Tending To Your Needs

A common theme in the clients I see is recognizing and tending to their needs. The needs get lost in the urgency of life and in taking care of others. We all need to have healthy ways to recognize, name and take care of our needs by ourselves or with help.

Here’s what I know about needs:

• They are your responsibility. Period. Not your partner’s, not your parents’, not your children’s, you need to learn to take care of yourself and meet your needs with or without help. Asking for getting help to meet your needs (without blame, with precision and without drama) is a skill you practice and learn.
• Your needs can co-exist with the needs of others. In other words, you are allowed to have needs at the same time as others around you.
• Your need for safety and security, and physical nourishment and care come before your need to heal, to unfold emotionally, and to be creative. You first need to care for the animal in you, your physical being the best way you can and make sure that that animal feels nourished, safe and secure. Everything else comes after.
• Your needs, most likely, will never be 100% met. You still will do the best possible care-taking you can at every single day and moment. You wouldn’t leave a little puppy or kitten on the side of the road, hungry. You need to do the same for yourself. And remember: safety and nourished body come first.
• There will be days when your needs will not be met but need to be heard. Your need for rest, renewal, creativity, sensuality, feeling alive, joyful, heard, seen, understood, etc. etc. are all waiting for you to acknowledge them. It is your job to sit down either with yourself or with someone else to name them. Naming a need is your best tool to let the animal in you know, that even though today was tough, you still hear her or him, you still care for her/him and you are here to pick up the pieces tomorrow or whenever you can.