Choose no more than two to four dimensions to work with
The previous chapters have presented nineteen balance dimensions. Together, they bring many aspects of social life into focus: citizenship, attention, focus, struggle, relationships, identity, wisdom, complexity, action, emotions, flourishing, meaning, rhythm, time, opportunity, body, risk, play, and adventure. The point is not for a person to improve everything at once. Such a task would turn complexity into yet another performance requirement.
A preliminary balance profile is a focused overview of a specific situation. It helps you identify which dimensions seem most significant at the moment and select no more than two to four to explore further. The profile is not a personality test, a measure of human worth, or a medical diagnosis. It is a testable working hypothesis. It should be adaptable as the situation, knowledge, or resources change.
Balance is an ongoing process of weighing options
In ABT, balance does not mean always staying in the middle between two extremes. In some situations, a person needs to rest more; in others, act quickly. In some relationships, greater closeness is needed; in others, more distance. Balancing means weighing multiple values, needs, relationships, and consequences against one another in a specific situation. What constitutes a reasonable balance can therefore vary from person to person and over time.
A dimension may involve a deficit, a surplus, or a blocked balancing process. However, these terms should be used with caution. A perceived deficit in social contact may stem from a lack of meeting places, discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, or negative relationships. An alleged surplus of rest may be necessary recovery. A blocked balancing means that someone sees a direction but lacks the resources, mandate, support, or safe conditions to act. The profiler should therefore always ask both what the person is doing and what social conditions make the action possible or difficult.
Three Sociological Checks
C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination connects biography and history. A private concern can be personally experienced and at the same time be linked to the labor market, housing, family structures, technology, or other societal changes. In the balance profile, this means that each selected dimension must be examined at more than one level. If time is perceived as a personal problem, working hours, transportation, caregiving, and digital accessibility must also be examined.
Leonard Pearlin and his colleagues describe stress as a process in which life events, chronic stressors, roles, economic conditions, self-perception, social support, and coping resources are interrelated. The point of the balance profile is not to treat a stressor as an isolated factor. The same demand can have different consequences depending on resources, support, and previous stressors. The profile must therefore include both stressors and protective factors.
Intersectionality was developed to analyze how power structures and social positions interact. Devon Carbado, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Vicki Mays, and Barbara Tomlinson describe intersectionality as an analytical tool rooted in Black feminism and critical race theory. In the balance profile, this means that gender, class, racialization, ability, age, and other positions should not be listed as separate background facts if, together, they alter the situation. For example, an environment may be accessible in one way but inaccessible in another. The specific combination of conditions must be examined.
Define the situation before creating the profile
Purpose: To prevent the balance profile from becoming a general assessment of one’s entire life.
Here’s how:
Choose a specific, recurring problem or situation. Describe when and where it occurs.
List the people, groups, organizations, or institutions that directly influence the situation.
Identify a stressor and a resource that are already present.
Formulate what you want to understand better. Wait before deciding on a solution.
Reflection: Is it now clear which part of life the profile applies to and what lies outside of it?
Limitation: Choose no more than one situation. If several urgent problems are occurring simultaneously, professional support may be needed to prioritize them.
The Nineteen Dimensions
Read the questions as possible perspectives on the chosen situation. You don’t need to answer everything in detail. Write briefly where a dimension seems to have clear significance. Leave the rest. The goal is to discover connections and then narrow down the scope of the work.
Choose two to four dimensions
The selection should be small enough to be practical. Two dimensions may suffice if they capture a clear relationship, such as time and body or relationship and identity. Three or four may be needed when a situation is shaped by multiple levels. More than four makes it harder to determine what to test first and increases the risk that the profile will merely become a description of everything that is difficult.
Do not automatically choose the dimension where self-criticism is strongest. Instead, ask which dimension has a clear connection to the situation, which one can influence several others, and which one has sufficient resources for a safe first attempt. The main manual describes such a dimension as an “anchor”: a change that can have consequences in several areas of life. It is a hypothesis that must be followed up on, not a guarantee of major effects.
Life circumstances behind the profile
Purpose: To verify whether the selected dimensions are influenced by conditions that cannot be changed through individual self-improvement.
Here’s how to do it:
Select up to three areas: housing, work or studies, finances, education, healthcare, discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, or physical environment.
Identify one circumstance that is a burden and one that is a source of support in the selected areas.
Link each circumstance to one of the two to four dimensions you have selected.
Distinguish between a small action you can try yourself and an issue that requires a relationship, organization, or institution.
Reflection: Did your interpretation of the profile change once living conditions and the distribution of responsibilities became clear?
Limitation: This assessment is not a health diagnosis. Acute or serious health issues require professional evaluation.
Belonging can be both a source of strength and a burden
Groups offer more than just companionship. They can provide identity, a shared language, practical help, recognition, and opportunities for action. The research behind Groups 4 Health shows that working with social identities and group affiliations can reduce loneliness and social anxiety in certain contexts. This finding does not mean that any kind of group contact is helpful. A group can also impose conflicting demands, limit a person’s freedom of action, or subject them to domination.
It is also important to distinguish social isolation from perceived loneliness. Isolation relates to the actual extent of one’s network and patterns of contact, while loneliness relates to the experience that relationships do not meet one’s needs. They may coincide, but they do not necessarily have to. A balanced assessment should therefore examine both the relationships that exist, their quality, and the material or institutional barriers that affect the ability to participate.
Group Identities as Support and Burden
Purpose: To explore how a sense of belonging affects identity, flourishing, and the ability to act.
Here’s how to do it:
List up to five groups that are important in the chosen situation. These could include family, friends, work, school, a club, religion, or a digital community.
Briefly describe what each group provides: support, knowledge, recognition, responsibility, practical help, or influence.
Also note if any group creates conflicting demands, vulnerability, or limitations.
Choose only one reconnection step if there is a group that is sufficiently safe and relevant.
Reflection: Does the profile indicate a lack of belonging, a conflict between affiliations, or the presence of a group that is already a resource?
Limitation: The simplified book exercise is not the same as the manualized Groups 4 Health intervention. More group membership is not always better; negative and dominant relationships must be taken into account.
Distinguish isolation from loneliness
Purpose: To choose the right level when the profile points toward relationality or flourishing.
Here’s how:
Identify what is missing most: actual contact, emotional closeness, practical support, recognition, security, or the opportunity to participate.
Describe the actual extent of the network and how often contact occurs, without assuming that many contacts automatically mean closeness.
Note whether insecurity, cost, health, discrimination, transportation, or negative relationships limit contact.
Link the deficiency to a possible next step at the appropriate level: individual, relationship, group, or institution.
Reflection: Does the next step need to increase the amount of contact, change the quality of a relationship, or remove a structural barrier?
Limitation: Social isolation and perceived loneliness are closely related but not the same thing. More contact can worsen the situation if the relationships are negative or insecure.
From Profile to Soft Wording
Once two to four dimensions have been selected, they must be tied to the defined situation. A “thick” formulation incorporates a sufficient number of social relationships and conditions to avoid a purely individual explanation. At the same time, it is sufficiently narrow to be testable. “Thick” therefore does not mean long or complete. It means that the most important intermediate links are explicitly stated.
A flexible sociological formulation is provisional. It may, for example, state that a time-related problem is exacerbated by workplace availability requirements and a lack of undisturbed recovery time, while a certain relationship provides support. The formulation does not state what the person is. It describes what appears to be happening in a situation and what question should be tested. It may be modified when the outcome does not match expectations.
A comprehensive yet focused formulation
Purpose: To distill the profile into a testable sociological working hypothesis.
Here’s how:
Describe the situation: When does this happen, where does it take place, and who is present?
Select no more than two mechanisms from your prioritized dimensions. Describe how they reinforce or block each other.
Add a social condition that imposes a burden and a resource that protects or enables action.
Fill in the blanks: When … happens in …, it is reinforced by … and …; it is limited or protected by …; therefore, I want to first test or investigate …
Read the wording and cross out anything that isn’t needed for the next question or experiment.
Reflection: Can the wording be changed if the observation or experiment yields a different result?
Limitation: Use no more than one problem and two mechanisms. The phrasing is a working hypothesis, not a diagnosis or a definitive truth about yourself.
Add or Remove a Practice
The main script distinguishes between “positive approaches” and “negative approaches.” A positive approach means adding a practice that can increase balance. A negative approach means removing or reducing a practice that perpetuates an imbalance. Both approaches may be needed at the same time, but the first attempt should be small. If body and time are priorities, adding a walk may have no effect if your cell phone continues to extend your workday. If relationships and play are priorities, removing screen time may have no effect if there is no available community to reconnect with.
A First Attempt at Finding Balance
Purpose: To translate the preliminary profile into a small change that can be tracked.
Here’s how:
Choose one of your priority areas as your first focus.
Decide whether you primarily need to add a supportive practice or reduce a practice that perpetuates the problem.
List the other people, resources, or institutions on which the attempt depends.
Make the experiment small enough to be tested without having to reorganize your entire daily routine.
Determine when to follow up on understanding, feasibility, communication, relief, and unintended consequences.
Reflection: Did the experiment affect only the selected dimension, or did any of the other prioritized dimensions also change?
Limitation: A failed experiment does not indicate that the person lacks motivation. The wording may be incorrect, the resources insufficient, or the change may depend on a missing actor.
The profile should be adaptable
After the follow-up, there are several plausible outcomes. The attempt may have supported the formulation. It may have shown that another dimension is more important. It may have made an organizational obstacle clearer. It may also have worsened the situation and therefore need to be discontinued. A balance profile becomes useful only when it can be revised.
The important thing is not to achieve a complete profile. It is to select a manageable part of a complex situation, maintain the connection between biography and society, and assign responsibility where it belongs. Two to four dimensions are sufficient to start with. In the next section of the book, the focus shifts from orientation to socio-asceticism: how social rules, practices, allies, environments, and experiments can support change over time.
Concept Overview
This overview reiterates the concepts that underpin the chapter’s reasoning and exercises.
Balance Profile: a preliminary overview in which no more than two to four balance dimensions are selected for further work; it is not a personality test.
Balancing: a situation-specific weighing of needs, values, relationships, and consequences; it is not a requirement to always be in the middle.
Blocked balancing: a situation where a direction is clear but resources, support, authority, power dynamics, or safety prevent action.
Sociological imagination. Mills’s connection between biography and history, as well as between private concerns and social issues.
Stress process. Perlin’s model in which stressors, roles, resources, social support, coping, and self-concept influence one another over time.
Intersectionality. An analytical tool for examining how multiple power structures and social positions interact in a specific situation.
Soft sociological formulation. A provisional and testable working hypothesis about a situation, not a diagnosis or identity.
Thick but delimited formulation: a description that includes the most important social mediators but is limited to what is necessary for the next question or experiment.
Positive approach: adding a practice that can support greater balance.
Via negative: removing or reducing a practice that perpetuates an imbalance.
References
Berglund, A. (2026). Sociological Therapy and Diagnostics. Unpublished manuscript.
Carbado, D. W., Crenshaw, K. W., Mays, V. M., & Tomlinson, B. (2013). Intersectionality: Mapping the movements of a theory. Du Bois Review, 10(2), 303–312. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X13000349
Haslam, C., Cruwys, T., Chang, M. X.-L., Bentley, S. V., Haslam, S. A., Dingle, G. A. & Jetten, J. (2019). GROUPS 4 HEALTH reduces loneliness and social anxiety in adults with psychological distress: Findings from a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 87(9), 787–801. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000427
Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press.
Parigi, P. & Henson, W. II. (2014). Social isolation in America. Annual Review of Sociology, 40, 153–171. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145646
Pearlin, L. I., Lieberman, M. A., Menaghan, E. G., & Mullan, J. T. (1981). The stress process. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 22(4), 337–356.
Umberson, D. & Donnelly, R. (2023). Social isolation: An unequally distributed health hazard. Annual Review of Sociology, 49, 379–399. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-031021-012001
World Health Organization. (2025). Social determinants of health. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/social-determinants-of-health