentor for me. And also very similar to me. My first mentor the summer before, Lewis, had also been great, but had perhaps one of the personalities most different from mine possible--he was so laid back, and calm. Not lazy at all, but serene, I would say. I was so blessed to work with each man, more than I could ever say, but I learned different lessons from each.

Scott and I were both pretty Type-A, and workaholics. The problem was I am a morning person and he was much more of a night person. So that summer, it all started innocently enough--I'd get an early start to the day, he'd get working later in the morning, and when he'd keep going on work into the evening, I'd head home. But then we started feeding off each other's schedules--he started getting at things earlier and I would keep at work later. It wasn't long before, between sermon prep, meetings, visits, and all our other duties, we were both worn out. It was Scott who recognized what was happening--that we'd created a feedback loop where though neither was putting any expectations on the other beyond what each would normally do, we'd both taken on the other's schedule without adjusting our own.

Once Scott identified that, we got better. When one of us chose to work early or later, we'd make sure to work on tasks the other wasn't needed for --and we'd be sure they knew that. I learned from Scott, from his sharing his own experiences, of the dangers of burnout--and I learned from him ways to attend to myself before it reached that.

I suspect we all face a whole slew of feedback loops in our lives and relationships. It's pretty similar, I think, to what Friedman (and others) describes within family systems theory in Generation to Generation. It so easy to get so caught up in feedback loops, in systems, that we don't even realize it--or the power they exert over us.

But perhaps Friedman's advice is good in any of these situations--that the only way we can change them is to be a non-anxious presence:

What Bowen has hypothesized is a scale of differentiation. Differentiation means the capacity of a family member to define his or her own life's goals and values apart from surrounding togetherness pressures, to say "I" when others are demanding "you" and "we." It includes the capacity to maintain a (relatively) non-anxious presence in the midst of anxious systems, to take maximum responsibility for one's own desitny and emotional being. It can be measured somewhat by the breadth of one's repertoire of responses when confronted with crisis. The concept should not be confused with autonomy or narcissism, however. Differentiation means the capacity to be an "I" while remaining connected. (Generation to Generation, p. 27)

It is this ability to be a non-anxious presence which, Freidman goes on to explain, is one's only real hope of changing a system (as opposed to trying to change someone IN the system).

So that's what was on my mind this morning. But while I've got my copy of Generation to Generation out, let me throw out some other great lines (though perhaps this only makes sense to those who've read the whole book or other family systems stuff, we'll see...)

• "It is not possible to eliminate any chronic condition without going through a phase that is acute" (p. 47)
• "One of the most astounding facts about organized religious life in America is the extent to which professional clergy organizations and heirarchies permit religious institutions to get away with blmaing all crashes on 'pilot error.'" (p. 218)
• "The possibilities of change are maximized rather when we concentrate on modifying our own way of functioning, our own input, into the family 'black box'." (p. 18)
• "If one is the third party in an emotional triangle, it is generally not possible to bring change (for more than a week) to the relationship of the other two parts by trying to change their relationship directly." (p. 37)
• "Chronic symptoms rarely go below or above certain thresholds and they tend to reappear with a certain rhythm. (Anyone who doubts this should try to make a problem worse and keep it at that level.)" (p. 46)
• "In fact, a good rule of thumb is that if you catch yourself disagnozing someone else [in a system you're part of], there is probably something in you that you are trying to hide." (p. 57)

SO there's a lot of good stuff in there...I'll have to stop there for now. Perhaps I'll come back to it later, though.