As always, a warm greeting to all readers. In this monthly article, we dive into the “needs” and how they, connected to feelings, become so relevant for the human being.
Analysis
We could see needs as a compass for our lives. This metaphor can make us better understand and assimilate their importance. I dedicate a brief aside to the distinction between understanding and assimilating. Understanding is the first part of a learning process, something very schematic and rational. The assimilation is the moment in which that understanding becomes automatic, fluid and integrated into the whole. It gives form and meaning to it.
Being in contact with one’s own needs allows us to create “our own goals” by diverting ourselves from realizing in our own life the needs of others. These few lines highlight its usefulness to allow us to be in contact with them as much as possible.
Where can we see the connection between needs and feelings? Basically we can find it by focusing on the fact that there is always a specific need connected to a feeling. Let’s start with the sensations and see briefly what they are like. They are the first signals that we receive from the body about its functioning. In the sensation we find every state of consciousness as produced by an external or internal stimulus to the subject; tactile, visual, sound, sensation of pleasure or pain. Precisely on the basis of our sensations we create our needs (in theory). Evidence “in theory”, as the direct process from sensations to needs can be easily hindered.
Sensations, it is true that they are the first signal we receive from our body, but it is equally true that their listening must be cultivated and maintained over time, and in addition carried out as faithfully as possible. This work takes place from early childhood within our living environment. In it we learn the importance of directing towards ourselves, that pinch of attention that will channel itself precisely into feelings. It is clear, that the fairy tale does not always have a happy ending. When this does not happen, the person begins an uninhabitingprocess of listening to his or her feelings, no longer perceiving the source of his or her feelings. The lack of this generates a qualitative decline in the creation and structuring of one’s own needs. People who are unable to focus on what they want, always being confused and indecisive, can represent what happens when we are disconnected from our own feelings, making it difficult to differentiate from the needs of another person. This concept highlights how a piece of advice given to a person has the side effect of carrying on a need that is not their own, but ours.
Education and the environment of growth, intervene to shape what we feel and need to do. They are not always in line with our needs, but they follow social rules and conventions that we often have to follow too strongly. If this is the case, it will get out of the way of being in touch with personal feelings and needs. Our spontaneity will gradually be lost. It will increase a certain form of malaise and not focus on ourselves. Having this aspect in mind, highlights an important point on which we can work daily in our way of life, that is, staying more and more in touch with our feelings, and from them shape our acquired mental patterns so that they become more and more comfortable for us.
Conclusion
Sensations and needs!
We have everything we need to set our actions in motion and make them as healthy as possible in our lives.
We begin to dedicate different moments of the day to ask ourselves what feelings exist within us. Let’s ask ourselves what we need, based on them so that these two levels can connect more and more.
We carefully observe when, and if our needs are excessively shaped and modified by what may be our own or other people’s dysfunctional patterns, and consequently we prevent this from happening.
Working methodically and in a way that is as playful as possible on all this, can only generate greater harmony with yourself and in different relational contexts.