Is Analyzing Needs Helpful?
In the consciousness of MCD, we offer that all people have the same universal needs. However, there is infinite variety in how an individual prefers to have a need met. Another person's need for love, for example, may be met most easily by hearing verbal appreciation. Whereas, your need for love may be most easily met by receiving help with the chores of daily life. You don't have to know why someone’s strategy for meeting their needs works for them. This is part of the simplicity of learning to love from a mindful, compassionate consciousness.
When you do something that doesn't meet a need for someone, you might be tempted to analyze all the reasons why your actions didn’t work for them. The mind that wants to analyze someone's issues by diving into their childhood history, and the current thinking, might contain a tragic strategy such as finding fault with another to prove one’s self-worth. Even analysis with the intention to help another very rarely leads to more connection; especially in moments of conflict. Such analysis could lead to a covert ‘comparison’ mindset and be used to invalidate or gaslight another’s experience.
Of course, understanding another's history and how it shows up now through sensitivities and preferences is useful. Ideally, when there is a certain level of trust in a relationship, such information is freely offered as a form of intimate sharing. Such sharing hopefully leads to greater compassion and subtle attunement.
For example, imagine you are with a loved one and you ask three times if the two of you can eat at the table instead of in the living room or outside. They don’t answer you at first and then they express irritation at “being pressured” to do things your way. You might react saying you have done nothing “to deserve” this irritation and accusation. But if at some point this loved one shares with you that they don’t want to eat meals at a table because this was the most common context for family tension and violence in their childhood, you suddenly see things differently and likely access compassion. You see that you weren’t wrong to ask to sit at the table, and that their unmet need for consideration isn’t a criticism of you or your request.
When you do something that doesn't work for someone else, offering empathy (a guess about what feelings and needs are up) is not only a gift to them, it's a gift to you. Offering empathy can help you get out of the habit of taking things personally and then assigning blame.
Life gets so much easier when you perceive another's behavior as about their feelings and needs and not about you. Here are some "mantras" that might help you remember this in a difficult moment:
This isn't about me.
It's okay for this person to be upset.
I know my intentions are good. I am doing the best I can.
I don't have to defend, this isn't about me.
This person's reactions are not my fault.
What is this person feeling and needing?
I can be okay even when they are upset.
Practice:
The next time you do something that doesn't meet needs for someone, try using one of these mantras to remind yourself that it's not about you—and then get curious about what does meet their needs in that context and what you might like to do differently.
Practicing empathy for another whenever an unmet need arises will help you to remember that there is space for an infinite variety of strategies to meet any given need.