“What are the thoughts that define You?” ” What are the thoughts that destroy you?”
“If you don’t take life seriously, it’s not worth living. If you only take life seriously, it’s not worth living.”
Presenting the Bowen Family Systems and the Differentiation of Self Series.
Now, about taking life seriously… The next post will begin a series dedicated to a serious effort to talk in an understandable way about what it takes to become more of a differentiated person. We’ll go slow.
Who the heck is Bowen? And what does differentiation mean? More simply put than does the term “differentiation” justice…the effort to become a more differentiated person means working to raise your level of functioning so that you are more in charge of you. Articles, definitions, and lots of juicy examples will be part of this series. The humor stays because laughter is one of the best ways for us humans to interrupt self-destructive thoughts and behaviors.
Increased differentiation is the goal of the clinical theory from which I work—and a way of thinking that, when I’m at my best, directs my living. Bowen Family Systems. Bowen Family Systems is about more than therapy or learning anything.
Bowen Family Systems is about A WAY of THINKING that TRANSLATES into a WAY OF BEING.
Why would you want to take on this challenge? Because blaming other people, past events, fixing physical imperfections, even winning prizes, and buying all the cool stuff in the world doesn’t work. Learning a way to think about behavior, internal and external, can change your life. But it’s hard. Very hard. Don’t fret, though. We have all the time we have.
For my part, I’m ready now to launch this series because, while I can dodge most of life’s speedbumps, I know now I need to get in charge of my body’s inflammatory processes, and because…
THERE WAS THIS MAN….on a panel at the Bowen Family Center Spring Conference…this man who was supposed to be dead and he wasn’t.
Entries for this series will be filed under a category labeled Bowen Family Systems. Welcome aboard.
