Hi everybody, a warm welcome once again to this podcast on how to heal your relationship.

My name is Ayesha Walker and I’m a relationship coach. I’m doing this series of podcast episodes really to share with you some of the tips, tools, techniques and skills that I use in my own coaching practice with couples and individuals wanting to improve their relationship.

So last week we were talking a lot about the importance of being connected to what you are feeling when you’re in a conflict and why this is important and for those of you who struggle to get connected to what you’re feeling or have a partner who struggles to connect with what they’re feeling, ways in which you can get better at that.

So if that sounds interesting to you, go and have a listen to last week’s episode.

But this week I’d like to talk to you about needs because we began to touch a little bit on that last week when I was saying one of the ways that you can connect to what you’re feeling is to first of all connect to what you’re needing, often connecting to what you want or you don’t want any needs is much easier, it’s kind of less amorphous than trying to work out what you are feeling.

It’s a little bit more concrete.

So if you can connect to what you are feeling, sorry if you can connect to what you are needing or example, I’m really needing some peace and quiet right now.

It’s not too difficult to work but what it was that you or your partner might have been feeling, they might have been feeling overwhelmed, too stimulated, exhausted, stressed if they’re wanting peace and quiet.

Inventory Of Needs

So needs, how do you know what you need?

I’ve just said it’s easier than knowing what you feel for many people, but even that can be something of a stretch for some people.

So a little bit like last week, what I’m providing this week is a needs inventory.

So last week we had a feelings inventory, this wonderful chart that you can use where you can look down a whole list of feelings that are put into lots of different categories, like a category for happiness or a category for anger or a category for tiredness.

So we have a similar thing available for needs. So once again a little bit light last week, if you’d like a copy of this inventory sign-up to my mailing list here.  

So go and have a look there and I’ll send you out a PDF of this chart. So let’s dive in a little bit to the chart itself, a little bit like the feelings inventory we were talking about, this puts things into categories if you like, needs that sit within a similar area.

So maybe I can give you an example of what I mean.

Let’s say one of the needs that pretty much all human beings have is a need for connection.

We Are Social Animals

We are social animals when we don’t have any connection, we can feel pretty low, even those of us who largely kind of like our own time, more than we like being with other people, can still have a need for connection at a certain level.

So when we’re looking at the needs of being connected, that might include acceptance, being accepted into a group of friends or into your family or into a workplace or into your relationship.

It might be within that need for connection, affection, because when we feel affection from another or we feel affection towards another, that’s part of feeling that feeling of connection.

Similar with appreciation, if you’re feeling like you’re not really being appreciated by others or by your partner, that’s really part of a need for connection because when we don’t have that need for appreciation, connection is broken.

Some others that might come under that title would be wanting to, a feeling of belonging, particularly have that around families, feeling that we, how important it is to feel that we belong to our families that we’re not feeling like outsiders within that, it’s also why what drives us really as human beings to love being part of groups, institutions, political parties, our country, it touches on also our need for our, touches not our need for identity, it’s not really a need on our sense of our identity.

Need For Connection

So other needs that might be under that heading of connection, a need for closeness or community or companionship or compassion, consistency, even love comes under that heading of connection because love is just a very deep, deep, deep form of connection.

There are more under that heading of connection, so get hold of that chart if you’d like to know a little bit about your needs for connection.

As with feelings our needs can also be physical, they’re not necessarily emotional needs such as intimacy or respect, but they can be physical needs such as a need for food, for sleep, for exercise, for section expression, for safety, very, very basic need that every human being has, a need for touch, incredibly important need for many of us who’ve gone through, well for all of us actually have gone through the pandemic over the last two and a half years, living in isolation.

If you were truly doing that on your own, if you weren’t living with a partner or as part of a family, you don’t have that incredibly basic, wonderful need that we all have just to be touched, to be hugged, very, very important, other physical needs, water obviously, air, I could go on, but as with feelings, a physical need is very important to acknowledge.

Other Needs

What about our needs for play, for relaxation, for humour, for joy, for just being silly, talking about our needs to feel expressed, those needs of play might come under that.

How about honestly? This is an incredibly important need in relationships, for authenticity that your partner is being real with you, they’re not playing a part, our need for integrity, all those words that we use around honesty.

I was talking earlier about somebody feeling stressed, probably having a need for peace, so peace covers a lot of areas, it might be under a peace, could be harmony, and order, and ease, and inspiration, those all come under that beautiful heading of peace. Another very important section of human needs is autonomy.

The Need For Autonomy

For me, this one is extremely key.

One of my own personal philosophies is why there often exists conflict within communication, is where our need for autonomy bangs up against our needs for connection.

If our needs for connection are closeness and community and companionship, autonomy can perhaps pull us in a different direction. There is the need for freedom, for space, for independence, for choice, personal choice, so if you’re a little bit too close with someone else this can feel challenging.

If you’re part of community, you might be really craving a little bit more freedom, a little bit more choice, a little bit more space. So that’s quite interesting to know, because it’s very important in a healthy relationship to meet the needs of autonomy and to meet the needs of connection, and that can be, well let’s say it requires creativity to find that path that is able to include both of those needs.

The Need For Meaning And Challenge

So as well as autonomy, we have a need also in our lives for meaning, right? Meaning is incredibly important for it to feel that our life has meaning and has value is incredibly important to us as human beings.

We don’t want to just exist, we want to thrive, we want to be in celebration of life, we want to feel that our life has creativity in it, variety, that it’s full of discovery, that we are living lives that are full of contribution, incredibly important for us, for to feel that our lives has meaning, that we are of value to others and to ourselves.

Here’s another important part of meaning and a need in our life which actually you might be surprised to hear there’s a need for challenge.

We don’t want life to be too much ease and play and peace, too much of that, we’re bored, we like a little bit of challenge because it helps us to grow, we like to be tested and tried a little bit. Because that helps us to expand that side of our comfort zone and feel that we are actually evolving as a person. So that touches a little bit on our needs for meaning.

So get a hold of that PDF from me guys so that you can go into a little bit more depth if you so wish around needs because there might be needs in there that you haven’t given voice to, you didn’t even realise that they were actually very important to you, but you weren’t connected to them and when you are not connected to what you are needing.

Often then you go into sort of a general feeling of unhappiness, disquiet, you can’t quite put your finger on what it is that you are feeling because you don’t quite know what it is that you are needing.

The Importance Of Awareness Of Your Needs

So that’s another reason why being very conscious, very awake and very aware of what your needs are is so extremely important in relationships. And as well as helping you in your relationship and having a greater understanding of your partner, of course it helps you have a greater understanding of yourself.

If you want to deepen your own self discovery, get aware of what your needs are. We all have the needs that I’ve just gone through by the way.

That’s why there’s such an incredibly important part of communication because they’re universal and we all have them and therefore other people are far more likely as with feelings to listen to your needs when they are expressed because they too have them.

But here’s an interesting and important thing to share about needs: some people will have one need much more than they will have another. So let me give you a little example of that.

One person might have a high need, let’s say, for variety. They love a little bit of challenging their life. They like stretching themselves. They love variety. They love to meet the unexpected. They don’t want everything the same every day.

They don’t want to be doing a nine to five perhaps. They don’t want to just have a holiday in the same place every single year. They don’t want to have a nine to five job that wouldn’t speak to their need for variety and for discovery or perhaps even challenge and growth.

Another person might perhaps your partner have a very high need for certainty for knowing what’s coming for not having too much variety in their life for things being in a place of order for not having surprises dropped on them for their future having a high degree of planning and this might affect their choice of what they might really thrive in a nine to five because they know exactly where they need to be at what time.

They love going on holiday to the same destination every year because that means that they can relax and they can really let go because they feel safe and they feel held. They’re not somebody that has a high need for variety but they will have some need for variety.

They’ll like variety in smaller ways. They might choose variety in I don’t know what they wear each day or what they eat for breakfast but they don’t need to go and climb Mount Everest and the person who has that high need for variety challenge difference will have a need for a degree of certainty.

They will come a point when they’ve had enough of that adventure holiday and they’re really ready to come home and chill and relax and be with friends and be with family again. So we all have all needs. We just have them in at different levels.

Self Discovery

So again going back to what I was saying about self awareness and self discovery knowing this with yourself knowing what needs are important to you and being able to ensure or speak about with your partner what needs are important to them is incredibly useful and an important part of communication within a relationship.

So I could talk for hours on the subject of needs but I would say that’s enough to be going on with today. As always I like to just give you enough and not too much so that you can really take what it is that we are talking about in each episode.

So I’d love you guys to get in touch, get a copy of this chart, have a look at it, really connect up with what needs are important to you and perhaps what needs you didn’t realise were important to you and ask yourself are they being met?

Are they being met in your life? Don’t get onto who it is that’s not meeting them, right? I don’t want you to go stop blaming your partner because you don’t have enough stability in your life or enough challenge in your life. Just sit with an awareness of what needs are being met and what needs are not being met.

Okay I think that should keep you going for the next seven days, have an amazing week, get connected to what your needs are and tune in again next week when we will go down this particular rabbit hole a little more deeper and take care to them.