D04 Pain Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

If you can get rid of your pain then your life will be much better.

OR

Improving your life by resolving more needs gets rid of your pain.

Anankelogy

Anankelogy isolates for types of pain.

1. Organic pain. Or “natural pain” or “natural discomfort”, this is the immediate displeasure reported by your body to warn you to remove some apparent threat. It’s usually sharp and instantaneous.

2. Residual pain. This type emerges after your natural pain fails to result in removing the threat. It continues to alert you to the threat. If partially removing the threat, you feel this as a dull pain.

3. Biostructural pain. This type emerges after your body seeks a different route to report the threat. You feel a headache or stomachache. If residual pain cannot get to remove the threat, maybe this will.

4. Metapain. This type emerges to warn you of the threat of too much pain. Your body complains it cannot adequately function when there are too many alarms going off. It warns of the threat of unheeded threats.

Each type of pain serves as a messenger. Shooting the messenger leaves the threat or threats in place. Ignoring, suppressing, repressing, or trying to shift it onto others almost guarantees the threat to persist. The more your senses register a persisting threat, the more your pain comes back again and again.

Only by addressing the needs behind those threats can your pain be fully removed. The more your needs resolve, the less cause to report threats in the form of pain. The more resolved your needs, the better you can function to remain responsive to new threats.

Need-response

Your level of functioning exists as an objective fact. Any subjective experience of your needs arises after the objective fact of something impacting your ability to function. That includes your pain. Feeling depressed, for example, may be a subjective experience. But it results from the objective fact of your inability to fully function as before. The pain of depression is less of a problem than these objective limitations crashing into your ability to fully function.

Instead of offering you relief from depression, or from any other painful emotion, need-response helps you get to the sources of your pain. Instead of reacting to pain, it equips you to respond more effectively to the needs prompting such pain. Resolving those needs naturally clears up the pain. Need-response emphasizes a shared response to our needs, to get to the root of our pain.

Reactive Problem

Modernity promises to provide a life full of comforts. Pop philosophies suggest a pain-free life is our innate right. Ideologies imply that we should be able to reason our way out of suffering pain. Or take some medication to make the pain go away.

These passive approaches to pain easily lead down the rabbit hole of addictions. You can only do so much to ease the pain of threats, of trauma, of agonizing problems, and a host of other sources of pain.

A huge reason we get trapped in passive pain-relief stems from feeling powerless to do much if anything about the threats. If the threat comes from a neighbor whose actions remain privileged by law, you understandably feel pressured to cave. If the threat comes from a giant corporation backed by better paid lawyers and the elected officials they help elect with their campaign donations, then you understandably feel you must resign to your fate. If the threat comes from established norms cooked into the DNA of our daily lives, you may not even notice the source of such pain.

Since you cannot change others but only your reactions to them, you typically feel pressured to adjust to these untouchable sources of your pain. You can mount protest, complain online, and write to your local officials. But as these tactics fail, you become increasingly accustomed to a growing level of residual pain, emerging biostructural pain, and intensifying metapain.

Responsive Solution

Need-response fills the gap missing in our legal systems by addressing the needs on each side of a conflict. The legal systems of the judiciary and politics only offers pain relief to the winner of a court or election battle. They fail at ensuring all sides can improve their levels of functioning. Indeed, a purely legal approach easily results in more suffered pain.

Need-response first reacquaints us the point of pain, to alert us to remove threats. The first development program walks you through an exercise that can restore your ability to endure discomfort long enough to address its underlying needs. Instead of habitually avoiding your pain, you can be equipped to remove the causes of your pain. And enjoy more peace.

Need-response then provides tools to help you turn from provoking more pain to creating an environment that reduces or removes pain. The second development program helps you replace harmful norms of reactively opposing others to engaging their inflexible needs. Instead of habitually opposing apparent sources of pain in each other, you can be equipped to mutually address each other’s needs to remove the sources of pain. Then enjoy more peace between each other.

Need-response then equips you to speak truth to power. In a way that incentivizes the powerful to listen to you. The third development program invites those in positions of power to realize their leadership brand relies on how responsive they are to your exposed needs. Instead of remaining aloof under shield of impersonal law, you engage them to help them improve their impact by first positively impacting you. More of your pain, and their pain, will then automatically slide away into oblivion.

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:

• I am outraged by the things I see on social media or online.

• I feel powerless to do anything about the problems around us.

• I want to contribute more to lowering the temperature of public discourse but unsure how.

• I wish I could process more of my pain to get to the source, but I don’t see how that’s possible.

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.