When Your Needs Are Not Met

1:18:10

1:18:10

When Your Needs Are Not Met

by Anna Seewald

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talks

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Meditation

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Effective communication is at the heart of strong relationships. A critical aspect of effective communication is learning how to express our needs. But in order to learn to express first we need to get in touch with our needs. Communication can come into conflict when needs are unfulfilled. Unmet needs can lead to feelings of anger, confusion, disappointment, frustration, hopelessness, irritation, sadness, loneliness and embarrassment.

Meet your Teacher

New Brunswick, NJ, United States

Meet your Teacher

New Brunswick, NJ, United States

Transcript

I am Anna Siwald and this is Authentic Parenting, A podcast about personal development in the context of parenting where I explore how you can find more calm connection and join parenting through the process of self-discovery and inner growth with a trauma-informed lens. I'm a parent educator and my mission is to help children by helping parents. The motto of this podcast is raising our children, Growing ourselves. Today, Getting your needs met in a relationship. What happens when needs are not met? I am positive that you would agree that effective communication is at the heart of strong relationships. A critical aspect of effective communication is learning how to express our needs. But in order to learn to express our needs effectively, First, We need to get in touch with our own needs. Communication can come into conflict when needs are unfulfilled. Unmet needs can lead to feelings of resentment, Anger, Confusion, Disappointment, Frustration, Loneliness, Sadness, Just to name a few. Fully understanding what we need makes the next step in our communication easier. Asking for what we need to enrich our life. And it's not as easy as it sounds, And we all know that. Do you know what your needs are? Do you have a difficulty identifying your needs? Do you feel guilty for having needs? Are you able to communicate your needs effectively, Directly, Openly to get them met? Here is the thing. Requesting what we need is not a selfish act. My guest today is Yvette Erasmus. She's a psychologist, Teacher, And consultant specializing in transformative learning. She's a sought after relational intelligence expert with over three decades of real world experience in human transformation, Healing, Growth, And learning. Dr. Erasmus helps us embrace and enjoy our differences while staying grounded in our fundamental unity. Her work is dedicated to bridging differences and to bringing whatever is divided and fragmented back into wholeness, Integrity, And harmony. In this conversation, We take a deep dive into the topic of needs and feelings. We talk about taking responsibility, Dropping our defenses, Communicating for connection, Choicefulness, Victim consciousness, And so much more. I'm a big proponent of nonviolent communication, Short NVC developed by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. It's a powerful model of communication, And Yvette Erasmus is trained in it. If you're not familiar with NVC, Please look into it. I promise it will change your relationships. Before we begin, I would like to suggest a few past episodes that compliment today's conversation. Episode 235, How to Make Good Decisions with Christine Jawad. Episode 168, Mindful Communication, How to Find Your Voice, Speak Your Truth, And Listen Deeply with Oren J. Sofer. Episode 102, How to Communicate Your Needs in the Relationship with Max Rivers. Episode 163, How to Make Peace with Your Past and Heal Your Life with amazing Mark Nebo, One of my very favorite episodes. And episode 166, What Not to Say and How to Say No Without Actually Saying It. This is a special episode with my friend and colleague, Dr. Laura Frohan, And this one is geared towards parenting and children. Parenting what we need not only enriches our own life, But also adds value to all life on this planet. Please enjoy this fantastic conversation with this beautiful human, Yvette Erasmus. Yvette, I am so delighted and honored and so excited to have you on the podcast with me today. I'm so happy to be here. When I found you, As I told you already privately, I just fell in love with you. Firstly, You have a beautiful accent and you are not the only South African on the podcast. You are the fourth South African. I know your roots are from there. You were born there, But we had guests from South Africa and I just love the way you deliver your message, Your passion, Your energy. I could see that there is this genuine goodness in you and deep compassion for what you're doing. It's not fake and it's so resonant for me. I said, I have to have this person on my podcast and I was so happy when you said yes. I was happy to be invited. Thank you. I'm wondering if we can start by talking about what we bring from our programming into adulthood. And I love how you talk about the two frames, The dominance frame, The what's wrong with you, What's wrong with me, What's wrong frame, The control frame. And then we can talk about nonviolent communication. I want to tackle the topic of needs, Particularly that many people struggle with. And I have several other questions. Wonderful. So why don't we begin from that? Okay. So the primary question being, Where do you want me to start? From what we begin from our programming and our conditioning into adulthood, Because many of us are struggling in our communication patterns, Right? Especially now with this pandemic, When we are pushed to our limits, Our old programming reactivates and we say and do hurtful things in those moments. And then we regret later. Right? Right. Yes, Absolutely. That happens to all of us. So I think one of the ways, You know, One of the ways that I like to talk about it is to think of ourselves as like sponges that are absorbing the world around us while we're growing up, Because, You know, We're born as infants with a very different kind of consciousness than the kind of consciousness we have as adults. And there's a developmental trajectory, Both biologically and ego wise and psychologically and emotionally, You know, We're going through various stages of development. And the stages of early development have to do with taking the outside world in. So we're internalizing whatever it is that we're experiencing. So depending upon the culture and the society and the family system and the kinds of religious teachings or parental teachings or cultural teachings that we are surrounded by and that we find ourselves living, You know, As children, We take that in and we're navigating what feels good and what doesn't feel good and what brings us a sense of connection and belonging and safety with the other people and what things cause, You know, Pain and disconnection and shame. And so we develop these adaptive ways of being that help us adapt to those early environments and it all goes in unconsciously. We don't, You know, We're not taking notes at the end of every day as a child and then saying, I think I'm going to take this belief and I won't take that belief and this is really not my stuff. This is my parents limitations and not about me. You know, We don't have that kind of consciousness online as children. So what we do is, You know, We take it all in as a reflection of who we are and we take in certain patterns and beliefs as a sort of our primary internal operating system and it becomes unconscious. It becomes our sort of default programming and then as we develop and become more conscious as adults and we begin to have this ability to reflect on ourselves and detach from that sense of identity. It often happens when we switch cultures or we have a major different experience that has sort of a clashing of two worldviews. We have these moments as we develop where we can look at two different points of view, Both of which feel like who we are and we get this opportunity to start thinking, Oh, Wait a minute. Do I really believe this? Is this really who I am? Does this fit for me? You know, And as we meet more and more diverse people and situations, It can speed up that process and once we have that self-reflective consciousness and we're not so identified, You know, We're not tied up in our identity with the things that we took in. We can begin this journey of becoming more active evolutionary transformative co-creators with ourselves and we can begin thinking things like here are the really great things that I internalized as a child that I'm going to keep and here are the ways in which things actually hurt me or didn't work for me or inhibited me and these are parts that I can heal and transform and begin to do differently so that I'm not taking it forward. But just to get to the last piece you said, When we're really under stress and we don't have that consciousness online as much, We're under resourced, We're tired, We have a lot of demands in our capacity, We do have a tendency to sort of default to that early programming and to use some of those really unconscious and ingrained scripts that worked for us as a child as a way of adapting. So true and oftentimes people say, Oh, I said something to my kid and I just sound like my mother or like my father, Right? Yes, Yes, Yes. It's so ingrained in us. It's, We have to do this conscious detachment to observe ourselves, Our patterns and to untangle ourselves and consciously choose different communication skills. And I, You know, I have struggled a lot in my communication with friends, With my partner, With my child, And definitely I'm learning and growing every day. Yeah, Right. Learn to speak to other people the way we were spoken to. Okay, So the way that people spoke to us becomes the way in which we learn to speak to others and also the way we learn to speak to ourselves. So if you had very critical parents, You'll become very self-critical, You'll internalize a very self-critical voice and you'll also try to interact with others through the same critical voice. Now, This can be really harmful, Right, To ourselves and others. And you know, One thing that I often tell people when you find these voices in you, When you find yourself, You know, This thing you've mentioned like, Oh my goodness, I sound just like my mother or wow, That was my father. This is an act, This is a moment of celebration because the simple fact of knowing where that voice came from already represents a little bit of detachment that you know, It's not your authentic self very often and in the noticing of where the voice came from, We can develop a lot of compassion, A compassion for ourselves about what it is that we internalize, Compassion for our parents for what it was that they must have internalized. And in that moment of awareness, We have choice. We don't have choice until we have that awareness, You know, Before awareness, All we're doing is replaying patterns and sort of feeling victimized by them. Yeah, I love that you always talk about choice and oftentimes victimized people feel that, You know, They were blamed and shamed and they want to retaliate, They want to blame others, They want to set the score straight or gain justice. But I feel like these are unhelpful, Ineffective, Still victim consciousness, Right? If you are stuck in that mode, Wanting to punish the other person for what they have said or done to you, I would love for you to speak about this choice. And yeah, Yeah, Absolutely. So a couple of things about victim consciousness and how we get to choicefulness because I see a variety of ways that we're working with these ideas culturally that are incomplete and it can be helpful for us to just pull back and get a slightly broader view. One, All of us have been victimized in some way that is part of the nature of being a child. If we think about victimization as people who have more power than you, Making you do things that you may or may not want to do that may or may not be harmful. So victimization particularly when they make you do things that are actually harmful or painful or wounding to you, That is the experience of being victimized. I don't have enough power to stop a harmful and hurtful thing from happening to me. So one piece is the acknowledgement that that happens to all of us. This is a part of the human experience that we don't have enough power to stop something, To protect ourselves from something. And so we then end up accumulating harm, Wounds, Pain, Trauma from these events. We don't want to vilify or make that a pathology that is where we end up turning on the part of ourselves that was victimized. Because part of what I see happening sometimes is somebody will say, I'm not a victim. I'm not a victim. I refuse to be a victim. They become scornful about victim consciousness. You're just falling in victim consciousness. And so I want to bring a little more nuance to having some compassion for the experiences that we have and that we have gone through that have genuinely been painful and traumatizing and being able to feel our way into them and acknowledge them and sit with them with compassion and non-resistance, Acknowledging that these things have happened and it was painful and it wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't the most life affirming thing. And also not then organizing our sense of identity and righteousness around the wounding. Because the next thing that happens is that sometimes people will then, The wound will become such a large part of their identity that they don't actually have the ability to heal from it because they're getting some secondary gain from staying stuck in it. It's a tragic strategy for trying to gain some mattering or some significance or some other kind of power. But it then keeps us stuck in a consciousness that has very little empowerment, Very little capacity for co-creation and very little capacity to help us actually transform the world into a more compassionate and less traumatizing place. Because when we haven't healed what is inside of us, We tend to reenact it. We just tend to act it out and we sort of pass the potato around. This is the way that I was wounded. So I'm going to wound you and see I survived. So you should be okay. And so we go through these cycles of just continuing to hurt and harm one another if we stay desensitized from what the experience actually feels like. So you know one move is just having a lot of compassion for this experience of victimization. And the second one is not organizing our identity around it but taking the next step in the path of healing to really come to a place of compassionate empowerment so that we don't stay stuck there. It's the same as like we don't judge children for being children, But we don't want to stay a child the rest of our lives. What kind of, What will require for a person like that to start the healing process? How can that person recognize that they are even stuck in that mode? Yeah, So there's an infinite amount of answers to that question, Right? Because every human is going to have these moments where they're like, I'm tired of suffering in this way. I'm tired of this repeating pattern. I keep doing this thing that I'm doing and I know better. Or why do I keep doing this when I'm trying to do some other thing? We all have these moments in our lives where we see these default scripts and default wounds running our lives. And very often, It's the people who want more inner peace, More sense of freedom and choice, More sense of like liberating themselves from a past that hasn't worked. People who really want the awareness and the choicefulness who get on that journey. And just one of the one of the pointers for getting on a self-healing journey is that the first thing that I always recommend people develop is oodles and oodles of self-compassion. Because when we start to get aware of something and we have a very judgmental and punitive script in our mind, A lot of shoulds and shouldn'ts and a lot of like, This is what's wrong with me. It can make it very, Very painful to stay with the awareness work because the awareness work just brings up more and more layers of shame. If your habit is to think, You see, Here's the evidence of what's bad about me. Here's the evidence of what's wrong with me. That can be really a lot of agony. So one of the first moves is learning to greet yourself with a lot of love and compassion. And this is where I think the practice of nonviolent communication can be a really helpful practice in understanding that everything we've ever done in our lives has simply been our best attempt in that moment at that stage of development to meet a deep need of ours. And that when we begin dropping in and figuring out our deep, Deeper universal human needs and understanding our behavior and other people's behavior as attempts to meet those needs, It can become a more soothing way of just getting our strategies better aligned with our needs instead of seeing ourselves as bad, Wrong, Shameful, Defective, Not good enough people. I know like as a first two things I want to comment, I work with high conflict couples who go through divorce. I'm a divorce mediator and oftentimes people are stuck, Right? When they come into the room, They don't want to work together. There's this is they have strategies and positions, They're stuck and every person states their position so hard. And I found that my job is to understand and uncover each person's need and strip it down and bring it up to the table and help the other party see the humanness, The universal, The universal need of, Of their partner. And once we do that, They see each other's needs and sometimes they both have the same need, They have different strategies and positions and they argue and fight and they're in an impasse, But the need is the same basic need. And when I'm able to do that for them and when they join in such beautiful human moments happen, People, People open their hearts, They cry, They understand each other, They dish out compassion for each other. And that's number one comment. Number two, I see that as children, We haven't learned how to speak in ways that we've learned to speak in effectively about our needs. I can bring an example with my daughter. I have a 13 year old, 13 year old who often would come out and say, She would start complaining about something. Obviously she has a need, But she's choosing complaining as a way of getting her need met. And because I know a little bit about this work, I am trying to change that pattern in my own household as much as I can. And I ask her to stop and help her to see the need and communicate in a way that is more skillful. But I'm wondering if you can speak about like complaining, Judgment, Criticism, Defenses, All those ineffective ways that we use to get our needs met. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. So there's a lot of moves, Right? There's a lot of moves with all of those defensive strategies. Like when we're unconscious and we're just inheriting the sort of water that we're swimming in and then sort of playing it back to one another, It's usually very low quality communication and it's usually communication that isn't very conscious or creative because it's defensive. It's coming from the system in us that just wants to advocate for our own needs and defend against the outside world. So it tends to be fairly egocentric. And so it comes out in culturally normative strategies, A lot of complaining, A lot of demanding, A lot of you must, You should, A lot of moralizing. So number one, We make peace with the fact that this is what humans do. So one of the first moves is not to see that as something wrong, To just be a non-resistance to the way in which human beings are going to show up and the way in which we ourselves show up when we're under stress. So one move is sort of a surrendering to the fact that that's the material we're here to transform. The second one is when I'm listening to my daughter, I have a 17 year old daughter as well who's very similar to yours. When she comes to me with all of her complaints and her whining and her demands, I'm the more skillful, Conscious grown up with capacity, Right? I've been doing this work a lot longer. So I take more responsibility in that interaction for hearing what she means instead of how she's saying it. So the first move is for me to help her and help myself understand what she means and not get too distracted by her delivery in the early stages. So the first thing I'm going to go for is connecting with what she's trying to tell me. So I might ask her things like, You know, So, You know, When you tell me that I'm always so judgmental and critical and that it's impossible for you to, You know, Show up the way you want to show up, It sounds like the thing you're really wanting is more freedom and ease and some trust that I'm going to accept you as you are. Is that right? Is that the thing that you're longing for more of? So I'll guess at the needs that she may have. I'll do the work of putting some ideas in the space of what she might mean. And then I check it out with her. And then when we get to a yes, When she's like, Yes, Exactly. I mean, You know, Why can't you tell me the things that are good about me? Or why can't you focus on the things that are working instead of always improving the things that are not working? And if I reflect that back and I say, Yeah, OK, It sounds like you would enjoy it a lot more if I put as much as many words into the space of what's going well as I do when I'm trying to tweak or upgrade something. Is that it? And it sounds like it's painful for you when you're always you perceive me as always focusing on the things that are not working. So we I spend the time and the work really reflecting back what she's meaning. And when we get to this place where her nervous system starts to reregulate, Because you'll notice when people come with complaints or defensiveness or demands, They are coming if you track their bodies, They're coming with an activated nervous system. They're bracing, They're tight. There's urgency. There's pressure in the system. And while our biology is activated in that way, It's more difficult for us to access creative, Relaxed, Open option, Finding co-creative consciousness. So we want to first work with each other's biology to bring ourselves down, To reregulate, To open, To relax, To soften. And that happens by connecting first with the message. And once we've received the message, We can go back and do some education about a way to talk about this next time that might work. Like we could go back and debrief how the conversation went. But we really want to do the correction piece or the education piece or the insight building piece once there's a foundation of trust and respect and relaxation that the thing that has been important to our child or to the other person has first been received. And our cultural habit is to do it the other way around. Our cultural habit is to first correct the delivery before we're willing to hear the message. Oh, I'm so glad you are speaking about this. Yes. We always see the face value of things and we react to that, I think, But it requires a lot of training from us to just be present, Listen, Listen with intent to uncover the deep need of this human. My child who is unknowing as hell in the moment, Wants something from me. Can't you have enough already? Right. But it's so worth doing it when we can because we often react to don't speak to me like that. You know, You said that and it becomes a power struggle. It becomes a completely different issue than what the child came to us in the first place. Right? Yes, Exactly. Exactly. And then we have a sort of a mushrooming of issues. And once we get into it, We don't actually even know which issue we're arguing about in this moment because we've mapped so many things into the basket now, You know. Oh, I know. I recently had an argument with my husband and he brought up something from when my daughter was four years old. And it's like every relationship has a scorecard, Right? We all keep track of each other's wrongdoings and mistakes. And when we argue, We tend to bring that entire big list and we forget what we were fighting about. How did it start? I know. And that's a whole other skill level, Right? How to work with other people's memories, Especially when they don't have the same memory that we have. Okay. So I would love for you to speak about needs because I think, Yes, We understand we have universal human needs, But it's so hard for many of us to get in touch with our own needs, To put the name on the need and then communicate it in a way that it may or may not get met because that's like a whole other story, Right? Yes. I hear in my community, People are so entitled that they have needs. Now meet my need, Meet my need. If it comes to this, I have a need, It has to get met, But we need to be okay with that. What are some questions, Some ways or strategies that you can help us to learn about our needs? You know? Yeah. So first of all, I just want to acknowledge that part of the reason why it's so difficult for us to be in touch with our needs has to do with how we were parented. Many of us, The way that we grew up, The focus in the parenting of earlier generations was to have obedient and compliant children who were functioning, Productive, Effective members of society who would get a job and make a living. Like the goal of parenting was narrow in that way. And there's not a lot of room in that model for caring about what the child is feeling and needing. The caring there is about making sure that the child is behaving and behaving in a way that reflects the values of the family system or the culture. Okay. So that intention in parenting is a piece of what we would then have internalized, That my feelings are actually a problem and my needs are actually a problem if they're not matching up with the behaviors that those who are evaluating me are approving of and disapproving of. So we learn to disconnect from our feelings and turn them into thinking. And we also learn to disconnect from our intrinsic motivations because we learn along the way that our intrinsic motivation not only doesn't really matter, That is also not to be trusted. So many of us get into adulthood with this idea that what I'm desiring or what I really want, There's no room for it. And also I should be suspicious and suspect of it because there's probably something fundamentally wrong with what I'm wanting. Okay. And we also, Depending on our childhood, Can grow up with this idea that it's too painful to know what I need and to know what I want because no one will ever be able to meet my needs. And if you've had enough experiences of unmet needs, Staying aware of that can be very painful when you don't have a lot of good options for getting your needs met. So we have this shutdown that happens in the emotional level and in the need level, Which is in the felt sense system and in the motivational and intentional system within us. And so we learn at first how to put that all away and then to adapt to the world as it is. And then we go into a lot of survival strategies and defensive strategies and cognitive strategies. And we get really good at those things first. And I'm painting with very broad strokes. I know this is not true for every person in the world, But this is just for those people for whom that is true. Okay. So then as adults, When we begin to get back in touch with this idea that maybe your feelings are not the problem, Maybe your feelings are actually a form of guidance inside of you that tell you about how life would be more wonderful for you or more painful for you. Maybe we need to bring those feelings back online so that instead of numbing them out or acting them out or using them to bully other people or shutting them down and becoming sort of dissociative and depressed in our way of living, We learn how to feel and tolerate and use our feelings as neutral data. So that's a whole section of inner work that people do when they sort of melt their defenses and their emotional lives come back online. And that can be really overwhelming and frightening for people if they grew up in families where they didn't learn a lot of emotional regulation skills, They didn't get a lot of empathy, They don't know how to tolerate and sit with their own distress. It can feel very dysregulating on the inside and chaotic. And so having community and relational environments where you learn how to do that is really helpful. And then learning a language, Like many of the people I work with just don't have a language of the needs. When I say, What do you need? There's this blank slate. I often hear, I don't know what I need. I don't actually even know what a need is. So some of these pieces of bringing it back online is acknowledging like we have needs lists, Right? Like, I wonder if you're needing safety or more meaning or a desire to contribute to other people, Or if this is about belonging or play or security or predictability or affection. Like we have long lists of things and with needs, We're talking about those things that help human beings both survive and thrive. And many of us know about needs on the survival level, Like food and sleep and sort of basic needs. Many of us have those online, But a lot of people seem to have internalized a message that anything more enjoyable and exhilarating than that, Like, Can I really have more play time? Am I allowed to have a need for play or movement or self-expression or dance or whatever it is, Sensuality? Like depending upon your experiences, There are certain needs that would have been shut down in your childhood as unimportant or luxurious or frivolous or not really needed. And some of these we want to actually give ourselves permission to bring back online if we want to live lives full of vitality and energy and inspiration and joy. There's, You know, Like a lot of people I work with, There's like this permission giving to actually enjoy your life and to enjoy your feelings. It's not all about trauma and pain and management of distress. Connecting with our needs is one of the most fundamental internal guidance systems that we can develop to inform our own evolutionary journey to becoming free and loving and joyful beings that are contributing in really meaningful ways to one another. I love that you said play, Affection, Those really positive things that sometimes people when they hear, The word need gets misinterpreted, I think. When people hear need, They think deficiency, Some, A lack of something. And therefore when you say you have a need for, You know, Service or play or self-expression, They don't see that as important need. They see those, I need connection, I'm lonely, Therefore I need connection. They sort of prioritize those needs more than those others, Right? Because those others are fun and good and more positive. How dare I even have a need for that, Right? I need those basic ones sort of, Right? Is this true? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what that makes me think about is the needs that were chronically unmet in our lives are the ones that are going to come with the most urgency and pressure and demand energy inside of ourselves. When we begin getting aware of them, Like this example you're giving, Like I've had loneliness all of my life. I feel so lonely and I've been out of touch with lonely. And then I start doing some personal growth work and I really become aware. Like I actually begin feeling the loneliness that has always been running in the background and that loneliness becomes like an acute awareness in me. And then I can connect that to my deep, Deep need for connection and community and belonging. When those come into my awareness, If they've been unmet for a very long time, They can come with a lot of acute pressure. And when we begin talking about it, It's almost like we're desperate at that point for somebody to meet this need. And then our way of communicating can feel very needy and clingy and demanding and other people might actually pull further away from that when it comes from that energy. I think you were talking a little bit about that earlier as well. Yes, Because I often tell in my community, We have needs, But our community members, We often talk about husbands or partners, And I always say your partner does not have to meet all your needs just because he's your husband doesn't mean you have to bring it up to his attention and he's going to meet somehow. He's also a flawed human being with his own set of needs, Right? Certain needs we can meet ourselves, Certain needs our husband can, Certain needs we have to seek elsewhere, But we need to also be okay if our needs, We express them and they're not met. I would love for you to speak about that, Be okay with that. Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. So you know what I think, You know, The way that that lives in me is sort of this invitation to being willing to tolerate and sit next to the distress of your life. This is the practice of being in non-resistance to what is uncomfortable. And also, So one piece, Like there's two consciousnesses that are paradoxical that I'm going to point to here. One is getting really aware, Let's play with loneliness, For example, Since you brought that one up, The intense loneliness and sort of it can bring up a real existential angst for people around belonging and community and will anybody ever really understand me. And there's one practice of just recognizing that even in the distress and the loneliness and that feeling of isolation, There is another part of me that is still okay. There is another part of me whose needs are being met. And so there can be a balance in that moment of both seeing the thing that is not being met and holding it next to all of the ways that a wide variety of other needs are being met. My need for challenges being met, My need for self exploration is being met, My need for meaning and purpose and self connection and self awareness is being met in this moment as I touch on this painful experience inside of me. And so to the degree that I can remember the parts of me that are inherently resourced at the same time, I can experience myself as having a slightly bigger container and bigger capacity for working with the things in me that feel tender and empty and have these deep longings that it's reaching for. And then the second step is remembering when I have an unmet need and I have a lot of emotional distress around it, Not to attach to one person or one strategy as the only way for that need to be alleviated. Because when I do that, I narrow my world and I create a dependency that is going to make it very difficult for me to get that need fully met. So if I'm feeling lonely and I've got a deep need for connection, It's going to do me more harm if I decide you, Anna, Are the only person who can meet that need. And the only way it can be met is if you sit and listen to me for the next six hours talking about my childhood. And if you don't do that for me now and it has to be you, That means you don't love me and this need will never get met. If I make it that small and that narrow, I'm going to increase my suffering. But when I sit down and I can say I'm feeling lonely, I've got a lot of needs for community and connection and belonging and I can generate 30 different ways that I can begin inviting the world to help me meet that need. I experience more choicefulness, I experience more empowerment, I experience more options, And I get a little bit more spaciousness in me around my well-being because you can say a yes or a no and I have 29 other choices. And so creating the sense of I could ask Anna for such and such, I can ask my husband for this, Maybe I go and I join a support group for such and such, Or I go get a therapist, Or maybe I get involved in my religious community if I have one or in my cultural community if that's a better fit. Like I start thinking more creatively about all of the different ways. It's a little bit like the nutrients of the body. You're not going to have a well-nourished body if you're always attached to only eating vitamin C and living on citrus. You can't get attached to just one strategy. Every need that you have needs a really wide diverse range of ways in which you're nourishing that need. And we can get very tight around it being unless my husband can empathize with me, I'm you know, I'm going to suffer. That's not always the case in the micro moments. We want to get wider. Yes, And that creates so much unnecessary suffering and it yields to a lot of buildup of resentment over time. I had a conversation a couple of years ago with Oren J. Sofer who also was trained in nonviolent communication and he was talking about the certain relationship and he framed it this way. Ask yourself a question, What's available in this relationship for me? And I will never forget that question. It's like, Yes, I do have a desire to go and get groceries, But if I'm going to Home Depot to get groceries, It may not be available. A very low quality version of groceries. Yes. Thank you, Anna, For letting me jump into the authentic parenting podcast space and share a bit about myself and an exciting new offer I have for parents. Hi, My name is Casey. I have been a parent coach and positive discipline trainer for the last 13 years and the host of Joyful Courage, A conscious parenting and human podcast for the last six. And I am an imperfect mom to two teens, A boy and a girl totally in the trenches of parenthood. I wanted to invite you to check out my latest mini summit, Parenting for a Brave New World, Created for parents who are looking to be the designers and the influencers of their lives. 2020 was madness. 2021 has yet to be determined. I am honored to share five brilliant expert interviews focused on everything from remote learning, Social justice, Parenting to expanding your financial literacy, Soul care and adolescent health. The content is so good. The summit goes live February 1st, So be sure to take some action and get registered to find out more and sign up. Go to Joyful Courage dot com slash BNW Joyful Courage dot com slash BNW and use the coupon code authentic 25 for 25% off the cost. Yay. Excited to see you there. But sometimes people who have the deepest needs, The ones that you talk about that are very urgent and acute, They are the ones who are stuck and they cannot see possibility. You know? Yeah. So I'm just going to go a little on the psychological realm just because I am trained as a psychologist. But one of the ways that I think about that is when a part of me, You know, We have younger parts. If you look at sort of the internal family systems model, For example, There are different parts of me that are three or five or seven or nine. And those consciousnesses live in me as well. And so what's sometimes happening, Especially in romantic relationships, Is we have now developed a primary attachment to another person. And this other person has been put into a very particular and special position of intimate partner who we then rely on to meet our needs in a way that is very different than our coworkers, For example. And our attachment system is going to kick in in those relationships. And there's a bigger significance in those relationships about whether that person will or won't meet our needs. And often what's happening is that the nine-year-old in me who needed my father or my mother to meet a child-oriented need in a particular way gets unconsciously put on our partner. And the demand and the pain of that nine-year-old looks at that partner in this attachment frame of you are the only one, You are supposed to do this for me. And it comes with this sort of urgency and demand and dependency. And when we find ourselves in that space, One of the really beautiful things about that coming up in a relationship is that we get an opportunity to make contact with younger, More tender, More vulnerable child aspects of ourselves. And we can find very skillful ways of being tender and inviting our partners to be kind and compassionate with this part of me that isn't showing up like the grownup that I know that I am. And when partners can begin understanding that piece, They can often find ways of responding to one another with more care and compassion without feeding a dependency that you don't want in sort of empowered, Functional, Free, And loving grownups having a partnership. But we can start working with some of those attachment wounds with a little bit more mindfulness and consciousness and compassion. What are some skillful ways of communicating our needs to our partner? We're speaking about partners in a relationship, In a way that the partner may hear us, Doesn't necessarily mean he will meet our need, But what are some ways that it would be nonjudgmental, Non-demanding? I'm wondering if you can give a script or a language just to highlight an example. Yeah, Absolutely. The key thing to do is to make it about you and not about them and to open up the conversation with the desire to reveal something about yourself and to suggest something that would help. So if that's your primary intention, I want to show you something that is happening inside of me and I have an idea of something that might help. It's going to be a very different conversation than if I'm coming into that conversation to educate you about the way you're impacting my needs, To show you why what you're doing is hurtful and harmful, And to require of you to change this thing so that my life will be better and I will feel better. That's going to be a very different conversation, Right? So some of it is really preparing our intentionality and grounding ourselves in loads of self-respect. And here's how it may sound. It may sound something like I actually just had this come up sort of recently with my partner where there was something about feeling like I was being missed. Like there wasn't room for me to be known on my own terms. And one of the ways you can open a conversation like that is saying, I've been reflecting a little bit on this glitchy dynamic between the two of us and I've had a little insight into what may be coming up in me. Do you have some room right now to hear about that? So just checking that they even have the capacity or the willingness to be in that kind of conversation and assuming it's a yes, It then sounds like, You know, There have been these moments where I think you're trying to explain to me, You know, X, Y, And Z, And I'm having this parallel experience happening in me where I'm not tracking you because I'm wanting to say, You know, ABC. And it feels to me like when I can't bridge that with you or I try and bring in something new and you stay on this other track and you don't shift with me into the ABC-ness that feels important to me, That I'm being missed and the story I start telling myself is that there's no room for me here. And what I'm realizing is it reminds me of what it was like for me as a child when my voice wasn't heard. And I think that's why I end up getting urgent and reactive. This is the self-responsibility piece, Not about what he's doing, But what I'm doing. I think this is why I get urgent and reactive in our conversations. Does that make sense? How does that land on you? What do you, You know, Are you having any reactions hearing that piece? You might check in at that point and then you would want to lead with, You know, You'd want to go very quickly to one of the things that might help me, You know, One of the ways that it might help me in our relationship is if this is coming up and I begin feeling this reactivity, Could there be a hand signal that we use that gives us two minutes to pause and check in with ourselves and find out what's going on? Is there a way that instead of playing out this old pattern where we both then begin advocating for our point of view, We could collectively take a pause and bring a bit more consciousness into that moment? Or do you have a different idea of what might help you? So there's an invitation into holding the dilemma together. I'm speaking about my experience mostly. I'm inviting the reactions and input along the way. And then I'm inviting a way of thinking together about something we might try with the assumption that we'll revisit it and we'll see how it's going. So that would be a frame that I that I would recommend as opposed to, You know, What people often do is they go in with when you get really stuck in your, You know, Agenda, I feel irritated and I feel, You know, Vulnerable and hurt and upset because I have a need to be heard and for some self-expression. So would you be willing to give me five more minutes of airtime? Like even though that meets the technical criteria of talking in an observation, A feeling a need and a request, You can feel that the energy and the demand and the painfulness and the consciousness isn't aligned. And so some of the work we do is getting empathy for ourselves and doing our own awareness work before we bring it. And then really checking that what we are bringing to other people is a vulnerable reveal and an invitation to help, Not an education. I love that you speak about that because in one of your talks you said communication is not only words, Right? It's our energy. It's what we actually, The unspoken language, The facial expressions, The gestures, The energy, All of it. You may technically have everything formulaically correct, But it may fall flat or don't land the way you intended, Right? Yeah, The primary intention is to connect. So you only use the words and the technicalities to the degree that they support connection. If they're not supporting connection, Find something that supports the connection. Because the goal is the connectedness and the trust building and the intimacy and the understanding. So find the tool that helps you get there. Yeah, I think sometimes it's words. Yeah. I think this requires highlighting the intention before you enter into the conversation, Into the dialogue. You have to set it clearly for yourself. Am I connecting or am I educating or correcting or controlling? I think if we repeat that to ourselves, That will put us on a different path. I often say to myself in those situations, I often say, Can I see this through my heart? Can I see this through the lens of love? Can I be compassionate? I constantly in those kinds of moments remind myself because it's so easy to slip to the other side and tell the other party what's wrong with you. And because of you, I'm suffering here. If you did that, Then my life will be so much better. Yes, Exactly. We all have those thoughts, But those are the ones we can use as the compost from which we fertilize a different soil as opposed to just like spreading them out. I have a similar one in my own life. I'm often telling myself my primary intention is to learn how to love the world and myself as it is with a deep trust that when I'm able to love myself and the world as it is, Other people as they are, Those are the conditions needed for healing and growth. So I don't make my agenda going off to the healing and the growth. I want the healing and the growth to be the side effect of creating relational containers in which people feel known and loved and accepted as they are. And remembering that we're pretty traumatized as a world population. We have a lot of wounds. There's a lot that doesn't go well. There's a lot of suffering. And I love the thing you brought in from Oren because this idea of just remind me what he said again. I just lost it. Yes, He said he had available. What is available here? What's available in this relationship? Yes. Yes, We do a lot of violence to ourselves and one another when we expect ourselves and other people to have capacities that they don't yet have. And so seeing really clearly what is my capacity right now and what is this other person's capacity? What are my limitations? What are their limitations? And being able to work skillfully with them helps us develop more capacity. But when we go after it as if it's a wrongness or a badness, It just keeps us stuck. Yes. So what if you skillfully approach your partner with openness, Vulnerability and authenticity and the response you get is, Whoa, This is overwhelming. This is way too much. Yeah. Then you empathize. Then you go, Got it. Thank you for telling me that. It sounds like this is a lot of data to metabolize right now. You receive it. You sit with it. Oh boy. There is so much learning to be done. There's so many layers here, Events. Yes. Yes. Many layers. Yup. You stay engaged. Oh, I see. I see. But unfortunately, It's so like we immediately go into that reaction mode right away. We feel ignored. We feel even though being ignored is not a feeling, I guess, In reality. We start hearing it. Well, We hear it as a criticism. We think, Oh, I'm too much. I've done it wrong. I've overwhelmed you. Or we think there's something wrong with them. What is wrong with you that you can't take in three little data points about how I feel? Like, Come on, Show up, Step up. Like that's overwhelming. I need so much more. So either there's something wrong with them or there's something wrong with us. And that's the trap that we want to continue to step out of. So when they say, Whoa, I'm really overwhelmed, That's whatever, Whatever, Find a way to join it. Find a way to reflect it. Find a way to let that be the next stepping stone that you build a conversation from. Tell me more about overwhelm. Tell me more about what you're needing. Would it help if I just gave you smaller chunks in a time? Tell me a little bit more. Are you willing to stay with it even though you're feeling overwhelmed? Is this something that you feel like you have some willingness to continue exploring or do you want to do this in sort of 15 minute conversations over a month? You know, Like there's so much we could explore that works with it instead of hearing it as a criticism or as a disconnect. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about feelings versus needs. We also don't have a correct language for feelings, Right? We often say, I'm feeling this, But in reality that's not even a feeling. It turns out. . . Yes, We're often expressing our thinking when we say things like, Okay, So first of all, You just brought up one that said like ignored, Right? I'm feeling ignored. So one quick thing is anytime that a feeling would end in an ED, Ignored, Attacked, Misunderstood, Well that would be a different one. But if it ends in an ED, It's often a good cue to try out something with that word. Would it still be true to say, I think you're ignoring me. I think you're attacking me. I think you're misunderstanding me. Because if you can change that feeling word into a statement of, I think this is what's happening, Then you're using that feeling word to express. It's not a feeling word. You're actually expressing a perception of what is happening. And if you want to be more skillful in your communication and have more self-ownership, You can say, When I'm talking to you and you look out the window and you don't make eye contact with me, I start telling myself you're ignoring me. It comes across to me that my interpretation of that is that you're ignoring me and you're checking out of the conversation. Is that true? And you let the other person tell you whether that's an accurate interpretation or not. And then if you want to go into the, You know, Maybe something caught their eye, Maybe they got emotionally triggered and they needed a little bit of time to self-connect before they could listen a little bit further. Like there could be all kinds of things going on that aren't wrong that could be supportive. And then you can say, Or you could say something like, You know, When I notice you're looking out of the window, I have some anxiety that comes up because I'm unsure how to interpret that. Can you give me some information about what's happening for you right now? So to your point, One, We often express our thinking and we code it as a feeling. And so, You know, On my website, There's a long list of what I call faux feelings, You know, Words that we use that are not feelings, But that we often use as if they are feelings. And you can take any one of those words and on the back end, Ask yourself if I think you're attacking me, How might I be feeling? If I think you're abandoning me, How might I be feeling? If I think you're leaving me out of something, How might I be feeling? Just to do that practice of separating out my thinking and perception from the felt sense experience happening in my body. And then that felt sense experience in my body, That feeling that I identify, I feel vulnerable, I feel sad, I feel hurt. Tracking from that feeling to the need that is giving rise to that feeling because every feeling we feel is just a signpost to pay attention to a universal human need. What am I longing for? What am I deeply valuing here? Is this about my need for empathy? Am I longing for more empathy? Am I longing for more connectedness? Am I longing for more trust? Is this about my deep need to trust that I matter to you, That this is a significant and meaningful conversation to you? Like getting to that deeper layer of the treasure that I'm actually trying to get more of in my life and your life. And when I can put my attention on the more vulnerable feeling and let you know, Hey, When you look out of the window, I start feeling a little vulnerable and unsure. I have such a longing to have a deep, Meaningful conversation with you right now and for there to be a lot of connectedness. Are you there with me? Is there something going on? Can you give me some information about what's happening for you? I want to check for some alignment. Are we in this together or not? Is there something different you're needing? That's a really different relational based conversation than why are you looking out the window again? I'm just feeling ignored and hurt. Oh boy. You know, I mean, It's just, You're going to get such a different result. Right. Completely. Oh my gosh. The door will slam again on you. And I'm wondering if we can play with a few of those feelings and maybe you can test me if I can get it right or wrong. Give me a word and say, Is this a feeling, Anna? You know what I mean? I think people get confused with this and I would love to do something practical. Maybe the list that you have on your website, We can take three or four. I can test myself. You'd like me to do you a little quiz to find out if you have a faux feeling or not? Oh yes, Sure. Oh my goodness. Embarrass me Yvette on my podcast. Okay. Sounds good. Let me go and find that list quickly actually, Because I don't have them in my mind very quickly right now, Other than the ones I've already said, Which I think are boring. So give me just a minute. Let me go get that list. Okay. So here we go. Let's do, Let's do a little bit of practice of like, Is this a feeling or a thought? Okay. I feel like she doesn't like me. I think that's a thought. Yes. Okay. Yay. Yes, I would agree. I would agree that that is a thought, Right? That is an interpretation of somebody else's internal state. I feel scared. That's a feeling. Yes. I feel disrespected. I think that's a thought. Yes. Right? I think, Yes. I think you don't respect me. And if I think you don't respect me, How might I be feeling? Hmm. Vulnerable? Exposed? Mm-hmm. Inadequate? Ooh, Inadequate. I feel inadequate is a self-evaluation. Ooh. So what do we do with that then? That's not good? So yeah, If I, It's a, Yeah, If I think that I am inadequate, If I think that I'm not enough, How might I be feeling? Oh boy, This is hard. Terrible. I don't know. I actually don't even know. Yeah. So for myself, When I'm sitting with that kind of thinking, You know, I think I'm inadequate. I think I'm not good enough. I'm sometimes feeling this heaviness in my chest and I'm feeling this pit in my stomach. And some of that maps onto feelings of vulnerability and some fear, Some fear related to needs for safety and acceptance and belonging in a particular relational frame. Does any of that resonate? Yes. Yes. Does that spring you into something different? I think, Yeah, I think the fear resonates with me. Yes. Yes. I feel left out. I think that's a thought. Yep. I would agree with that, Right? I think people are leaving me out or I, And the feeling might have to do with, I'm feeling some disease or some unsettledness and you could own the left out perception by just owning it as a perception. You know, When I see people sitting at a table and laughing and I'm not a part of it, You know, I have a story going on that I'm being left out and I have a deep need for belonging and safety and trust and acceptance that comes up in that moment. I feel hopeful. That's a feeling. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I would agree with that being closer to a feeling. Some people would say that that is using a need as a feeling that we have deep needs for hope and inspiration. And when our needs for hope and inspiration are met, We might feel delight or we might feel energized. And the only reason I bring that piece up is to make the point of not getting too rigidly attached to whether something is a feeling or a thought or a need because our language, The way we use language is heavily contextual. And so in any dyad, In any communication, If you were to say, You know, I really am feeling left out and the person that you were talking to said, Yeah, I know that's such a sad and heavy feeling. I really am with you. And they can hear and receive the feeling felt sense part of it. There's no problem with using the word left out because you still got the empathy. You still communicated the felt sense that you were pointing to and the other person could join you there. So the word worked. But if you're trying to say that to the person who's doing it to you and you said to them, You know, I feel left out and they say, I'm not leaving you out. That's not what's happening here. Then we want to find a closer feeling word that doesn't come across as critical or judgmental or interpretive to the other person. And in that dyad, It's more important to not use the word left out, But to say, You know, I'm feeling sad and I'm feeling lonely because that is an easier thing for them to connect to than what they will hear is the evaluation of them. Is that making sense? It completely does. I think when we choose to speak from our feelings, First of all, It takes courage and vulnerability to do that. One reason we may not do that because we may sense that we may get rejected or ridiculed or I don't know the various reasons, But when we do, It's very empowering and the other person cannot say, If they say, You know, No, You're not scared. Because when we speak from our feelings, It's valid. It's in my inner world. They're true to me. The other person is more likely to accept it and respond to me rather than what's wrong with you, Frame. Yes. Right? Yes. Yes. There's so much more loving power that comes from revealing my subjective experience and owning it as my subjective experience than in trying to come up with an objective truth of what happened and who we each are. So when I reveal myself to you and I say, You know, Such and such happens and I feel lonely and I start thinking these things and this is how it lands in me and I'm owning my perceptions and I'm showing you the impact it has on me without judgment and criticism, That's going to be a much easier place for you to connect with my humanity than if I come into the conversation with some idea that there is an objective truth and that both of us are somehow flawed in living into it appropriately. And what we're going to do is try and control and judge and evaluate one another to better fitting some external template. Yeah. Oh man. I wish every high school student at least will learn, You know, Nonviolent communication to bring into their adulthood, If not early on. Right? Yeah. So it's a very powerful tool when we learn to connect with neutral observations and to be able to describe what's happening quite neutrally. When we get permission to really drop back into our felt sense and give our feeling states a language, You know, There's actually some research, Quite a bit of research that has been done in people who are traumatized, You know, We have this chaotic felt sense on the inside, Emotional distress lives in our bodies in a very uncomfortable prickly, Somewhat chaotic or frozen state inside of us. And once we are able to give it language, And this is one of the benefits of therapy, When somebody else can reflect it back or bring that felt sense into a language and a word, It actually helps our nervous systems down regulate. It is soothing when we can give a word and an organizing conscious principle to the distress that is just felt on the inside. Oh, It just happened to me before I got on the call with you. Client of mine was having crisis and he texted me what the crisis was. And I read it three times to understand the need, The feeling before I said something stupid or dismissive, Right? And I just said, It sounds like you're stuck. Is that true? And he said, You nailed it Ana. And I said, Yes. You know, It felt good because all I said was one word, But it took me a while to understand that he's stuck and it gave him that relief that you're talking about because on his own, He was very confused and lost and disoriented. And we often need that third person, A neutral party to give a name or a label. Dan Siegel says, Name it to tame it. Exactly. Right? Exactly. Exactly. It's really good for our nervous system. That hit, That yes, That relief, That's what we're going for in the naming of it. That's when words can be very powerful when they contribute to that. And so the literacy of feelings and the literacy of needs, This is vocabulary we actually want to practice so that it is in our short-term memory so that it doesn't take us so long to go and dig it out. If we never use those words, They're not available to us when we're stressed out. So it really is a practice, A language practice of getting that language into your everyday way of being so that it's really available to you because it's a pretty powerful tool. What might you suggest as a practice tool, Writing down repeating to yourself or going back in the end of the day, Reflecting back on a specific dialogue and trying to change it in your journal? I don't know. What would be helpful? Oh, There's so many. There's so many things. So I'll just suggest sort of a few easy ones. So here's one that I used to do with my kiddo very often is we would have a bowl in our dining room and we had need words written on little pieces of paper and we'd fold them up. And then in the morning we'd each draw a word and then we'd have a need for the day. She would have her need for the day and I would have my need for the day. And the game was that we would go through our days looking for all of the ways in which this need was being met. And then at dinner time we would report back, You know, How was your need? Tell me all of the ways that your need, This need was met today. So it would develop an awareness of the need words over time. But the thing I really liked about the practice is that the attention practice is for looking for the good. You know, That's one of the things I think Rick Hansen talks about a lot is taking in the good. You're not looking for the unmet part. You're looking for the ways in which this need is being met around you all the time. And when we put our focus on the ways in which our needs are being met, It's deeply energizing. It meets a lot of our other needs. It promotes a very deep sense of well-being. So you know, If you were to imagine pulling a need for beauty and then going through that day with the intention of catching beauty all around you, Suddenly the world is so much more beautiful that day. And then when you come back and you report back to somebody else, All of the moments of beauty that you would otherwise have missed. It's a very resourcing activity. So that's one of my very favorite ones is to find a need for the day and to focus on all of the ways in which it's met and to do it in community with somebody that you care about. On the other end of the spectrum, Sometimes for a while at the end of my day, I would take a conversation that didn't go quite as well as I would have liked and generate a whole bunch of new scripts. Like I might write out a couple of the judgmental comments or I might write out the script as I remember it. And then I would just spend some time coming up with five other options in that moment. What else could I have said? If I wanted to reflect a feeling, What would I have guessed? If I had wanted to reflect a need, What might have been going on? If I wanted to suggest a path forward that was more relational, That was asking for what I want, What the other person might want, What would that look like? And that would just help me get more awareness and options online so that the next time I was in a similar situation, I was that much more resourced with options that I thought about outside of the moment. Because very often for myself, I will go into that default script. I will only have available to me whatever I've practiced until that moment. And so doing more intentional practice of coming up with a language intentionally just gives me more tools when I'm under stress. Absolutely love this too. I love the one that you do with your daughter. I think it's such a great exercise and I may use that in our support group. We have a support group around the podcast and I think this is a good one to work on, Very practical. And I love that you mentioned Rick Hansen. I'm a big fan of his work and he was on the podcast a couple of years ago. That's so lovely. Yes. Yeah. Anything else that you can add before we wrap this conversation? Otherwise I will keep you for the whole day. No, No, I, Nothing comes to mind. It's just so much fun to think through some of these concepts together with you. Thank you so much. So I want to ask one last final question actually. Yeah. I know what you know about communication, Spirituality, Personal development, Parenting, You know, If you were to go back in time, What would you say to yourself as a new mom? Oh, What would I say to myself as a new mom? The relationship is everything. Don't worry about all of the small things where the dinner gets on the table on time. See everything your child does as an opportunity for play and learning and try to join with as much playfulness and spaciousness as possible. And don't let any of the ideas of time and structure trample on the spirits that are wanting to be together in the moment. Like really embrace the playfulness of it. Be in relationship and play with your kids. That's what I would tell myself. I would tell myself to stop worrying so much about the educating, The correcting, The behavior, The shaping. I would really encourage myself to let go of more of that and to trust the process that we're emergent, Alive, Self-intelligent, Self-healing systems that are here to love one another and play with one another. And that's really what it's about. So beautiful and moving. Thank you, Yvette, From the bottom of my heart. You're a beautiful human being. I'm so happy I have found you. I am going to invite you back again on the podcast. You're such a wealth of knowledge and I love the way you share, You know, Your wisdom. So thank you. I really appreciate your presence today and what a joy it was. It's been such a delight. Thank you so much for having me. It's been super fun.