B05 Basic Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

You hold all of your beliefs as equally important.

OR

The more vital a belief to your life, the more you cling to it.

Anankelogy

If something has no relevance to anything you require to function, you will hardly consider it important enough to form defensible opinions about it. But if something proves highly significant to your ability to function, you will inevitably form defensible views around it.

For example, if a winter pond appears covered in ice, it matters little to you if that ice is thick enough to walk across. But if you must traverse across it, your belief in how thick it must be now becomes very important to you.

Likewise, if you’re relying on government assistance to help you pay this month’s rent, your beliefs about the necessity of government supports will be much more hardened than the remotely rural farmer able to provide everything the family needs. That farmer can easily dismiss government assistance as a waste of tax dollars, but not you.

As your emotions personally convey your needs, your beliefs convey how to interpret and respond to such evoked needs. The more intensely felt the need, the typically more hardened the beliefs. You hold true what you rely upon to help ease your needs.

If you cannot rely on something or others to fully resolve a need, you likely find something to rely upon to ease that need. Or some belief to depend upon to relieve the pain of that unmeet need. The more you count on a belief to help cope with mounting pain, the more difficult to adjust that belief—even if grossly inaccurate. False beliefs abound when struggling with pain.

Need-response

Need-response aims to improve each other’s responsiveness to each other’s needs. Instead of trying to shape how we think about such needs (as in psychotherapy) or how to impersonally monitor behaviors (as with the law), need-response realizes that your thoughts and behavior easily take care of themselves the better we can all function from resolving more of our needs.

Needs come first. Beliefs then follow to serve those needs. Such beliefs then serve as a filter for interpreting the recurrence of that such needs. The less accurate belief, the more likely you will suffer the pain of unresolved needs. Need-response gets to the source of the problem by addressing the needs themselves.

Reactive Problem

Too much focus on faulty beliefs or errant thinking, or even problematic behavior, risks overlooking how we all affect each other’s needs. As modern society increases alienation from each other, we privilege being less responsive to each other’s sensitive needs.

Increasingly, we form beliefs that normalize such alienation. We expect others to reason their way to respect what we expect of them. Instead of personally asking what we need of each other, or asking what we can do for others, we vainly hope the impersonal law will cover all the bases. But our laws do not resolve needs; people do.

Responsive Solution

Need-response inspires us to improve our beliefs not through better thinking or law-conforming behavior but by responding better to each other’s needs. Letting our needs resolve more fully naturally enables us to think better and behave more respectfully toward others.

Need-response extends beyond problem-focused psychiatric disorders or criminal behaviors. It gets to the root of such problems by addressing the underlying yet overlooked needs erupting as disorders and illicit behaviors.

Anankelogy advantages the need-responder’s toolbox with a unique set of tools currently lacking in psychotherapy and law enforcement. These tools identify overlooked factors that lower your ability to function, and then adds what can restore your ability to function.

These are called defunctions and refunctionsrespectively.

• A debilitating defunction lowers your ability to function. You feel pain as your body warns you that you can no longer function as before.

• A liberating refunction raises or restores your ability to function. Once restored to wellness, you feel the pleasure of being able to do more.

Instead of “believing” in something, you’re invited to relate. To engage the information. To vulnerably apply what fits your life, and help create the objective results of resolved needs.

Here are some examples of debilitating defunctions corrected by liberating refunctions to sharpen beliefs to better serve needs.

• Discomfort avoidance by discomfort embrace. Believing you should evade any level of pain, which attracts more pain, can be replaced by learning to relate to pain as a natural warning system to remove threats.

• Normative alienation by dynamic engaging. Believing we should remain painfully isolated from each other, such as in the name of privacy, can be replaced by getting to know what we specifically require from each other.

• Psychosocial imbalance by psychosocial balance. Believing we must champion one priority of needs over another, fueling political polarization, can be replaced by addressing all needs in due season.

• Grudges by forgiveness. Holding onto the comforting belief of vindictiveness, which fuels more than solves a problem, can be replaced by letting go of the anger to rebuild any broken trust.

• Perfectionism by grace. The belief one is never quite good enough can be replaced by appreciating where one is developmentally at and affirming the good faith to improve from there.

• Arrogance by humility. Believing one is rightly better advantaged than others can be replaced by making it easier for everyone to admit their shortcomings.

• Dismissiveness by empathy. Believing it’s okay to disregard others can be replaced by trying to see their experience through their perspective, to realize the merit in their words.

Each of these pairings nurture your beliefs to better serve your needs while respecting the needs of others. No need to get bogged down in psychology or legalism. Instead, you realize as you’re able to resolve more needs that you can remove more cause for pain. You can then free up your thinking. And can more freely honor the needs of others. And they can then do likewise toward you and your needs.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• How can I trust that these are not just another set of questionable beliefs?

• This seems dismissive of believing in psychology and law, which are very helpful.

• How does the concept of a “defunction” improve upon psychiatric disorders?

• Forgiveness and grace should remain in the domain of religion and not a social science.

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.