I Know You're In There Somewhere (eBook)

Chapter 3

Your Emotional Needs

This book isn’t about rehashing the past. It’s about being honest with yourself about how your past may be impacting the way you show up in the present, and then letting go of its hold over you.

At the end of chapter two, you identified the feeling that’s causing you pain or stress. This feeling is an important clue to help you understand your needs. You have subconscious emotional patterns that started when you were a child to meet your most fundamental needs—to feel connected, safe, and worthy. These three emotional needs drove your actions when you were young—and if you’re honest with yourself, these needs still drive many of your actions.

Our Need to Feel Connected (Loved)

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

—Rumi, 13th century Persian poet

Definition of Connection:

The feeling that we belong to a group and feel close to other people. Someone cares about us and has affection for us.

Human beings are wired to connect with one another. Babies are born dependent on others to survive, and not just for food and shelter. Studies show that babies without a primary, nurturing caregiver have a much higher mortality rate than average infants. This was first proven in the 1940s by Austrian psychoanalyst René Spitz. Spitz compared a group of infants raised in orphanages, with limited human interaction, to a group of infants raised in prison nurseries with regular contact with their mothers and other children. Of the babies raised in the orphanages, 37% died, while there were no deaths in the prison cohort. The babies raised in prison nurseries were physically healthier, grew more quickly, had better motor skills, and scored higher on intelligence tests than the babies who survived in the orphanages. 3

As we grow, love and connection remain crucial to our development and well-being. Studies in adults show that “lack of human connection can be more harmful to your health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure.”4 In his book, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, Matthew D. Lieberman, neuroscientist, and professor in UCLA’s Department of Psychology, writes about the importance of human connection: “Our brains evolved to experience threats to our social connections in much the same way they experience physical pain, by activating the same neural circuitry that causes us to feel pain. The neural link between social and physical pain also ensures that staying socially connected will be a lifelong need.”5

Over the past few decades, people have become more isolated, especially in Western society. We’re less apt to rely on a large extended family, friends, and neighbors for support. We’re taught that we can make it on our own and that it’s good to be self-sufficient. We’re more connected to our phones than to people. We may have hundreds of friends on social media but can go days without really connecting with the people who matter most to us. Because of the way our brains are wired, this leaves us feeling like something’s missing. In his book, From Strength to Strength, Arthur C. Brooks cites an 80-year Harvard study that concluded that happiness comes from loving other human beings.6 It’s that simple.

Even people who have caring friends and families can feel a level of emptiness that leads to anxiety. That’s how Isaac was feeling when he came to me for coaching, although he would never have admitted it to himself at the time. He told me his goal was to improve his leadership skills and make more money. Isaac had recently been promoted to the executive team at the software company where he worked. He had a loving wife, three young children, and a very large network of people he kept in touch with regularly. He was well-liked because he had a generous and open personality and really wanted to help others and make a difference. On paper, he had it all.

I quickly came to sense that Isaac wasn’t being honest with himself about what he was really feeling. He kept repeating the same phrases, “I’m sick and tired of other people’s drama,” and, “All I do for you, and this is what I get?” He was increasingly overwhelmed by his work and family responsibilities, and he was annoyed and resentful of people around him. Instead of addressing his concerns, he kept them bottled up, and his resentment began to consume and exhaust him. When we met, he was about to explode. His relationship with his wife wasn’t where he wanted it to be, and he was having issues with a couple of his work colleagues.

As with most people, Isaac’s biggest strength was also his biggest weakness. He was a pleaser. It made him feel good to help others so he did what he could to be there for them, but if a challenge or disagreement occurred, he avoided it. His inability to honestly communicate his feelings led him to become resentful and overwhelmed. It also frustrated people around him. This pattern wasn't new. Isaac had always had a very close relationship with his father and strived to please him. From a young age, he worked hard to make his father proud by becoming a star athlete and exceptional student. Here is how Isaac explained it: "I never wanted to let my father down so if the chips were down for me in any aspect of my life, I would either ignore, avoid, or mask in order to save face with my father. This was very unhealthy as it seeped into many aspects of my life as an adult."

Isaac’s old pattern was hurting him. Through the coaching process, he learned that when he didn’t allow himself to express his feelings, he wasn’t being real with people. By assuming others would react negatively, he didn’t give them the opportunity to speak their truth. This put a barrier between him and other people, and as a result, he lost countless opportunities to connect on a deeper level. By avoiding tough conversations, Isaac was getting the opposite result of what he wanted most.

Isaac didn’t want to live that way anymore because he valued his relationships more than anything else. He made a commitment to himself that he would work hard to learn how to communicate openly and create boundaries. It felt uncomfortable because he wasn’t used to addressing issues head on and because he was so used to putting himself last. He realized it was OK to have needs and to express those needs to people he cared about. The tough work Isaac did liberated him from his old, limiting patterns, and made him feel better about himself and his relationships.

Isaac’s story demonstrates how masking your emotions can keep you from having deep connections. It’s critical to be honest with yourself and others about your feelings, to be willing to set boundaries, and to say no when your gut is telling you to.

Our Need to Feel Safe/Secure

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

—Pema Chodron, American-Tibetan Buddhist

Definition of Safety:

To feel secure that we won’t suffer physical or emotional pain. No matter what happens, we’ll be OK.

Early humans were vulnerable to harm from a variety of animals, harsh elements, and other humans. Because of those pervasive threats, they had to remain hyper-vigilant. Like our prehistoric ancestors, we have a strong need to feel safe and secure. Our brains and nervous systems evolved to alert us to anything that could cause us physical pain or threaten our well-being, which led to an intricate system of responses, including fight, flight, or freeze.

Some people can never seem to satisfy their need to feel secure. There’s always an underlying fear that they’re not going to have enough or that they’ll lose what they have. Sometimes these fears can become irrational. Many of my clients have everything they need but still obsess over money.

We all have a strong need to feel safe and secure, but if we suffered trauma or neglect, our need for safety may be more pronounced. If our parents were cold, absent, or inattentive, we didn’t get this need met at the level we required. Even if we had parents who loved us and showed it, they may not have met our need for safety as consistently as we needed it. Parents are human, sometimes they feel stressed out and overwhelmed. Sometimes they have money concerns or relationship problems. All this impacted us as children.

When this need is unmet or met in sporadic ways, children will find small ways to make themselves feel secure–by taking control of what they can, by becoming people pleasers, or perfectionists, and by keeping their real feelings to themselves so no one can hurt them.

This need shows up with many of my clients, even the most successful ones. Lina was the Chief Operations Officer at an insurance company when we met. The CEO hired me to coach her because of several complaints he’d received about her. Lina was highly intelligent, and she had years of experience in operations in a variety of industries. She was good at creating processes, and she had a knack for coaching her staff.

She showed up much differently with people outside her...