"Neediness" Doesn't Exist

If you haven’t eaten all day and arrive at your friend’s house at 4pm, what do you do? You can hide your hunger, but it might come out as grouchiness. You can blame your friend for not having guessed that you need to eat. Or, you can say directly that you’re hungry and see whether your friend wants to eat too.

Sounds simple, right? But in our society, we have a weird concept of need. On the one hand, if supply makes something accessible, we think we “need” all kinds of useless commodities. On the other, when it comes to non-physical, complex needs, such as the need for love or encouragement or being seen and understood, we see these as shameful marks of “neediness.”

If you were told your needs are a burden (and we ALL learned this, at some point,) you have to cultivate some corrective perceptions, just as someone near-sighted needs corrective lenses.

The first perception is that your needs are a gift. Your need to be loved gives someone else the opportunity to love. Your need to be encouraged lets someone else be generous. All human connection is built on this implicit understanding.

The second perception is that, on their own, needs don’t create conflict between self and other. If you were shamed for your needs, you might swing wildly between being overly self-reliant, on the one hand, and waiting for a savior/miracle/romantic partner, on the other. The either/or IS the trauma-response. When shame is subtracted, we see that meeting our own needs helps us invite others to help us too.

This is why meditation is so important. People think, “Why should I work on myself when no one helps me?” Because as you see that many of your needs can be met internally by how you think, breathe, and talk to yourself, you aren’t so desperate to go along with bad people and bad solutions. That makes room for good people and good solutions. You deserve that.

Giacomo Ceruti, "Little Beggar Girl and Woman Spinning" (1734)