How do you know what your needs are?
One of the most common things I’m asked is: “how do you know what your needs are?”
I have spent most of my adult life refining my list of needs [in order to live well and create unbreakable bonds].
You can probably imagine that that journey has involved a lot of trial and error. I spent the first ⅔ of my life severely codependent and totally unaware of what my needs were.
Let’s be clear: it’s not like I was slumming. Particularly when I was alone I was doing pretty well. But the second another person’s energy entered into my field I had no capacity to either identify, express, or meet my own needs anymore.
And I would usually resent the other person for it when that happened (which is how my reactivity presents), because they were my perceived obstacle to no longer living well. I simply did not understand how I could get my needs met with other people around and so I organized my life in such a way that I would sacrifice my needs while with others and ramp up again while alone, all the while never learning how to communicate what mattered for me to the people I cared about most.
To me, needs are not arbitrary things you can apply when it’s convenient and live without when it’s not. They are the juice which makes life vibrant and the marrow of healthy relationships. Expressing them openly — and ensuring they are met — particularly in the company of others, is the cornerstone of building intimacy.
When one partner does not know what their needs are (because they either think they don’t have any of because they expect others to anticipate their needs for them or because they’re sure the need won’t be met anyway so why bother sharing), it inadvertently sucks the energy out of the relationship.
I used to be this energy vampire, folks. There’s no shame in it, but support is definitely available to grow out of this pattern, and it’s definitely a good idea to seek out support.
Codependency does not have to be a deal breaker. The solution is actually really simple: get clear about what is your responsibility to know and take care of.
First and foremost, your nervous system is your responsibility. There are literally no scenarios in healthy adult relationships where this isn’t true. The moment you make someone else responsible (either through overt blame or resentment or disempowered deflation) for how you feel, you have stopped taking responsibility for your nervous system.
This doesn’t mean you need to have a pristine nervous system in order to have intimacy. It just means you need to know what is healthy to bring to the relationship and your partner, and what is essential to bring to professionals outside of the relationship or for you to soothe and manage on your own.
The way to start taking responsibility for your nervous system — the HOW as it were — is to get clear about what your needs are and then put together a strategy to ensure you’re caring for yourself in all the fundamental ways which are important for you. Doing this requires you to build discipline.
There isn’t a shortcut here but I have personally learned that role modeling and lived experience you can then debrief with professionals are vital if you want to accelerate. You can pay attention to how others you admire (or are jealous of!) live and take notes and then try it out for yourself to see if it works for you. If it doesn’t: toss it. If it does: implement it.