There are four basic psychological needs, the fulfillment of which in childhood is very important.
In the book “The Inner Child,” Charles Whitfield provides interesting figures. Even in families where there were kind, loving relationships between children and parents, only 5-20% had their needs met.
It turns out that at least 80% of the population across the entire globe walks around with unmet psychological needs.
Learn how to determine whether your needs are met, and what the issues are with fulfilling them in adulthood.
Four Psychological Needs
The Need for Attachment, Belonging
If for a child this sounds like a need for attachment, then at a more mature age a term such as the need for belonging appears.
The trace stretches back to the times of tribal, primitive communal structures.
A person could not survive alone if they were expelled from the tribe. And this need for belonging greatly affects development, including in the sphere of spirituality.
The feeling of belonging means belonging to a certain group of people. And here we enter the topic of egregors, all kinds of schools that dictate certain rules of behavior that you must conform to. People integrate into them to satisfy this need for belonging.
You may have encountered this: you join some group of people and later feel that you really need to conform, or you immediately feel alien, that it is not yours, or they try to adjust you.
And if you have codependency, this imperceptibly integrates into you. You start to think the same way, agree, and in the end it all flows into “either you are with us or you are against us.” A classic 3D version.
Most people, even adults, try to fulfill this childhood need for attachment through relationships. Women are very prone to this, because few can feel self-sufficient while being outside of a relationship.
A woman feels lonely, although in reality the feeling of loneliness is a loss of contact with the soul.
This need for belonging triggers in many people. Among our spiritual audience, I have repeatedly observed people getting involved in almost sex orgies and so on for the sake of love.
Because the childhood need is not satisfied, it leads you who knows where.
There is also an illusion that if a person is studying the Keys of Mastery and corresponds with someone, meeting them will be a kindred spirit, soul to soul. Nothing of the sort, because reading some materials does not mean being the same as you.
I have observed this for a long time, because it says absolutely nothing. We read the same thing, but we perceive everything differently. And how we use it in life is also a colossal difference.
In my time, I went to Simoron events, I went to tantric practices, excursions; I lacked contact with people.
Svetlana Vladimirovna was already in my life then, and she kept saying the same phrase to me: “Only crows fly in flocks.” It didn’t bother me, but I needed to return that lost part of myself.
There was a lot of communication, a lot of interaction, and then somehow I fell out of all of it.
Take the free master class “Reconnection” to free yourself from the influence of egregors. Registration at the Keys of Mastery Training Center is required.
The need for independence and security. Security = control
This is the same crisis of 2-3 years old, when a child first separates from the mother and begins to try everything on their own: “I won’t wear the dress, I’ll put on the pants.”
It would seem, so what if the parents suppressed it? The recognition of one’s uniqueness and selfhood has a greater impact, from an energetic perspective, on the development of the solar plexus chakra.
Psychologists and psychotherapists believe that independence means you activate control to gain security.
Few people work on themselves; usually this part is projected outward, and control of others begins, or self-assertion when others try to control you.
It would be fine if you controlled yourself: activated willpower, self-discipline, physical exercise, a certain eating rhythm. No, first and foremost, all of this is transferred outward.
A very long path of self-development must be traversed before you turn this on yourself.
Therefore, those who try to control children or spouses have not resolved this need for independence and security.
Perhaps someone tried to increase their level of security through finances, but as soon as the attachment becomes very strong—that money equals security—a collapse immediately occurs when you lose money or business, to knock it out of you.
Similarly, if you cling too tightly to a relationship: “He is me, I have fused with him, we have penetrated each other,” eventually some blow knocks the ground out from under your feet, and you are left alone.
This need, if unresolved, manifests in many areas of life, and it all originates from childhood.
Go through the meditation “My Security,” the focus of which will be on strengthening the feeling of security within you.
The Need for Pleasure. Reasons for the Inability to Satisfy One’s Needs
Small children are taught to exercise willpower, to curb the thirst for pleasure, the desire to have things here and now, and to cope with displeasure if they do not get what they want.
But there are a huge number of adults who cannot handle the expectation that something has gone differently than they imagined in their minds.
In childhood, this is all understandable: the ability to wait, the ability not to react when one’s immediate desires are not fulfilled—it is difficult for a child to cope with this.
But now we are observing the flip side of this unmet need — a lack of desires. For many, the right to pleasure is completely suppressed.
In our course “Dance with the Shadow,” there is such a story. The comment author writes: “My husband’s relative is such a brazen woman, she keeps asking, asking, demanding money, and my husband agrees.” The woman feels resentment toward her husband.
The very first question: “Do you often ask for what you need? Do you know how to ask?”
The point is, you don’t know how to ask, which is why these women infuriate you. We have many such stories, and it all comes down to one thing: they allow themselves to ask, they allow themselves to shake a man down like a pear tree, but I don’t—I am the good, innocent one.
No, it’s simply that you don’t know how to ask and allow the need for pleasure to be satisfied, even from external sources. I’m not even talking about satisfying some of your own needs by yourself.
I had a huge mess with satisfying my own needs. I still do. If I can avoid buying something, I won’t buy it. Not because I feel sorry for the money, but simply because I won’t buy it—there is always something else, something more important.
I remember those first withdrawals, the first MacBook I bought. Thankfully, my husband pushed me into it: “Get yourself together, go, and don’t come back until you’ve bought it.”
Many people encounter this side and are unable to overcome it, which is why they depend on others’ opinions. Their world revolves around other people; for them, causing someone’s displeasure strongly impacts their sense of belonging.
For example, if there is an alcoholic in the family, God forbid you wake him up, everyone will suffer, even to the point of beatings. Therefore, you have to sit quietly so that no one sees or hears you. This is an exaggerated situation.
But it is almost the same in relationships with despotic, authoritarian husbands. Women in our courses write: “I am ready for anything, just so my husband remains satisfied.”
And how many still write that their husbands dictate what to read or not to read. Moreover, later, grown sons start dictating who you can listen to, what books to read, and where you can go.
And this is all the same unmet need, taking on such terrible forms.
See also How to live for your own pleasure and why you forbid yourself from it
Needs for recognition and respect
The fourth basic need is of great importance — the need for recognition and respect.
This is that painful topic when you endlessly quarrel with your parents, they humiliate you, fray your nerves, criticize you, and instead of setting a boundary, you still try to prove to them that you are good.
For some, this manifests in the professional sphere. If I consider myself a cool expert in some topic, but there is no recognition from the professional community, then it will sting.
But this recognition can only be obtained when you fulfill your own need yourself.
See also Trauma of recognition. The secret of its healing
No need can be satisfied from the outside
It is impossible to satisfy these needs from the outside; you can only put a so-called patch, when you try to close this hole, which most likely appeared in your childhood, at the expense of another person or people.
But unlike childhood, an independent adult has no other options except to do it themselves.
In essence, you are following the lead of this unfulfilled childhood need, when you were a child, not independent, and expected that your parents should have provided it.
If they didn’t, you now try to compensate at the expense of other people, sometimes getting involved in stories that are completely unbelievable from an adequate perspective.
An unsatisfied need pushes you to some reckless actions, as you are gnawed from within by this feeling of longing and a certain restlessness.
Could our parents satisfy our needs
These four needs of ours are mostly closed through something external. Hence such a number of fusions, imprints with other people.
Both the rescuer syndrome and codependency: “I am nobody without him, and my name is nothing,” and unhappy love — this is the “average across the board” traumatization of all women, because it was not given in childhood.
To exaggerate — a castrated person cannot give sex. A semi-finished product, who was not loved themselves, cannot give love. And if we go back to earlier years, to the post-war period — what love is there, there it was about survival, having something to eat and wear.
Our parents are semi-finished products; with all their desire, they could not satisfy our needs. Some did it better, some worse.
All my complexes stem from childhood; I was constantly falling short. A feeling of guilt can be overcome: you make a mistake, realize it, admit it, try to correct it, or at least write down an algorithm for yourself — don’t go there next time.
But with shame, it doesn’t work that way, because from the start you are not what you should be. And to become what you should be, you would have had to accumulate a lot from childhood, even with good parents.
See also: Relationships with parents from a spiritual perspective. Acceptance as the foundation of relationships
Balanced Family
A balanced family is one where mom and dad are equal, and children are beneath them.
This forms a triangle — equal parents are at the top, and equal children are at the bottom, occupying the role of children. Such families are very rare.
As soon as emotionally immature parents, indifferent parents, narcissistic parents, or toxic parents appear, there is distortion and various pathologies.
In some cases, everything revolves around the mother; in codependent families, if the father is an alcoholic, drug addict, or gambler, everything will revolve around the father.
This leaves a mark on absolutely everyone. And it’s not just that personal boundaries are completely erased; there is a whole host of issues.
Here, by the way, lies the main grievance: a longing for normal relationships. If childhood is perceived as problematic, then the parents are not what they should be.
And no matter how much you try to forgive them, it doesn’t work, because they are not what they should be; they don’t match your internal idea of what parents should be. Especially if there were no loving relationships, if you were flogged, punished, or abused in childhood.
They are not like that, and that’s it. And no matter how much you try to forgive them, it doesn’t work. Our psychologists add fuel to the fire by saying they do not deserve forgiveness.
And now I consciously choose not to forgive them, because they are not worthy, they have not earned it; they should love, they should care, they should respect, they should satisfy these needs. When none of this was there, what would I forgive them for?
Inside there is a longing for normal, emotionally close, balanced relationships. And here there are many various traumas, branches, and knots tied up for many people.
But we are not talking now about forgiving parents, but about the fact that this need cannot be satisfied any other way if you do not give it to yourself.
Please share, have you learned to satisfy your own needs? Which of them were the most important for you?
The article is based on a broadcast for clients of the Keys to Mastery Training Center “Hot Topic, 03/21/2024”