Bevin Reynolds

What Are Our Human Needs

Bevin — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 09:25:24 +0000

In order to fully address the question of “how do we express my needs lovingly”, it is necessary to take a step back and first provide us with a starting point: What do we need as human beings? I do this because many of us are not fully aware of these needs or have learnt, through life experience (both adulthood and childhood) to ignore, suppress, or deny them. Others of us may have been taught either directly or indirectly that we do not deserve to have our needs met, or that having needs makes us weak or vulnerable.

The reality is, we all have these needs, some of which we may experience more stridently than others, and being in touch with them is vital to creating a full and enriching life. Whether we are aware of it or not, needs drive action and motivate us toward doing the things that satisfy them. So, the better we are identifying them, the more likely we are to take wise and considered action that benefits us and the people in our worlds.

The following list has been divided into 3 overarching groups:

WELL-BEING
Sustenance/Health – abundance/thriving, exercise, food/nutrition, nourishment, rest/sleep, relaxation, shelter, sustainability, support/help, wellness, vitality, energy.

Safety/Security – comfort, confidence, emotional safety, familiarity, order, structure, predictability, protection, from harm, stability, trust, faith.

Beauty/Peace/Play – acceptance, appreciation, gratitude, awareness, balance, ease, equanimity, humour, presence, rejuvenation, simplicity, space, tranquillity, wholeness, wonder.

CONNECTION
Love/Caring – affection/warmth, beauty closeness/touch, companionship, compassion, kindness, intimacy, mattering, importance, nurturing, sexual connection, respect, honouring, valuing/prizing.

Empathy/Understanding – awareness/clarity, acceptance, acknowledgement, communication, consideration, hearing (hear/be heard), knowing (know/be known), presence/listening, respect/equality, receptivity/openness, recognition, seeing (see/be seen), self-esteem, sensitivity.

Community/Belonging – cooperation, fellowship, generosity, inclusion, interdependence, harmony/peace, hospitality/welcoming, mutuality, reciprocity, partnership, relationship, support/solidarity, trust/dependability, transparency/openness.

SELF-EXPRESSION
Autonomy/Freedom – choice, clarity, congruence, consistency, continuity, dignity, freedom, independence, integrity, power, empowerment, self-responsibility.

Authenticity – adventure, aliveness, discovery, honesty, initiative, innovation, inspiration, joy, mystery, passion, spontaneity.

Meaning/Contribution – appreciation/gratitude, achievement, productivity, celebration/mourning, challenge, efficacy, effectiveness, excellence, growth, learning/clarity, mystery, participation, purpose/value, self-actualization, self-esteem, skill/mastery.

Whenever you are feeling dissatisfied, unhappy or discontented, take a look through the list and see what stands out for you. Becoming more adept at naming our needs helps us to express them to others with more ease, as well as ultimately assisting us to create the kind of lives we long for.

Identifying Our Needs

Bevin — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 09:19:03 +0000

Today I move on to the next step of learning how to identify and define our personal needs. Before we are able to express to another how they may be able to assist us in meeting our needs, we have some personal reflective ‘work’ to do. Get down to the emotional needs that we are seeking to fulfil can take some time and effort. By this I mean, our needs may not be apparent to us immediately and peeling back the layers to come to a place of knowing what our needs are is a contemplative process that requires a commitment to self-discovery.

The first step is for us to take a look at our emotional realm and the associated thoughts that go hand in hand with these feelings. This means stopping and assessing our inner emotional/feeling/sensing experience to get to a place of naming, at least partly, what it is we are actually feeling. Being able to name or label our emotional experience helps us to regulate and manage our emotions as well as to go a little deeper to find the associated need that is often ‘buried’ beneath the emotion.

Once we have got to naming what the emotional experience is, we can begin to ask ourselves reflective questions that help with the ‘uncovering’ process. Great questions to ask are:

What is it that I really need here? Not just what action do I wish this other/life would give me or do differently, but what does this action/experience represent to me? What is it that I am longing for or craving here? What does my heart/soul/body/mind need right now?

The answers to these questions can be found by selecting one/more of the personal needs that I drew our attention to last week. Think in terms of “to feel”, “to have”, “to experience”, and “to be”. An example may be: “I am needing connection”. The next question to ask is: “What does ‘connection’ look like to me?” By doing this we define, more precisely, the specifics of what our need looks like. For some, ‘connection’ may mean going out for dinner and chatting, for another, it may mean cuddling up in front of a movie with our loved one. Knowing the specifics helps us to clarify whether we can meet our needs alone or whether we need to enlist the help of another or others.

Some needs may take longer for us to discover as we continue to unravel and contemplate the layers of our emotional and psychological understanding. Other needs may be highly significant to us, such as when we need to make a job change, move house, get married, or do something that radically transforms the direction our life is moving in.
As you may well see, discovering our deeper needs requires that we make decisions about what, when and how we are going to meet them. It also involves believing that we deserve to have our needs met and that it is okay to ask safe others to help us in meeting those that we can’t do alone. Learning to identify our needs is a personal growth skill that gets better the more we use it. It also has both the immediate and long-term consequences of contributing to the creation of a life that is enriching and fulfilling.

Expressing Our Needs

Bevin — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 09:07:16 +0000

This week I move onto the third part of our recent series on needs! From this, we can turn the human need knowledge gained in part one and the self-knowledge discussed in part two into definable and empowering action. Expressing our needs in loving ways to our partners takes courage and wisdom. Courage because it involves being open and honest with both ourselves and our lovers about what we are experiencing within our relationship. And wisdom because when we say something, what we say and how we say it all impacts on what unfolds as we begin these important conversations.

A very useful NEEDS script goes like this:

1. Start off with a clear and objective description of the situation you want to address. An example of this is: “We haven’t spent quality time together in the past two weeks.” Notice how this is not accusatory or blaming, has a specific time frame, and does not include any analysis or interpretation. Keep it simple.

2. Name your feelings. Try to use “I-statements” that avoid blaming your partner for how you are feeling, no matter how tempting this may be. Also, try adding the intensity of the feeling, as well as the duration that you have been feeling this way. An example of this is: “I have been feeling pretty upset over the past 3 or 4 days.” You can also add something about the interpersonal context in which your feelings are arising. In other words, “I have been feeling pretty upset over the past 3 or 4 days. I think it because of how much I was hoping we would spend time together this weekend.”

3. Include the specific need that you need help from your partner to fulfil. “I need some quality time with you where I feel that we are connecting with each other”. You can also add the specifics of what this connection looks like for you: “I need some quality time with you where I feel that we are connecting with each other. I’d really like us to go out for a yummy dinner and a movie.”

4. Make a request for behaviour change. Here you can ask your partner for some action on their part. Remember to not ask for them to change some aspect of their personality and rather focus your attention on specific and observable behaviours such as “Please would book the restaurant for one night this weekend so that we can go for our dinner?” Consider adding the part that you will play in co-creating a more fulfilling experience for yourself.

You may want to prepare your script beforehand so that you stick, at least mostly, to what you are wanting and needing from your relationship. It is wise to keep in mind that addressing one need and behaviour at a time is best so that you do not overwhelm your partner. Also, consider starting with a small need first and once you and your partner have got the hang of this process you can begin to express the larger, more significant ones. Of course, also try to keep any anger, irritation or resentment contained within yourself as becoming reactive is likely to create the very conflict that you were likely dreading from the start.

Remember as tough as this kind of conversation may seem at first, expecting your partner to intuitively know what your needs are is more likely to lead to disappointment and resentment that negatively impacts both of you in the long term. The more you practise this skill, the more likely you are to feel empowered and fulfilled within your relationship.

Authentic Attention

Bevin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:54:04 +0000

Each and every one of us craves some form of ATTENTION. In fact, it is a human need that we all have – to be seen, noticed, attended to, and recognised as we are, held in the gentle gaze of an open-hearted, non-judgemental other. While we can’t control the attention that another gives or doesn’t give us, we can certainly become more present and authentically attentive ourselves. We can choose to practice becoming more artful in our ability to love others.

So, what does it mean to be authentically attentive?

Being in this way means noticing and hearing our partner’s words, feelings, and experiences. It means noticing their whole being, becoming ‘attuned’ to what is moving for them, and being present with all that is expressed, verbally and non-verbally, without jumping in to fix, persuade, coerce, or compete.

It means developing and adopting a neutral stance towards feelings, suspending automatic judgements, releasing ideas of right and wrong, and becoming energetically receptivity to being influenced by what the other shares. It means allowing another to be exactly as they are, in that very moment. In some situations, it means sitting in any discomfort their expression brings up, without trying to manipulate the conversation so that we can feel more comfortable.

And why would we want to do this?

When we offer this gift of authentic attention, our partners feel deeply and truly heard and understood. Their perspectives, intuitions, and emotions are respected and valued. Trust and safety expand between us and ever-deepening truths can emerge, be sensed or felt, named and verbalised. More of who they are, authentically, is revealed. And in this deeper intimacy is experienced and our love matures.

Next time your partner starts talking to you, STOP what you are doing, take a few deep breaths, and be FULLY present to all that they reveal to you. Allow yourself to fully hear them, with your whole body, catch yourself if you find yourself formulating an answer or turning the conversation onto yourself. Invite curiosity within yourself, ask gentle questions, find out more about what they are telling you about.

Afterwards take a moment to reflect. What was it like? Did you find it hard or easy? Did you notice or learn something new about them and or yourself? Did the other notice your attention and respond? Can you feel or see the value of this skill for building your relationship?

Creating a Culture of Appreciation

Bevin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:52:18 +0000

Let’s explore APPRECIATION and how it is fundamental to building healthy and thriving relationships.

Each one of us has psychological needs to be seen, acknowledged and of course, appreciated for who we are and what we do, think and feel. Feeling appreciated is a fundamental human need that contributes to our self-esteem and how we value ourselves which affects our overall well-being. People who feel appreciated tend to go the extra the mile, do more, engage more, contribute more. They tend to feel better about their contribution and, very importantly, tend to think more positively about their value and place in society. As social beings, knowing that who we are and what we do is appreciated by others really makes us feel better about ourselves and others!

In fact, many conflicts start when one or both partners don’t have this need for appreciation met! And, given that most of us prefer peace over conflict, learning to express our gratitude and appreciation goes a long way toward enhancing our relationships with others. Showing our appreciation builds trust and mutual respect. It also increases the chance that one or both in the relationship will feel pleasant feelings of safety and well-being! When both partners focus on the positive aspects of their partner or the actions their partners have taken and less on critically appraising their lack of action, a culture of appreciation is created. Within this kind of positive energy field, partners are more likely to want to act in beneficial ways that enhance the relationship. Quite simply, this is because they are met with positive reinforcement. Overall, meeting and having the need for appreciation met enhances connection and intimacy between partners and lessens the chance of uncomfortable feelings emerging.

Furthermore, the likelihood of partners feeling that who they are and what they do contributes to the creation of a healthy relationship builds self-esteem and tends to lead people to want to express their appreciation for others outside the relationship. In this way, a culture of appreciation within a couple contributes to universal compassion as many others are impacted by the couple’s positive energy.

Mindful Affection

Bevin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:49:30 +0000

Let’s turn our attention to the ever important topic of AFFECTION within our intimate relationships.

Firstly, affection plays a vital role in the development of any relationship. This is because each of us has varying needs and wounds related to touching and being touched. The nature of these needs and wounds are unique to each of us and creating respectful and honouring relationships needs to entail consciousness and mindfulness of these differences. In essence, each of us has a unique relationship to touch that is worthy of being heard and respected.

Secondly, affectionate action, as a physical expression of loving energy, spans a broad spectrum. At one end of the continuum lies tender expressions such as holding, hugging, fleeting touches and other forms of non-sexual contact. At the other end, sexual acts and caressing that entails touch imbued with erotic elements of lust and desire can be found. It is important to remember that different types of affection will be felt as wanted/desired/needed/appropriate at different times and in different contexts. By paying attention and being receptive to these factors, each of us can learn a great deal about ourselves and others and gain vital information that will inform our future choices and actions in the realm of giving and receiving affection.

Thirdly, gaining personal mastery in the realm of mindful touch requires that we are sensitive to touch given as we would like to give it and touch given as the other wishes to be touched. These are not one and the same and, within an intimate relationship, there will be times when these do not align. Being able to navigate this terrain with grace will greatly assist how each person experiences the love of the other and how the relationship will be impacted.

Learning how we and our intimate partners relate to affection and touch is extremely beneficial for both partners. This involves that each partner takes some time to reflect on their own personal relationship to touch and consciously creating the space to communicate this to each other. Within the framework of non-judgemental listening, by sharing personal histories of touch and discussing how each partner experiences touch in their bodies, couples build on their intimacy skills and enhance their abilities to respond to each partner’s needs.

Inviting Acceptance

Bevin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:47:18 +0000

Each of us has a human need for ACCEPTANCE. When we are accepted by others, we feel that we are adequate and enough as we are. Yet, amidst our seeking of it from others, learning to offer it, as an act of love, is key to building healthy relationships.

Accepting others is a way of being that invites safety within our relationships. It requires us to drop and dismantle all ideas of who we want another to be, and in so doing, say through our words and actions, that we accept and approve of them as they are. When we accept another like this, we send them the message that we love them, in all their individuality, even if we may disagree with their choices, their opinions, their lifestyle, or their way of being in the world. It means we are okay with them, even if they display traits that we don’t like or can’t understand. It means taking the differences between us and letting them slide because we love this person regardless of how much they differ from us.

For some of us, accepting others like this takes a great deal of personal work. We have to work on fostering deeper empathy, on expanding our understanding, of acknowledging and honouring differences and uniqueness in the world. We may have to work hard to deconstruct our illusions about how we want others to be. We take an honest look at how we may want them to be someone other than who they are, usually because we want to feel more comfortable. When we drop trying to mould someone in ways that are other to who they are, we set them free to be. We let them live as they are because we love and respect them enough to value their unique way.

What belief system about your partner can you dismantle that will foster greater acceptance of them? What disapproving idea about them do you carry that you need to question and perhaps drop?

Emotional Availability

Bevin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:44:07 +0000

This week I am especially keen to unpack this topic! Firstly, because I have had a long personal journey with it, and secondly, because it continues to be relevant for almost everyone I meet. EMOTIONAL AVAILABILITY is one of those intangible traits that some seem to be naturals at! Others of us may need to do a lot of personal work in order to develop our availability to both ourselves and our lovers in the realm of emotion.

So what is it?

Being emotionally available means being open to your own emotions and sharing them with your partner. Emotionally available people tend to feel all their feelings, without being afraid of them. Naturally, this involves having a perspective towards emotions that allows all, and I mean, ALL of them to be felt, acknowledged, and accepted. In other words, developing a positive or at least neutral attitude towards the FULL repertoire of human feelings without shame, guilt, or fear clouding or distorting their experience goes a long way to helping us become more emotionally available.

Why would we want to be more emotionally available?

Firstly, without emotional availability intimacy and a deeper connection to our lovers is impossible. In order to feel truly connected and engaged with each other at an emotional level, we have to be emotionally open. When both partners are able to meet each other at an emotional level, because they are both open to it, a reciprocal feeling of intimacy and connection can be felt. This can be a beautiful experience! Especially as we are taking a step towards developing a more authentic relationship. In this kind of relating, both lovers feel that they are able to be their full selves, without having to hide any part of who they are and what they feel. This means sharing our so-called darker feelings – those of fear, insecurity, vulnerability, sadness, and so on – without feeling overwhelmed with fear or doubt. The lovers will no longer feel the need to hide behind a façade.

Secondly, emotionally available lovers have more fulfilling relationships. This means that partners rarely feel lonely or isolated within their relationship and when they do they find ways to reveal this to their partner so that both can actively engage in changing this dynamic. Furthermore, commitment to a long-term relationship relies on at least some availability at an emotional level.

What can you do to become more emotionally available to yourself and to others?

The first place to start with is becoming more emotionally available to yourself. This will involve a different process for everyone as our reasons for becoming unavailable in the first place will vary. For some of us, writing our feelings in a journal may be enough to invite more connection to ourselves. For others, talking to a compassionate friend will be enough to get us into deeper connection to what is moving for us emotionally. For others, talking to a trusted counsellor or therapist may be necessary to face the painful losses and trauma from the past that are preventing us from feeling a full range of emotions in the present.

Once we have developed a better relationship to our own emotions, in other words, being aware of them and able to name them while having an understanding of where they are originating from, will allow us to become more emotionally available to our lovers. If we know that our partner is someone that will compassionately accept our feelings, we can allow ourselves to reveal these feelings. When we are given the gift of empathy and understanding from our partner, our connection to each other will deepen and our hearts will feel together.

Space

Bevin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:36:04 +0000

Whether you are single or in an intimate relationship, each of us faces the challenge of navigating the relationship terrain that arises when our individual lives offer us distinct opportunities from that of the other important people in our lives. Learning to navigate this with as much grace as possible is a life long journey of developing our self-awareness, creating clear communication, and growing our ability to sit with misunderstandings and conflict. This week I explore the beauty and the challenge of needing and creating SPACE within our relationships with others.

As individuals, we all have needs for both connection and intimacy, and autonomy, solitude, and separateness. When we are flying solo, our needs for solitude, autonomy, and to express our individuality are easily and naturally met. We may struggle more with meeting our intimacy needs and as such loneliness can and often does creep in. However, once we are in a relationship, the pendulum swings the other way. By this I mean, creating solitude, and the space for the expression of our autonomy, sovereignty, and independence often becomes the more challenging task for the lovers.

Ideally, in mature and healthy relationships, this not unduly challenging. When there is sufficient trust between the partners, respect for these needs for separateness and togetherness is fairly balanced, and clear communication around these needs paves the way for a relatively harmonious and smooth meeting of these needs. This may require levels of compromise for one or both partners, as well as the processing of disappointment and other less comfortable emotions that arise when certain needs cannot be met immediately.

However, for a lot of us, this is not always the case, and dealing with these conflicting needs is one of our biggest challenges. When we are needing to allow our partner the freedom to follow their own path, it is vital to recognise that SPACE is a necessity for the health of our relationship. This space has a certain beauty to it – it creates the space for longings to emerge, for urges to connection to be felt, even increasing desire to be experienced (this is especially yummy when we have been together for a long time!), and of course, most importantly, for contemplation and connection with ourselves. In this process of allowing, we may also be called to take care of our own needs, and manage our feelings, and expectations, whatever they may be. Our task here is to work through whatever emerges for us, without preventing our partner from living their life in a full and rich way.

When we are the one needing space, our edge of growth may be around acknowledging this need, owning as it something that we require for our personal well-being, and expressing this to our partner. Some of us, having grown up in a home where asking for space and solitude was not honoured and accepted, may find that we struggle with this process now. Here, our work first lies in becoming aware of these needs for more separateness and solitude. When we can see that we need more alone time or a retreat from the togetherness of our coupledom, we are then able to express this directly to our partners. We are then less likely to initiate conflict as a means to create space.

In summary, learning to express our need for more space, and allowing others their own space are two vital skills for creating and maintaining healthy and thriving relationships.

Trust

Bevin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 12:26:07 +0000

So, this week I’ve been playing with the word and concept of TRUST. We all know how important, or rather, how vital trust is to any intimate relationship. As far as I see it, it’s a pretty vast topic to explore and one that a post like this will certainly not do justice to. One angle that arose for me is how often we can get caught up in questioning whether our partner is trustworthy, without turning the question back on ourselves and asking “How trustworthy am I?”

Without any real ability to control our partners when distrust arises, turning the question back on to ourselves is the only place where we do have control. Committing ourselves to become a more trustworthy person and practising trust-building behaviours is where our power to change a situation lies.

Trustworthy people tend to display a set of characteristics, consistently, which enhance the trust that others feel and experience when interacting with them. One obvious trait, that I am sure you can imagine, is honesty, or in other words, transparency and authenticity. This means regularly and consistently telling the truth to another. Without going into a philosophical debate about what this truth is, I’ll leave this word to mean our personal truth. The truth that we ourselves have gleaned from our own honest appraisal of what we did or how we felt, thought or processed something. This involves being less defensive and being willing to admit our fallibilities without using unlikely justifications for behaviours that are less than savoury.

A second trait is that they practise being a person of integrity. This means doing what you say you will do more often than not. It means having personal values that you would stand up for even if standing up for them means facing disapproval. It means behaving in ways that align with these values, even if no one is watching.

Trustworthy people also tend to be empathic, compassionate and kind. In other words, others feel psychologically safe with them. This means practising putting yourself in another’s shoes, listening, being considerate of other’s thoughts and feelings, and making attempts to understand another’s perspective without undue judgement. These kinds of behaviours build connection, intimacy, and help others to feel inspired, motivated, and supported. Or, in other words, loved!

Another important trait of trustworthy people is that they respect and accept other’s boundaries. This means honouring another’s choice and the lines that they draw to protect and honour themselves, without making attempts to persuade, argue, or change their mind. This too allows others to feel safe to be themselves with us – one of the foundations of trust.

Of course, all of these traits and the many others that social scientists have discovered, fall less than flat when they are not done consistently and regularly. So, as we continually practise these behaviours, being a trustworthy person becomes WHO WE ARE, and we no longer have to think too much about it. This leads to deeper levels of trust between ourselves and our partners. Others begin to see us as BEING trustworthy and, as a result, are more likely to feel safe enough to also share themselves in authentic and trust building ways. In this way, we exercise our power to bring out the trustworthiness of others.

In a nutshell, while trust is co-created between persons, we have the power to shift our relationship dynamics when we stop asking the other to be trustworthy and instead commit ourselves to becoming the trustworthy person we are looking for.