Characteristics of Chronically Anxious Families

Here is a description of five interlocking characteristics of chronically anxious individual families and their regressive parallels in the greater American family of today. Each is regressive because it subverts a major principle of the way life on this planet has survived and evolved, as shown below:

CHARACTERISTICS - of anxious individual and families
1. Reactivity
2. Herding
3. Blame Displacement
4. A Quick-Fix Mentality
5. Failure of Nerve in Leadership

EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS SUBVERTED
1. Reactivity subverts our self-regulation of instinctual drives
2. Herding subverts our adaptation toward strength
3. Blame displacement subverts a growth-producing response to challenge
4. A quick-fix-mentality subverts allowing time form processes to mature
5. Failure of nerve in leadership subverts all of the above.

"All five characteristics contribute to one another, although the fifth, lack of leadership, may be the link among them all. For the first four all share two factors in common that always tend to compromise effective leadership: denial of emotional process and a devaluing of the individuality that is necessary for summoning 'nerve'."

A Failure of Nerve - Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin H. Friedman