by Derek Suchard

A full house gathered in the Köln Room on Saturday morning at the EUU Fall Retreat youth hostel in Cologne, Germany to listen to and participate in a theme talk inextricably bound to the mood of our time: From Angst to Agency.

Presented by Retreat guest minister the Rev. Diane Rollert, the theme talk, or participatory theme exploration, focussed over the roughly 2.5 hours of the session on understanding and navigating anxiety with the aim of fostering personal and collective agency.

The journey covered a wide range: story-telling, family-systems therapy, also as applied to congregations and other organizations, and how societal anxiety could make people susceptible to messages that may not be in one’s own interest. At the beginning, Diane outlined a covenant for sensitive group sessions to set clear boundaries about what can be shared outside the session.

Covenant (Ground Rules) for sensitive group session

The speaker/facilitator establishes group norms for participation, including:

• Engaging with heart and mind, listening carefully.
• The right to pass on activities or discussions without explanation.
• Self-care, including leaving the room if overwhelmed.
• Respecting differences in opinions, especially on sensitive topics related to “angst to agency.”
• Relaxing and enjoying the time together.
• Acknowledging that confidentiality is challenging in a large group; individuals should explicitly request confidentiality if needed.
• Asking for help and making new connections.
• Welcoming mistakes and practicing “calling each other in” (constructive feedback) rather than “calling out,” using “ouch” as a signal for discomfort.

Say ‘what’?

Of course, it wouldn’t be a UU gathering without a need for clarification of terms. In this case, that was made more complicated by the multilingual nature of the participants.

In most Germanic languages, ‘angst’ translates in English primarily as ‘fear’. In English, however, that  meaning had been discarded at some point (probably following the Norman invasion) and only returned with the rise of Freudian psychology, where the definition used by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844 to describe a deep-seated feeling of unease, dread, or anxiety related to human freedom, responsibility, and the uncertainty of existence came into vogue..

That was how Diane had intended to apply it and, following some discussion, that became the working definition for the theme talk.

There was little discussion about the other important term of the day, ‘agency’, defined as “an action or intervention, especially in order to produce a particular effect.”

The sky is falling

The  session continued with a retelling of the famous “Sky is falling” story of Chicken Little, who misinterprets reality into disaster, bringing panic and despair to the others in her community. Anxiety – angst – takes hold in a familiar pattern: fueled by unverified information (like online headlines), angst can spread rapidly and make individuals vulnerable to manipulation.

Retreat participants created their own version of the Chicken Little story, which was presented on Sunday. Click here.

It should be noted here that anxiety is not all bad. Anxiety is acknowledged as an inevitable part of life and nature, and is essential for survival. It cannot be eliminated but can be better managed.

Angst and anxiety

In the 1950s, Dr. Murray Bowen developed Family Systems Theory, concentrating on understanding individual issues within the context of the family systems the individual grew up in. Bowen’s theory was later expanded to religious congregations and other human organizations, with the highlight on ‘all human systems being emotional systems.

He emphasized:

• Self-Differentiation: The process of an individual becoming their authentic self, distinct from family expectations. This can initially cause reactivity in the family system but can lead to overall health.

Non-Anxious Presence: Diane’s personal experience, learned from studying her own family system and its anxieties, was that maintaining a “non-anxious presence” in tense situations could reduce the reactivity of an entire group or family.

Failure of Nerve

In the 1990s, Rabbi Edwin Friedman made a prediction of how societal anxiety could lead to “rapid cycles of shifting allegiances,” where people who were feeling threatened by change, direct their anger towards leaders and become susceptible to manipulation by “autocrats” who exploit social anxiety. This prediction was linked to con-temporary challenges like eco-nomic, technological, and climate change.

The book calls for all individuals – not just leaders – to learn to manage their own anxiety to act from a place of “calm and thoughtfulness” rather than an “emotionally flooded state,” enabling them to become effective “agents of change.”

Strategies for managing anxiety include (but are not limited to)

• Identifying strengths and resources within one’s own ancestry/ family system.
• Engaging with family members (even on different topics) rather than cutting off communication, as a way to heal relationships.

During a group activity, the following interpretations of angst were developed by the participants:

The group also explored their personal levels of angst through a series of physical activities, placing themselves on a self-experienced spectrum of anxiety levels from “total chill” to “off the charts”.

When asked, to share their reasons for their choice, participants gave various reasons for being “chill” and for being “anxious”:

Shared reasons for being “chill”:

• Agency, action planning, positive future outlook, fear-lessness, coping strategies (compartmentalization, slowing down, one step at a time).

Shared reasons for being “anxious”:

• Anxiety as a natural state, feeling unseen, things exceeding personal power, loss of faith in systems, worrying about children’s future, generational impact, chronic pain, the inability to imagine positive outcomes.

Physical Spectrum Exercise (Past Anxiety – Family System):

• Participants repositioned themselves based on how much anxiety was expressed (or unexpressed) in their family growing up.

Shared experiences

• : Generational anxiety (e.g., post-WWII, Cold War), anxiety expressed through behaviors rather than words, parental coping mechanisms (anger, martyrdom), developing resilience, secure foundations despite external threats.

And this was just the session before the coffee break. For details on the second half, see the next issue of the Unifier