Be aware of your needs and how they play out in your life

Many of the issues we face in relationships have their origins in the inadequacies, difficulties and failures of our own early relationships and the developmental deficits we experienced with our caregivers. But because these experiences were our “norm”, we may not always be aware of how they repeat in our adult relationships, sometimes to our disadvantage.

I recall a client who told me how his need to be right had manifested in his marriage: his determination to be proved right (at the expense of his partner’s feelings and self-esteem) had almost led to the irretrievable breakdown of their relationship. Only when he woke up to the fact that he didn’t have to be right all the time, and he didn’t have to point out to his wife when he believed she was wrong, did he see how destructive his behaviour had been. Even so, he told me the drive inside him to “correct” her – i.e. tell her she was wrong – was so strong he struggled to keep his mouth shut at times.

Unfortunately, anyone who’s developed patterns of behaviour that grew out of the need to preserve their sense of identity or sustain their self-esteem can find changing those behaviours quite difficult. And changing the beliefs they hold about themselves which underpin those behaviours can be even more challenging. This is where self-reflection might be very helpful: it allows you (or at least  helps you) to work out what drives your thoughts, words and behaviours, and in doing so helps you to develop a more King-like way of being in the world. (In other words, to become more tolerant, less reactive, and more discerning in what you say and why you say it.)

My client realized that while he appeared to be driven by his need to be right, this was not the whole story. Together we were able to drill down another level and discover that what really lay behind his behaviour was a deep need for significance; in other words, a need to make an impact on the world. As a child, my client had little or no capacity to experience this fundamental human need being met, because his family and social environment were far from ideal.

The Normality Of Human Needs

To help you in your own process of self-reflection on these matters, I’m going to outline two ways of looking at human needs. The first was developed by Abraham Maslow., and the second by Richard Erskine and his colleagues. The idea here is for you to consider where your behaviour is, shall we say, less than helpful or even dysfunctional, and to work out what underlying needs might be contributing to this behaviour. This in turn may help you find an appropriate way of addressing those emotional deficits.

First, then, let’s look at Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. Maslow observed that survival and safety needs are the most fundamental needs we have, and we will always try to get those needs met first. They include our need for vital human resources such as air, water, food, warmth, clothing, shelter and sleep.

Next in the hierarchy comes our need for security, which includes such things as good health, personal security, emotional security, and financial security. The next level in the hierarchy is that of social belonging needs such as belonging to a family, friendship, intimacy, trust, acceptance and the receiving and giving of love and affection.

Now we move on to “higher” levels of need. First, we have what are called esteem needs. Although these are less well-defined, they include our natural need for respect and admiration from others, as well as our need for a strong sense of self-respect and self-worth, which includes qualities such as strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence, and freedom.

Cognitive needs come next in this hierarchy of human needs. These include those qualities which will support our impetus and drive towards learning, such as creativity, foresight, curiosity, and understanding. According to this theory, after we’ve fulfilled our cognitive needs, we progress to aesthetic needs, which are about appreciating the beauty within the world. Perhaps, to be fully human, we actually need to appreciate beautiful imagery or aesthetically pleasing art, or to immerse ourselves in nature’s splendour and find calmness and tranquillity in natural places.

What comes beyond aesthetic needs? First, there is the need for self-actualization, or the realization of your full potential, based on a desire to become the most that you can be in any area of your humanity. I would call this “living within the king archetype” more or less all the time.

For example, you may have a strong desire to become an ideal parent, or to succeed athletically, or to create paintings, or to invent new products. Self-actualization is seen, in this theory, as the outcome of mastering the previous levels of need. This means that the path of self-development is an essential element of your growth towards the fullness of who you really were meant to be “before the world got in the way”. To be clear, you need a full understanding of who you are, and of how your needs, relationships, and sense of self are expressed through your behaviour before you can express your humanity in full. And that, of course, is the purpose of this book and its guidance towards kingship. 

The King Archetype

The final need in Maslow’s hierarchy is the spiritual aspect of transcendence. This means, in one interpretation, living in integrity with yourself and the world around you, and giving yourself to something beyond yourself – for example, altruism or a spiritual connection. You are because you are, not because you do.

Heinz Kohut’s and Richard Erskine’s Hierarchy Of Needs

To help you in your own process of self-reflection on these matters, I’m going to outline a way of looking at human needs developed by Richard Erskine and his colleagues. The idea here is for you to consider where your behaviour is, shall we say, less than helpful or even dysfunctional, and to work out what underlying needs might be contributing to this behaviour. This in turn may help you find an appropriate way of addressing those emotional deficits.

Relational Needs

The concept of relational needs helps us to describe what people want to get out of relating to each other. Relational needs are about contact between people. They are not the basic needs of survival like food, air or shelter: rather, they are the essential elements of our human relationships which make life worth living. They are about a good quality of life and a clear sense of self even in a relationship. Relational needs can also be described as the component parts of a universal desire for intimate relationships. Different theorists have come up with different sets of relational needs, but they all overlap. Some people see them as leftover needs from childhood, others see them as normal needs we all have throughout all of our lives right to the point we die. Perhaps it is easiest to see our relational needs as human, something we never grow out of. However, each one of us has some needs that are more important than others, maybe depending on what is left over for them from childhood (for example, they may still be looking for a quality of being in relationship they never got as a child). Here’s a question: Do you need to go through deep process psychotherapy (read about that here)y to grow beyond the limitations of childhood? Maybe, maybe not. To help you decide, read through the ideas below, and then come back to that question, specifically to consider how much you might work with the help of your partner on the areas where you experienced some kind of deprivation or deficit as a child.

The first set of relational needs was defined by the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut. He wrote about the child’s need for twinship, mirroring, and idealization. In twinship he meant that we long to be with someone who we see as similar to ourselves, who shares our experiences, and who we can communicate with. In mirroring he described our need to be with someone who delights in our presence, our actions, feelings, and our simply being alive, and who shows this delight to us in an active way – hence mirroring. This is a wonderful process to watch between adults and babies when both look at each other with beaming smiles, delighting in each other’s company. Finally, Kohut talked about idealization, which is our need to have someone in our lives who we think is bigger than us and who we can go to when things get difficult. Someone who we can trust will “sort it out for us” or simply be there for us as backup. It may be more important for children to have someone to run to with things they can’t handle themselves, but even as adults it’s still really reassuring to have someone who will be there for us no matter what. This someone may be a real person, a parent, a partner, a friend or a symbolic place, or it could be our own god. This sense that there is someone we can go to, who can help us to deal with things by which we feel overwhelmed, creates security. It means we are not alone with life’s vicissitudes.

The second set of relational needs I want to describe are by Richard Erskine and Rebecca Trautmann, two integrative psychotherapists. They have expanded on Kohut’s categories and have come up with 7 relational needs.

The first is security. We all have a need to feel safe in relationship with others and to feel free from threats of humiliation and shame. It also means that we have a sense that the other won’t attack, engulf or abandon us.

The second is validation. This need is for an unconditional acceptance of our feelings, fantasies and identity by another person. It includes the need to have all our relational needs affirmed and accepted as natural. It gives us a sense of being normal and OK in our own way, and is experienced as an unconditional positive acceptance of who we are.

The third is acceptance by a stable, dependable and protective other person. This is Kohut’s need for idealization: the need to have someone in our lives who we trust and who looks out for us. The degree to which an individual looks to someone and hopes that he or she is reliable, consistent, and dependable is directly proportional to their quest for a sense of internal security.

The fourth is confirmation of personal experience: in other words, a need to find someone who we feel is similar to us. This is Kohut’s need for twinship. It can be incredibly affirming to find someone who we feel shares our view of the world, or who has been through experiences similar to those we have had ourselves.

The fifth is self-definition; The opposite to our need for twinship is our need to feel separate and unique, to be true to ourselves and to be able to show who we really are. Self-definition is the communication of one’s self-chosen identity through the expression of preferences, interests and ideas without humiliation or rejection.

The sixth is the need to have an impact on other people

Impact refers to having an influence that affects the other in some desired way. An individual’s sense of competency in a relationship emerges from agency and being able to influence others – attracting the other’s attention and interest, influencing what may be of interest to the other person, and effecting a change in the other’s emotions or behavior. Being able to influence others means we don’t feel like we are just thin air or completely unimportant to others.

The seventh is the need to give love.  We also have an inbuilt need to give love, which can be expressed through quiet gratitude, thankfulness, giving affection, or doing something for the other person. It is important that these “gifts” are accepted and welcomed, at least in spirit, even if they are not the right thing at the right time for the other person. (Think of a two year old sharing their favourite chocolate cookie with you. Of course the two year old doesn’t know you might not like to eat half a chewed cookie that’s already been melting in his hand. It’s his intention that matters most.) The concept of relational needs is really useful when you’re exploring the questions “What exactly is it that makes me feel loved?” and “What do I want from my partner in our relationship?”

Most people feel drawn to some of the relational needs more than others. This might be explainable when assuming that those are the needs, which are still left over for them from childhood. In other words, people may still be looking for what they didn’t get enough of as kids.

Have a look through the list of relational needs and see what you would like to get in your relationship. Feel free to do this really instinctively, you don’t need to be able to rationally justify why you want a particular thing. In fact, all those needs are ok for us to have as adults. If you know what you want from your partner, think about how you could ask for those needs to be met in some way.

Remember that your partner can’t read your mind.  If you don’t tell him or her they won’t know. It is also really ok that you ask for what you want. As adults you can then negotiate with your partner about how to meet these needs. Some needs will be easily met, some will be impossible to be met by another person, because you need to give yourself something of it too. For example, take protection: The other person won’t be able to look after you emotionally all the time, you need to be able to do that for yourself to some degree.

Some of these needs will be impossible to meet. That’s because they relate to the past, which can’t be changed any more. For example, you may long for your mother to come back and make things ok for you. However, you are an adult now and can never go back to being a child again. 

Once you know what you want, think what your partner may want. Better still, let him or her read through the list and they can point out the ones they are drawn to themselves. It may be very interesting to find out what your partner picks out – perhaps very different ones from you. For example, sexual issues are often a bone of contention. We tend to find that women would like slower and longer sex, with more emotional involvement by their man. Men would like more sex, and for their women to be more excited. What of course is missing in this equation is adequate concern by men for women’s emotional needs, and adequate attention from women for men’s sexual needs. Talk with your partner about this stuff, because once you get the mix right between the two of you it will increase the feel good factor in your relationship dramatically.

Apart from that, remember that your partner isn’t the only person who can meet your needs. Number one to be taken into account must be yourself! Give yourself credit for who you are and what you do well. Really notice when other people initiate contact with you or give you compliments and let those sink in so that it really feels like it is warming your heart. Often people feel deprived, not because they live in a environment where love is scarce, but because they are very good at not letting things in that people give them.

And then there are all the other people round you: Friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances or even the odd stranger with whom you might share a smile. 

Let all the good relationships round you matter to you! You can take the good things people give you fully on board (and you can ignore or not let the bad things hurt so much too).