3 stages of slipping into "symfunction capture"

Let’s take a microscopic look at how you can slip from being totally well to suddenly suffering the pain of some overwhelming ailment. Not so much in physical or exclusively biological terms, but more in terms of your emotional wellbeing. Let’s see how “symfunction capture” can help explain that easily overlooked zone between wellness and sickness.

Which do you think is more likely?

It’s common to be totally well one moment and then totally sick the next.

OR

There is a little talked about transitional zone between wellness and sickness.

Symfunction refers to your less-than-optimal level of functioning. Symfunction refers to that zone you experience between being totally well and being totally sick. Symfunction refers to that level of operating in life that sits between peakfunctionality and dysfunctionality.

If you ever reach peakfunction, your every need enjoys full satisfaction. You can do amazing things while peakfunctional. But if any need lingers unresolved, you slip from peakfunction to that zone where you must rely on others to still function adequately—symfunction.

Anankelogy recognizes how you can enjoy peakfunctionality one moment and then slip into symfunctionality. Anankelogy further recognizes how this slippage serves as a common gateway into painful dysfunction—of prioritizing relieving the pain of your unmet needs.

Anankelogy refers to this phenomenon as “symfunctional capture”. Anankelogy further identifies three phases for this experience:

1. You start safe enough with “symfunction creep”

2. You often feel a mounting level of “symfunction strain”

3. You then slip dangerously into the “symfunction trap”

4. Symfunction capture can pull you into dysfunction

1. You start safe enough with “symfunction creep”

When your every need fully resolves, you can reach peakfunction and freely focus on just about anything. You can do some amazing stuff. This moment features a total absence of any disrupting pain.

As soon as one of your needs does not fully resolve, your body now has cause to warn you with a little pain. A slight headache. A subtle doubt. A lingering sense of trouble. Your body uncomfortably and almost imperceptibly alerts you to this creeping imperfection.

Instead of optimal functioning, you function at an adequate level with impersonal help from others. Anankelogy calls this symfunction.

Symfunction creep refers to that early emotional stress you naturally experience from one or more needs not fully resolving. They resolve adequately enough for you to sufficiently function. But creeping normality sets in as your body insists with largely indiscernible warnings of a slight yet tolerable threat to your ability to fully function.

You kind of notice some slight uneasiness, for example, after seeing a stranger scowl in your direction. You can function well enough but sense a fleeting possibility of a remote threat. You might be confronted by this person you’ve never met, or not. As the stranger looks elsewhere and moves on, that sensation quickly fades.

When all your needs fully resolve again, you can function fully. You feel no pain. Sometimes your needs linger a while before accessing the resources to restore inner balance. But once restored, you’re back to peakfunction. After all, sometimes can only access a resource through others you do not personally know, and this can prevent you from remaining peakfunctional.

If you had to deal with a stranger in a distant land completely on your own, you would likely remain vigilant. But at home, you likely depend on familiar social norms to ensure this stranger doesn’t bother you. Instead of operating at your optimal potential, you find you can function only at a level those social norms permit. This typically tends to be a little less than full functioning. After all, the more focused to what could go wrong when encountering this unknown person, the less attentive on getting things right for your peakfunctional potential.

Impersonal norms typically help you. Authority to enforce them ensures the peace. But an externally incentivized peace cannot effectively address each other’s specific needs. Social norms and power dynamics shaping symfunction risk pulling you down into symfunction strain.

2. You often feel a mounting level of “symfunction strain”

Symfunctional strain refers to the ongoing emotional stress you naturally experience from each need not fully resolved. Emotions only exist to convey your pressing needs. As more of your needs partially resolve, you’re spared the disturbing pain of not getting resolved at all.

Each imperfectly resolved need prompts your body to warn you of its particular threat. Each need only partially resolved denies your ability to function fully. Unlike symfunction creep where you frequently return to full functioning, symfunction strain reminds you that you remain constantly at a diminished level of functioning.

If enjoying a quick meal of processed foods leaves you nutritionally deficient, your body warns you that your hunger has not been fully satisfied. If sharing your emotional troubles with a trusted friend who then dismisses your complaint, your body warns you that your need for social support remains unfulfilled. If your job provides a steady income but less meaning to create appreciated value for others, your body warns there is still room for improvement to address your need earn a living creating something meaningful.

Typically, you feel each warning of a partially eased need as a dull and manageable pain. If experiencing just a handful of such needs that remain partially resolved, you likely do not even notice this strain. You can bear the trouble. With most other needs fully resolved, you can still function quite well with little if any distraction.

You can focus sufficiently despite that emerging reminder to satisfy that hunger. Or that slightly disturbing cue to find someone who cares about your complaint. Or that gnawing but easily ignored feeling that you are not really being valued at work for all you’re worth. These mostly resolved needs let you focus on the positives and disregard such miniscule negatives.

Getting comfortable with this new normal can set you up for even worse things down the road. A few persistently partially resolved needs can blow up easily into many persistently unresolved needs. You’re then staring down into the abyss of a symfunctional trap.

3. You then slip dangerously into the “symfunction trap”

Often, however, a few partially resolved needs swells into a molehill of unresolved needs. Your ratio of fully-to-partially resolved needs can slip down into most of your needs only partially resolved. Your body will not let you forget.

With fewer of your needs fully resolve, your body painfully warns how your ability to function has become increasingly compromises. These can build up into a mountain of warnings constantly reminding you of growing threats to your ability to function. Any dull pain you felt at the beginning doesn’t feel so dull anymore. In fact, they can now overwhelm your attention.

Your growing hunger pangs refuse to be ignored. Your increasing sense of being misunderstood crowds your attention. Your alarming dissatisfaction with your lousy job consumes your focus.

These less resolved needs increasingly distract you, as they scream for your attention. They warn how your ability to function is becoming intolerably decreased. Your once-trivial problems now appear much more alarmingly urgent. You feel increasingly trapped to prioritize these alarming needs.

While not completely nourished, you lack sufficient energy to always prepare a healthy meal. While wondering if you’ll find anyone who’ll care, you adjust your expectations to avoid painful disappointment. While feeling stuck in your dead-end job, you doubt if you can find any job that’s better.

Symfunction trap describes this disturbing experience. You feel increasingly trapped into this mediocre level of functioning. You find it increasingly more difficult to fully resolve your needs, and increasingly absorbed by the rising levels of pain. You likely resign to your fate of not fully resolving many if not most of your needs.

You increasingly drink more for pleasure than merely to quench your thirst. Sugary drinks dominate your day. Or you gulp down something for the caffeine buzz. Or you sip on alcohol to take the edge off your troubling circumstances. You slip dangerously close into destructive habits, easily shared in your social circles.

You can at least get by in this modern world of technological conveniences. You can function adequately enough with the predictability provided by enforced laws. You can feel confident that you’re not alone in this situation.

Indeed, more and more of us accept such mounting emotional distress as the new normal. We hardly notice as this three-phase process of symfunction capture serves as a gateway into dysfunction.

Symfunction capture can pull you into dysfunction

You rarely choose to go from optimal functioning to self-sabotage. You tend to get pulled into symfunction when the resources to fully resolve your needs remain inaccessible. A lack of reliable access to primary resources like

• clean water for your thirst, or

• trustworthy friends for companionship, or

• meaningful employment for your purpose in life,

points less to personal problems and more to interpersonal, power and structural problems. Unfortunately, many social norms yank you into the abyss of dysfunction.

Anankelogy identifies three levels of resources for responding or reacting to your painful needs. Only steady access to primary resources can enable you to stay peakfunctional.

1. Primary resource: Something that fully resolves your need, like water for thirst or a trustworthy companion for deeper social connection.

2. Alternate resource: Something that partially eases your need, like coffee for thirst or casual friends for meaningful social connection.

3. Substitute resource: Something that primarily relieves the pain of your unmet need, like alcohol or social media "friends" for social connection.

Anankelogy recognizes the problem of more easily accessing alternate or substitute resources. The more easily you find many Facebook friends than cultivate personal friendships, for example, the easier you slide into symfunction and onto dysfunction.

Anankelogy has a label for this widespread yet overlooked problem: coerced poor options dependence (or CoPOD). If you cannot readily access highly nutritious food as easily as processed or junk food, you can become easily attached to these less-than-optimal options. If coerced into accepting a court decision as the best yet only available option, you understandably rely on it almost every time you think of suing someone.

If you never know a life of steadily accessible primary resources to fully resolve all of your needs, you understandably acclimate to whatever best helps you get by. Despite every good faith effort to make the noblest decisions, this pervasive problem of CoPOD can pull you through symfunction capture and then on down the rabbit hole of painful dysfunction.

Dysfunction means you must now prioritize relieving the incredible load of pain you cannot shake off because of problems beyond your control. In our highly individualistic culture, at least in Western societies, you may accept blame for making too many poor personal choices. What if slipping into an addiction is not completely your fault?

Need-response dares us to look a little deeper into these complexities of our many problems. Instead of oversimplifying addictions as resulting from poor moral choices, need-response enables you to be more honest by recognizing different levels of human problems.

A wellness campaign takes you through all four types of human problems. This need-response service could be the only professional option to help you break free from symfunction capture. One way to know is to explore this option for yourself. And it’s free to start. It's also free to check if a wellness campaign is right for you.

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