Our Concepts

Relational systems thinking is a way of understanding reality that sees living beings not as isolated individuals, but as participants in dynamic relational fields, where behavior, consciousness, and outcomes emerge from patterns of interaction rather than from single causes.

In this view, relationships are primary, and individuals, thoughts, emotions, and systems are expressions of those relationships over time.

A plain-language description

Most of us are taught to see the world through object-based thinking:

• Separate people

• Separate problems

• Separate causes and effects

Relational systems thinking starts somewhere different.

It begins with the observation that nothing alive exists or functions alone.

Humans, families, organizations, cultures, ecosystems, and even minds themselves operate as interdependent systems — webs of mutual influence where:

• Actions change conditions

• Conditions shape perception

• Perception shapes action

And this cycle continues, creating momentum and trajectory.

Rather than asking “Who caused this?”, relational systems thinking asks:

“What pattern is this part of?”

Core principles (in everyday terms)

1. Relationship comes before behavior: What people do makes sense when you understand the relational field they’re embedded in — levels of safety, trust, power, and repair.

2. Regulation shapes perception: How safe or threatened a system feels determines what it can see, think, and tolerate. Meaning follows regulation, not the other way around.

3. Cause and effect are recursive: Outcomes loop back to become new conditions. Relational systems don’t just react — they learn themselves into certain patterns.

4. Change happens through conditions, not force: You can’t command a relational system into health. You change the conditions, and the system reorganizes itself — or doesn’t.

5. History matters: Relational systems carry memory. Repetition doesn’t return to the same place; it moves a spiral forward or backward.

6. No single node controls the whole: Individuals matter, but no one person determines the field alone. Responsibility is shared, distributed, and relational.

How this differs from the dominant perspective

Much of modern Western culture (and many of the systems influenced by it) operates within a dominant way of thinking — the prevailing framework most of us are taught, often implicitly, for understanding the world.

In this framework, individuals are the primary units of reality. Problems are traced to isolated causes. Change is pursued through control or correction. The mind sits above the body, and responsibility is located in separate actors rather than shared conditions.

Relational systems thinking begins from a different place.

It understands relationships as foundational, and individuals as expressions of those relationships over time. Rather than asking who caused a problem, it asks what pattern the problem is part of. It recognizes that change emerges through conditions — safety, trust, feedback, and repair — not force.

Where dominant thinking places mind over body, relational systems thinking sees regulation as prior to cognition: how safe a relational system feels shapes what it can perceive and integrate. And where dominant thinking fixes parts, relational systems thinking tends the relational field itself.

At its core, relational systems thinking rests on a different ontological assumption: that reality is not made of separate things acting on one another, but of living systems continuously arising through relationship.

Why this Is hard (and why It matters)

Relational systems thinking is challenging because it:

• Disrupts moral simplifications

• Undermines control-based solutions

• Requires patience and participation

• Asks us to feel what we’re part of, not just think about it

But it matters because living systems don’t heal any other way.

You can’t think your way out of a relational injury.

You can’t dominate a system into coherence.

And you can’t solve a crisis that emerges between us by acting alone.