Why Is It So Hard to Ask for What You Need?

I think, for me, the big shocker was: there is such a thing as Needs and I have them.

For as long as I can remember, the way I dealt with what I now realize were arising needs was to get “strong” and overcome them. Sacrifice was always the name of the game, and, to be honest, I thought I was pretty good at it. I quit eating meat when I was 18 years old. I quit smoking and, before that, I had smoked a pack a day. I could do sacrifice. I considered it a skill.

So when something wasn’t working out quite right in a relationship, or when I was crying because the baby’s needs had taken up every last cubic centimeter of space in my life, I buckled up and I “overcame” it. I powered through, I guess you could say. I thought I was good at it.

When, in therapy, I started to learn that there was this thing called Needs, and they were actually very important, and that I was (gasp) Allowed to have them… it blew my mind. But I still wasn’t quite sure what they were or, much less, how to get.them.met.

So, step 2 was: Identifying my Needs.

This was actually tricky and it took me many months. I recognized the nebulous feeling inside when something wasn’t “right”, but my upbringing told me to ignore that feeling, push past it, not listen to it! Even though my therapist gave me words, like a multiple choice quiz - Validation, Empathy, Understanding -, putting those words to the “off” feelings inside was a challenge. “What did you need in that moment?”, she would ask, after I had recounted a situation. “Mmmm, I’m not sure.”

In the area of Identifying My Needs, I feel like meditation made all the difference. Whether it was iRest Nidra or Tara Brach’s mindfulness meditation, these practices all helped me to create an internal pause after the feeling. And then, over time, I was less and less afraid to spend time examining that feeling, listening to it rather than trying to move past it in a rush. And this was a game-changer. I am no longer afraid of what lies beneath the surface, of my feelings, or of myself, really.

But still. Now I knew Needs existed, I knew I was Allowed to have them, and sometimes I even knew what they were! However, when I tried to get them met, especially by reaching out to my spouse, I tended to fall flat on my face. It felt better than ignoring them, but it was frustrating, as you can imagine.

So then I read a book that changed my life. It’s called The Dance of Anger, by Harriet Lerner, and it is a huge bestseller that I had never heard of until I heard her on Brené Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us. Thank you, Brené.

Here is quote from The Dance of Anger, to give you a taste:

“Anger is inevitable when our lives consist of giving in and going along; when we assume responsibility for other people’s feelings and reactions; when we relinquish our primary responsibility to proceed with our own growth and ensure the quality of our own lives; when we behave as if having a relationship is more important than having a self.”

There were two ideas in this book that blew my mind and changed my life. It was the balance between “you overfunction when you take responsibility for other people’s feelings and reactions” and “you underfunction when you don’t take ownership of your OWN feelings and what to do about them.”

I still struggle (but less) with the first: the feeling responsible for how other people feel or react in response to me. But I embraced the second. I saw, instantly, that I had been wanting my partner to notice what I needed and then to offer it to me, even though I myself didn’t know what I needed sometimes. I wanted him to do my work for me. I wanted to be saved.

This post is long enough and I still have a lot more to say, so sign up or stay tuned for next week, when I will post about How to Save Yourself (With Help From Other People).