The Social Nervous System (or SoNS, pronounced ‘sons’) is a collection of relational styles which we automatically adopt when we sense threat or danger. These behaviours very effectively pass tension on to the people around us, creating the same physiological experience of fear and danger in them as in ourselves.
The overarching purpose of SoNS was to create a single minded survival focus for the tribe. It was originally designed for occasional use: a team fire-alarm system enabling us to collectively feel the fear and escape danger together. But today's hectic lifestyle with its vast array of stressors makes our SoNS a hindrance. Our pressures are no longer life or death threats, but because the social nervous system is automatic and rudimentary, it doesn't distinguish between 999 emergency danger and the annoyance of Sainsbury’s delivering the wrong shop.
Once we have crossed the stress threshold and unleashed our behavioural reactions to stress, then we become highly contagious. The people who come into contact with us do not need to know what has made us stressed, they intuitively feel the tension through our SoNS actions, this unleashes adrenaline within them and they start feeling stressed too.
Now imagine an open plan office at work. 50 people in a room and 3 of them walk in stressed. Each of them have a favourite SoNS method of spreading the stress. One distances by avoiding eye contact with their boss; another utilises conflict by snapping at a junior; a third switches on their over-functioning by micromanaging a colleague. The boss, junior and colleague all catch the tension and their optimistic mornings have soured. If the tension they catch pushes them over their stress threshold they will also start to adopt SoNS behaviours. You can see how quickly a chain reaction of stress spreads across the room. It will not be a good day in the office.
We tend to emphasise the explicit problems we face as the causes of our stress. But the reality is that it is this relational stress, the tension that we pass between us, which actually causes most of the chronic pressure and anxiety in our lives.
The Social Nervous System is our Stress-Dance
We can think of our SoNS behaviours as our personal stress-dance moves.
When our stress or anxiety increases to a point where we can no longer regulate it internally, the music goes on and without thinking we automatically start to move to the beat.
“They communicate to one another through a dance. It took me years to understand them, and once I did, the world around me never looked or sounded the same again”
Christy Lefteri, The beekeeper of Aleppo.
The size of our dance moves varies with our level of stress. Sometimes our SoNS behaviours are obvious, clearly visible to everyone, like exuberant breakdancing which no one can ignore. At other times our behaviours are micro-cues, slight adjustments in our facial muscles or body language and only detectable by our closest family and friends, like my friend Clare, whose trademark dance move is the shoulder shrug.
While our experience of stress and tension is deeply personal, the way we express it to others via SoNS behaviour is actually highly patterned. There is a limited repertoire of stress-dance moves which all humans adopt under pressure. And while we each have particular favourite moves, we will use all the interactional styles at different times and with different people.
Dr Kissell has termed the automatic and instinctive relational behaviours we adopt under pressure our social nervous system because of how this social method of tackling threat aligns with our sympathetic nervous system, our individual method of addressing danger. Click here to read more about the link between our individual and our social brains .
The original observation and articulation of these clusters of behaviours came from psychiatrist Murray Bowen. From the late 1940s through to his death in 1990, Bowen and his research team observed and analysed the interactions of hundreds of families and other relationship systems. His insights, articulated through Bowen Systems theory unpack how these relationship dynamics have a fundamental impact on our well-being and mental health.
We try to highlight the infrequent occasion where we adjust Bowen’s original terms within Dr Kissell’s fresh unpacking of Bowen systems theory.
There are 10 categories of SoNS behaviours which we adopt under stress, tension or pressure. The unconscious goal of each of these behaviours is to pass our stress on to someone else and give ourselves a brief respite (think of the brief moment of satisfaction you get when you dump all blame and fault onto your partner - before the guilt kicks in later…).
You will recognise your favourites, and the preferred styles of your friends and family, but other behaviours might be less familiar, or even surprise you.
Blame & Conflict
Blame is the arbitrary identification of one individual or event as the cause of undesirable events. Directing blame, and the resultant conflictual fighting, arguing, disagreeing may be mild and brief or may become symptomatic in the extremes of abuse or violence.
Distancing & Cut Off
Distancing is the withdrawal and reduction of contact. Seeing or speaking to someone less, reduced eye contact or being more distracted. It can also be emotional distancing, continuing to spend time together, but becoming superficial, no longer sharing your thinking or feelings about important subjects or ignoring the elephant in the room.
Cut off is the extremity of distancing, where all forms of contact are eliminated. This includes divorce, quitting your job or stopping all contact with a family member.
Pursuit
Pursuit is increased intensity of contact. It might be expressed through a bombardment of texts or phone calls, requesting unnecessarily frequent meetings at work or generally asking for more and more of your time, attention or affection.
Over-Functioning
Over-functioning is where we take over to fix a situation to mange, help or change another. Doing for others what they are able to do for themselves. Micromanaging someone’s work, giving advice before it is requested, attempting to resolve disputes that do not directly involve you or taking over & problem solving issues without being asked. Helicopter mums are a good example of compulsive over-functioning.
Under-functioning
Under-functioning is where we do not take appropriate responsibility. We avoid making decisions, seeking advice rather than thinking issues through for ourself. Habitually letting others have their way or believing others are responsible for resolving your feelings. Over time under-functioning can develop into an inability to maintain a ‘normal’ level of functioning resulting in mental health and sometimes also physical health problems.
Triangling & Interlocking triangles
In triangling a third person is introduced into a tense situation between two other people. You complain about your boss to your co-worker; your Mum steps in to resolve an argument between you and your Dad; you ask your sister to find out the plans for the weekend at your Dad’s house or one partner in an unhappy marriage has an affair. Much gossip is triangling
At high levels of stress and tension a series of interlocking triangles develops as more and more people are pulled into the situation.
Projection
Projection is an intense and out of proportion focusing on one individual. Projection might be negative e.g. scapegoating one person at work; positive, where a partner is idealised as the perfect individual, or anxious, where a parent is becomes highly focused on one child, fearful that something is wrong with them, whether physical health, mental health, academic work or friendships.
Active Fusion*
Fusion is when everyone thinks or acts the same. While the group might appear to be in agreement, such alignment is superficial because it has been manufactured by pressure, not chosen thoughtfully.
Active Fusion are those behaviours that seek create agreement by making other people agree with your view. You might be dogmatic, pushy, dictatorial, coercive or intimidating. Agreement can also be achieved through seduction, and if alignment is not achieved seductively, the active fuser frequently turns and becomes spiteful and aggressive.
Passive Fusion*
Passive fusion is where fusion is created because you automatically agree with someone else and go along with their point of view. You may be unsure or out of touch with your own opinion, you accommodate to other’ people’s wishes or desires, become passive or submissive and compromise, putting up with situations to keep things pleasant.
*Active and Passive are terms added to Bowen’s concept of Fusion by Dr Kissell
It is important to start to spot when we are adopting SoNS behaviours and begin to interrupt the automatic action because the contagious nature of these activities. In the short term they calm our own internal tension (because we have passed our stress on to someone else!) but in the long term they make tricky situations worse. So much so that the secondary relational stress they create can become become the main source of stress and tension in our lives.
But how can we tell when being focused in our work is actually anxiety driven distancing, or when solving a problem is actually stressed over-functioning? We can tell by noticing how we feel internally. We can notice it by the Drive.
Every SoNS behaviour is driven by adrenaline. Our experience of stress has resulted in our sympathetic nervous system pumping this fight or flight hormone through our body. Adrenaline is all about urgent action (it is our survival hormone after all), and you can spot a SoNS behaviour because you HAVE to do it. There is an internal urgency and pressure that builds, you become single-minded in the desire to jump in and take over where someone is struggling with a problem, or you have an overwhelming urge to get out of the room which you cannot resist.
You can also notice SoNS behaviours by the effect they have. When we adopt a reactive SoNS behaviour, then the people around us react to it. A co-created dance forms as we see their pursuit to our distancing or their under-functioning to our under-functioning. We often notice (and complain) about others ‘stress’ a long time before we realise that our behaviours were actually the cause.
To understand more about the nature of co-creation and how our SoNS create pairing and choreographed dances across our family and our work colleagues, read more blogs by Dr Kathryn Kissell
