Options array
open house page
Register to access this page after open house ends.
your
OPTIONS
psychosocial reduction =
Reducing to either biopsychological factors excluding socioenvironmental factors or reducing to socioenvironmental factors excluding biopsychological factors. Wellness relies on a balance of both.
psychosocial reduction?
Most anxiety and depression results from your situation. Let's not be fooled by psychosocial reduction. It's time to address your situation. Let's consider your options.
Your avoidance options
When pain-avoiding is your priority
Flight or freeze.
Often, that's the only thing we can do. Avoidance may be your best option right now.
Modern life can easily overwhelm each of us with painfully unmet needs. Indeed, the bulk of sociocultural norms emphasize pain relief over resolving the needs behind that pain. Do you as you're expected, and many of your needs never fully resolve.
The more we suffer from these persistently unmet needs, the more they consume our limited attention, to do something about them. Often, we settle for pain-relieving substitutes. That's better than allowing the pain to rob us of a capacity to functional at all.
Your boss snaps at you, with innuendo that your performance is lacking. Do you defend your performance, or mitigate any perceived risk to your job security? You may grumble under your breath, but you're likely too busy doing the job to shift to the challenging job of conveying all the relevant details without sounding like you're making excuses.
You're accused of doing something unsavory. You realize the accusation robs you of credibility. Your self-defense sounds like a selfish rationalization to escape trouble. You agree to disagree, but know something has been lost along the way. Your reputation takes a fatal hit, but you limp along the best you can.
You hold a different political view than your vocal neighbor. But you dare not express your opposing view. Why bother? That could cost you the fragile rapport between you. It's generally easier to avoid risking the pain, and letting this stuff slide.
Nature, however, could care less about our differing views. Where needs persist, anxiety and depression naturally creep in. Adversarial options may appeal to you for urgent relief.
Economic
examples
When pain-avoiding, you...
Take whatever job you can find
Borrow heavily to spend beyond your means
Accept you cannot earn a living from your dreams
Resign to fate of never earning earning to build a savings
Live paycheck to paycheck
Suppress doubts about how treated at work
Disengage from job and be less productive
Perform just the minimum of the job requirements
Quit job
Struggle with anxiety & depression
AVOIDANCE BENEFITS
At least you have a roof over your head and some food in the fridge
At least you have a job to pay the bills
Judicial
examples
When pain-avoiding, you...
Settle for any low paying job willing to hire "felons"
Struggle with homelessness
Adjust to poverty
Apply for public assistance
Frequent food pantries
Rely on family, if they are willing and able
Avoid calling police when victimized by crime
Steer clear as much as you can from retraumatizing reminders
Only tell those you can trust that you’ve been wrongly convicted
Struggle with anxiety & depression
AVOIDANCE BENEFITS
At least you're not being falsely accused again right now
At least you’re not in prison anymore
Political
examples
When pain-avoiding, you...
Refuse to vote
Disengage from all that’s political
Defriend those on social media expressing opposing views
Distrust media bias
Hope local reps don’t make life any worse for you
Dance around hot button topics
Listen to others express their views without giving your own
Tolerate disagreement without knowing why
Only vote for President
Struggle with anxiety & depression
AVOIDANCE BENEFITS
At least you have friends to share nonpolitical topics
At least we’re not ruled by some despot dissolving the Constitution
Those who perpetuate problems
by coercing you to keep avoiding its pain
are among the most evil in the world.
Those who let you solve problems
by inspiring you to embrace life’s pain
are among the most upright in the world.
Your adversarial options
When pain-relieving is your priority
Or face 'em and fight.
Let’s admit it, it’s much easier to think about our lives if we lump folks into conservative and liberal camps, and lump people who run afoul of the law as accuser and accused, and lump others we don't understand as either sick or well.
Reality resists our simplification. Reality occurs with all its discomforts, while our convenient categories have us overlook relevant details. They may ease our pain, but clinging to them easily gets in the way of addressing important details for resolving these nuanced needs.
When you orient yourself to these categories as provisional starting points, you remain open to exceptional nuances that provide a full picture.
When you reify these arbitrary categories as literal reflections of your complex realities, of course you’re apt to feel the painful squeeze of reality. Once there with others reinforcing this overgeneralizing of human conventions, it’s easier to blame others for the mounting pain. And miss the liberating experience of responsibly viewing the full thing, in all its raw honesty.
Clinging to adversarial options easily miss the fact that most adversarial categories are not wholly real. To escape the pain of life, conventionality must give way to a more conciliatory view.
Ciseconomic
examples
When pain-relieving, you...
Sue employer
Quit job without notice
Glassdoor negative review
YouTube rant
File complaint with EEOC
File complaint with BBB
File ethics complaint
Tell all your friends and families not to spend their money where you work
Complain about your job on social media
Only do minimal requirements of the job
Temporarily relieve own pain at another’s expense
Manage your anxiety & depression
ADVERSARIAL BENEFITS
At least you refused to play the victim
At least you're not walked all over like before
Cisjudicial
examples
When pain-relieving, you...
Litigate, litigate, litigate
Presume adversarial stance: assume other is fully against you
Accept people can literally be categorized as “good guy” and “bad guy”
Assume law abiding means need respecting; law violating must mean need disrespecting
Insist your interpretation of law is better than any alternative interpretation
Rely on rules to regulate society and distrust personally engaging to respect specific needs
Temporarily relieve own pain at another’s expense
Manage your anxiety & depression
ADVERSARIAL BENEFITS
At least an arrested offender is off the street
At least you have hope of winning in court
Cispolitical
examples
When pain-relieving, you...
Demonize foes
Use opposition research to smear opponents
Cling to belief that political positions are rationally chosen
Despise those who need differently than you
View opposition as irrational and carelessly threatening
Depersonalize political foes
Only listen to views confirming your political outlook (echo chamber)
Spread rumors about those of opposite view
Temporarily relieve own pain at another’s expense
Manage your anxiety & depression
ADVERSARIAL BENEFITS
At least you took a stand
At least you've found others to support your disputed needs
Flee pain, and it will chase you, to do
some pain-relieving regretful deed.
Chase pain, and it will flee from you,
after resolving its reported need.
Your conciliatory options
When pain-removing is your priority
Face obstacles as challenges to turn into opportunities.
There's nothing inherently wrong with you or other people besides unresolved needs. Any painful problem you have ever faced, or will face, stems from some unmet need or needs. Period. Resolve needs and the problems we experience naturally clear up. Hence our slogan:
solving problems by resolving needs
Here's the thing. Problems persist when needs remain unresolved. Painfully unresolved needs compel us to seek urgent relief. The more urgent the alarm, the more we tend to settle on familiar generalizations. Like those opposing generalizations of our adversarial options. For the sake of quick relief, they easily let the painful problem persist.
We cannot solve our specific problems with the same level of generalizing we used to create them. In other words, resolving needs calls us to move past our provisional categories. Clinging to oppositional categories (e.g., "us" and "them" or "good guy" and "bad guy") may provide some utility, but can often normalize our problems.
Needs typically remain painfully unresolved when seeking their relief solely with adversarial options. Understandably, law enforcement must make instant life-or-death decisions when addressing violent situations. Hesitation can turn lethal.
The good-guy/bad-guy binary serves that situational need. After a suspect is in custody, failure to shift to addressing all needs involved underpins much of the problems we now see in the dysfunctional criminal justice system.
Embrace your pain to resolve your needs
It's easy for us to get caught in the cyclic trap of relieving the pain of unmet needs at the cost of resolving those needs. We can't remove pain by constantly ignoring its source. When fully committed to resolving your needs in sync with others resolving theirs, we work together to remove pain. You might even call that love.
Pain may linger for those needs kept waiting a long, long time. Or were a much more serious threat to functioning. But fully resolved needs eventually removes any cause for pain, since the need no longer compels focus with such pain. (Although resolving a painful need sometimes elicits painful awareness of other suppressed needs.)
Pain only exists to compel you to remove some perceived threat to functioning. Outside of such threats to be removed, real or imagined, there is no such thing as pain.
Outside of a felt need to reject something, you feel no anger.
Outside of a felt need to handle something, you feel no fear.
Outside of a felt need to redirect your focus, you feel no depression.
Outside of a felt need to restore your respect for others, you feel no guilt.
Outside of a felt need to control your situation, you feel no powerlessness.
Outside of any felt need to remove some threat, you feel no pain.
You may experience some pain long after the threat is actually removed, as your body remains on alert in case the threat persists. But what evidence is there that pain can magically, spontaneously occur?
There is little compelling evidence, for example, that endogenous depression (i.e., stemming only from within) even exists. According to anakelogy, there is always some perceived situation emoting a pain, to draw your attention to your need to remove all threats to full functioning.
You can think of pain as the most underappreciated gift of nature. No matter how unpleasant, we need pain to survive and thrive. The more we appreciate that gift by embracing pain as soon as it arrives, and promptly remove any threat, the less residual “not-so-good-kind-of-pain” we risk suffering.
Remove your pain
In short, your conciliatory options are your most responsible options. By responsibly resolving your needs that removes pain, while respecting the needs of others, you create irresistible value. Value Relating exists to facilitate that value in you, and through you. And insists you get duly compensated for it.
That may not happen overnight. We appreciate your conciliatory options unfold in a reachable process.
We first identify the needs involved, using assessments.
We then express their impact on your needs using audits.
And we support you to address your impacted needs using what we call an avowal.
To get there, to resolve your specific and often overlooked needs, we must transcend relief-focused opposing generalities.
We cannot solve our specific problems with the same level of generalizing we used to create them.
Transeconomic
examples
When pain-removing, you...
Psychosociotherapy
Glassdoor positive review
YouTube testimonial
Social media buzz
Remove pain be facilitating the resolution of needs on all sides
See anxiety and depression drop away
Transjudicial
examples
When pain-removing, you...
Psychosociotherapy
Need Response
Restorative justice
Arbitration
Remove pain be facilitating the resolution of needs on all sides
See anxiety and depression drop away
Transpolitical
examples
When pain-removing, you...
Psychosociotherapy
Identifying psychosocial orientation all sides
Value frame each position
Remove pain be facilitating the resolution of needs on all sides
See anxiety and depression drop away
Fully removing pain, by resolving the needs such pain reports, involves a basic three-step process:
-
identify your need - realize each specific need behind the pain, to distinguish the core need to be resolved from habits that only relieve or avoid pain. Or get pulled into comforting generalizations that overlook your specific needs, leaving you in constant pain.
-
express your need - personally convey your needs so others respect what you need, instead of relying on hit-and-miss impersonal rules. Or get pulled into alienating rules that fail to address your specific needs, leaving you in constant pain.
-
address your need - resolve your needs in sync with how others resolve theirs, rather than wasting your precious resources battling others. Or get pulled into polarizing camps offering temporal relief over removing pain, leaving you in constant pain.
Three main steps for shifting from an adversarial approach to a conciliatory approach.
DEGENERALIZE
Generalizing around opposing categories allows you to avoid or relieve pain, but not to accurately identify your specific needs. You will need to identify your specific needs before you can fully resolve them, to fully remove their reporting pain.
Diving instantly into all the overlooked specifics would be overwhelming. Shifting to such an extreme would itself be more generalizing.
We respect how these generalizations were serving you, but now drop what no longer serves your long-term cause. We de-generalize.
We step back from generalizing. We step toward overlooked specifics. We replace your "unchecked believing" with "dynamic relating."
Transeconomic
examples
Degeneralizing economics
Degeneralize from unchecked economic beliefs. Relate to specific economic needs in ways that draw out your identified passionate life purpose.
Transjudicial
examples
Degeneralizing justice
Degeneralize from unchecked judicial beliefs. Relate to specific judicial needs in ways that attract interest in your identified violated innocence.
Transpolitical
examples
Degeneralizing politics
Degeneralize from unchecked political beliefs. Relate to specific political needs in ways that dissolve for us all identifiable political polarization.
Generalizing goes well with avoiding pain and relieving pain. To remove pain (like anxiety and depression) by resolving needs such pain reports, some degeneralizing is in order.
Step back from generalizing with all those unchecked beliefs. Step towards continual updates to accurately relate to each other’s needs.
DEALIENATE
Alienation of modern life gives you plenty of space to breathe, but not to express your overlooked needs. You best express your exact needs in more detail than could ever be contemplated by the rules you’re coerced to follow.
Plunging into such intimate details can be crushing. Shifting to cathartic unloading would itself be alienating.
We respect how impersonal rules kept you minimally out of trouble, but now you drop what no longer serves your long-term cause. We de-alienate.
We step back from alienating norms. We step toward glossed over details. We replace "normative alienation" with "impact engaging."
Transeconomic
examples
Dealienating economics
Dealienate from impersonal economic norms. Personally engage others to know their expressed economic needs, how you impact them and how they impact yours.
Transjudicial
examples
Dealienating justice
Dealienate from impersonal judicial norms. Personally engage others to know their expressed judicial needs, how you impact them and how they impact yours.
Transpolitical
examples
Dealienating politics
Dealienate from impersonal political norms. Personally engage others to know their expressed political needs, how you impact them and how they impact yours.
The less attached to opposing sides, the easier to address the intractable needs on all sides.
The less anxiety and depression from unresolved needs.
Alienating goes well with avoiding pain and relieving pain. To remove pain (like anxiety and depression) by resolving needs such pain reports, some dealienating is in order.
Step back from always relying on impersonal norms, of how it “should” be done. Step towards personally engaging what each other honestly needs.
DEPOLARIZE
Choosing opposing sides lets you find comfort among fellow sufferers, but usually consumes the very resources necessary to address your contested needs. You will need to address your challenged needs before you can fully resolve them, to fully remove their reporting pain.
Jumping equally into both camps would likely create suspicion. Swinging to such an extreme would itself be polarizing.
We respect how taking belligerent sides was comforting, but now drop what no longer serves your long-term cause. We de-polaralize.
We step outside polarizing silos. We step into shoes worn on both sides. We replace "mutual hostilities" with "value framing."
Transeconomic
examples
Depolarizing economics
Depolarize from antagonistic economic sides to see the value in each side, as each side experiences their strained economic needs, to make it much easier for each side to fully address and resolve their economic needs in sync with each other.
Transjudicial
examples
Depolarizing justice
Depolarize from destructive judicial sides to see the value in each side, as each side experiences their strained justice needs, to make it much easier for each side to fully address and resolve their justice needs in sync with each other.
Transpolitical
examples
Depolarizing politics
Depolarize from intimidating political sides to see the value in each side, as each side experiences their strained political needs, to make it much easier for each side to fully address and resolve their political needs in sync with each other.
Polarizing goes well with avoiding pain and relieving pain. To remove pain (like anxiety and depression) by resolving needs such pain reports, some depolarizing is in order.
Step back from assuming others must be against you, or you against them. Step towards a conciliatory approach. It is the only long-term means for lasting resolution of needs, for enduring removal of pain, for “loving others as one would love oneself.”
All pain stems from unresolved needs.
Pain only occurs to get us to remove
whatever hinders our functioning.
Resolved needs remove pain,
albeit not as fast as we'd like,
since it no longer must report
the painfully unresolved need.
Speaking your Truth of Impacted Needs to Power
ASSESS their awareness of your identify needs
First, just quietly tell ‘em what you need.
Assessments let you replace dysfunctional "unchecked believing" with "relational knowing."
Unchecked believing accepts the given conventional understanding about something, without checking if accurate or not, or if what was true yesterday remains true for today.
Relational knowing replaces unchecked believing by continually engaging sources of information to gather as accurate a picture as possible, to make well informed decisions, and to see if what was known yesterday remains the case even for today.
You assess if they conventionally overlook your needs.
As we build this out, you will find more assessment examples here.
econism: relying on divisive economic categories to literally define reality, often with debilitating impacts on economic outcomes.
Workplace impact: What authority do they claim to undermine your passionate purpose in life?
justifism: relying on divisive judicial categories to literally define reality, often with debilitating impacts on judicial outcomes.
Estimated innocence: What authority do they claim to deny your mounting evidence of actual innocence?
politism: relying on divisive political categories to literally define reality, often with debilitating impacts on political outcomes.
Estimated innocence: What authority do they claim to undermine your bridge building to embrace the psychosocial orientation of anyone?
AUDIT their impacts on your express needs
Next, let ‘em know how they’re impacting your needs.
Audits let you replace "normative alienation" with "impact engaging."
Normative alienation is the sociological concept of following impersonal norms instead of personally knowing what we need of each other.
Impact engaging replaces normative alienation by personally asking what we need of each other, along with sharing nonjudgmentally how we impact each other under those norms of alienation.
You audit their conventionally privileged norms that negatively impact your needs.
As we build this out, you will find more audit examples here.
econism: text
Workplace impact: What ?
justifism: text
Estimated innocence: What ?
politism: text
Estimated innocence: What ?
AVOW their impacted your needs address
Finally, assert your right to address your needs—with or without them.
Avowals, or declarations, let you replace "mutual hostilities" with "value framing."
Mutual hostilities tend to emerge between parties enduring pain from unresolved needs, where one or more insist the other respect such needs more than they accountably respect those needs.
Value framing replaces mutual hostilities by using a technique for engaging each other's impacted needs, to freely address those needs in ways poorly addressed before.
You avow to address needs despite any conventional limits—with or without them.
As we build this out, you will find more avowal examples here.
.png)
econism: text
Workplace impact: What ?
justifism: text
Estimated innocence: What ?
politism: text
Estimated innocence: What ?
Extortion vs. “contra-extortion”
When speaking your truth to power with avowed consequence you may well wonder, “Isn’t that extortion?” Consider your alternative.
Do you continue to allow more powerful others, in the name of legal compliance when they can afford better legal representation than you, to pull you further into debilitating anxiety and depression? Or isn’t that a form of privileged extortion? Besides, this doesn't fit the legal definition of extortion.
Extortion
1) violence,
2) property damage,
3) harm to reputation, or
4) unfavorable government action.
Does that really apply here?
In contrast to the explicit crime of extortion, consider how in your situation
-
there is already a working relationship between the parties,
-
the working relationship involves a power imbalance,
-
there is already a level of coercion in the other direction, and
-
your “demand” is for a preferred conciliatory approach to responsibly resolve all affected needs.
Actual extortion includes none of these.
Legitimacy at stake
Conflating this proactive approach with an adversarial accusation of extortion (or extraction) invites and potentially triggers a rapid shift along these option arrays. It invites impeachment of legitimacy, of the very privilege accorded to the more powerful to have any role in your needs.
While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs it exists to serve. By following this proactive prosocial path, you serve their need to improve their legitimacy. Whether that’s the need of government to demonstrate good stewardship with democratic principles, or the need of private enterprise struggling to earn the trust of its constituents. Helping us resolve our needs earns that respect.
Contra-extortion
This process instills responsibility on all sides. Coercion in any direction undermines the responsible resolution of affected needs. If needed, we are open to discuss how this remains distinct from extortion.
We are not open to this status quo of power differentials and calling it conciliatory. It’s adversarial, and unacceptable to the natural path of resolving needs.
To overlook this openness for mutual understanding, with a rush to apply privileged accusation, provides us more evidence of privileged extortion—or what we call “contra-extraction.”
Contra-extortion is where the avoidance of being accused of extortion allows the more influential in a power imbalance to subtly “extract” or “extort” compliance to their coercive advantage. To be sure, this is a type of psychosociopathology, where needs are not being responsibly resolved.
Accountability
Accountability sets in when removal of contra-extraction correlates significantly with a measurable decrease in anxiety and depression. To reassert norms of coercive influence then appears to argue for more debilitating anxiety and depression. Which warrants a challenge to the legitimacy of such authority.
These options raise the bar on accountability for all sides, to remain responsive to how we affect one another’s needs. Relieving pain at another’s expense—no matter what the authority—lacks the legitimacy compared to removing pain by respectfully responding to all affected needs. Period.
In the honorable tradition of Thoreau and Gandhi and King and the many like them unheard, we prioritize personal resolving of needs over the privileged extortion of exploitive impersonal law. We avow to resolve needs, by any means of nature necessary. Nature permits us to do no less.
Conciliatory ethics
To be fully ethical, in line with how we naturally function, we must allow room for each side to respond appropriately to each side’s identified, expressed and addressed needs. Three levels of ethics seek to do just that.
gap ethics – assessing the apparent gaps in whatever ethics are being applied
grassroots ethics – auditing the actual impacts from whatever ethics applied
guerilla ethics – avowing to address needs despite whatever ethics applied
While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs it exists to serve.
Gap ethics -
ASSESSING the apparent gaps in
whatever ethics are being applied.
It's as if to say to your Impactor: "Here are my oft-overlooked specific needs you impact, so what do your ethics say about it?"
Grassroots ethics -
AUDITING the actual impacts from
whatever ethics are being applied.
It's as if to say to your Impactor: "Here are my oft-overlooked specific needs you regularly impact both positively and negatively, and here are the unfolding consequences to me and potentially to you."
Guerilla ethics -
AVOWING to address needs despite
whatever ethics are being applied.
It's as if to say to your Impactor: "Here are my oft-overlooked specific needs I am compelled to address the best prosocial way I know how, whether your beliefs, policies, best practices, or operations recognize them or not."
Further, "My proactive commitment improves my responsiveness to other's needs while measurably lowering my anxiety and depression. Your trusted ethics do not."
Value relating: the more accountability for their actual impacts on specifics needs, the more legitimacy for their influence. The opposite applies: the less accountable for their actual impacts on your specifics needs, the less legitimacy for their privileged influence.
Violence is weakness
turned outward.
Resilience is strength
turned inward.
WORK IN PROGRESS
You’re seeing a work in progress.
Yes, I know, some content on this page is missing.
Much of this material will inevitably be changed as we go to market.
You're the market. You can help us create value with your constructive feedback.
Thank you for helping us create this meaningful service.