How to change your needs
When we talk about needs, we imagine them as sacred and fixed. But just like any aspect of our worldview or identity, they can be changed. If you want.
Once upon a time, when you were very small, you were a blank canvas.
Or rather — your brain was a mass of potential, with all the connections that could possibly be made, available for wiring up as needed.
Like a sculpture forming from an uncarved block of stone, as you experienced the world some of these connections grew stronger and some fell away.
Each experience left its own imprint. Each time someone important to you gave or withdrew their approval or love your small self logged it as an important reference.
Their body language, tone of voice, the words they used and how you related to them were encoded along with how the following interaction unfolded.
Some of these events might have been major traumas, others were more repetitive and persistent messages. They all formed your sense of self and created scripts (like little bits of code in a computer programme) to help you navigate the world.
These beliefs about who you are, what the world is like and how you should think, feel and behave are all there to keep you safe.
Or rather, to give you a perceived sense of safety, because it gave you a brief to work to.
How needs shape our experience
If you weren’t aware by now, ‘needs’ are a way of explaining the basic drivers of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
We often believe other people or events outside of ourselves are to ‘blame’ for our difficult (or enjoyable) experiences. The simple way to see through this is to recognise that depending on the day or time, the same person could say the same thing to you, on two different occasions, and get a different reaction.
When we’re feeling irritated, angry or afraid (for example), while another person’s words or actions might be the trigger, the process that leads to every thought and feeling you experience as a result is entirely our own.
The harsh comment might leave us feeling wounded and we might blame the source of it for being cruel or uncaring, but underneath it could be a need for approval that’s not being met.
We might ask ourselves: why do I need another’s approval? And digging deeper you might notice that you have a need to matter in the world, and that the denial of approval leaves you feeling like you don’t.
So how do we get from a mis-judged comment by a colleague or friend to feeling like we don’t matter in the world?
The answer lies in those early childhood experiences that laid down the foundations for our sense of self, coupled with our basic evolutionary biology.
How we change when we’re triggered
The way we constantly assess and react to others’ words or actions as a measure of ‘Am I OK right now?’ is a leftover function from a time where just surviving day-to-day was not guaranteed.
As nomadic foragers, wild animals, pillaging neighbours or even minor injuries from a quarrel with a family member could quite easily spell death.
So it was essential that we were hyper-vigilant, assessing other people and events as potential threats.
While these threats largely no longer exist, physiologically we have not evolved any further than those days of precarious existence.
This is why a conversation with an irritable colleague, while not representing any real danger is assessed as a mortal threat.
And the only reason we can believe something that can’t physically hurt us will cause us to suffer is because we experienced something similar enough in our earlier development that left an imprint.
So the ‘trigger’ of some ill-judged comment sends us into a ‘triggered state’ where we are reliving our unresolved past experience through the lens of the present.
The feelings we experience are so clear and strong, and the accompanying changes in our body fundamentally affecting our ability to think, so it’s easy to mistake them as objective reality.
This was a critical function of your design if you were trying to evade a deadly predator but it isn’t if you are are trying to finish your presentation to the board and Geoff is being a dick.
How your needs can change
So — our needs are stories. Echoes of the past, played out in the present.
This doesn’t undermine them. Internally they are our reality and trying to ignore or squash them just creates tension, self-denial and lots more unhelpful experiences.
We don’t have to buy into them either.
By believing that they are an inarguable statement about ourselves or what we need from other people, we become powerless to them. We have no option but to react to them or deny them.
This belief that they are fixed removes responsibility and choice from any situation that we find ourselves challenged by, or feel that we’d like to change.
If you need evidence that needs *aren’t* fixed, try and think about a time where you chose to take a different perspective on a problem and found your feelings changed towards it.
There is no aspect of your needs that is any different.
Some may feel more ingrained — personally I still find particular situations (in particular relationships) highly ‘triggering’ and have to work hard to not let my reactions fool me into thinking that ‘this is how it is’.
But after a lot of practice, I can very quickly become aware that my reaction is only loosely connected to the objective reality of the situation, that I have no idea of the motivations or needs of the other person (even if the little voice in my head is convinced that I do) and I don’t *have* to feel this way.
Thousands of years of contemplative practices have been teaching us how to do this — Buddhism, Taosim, even the roots of modern popular religions show us that space and increasing levels of self-awareness (being aware of the existence of a ‘self’) allow us to somehow change our sense of who we are and what it means to be alive in the world.
For those people who don’t practice Buddhism or who find mindfulness leaves them cold, modern scientific research into Neuroplasticity shows very clearly that our brains are malleable well into our later life, and can allow us to change our relationship even to significant childhood trauma.
How to change your needs
People can find this way of looking at needs to be challenging.
This is because your sense of identity is deeply important to some part of you and your needs are a product of that ‘self’.
But just because things like your needs and identity are subjective and can be changed, it doesn’t undermine them.
In fact, life is much better when we simply acknowledge and respect our own and each others’ experience of the world.
AND… if we’re to navigate the world using stories then doesn’t it make sense to tell the most helpful stories that you can?*
So — how? Where do you start?
In order to begin to change our needs, we first have to become increasingly aware that they *are* stories, and hold the reactions they elicit just as lightly.
This starts with learning how to observe what’s happening in your mind and body as you navigate daily life, in the way you might watch a programme on TV.
What are the thoughts that you experience? How do you feel urged to act? What accompanying sensations do you notice in your body?
Don’t fall into the trap of judging and undermining the things that you notice, this is just buying into another story about whether they are right or wrong, good or bad.
And don’t fall into the other trap of trying to analyse the root cause of where these stories originate from.
After six (very useful) years of counselling and therapy I came to realise that this just isn’t possible and can be a sneaky way of trying to find someone to blame (usually your parents), see yourself as a problem to be fixed (which you are not) and/or create another, rigid story about ‘why I am this way’ (and we’ve established that who you are is a flexible and changing thing).
At best I choose to only entertain an idea of ‘why’ I react in a certain way if it helps me differentiate between the situation I find myself in and how I notice myself reacting, and I always remind myself that I’m probably wrong.
Instead the practice of changing your needs is just about making space to watch your own experience with a curious, open mind.
When you feel you can watch and hold your reactive experience, with a clear knowledge that there might be more happening in the present moment, the opportunity you are offered is simple: to choose.
Sitting with those feelings and urges you can start to ask yourself: Is how I’m feeling, and what I’m urged to do as a result, going to help me right now?
How to choose a useful path
So many of our needs are based on an idea that we lack something — that there’s something missing and if only we had it we’d feel a greater sense of safety or ease.
And we’ll usually look to someone or something outside of ourselves to provide it.
- Are you feeling anxious? Noticing a need for certainty? Rewrite your life plan. Again.
- Are you feeling angry? Noticing a need for fairness? Blame Geoff and get the rest of the office on side.
- Are you feeling unsafe? Noticing a need for comfort? Eat three Twixes.
It goes without saying that in most situations none of these give any lasting feeling of safety or ease.
In the past I would have advised people to dig deeper and ask: what would *really* help?
And you probably could find the needs that underpin these feelings and identify a better strategy to get them met.
But this path has a cost — it reaffirms the need and the story that underpins it. You are very welcome to take it, you may have to, regularly.
The other path is also available. The other path is recognising that every one of these needs are a passing story, an echo of your past. That by reacting to them the impact is holding on to that story for a bit longer.
So the question to ask is not: “What do I need?” but perhaps: “Is this helping?”
And if you have a sense that it’s not, you have the opportunity to give it the space and care it needs so that the energy or drive in it subsides just enough.
After that — the choice is yours.
How to live an autonomous life
There was a period of time where, excited by this new discovery, I would tell anyone who would listen that their beliefs (particularly about money) were ‘just stories’.
And because money is a proxy for fundamental needs of security, safety, freedom (etc) I now know why many of them disliked it so much (some of them very, very much).
I was essentially telling them that everything which kept them safe was made-up. This is like telling people that the ground they stand on is actually soggy cardboard and most people imagine that beneath that is some kind of horrible, uncertain world of bubbling lava.
I wasn’t saying ‘You don’t really have to pay your rent or mortgage’ and I wasn’t saying ‘Food will magically appear on your family’s table’.
All I was saying is that if the way you earn money is causing you pain and suffering, which is damaging your health and your relationship with your kids, maybe you could change the beliefs that lead to the needs that drive this behaviour.
Because it’s only about knowing you have the right to choose.
Your needs and beliefs can never be right or wrong, good or bad, but they are always up for debate.
It’s about recognising that they can change and that if they’re not serving you then you have the option to not reinforce them.
In Dr Gabor Maté’s book “When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress”, he points out that a major source of emotional stress that has significant, long-term health impacts is a lack of autonomy.
When we think about autonomy, we imagine it as being dependent on another person or situation.
But as Dr Maté points out, the fundamental source of autonomy for most of us starts internally.
Only by learning how to listen to the voices and feelings that come up as we navigate the world and rather than allow them to be in the driving seat, create an increasing sense of space and choice, can we live an autonomous life.
This is the final chapter of the 2019 version of my ebook Working with Needs — you can buy a copy here where you’ll also find courses and the opportunity for coaching.
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*I am indebted to Charles Davies for his provocation and inspiration, particularly around the idea of telling helpful stories. I urge you to learn more about his work on How to be clear
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