Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

communicate with others. Norms, on the other hand, are patterns of behavior that are arrived at through
the system. For example, maybe your mother has a home office, and everyone knows that when she is in
her office, she should not be disturbed.
Of course, one of the problems with patterns and regularities is that they become deeply entrenched
and are not able to be changed or corrected quickly or easily. When a family is suddenly faced with a
crisis event, these patterns and regularities may prevent the family from actively correcting the course. For
example, imagine you live in a family where everyone is taught not to talk about the family’s problems
with anyone outside the family. If one of the family members starts having problems, the family may
try to circle the wagons and ultimately not get the help it needs. This is an example of a situation that
happened to one of our coauthors’ families. In this case, one of our coauthor’s cousins became an
alcoholic during his teen years. We’ll call him Jesse. Very few people in the immediate family even
know about Jesse’s problems. Jesse’s mother was a widely known community leader, so there was a
family rule that said, “don’t make mom or our family look bad.” When Jesse’s parents found out about
his alcoholism (through a DUI), they circled the wagons and tried to deal with the problem as a family.
Unfortunately, dealing with a disease like alcoholism by closing ranks is not the best way to get someone
treatment. One night Jesse’s mother was called out to an accident at a local night club where a drunk
driver had hit several people. When Jesse’s mother showed up, it was only then that she learned that the
drunk driver had been her son.
In this case, the rule about protecting the family’s image had become so ingrained, that the family
hadn’t taken all of the steps necessary to get Jesse the help he needed. Although no one died in the
accident, one young woman hit by Jesse was paralyzed for the rest of her life. Jesse ended up going to
prison for several years.
Interactive Complexity
The notion of interactive complexity stems back to the original work conducted by Murray Bowen
on family systems theory. In his initial research looking at schizophrenics, a lot of families labeled
the schizophrenic as “the problem” or “the patient,” which allowed them to put the blame for family
problems and interactions on the schizophrenic. Instead, Bowen realized that schizophrenia was one
person’s diagnosis in a family system where there were usually multiple issues going on. Trying to reduce
everything down to the one label, essentially letting everyone else “off the hook” for any blame for family
problems, was not an accurate portrayal of the family.
Instead, it’s important to think about interactions as complex and stemming from the system
itself. For example, all married couples will have disagreements. Some married couples take these
disagreements, and they become highly contentious fights. These fights are often repetitious and seen
over and over again. Mary asks Anne to take out the trash. The next day Mary sees that the trash hasn’t
been taken out yet. Mary turns to Anne at breakfast and says, “Are you ever going to take out the trash?”
Anne quickly replies, “Stop nagging me already. I’ll get it done when I get it done.” Before too long,
this becomes a fight about Anne not listening to Mary from Mary’s point-of-view, while the conversation
becomes about Mary’s constant nagging from Anne’s point-of-view. Before long, the argument devolves
into an argument about who started the conflict in the first place. Galvin, Dickson, and Marrow argue
that trying to determine who started the conflict is not appropriate from a systems perspective, instead,
researchers should focus on “current patterns serve to uncover ongoing complex issues.” 31
Openness
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Interpersonal Communication