Practice Recognizing Reactivity: Skills 3 & 4: List from memory the 9 core needs also called "tender needs"

Each MCD Relationship Competency identifies 6 Skills, along with specific practices for learning each. For more context about MCD Relationship Competency 5: Recognizing Reactivity, see Skill 1: Define and describe reactivity and Skill 2: Identify the signs of reactivity the moment it arises.

Skill 3:  List from memory the 9 core needs most often associated with reactivity: 

• safety

• belonging

• support/nourishment

• love

• to be seen/heard

• inclusion

• autonomy

• authenticity/intimacy

• acceptance

Skill 4: Identify your own “tender needs”

When a universal need arises and is met with painful or neglectful responses from others more often than with supportive responses, that need begins to be associated with pain. As a need becomes associated with pain, you develop adaptive strategies to protect against future pain related to that need. These adaptive strategies take a variety of forms such as becoming secretive, tough, endearing, industrious, or simply shutting down around needs and becoming numb. When the painful context in which these adaptive strategies were born changes and you find yourself in a supportive context, yet the strategies persist, we call that reactivity. Reactivity is a misperception of threat to one or more needs that results in behavior that either blocks incoming support or actively puts needs at cost for yourself and others. When particular needs are linked to reactivity, I call these “tender needs” as a shorthand, but, of course, the need itself is a universal energy and doesn’t shift from person to person. It’s the relationship to the need that is tender. In addition, because of these tender relationships to needs, it seems like a person has more or less of a particular need. We all have the same needs that rise and fall according to the flow of aliveness. It is simply our relationship to the need that has it show up differently with each person. 

Practice

Use one or more of the following ideas to help you identify two of your most tender needs and then make a note of them below.

• Identify your most common complaints, wishes, or requests. Mindfully imagine yourself in those moments when you are making the complaint, wish, or request. Then look through the needs list and find the needs alive for you in those situations.

• Mindfully imagine yourself in 2 or 3 of your most reactive interactions in the last year or few years. Then look through the needs list and find the needs alive for you in those situations.

• Recall recent times of reactivity. Then look through the needs list and find the needs alive for you in those situations.

• Reflect on situations in which you are quick to defend, justify, or protect. What needs are alive for you in those moments?

• Look through the needs list and notice if there is a need you don’t think you have, that is, one that doesn’t ever seem to come up for you.