How I Stopped Being Needy
One of the subsets of desires that will influence your emotional well-being is needs/obligations. They can have a deep and pervasive effect because if you don’t manage them then they end up controlling you and determining how you feel about particular events and results. Through an explanation of why this is the case and how you can overcome them you will maintain a better control of your emotions and will thus act and live better.
Needs are desires that require fulfillment by someone or something else and obligations are desires that are imposed upon us by someone or something else. Needs and obligations force upon us set-points against which we judge our results and which, by default, determine whether we feel good or bad. In the event of those set-points being entirely impossible, or frequently impossible, for us to fulfill we will end up generating a stream of negative emotions that over time can have a very pervasive and unpleasant affect on how we feel and how we behave.
Common needs are as follows (and common obligations are the reverse - when other people force their needs upon us):
- A need for approval
- A need for others to show love
- A need to meet the expectations of others
- A need for security
- A need for fairness
- A need for others to take responsibility for us
- A need for others to follow rules
- A need to be right
The antidote for these things is not to be against them but to be for something else. In this case instead of allowing those set-point desires to be dictated by other people or things you must take those desires into your own control. You must take responsibility for deciding what you will aim to fulfill or not.
A Personal Example
For example, when I was younger I had a great need for approval and as a result I became a plaything to bullies and people that would manipulate me to their own ends. You may have experienced the effect of coming across someone with a lot of pent up emotions who downloads them upon you as a way of getting rid of them in the moment. I had that almost all of the time and predominantly because I kept seeking approval from people. Even worse I would respond as if I was the cause of their original angst and I would seek to assuage them and pander to them. Boy! What a sucker I was, but I had no real idea what was going on. My need for approval ended up corrupting me as I sought to do things that I didn’t like doing but that made other people at least accept me, even if they didn’t approve of me. This was a continuing problem as I unwittingly made myself a cooperative victim.
After reading Stephen Covey’s book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” I got a better understanding of personal responsibility and how it impacted upon a person’s ability to make personal choices about how to live life, rather than responding to events all of the time. I decided to get real about these situations where I allowed myself to be manipulated. I recognized that if I met someone in a bad mood and I had done nothing to cause that reaction then I was not responsible for their feelings. I decided that I would refuse to let them blow off steam over me. I took the step of deciding upon my own code of conduct rather than let it be set by other people, who often had conflicting needs. Part of that code was that I would never act intentionally bad to someone. In that way if another person felt bad then it was not my doing. I also made the provision that if I ever broke that rule and caused upset to another person then I would apologize and (where appropriate) resolve not to do that again.
Without knowing it at that time, I had gotten to the root cause of the problem, eliminated as much of it as I could and carefully managed the remaining elements. The result was truly miraculous. The misery caused by me allowing myself to be manipulated vanished practically immediately (this is always the result of eliminating the root cause of a problem - the symptom vanishes and the respondent behaviors are no longer needed, but I didn’t know that at that time). When I came across upset people I would never respond to their efforts to transfer emotion. I would make sure that they remained responsible for their feelings, such as by saying, “That’s quite a problem you have,” or “What happened to upset you so much? Why don’t you do something about it?” I made it clear that they were on their own with this one.
How You Can Do The Same
In order for you to negate the effects of needs and obligations you have to take personal responsibility for what desires in life you will aspire to meet or not. If you continuously feel manipulated by people an events around you, then sit down with a pen and paper and work out the underlying desire that you want to have fulfilled. When you have done this next figure out and set the standard, or code, of how you will judge whether you have fulfilled something or not and how you will feel about that.
For example, if you feel a need to be loved then recognize that you will rarely be happy because you have wait for others to give it to you (if that ever happens at all). Instead work out what acts you can take for yourself and for other people that you can control and through which you will feel love. It might not be exactly what you want at this stage but it’s a step in the right direction and it builds a foundation that you can rest upon. In the meantime, you can keep on the lookout for love, or approval, or whatever, but if it’s not happening for you then you don’t feel desperate as you already experience some of that through your own doing. If it comes then great, accept it and revel in it but your world won’t collapse if it disappears as suddenly as it arrived.
Accept your reality and accept yourself as things stand. Don’t depend upon others for solutions or satisfaction, instead accept and take personal responsibility for fulfilling your desires as far as you reasonably can. This will put you in command of your desires and hence your emotional states. This has the added benefit of making you pragmatic because you start to look out for what you personally can do to get what you want. It makes you more resilient to the inevitable setbacks that will come along the way because you accept that making any advance and getting what you want comes down to you.
You might encounter some initial resistance from people around you who enjoyed the benefits of your dependency upon them or vice versa but stick with it. As you trust in yourself more you will develop more competence to deliver the results that you want. From that will come confidence and resilience. You will grow as a person and pretty soon people will be admiring you for your inherent strengths and that’s the best way to attract good people into your life.
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[Photo by Meytoh]
#1 - Permalink Chris March 13th, 2008 at 1:22 pmThanks Nick for such an insightful article!
Your blog is starting to have a lot of content! This one of the best posts, IMO.
I’ve discovered that some needs stem off of another need. For example, the need for agreement of what one says, I think, stems off of the need for approval or acceptance as a person. What do you think?
#2 - Permalink admin March 13th, 2008 at 4:59 pmChris,
To be honest, I haven’t thought in-depth about possible direct relationships between needs. I was more interested in understanding the mechanism involved as a way to remove their negative effects, where possible. There probably exist crossovers and interrelationships. For example, and using the example you gave, if you decided that by your standards (set-point desire) it is not necessary for everyone to agree with you in order for you to feel good but then found that you still feel bad if someone disagrees with you then perhaps another need (or expectation) is influencing how you interpret whether you got the result that you wanted or not. Sometimes we have a multitude of expectations that don’t become clear until we succeed at something but then still don’t feel good about it. If you keep working at it then it should prove possible to unravel all of the desires surrounding something or some event until you get a full understanding of what influences how you feel about it and what you can do to change those feelings if you don’t like them.
#3 - Permalink admin March 13th, 2008 at 5:04 pmBy the way, thanks for the welcome comment - I always enjoy getting feedback. I’ve put a lot of effort into developing good and useful content. I wish I could say the same about developing traffic! Currently I’m deep into writing an e-book about overcoming procrastination and the flip side, replacing it with high-personal productivity. When that’s done I’ll focus a whole lot more on spreading the word about this site. Thanks for your continued support!
#4 - Permalink AnnMarie Peterlin March 15th, 2008 at 8:29 amI see both aspects as valid points (Chris and Nick)– This level of self-reflection takes a lot of emotional maturity, and thanks to Nick for articulating the process. I ask myself, once I set these higher-level emotional constructs into movement within myself how to I help another person, say my spouse or my child, to mature to this level of self-reflection? Maybe each person has to achieve this on their own? Any thoughts?
#5 - Permalink admin March 15th, 2008 at 1:24 pmAnn Marie,
I think that awareness of the problem is the first start because if people don’t know that there is a problem then they don’t look for answers. After that an explanation of the causes of the problem (in this case dependency upon other people to fulfill personal desires) and the solution (that whenever we take responsibility for fulfilling our desires by ourselves we do better in life through having enhanced competence, self-reliance and positive emotions). The greatest difficulty is that people want instant gratification and will resort to manipulation in the short-term to get what they want when they want it (especially if this has worked numerous times in the past). Attempting to deal with this problem as it arises is thus thwarted with difficulty because of the heightened emotions and immediacy involved. You have to take a clever, subtle (perhaps even sly approach) and gradually train and encourage people to do for themselves what they want. The explanation of the problem and solution can give the vital awareness needed and the response to encouraged training will probably occur with less resistance.
#6 - Permalink AnnMarie Peterlin March 19th, 2008 at 12:50 pmThanks Nick for the quick response. Yes, manipulation is an emotionally immature behavior pattern as is wanting or desiring something instantly. It comes down to training as you said.
I guess the problem might remain if the person does not see anything wrong with manipulation even if they know that it is not appropriate behavior.
It might only be successful with self-reflection anyways.
By the way, do you mind telling your age? I am impressed that you have these thoughts at a younger age than I did, it appears.
Thanks!
#7 - Permalink admin March 19th, 2008 at 3:05 pmI am 39-years of age.
#8 - Permalink Lesley April 19th, 2008 at 6:17 pmhttp://www.nickpagain.com
Your comments really resonate with me as the moment as I am aware I am behaving needy in my relationship. I understand what you say about not relying on others to provide us with emotional needs. What I would love a few tips with is the how, i.e specific behaviours that will hopefully lead me to be less needy and emotionally dependent. How can I specifically start this process? Would really appreciate any advice. Thank you!
#9 - Permalink admin April 20th, 2008 at 4:28 pmLesley,
I will work on a post to offer more advice on this and I will let you know by e-mail when it is posted.
Nick
#10 - Permalink admin April 21st, 2008 at 9:48 amLesley,
I have created this post, which I hope helps: http://www.nickpagan.com/blog/.....roys-love/
If that still doesn’t satisfy you then please let me know in greater detail specifically what you are looking for!
Nick
#11 - Permalink I don't have any friends... May 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pm[...] their emotional well-being in the hands of another person by holding onto these needs. I love this article and this one in regards to this issue. __________________ [...]
#12 - Permalink My returning social issues.. July 15th, 2008 at 3:28 pm[...] questions, using "in my opinion", utilizing small talk. Take a look at this article: How I Stopped Being Needy As for #2: I think it’s annoying because in my mind it implies that they think I’m not capable of [...]
#13 - Permalink If I followed your advice, I would have no friends. August 24th, 2008 at 5:28 pm[...] fulfill and not worry about being accepted, then I tend to be happy. I would suggest this article: How I Stopped Being Needy __________________ [...]
#14 - Permalink David May 25th, 2009 at 6:46 pmIsn’t there a basic human need to love and be loved? A person cannot satisfy this on his own in my opinion.
#15 - Permalink admin May 26th, 2009 at 2:59 amYou are right that a person cannot satisfy a need on his own. This is the reason why needs are the source of so much personal trouble. When you depend upon other things or other people for the satisfaction of what you want then you cannot control the situation. If the other person or other thing will not give you want you want then you will end up unhappy.
The questions to ask are, “What is it about this thing that I want? What do I think it will give me?” When you can answer those questions you get to the root cause of why you want to love or be loved. There is something within you that you want satisfaction for and you have concluded that love is the answer. When you get to root cause you might find out that what you want is something different and that you can get your satisfaction and fulfillment in ways that don’t depend upon other people.
Most people that I make inquiries with cannot even define what love means to them. They can’t describe clearly what is means to be loved and how they would recognize it. They can’t describe clearly what it means to love someone and how they would know for sure that they are doing that.
If you were to make the effort to define these things then you would find out that you could love other people easily. The difficulty is if you have the expectation that they love you back. You can’t control that and might end up disappointed. However, if you are true to your principles and want to love people because it brings you satisfaction and fulfillment regardless of their reaction then you will become a fountain of loving actions because behaving that way makes you feel good.
If someone loves you back in a similar way then that’s the icing on the cake, but if you’re holding out for this then you cut off your ability to love and you end up impoverished on both fronts.
#16 - Permalink AnnMarie May 26th, 2009 at 7:26 amDot on as usual Nick! Articulation is the key, this leads to self-reflection and then allows the person to let go of expectations. I notice most people’s frustration comes from the lack of fulfillment of their expectations. Loving for the sake of loving, not to receive love back but to truly do it as an exercise of complete selflessness. This higher love (for lack of a better term), in fact, brings more personal satisfaction, because I can control it. Take care!