Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive

by Daniel J. Siegel

The example of a choir can help illustrate the sense of complexity. If all the singers sing exactly the same notes in the same way, this would be rigidity—a boring, but loud, output of sounds. If each member of the choir sings totally independently of one another, this would be cacophony and chaos. Complexity, the path between these two extremes, is the same as harmony. Harmony emerges when differentiation and linkage unfold over time. That’s our definition of integration. And so complex systems self-organize in an optimal way by linking differentiated elements to each other. The subjective feeling at the extremes away from this integration is boredom on the one hand and anxiety on the other. The rich, vitalizing, energized sense of complexity, of integration, has a vibrant quality to it that emerges when systems are able to move in their natural, self-organizational flow toward complexity, toward harmony.