As a recovering people pleaser, I let my own needs fall to the bottom of every priority list for most of my life.
I can still hear it now: "Ivana is such an attentive student, she encourages other students around her to listen when I am giving a lesson," my third grade teacher proclaimed to my parents at parent-teacher interview night. Little did they know it came from a desperate attempt to keep my teacher's unpredictable nature at bay.
This response (the fawn response) would follow me throughout my teen years and became something I was often praised for. It made me really good at predicting what others would need long before they even knew it themselves.
One day, as a freshly graduated social worker, I asked a client in session what their feelings of isolation might need from them. In my mind, I already had a list of ways I wanted to tend to that feeling for them; comfort, reassurance, exploring where they could find community, but I figured it might not be helpful to jump into problem-solving mode.
As I sat there waiting for them to come up with an answer, I couldn't help feeling a bit hypocritical as I realized I probably couldn't answer that question myself. I had no clue what my needs were or how to determine what they may be.
Admittedly, learning to need in the first place was difficult. Somehow, attending to myself felt like an act of neglect toward others. At times I felt immense guilt, and I won't lie, there were times others were also taken aback by some of the changes I began to make.
As I became more curious and took time to understand myself better I realized just how unmet my needs really were and how my emotions were trying to show me all along. For example, the disappointment I felt when a friend didn’t mirror my over-giving was actually the unmet need of security, or the inferiority I carried was actually a deep need for exploration of my own choice and individuality.
Over time, instead of jumping into people pleaser mode, I would take a minute to understand what I was feeling and then question what I may need before over extending to meet the needs of others around me. To my surprise the more I was attending to my own needs the more I began to show up with genuine love and care, confidence in who I was, and ultimately a better therapist, daughter, friend and partner.
So how do we get here?
It starts with treating our emotions as notifications. Say you got a notification on your phone from your closest friend, asking you to call them because they're having a terrible day. Would you pretend that notification didn't exist? I would bet that if you are reading this, at the very least you would ask if they were okay, and maybe what had contributed to their bad day.
Your body sends you these notifications all day, in an effort to communicate with you. The first step is simply learning to notice them, to name what you're feeling rather than push it away. (This article covers the emotion wheel, which is a helpful tool for exactly this.) That naming matters more than it seems: research on how we process emotion suggests that the more precisely we can identify what's going on inside us, the better we're able to choose how to respond. Vague distress can keep us stuck, while specificity gives us options to take a step forward.
Sometimes a notification is louder than the moment seems to call for and that's usually a sign it's carrying something heavier.
That's the difference between an emotion and a trigger. A trigger is more like an alarm that urgently requests we act in self-protective ways as quickly as possible. It holds past hurt or a long-term need that was never tended to, and it may still produce strong emotions. Think of that disappointment when my friend didn't reciprocate: the sting was bigger than the moment deserved, because it was pressing on an old, long-unmet need to be considered without having to earn it.
When triggers occur, we can pause, identify what emotions are present, and then figure out what needs they are asking us to attend to. This is where the needs wheel comes in!
HOW TO USE THE NEEDS WHEEL:
If the emotion wheel helps us name what we are feeling, the needs wheel helps us translate what the feeling is needing. It can take an uncomfortable emotion and give us important information about the actions we can take to meet the need underneath it.
Use the outermost ring to identify the category that resonates most with you, then work your way inward to the more specific need.
Let's walk through the feeling of disappointment I had when my friend did not mirror my own actions. We may identify two bigger categories of safety and relationship and within these sections live the more specific needs of security and consideration. You may be surprised at what need your emotion calls for once you follow it all the way through.
If we can move from "I feel angry" to "I feel resentful" to "I need to put a boundary in place," then there is an opportunity for some resolution, self-determination, or relational repair to occur. The needs wheel is simply a tool to help you find that specificity, especially in moments when your mind has gone blank and all you know is that something feels off.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Now that you have identified your need, whether it be: Space, Choice, Spontaneity, Authenticity, Passion Etc.
It is time to act. This part is often uncomfortable.
For that disappointment, acting meant telling my friend what I actually needed rather than quietly giving more and hoping she'd notice as well as setting a gentle boundary around my own actions of over-giving. In my case of pleasing people, acting on my needs usually looked like acting in ways opposite to what I was used to. Setting boundaries, asking for help, expressing my emotions, and doing a lot of work on choice, empowerment, and curiosity of my own identity.
Taking action reminds our nervous system that we have autonomy which is a basic psychological need. In other words, identifying your needs is grounded in genuine psychological necessity, and when we all work towards meeting our own psychological needs, we as a community are better off for it. Learning to need, it turns out, isn't neglect of the people we love. It's what finally lets us show up for them as our most authentic selves.