Are your needs being met?
There was once a dude who had a theory that being human came with certain needs. Maslow (1943) might have come up with this idea a fair while ago now, but if you understand his theory, it can be really helpful to apply it to our own lives - and it explains so much about ourselves and other people.
Briefly, his five initial needs were, in order of importance:
Physiological (food, water, shelter etc)
Safety (security)
Belongingness and love (intimate relationships, friendships)
Esteem (feeling accomplished and respected by others)
Self-actualisation (achieving your full potential, growth mindset)
In course, there were other needs added to this model, and it has been recognised that different people - depending on their circumstances - may have these needs in different order. But I’m going to inspect just the basic model today.
It is vital to our wellbeing that our basic needs are met. You may be able to bluff your way through if there is something lacking, but ultimately you will not live a fully meaningful and sustainable life if one of your most important needs is not being met. You cannot control what your needs are, it is the way you were made. These needs are equally as true for children. Let’s take a closer look at the needs and how they might apply to you:
Physiological needs: Basic needs that keep you alive such as food, water, air, shelter, warmth and sleep. Everyone starts off needing these things - these are the basic needs that will keep a newborn alive. If we do not fully have our physiological needs met, we will eventually get sick and die. We have an innate drive to seek these needs out and all other needs are secondary.
Safety: Feelings of safety, security, predictability and control are a close second in the hierarchy. These needs are met through a variety of ways - family, friends, neighbours, schools, workplaces, law and order, government and medical, to name a few. The feeling that we are safe both physically and metaphorically such as financial security, is necessary to survive. This particular need has shown itself in predictable and interesting ways during lockdown. We have a need to feel safe from the virus, but also from the vaccine - hence the dissonance from people wanting to be safe and have the vaccine, and anti-vaxers who feel they are unsafe from the vaccine itself. This need also encompasses the need of autonomy over our own lives - also showing in dissonance around people wanting to preserve our freedom by staying in lockdown now so that we can overcome the virus, and people who are against lockdown at all in the service of something bigger - they want their freedom right now. See Mischel’s marshmallow experiment (1972) for a better understanding of that! (spoiler alert, far better to wait for more “marshmallows” at the end). If you look at this need through the lens of a child, you begin to see why safety and security matter so much to their development.
Belongingness and love: Our social needs are essential to our wellbeing. Feeling as though we belong in a family, group, club, town/city, nationality etc is imperative to allowing us to feel connected, accepted, loved and needed. Personal relationships that include trust, sharing, acceptance, vulnerability, affection and partnership can be make or break - one thing that depression and anxiety often have in common is that the sufferer has ceased to uphold their personal relationships and social connection - and the slippery slope to their condition deteriorating begins. To climb out of the hole of anxiety and depression, one of the first things your counsellor or psychologist will recommend is to get back out into socialising, even if you don’t feel like it at first. Looking at this need through the lens of a child, you can see that the relationships they make at school, daycare, sports and clubs are just as important as their family relationships. When adults or children do not feel that they belong, or that they don’t fit in, it can be very difficult and detrimental to mental health. With lockdown, if this need is positioned higher for certain people, they will be the ones that struggle the most with not being able to see people in real life.
Esteem. Feeling accomplished and respected by others. There are two slightly different parts of this need - one is that we have a need to experience achievement, independence, mastery, all things that we ourselves can experience and achieve; the second part is that we have need to be upheld and respected by the people around us. It has been said that this need for respect from others is more important for children than adults. This could explain peer pressure at school, or valuing the opinions of friends over that of family or the rules of society. If you look at this through the lens of family violence, you can see that when the victim in the relationship is poorly treated without respect or dignity, there is no sustainability. Pair that with the second need of safety and security, and the third need of belonging and love, we can see why there is really no place for family violence in society.
Self-actualisation needs. The self-actualising tendency is a theory that says that humans all have a drive within them (in differing amounts) to always do our best with what we know how at the time. The need to work towards our best, even if we disagree what our “best” entails, is a basic desire that crosses over heavily with values. If you value being a good friend, you will strive to do everything right for your friends, whether that means being a pillar of support or helping them through something difficult. If you want to be the best parent possible, you will do everything in your power to whatever your child needs. Like an internal compass that lights up the path to what matters to you.
I hope this explains why we have some of the needs that we do, and that you are able to look at this model to explain more than just yourself - it can explain why some of our friends place more importance on some aspects of life than you, and why children have complex needs that must be met, mostly by you in the early years if you are the parent. It can also be handy if you are looking for a partner or considering spending the rest of your life with someone - the more of your needs they meet, the more sustainable it will be.
And vice-versa of course.
Feedback? Get in touch: kathryn@kathrynwright.co.nz