One of the patterns in my life that I’ve been putting intentional energy towards tearing down is the pattern of trying to not have needs. I know exactly why I subconsciously try to navigate relationships with disregard for my needs. It makes me feel strong. The trouble is, feeling strong and being strong are two different things. I’m sure many people can relate. So many of us have experiences in our childhood that teach us our needs aren’t important. That little lie becomes a deep down structural support within our model of the universe and by the time we get into relationships that have the ability to bring intimacy to our lives we’ve rehearsed the lie a billion times in our mind. My needs aren’t important.
We’re finite creatures. We have boundaries, limitations, capacities. Trying to navigate relationships at the expense of getting our needs met is like trying to parallel park with a blindfold on. If you don’t know where your exterior walls are, you’re gonna bump into things. You’re gonna get owies. If you accumulate owies without ever dealing with them, you get wounded and if you ignore wounds they can start to poison you.
To make my point clearer, I’ll use an analogy someone else used when I was in ministry school. What do you do if you’re walking along and you see someone drowning? You do everything in your power to help them. As humans we all collectively recognize our obvious dire need for oxygen and when we see another human being deprived of their need for oxygen we rush to their aid regardless of who they are or how they do or do not touch our social circles. There’s an entire industry built around showing us starving children and asking for our money. We (collectively) send money in droves to help meet the need for food in the children on the tv. So what other needs do we have? Water? Sure. I know of a charity that works really hard all over the world to provide wells in places where their water quality is poor. Humanitarian efforts globally are large to help meet other humans basic needs. We rush to the aid of those whose needs are not being met.
I’d like to suggest that human beings have other needs that may not be so apparent as oxygen, water and food. I’d like to suggest that attention, affection and significance are also needs. Think about that little kid who was so obnoxious, desperately vying for the attention of the adults. If you look through the lens that attention is a need, you see a young one thrashing about internally trying to get their need for attention met because why? Because obviously their need for healthy attention is not being met where it should be. Have you ever met a kid who was inappropriately affectionate? Maybe they came across as a bit clingy. What if clingy people actually aren’t getting their need for affection met and so the increased urgency attached to that need is what’s driving their behavior. Have you ever met a child suffering with depression? If a child’s need for significance isn’t met where it’s supposed to be met, what does that turn into in their adult life?
There are unhealthy ways to get our needs met. I think it’s pretty obvious what kind of adult behaviors are the person’s inner child scrambling to get their needs met. For many, they’ve never been exposed to healthy ways of getting their needs met. There’s no other way for them.
I think denying our needs altogether can worse in some ways.
I once did a ropes course. We were so high up. We were uncomfortably high up. We had traversed some sort of ridiculous swinging log pendulums area and we had arrived at what they called, “The Scary Ferry”. The Scary Ferry was basically a few thick boards put together that we could all just fit onto. It hung from the top on some metal wheels and there were two ropes to pull ourselves across just a horrifying empty falling hole. It wasn’t an easy pull. I set myself up on the left side to be one of the rope pullers. I set the metal-wound wire against my chest and pulled the rope in tandem with the other rope man. We had some larger ones with us who could do nothing but sit on the Scary Ferry while we ferried them across. By the end I had a deep nasty welt from the top of my shoulder down to my waist where I let the wire dig into my body while I pulled the team across. I shouldn’t have done that. That incident highlighted to me that I had a dynamic at play in my toolset for life navigation called People Pleasing.
People Pleasing operates from the belief that my needs don’t matter. Ironically it trades certain things to get attention, affection and significance from people by pleasing them. People Pleasing dictates the things in conversation that you are and are not allowed to say. People Pleasing gives away your power in relationship in order to be acceptable. It operates from the lie that the most real me is unacceptable and must be edited or watered down or changed in some way so that people will find me palatable. That’s called shame. Shame is an awful companion. Shame says that there’s something inherently wrong with who or what I am. The voice of Shame spits in the face of God when He tells you that you’re altogether lovely, deeply beloved and cherished. Shame lies to the children of God about what species they are and if shame got into your deep down pillars in your model of the universe then what you get on the surface of adulthood is People Pleasing!
So as I went through a process of breaking agreement with shame, I began to notice changes in my behavior. As I did daily declarations, speaking out loud that I’m profusely lovable and that I’m deeply loved by God my model of the universe began to shift.
The next time I did that ropes course I did step up to be a Scary Ferry Rope Man but I was different deep down. I asked for help.
Here’s the thing: People Pleasing disallows others from loving you authentically. It removes your needs from the relationship equation which makes it impossible for the other to build relational equity with you. The purpose of a healthy relationship is for both parties to get their needs met by the other. Different relationships meet different sets of needs. A friendship relationship is great for getting lower level attention, affection and significance needs met. Deeper relationships meet deeper needs but if you disallow the other from meeting your needs by hiding them (even accidentally), you’re actually disempowering them to relate to you with authenticity.
Powerful relationship looks like bringing my authentic reality to the table, vulnerably reveal what is truly going on inside of me and then allow the other to do the same. Then mutually navigate how we’re going to get our collective needs met.
If you want intimacy, you need to show up.
The Weirdo Christian 