Posts

Showing posts from December, 2022

Systems thinking and economic indicators

I’ve been reading about Internal Family Systems (IFS) again recently, and so I’ve been freshly re-exposed to that systems thinking way of seeing. Viewing our behaviors and reactions as interdependent/interwoven, as opposed to as independent symptoms that can be individually targeted and “fixed.” For instance, the book  No Bad Parts  includes a case study that illustrates how one woman’s suicidal, manic, sleepy/dissociated, and abused parts are all occurring in relationship to one another. It can be easy or tempting to pathologize various parts, but targeting one part without an understanding of the reality it exists in—or that it perceives it exists in—can lead to an increased sense of threat and further spiraling, as the system bounces back even more intensely. In recent circling contexts, I’ve also been engaging in systems thinking in the form of the concept of leading and lagging economic indicators. “A leading indicator is an economic factor that tends to change before the economy