Emotions and Needs

Emotions—such as anger, fear, happiness, and sadness—are an essential part of human life, but they can often be a difficult, unpleasant part of life as well. Emotion is what makes our joyful moments joyful, but they also make us feel grief, rage, despair, and a thousand other things that we may wish we didn’t have to feel. On top of that, they often conflict with our knowledge and our logic, so that we may rationally know one thing is true, but feel the opposite thing is true. What can we do when our emotions are making life more difficult? Can we fight them, or suppress them, or turn them off all together?

The answer is, we can try, but our emotions are a part of us as living beings, and we can’t get rid of them. Nor could we live without them even if we COULD get rid of them. Emotions are a language our body uses to communicate with our conscious minds about what the body needs and wants. Some of these feelings are simple and straightforward—if we feel hungry, it means we need to eat. If we’re tired, we need to rest. But what if what we need is safety? What if we need to feel valued and appreciated? What if what we need is something we can’t have?

Understanding, not Fighting

Living with our emotions means understanding what they’re communicating to us about our needs. For instance, fear is how our body communicates that we don’t feel safe—and fear can come in a whole range of shapes, from mild anxiety to nagging dread to sheer terror. But regardless of the shape it takes, at its core, fear is always about the same thing: something feels dangerous, and we want to get away from it.

Similarly, anger is our body communicating that we feel hurt, or threatened with hurt, and we want it to stop. Grief is our body communicating that something important to us is gone, and we want it back—and since we can’t have it back, we want to be comforted and reassured. The list goes on, and as you may have noticed, the needs our emotions communicate to us are all things that you might expect a baby, or a small child, or an animal, to feel and need.

There’s a reason for that: the parts of us that feel emotions are older and more “primitive” than the parts of us that think and reflect, and they develop earlier in life. This means the needs tend to be more simple and straightforward, and also means that when emotions and knowledge come into conflict, emotions almost always win. Feelings are older and stronger than thoughts, so as much as we may try to make our emotions “submit” to reason, at the end of the day our feelings are likely to have more power over us.

Knowing What We Need

So what can we do when our emotions are causing us pain, or driving us to do things that we logically know aren’t useful or necessary? Rather than trying to “fight” these emotions, it’s important to recognise them for what they are and understand what they’re telling us. Even when our emotions seem illogical, they always exist for a reason, and that reason may have little or nothing to do with the situation in which the situation is arising.

For example, imagine someone who was in a relationship that was making them unhappy, and then the relationship ended. Logically, they might expect to be happier now that it’s over, but instead, they feel grief and sadness. That grief may not be about the relationship that just ended, but rather the person’s need to feel wanted and valued, versus feeling alone and rejected. Even though the relationship wasn’t good, it kept them from feeling alone, and now that it’s over that feeling of having been “chosen” by someone has gone away and won’t come back. That’s what the grief is about: the need to feel valued, and the fear of being alone and unvalued.

Understanding the need underlying the emotion can help the person respond to it. Rather than trying to get back into that unhappy relationship, or running out and immediately starting a new one, that person could spend time finding ways to make themselves feel valued, without relying on another person or a relationship to meet that need. Additionally, this approach removes the conflict between logic and emotion that the person may have been experiencing; it’s perfectly logical that someone would want to feel valued, and therefore logical to feel sad when the relationship which met that need goes away—even if the relationship itself wasn’t good.

Consider other scenarios in which this approach might be applied. For instance, someone who gets excessively angry when they feel ignored, even if they logically know there’s a valid reason for others not to be focused on them at that moment. That anger could be communicating a need to feel important and valid, and the hurt that comes when that need isn’t met. Instead of letting that anger drive them to be unkind to others—or trying to suppress that anger and criticizing themselves for feeling it—the person could understand the need and look for ways of getting that met, by doing things that reinforce their sense of their own validity.

Meeting Our Own Needs

Once we’ve identified the need underlying our emotion, the next step is figuring out how that need can be met. In the examples above, we considered people whose sadness and anger were coming from the need to feel loved and important. How could those people meet those needs, especially if the things they want in those moments—a relationship, or attention—aren’t available?

One big part of meeting your own emotional needs is how you talk to yourself. In the example of the person whose unhappy relationship has ended, they might say to themselves, “Maybe it’s better if I’m just alone forever—every relationship will probably be as bad as that one was.” The person who feels angry when they feel they’re being ignored might say, “I’m such a bad friend—I just want to be the center of attention all the time, I must be really needy and annoying.” But those kinds of self-talk just exacerbate the problem; if you want to be in a relationship, wouldn’t thinking that you should be alone forever just make you sadder? Wouldn’t thinking that you were a bad friend give you more to feel angry about?

Instead, we can learn to talk to ourselves in a way that recognises that we deserve to feel our emotions, even when those emotions are confusing or uncomfortable. (If you’ve read the previous blog entries about Narrative Therapy, you’ll recognise this as “re-authoring”.) We can say “It’s okay to feel sad when I’m alone, because I don’t like being alone. But maybe I can make being alone feel less sad for right now, and in the future I can find a relationship that actually makes me happy.” We can say “It’s okay to feel angry when I’m not getting attention, because that hurts my feelings and my feelings are important. But maybe I can find ways to make myself feel valid even when I’m not getting attention, and not rely on others to give me that feeling.” By talking to ourselves in a way that respects our emotions and our needs, and treats them as things that can be dealt with rather than things that are wrong with us, we give ourselves reason to hope and take steps towards getting our needs met.

The other big part of meeting our needs is actually finding the things that meet them. This could be changes to our environment; for instance, if we need to feel safe, surrounding ourselves with things that comfort and relax us—like soothing music, soft textures, or pleasant scents--could help us find a feeling of safety even when we’re afraid. This could be activities that change how we feel; for instance, if we need to feel lovable and valued, doing things that make us proud of ourselves—like learning a new skill or practicing something we want to be better at—could give us reasons to feel positively about ourselves. This could also be making use of the resources we have available; for instance, if we need to feel heard, talking to a trusted friend or family member, or calling a support line, could give us the chance to share what’s on our mind and have someone say “I understand”.

A Vital Part of Us

Even when emotions are uncomfortable or confusing, they’re a source of important information about what we need in the moment. Understanding and responding to them, instead of fighting or ignoring them, can help us get our needs met and help us be more comfortable with how we feel. Loving ourselves means accepting every part of us, even the uncomfortable parts, and recognising that everything in us is there for a good reason. And take steps towards getting our needs met, once we’ve identified what they are, is a way of treating ourselves with respect and acknowledging that all of our emotions and needs are valid.