THIS IS A CHAOTIC TIME, and knowing how to handle chaos is a rare talent. But it’s one that can be honed by working with families facing insurmountable challenges in communities with few resources. Forty-five years of experience working with such families was the impetus for creating The Fractal Model of Relationships.
This model is a method for handling chaos in all human groups. Whether you’re interested in families that are in trouble, or worried about our nation and others, the Fractal Model of Relationships provides a pathway to solutions. By “pathway” we mean a process, not a single, stand-alone answer to the question of how to proceed.
In this essay we first describe chaotic families and how to work with them, because they’re smaller and less complicated. At the end we show how this process will work with groups as large as nations, since their dynamics are similar.
Families
While the details will vary, many families are facing overwhelming stress these days. It’s palpable. We’re all affected by external pressures we have no control over, like climate change and inflation. And in every family, each person’s personal problems affect the others. It can test the limits of a family’s cohesion and civil behavior, leading to breakdown. When breakdown escalates, the family experiences aggressive and sometimes violent behavior and can no longer function safely. Over time it becomes rigid. The same dynamic happens in larger groups as well, like workplaces and communities.
The Fractal Model of Relationships is a process for working with complicated, possibly chaotic, and ultimately violent behaviors in families and larger groups. These groups are human systems; in all human systems, everyone interacts together, and each person’s actions affect all the other individuals and the system as a whole. That’s how systems work. That’s important for everyone to understand. The Fractal Model of Relationships is effective in changing the way people interact in groups of all sizes when they have become significantly destabilized. This is not a model for dealing with minor family problems.
What does breakdown look like? In families, destructive, disturbing behavior and reactions to stress erupt in the form of domestic violence, child abuse, addictions, chronic physical and mental illness, and illegal activity, to name a few of the ways they express. It may not be as obvious in the workplace, but you see examples of it in anonymous threats or reputation sabotage; it can get more violent too, with physical fights and shootings.
On a larger scale, communities struggle with crimes attacking specific individuals, like murder or arson, as well as broad expressions of amorphous and uncontrollable rage directed toward random victims. The effects of community violence ripple out across the nation, fueling polarization, which in turn motivates people to commit more violence. Globally, nations use cyberattacks, take hostages, and inflict damage continually in various ways, leading at times to warfare. Destructive behavior resulting in chaos takes many forms in each setting from small to large. In all groups, both the symptoms of breakdown and the steps needed to heal the problems are similar.
How does a system get so out of kilter? Let’s look at what often happens in a family first.
Inside A Family Losing Its Balance
When internal and external forces wreak havoc in a family, it weakens and loses resilience and possibility: it is left only with certainty and probability. In such a chaotic environment, tensions are high; family members stay away from each other and no longer converse the way they used to—communication collapses into angry silence. They react to others without thinking first because they’re afraid to ask questions or even to understand anyone else. Everyone is in survival mode, which means that each person focuses on their own needs. Blaming and attacking each other is often their default reaction.
Anger, blame, and lack of trust restrict behavioral options in the family. When everyone is walking on eggshells, only a few behaviors remain safe. Rigidity sets in because the family fears that if anybody behaves differently or changes anything, the wheels will come off the wagon and everything will become unbalanced and more dangerous. Therefore, a therapist working with a family like this will design interventions to protect each member in the system and their sense of belonging, regardless of how ugly their behaviors may be, knowing that for each one, loss of connection is the worst thing that can happen. Restoring connections in the family is an important outcome of the process. It is very important that therapists not confuse the ugly behaviors with the person. When the structure shifts, the behaviors will become more fluid and possibilities will expand.
How does a family get here? It happens over generations. Unresolved traumatic events in the past generate restrictive patterns of behavior that are taught and retaught in the following generations; the constraints close the family down and it becomes rigid. If someone in the past abused a family member or stole money from the family, for example, they might repress that harmful information. Secrecy then becomes one of the restrictive patterns of behavior passed down to the next generations, fostering more rigidity. That lack of openness will also be expressed in other ways as well. Like a snowball rolling downhill, what happens over generations is that the original dilemma spreads out as it passes over into other areas, further taxing the family’s coping skills. With each generation, family members will feel more and more constrained. Any attempts to escape the system will make things worse.
It is the interactions among family members that maintain the structure or framework of rigidity, leaving no one free to make choices. A therapist’s job is not to accept the problematic behaviors, but to understand their function. That understanding will allow them to predict which changes in behavior will affect the family members and the integrity of their system. As this knowledge infuses the therapy process, it will enable the family to participate in the change process.
The Model
The Fractal Model of Relationships uses the tenets of family therapy, which is a systems approach, but reaches beyond that modality to be able to work with all-out chaos both within the family and as it relates to its external environment. The model’s goal is to understand and effectively work with the patterns and functions of the problematic behaviors over time.
Expanding the context helps people see new possibilities for solutions. The model suggests paying attention to patterns linking the family’s chaos to the outside world and to the structure that sustains the way the family functions. The behavioral patterns in the family will be replicated in an equally complex environment. In all complex/chaotic human systems, the patterns will not vary, regardless of the size of the human unit.
But why is this method called a “fractal model?” Many people are unfamiliar with fractals, which were discovered by scientists attempting to measure natural irregularities such as coastlines. In nature, patterns are expressed throughout different types of natural and living systems. If you understand the irregularities found in a coastline, you can understand irregularities in other natural systems—in humans and throughout the environment. Fractals exhibit a pattern of self-similarity that is repeated at different levels of scale: smallest to largest. In nature, a fern is a fractal. We see the same design in the smallest leaf of a fern as well as in the little branch it is on, and again in the entire frond. Fractal images can also be created on a computer in the form of designs in which different sizes of the same pattern are interconnected. Probably the most well-known of these images is called the Mandelbrot set.
This model for healing human chaos is a fractal because it addresses chaotic behavior in groups of all sizes: the same patterns of behavior occur in all these groups. This fractal quality makes solving such behavioral problems clearer and less overwhelming. If you can figure out how to help families facing these situations, you’re better able to understand how and why communities and nations still find it difficult to cooperate.
How To Use This Model
The most important and also the most difficult aspect of the approach is that a therapist working with a family must avoid any thoughts of blame. It seems natural for people to judge and blame others, and this tendency is bolstered by cultural practices and validated by judicial systems. But blame escalates polarities.
When beginning to work with a family, a therapist must refrain from arriving at a terminal degree of certainty about how and why it is in such difficulty, even though superficially the reasons for its problems may seem obvious. One of the simplest cases to illustrate this point is that of a mild-mannered Jamaican man who was referred for treatment in a clinic when bruises were discovered on his 10-year-old son. Most people know not to be a master of the obvious, as in telling a patient, “Don’t beat your child,” but they often find it difficult not to do it. In this case, it was important to figure out the function of the behavior. As it turned out, this man was himself battered growing up in Jamaica, and he had experienced even worse treatment since arriving in the U.S. He was worried about his son, and he was trying to teach him to be tough. The boy understood and was not angry. Without discovering the function of the man’s behavior, a therapist might have sent him to anger management training, which would have missed the most important point. The therapists’ job was to help him find a different way to teach his son how to protect himself.
When judgment is suspended, a therapist is free to approach each family member with authentic care and focused interest, which will lead to an unbiased understanding of the way family members interact with one another. Judgment and blame preclude understanding such that crucial information may never rise to the surface. When people feel respected and not in the crosshairs despite their ugly behavior, they’re more willing to be open. This model starts from the assumption that all behavior makes sense in the context in which it occurs, so it is vital to use an open process to determine what that context is.
Using the Fractal Model of Relationships with chaotic families, a therapist needs to be able to size up the situation quickly and accurately, using strong engagement skills. Family members may not trust each other, much less a stranger who is also an authority figure. They are afraid to engage. In a less challenged family, that sense of urgency is usually not as compelling.
It’s important to remember that a chaotic family (or larger group) always operates within the same structure or framework: rigidity. It structures all the patterns of behavior, and it prevents change. Change threatens the survival of the group, and in some sense, also the survival of its members, so it is to be avoided at all costs. This imperative to protect against change may be felt at both the conscious and unconscious levels, even though it is at odds with conscious longings for things to be different.
An incest family is a good example of this. No matter how much victims of incest (and others in the family who know about it) want it to end, protecting the family is more important. That may be why it is unusual for an incest family member to seek treatment unless there is a court order or another extenuating circumstance. A family is already in difficulty when incest occurs; but when it does, it establishes rigidity bolstered by secrecy and other restrictive behaviors over generations, forming the essential pattern of that family’s dynamics.
Inside an incest family, boundaries erode, so that a therapist may find such things as no doors on bedrooms or bathrooms. For each family member, the only privacy is in their mind. And yet, in spite of this forced openness to each other, members of these families are afraid to the point they rarely look each other in the eye: if they do that, they’re cornered. In contrast, boundaries with the outside world prevent access. Bushes may surround the house, preventing passersby from seeing in. Social engagements with outsiders happen rarely.
It’s hard to convey how liberated patients in these families feel when they finally understand how incest dynamics controlled their lives. Incest compels family members to follow certain patterns of behavior with each other and in their relationships with the outside world in order not to lose that most valued connection with their family. When they also understand the framework of rigidity, they can move out of the shame, guilt, and misery that patients report as the way they felt living in their incest families. But initially they become anxious and fearful over the multitude of opportunities and possibilities. The healing process takes time.
When a therapist is working with families locked into rigidity, a simple tool effectively helps patients understand their situation more profoundly. Frequently asking them “what is the function of those behaviors in your family” prods them to plumb the depths of their experiences. This question implies that there is a reason behind the behaviors. Again, all behavior makes sense in the context in which it occurs. If a therapist assumes that a particular behavior is ugly or disgusting, they are unlikely to find its deeper meaning or function.
Paying attention to context is essential in working with chaotic families, because context helps shape behavior, and it can add to the chaos and confusion. When the level of chaos is high in and around a family, context becomes all important, because it amplifies the pattern of chaos in the family.
In the past, members of families with internal chaos could move out into the community and find solace, but in the US this no longer works because for the first time in a very long time, the internal chaos is matched by the external environment, which means that rigidity is present both inside and out, limiting choices of behavior.
What Does Healing Look Like?
Healing is a process of freeing a family from their constraints. The therapist’s role is that of a skilled guide, first gaining trust, and then modeling throughout the process ongoing respect for each member. The therapist’s process leads the family members to see that the problematic pattern occurred over generations in their family, leaving the current generation blameless. That helps them understand that their behavioral restrictions were a survival mechanism, opening up new possibilities.
As the system begins to loosen, family members become more open to each other and able to acquire new problem-solving skills. They enjoy better physical and mental health and find they are less drawn to addictions and other destructive responses to the family’s desperation. This approach makes it possible for them to stop looking at their situation through a key hole and throw the door wide open to their future.
Larger Systems
As we mentioned, the Fractal Model of Relationships is an approach to use in understanding and dealing with any human system that is experiencing disruptive behaviors and has become rigidified. When it’s a family in this predicament, the model suggests a process a therapist can use. When it’s a larger group, the model can guide anyone to understand why the system isn’t operating as expected, and it can help leaders in workplaces and communities involve others in solving their problems by expanding their perceptions. When people stop blaming one another, it opens up the possibility of “us” rather than “them.” They realize they’re all in it together.
Rigidity structures all groups that are experiencing aggressive, ugly, and violent behaviors: in each group, it has a protective function. When a system is on the edge of implosion, any change, no matter how small, is feared because it might be the spark that would ignite it. Because rigidity affects all groups the same way, the people involved react with similar behaviors. The following symptoms of breakdown can happen anywhere: secrecy; fear; procrastination; suppression of complaints and ideas; attempts to control; plummeting morale; conflicting orders and information; and feelings of being invalidated, overworked, stressed out, and patronized. (chaosinstitute.org/resources/tools-breakdown chart). These symptoms lead to the polarization we’re experiencing worldwide. When people in rigid systems try to make change happen, it’s as if they’re in a car in the snow with their foot on the gas, only to hear the wheels spinning, going nowhere. That’s because rigidity protects so well against change.
Do larger systems degrade to this point in the same way a family does? Basically, yes. In a family, a tragic event occurring a few generations ago that was not processed or handled well sets in motion shutting-down behaviors that are amplified in succeeding generations. In a larger system, generations of poor problem-solving are a major factor, with attempted errant solutions getting more bizarre as time goes on. In workplaces, communities, and nations, when situations demand an immediate response, leaders have to propose solutions to problems even when they don’t know what will work. They’re on the spot. During the pandemic, leaders suggested all kinds of ways to kill the virus, most of which were not backed up in any meaningful way. In an emergency situation, leaders cannot just try different solutions because that may escalate the underlying problems.
In larger systems, you see some of the same behaviors emblematic of breakdown in a family along with increasingly rigid barriers between and among groups, which may take the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-immigration sentiments. Attempts by different groups to be validated often lead to polarization as people in other groups say they also matter, or they are even more important. Attempts made by members of marginalized groups to be granted a seat at the table can be exploited by others who seek to control by pitting groups against one another. This moves the system toward increasing rigidity. When people are pitted against each other, they enter into battle and move away from finding solutions. Solutions can be found only when all concerned parties contribute to the effort. At the point that the system becomes so rigid it can no longer handle the emotions it generates, it explodes into violence. Often the initial function of the violence in families and larger systems is to shut down all conflict. When that doesn’t work, the conflict escalates.
This dynamic is an example of the either/or thinking emblematic of the old industrial paradigm. Either/or thinking cannot solve problems in complex situations; instead it escalates the problem. The pathway to solution lies in a different direction: to solve the pain in your own group, notice the pain in other groups. And if your group bands together with the others, the pain can be eased for all.
When working in a system of any size, therapists or leaders will encounter angry people, completely closed to hearing anything that runs counter to their beliefs. In this situation, those leading the intervention must not head into the resistance. They need to go ahead with the process in an open and non-confrontational way, including everyone and gradually gaining trust. How do you engage very angry people? You validate their anger and dig deeper. You ask questions and try to get them to expand on their positions and explain their thinking. You try to find a way to include their perspective, in some form, in the big picture. People are often angry because they can’t make themselves heard and understood.
There is room for both conservative and progressive thinkers in solving any complex problem: when they’re both in the group, in dealing with each other they pull toward the center. Conservatives keep the progressives from becoming too extreme, and progressives drag the conservatives out of their resistance to change. Change has to consider all positions and be incremental or it will initiate backlash. Placing this push and pull process in the midst of an exploration of system dynamics moves it from its outworn grooves onto a new playing field in a way that helps people see things differently and leads to solutions that weren’t apparent before.
The National Level
We’ve looked at smaller systems, so now let’s shift to the national level: the US is one of the largest nations in the world. With a system so large and complex, it’s obvious that dwelling on details would derail our thinking, so we look for patterns. In 2025, many of the behaviors indicating breakdown are obvious. The country is extremely polarized; each half of the nation believes the other half is blind, crazy, or wildly misinformed. Blame is endemic: Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, immigrants, women, the MAGA crowd, and Democrats take turns being targeted. On some levels, this is a fragmented system that is no longer functioning. More and more people are beginning to feel unsafe. People are worried about the future both within the nation and as it operates on the world stage. Authoritarian tendencies, if they are to take hold, would impose lock-step rigidity on the country as a whole. Out of fear of the consequences, people would by-and-large follow the dictates of national leaders. The US is on a path that could lead it to become the mirror image of a rigid, chaotic family facing challenges it cannot resolve successfully. And similar tendencies are happening in many countries. Is there a way to heal this situation?
Before describing how the Fractal Model of Relationships can be used to heal a large and complex system, let’s take a moment to review its important aspects. It is designed to work with systems so challenged that people are acting out with aggression and violence. This model is not a top/down approach. Instead, those leading an intervention guide the people involved as they do the hard work of shifting their perceptions away from blame to a systemic view. The process starts small as therapists or leaders work with individuals or small groups. Later, the work can continue with larger working-groups. When enough people understand their situation using a systemic lens, problem-solving work can begin.
Essential to this approach are several requirements. The first is that the leaders respect everyone involved, regardless of their behavior. There is no room for blame or for judging people.
The second is that leaders must help the problem-solvers identify their basic values: you start with asking, “What do we as people in our community need from our institutions going forward?” These values will form the foundation for their work. Experience shows that when individuals from different classes, racial groups, religions, and geographical regions are asked what they care most about, they all mention the same things. They value their individual rights and freedoms; opportunities to grow; good jobs; safety for themselves and their families; and the ability to acquire what they need in order to survive and thrive: food, shelter, transportation, education, and connection to others. The emphasis here is on people first rather than on money. Knowing that humans share these elementary values indicates a pathway toward healing polarization, unifying the whole, and building what we need going forward.
The third is that all perspectives have value. Each view helps round out everyone’s understanding of the problem. Each is one piece of the puzzle. When they are brought together and shared along with the history and context of the situation, the puzzle can finally be assembled, revealing an image of the systemic forces that are contributing to the problem.
A fourth requirement is that leaders must help the problem-solvers understand how systems work. Without that understanding of the way the parts of a system are always interconnected, with each part being continually affected by the behavior of all the other parts and by the system’s context, the problem-solvers’ views may be fragmented and atomized, preventing them from being able to see systemic, structural forces.
How Do We Begin?
When therapists work with families in distress, they engage in deep conversations with each member individually, while at the same time gathering the whole family or clusters of members for discussion. In groups of all sizes, this model suggests working with individuals or small groups initially, even when trying to disseminate new perspectives across a large nation. People who want to heal a country would do well to work with small groups within communities, building a foundation for an approach that could be launched more broadly.
A Vision
Thinking of the US, imagine that a process built on the premises of the Fractal Model of Relationships is taking place in each rural community, village, town, and city across the nation. A group of trained and dedicated volunteers is working in each setting with community organizations. They are exploring their common history and context, leading to an appreciation of their shared values and to a vision for the future of their community. In fact, the Fractal Model of Relationships can be embedded into a community visioning process. “Put simply: community visioning is a formalized process that engages and empowers residents to have a voice in how they want their community to look in the future.” (Envisio.com). Because basic values are similar the world over, if this process were to play out in innumerable communities, each one would come up with the same pattern dressed up in different details.
This may sound like a pipe dream to some, but we will have to get here either before or after the violence, which is assured if we don’t begin to see our world differently and find solutions to our problems. We are providing you with a way to think about how to get to those solutions.
Communication is foundational to this process. Meetings are held throughout the country, and in each locale people are encouraged to join in by making the events fun and exciting with food and entertainment. When a community-building process begins by creating an awareness of our commonalities, it can cushion our differences. At the most basic level, this process is about forging new relationships and deepening those that already exist throughout the area.
This visioning process is educational, with a goal of helping as many people as possible see the country as a system nesting within other systems and see the forces creating and maintaining the problems that stymie us. In achieving its goal, a process guided by the Fractal Model of Relationships would create a web of human interconnections, hope for the future, and new and exciting responses to the enormous problems facing our nation and the world.
If you were part of this process, what vision for the future would emerge from your deepest values? How do you envision an exciting but stable and sustaining future for our country in this world?
Here We Are
We are at a crossroads right now because of all the forces pushing at us from various directions. We have a choice. We can initiate or join efforts like this, or we can sit back and witness the pressures around us increase as the world continues its descent into chaos. Several nations have already reached that point. Don’t think, “It can’t happen here.” We’ve entered a time when the old normal is gone forever. If we want to survive and actually thrive, it’s up to us to build a new normal on a strong foundation of our shared basic values. Will you commit? If so, contact us today.
