All of your needs need to be met.
But it’s really hard to be able to figure out what you need when you’ve never gotten it.
That’s why it’s absolutely imperative for you to receive the objective reflection that your emotions are trying to communicate to you all the time: they show you exactly what is missing, no matter how opposing your reflecting experiences (how others reacted to your emotions) may have been in your reality.
The emotions that are created to communicate to you your unmet needs are absolutely precise. It’s simple: if you feel it, it’s accurate.
Problems have arisen only because you’ve been taught to discredit your emotions and to distrust their healthy and necessary reflections.
Another obstacle to discovering what your needs are is the conditioned belief that your needs have to first be approved by others in order for them to be valid.
Sometimes people go towards complete disowning of such needs in order to cope; they separate from the needs that other people didn’t find acceptable.
However some of those needs do need to be met directly by others and that of course produces a problem.
The good news is that whether a specific person is willing or able to comprehend, validate and meet your needs is irrelevant.
Because you can still listen to and allow yourself your needs and then honor them by taking each need to another, appropriate person (one that wants to and can meet them!).
The mistaken belief we’re accustomed to is that we must fight for the right to have our needs, usually against one person-which mirrors one or both our parents, or to invalidate those needs altogether.
It really is about fully honouring different needs, regardless of who’s in agreement rather than automatically complying to what we’ve been conditioned to allow as appropriate.
Another block is that we’ve learned that it’s “selfish” to insist to get our needs satisfied when others disagree with them.
But it’s not only not selfish, it’s actually beneficial for them too!
The needs others resist in us are the needs they resist in themselves.
So in pushing for our needs, we aren’t actually competing against theirs, we’re forcing both to come to the surface.
This is why it’s usually confrontational to experience this seeming clashing of needs, because the way the other’s been forced to disconnect/deny their needs is the way they’re going to fight against yours.
So it seems like there is a conflict, when in fact it’s the same unmet need in both that’s aching in unfulfillment.
The confusion we usually have around this is also due to the fact that repression of the need manifests in similarly opposing ways, so again it looks like a conflict, an opposition, when in fact the root is the same.
Here’s how this works: The one side of the coin shows the obvious denial of the need (self-sacrificing/co-dependent/rescuer mode) and the other is the entirely superficial glorification of the same need (narcissistic mode).
But the second side doesn’t actually satisfy the need itself either! It is simply a loud declaration for the need (in an effort to justify it), but without actually managing to receive the thing truly needed.
So, in essence, both sides of the coin still have the need unmet.
For example, if we’re talking about the need to be seen, the first side of the coin will look like humility, hiding, egolessness, while the other side will look like an over-zealous display of their image.
But the real need in both parties in this case is to be seen for who they are.
So while the first obviously does not get it -while secretly hoping to get to it through the never-ending path of being “good” towards others first-, the second one also does not get seen!
Only their exaggerated facade gets the attention and none of their real experiences and feelings get the nourishing witnessing they’re so desperately fighting for.
Worse, they’re also living with the fear and burden of having to prove and maintain that same facade, which makes them feel removed from who they really are, and that adds even more to the distance of the experience they need, that of being seen.
It is only due to the convincing of this type of narcissistic facade that we’ve learned we’re not getting our needs met “because of the other’s needs”.
Because part of the narcissistic facade itself is the illusion that they’re getting what they need (otherwise they feel unworthy/failed etc).
So we don’t actually need to fight the “narcissistic” elements in others in order to assure we get our needs met, because there really is no competition. Nobody is getting their needs met that way anyway!
We simply need to get what the need is and understand that facilitating others’ ACTUAL needs is automatically opening the door to us facilitating ours too!
Here be careful though not to commit to “cover-up needs”. It is imperative to find the actual, core needs.
Both people are hoping for the same need through their dysfunctional coping mechanisms, so don’t fall into the trap of meeting any needs just because they’re needs!
Meeting needs without a filter (usually out of obligation) traps you in eternally offering energy for the “cover-up need”- such as having to constantly give superficial attention for something “impressive”/appealing about the facade, rather than actually seeing the truth of the being behind the facade.
If you have a tendency to fall for “cover-up needs”, it is highly likely that you are invalidating your feelings about your underlying core needs too:
You cannot bear to see others suffer the way you are from this unmet need, so you get trapped in accidentally enabling others because you aren’t owning your negative feeling from your unmet need directly.
You’re trying to “save” the other person from the pain, but you should both be following your negative feelings towards actually meeting your underlying need.
You can use either your feelings or the other’s – it may be easier to notice feelings/unmet needs in others- to uncover your actual needs and then directly apply your energy on meeting the real need for both (if the other is open to communication) or simply love yourself by taking your valid need to somebody who’s actually available and happy to meet it.
All of your needs are meant to be met.