About
A simple yet powerful idea
“All living things have a basic strategy for surviving, growing and passing on their genes to the next generation.
They all use their resources to meet their needs in their environment.”
They all use their resources to meet their needs in their environment.”
The simple example of a plant shows us how this works
Each plant has needs of which the most obvious are light, air, water, and soil. To meet its needs each plant has resources such as its amazing ability to capture sunlight and turn carbon dioxide and water into sugars.
Each type of plant is adapted to a particular kind of environment. A successful gardener knows how to create the right environment for each type of plant to ensure its needs are met, so that it can thrive.
To give another example, a good zookeeper knows that for the animals in their care to thrive, they must clearly understand what that animal needs, and what kind of environment will enable it to develop all its resources. If they don't do this, the animals will become distressed and sick.
When we understand, clearly and simply, what our actual innate needs and resources are, and how to maintain environments in which we can meet and develop them, we are, like the zookeeper or gardener, on the right path to health and wellbeing.
The Human Givens
This idea of innate needs and resources underpins the “Human Givens” (HG) approach to psychotherapy and counselling, which was created in the late 1990s. At the time brain scanning technologies and other brain sciences were opening up new understandings of mental health, but ideas about treatment of mental health problems hadn’t been updated with this new information.
Neither had much attention been given to how all the very different ideas about the working of the mind, and how to help people, might potentially fit together.
The “Human Givens” approach was designed to combined the best of many different types of effective therapy like CBT, motivational interviewing and mindfulness within a clear and flexible overall approach, drawing on modern understandings about the brain, to help people recover quickly and build more satisfactory lives.
Andrew Morrice
Founder of JoinedUpHealth
Dr Andrew Morrice is a family doctor in the south-west of England has used the “Human Givens” (HG) approach in his work as a General Practitioner from 2002. By the early 2010’s it became increasingly clear that this approach could help in areas beyond mental and emotional health and help tackle many other challenges in healthcare.
In 2013 he was asked to create a one day course exploring what the innate needs and resources model had to say about human health as a whole. This course drew on teaching he had developed with the Bristol Medical School, on his HG training and on 35 years’ interest in how approaches other than drugs and surgery can help with a range of medical problems such as pain, diabetes and depression.
In 2018 Dr Morrice decided the time had come to spend more time developing this educational work. He still works as an NHS GP but devotes most of his time to JoinedUpHealth, developing training,and running courses, as well as providing Human Givens therapy.
If you are reading this site to find help for yourself or someone you know please see the HG therapists register here or Dr Morrice’s therapy page here. For practical information about appointments learn more here
Our Needs & Resources
+ Emotional Needs
• Feeling Safe enough: the sense that we have sufficient security
• Having some control, autonomy and the capacity to make choices in life.
• Being part of a community.
• Having some abilities or skills we can use, which creates the feeling of competence.
• Having status that realistically reflects who we are, our value, and our abilities.
• Receiving attention from other people as well as
• Giving attention to those around us.
• Having least one close or intimate relationship so we are known and accepted as we are.
• Access to privacy when we need it: to reflect, recharge or rest.
• Knowing that our life has some meaning and purpose, that we are growing and being ‘stretched'.
Meeting these emotional needs in a balanced way is one of the foundations of good mental and physical health.
+ Physical Needs
• Clean Water
• Clean Air
• Clothing & Shelter
Not only are these vital to keep us warm, they provide some privacy, safety and help reflect our status
• Food
Day to day we need both enough energy (calories), and basic nutrients, and in the longer term we need enough of the foods that help maintain long-term health including mental health.
Food is also important in our family and social lives, and is often part of our sense of who we are in the world. We are also constantly influenced by advertisers and others. This means that in our modern society it has become quite complicated to get a clear understanding of what we actually need in this area.
This difficulty is explained in more detail here and in this article which has also been published in the BHMA Journal of Holistic Health Care.
+ Resources
To meet our needs we have 100’s of different resources. In practice we don’t often need to consider most of these, and can focus instead on some key resources that many of us in the 21st century may need to pay more attention to, use more wisely, or strengthen.
These are:
• Physical Activity
Our ancestors could only get enough food, water, shelter and physical security by doing all sorts of physical activities. Nowadays we use machines to do a lot of this work, so we’ve had to invent ideas like ‘exercise’ to keep us active, because we understand that being active helps our mental and physical health.
Learn more with this resource Getting Active.
• Play, Creativity & Fun
All intelligent animals devote time, energy and take some significant risks in ‘play’. Playful activity is done ‘for the sake of it’, feels ‘fun’ and ‘pleasant’ to us, and is part of what makes us creative.
Aside from this it is important because we learn best, come up with better solutions, and develop most when we are using this ‘playful’ mode.
• The Imagination
Using this amazing resource we can recreate past events, imagine what may happen in the future, solve problems, including creating completely new technologies or ideas.
We can also get lost in repeated upsetting internal conversations or ‘movies’, or rapidly find ourselves imagining terrible things happening, or imagine that the world is very different to how it really is. We need to learn to use this powerful resource with care and skill!
• The Relaxation System
Because humans are prone to become stressed over long periods of time, it is fortunate that we can switch on our relaxation system to get our minds and bodies back in balance. Accessing this innate resource is a skill we all need. Learn more with this resource
Breath Easy to Really Relax.
• Sleep
We now understand that whilst we sleep the brain and body are repairing, refreshing and learning by going through cycles of ‘non-dreaming’, ‘slow-wave’ or ‘deep’ sleep, and ‘dream’ sleep.
To wake feeling refreshed each morning our sleep needs to be sufficient in length and we also need the sleep cycles to work well. Learn more with this resource Sleep Well.
Click to expand, learn more about our key needs and resources. You can check up on how well you are meeting your needs and accessing your resources in this free checklist tool.
