Episode 04 - Qualities of a System of Transformation: Part I - Individuation and Integration

Hello again!!

In Episode 04  we are going to discuss what a System Of Transformation looks like and how you can identify the positive qualities of a system that is set itself up to be a positive influence of transformation. 

• Quality 01 - The willingness to individuate in order to successfully integrate. 
• Defining the processes of individuation and integration
• Healthy outcomes of individuation and integration 
• Disruptions in the cycle of individuation and integration  

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Transcript

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Anu 0:00

It will be beneficial to turn the record button on. You know, just an important part of recording would be to make sure that you turn your record button on. Anyways. Welcome everyone to the Systems of Transformation podcast. Thank you for being here today. I really do appreciate you guys taking time out and investing into this podcast. It's been a while. I wasn't sure if I was even gonna get this episode out today or on schedule, but it's been a beautiful day today and I thought, why not? I have taken the day off for personal reasons and. I might as well sit and do this with you guys. Systems of transformation is a podcast that is dedicated to the dynamics of generational healing and global transformation through a trauma-informed lens and a Christian perspective. I am your host, Anu Hernandez, and I am ready to record episode four today. I hope you've all been doing well. We've had some adventurous weather changes in California these last two weeks, and so you know, I've kind of had to just go with the flow or go with the pour. I don't know. Anyways, it's just me being silly, me being silly, but that just means we're getting more comfortable with each other. Today we are going to start a series within the series called, The Qualities of a System of Transformation. And I have eight qualities that I wanna share with you guys. I am willing to take it as needed and pace it so that we really do get into some of the nitty gritty stuff of what a System Of Transformation actually looks like and how can you identify something as a positive quality of a system that is set itself up to be an influence of transformation or a positive influence of transformation

Welcome & Introductions

Anu 2:13

rather.

Quality 01 - The willingness to individuate in order to successfully integrate

Anu 2:14

Quality number one, and what I think is the most crucial and integral part of a system of transformation is that it is willing to allow itself to individuate from its origins in order to successfully integrate with its natural evolution. You might be wondering what I am talking about when I talk about individuation and integration. What are those things? What are those processes? I don't know. Very simply put, individuating is evolving and finding yourself as an individual. Asking questions like, who am I apart from a system? Who am I from my origins as an individual? What do I believe in? What am I going to continue to take forward with me from my origins? And then what are some of the things that I'm going to leave behind or let go of as I move forward in figuring out who I am basically. And integration is then saying, okay, I know who I am. I feel secure and safe in my own identity. So now I feel ready to build connection, to integrate and to blend some of my individuality with the larger system with other people and see who I am as a healthy individual in the larger system. All right. So one thing that we do need to understand is that throughout human development, through our entire life, we are going through these cycles of individuation and integration. And they are healthy and they contribute very positively to our overall development as people, as communities, and collective bodies.

Healthy cycles of individuation and integration

Anu 4:12

What I have come to understand is that healthy transformation occurs in these cycles of individuation and integration. It is very important to know who you are as a whole singular being, so that you can then take yourself into these greater places and systems and contribute in a positive way to what exists out there. I believe this goes back to my reference of true, healthy, positive transformation comes when you're able to align and love yourself and then take that alignment and love into the world. Both parts are important. It is very crucial for us to carry both individual and collective identities. What I'm not encouraging is that we spend our entire lives by ourselves without investing in relationships, without practicing and applying the things that we've learned for ourselves in the larger world. They're both needed for healthy existence in this world. But it is important that we are flowing through these cycles. In a healthy world, and please notice that I am saying healthy and not a perfect or ideal world. In a healthy world we should be able to peacefully move through the cycles of individuation and integration, and honor, not only our individual development, but collective development. Unfortunately, a lot of times I see blockages and obstacles when people enter certain cycles of individuation because their origin or the larger system is too afraid to let them figure out who they are as individuals. Because the fear is, if I let you go on this journey, you may never come back to me or you may become something that is different from who I am and what this system is used to in order to continue functioning the way it has. But I would beg to differ in my opinion, that if we allow individuals to submit themselves to these ongoing cycles of individuation and integration, you are able to create healthy, connected, and authentic systems, where every component, whether it's the individual or the group is celebrated and there's continuous success and health that we see in the system. The healthy evolution and transformation of a system rests very heavily on how we are allowing these processes to occur. And I'm not saying that we will do this perfectly, but I think it's also important to create that awareness within ourselves on both sides of even that spectrum of How can I contribute to the ongoing healthy evolution of this particular system that I find myself

Problems, challenges and outcomes

Anu 7:24

in?". Problems arise when one part of a system finds its identity in the other and as a result is unable to allow these cycles of individuation and integration to occur freely. There's then a block in the transformative cycle, which leads to dysfunctionality toxicity, and then the employment of systems of compensation. All our negative coping skills, whether they are expressive or suppressive, play heavily into maintaining what exists at that point. What happens is either the individual has to step out of the system and completely reject the system and become dissimilar to the system in order to differentiate and honor themselves as a person or a singular unit. And the fragmentation of that process causes a lot of pain and additional trauma to all the parties involved in that system. A lot of times individuation is seen as rebellion or even mislabeled as rebellion because maybe the system of origin sees the evolution of self as a process that is working against the system, even though over time, if allowed to, it really is working to the benefit of the greater system. Rebellion is not the rejection of the other, it is the finding of one's self. Or I could say it this way. Individuation is not the rejection of the other, it is the finding of one's self. It is the asking of "who am I?" in order to contribute to the, "who are we?". We see cycles of individuation in childhood, in adolescence, in adulthood. We see those processes occur on an individual level. We also see the cycles of individuation and integration occur in systems. So whether it is a family system or a faith system or a business system or cultural even, there are times and seasons where people will start to ask "who they are", and that is healthy, in order to understand their place in the "who are we?". The challenge of labeling individuation as rebellion is that a lot of people will give up that journey of asking those hard questions and going on that journey of finding themselves out of fear of disappointing or being rejected by the larger system, from their origin, from the place that they belong or want to belong to. And that's very scary because safety and belonging is one of the basic needs of human development and evolution. You cannot walk these journeys unless you have a sense of security, and a lot of times what I see is that people end up taking these journeys anyway to honor themselves, at the cost of losing crucial relationships and having to step out of systems where they once were, because the price of losing yourself to a larger cause is great compared to finding yourself and then contributing to the larger cause. Ultimately, we are meant to live lives of service to other people and to other causes and to the greater good of humanity. But we cannot do it from that place of deficits. We need to do it from that place of overflow and this is what I call the 'blessing of both'. We need both individuation and integration to be a healthy, transformative system. We need to know who we are as individuals and be secure in our individual purposes in this world so that we can take on the greater good of humanity. The success of any generation lies in their ability to work themselves out of being power players in their respective system and allow the next generation to thrive without an unhealthy dependency on them. I would like to emphasize the three qualities of a healthy system that allows itself to go through the processes of individuation and integration. The three qualities are, authentic, connected and healthy. Where these cycles are given permission to exist freely, you will see health, you will see connection, and you will see authenticity on an individual level and a collective level. And that's how you know this is a truly healthy, transformative system that is going through what it needs to go through and evolving according to the dynamics of origin and transformation. I think every system will always have some component of compensation, and that's just a byproduct of living in the world that we live in. I think that it is human and natural to even give those minor Systems of Compensation places to exist so that we work through them and we figure out how to maybe transform some of those compensations into transformation. And it's all about growing. It's all about learning the better option. It's all about figuring out, maybe I lived this way even a week ago, but today I wanna try something different and I wanna see that I can evolve as a human and I can, as I figure out who I am, practice those things for myself and then model them for other people and hopefully somebody else will see that change in me, will see the transformation in me and want to apply something for themselves. When there is a blockage or a disruption in this cyclical transformation of individuation and integration, we also see certain negative outcomes, and typically I see them as losses. So there is a loss of connection, which leads to sometimes a loss of relationship and disconnection. There is the presence of disease and a loss of health even the absence of wellbeing because there are more compensatory systems being employed than transformative practices. And then finally, there is a loss of authenticity. People cannot be who they truly are, and very sadly, a lot of times, in order to continue existing in those dysfunctional systems, people begin to lie to themselves. And so you see this deception of preservation set in, right, where people have to tell themselves certain things, or start believing in certain things that aren't true in order to survive having to live in this type of a system. So to summarize the negative outcomes, I have three. They are disconnection, disease, and deception. And if we're keeping it real, guys, if we look around us, if we look within us, sometimes I think we're able to see these parts of us that are disconnected that are not doing very well. And that also maybe we are kind of gaslighting ourselves to continue staying in certain places and spaces or relationships, just to keep them going and we are paying the price of that.

Let's talk examples

Anu 15:42

So let's talk examples. Let me start with the individual system. I am sure that you are aware that we go through different phases where we are asking the question of who am I? I, myself, and I shared a little bit about this in episode three, have found myself evolving, or I find myself evolved or changed just in the last three years of my life. I came to a point where I couldn't ignore that anymore. I couldn't tell myself I was all in all the same person that I was three years ago. I think for the last year, I've been fighting a lot of that change in me because I was afraid of how it would change the dynamics of how I move and function in this world and interact with other people. I was fighting myself, and as a result of fighting myself, I was fighting other people, and it's that aggressive expression of my discomfort that made me sit down and really take a look at what was going on internally. The dissonance and the discomfort of that became so great that I had to take a step back and say, "You know what, you need to realign with who you've become today, and it's going to be okay." I have really tried to invest that time to filter through a lot of these things and then consider how they impact my world and then the larger world at hand. And I encourage you to do the same because you are constantly evolving as a person. And you need that sense of connection with who you are just as you, removing everybody and everything else. When you are in your room and you are moving through your life as an individual human, who are you? What do you believe in? What do you not believe in anymore? How do you want to carry forward, yourself? So that you are true to who you are and you are authentic to your journey. We are moving through life, always gathering and interacting with these different experiences that life brings our way. And so it would be a disservice to yourself to not question and align with who you are becoming every day. Let's look at the family system. So in the family system, I think this is where it is super crucial that we are allowing people to walk through their individual processes of individuation and integration. Yes, a family is a collective body, but it is also a gathering of individuals and if each of those individuals are not fully functioning as themselves, if they are not committed and aligned with their greater purpose, there's going to be so much friction and dysfunctionality in families. The most successful parents work themselves out of the business of parenting. We never want our kids to not be part of the family, but my success or our success as caretakers and parents are really, how can I raise this next generation so that at the end of the day they are confident and thriving individuals who feel like they can go into this larger world and live and thrive and be everything that they are supposed to be without having an unhealthy dependency on me. Many parents I see really function out of their own fears and insecurities to stay in the business of being those primal caretakers in their children's lives and never truly let them go. So then not only did the children end up stuck in, in some part of this cycle, but so do the parents. And then you have a dysfunctional system that eventually turns toxic and somebody breaks away from the other person and there's more damage that is caused that then we have to grieve and repair. Are we allowing our children to truly leave and cleave to themselves even before they leave and cleave to another human? Are we secure in the fact that our identity is not the next generation, but we are called to be caretakers and play that role in such a way that it aligns with an already existing greater purpose. The danger becomes, like I mentioned earlier, when we start making each other our identities and when we don't have a greater purpose that is bigger and more general, that can be taken and applied in different areas. Let me give you an example of myself. I know my purpose in this world is to love, heal, and transform. So I can take that principle and apply it into every area of my life, every role that I participate or play in my daily being, and should one have to be released and let go of, or should a relationship end, it doesn't feel like the end of the world for me. Even if it might in the moment over time, I kind of understand that there's so many other places where I can apply and be true and genuine to my calling in this world, which is to love, well, to bring healing and help this world transform in some way. If I do end up having, whether it is my own children or adopting children or whatever it is for me to contribute to the next generation in terms of being a part of a family system, I know that that is just one component of my purpose and it is not my identity. So I can let my children be authentic and honest and connected to who they are, because that does not mean that they are disconnecting from me with the purpose of never reconnecting. I know that if I hold on to anyone or anything, and I'm just talking about kids here, but this applies to every type of relationship and dynamic. If I hold onto something tightly, the only way that the other thing or the other person can then be true to themselves is to sever their connection with me, which is because it is so overwhelming and I am trying to, in some way, have them tell me who I am. Which is a burden and a responsibility that nobody needs to carry unless you are a caretaker in some capacity than it is your duty and responsibility to impart identity. But listen carefully that I'm saying that it is your duty to impart identity and not to gather identity for yourself from that other thing or that person that you are supposed to raise and release into the greater world. And we can get into that in other episodes, but this is just a general framework of how I see that happening. I also wanna talk about faith systems because this is something that I have been personally impacted by and I had to walk through a lot of understanding of how even my faith goes through these cycles of individuation and integration. The evolution and transformation of my faith journey has also been a very, very large component of me walking in authenticity of who I am in this world. At some point in our faith journey, God, your higher power, whatever you believe in, is going to challenge you to step outside the parameters of your origin in order to establish your own personal intimacy and relationship. I can speak personally from my own life and then through my own Christian faith. When I read a lot of stories in the Bible, I started to recognize that when I read the story of Moses, God took him out into the wilderness for a season by himself with just God to grow in the depth of their relationship, for Moses to understand who he was and to understand his purpose and what God was asking him to do with his life. And the intention was never that he was going to be in that wilderness all by himself for the rest of his life. But if he hadn't done that, he would've been ill equipped to go back into his purpose and calling, into bringing freedom to the captives. Even Jesus before he was launched into his mission, his ultimate mission, was taken out into the desert to spend time by himself with the Lord. And it was through that period of him wrestling with his faith and his relationship with God, and knowing that his purpose and his mission was coming to fulfillment, found himself so that he could take himself back into the very thing that he was called to do. I think we have mislabeled people taking this journey of individuation as them leaving the faith or leaving organized religion, stepping out of the church and disconnecting from their faith journeys. I have come to realize that allowing people to go on that journey, if it is done in a mature way and there's a healthy way to do it cuz I did it myself. There came a point in my faith journey where the Lord clearly told me, You are mixing up my voice with the voice of people in this organized religious system, and I'm not okay with that. I need you to step out of this for a season so that we can reestablish for you clearly what my voice sounds like, because don't make the mistake of thinking that the voice of people is always my voice. Even if they have the best intentions, the most wonderful educations and a lifetime of experience." I was very firmly chided by God to consider that what He might be telling me might be different from what the community at large was saying or believing. And the sad part is a lot of that stepping out and honoring my relationship with God came at the price of losing my community. Because they weren't ready or couldn't even fathom the concept of, in order to lean into her relationship more with God, maybe she does need to step outside the group to take some time." There was a lot of backlash and a lot of pain as a byproduct of that misunderstanding. But I came to a point where I knew that if I did not honor where God wanted to take me in our relationship, I was going to lose Him, and that was not an option for me. I cannot live without having a relationship with Him. And so I did. I made the very, very difficult choice to step outside the larger body and I want to say that what my heart craved was for someone to bless my individuation process. Knowing very well that my heart was not to leave forever, but I had to honor this part of my journey in order to return as a healthier, more transformed Christian. I have even began to wonder, what if we blessed people on these individual journeys instead of severing relationship with them?, or assuming that they were walking away and started to look at it as they were walking into the arms of something better. They were walking into God. And that I am absolutely not the prime voice that they should be listening to. They need to be listening to the voice of God, the voice of their higher power, the voice of their intuition, above my opinion of what it should look like for them. And I do carry the weight of sadness at times when I think about how many people we might have pushed away from a deeper relationship with God and community because we refused to bless their individual journeys with the assurance of knowing that they may come back someday and all they're asking for is some time and space to figure themselves out. I have made it my mission in life that when I see somebody asking those questions, because individuation in itself, not an easy process. And when you feel like you have to go against the grain, especially against people that mean so much to you, the temptation to compromise is so high, but the long-term effects that it is going to have are so detrimental that I will do whatever I need to do to encourage that person to honor what they're sensing in terms of taking that time for themselves and individuating so that they can come back as healthier, better people. For me, myself, when I have stepped out of systems, of larger systems, I would say I always try to set up a smaller circle of mentors and support systems so that I am not walking in isolation. And a lot of times I think that's the fear too. It's, it's the fear of, oh this person's isolating themselves, or, oh, this person is just going to sink into some kind of hellish darkness by themselves". But maybe what they need at that time is a smaller, more intimate circle. I know there was a period of time in my life when I only had three people that I allowed into that process with me, a couple of friends and a mentor who understood what was going on in my life and where God was taking me and why I needed to do the things that I needed to do. I hope that, this episode brings some enlightenment to some of the questions and thoughts some of you are having. I hope that you feel encouraged to honor your own process of individuation, knowing that you don't have to carry guilt and shame for wanting to find out who you are so that you can serve the greater good.

Connect with me and spread the we :)

Anu 31:19

I want to thank all of you for downloading, listening and sharing this, this podcast with other people. I am seeing the growth and it makes me so happy and so thankful. If you enjoy listening to the Systems of Transformation podcast, I request that you leave a review or a rating because that really helps me also receive feedback on an ongoing basis. You guys have really encouraged me in our personal conversations, and so please do put that message out there as well on the different platforms to share your perspective and your experience of the podcast. Connect with me. You know, I'm always up for a conversation or always up for a text or an email. The more we begin having these dialogues, the more this is going to become the norm of the world that we live in. It is in a way, a petition for all of us to live authentically so that we can bring transformation in our time on this earth. It has been my deepest pleasure to have spent this time with all of you this week, and. I hope you stay safe out there with all the different changes in weather, no matter where you are in this country or this world. Stay healthy. Honor yourselves. Honor those around you. Walk this journey. It is so worth it. It is so worth it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful two weeks and until we meet again remember to heal generational and transform global. Bye everyone.