Take a moment: what needs aren’t being met?
There’s something special about the unusual, unexpected and even damn right challenging circumstances that the universe can throw at us. In such times it’s all too easy to focus on the circumstances and not take an elevated look for and at ourselves.
For at least a week (maybe more, who knows) I’m going to be sharing a series of “Take a moment” posts. These are designed to help you pause and reflect, and see the breakdowns for what they are, and breakthroughs you might want to make in your life.
Today, we’re thinking about understanding your needs.
We know our fundamental needs:
air
water
food
sleep
shelter
And we tend to think that we’re good at being in touch with our needs, even the more sophisticated ones as we climb Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (love, esteem, fulfilment, and so on).
And yet our behaviours, our triggers, our irritations, our predictable patterns, are often a sign of an unmet need. But we can be so focused on the external trigger that we rarely pause to connect our reaction to our internal unmet need.
Panic, anxiety, sadness, upset, anger, irritation, frustration… they’re all signs of unmet needs. But how often when these come up, do you focus your attention on the trigger, instead of what your response is telling you about you?
Right now as I write, the world is experiencing something pretty unusual by way of a global pandemic. We might be experiencing:
Panic, fearing that we or a loved one is going to sick and/or die
Anger or frustration at others’ behaviour (“how can they be so selfish to buy so much toilet paper”, “why are they still going out partying when we’ve been told to stay home”)
Frustration (“why aren’t the politicians doing more”).
Our adult logical selves have us often look outwardly to the triggers of our emotions and focus on those. We want to fix other people’s selfishness, change our leaders, heal our loved ones or protect them before they even start to cough. It’s all “out there”.
But what about what’s really “in here”?
Last year I started some work on myself to look at my behaviours in a given situation: dating anxiety. My anxiety had me focus on the “out there”: wanting dates and potential partners to change, to behave differently, to “be better”. And as the anxiety got worse I wanted to control that too: “why can’t you just stop it, Tracy? Just turn it off and feel something different. Let’s think of all the ways that we can fix this thing and be better.”
It was exhausting.
And then I accessed a new way of being in those heightened moments. It boiled down to reaching out to my inner child - who I call “little”- and literally asking them “hey what’s going on with you? What do you need, little?”
The answers that came from “little” or my inner child gave me access to my unmet needs that were often nothing really to do with the other person, or what was going on “out there”.
Little would tell me:
I’m scared
I don’t feel safe
I’m finding it hard to trust
I need to know I’m liked and loved
I need to know that I’m okay.
From there I could access new structures for getting those needs met instead of trying to fix everything else around me.
What do you see in this for yourself?
Especially during these uncertain times of panic and fear, what behaviours are showing up for you? What’s triggering you? What are you focusing on “out there”? And what might really be going on “in here”?
There might be no better time to start getting in touch with your own inner needs and getting supported in having them met. So, take a moment…
Get supported in having your needs met
Book a free sample coaching session with Tracy to explore your needs and how to get them better supported. Together, we’ll consider the possibility of how life might look if those needs were being met.