Satisfying Our Emotional Needs Without Being Codependent

April 26th, 2017

By Lissa Rankin

Guest writer for Wake Up World

A deep cultural blind spot has recently come into my awareness, and it’s the kind of blind spot that, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. When I was in Bali, I spoke to a Hindu high priest, who is also an indigenous Balinese shaman — a rare combination — and he said that during the Kali Yuga, many blind spots will be revealed, and it is our invitation to just let ourselves see what has been in the shadow, for only then can it be illuminated with healing light. So let us shine light on this pattern and explore it together with curiosity.

This pattern has to do with our relationship to needs. As humans, we have needs. It’s a simple fact. If we don’t get our needs met, we suffer and/or die. We need healthy food, clean water, shelter, physical and emotional safety, emotional intimacy, and a feeling of belonging to a tribe of people who love us. We need the opportunity to do work that matters — without having to sell our souls for a paycheck — so we can give our gifts to the world and have them received. We need to be loved but we also need a place for our love to land. We need beauty and nature and the opportunity to express ourselves creatively. We need sex and good health and a deep connection to our true self.

As Abraham Maslow outlines in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it can be tough to focus on getting deeper needs met when we’re scrambling for survival, as the Syrian people are right now. Maslow asserts that we have to get basic physiological needs and safety needs met before we can begin to meet our needs for love and belonging, esteem, and self-realization. While his model has been criticized as being specific to more narcissistic “me-centered,” self-improvement focused cultures like the United States, and while I sense that such critique is valid, the gist of it is that to be human is to be needy — and the sooner we recognize this, the healthier we can become emotionally, physically, spiritually, and societally.

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Recommended articles by Lissa Rankin:

• Holding Space When Someone Is In Pain
• Relationships on the Spiritual Path
• The “Space Between Stories”
• How to Make Your Body Ripe for Miracles
• Are You “Spiritual But Not Religious?”
• 10 Tips for Fully Feeling What Hurts Right Now, Without Going Insane
• 9 Practical Tips to Help You Find Your Calling
• 10 Fun Ways to Reduce Your Cortisol Levels
• 6 Stories To Make You Believe In The Power Of The Mind To Heal You
• 7 Tips For Finding Your Tribe
• 10 Surprising Things That Trigger “Fight-Or-Flight”
• 8 Signs You’ve Lost Touch with Your Intuition – and 10 Tips to Help You Reconnect
• Medical Error is Still the #3 Cause of Death in the U.S. – Are We Really Okay With This?

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