Reflections :: Owning Our Needs

Owning Our Needs:

Lately, in my work with women, I have been very aware of a theme around our needs.

Identifying needs can be very difficult.  Sociological programs are belief systems that aren’t personal to us, but often are, because of what is considered acceptable or normal, we measure our self worth.  This can lead to a monotonous loss of  vitality, a feeling of numbness or stress over the daily going-ons of life, because the needs that drive and demand us aren’t reflective of our true, actual, internal needs.

Our needs speak to us from our truth.  Needs speak in a quiet voice.  Ignore the voice long enough and it will instead sit in the body, maybe as a mild stir of uneasiness or a plain feeling of bad.     Our needs, and listening to them or not, are part of the base function of being secure.  They are connected to early childhood development on a neurological level!

One of the mature functions of continued development through out life is knowing when a need is essential, and when it is actually a fear-response based on an program connected to society’s influence on us.

The best way I can think to learn the difference is in personal relationships.  Kids, parents, husbands, wives.   I am dating someone who has a biological need–he is very alpha male!!–to be in control of his own choices.  This is part of his true needs, his true nature.  A programmed need of his, as an alpha male, is to receive validation for being a man’s man, and to assume that he deserves this validation.  It can come out as aggressiveness.

One of my programmed needs, which arose from my early family home and which I have played out in life, or society, through my various roles and responsibilities; is to need constant attention from the man in my life.  A biological need for me, part of my nature, is to also have solitude and time alone.

Programs and true needs often conflict!  And we only get to see them when we can gently go to our own selves with unconditional love and understanding of our humanness.

In our case, he doesn’t need a needy woman.  I don’t need the pushiness of an arrogant man.

In my quiet time lately I’ve recognized that I am willing to surrender my panicky feeling of always needing to hear from him.  That’s not a true need, it’s a program, fear-based!  He in turn has shown up more, go figure!  Likewise, he recently mentioned that his pushiness doesn’t feel good because he sees that it alienates me from him.  He hasn’t said as much, but his actions speak and I understand that he’s been letting that part of him go, too.

Learning our true needs is such a vital part of having real vulnerability and connection with one another.  Having programs are such a normal part of our experience, too.

It’s learning the difference that matters.  This is a lifelong goal.

Photo courtesy of Flickr:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/cavanimages/5324379327/