When we are born into human society, we commence the process of socialization. As a part of this process, we learn a great deal about what needs are seen as acceptable by those around us and therefore will be met and which needs are seen as unacceptable by those around us and therefore will not be met. Not only that, we learn we should not have those needs. This leads us into a world of pain. A world where we suppress, deny and disown many of our deep needs. And it sets us up to eventually have to be willing to be bad and feel socially unsafe in order to get our needs met. Let’s do a deep dive on this so you can see the main reason it has been so hard to meet your deepest need and what you have to be willing to do about it.
Because we are raised relationally dependent in a society in which our survival depends upon each other and has for thousands of years, the only way for our self to survive is if we are in the good favor of the rest of the social group. The rest of the social group, beginning with our parents when we were young, have to approve of us. They only approve of us if we are “good”. That is if we are being in a way and doing things in a way that is deemed good by the specific individuals around us. There is no real clear distinction amongst humans between doing bad and being bad. Therefore, the single most important thing to the human ego or sense of self is to believe itself to be good.
Your sense of what badness and goodness is, is primarily determined by the social group and specific family that you grew up in. Obviously, this is different from culture to culture and family to family. One culture may consider sexuality a virtue and the other may consider it a sin. One family may consider self-centeredness to be a necessary part of success and servitude to be a weakness. Another family may consider self-centeredness to be an offense worthy of condemnation and servitude to be the ultimate positive character trait. You will spend your life trying to become anything that you associate with goodness and trying to see that in yourself. You will spend your life trying to avoid the things you associate with badness and your mind will actively avoid seeing these traits in yourself. They will become subconscious. You will sup-press, deny and disown them so you can believe yourself to be good. And needs are a big part of this.
We all have needs. However, the process of socialization teaches us that only some of these needs are ok to have. If you grow up in a family that believes that goodness is about giving up your personal goals to be there as a helper to whoever is in need, your need for personal achievement will be seen as bad and wrong. And you will be in a struggle both for and against that need within yourself. Or for example, if you were raised in a society that prides itself on stoicism and is really cold and aloof, the need for warmth and affection will be seen as bad and wrong. Going for that need will make you feel like a bad person or like you are wrong. As a result, you will be in a struggle both for and against that need within yourself. And to go for that need will put you in the position to have to willingly choose to be a bad and wrong person. And this will threaten your sense of social cohesion, which will threaten your sense of survival.
The bottom line is, to go for a need that does not fit in with what the society around you sees as good and right, will make you feel like crap about yourself. And it will threaten your sense of survival. You know… just that. The real kicker is that a need does not go away just because someone or everyone thinks it is bad to have. It also doesn’t just go away if you think it is bad and wrong to need it. You can suppress, deny, oppose and disown it. But it isn’t going to go anywhere. On top of this, the needs we do this to in order to maintain a positive self-concept and to have that sense of cohesion and confluence with the group, become bigger because we are depriving them. It works the same if we have a need for water and we suppress, deny, oppose and disown that need. Our need for water will only intensify and become a desperate need.
Our deepest needs are often the result of trauma we have experienced. And a big part of what creates trauma in general are needs that were not met in a certain experience. Keep in mind that the experience may be the whole of your childhood. For example, we could have experienced a trauma where we were bullied badly. And the deep unmet need is to be defended. Or, we could have gone our whole childhood without our need for autonomy being met. When this is the case, what we need in order to heal, is to have that need met. Your deepest need is almost always the result of trauma. Keep in mind that the deprivation of needs is a trauma in and of itself. And it is almost always one of those no-no needs within your specific social environment… A need that makes you a bad or wrong person if you need it, therefore it causes you to feel bad about yourself. And it threatens your cohesion and confluence with other people. And due to the way the people around you (as well as you yourself) will go against that need, the deprivation of that need grows to the degree that the need becomes very, very, very big. You become desperate for it. While at the same time, opposing it. This makes for one of the most tormenting and biggest internal wars there can be in an internal system.
So that you can get a picture of this, here is an example: Dawn was raised in the United States by two parents who are very liberal in their ideology. They are old enough to have been part of the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The empowerment of women is a deep value and was a really big part of the way they raised dawn. They raised her to be independent, strong, assertive, confident and to believe that she could do anything boys could do and better. Dawn’s mother is the dominant one in the household and she often describes her father as being a minion to her mother’s whims. More like a little boy with a mother, than a man with a wife. Dawn was raised with the ideology that a woman does not need a man. Because of this dynamic, Dawn lacked the experience of masculine ownership. With masculine ownership (the kind that would naturally come from a father relative to his daughter) comes a great many needs. Things like protection and containment and security and caretaking and reassurance and adoration. Dawn lacked all of these needs because she had no masculine ownership in her life. And not only was this traumatizing in and of itself, several traumas went on to happen because of the lack of it. Dawn was raised to believe that to need masculine ownership is pathetic, girly, incompetent, weak, a set up for a man to harm a woman, chosen powerlessness and an affront to the entire women’s rights movement… therefore, a siding with the perpetrator of every woman throughout history that has ever been harmed or oppressed by a man. Just that! Dawns need for masculine ownership has only grown and grown over the years. She is in an internal war where she keeps looking for masculine ownership from men she dates. But at the same time, she fights against her own need for it in many ways. All of this is happening on a subconscious level. For example, she doesn’t ask a man to reassure her when she is afraid. She simply keeps it to herself, muscles up and bulldozes the fear. She lets the men in her life dictate whether they will open doors for her or carry heavy things for her. If they don’t do it, she just does it herself. She follows Instagram pages of couples who have the kind of relationship where the woman gets to be in her femininity and feels extreme envy as she flips through the stories and images. She continues pursuing a high-pressure career as a doctor, (which due to her social upbringing, makes her feel good about herself) regardless of the fact that every day, she feels an amplification of the pain that came as a result of having no masculine ownership. She is shielded. The tissues of her body feel like iron. She has to muscle up every day and be assertive as hell. She struggles with her monthly cycle. There is no space for her femininity. And as a result, she is breaking apart and heading towards a nervous breakdown.
For Dawn to go for this deep need for masculine ownership would threaten her self concept. It would make her feel bad about herself. It would make her feel pathetic, girly, incompetent, weak, set up for a man to harm her, like she is choosing powerlessness and is against the entire women’s rights movement… therefore, like she is siding with the perpetrator of every woman throughout history that has ever been harmed or oppressed by a man. It would also cause her to feel afraid of the social consequences of going for that need, given that her social group believes this need is wrong and bad. But what is Dawn going to do? Is she going to stay stuck in this nightmare forever, with this deepest need becoming more and more desperate?
Self-Concept is what really stands in the way of your deepest need! To get out of this nightmare, you need to acknowledge what your deepest need is. Ideally, you need to do this with all of your needs. But for the sake of this conversation, let’s use your deepest need as a template. Acknowledging this need will make you feel like crap about yourself. And it will make you afraid of social consequences. By getting that need met, you are up against all of your training which the process of socialization has put in place. You need to really question the badness and wrongness of that need. This questioning process is the thing that will lower the red tape around that need and is likely to decrease the feeling that you are a bad person for having that need at least a little bit. You need to release some of that resistance that the part of you that is against that need has. It can be a really good idea to do parts work with the aspect of you that has the need and the aspect of you that is against you having that need. To learn more about how to do this, you can watch my video titled: Parts Work (What Is Parts Work and How to Do It). You need to find people who approve of the need that you have and who will advocate for it and potentially even people who will meet it, if the need is a relational one. And ultimately, you need to make the decision to get that need met… To be an advocate for it and in a direct way. Even if doing so threatens your self-concept. And even if it means a lack of cohesion and confluence with some people in your life.
