HSDP Life Journey Reflections & Celebration of Life
By Dr. Janice Ryan, OT, HSDP
This HSD story is a celebration of life over the course of my occupational therapy (OT) career as a Human Systems Dynamics Professional (HSDP). Although I had been an OT for two decades before meeting Glenda and being exposed to HSD, I remember that time as a turning point in my life journey… a turning point that changed everything. This is the story of a professional and personal butterfly effect.
I met Glenda in 2007 while I was still working on my doctorate. Ivy Lazzarini was an HSD Associate, and she was my OT faculty mentor. I was presenting my first professional poster at the 17th Annual International Conference of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences (SCTPLS).
We were in Orange, California at Chapman University and I was really nervous. I remember we met for lunch before the conference. I had already read and loved Glenda’s book Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools so I felt like I was speaking with a celebrity. She made me comfortable right away and now I know that is one of Glenda’s greatest gifts.
For those who haven’t read Glenda’s 1997 book, I can’t praise it enough. In those days, she only gave an example or two at the end of each chapter and stories were provided in a brief epilogue. The epilogue was titled, “Chaos at Work”. Chapters 1 through 7 were named after her seven simple tools and came directly from complexity and chaos science.
The tools Glenda wrote about were just as life-changing for me as the HSD Models and Methods that she currently uses to teach others how to take her approach to life and work. I will be sure to give examples of these tools in my story. They were butterfly effects, boundaries, transforming feedback loops, fractals, attractors, self-organization, and coupling.
I still look back at the time when I met Glenda as a butterfly effect in my own life journey because meeting her and learning about HSD, altered everything that has happened in my life from that point forward. I remember Ivy was at that conference talking about her use of neurofeedback in OT and Glenda tried her approach to relieve pain from a minor injury. The two of them were teaching and learning from each other. I now realize that this was my time to begin shifting from old to new paradigm thinking.
That SCTPLS Conference was a rich experience for me because I was putting together two of my favorite areas of interest, neuroscience and complexity, with this brand-new area of interest called HSD. Glenda taught me that complex adaptive systems change through influence rather than control. She also taught me that any two parts of a complex adaptive system that have exchanges are coupled together. This must have been at least one of the roots of her Containers, Differences, Exchanges or CDE Model.
I knew even then that a complexity or chaos scientist would call my process of combining areas of interest to create a new interest container, a coupling. I went to train with Glenda and Royce in Circle Pines the following year and began using HSD to expand upon my original interest-coupling of neuroscience and complexity. This is how HSD gave me a practical, new paradigm way to understand and influence human systems as a memory care OT. This was my first experience with dynamical change.
I have stayed involved in both complexity communities ever since that new paradigm beginning. SCTPLS publishes a research journal, and I had an article published in it in 2017. In that article, I used the HSD Landscape Diagram to explain how I reduce stress in people with dementia by blending the relaxation response and reward-chemistry to support more adaptive actions. This was modeled as occurring in the transformative center of the HSD Landscape Diagram.
Glenda wrote in her book, “Human beings should know what they can and cannot control. To try to control the unknowable is a tragic flaw.” I could see the wisdom of this quote so clearly while treating people with dementia. Dynamical change is never controllable or totally predictable and such is the case when a therapist is attempting to shift the consciousness state of a person with advanced dementia.
In that study, three subsystems of the larger sensory-emotional-social engagement system were analyzed by theme and then coded for quantitative analysis. I used the HSD Magic 21 in my research article to explain how dynamical change appears through the interconnected dynamics of containers, differences, and exchanges in the part, the whole, and the greater whole of the same human system. Prior to that, like most every old paradigm OT, I had approached therapeutic change as if I were the director of a change process. By using the HSD Magic 21, I hoped to show how change actually occurs in natural complex adaptive systems such as human consciousness and that it must appear from within our clients.
Boundary conditions in a person’s brain can make memory reactivation so unpredictable for people with dementia that sensory and emotional attractors of their attention are an essential treatment tool. For this job, I started out with what is now called personal memory environments and then graduated to also using multi-sensory environments. Both can be used to engage people who are unable to adapt and learn from their current life environments.
People with dementia and with other neurological challenges can detach from their current reality. My work supports the theory that this happens partly because they cannot find their way to the transformative center of their personal reality landscape. Sometimes, they may be experiencing overwhelming anxiety and other times feeling under-arousal or boredom.
In my 2017 research article, I included quantitative data that proved that I was able to create new transforming feedback loops for a person with advanced dementia by treating them in a personal memory and multi-sensory environment. Glenda had taught me that each part of a complex adaptive system is independent in ways, but is influenced by other parts through a series of transforming feedback loops. I knew that, as a result of interdependent parts of the whole occupational engagement system of my clients with dementia, sensory, emotional, and social attractors were reshaping their behavioral responses.
As Glenda taught me years before in her book, the shape of a whole system develops as attractors create exchanges across differences. She taught me that, to understand and describe a system’s behavior, I must see the behaviors of both the individual and the patterned whole. This must have been a root of her HSD Simple Rule to “Zoom in and zoom out”. That is what I did over and over while analyzing video data from my memory care treatment sessions.
During my research study process, I spent hours reviewing videos of treatment sessions, and I was continually zooming in and zooming out. I needed to zoom in and out because I was always looking for engagement of root memories which complexity and chaos scientists call fractals. I was always in search of root memories during treatment because these are the ones that had given each person joy over their entire lifespan and sometimes even since early childhood.
Although sometimes root memories are less traditional, for this story, I will give two common examples noted in people with dementia. My examples will all be about root memories that I activated during treatment of people with advanced dementia. For example, root sensory memories can be the feeling of a person holding a familiar object in their hands.
For a man who had built houses as a career, this sensory memory was the feeling of a familiar tool or a building supply like covered wiring in his hands. That man may have even enjoyed construction toys as a child and so that root memory had begun early in life as a sensory-emotional memory coupling that gave him joy. As fractals do, those early life memories were replicated and increased in complexity over his lifespan.
A sensory childhood memory had been coupled with an increasing sense of pride in his accomplishments during adult years as a builder. Data supported that this sense of pride was reactivated during treatment with a sensory-emotional memory coupling that may have been developed during his childhood. His more engaged consciousness state and the sensory memory of his familiar work tools had reengaged him with his current life environment.
For a woman who had treasured memories of holding her babies as a young mother, this sensory memory might be the feeling of a warm, soft baby blanket or stuffed toy scented with baby powder. That woman may have enjoyed playing with dolls during childhood and so that root memory had begun early in life as a sensory-emotional memory coupling that gave her joy. As fractals do, those early life memories were replicated and increased in complexity over her lifespan.
A sensory childhood memory had been coupled with an expanding sense of joy during her adult years as a young mother. Data supported that the joy of family relationship was reactivated during treatment with a sensory-emotional memory coupling that may have been developed during her childhood. Her more engaged consciousness state and the sensory memory of holding her babies as a young mother had reengaged her with her current life environment.
Research data showed that, by using familiar sensory and emotional attractors, even people who have become disengaged from their current environment due to advanced dementia can become more consciously aware. This was shown through a nonlinear research tool called fractal analysis. Complexity and chaos science, explains how sensory-emotional memory couplings can be reactivated. Every time our spirits are lifted by a favorite song, it happens through this type of dynamical process.
Today, as an HSDP, I do less direct treatment and more healthcare program development or volunteer work. I am still just as enthusiastic about HSD today as I was when I met Glenda. I was excited to tell her recently that I had a breakthrough experience just this week. It looked quite different from what I had researched years before, but it was a similar dynamical process.
A captain with our local fire department is leading a community collaboration I am involved with for improving services for aging and disabled people in our county. We have struggled so long and hard with getting everyone connected enough to promote positive change. I’ve talked about HSD but often felt like I was speaking a foreign language. Old ways of doing things seemed so engrained and the right words always escaped me.
This week we were talking about ways for everyone to stay more connected, and to collaborate across organization boundaries. Just as Glenda taught me years ago, I know that boundaries and the conditions that surround them can be either constructive or destructive. Rather than the boundary being lost memories in need of reactivation, this time, the boundaries of interest were communication silos.
A colleague suggested we use ChatMe or a similar app to stay more connected during this volunteer community collaboration. I gave an HSD explanation for why I thought that might be a good idea. I was really talking about the same dynamical system I had addressed in client treatment years before but, the CDE Model context he related to was communication silos. Reflection of the sensory-emotional memory coupling process makes sense of what happened next.
The communication silos the fire department chief had become sensitive to are likely to have developed out of his real-life experience as a first responder. These may be the ones that happen naturally in the lives of teams of people putting out fires. When communications are blocked or delayed, destructive boundary conditions or silos are likely to lead to traumatic outcomes. Lost team members and missed opportunities to save lives or people’s homes are common traumatic memories in first responders.
The communication silos this lifelong first responder is sensitive to are also typically developed between different organizations though with less obvious and traumatic outcomes. Communication silos slow or block progress during collaborative projects naturally and create the workplace chaos that Glenda wrote about in her 1997 book. This is why she wrote in her epilogue about the importance of taking actions during team projects that minimize disruptive communication boundary conditions and maximize constructive ones.
Next, our community project leader said, “I just hate silos. Let’s give this a try.” I was like, “Oh my gosh!” I've never heard anyone in my part of the world openly acknowledge they were dealing with silos much less admit they hate them! Reflectively, it makes sense to me that this lifelong first responder was the one creating this dynamical system breakthrough for our volunteer community.
I didn’t need to use the words transforming feedback loops to describe the now open channels of communication we can develop by using ChatMe to stay more connected. Rather than couplings, feedback loops, and attractors being processes for planning treatment and completing research, they describe the patterns we can see, understand, and influence from now on in our community collaboration. It was a whole team butterfly effect and for me it was cause for a celebration!
Rather than the accumulated memories I helped my clients reactivate during treatment, the fire department chief and leader of our collaborative project began with an organizational principle that he naturally believed in. That is because it was based on his life experience. That principle was the reduction of destructive boundary effects, otherwise known as silo-busting.
These surprises are what keep me falling in love with HSD and being engaged in dynamical change processes. Just as I had learned from Glenda so many years before, dynamical change is never controllable or totally predictable. After what felt like a very long wait, only now is it time for this old to new paradigm consciousness shift, ready to occur in my local HSD Healthcare Community.
Now, I hope it is clear how useful HSD has been in my past as a memory care therapist and continues to be during my current work as a healthcare program developer and community project volunteer. My story also illustrates that the day I met Glenda and learned about HSD was a personal life journey butterfly effect. Finally, I hope that by sharing these reflections, I’ve explained why and how I still experience so much joy in my work and continue to celebrate life as an HSDP.
Dr. Janice Ryan is a Doctor of Occupational Therapy and the owner of a sensory-based program design company that develops innovative service solutions for dually diagnosed persons with intellectual disabilities and mental illness.
Janice lives and works in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States.