[00:00:00] We spend so much of our time trying to change other people, our partners, our parents, friends, colleagues. Some people are even trying to change their children often with the best of intentions. But what if the real work, the hard work, isn’t about getting others to behave differently. Instead, it’s about how we manage ourselves in those relationships.

I hear it all the time in couples therapy and family therapy sessions where people come in and say, if only they would just do this thing differently, everything would be fine. And that’s really hard. Probably almost impossible. That’s what today’s conversation with Dr. Jenny Brown is all about. Jenny is the author of Growing Yourself Up a book that really, it did stop me in my tracks. I came across Jenny Brown’s work when I was studying family therapy, and she’s written a few amazing articles. She translates some really complex family systems thinking into some really [00:01:00] tangible bite-size, I guess, insightful and wise. Commentary. She has a really great podcast, the Parent Hope Project, and she’s, she’s done a lot of amazing work, I was really thrilled to have her on the podcast to talk about this because I found the book amazing and also confronting.

There were moments where I was underlining thinking this would be great, and a part of me still thinking if only the other person would read this, then they could do it differently. And then there were times where the penny kind of dropped and I thought, ah, right, I have to do things differently. And I wanted to throw the book across the room.

Because it asks us to look at our own patterns, the ways that we try to maybe steady ourselves by changing or pleasing others, the way that we try to get our needs met in ways that sometimes push those things further apart. And it gets us to consider what growing up really means in adult relationships.

Even if you haven’t read the book, this podcast will provide some insightful things that you can take away and kind of mull over. And if you’re [00:02:00] interested in the book, I highly recommend it. It’s a really great book. In this chat, Jenny Unpacks the idea of borrowed versus solid maturity and how our family dynamics shape us long after we’ve moved out, and what it looks like to stay connected without losing ourselves.

We talk about those tricky moments like family gatherings and everyday interactions where we can easily slip back into old roles and reactions, sometimes thinking, how the hell am I acting like a 15-year-old again? Because it happens, and I think we can all relate to that idea of being around certain people or in certain family dynamics where we feel infantalised or we start acting like petulant teenagers and we think, where did this come from?

I’m a grownup. It’s not supposed to be happening. I thought this would be a good time to put this episode back in. It’s something I recorded a couple of years ago, but coming into that busy period, a lot of events start happening around the end of the season, end of like Christmas time, new Year’s, all of these things, and they’re going to.

pock us, it’s going to create tensions in family [00:03:00] gatherings, so I invite you to have a listen, see what it brings up for you, if there’s something you think you might be able to do differently. And it’s a, it’s a conversation that every time I listen to, I take away something new. I’ve listened to this episode a few times, not because I like the sound of my own voice.

I actually really don’t. But because I think Jenny’s wisdom is so powerful and every time I listen to her talk, I learn something new about myself, which is pretty amazing. It’s a rich and relatable conversation to help us become steadier versions of ourselves and why the hardest and most rewarding work often starts with us.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Of this complex life with Dr. Jenny Brown.

Marie Vakakis: Today. I have a return guest, Dr. Jenny Brown, here with us today and the last episode, and I’ll pop a link to that in the show notes. We talked about parenting, and today we wanna talk about some of Jenny’s earlier work.

And it’s a book that I. I really loved and also found confronting, and I think I flung it across the room a couple of times, the book Growing Yourself Up. But before we dive right in, could you [00:04:00] just brief the audience a little bit about your work, Jenny, maybe kind of what was happening around the time you wrote that book?

Jenny: Yeah, well, growing yourself up and very importantly Marie, it’s got a subtitle, how to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships. So that tells you straight away it’s a, about relationships not being itself in a vacuum. And it’s a book that I really wanted to give my clients. I was recommending particular books.

For clients that wanted to manage themself in their relationships better, and who doesn’t wanna do that? And I wanted a book that had really good case examples to bring it to life. I wanted a book that was equally relevant across genders. Most of these books have ex so many examples about women. So I wanted a [00:05:00] broader book that spoke to men with plenty of their examples as well.

And I wanted a book that represented Bowen Family Systems Theory in a really accessible format. And there were books out there with great case examples, and there was a book I used to recommend that was really good on theory, so I wanted to bring them together. 

Marie Vakakis: Wonderful. And for those who don’t know a bit about your background.

So I was rereading the book as a refresher and you started off in law. I don’t, I don’t think I remember that. Ah, 

Jenny: well I didn’t last very long. For me, I escaped the study of arts law and moved across to arts, social studies that put me down the wonderful route of social work and then family therapy and.

All of the fascinating clinical experiences that [00:06:00] that field of work has offered. In the early days working with families with, in foster care and alternate care, and I, I’ve gotten into research early on and training in family systems and family therapy, so it’s. And then lots of teaching, setting up the Family Systems Institute in Sydney, Australia, which is an institute to teach people how to go deeper with Bowen’s amazing theory, which I discovered while working and studying in the USA back in the nineties.

So yeah, there’s a little bit 

Marie Vakakis: more to throw in to the bio. Amazing. So if people, like, if you could sum up like one key takeaway or one kind of key message that this book tries to highlight for people before we get into it a little bit more, what would sort of be the one kind of takeaway? Like if someone was had read the book and they recommend it to a friend, they’re like, oh my gosh, you’ve [00:07:00] got to read this.

It will do this for you, or it’ll help you with this. Like is there like a. A key message that you’re hoping readers will, would take away. 

Jenny: Great and tricky question, Marie, to pull out one thing. I will say that I laughed at the introduction that you love the book and you would also throw it across the room at times.

And I get that feedback from people, which makes it a hard sell, doesn’t it? It’s confronting because this is a poor. That is not about fixing or changing others or analysing others or diagnosing others, which is the easiest thing to do. This is a book about how we’re all affecting each other. In the back and forth of relationships.

And so if I can change the part I’m playing on how I’m being a challenge to others, how I’m affecting others for good [00:08:00] or for ill, and I can learn that, then I can be a mature, grown. That will bring benefits both to me and to others who are important to me. That wasn’t a one-liner, was it? No. 

Marie Vakakis: Well, it, it makes me sort of, I, I jotted some of those things down and it’s sort of that, how we affect each other and what’s the part that I’m playing so 

Jenny: great.

Great 

Marie Vakakis: summary. You, you mentioned at the, at the start of your book, it was a paragraph that really struck me, and I’m just gonna flick through to the highlighted bit of when your, you had lost your mother, and then about over a decade later, your dad, and there’s this one bit where you sort of say, I was overwhelmed, had this overwhelming sense of emptiness as I con contemplated the loss of a parent who I could make proud.

And I really thought that really struck me as. Even sometimes when we’re not in conflict or not in the distress, we’re still sometimes doing things relationally. 

Jenny: Mm-hmm. [00:09:00] Yeah. So often outside of our awareness, Marie. But yeah, that, that was such a profound time in my life that really got me working on myself rather than all the training I’d done to help, which I realised.

Came out of my own family experience being the helpful one in my family and the experiencing, being orphaned in my thirties, losing my second parent and thinking, gosh, who’s there to be that special person to validate me? One, it made it, it was an overwhelming grief that I realised I hadn’t attended too well when my mother had died.

A decade earlier and made me think about how my family of origin avoids those difficult topics and we go into distancing. [00:10:00] But who, it also helped me to see that I would steady myself by making my parents proud, by achieving by and, and that is something that is quite unreliable. That isn’t a good roadmap for being resilient in life, needing other people to be proud of me or validate me.

So it, it was part of the awareness I had from studying bow and family systems to see how I could borrow from others. And I’m not saying that it isn’t great to appreciate and validate and be proud of family members, but. Being dependent on that, to be steady in life is an issue. So yes, it was a big time in my life realising what it was like to be the [00:11:00] remaining older generation at an early age, having my siblings, but not having a generation above.

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, it really, I think it’s something that a lot of listeners might really get kind of caught off guard with when there’s, they’re faced with something like that is, what does that mean for me and what does that mean for me if I’m not pushing against this or to please this person? And, and it really makes me think of my work with adolescents and we talked about in another episode, I forget whether it was you on mine or mine on yours, but you can develop your identity based on that, that dynamic or that you know.

Push against someone and, and I thought that was a really vulnerable thing to share, but also really highlighted that even someone who’s got all this knowledge can still have a moment of, oh, there’s a piece there. I can, I can tend to, 

Jenny: yeah. It’s something I have so valued Marie about those. [00:12:00] Who have trained me with Bowen Family Systems is they share their own work on themselves in their families, as much as the way they lend a hand to their clients.

We’re all in the soup of relationship challenges and opportunities together, and us helpers don’t stand in this separate place of having everything zipped up and sorted out. 

Marie Vakakis: Amazing. You use this term in the book borrowing maturity and you, you use maturity kind of throughout the book. Can you just highlight like what does that mean and how do you conceptualise maturity?

Because it’s different to what people might assume? 

Jenny: Yeah, well certainly it’s not just extra years that guarantee maturity or growing up. It’s [00:13:00] how we manage the stresses and strains of life in ways that don’t in on or make life difficult for others, I would say is the core of maturity. I use the word maturity in the place of Dr.

Murray Bowen’s word, differentiation of self. It doesn’t completely capture the meaning of that. Elusive concept differentiation, but I think it’s the closest to it. It’s about maturity in our different context, in our relationships. And I think you also ask Maria about borrowed maturity. Yeah. And this difference between a solid maturity that grows out of.

Self-awareness in the ups and downs of life and working out what I stand for, what, what are my principles for [00:14:00] managing myself versus borrowed or pretend maturity is being a chameleon and just fitting in with others to secure ourselves to be stable or, as I mentioned before, borrowing maturity by putting.

Ourselves in positions where it, where we invite people to phrase us, validate us, rescue us, care for us, all of those things that we invite people to steady us rather than learn to cultivate our own capacities for being the steadier self. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. I mean, it does roll off the tongue a bit better than differentiation of self, I think.

I think so. 

Jenny: Yeah. I think so. What’s, but it’s also a misunderstood concept. Yeah, and the key difference is I’m using it as something we’ve got growing up opportunities or maturing [00:15:00] opportunities at every stage of the adult life cycle, right into old age. I’ve had clients say, oh, I wish I came across these ideas earlier in my life.

But they make profound changes in how they relate to their adult children and their partners, and it makes a big difference at any stage of the life cycle. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, it, it sounds and, and what struck me. It’s always, I, I love reading material like this. ’cause sometimes you’ll hear something or read something and it gives you a different analogy or a different metaphor or something to explain to clients.

I see in a lot of pop culture stuff, people want this either extreme, like, you know, you have to have these really firm strict boundaries where you have to be really, and what I’m gathering from this. Approach is, it’s, it’s fitting in this grounded, centered part of yourself where you’re not looking to be rescued, but you know how to ask for help.

You’re not [00:16:00] overcompensating and smothering someone, but you’re not completely distancing yourself and pulling away like it’s this, it’s a more fluid, flexible, but attuned way of being. Like, how would you Yes. Describe that to people who, who maybe want like a quick fix or a yes. What do I have to do? Maybe recognise the complexity in that.

Yeah. 

Jenny: I, I’m gonna step back, back from your question just for a moment, Marie, because I do wanna say to people listening that we all inherit certain amount of capacity to manage ourselves. So we don’t all start with the same toolkit for maturity and. Learning to be gracious to self about this is what I’ve inherited from the generations of my family.

It has some gap and it’s nobody’s fault. [00:17:00] And to not try to grow up to quickly or beyond what your capacity is, just we all start from where we’re at. I think that’s really important and that. Also comes out of Bowen Theory. It’s on a continuum. There are not immature people and mature people. We’re all, we all have our maturity gaps and some more than others just because of what has been passed down the line of their relationships generationally and, and then it’s getting the balance.

I think that was your question, wasn’t it? About. Not going too far in one direction of being a rugged individual to being overly dependent on others. It’s finding this balance where you can be a connected person, present a resource to people, but to at the same time, not lose the capacity to think for [00:18:00] self and manage as an individual.

And where things come undone is when we overfocus focus on the other and lose our capacity to think and take action on behalf of us or the other direction, which is we focus so much on being an individual that we are distant from others and we can’t tolerate upset in any relationship, and we’re always running away.

So it’s finding that. Ability to stay connected while holding onto our own uniqueness as an individual. And that, you know, that’s a laboratory for growing up. Just practicing that all the time. And you’d use the word boundaries, Marie, and. I just had a client, a parent client I was working with early this morning say, you know, I don’t think boundaries is the right word.

I [00:19:00] think where my energy going is going. Is the the right way to think about it, that if my energy is going into managing me, I’m not gonna have boundary issues. If my energy is going into reacting to others, I’m going to invade their boundaries and they’re gonna invade mine. So I thought that was a great insight this morning from a parent.

Marie Vakakis: Absolutely. I really like that, especially ’cause we’re recording this around Christmas time. It, it really does test. A lot of our coping skills 

Jenny: Surely does. Yeah. But it’s a great opportunity to observe ourselves in relationships and, and that’s always the starting point. Observing as neutrally as we can without judging, blaming others, blaming self, and.

Curious and interested and watching, oh, what, what are my triggers here and how do I respond [00:20:00] and what’s that? How, what, how, what, how does that affect others in my family? And just being a researcher is a great place to start. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. How can, how would that look on an event like Christmas Day, if. Someone was, let’s say, going to their parents’ house, what would they be looking out for if they’re wanting to observe their own behaviour?

Like where would someone start to kind of pause and reflect? 

Jenny: Yeah, yeah. Great question. For this time of year, as you say. Well, the first thing is we always start with self. So rather than think, oh gosh, what am I up against? How’s everyone gonna behave? Is this brother going to drink too much? And is there gonna be a big upset or a fight here?

Not to overfocus on what might go [00:21:00] wrong or worrying about others, but asking How am I gonna turn up? How, what a, what’s one key principle for how I’m gonna manage myself? And am I gonna turn up as a 15-year-old, the age I was when I was growing up in the family, around the time I was trying to get my independence?

Or am I gonna turn out as the age I am now? And respond to people from where I’m at now. A lot of people say to me as soon as they walk back into the home of their parents, they experience themselves as a child again, and we can make choices about that. So just start with self. Couple of principles on how we are going to work.

At managing ourself to not react to others. I had a client this week [00:22:00] say to me for their family, Christmas, which is a really big one, because there’d been years of cutoff and this family have repaired, cutoff, and a. Coming together again for the first time in many years. So it could be quite intense and it’s, the danger is expecting too much in terms of happy reunions.

’cause there’ll be stress and anxiety. That’s normal. But she said to me that her key things she’s holding onto is this word, let it go. They were her words. So whatever other people do and how they react, just let it go. I don’t have to take it on. And she reflected also on how can I manage myself? And that’s just pause before saying anything.

Remember to breathe. So there are a few ideas. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. I just have to get the song, let it Go from [00:23:00] Frozen out of my head to concentrate on the next. I’m sorry. 

Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. And once it’s in your head, it’s there forever. I hadn’t made that connection. 

Marie Vakakis: It, I like that bit. You said how you can. Walk into your house and feel like you’re 15.

And I can see this play out. Like when I work with families, everything feels so loaded and I can just picture someone walking in and maybe putting their jacket on the back of a chair and their, their mom or da, you know, grabs it and goes to put it in the cloakroom and they’re like, oh, you always do this and.

A neutral of a neutral kind of action is loaded with this whole, my whole life, you’ve just told me I’m not good enough. And they see that as a representation. Like everything can feel really charged. And if you bring that to someone’s attention, like, oh, well, if they just didn’t touch it, then it would be fine.

How does someone start to recognise the role that they play? In those moments? 

Jenny: Well, it’s different for everyone [00:24:00] and it’s really hard to see the part we play in something. It’s easy to see how other people can make our life challenging, and I do invite people when they read, growing yourself up to just read the examples and think, what can I identify that’s similar with me in that example?

I think in just having realistic expectations that us humans in our families are so important to each other, which means we’re highly sensitive to each other, which means that sometimes we suffocate each other and make life really difficult for each other, and that’s just what happens. We can be a wonderful resource in our families and we can be a huge burden.

But it’s worth working on bringing our best to those relationships. A lot of people [00:25:00] just wanna find substitute families, and that has its place in terms of good friendship networks, et cetera. But working with our real families is where great growing up are close. At its, at its best, at its core, at its primary source.

And if we’re always avoiding it because we find people difficult, I think we’re losing some great maturing opportunities just to be in the presence of someone who, when they’re anxious, become very loud and dominating. We all do different things when we’re anxious and we might find that like very, very.

Triggering to just practice thinking that’s how they are in stressful times. And I don’t have to react to it. I can just let them [00:26:00] do whatever they’re doing. ’cause that’s where they’re at. Just having that capacity at a family gathering to choose not to react. Mm. And. I have a little success at that. It won’t be perfect.

That is a great investment in the Christmas or holiday gathering. That’s a growing up investment. Growing up means tolerating what is usually uncomfortable for us without running away or moving into. It’s just disguising the discomfort by being overly helpful or rescuing. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, it reminds me, ’cause I, before this episode comes up all of release one on boundaries.

It makes me think in that moment, that’s when you’ve got a chance to put in a boundary. It’s not about your reaction to them. ’cause we can’t get someone else to stop [00:27:00] how they behave. But you might actually say, I’m not gonna listen to you. I’m gonna step out. Or I can see you’re really angry. It’s not okay to speak to me that way.

Jenny: Mm-hmm. I’m gonna 

Marie Vakakis: come back in an hour. Like how do people then use that ability to differentiate and that more centered sort of sense of maturity to then set a a boundary? Because I think what people misunderstand about boundaries is it’s about your role, like what you can do different, not getting the other person to change.

Jenny: Yeah, Marie, I mean, we’re in fraught territory here, aren’t we? In terms of when to speak up and how to speak up if somebody has never spoken up like that before in terms of I’m not okay being spoken to that way, I’m going to leave right now, and they’ve never done that. I would say it’s going to be a volcanic eruption.

It’s, it’s too much too soon. We [00:28:00] start small in these things, and the first step to putting the energy into what’s in my control, what can I manage in me, is just not to react to what’s happening. Probably not to say anything that might come later. Down the track when we’ve understood what and gotten more neutral about how the relationship got to be that way.

And I do think therapy and coaching and training in family systems thinking is really useful for that. This is not easy work. And so I would say not to be too quick to define self. At the Family Systems Institute, there are family of origin small group that are run every year where people look at the generations of their family and work at [00:29:00] getting more objective.

It isn’t a group about how to go in and define yourself differently with your family. That takes a lot of thoughtful and careful research. So I like those examples you gave for when people have done the work to really understand how did we get here? But I would say as a starting point for people, just that capacity to not react to a reaction.

Yeah, and that might just be changing the subject or remembering, oh, I’ve left my phone in another room, and finding a way to remove yourself not not being in any way kind of defining self, especially in an anxious group context. 

Marie Vakakis: I can see it playing out where I’ve got some clients who, they’ll be like, I told them, so speak to me like that.

And I’m like, how did you say it? And they tell me the words like, [00:30:00] well then no wonder they reacted. And you see this dynamic of this back and forth conflict, but how do you, we, you discussed in your book, and I’ve kind of touched on, I’ve got a whole bunch of questions here that I’ve gone completely off track, but that’s fine.

How do you maintain these healthy relationships while also nurturing your own autonomy? Like how do you find that balance? And this is, I mean this book’s targeted to adults, so it’s really around, it’s not just parent teenager relationship, this is adult stuff too. How do people like start to do that?

Jenny: Yeah. It’s so hard to answer it in a short sentence, Marie. It’s why I value examples, different examples, all the way through the book of how people start to do that. But the key is that you don’t put on your autonomy hat on one day and your connection hat on another. Both hats [00:31:00] are worn at once. You work at, I.

I don’t wanna shut myself off from people. In order to be independent and autonomous, I want to be able to do both. That doesn’t mean that we don’t say to the important people in our life or to our colleagues at work or wherever. I need some space to really work on some stuff and. I’ll be more available in a couple of weeks.

How does that work for you? See, even that is negotiating our need for autonomy in the, in the connection and inviting the other person to speak into it. So it’s practicing, wearing the two hats, one with the other. 

Marie Vakakis: When you say stuff like that to your family, do you get the eye roll in people saying, stop using your therapist’s voice on me.

Jenny: Oh, [00:32:00] I hope I don’t say that to, oh, when I say to, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, because I hear that example. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, I hear this and I’m, oh, that’s what I would tell someone. But then if you’re doing that all the time, people roll their eyes and they’re like, oh, Marie, 

Jenny: I hope to goodness in a podcast. I’m trying to explain something.

I hope I don’t speak that way. Using exactly those words. It’s gotta be right for the context. Yeah. Yeah. 

Marie Vakakis: Yep. So I’m glad you pulled me up on that. No, no. I’m just, I do it too. And I have people say, you, you’ve got your therapist’s voice. And I’m like, yeah, that’s not different. It is. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Marie Vakakis: How so? Maybe an example that comes to mind would be for me, like I’m having my, my dad’s helping me with some home, like maintenance improvement stuff.

And so maybe that healthy relationship and own autonomy that could be, I’m thinking of like. Thank you for helping me do that, but I’d like you to show me, ’cause I want to learn rather than sort of [00:33:00] saying, you always take over and you never let me learn this or stop patronising me. Like I could go down that fifth and that’s probably how I would’ve felt at like 18, 19, but now it’s more like, I don’t want you to do this for me, but I’d really love for you to show me like is that, that sort of balancing that I can appreciate your effort.

But this is what, this is my need in that. And can you show me and the conversation go different? 

Jenny: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that’s great, Marie. A really practical and good example, and it also just accepts that at a different stage of life, we will be different in our relationships with our parents, with our kids at their different ages, I would say.

It’s not always important to find the right words. There’s so much in books and therapy about using these words, and [00:34:00] more important, it’s what’s my mindset and what’s my attitude. Yeah. In terms of how I relate to others. So I love your example and just being able to action it, not just use words. To action.

Being curious, how did you do that? Do you mind if I watch that? Can you show me that again? Like, we set a goal for ourselves, which is our, our autonomy, and then how do we live that out in a relationship? 

Marie Vakakis: Well, it worked. I have the drill bit that I need to make the hole in the bricks so that I can put the the board up and I was like, oh, this is cool.

Now I know what to do, and I’ve got the little drill bits there. And that could have been something I might have otherwise either said, oh, just do it for me. It’s too much effort. Or avoid it all together. 

Jenny: Yeah, that’s great. And you’re touching on a key idea that I try to convey in the book, but it’s [00:35:00] another Bowen idea of overfunctioning and under functioning.

In a relationship that Seesaw and your showing your, your example, shows how to ask for help from someone without becoming dependent on them and always being in the one down position and letting them be in the one up position, which is how I describe it in the book. The one up and one down. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. Well that, I mean, it’s not a question I had to touch on, but that’s a really good one because one of the things I see from people is they’re so scared to be in that position that they then do the opposite, which mm-hmm.

And, and that’s what struck me when I’ve read the book for the first time. A lot of my responses were to pull away thinking like, that’s the healthy, mature thing. And then this book, that’s the bits I wanted to throw it across the room was like, oh, that’s just as, that’s just the other extreme end of. I don’t need anyone’s help.

I can do it myself because I don’t wanna be dependent. So how do people [00:36:00] understand that? It, it’s, we’re, we’re relational creatures and we function in community and we need collaboration. And some people are so scared to be dependent on someone that they don’t let anybody in. That’s the other end of that.

The over-functioning side. Yeah, 

Jenny: indeed. Right. And distance is. And especially as life is getting stressed and pressured, that pulling away from people. And I think it’s useful to be really intentional about how we distance, to acknowledge I need space, we all do, we all need some space, but I need space in order to reengage, well, not to escape a relationship and.

And the flip side of it is I need to engage with others but not allow them or invite them to take [00:37:00] over for me. 

Marie Vakakis: Hmm. Amazing. This all sounds like hard work. What’s the point? Like what’s the, what’s the benefit? Like if someone’s reading this, it’s not a quick fix, it’s a, it’s a way of understanding yourself.

How do we sell it? How do we. Sell the benefit of starting to do this work? Yeah. 

Jenny: Well, so many people read it and say what you’ve said, Marie, which is so many light bulbs go off, but it’s confronting. So are you prepared to be confronted, but in a helpful way that can grow your life satisfaction? And your strength of relationships, they do go hand in hand.

But I can’t sell a false problem that it’s easy. It’s not, and it is a lifelong effort, but it’s a rewarding effort and [00:38:00] it’s. What I have found in discovering this really fabulous theory of humans in relationships that Murray Bowen develop is it’s, there’s no quick fix. But you can see yourself in the example so readily.

Marie Vakakis: I don’t know what you’re talking about. 

Jenny: You’re just, people say, well, you’re writing this about me, because he was such an, as an astute observer and researcher that it’s, it’s wonderful to discover a theory and hopefully people get that in this book that has so many aha moments. Yeah. And then we choose what to do with those aha moments.

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, I think it’s a really good place to start for some people if they feel like talking to a therapist is a bit too vulnerable, that this is a neutral kind of. You [00:39:00] can absorb the content in a really neutral way. Whereas I find, even with my therapist sometimes she does a lot of this work. I’m like, whose side are you on?

And it’s like, but this is just, you can just read it. You can take what you want. You know, I’ve got all these post-it notes and highlighted bits on my copy. But it’s a really helpful to start to kind of put those in place in your case studies or the stories you share. And the personal ones really highlight some of those tools.

And I think it also shows as someone who, yeah. Admires your career from, as a learner who came across your work In my training. Is there something really beautiful about hearing your vulnerability through this book and realising, oh, no one’s got this perfectly sorted. It’s an ongoing process. Mm-hmm. And we can have empathy for, like you said, right at the start, where we’ve come from.

Jenny: Mm-hmm. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. Here, here. I agree with you. Amazing. So for listeners who, maybe we’ll wrap this [00:40:00] up in just a moment. Where can they, what can they do next? So if they want to grab a copy or put a link in the show notes, but what sort of a key piece of advice you would maybe emphasise for some for listeners?

Jenny: Well, I think. Doing the work to understand ourselves and our relationships and to read that to just study, to do therapy or coaching is a worthy investment. It really is worth the effort. It’s not about, this is not a theory about mental illness and diagnoses. This is a theory about all of us. And how we can all do a bit 

Marie Vakakis: better and the world surely needs that at the moment.

Amazing. Thanks so much Jenny, and I look forward to maybe having another chat about, I’ll find another way to 

Jenny: get you on. Well, thanks [00:41:00] Marie. I wish all of the listeners along with you and I, the capacity to become observers. Were a little bit calmer than usual at our holiday gatherings. 

Marie Vakakis: Thank you.

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