Getting our needs met

I had never even heard of the concept of “getting our needs met” until the round of psychotherapy I did in Europe in 2014-2015. 

Of course, I had an instinctive understanding of getting my needs met and to some extent did it, and had always done it or tried to do it, like we all do, as human beings, as animals, as living creatures. But the idea that “getting our needs met” is a key aspect in our well-being and our functioning in the world and our interactions with others — that “getting our need met”, or not, really affects all aspects of our lives and has deep impacts on our close/intimate relationships and our professional success/effectiveness — this was all new to me until 2014. 

Ever since, though, it’s been a guideline, and even a life-line, for many of my important decisions and choices. 

I realize that a lot of my “life wanderings” have been driven by my seeking environments that would allow me to get my needs covered better, more fully. I have changed countries and jobs and professional sectors altogether, and even relationships, to try and get closer to a “place” (geographical location, professional environment, relationship styles) that fits my needs better. And my feeling so much better here in Colorado than I did in California basically boils down to the fact that my needs get met more wholly here (as I felt better in California than in most European places because my needs were getting covered better). 

I think that finding ways to get my needs covered in a more rounded and healthy way has been so tricky for me for two main reasons. On the one hand, because I wasn’t taught to think, or feel, in these terms — I discovered this “viewpoint” in psychotherapy in 2014, as an adult. On the other, because my needs are usually very different, or even opposite, from the “mainstream” or conventions. They’ve always been different in many ways: I’ve always desired and sought different ways of being close, intimate, romantic with people, instinctively refusing the heterosexual-monogamic normative ever since being a teenager; I’ve always believed in the importance of a “chosen family” and sought that vs/over the “biological family”; I’ve always been non-binary/trans, often feeling different from how the world saw me or wanted me to be; I often wanted or needed to behave differently from how I was taught (although I often abided and “behaved myself”). 

Getting my needs met better is making me into a “better” person: it’s allowing me to be kinder, more forgiving, more understanding, more loving even; it’s allowing me to have the bandwidth, i.e. the mental and emotional energy, to do some activism, thus trying to actively improve some aspects of the world around me and beyond me; it’s allowing me to connect with people in a more healthy way. Vice versa, when I wasn’t getting some very important needs met, it led to very unhealthy, toxic, and even dangerous situations, especially in the intra-personal sphere.

I remember distinctly how “good” and much more “flexible” I felt when I got to California, leaving Europe several years ago: all of a sudden, so many toxic burdens and constraints had been lifted or severed, allowing me to have emotional and mental energy for so much more and be “nicer” to the people, the world, around me.

Now, I’m getting the same feeling again, here in Colorado, compared to California. There was some toxicity in my life there coming from unmet needs, and that toxicity has been washed away — or is in the process of being washed away — allowing me to be happier and more whole within myself and thus give more, in a healthier way, to the world around me.