Emotional Cutoff

important because

it can make the difference between

a successful

and an unsuccessful

course of family therapy.

If people are using a significant degree of emotional cutoff to deal with their families of origin, it can be very difficult to gain the needed perspective on current relationship.

It is difficult for people to see their false assumptions if they are "cut off"

• what constitutes a “good” marriage
• “good” parenting
• the way things “should” be

Family of origin/multi-generational families are where the roots of these assumptions took hold.

Bridging the cutoff -

can tone down the intensity of current relationships enough to permit some objectivity and progress.

Seeing the processes in our family of origin

can facilitate being able to see similar processes

in our immediate family.

We all have some unresolved emotional attachment to our family of origin:

Unresolved emotional attachment is the emotional fusion that existed with one’s family while growing up.

It is not simply solved by leaving your family and forming new intimate relationships. (People carry unresolved attachment with them and replicate it in new relationships)

Example: Ted Kaczynski

Emotional Cutoff

One of the last concepts Bowen added to his theory (1975)

Describes how adult offspring handle their unresolved emotional attachment during and after leaving home.

Emotional Cutoff vs.

Emotional Distance

*** Bowen theory does not assert

that people should not cut off from their families. It says that this is what people do and that it has advantages and disadvantages.

Advantage: peace from painful/difficult interactions

Disadvantage: intensifies future relationships and problems associated with anxiety-driven fusion

Both manage chronic anxiety generated by the forces for togetherness/individuality.

Same emotional Process...

• Emotional distance - in nuclear family
• Emotional Cutoff - how the distance plays out between generations.

Contributes to the “generation gap” ?

Looks can be deceiving:

• Superficial interactions can make things look normal
• The problem is they may replicate those problematic interactions with their own children
• Geography is not always the answer (moving toward a goal vs. cutting off from family)
• The husband or wife can often see their spouses unresolved emotional attachment better than the spouse can (for the spouse it is just seen as “normal” behavior)

The ideal is as much resolution of the emotional attachment as possible

Psychoanalysis

The less "self" people have developed when leaving home, the greater vulnerability they have of their relationship with the family generating chronic anxiety from then on.

The anxiety can be coped with in two ways:

1. Not to threaten the dependency on one’s parents (failure to lift off syndrome)

2. Physically running away and never going back (in extreme situations this leads people to become peripatetic nomads/vagabonds

(This is a spectrum)

From working on differentiation of the self with spouse

-->

focusing on differentiation of self in family of origin

When people make progress in family of origin,

they make progress in their current context

Position of the therapist changed from transference

-->

“coach”

(maintaining differentiation, relating to the system not joining)

Emotional cutoff is not a pathological process...

but it is important to understand the consequences of it for oneself and others.

People who have developed a reasonable level of "self"

and the associated good level of emotional resolution

“grow” away rather than “break” away

allowing for continued communication and resourcing.

emotional cutoff