12. Emotional needs being met is a full time job for each of us
Hi my sweet Bud. Aunt JD on the prowl to cultivate curiosity about how to be authentic. Today we’re taking a look under the microscope about our emotional needs and how they affect our daily lives. Let’s get to our question of the day.
Today’s Question:
Is there ever a time that we’re not trying to get our emotional needs met?
No, and that’s the way it’s suppose to be. It’s how we go about attempting to get our needs met that can go so badly for us. Many will want to push back against this by proclaiming I’m always trying to meet other people’s needs! I barely have time for my own. I know it feels that way. It has felt that way to me too until I realized that my People Pleaser, who believes we have to meet other’s needs to even have a chance at getting our own met, is really more self-centered than I originally imagined.
Our People pleaser is the defensive strategy that most of us have been taught to spend the most time in. It’s job is to give us value and lovability by transacting with others for it because it wasn’t taught how to feel these experiences internally. Our Essence authenticity gives us value and makes us lovable because it is our inherent inner goodness. If our caretaker’s didn’t get their Essence qualities reflected back to them as a child they wouldn’t have known how to do it for us. The place where this went south in most FOOs (family of origin) was with feelings. Three feelings especially: sadness, fear, and anger. If your feelings didn’t get Validated as a child, you would have misinterpreted this to mean that your feelings were not valuable or lovable. As a child we still believe our feelings are who we are so if they don’t get Validated it feels that who we are isn’t valued.
Validation means worthy of value. When we don’t feel internally as if our experience is valuable, we learn to be a People Pleaser who gleans it’s value from being how other people need us to be so they are more comfortable with us and we can get their approval that we are worthy of their interest, love, and value. This doesn’t sound very authentic does it? It’s not, and yet this is the version of us that we spend most of our time in. Our People Pleasers are trying to get our needs for worth, love, and value through external methods instead of internal trusting and knowing. No matter how much we’re doing for other people, as long as we’re in People Pleaser, we are trying to get our own needs met under every kind act.
Take a moment to choose to feel some compassion for your People Pleaser. You don’t want to get rid of it. It has authenticity inside of it and great skills we can use within our Essence. You want to teach your People Pleaser how to be authentic instead of judging it as right or wrong. Judging it requires your Protective defensive strategies to constrict against your People Pleaser instead of loving it. Your People Pleaser, like all the other parts of you that don’t know how to be authentic, simply need to be met with Essence instead of a defensive strategy in order to transform.
I’m realizing just how much time and energy each us spends trying to get our emotional needs met everyday. Emotional needs like feeling capable, feeling supported, feeling motivated, and feeling connected. These needs often went unmet for us in our kiddohoods. Whenever our caretakers contracted their Essencey energy of openness, flexibility, and compassion, into fear-based defenses of judgment, blame, and being right, we misinterpreted their contraction away from their loving energy as meaning something about our worthiness of receiving loving energy in that moment. It felt like disapproval of who we were. It wasn’t. It was them tightening into their defensive structure because of a perception they had that their needs weren’t as important as someone else’s.
When someone unconsciously gets activated into believing that their needs don’t matter as much as someone else’s needs, they feel like a victim and deploy defensive maneuvers to get their needs met. This is inevitably going to happen between parent and child. Since most of us got the training that only one of us gets to get their needs met but not both, we unconsciously react in victim powerlessness instead of trusting our Essence. Our Essence, our authenticity-packed resources inside, view what’s happening through both/ands: Okay this is happening and it’s not what I wanted to happen. How can I still get what I want. In terms of emotional needs this view would be: Okay here’s your need. Here’s my need. They are different in this instance. How can we both get our needs met? Check out the other posts in this series about either/ors and both/ands to explore more about these two different aspects of us. They require us to have two different versions of us inside. Only one of them is our authenticity, the other is our trained-in fear.
We’ve all been trained to slip into victim powerlessness about unmet needs through our FOOs and through our Unconscious Procedural Manuals that hide these strategies from our conscious awareness. This is why many people can go there whole lives doing harm with their defensive strategies and never realize it. Most people don’t want to cause harm to others. Most want to connect and create communities where people trust each other to consider each other’s needs.
I’m putting together how we all are trying to get our needs met defensively in one of two ways: We’re either trying to control our partners and our environments to get them to see our value and lovability or we’re trying to control ourselves and make ourselves more lovable and valuable. Some of us do both. Take a moment to view this moment through your curiosity. Be curious about how much time and energy you have put into getting your needs met in these ways. Your irreproducible life force being funneled into defensive strategies instead of Essence. Your authenticity swallowed up in your fears that you or the environment have to be different in order for you to feel loved or be valued.
Notice any feelings that come up about this unconscious training we received and didn’t know we had. We’re exploring what kept you from thriving authentically when no one meant for you to not thrive authentically. It’s going to bring up some feelings. Meet your feelings with Essence so your feelings can have a new experience of being Validated as they arise instead of being met with defensive strategies. Step outside of the body sensations of these feelings and recognize them as past pain, not an evaluation of whether you’re lovable or valuable in this moment.
Taking a moment to notice your body sensations of feelings is one of the most authentic actions you can take for yourself and your authenticity. It’s how you regulate your emotional system and your nervous system (the part of you that perceives threats). It’s how you love yourself. The act of noticing your body sensations activates the part of your brain that can connect with your Essence qualities inside. That’s what allows you to feel safe and in control while you’re feeling your feelings. Thinking about your feelings or evaluating them as good or bad, positive or negative, turns off this part of your brain which can send you into feeling out of control or incapable whenever you are feeling your feelings. This latter system seems to be the system that we were all taught. No wonder we don’t want to feel our feelings. Now, you know there’s another way to be with your feelings. One that transforms them instantaneously. Start teaching yourself to meet your feelings with Essence and you will be surprised at how powerful you can feel right while you are feeling vulnerable feelings. Yes, Aunt JD said it here. You can learn to feel empowered internally while your feeling very vulnerable feelings.
Remember sweet pea, we’re exploring these important versions of ourselves in order to know ourselves more deeply. We can’t do it all here, but we can activate the curious and compassionate parts of your mind and body about yourself. Look within through a loving and kindness lens and it may surprise you what innocent and vulnerable part of you looks back at you. These parts of you need your guidance about how to do things differently internally in order to transform back into their original authenticity. There’s more to learn and discover. Set an intention with yourself to practice being mindfully aware of these different aspects of you inside throughout your day. Set reminders. Make association that remind you, like every time I think about myself, I will double check to see if I’m thinking of myself through and Essencey lens or a fear-based defensive lens.
