About: Separating real needs from false demands

Every child has real needs—for good feelings, attention, affection and appreciation of its uniqueness. Every child also longs to be loved, cared for and accepted completely.

Since parents are humans with faults of their own, most cannot give love maturely. They certainly cannot give 100% devotion to a child, as it desires.

So in every little life, there will be the pain of having unmet needs.

This pain will come out as anger toward the ones the child loves most, which often results in feelings of guilt. When this pain is resisted, these unfelt feelings become stuck in our beings and in our bodies.

Then, as a person grows older, these once-real-needs turn into false needs. Because what was a real need for the child is no longer a real need for an adult.

A mature adult is capable of tolerating frustration, of delaying gratification, and of having genuine good feelings, even if they are not liked by everyone.

For the immature adult, then, these false needs turn into demands: to always be loved, to never be hurt, and to make others be responsible for us and our feelings of well-being.

For an adult, however, getting fulfillment this way is simply not possible. Even if it came to us, it could not provide the happiness we long for.

Because this is now an inside job.

We must come to see that we are the one who can now fulfill our needs.

Lost in a maze of unmet needs

The dissatisfaction that results from lack of gratification leads to the pain of frustration. But when we are in an immature state, we cannot tolerate this.

The tragedy is that this combination of lack of gratification and frustration seems to confirm that we were wrong to even have needs.

We then defend against this pain, using habitual, unconscious strategies that cause us to act against our own best interest. The result? We starve the now-buried-real-needs even more.

With part of us disapproving of even having any needs, we repress our needs further. But by saying no to our real needs, we blindly disconnect ourselves from ourselves. This creates a feeling of urgency.

Urgency is always a blinking light that there is something unconscious that needs to be surfaced. Instead, we often mistake urgency for “proof” of how much we want what we want—which is often to receive 100% love and to be cared for by another.

Our inability to relinquish these false needs creates self-contempt. We are simply not able to tolerate the frustration of “not having.”

As such, we cannot love and accept ourselves, which leads to lack of self-confidence along with more demand for fulfillment from others.

And we are back where we started, but more lost in a maze of confusion, demands, buried longings and unmet needs.

Separating real from false needs

The good news is that there is a way out. It is through the doorway of awareness. At first, we will only see this vicious circle playing out in hindsight. Gradually, we will come to see it playing out in the moment.

That is when we can make another choice.

If we have not fully experienced our past, we must attract similar experiences later in life. Then, when a hurt, criticism or frustration arises, we need to become aware of the strong emotional reaction taking place in us.

Next, we must become willing to express our unexperienced residual feelings.

It can also help to bring reason to our emotions by asking ourselves: Is it true that I must perish because I have endured pain? How much am I really hurt by this experience that I believe hurts me?

What are real, healthy adult needs?

In relationship

• Love
• Companionship
• Harmony
• Sexual pleasure

Within ourselves

• Self-expression
• Self-confidence
• Self-respect
• Independence

In life

• Success
• Happiness
• Fulfillment
• Spiritual growth

We need to see how our misconceptions about life color our perceptions about others. Such images contribute to the way we show up in life, making demands on others that can never be fulfilled. These include:

• Always needing to be loved and accepted.
• Needing life to never hurt us.
• Being dependent on others for good feelings.

To experience fulfillment of our real needs, there must be a conscious yes to less-than-perfect fulfillment. We need to come into reality, seeing that actual fulfillment may not be perfect, but it is better than childish fantasy.

We will come to see that both giving love and receiving love are two sides of the same coin, and that one cannot survive without the other.

We must also learn to relinquish—to be able to wait, to give something up for now—and to be able to tolerate that frustration. Being able to do this creates strength, self-confidence and healthy self-respect, all of which are signs of maturity.

These are needed to give up false needs.

As children, we are dependent on our parents. But as we mature, we need to learn to stand on our own. Otherwise, we grow up but remain emotionally dependent on something or someone other than oneself.

This creates self-alienation.

In truth, our ability to experience pleasure and peace does not depend on others.

It is denial of our original pain that creates suffering. Anxiety disappears when we look within for the cause of suffering.

This is what it means to take on self-responsibility.

“Do not abandon the longing that comes from the sense that your life could be much more, that you could live without painful tortured confusions, and function on a level of inner resilience, contentment and security.

It is a state of experiencing and expressing deep feelings and blissful pleasure, where you are capable of meeting life without fear because you no longer fear yourself.”

– Pathwork Lecture #204

Learn more in Finding Gold, Chapter 5: Self-alienation and the way back to the Real Self

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