How good are you at asking for what you need directly? Do you often (but almost unconsciously) anticipate your needs will not be met? In fact, how good are you at recognising that you even have a need?
Many of us struggle to attempt to have our needs met in straightforward ways. Here’s why, how and what to do about it…
In our childhoods, it’s unlikely that all our needs were met all of the time. This is appropriate as sometimes children have ‘needs’/wishes it would be unwise to meet all of the time. e.g. can I have another ice cream?
However, in the busy-ness of family life, for one reason or another, our needs will not always arrive in a circumstance where they can be accommodated. Or in worse set-ups, our ‘healthy’ attempts to have our needs met frequently went ignored, punished and/or left unmet because of the vulnerabilities of the significant adults in our childhood. Consequently, some of us developed less-than-helpful strategies for attempting to get our needs met. These can be far from straightforward and often unnecessarily over-complicate and make situations worse.
Consider yourself as a child. If you needed something, what did you do? With what likelihood did you anticipate your needs would be met? What do you think worked best to ensure your needs were met? This might have some link with how you attempt to have your needs met now.
The kind of emotional needs we might not always have had met include, for example: feeling listened to, having what we said taken seriously, having our feelings validated, unconditional positive regard (feeling liked for who we are, not just what we do and don’t do), being able to influence decisions that impact negatively on us, feeling valued and appreciated, getting enough attention and connection, having our boundaries respected, being helped or guided in tricky situations, being kept safe – physically or emotionally etc.
If in our tender years, we had to learn to get our needs met via strategies that were not straightforward, without conscious challenge we are likely to continue using them into adulthood. Some maladaptive strategies for trying to get our needs met or approaches we might have used that dismissed/denied our needs in the expectation/anticipation that they would not be met, include:
- manipulation (doesn’t make you popular!),
- people pleasing (e.g. insincere flattery which usually feels inauthentic to receive and makes you seem untrustworthy),
- playing victim (hoping someone will come to the rescue),
- complaining to those not involved directly (because we feel we can’t be direct with the person we have the ‘issue’ with)
- humour (might work but can trivialise and/or obscure issues),
- rage, verbally attacking and intimidation (I will bully you to meet my needs),
- sulking (hoping someone will notice and then do the emotional labour needed to sort the situation for you),
- persistent ‘nagging’ and being overbearing (often ineffective and unpleasant to be on the end of)
- passive-aggression (rarely works, leaves you resentful and irritates others!),
- dramatic, testing and ‘big’ behaviours (this gains attention but doesn’t always cut to the chase of the issue that needs sorting!)
- martyrdom (‘oh I’ll do it then’ or in the hope of reciprocation and then resentment when there is no reciprocation),
- disengagement/being dismissive/sour grapes (I didn’t want it anyway – a protective measure against disappointment),
- becoming controlling over the things you can control – or think you can control (I will do it my way whatever, be totally self-reliant and not let anyone else have a go! I will meet my own needs regardless of others’ needs and ignore the real issue),
- start micro-managing and driving for perfection with things you can influence (justifying control, self-reliance and helping you feel safe with what you can control when your needs have not been met),
- over-rationalising and intellectualising to validate another’s actions that dismiss your needs.
- pretending ‘it’ doesn’t matter (leaves you feeling resentful).
- becoming defensive, snappy and irritable (not an optimum way of addressing things and can trigger things to escalate).
Many of these ‘methods’ can be used unconsciously when we experience a need we assume will not be met. We assume this, not necessarily based on realistic facts about the situation in front of us, but from the conditioning of past experiences.
As with most things I write about, emotions are key in our unpicking of such issues. When we tune into uncomfortable emotions as they arise and/or spot ourselves behaving in unhelpful ways, instead of simply reacting or letting situations fester, perpetuate or escalate, we can ask ourselves:
and then work out how that need could be addressed. This can be a key part of processing emotions.
Here are some ‘everyday’ examples of not being clear about what you need:
- You come home from work feeling grumpy and start to snap at you partner because they have asked you to help them with something immediately. You could leave it there and stay grumpy or instead, noticing your emotion and behaviour, you could ask yourself, and work out, what your real need is. It might be a need to talk about how difficult your day was and/or take some time out.
- You feel ‘put upon’ at work as your boss has asked you to complete too many tasks and you go along with what’s been requested of you but feel overwhelmed and stressed about it. You complain to others about the situation – feeling somewhat helpless. You could leave it there or you could more usefully ask yourself what your need is and realise that you simply have too much to do and you need your boss to acknowledge this, extend deadlines or perhaps redelegate something.
- You start to mock another person for something they’ve done well because of underlying envy. You could leave it there – festering – or you could realise your underlying need is to feel better about yourself. You focus on the things you can do well and you learn to accept you can’t be good at everything.
- You feel like your achievements at work have been underacknowledged and someone else’s over-acknowledged. You’re starting to resent this but carry on hoping your effort will eventually be noticed. They’re not, so you build further resentment. You realise your need is for your work to be acknowledged so you go directly to your boss and express this need!
Once you work out your need, it becomes a positive problem solving exercise rather than heading into the automatic behaviour (that might have worked for you sometimes as a child). You also need to understand (contrary to what your child-self might have been led to believe) you have a right to have your (reasonable and unharmful-to-others) needs met!
If others are involved, once you have worked out your need, it’s time to get direct. The reason why you feel you can’t express something directly – if that’s the case – and you use other strategies, is usually because your needs were not met directly as a child and you still hold on to the original feeling of this. It’s time to update. There’s no reason to assume your direct expression of need will be received badly, ignored or dismissed and if it is, that’s on the other person!
