Kafka Finds His Rage (Against the Machine): Using Hierarchicals to Pull Yourself Up
Parts of my life have been a little too much like a Chuck Palahniuk novel: chaotic, painful, and governed by the reliable presence of unreliability. Chaos breeds a different kind of attention—if you survive it.
What I have found is that surviving a painful context over time requires more than gritting your teeth. At some point, you have to find a reason for the pain. You have to connect the miserable, repetitive thing you are doing today to something larger than today.
You have to contact the hierarchical.
In relational frame theory, a hierarchical relation organizes one event as belonging to or being part of something larger: *this action is part of that goal; this goal is part of that value; this moment is part of the life I am trying to build*. Hierarchical framing does not merely describe what matters. It can transform the psychological function of an action. Something difficult may become more tolerable—or even reinforcing—when it is experienced as contributing to something deeply important.
Villatte, Villatte, and Hayes describe this as building meaning through networks of relations. We can ask:
If you continued doing it, what larger direction would it serve?
What could you do today that would be part of that direction?
These are not questions about discovering a magical object called a “value” hidden inside you. They are ways of arranging relations among actions, consequences, goals, and larger patterns of living. The clinical—and personal—question is whether arranging those relations changes what you do.
That is why I am not talking about “using RFT” as though RFT were a therapeutic technique. RFT is a behavioral account of human language and cognition. What I am describing is a functional relational analysis: examining how a person’s learned relational responding changes the functions of experiences and influences behavior, then deliberately using those relations to help move behavior in a useful direction.
In plain language: Is there a piece of what you’re doing that connects to higher meaning for you?
Maslow Was Not Entirely Wrong
Maslow’s hierarchy contains an important truth. Food, sleep, and safety matter. Connection matters. It is considerably harder to contemplate your grand contribution to humanity when you are hungry, terrified, or trying to keep the electricity on. Harder, but not impossible, and sometimes – it’s just the thing that helps you rise.
Material stability expands the range of behavior available to us. Suffering isn’t an inspirational slogan. And finding “meaning” doesn’t excuse conditions that are dangerous, exploitative, or unjust. Sometimes the most functional response to pain is to leave, resist, seek help, or change the environment that produces it.
But the popular pyramid leaves something out: people do not always wait for stability before reaching toward meaning. In fact, Viktor Frankl spoke about this widely – sometimes meaning is what gets you through the pain.
Gandhi did not wait for comfort before organizing his behavior around a larger purpose. Martin Luther King Jr. did not first achieve a safe and pleasant life before confronting injustice. Kashdan (2022) describes this kind of principled insubordination as dissent directed toward improving an unhealthy status quo—not rebellion for its own sake. Effective dissent requires willingness to experience discomfort, but also the flexibility and skill to make that discomfort serve meaningful change.
The opposition these leaders encountered did not necessarily weaken the relational networks organizing their actions. At times, opposition may have strengthened those networks: “This resistance is evidence that the work matters. This suffering is part of the struggle. This action contributes to freedom.”
Contacting the Hierarchical
There are mornings when the immediate consequences of getting up are not enough. The work is exhausting. The daily details are tedious. The context continues to hurt.
If all I contact is the drudgery, the drudgery wins.
For me, public speaking is part of challenging how people understand behavior. Challenging those ideas is part of making change possible.
The lower-level action participates in a larger relational network, and its function changes when that network becomes psychologically present.
For me, music sometimes brings that network into the room.
Before an important talk, I may listen to Rage Against the Machine or Nine Inch Nails. I am not looking for “calm” in those moments. I am contacting the fire inside. Raising up my lighter and getting ready for the mosh pit.
Someone has to speak about change before change can happen. If I want it to happen, then I’ve got to be out there to do it. Contacting the music helps transform nervous activation from a signal to retreat into energy… the kind of energy that says, “Let’s all get in that pit and dance until we change something that matters.”
That is functional only if it actually improves the behavior that matters.
If the music leaves me so angry that I become rigid, hostile, or incapable of responding, then it’s helping me move right, and I adjust.
Meaning Can Keep You Alive—and Make You Numb
Contact with something larger can carry a person through serious pain. It can lift behavior out of the immediate grind and place it in the service of a longer trajectory.
That capacity is powerful. It is also dangerous.
When suffering is relationally tied to a cherished value, we may tolerate conditions that should be changed. We may become less responsive to pain that is providing important information. We may remain in destructive workplaces, relationships, movements, or personal projects because leaving then feels like weakness, betrayal, or failure.
Adequately tracking whether our behavior moves us to our goals requires something more discriminating. Kashdan and Rottenberg define it in terms of adapting to situational demands, shifting perspectives or behavior when strategies undermine functioning, balancing competing life domains, and remaining able to act in accordance with important values (Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010).
Sometimes flexibility means staying. Sometimes it means stopping. Sometimes the courageous act is walking onto the stage. Sometimes it is admitting that the stage is burning and getting everyone out of the building.
An Exercise: Build the Hierarchical, Then Touch It
Choose a piece of music, art, literature, or another experience that helps you contact something larger than your immediate discomfort.
Do not stop at “This inspires me.” Work through your experience to feel the important relations moving.
1. Identify the behavior.
Name one observable action you are having difficulty doing. Not “be courageous.” Try “submit the application,” “make the phone call,” “write for 20 minutes,” or “state my position during the meeting.”
2. Build upward.
Ask yourself:
What is this action moves me toward that matters to me?
Why does that contribution matter?
And let me tell you, sometimes – what you contact doesn’t sound ‘adaptive,’ but if it moves you – it might be. Before Rage Against the Machine got me to harness stage energy, it got me through a clinical training experience where I was what you would call a neuropsych scoring ‘workhorse.’ In those hours of scoring assessments on my own time, Rage Against the Machine was all about not letting ‘The Man’ take me down.)
But I digress; continue until you feel what matters, whether it be creating, protecting, learning, telling the truth, caring for others, or challenging injustice.
3. Build downward.
Ask:
If this larger direction matters, what actions could be part of it?
(Do you need to score an insane amount of assessments to just get past this hurdle – to get what you want?)
4. Use the art deliberately.
Listen, read, or look. Notice what memories, sensations, images, and verbal relations become present. Then perform the target action.
5. Track the effect.
If you did contact a hierarchical, you might feel less sensitive to pain and better able to move. Did it improve persistence, clarity, compassion, or responsiveness? Or did it produce the other effects of rule-governed behavior – the rigidity, numbing, aggression, exhaustion, or continued exposure to unnecessary harm?
Meaning Is a Functional Question
I still love Kafka, Dostoevsky, Dante, Camus, and Palahniuk. Metaphor (and art, by nature) can help us contact experiences that direct explanation cannot reach. But I no longer want only a beautiful description of the rock I am pushing uphill.
I want to know what the metaphor does.
Does it expand my behavior? Does it connect today’s action to something worth building? Does it help me notice when persistence is effective and when I need another response? Or does it become a coherent, elegant blindfold?
A rule that blocks sensitivity to consequences is dangerous. An entire network of such rules can make blindness feel meaningful. So yes, find the reason for the pain. Build the hierarchical, contact those properties that make the action easier and worthwhile…
Then keep your eyes open.
I’d love to hear about the things that help you contact your hierarchicals in the comments, if you feel comfortable.
References and Further Reading
Kashdan, T. B. (2017, April 13). How I learned about the perils of grit. Psychology Today.
Kashdan, T. B. (2022). The art of insubordination: How to dissent and defy effectively. Avery.
Kashdan, T. B. (n.d.). Psychological flexibility: Your new secret weapon for resilience.
