Yes, We ALL have Emotional Needs!

Many of us grew-up having our needs denied, especially our emotional needs. We may have had warm houses to live in, food on our tables, proper clothing and toys to play with. But many of us didn’t have the kiss on the cheek, the heart-felt hug or a hand to hold ours when we were sad or hurting emotionally.

As a result, we grew-up misunderstanding our emotional needs. Some of us learned to disassociate from these needs. We learned to feel so much shame about having needs or wants that we went into a complete denial about our even having such things at all. In doing so, we became extremely independent. We came to believe that we didn’t really have any emotional needs or physical wants. We became men and women of steel.

To compensate for the needs we were ignoring, we subconsciously began to confuse our needs with our wants when it came to taking care of ourselves. Any time we experienced an emotional need, we learned to satisfy it by securing something we wanted. As a child, I often met my emotional needs through getting a new toy or a candy bar. As an adult, every time I was feeling extremely emotionally needy I went shopping. I’d hit the mall and go to my favorite clothing stores.

For years now, I’ve had the behavioral pattern of buying about 20 shirts for every pair of pants I buy. A therapist, curious as to why I always had a nice new shirt every time he saw me, asked me what I thought my need for new shorts was all about. I had no clue, initially. Then I came to realize that shirts cover our hearts; they cover the emotional centers of our bodies. They cover the very area where we are most in contact with our emotions.

So every time I felt the need to go shopping for a new shirt, I was actually trying to fill an emotional need through shopping. I thought I “wanted” a new shirt, when in fact, I “needed” love that I wasn’t receiving from myself or others. Since I didn’t know how to properly acknowledge or express my emotional needs, since I felt shame about even having such needs, I confused my needs with my wants. This is why, in the long run, buying a new shirt was never fulfilling. A shirt, or any object for that matter, can never fulfill an emotional need for love.

There’s another side to this story, however, because when I wasn’t shopping to quiet my emotional needs, I was overly tuned-in to other people’s emotional needs. I may not have been consciously able to identify my own emotional needs but I could subconsciously see them in other people who were as emotionally needy as I was. I could easily pick-up on the needs and wants of someone else and begin to address them immediately.

It was easy for me to be Dr. Love & Tenderness to someone else who was emotionally hurting as much as or more so than I was. I’d busy myself with taking care of their every emotional and physical need—and their every want as well! And of course I was able to do this because I was so blind to my own needs and had no idea how to meet them. Deep down, however, on a subconscious level, I really believed that if I met this person’s every want and need they would reciprocate—and we’d live happily ever after!

This behavior is codependent folly. We cannot meet our emotional needs through shopping (or eating, or drinking, or gambling, or sex, etc.); nor can we meet our emotional needs by placing all of our focus on the needs of someone else. If we are going to meet our needs in recovery, we must first acknowledge that we HAVE THE RIGHT TO HAVE NEEDS! We need to get over our shame about having needs and declare that we do have them and we are valid in having them.

Next we need to admit our needs to others. A recovery meeting is a good, safe place to begin acknowledging our needs. Once we begin to feel comfortable with owning our needs, we must begin sharing them with people who are close to us. And we need to let go and allow some of these people to help us fulfill our emotional needs. We need to stop being the Iron Man or the Iron Lady and allow people in to our hearts. Eventually we will learn what emotional fulfillment really feels like; we’ll experience how wonderful it is; and we’ll truly know how hollow it is to try to substitute a new shirt or caretaking for real emotional comfort.