One of the blessings and curses of a healthy Western society is that we are abundant in so many things which make our lives easier—but because of that, we are constantly bombarded with marketing messages which can somewhat skew the truth and give us a false perception of what we truly need or even desire.
There is no shortage of this messaging when it comes to beauty & health products, gym memberships, magazine covers, and spa treatments. But amidst all of the hype, there are nuggets of wisdom and truth. A primary one being that it is important for us to take care of ourselves and to understand that self-care and self-love are subjective and will be personal to each individual.
So, how does one figure out what particular cocktail of needs-fulfillment is required to soothe stress or rise above existential funk? First, we must properly understand the definitions of the words we are using.
How do you define “self-love”?
In my Austin, Texas therapy practice, I define self-love as engaging with yourself from a place of worthiness simply because you are a person and you exist; honoring your intrinsic value as a human. Loving yourself, not just for your most admirable traits (physical appearance, intellect) or the functions you serve (caregiving, providing financially for the family), but because you’re alive!
We live in a society filled with dichotomy–you’re either “for us” or “against us”, good or bad, conservative or liberal. Because of this, we all have a tendency to pigeonhole ourselves into distinct and simplified categories. In reality, we are “both-and” more often than we are “either-or.”
We all have many different parts that make up the whole of who we are. Some of these parts are easier to accept than others. For example, it’s probably easier to accept that part of you is assertive than it is to accept that part of you is shy, but remember, you are both. You don’t have to love each individual part to practice self-love, but you do have to love the sum of all of your parts. This might be the same way you learned to love a parent or your partner. Though he or she can be very annoying at times, you still love them overall.
I tend to use self-love and self-compassion interchangeably, but I want to acknowledge that they are slightly different. Love is a deep affection and compassion is a concern for suffering.
Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychology professor and researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, has pioneered the research of self-compassion and the benefits of utilizing self-compassion; especially in times of stress. Put simply, self-compassion means treating yourself with the same kindness and care that you would a good friend or loved one.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Dr. Neff explains that high self-esteem (confidence in one’s own worth or abilities) is generally associated with personal success. The pursuit of self-esteem usually entails differentiating yourself from others by proving yourself as special or making someone else feel less-than. If self-esteem is starting to sound a little narcissistic, it’s because it is. This creates many relational and cultural issues, but on an individual level, Dr. Neff argues that the real problem with self-esteem is that it leaves us high and dry in times of failure. Self-esteem clings to accomplishments and snubs its nose at human suffering.
Since we are all human, you can see why we need self-love and self-compassion.
When we’re at our worst or even just being our ordinary selves, we need to remember that we still hold value. We are still “enough” and we are still worthy.
When I first “mastered” the skill of self-compassion I was really excited to teach other people how to do it. I stopped practicing it with myself because I thought there was no need to. I learned the hard way that there is not an endpoint when it comes to self-love. Much like your relationship with your best friend, your relationship with yourself takes ongoing maintenance. Even in writing this I’ve had to confront that I haven’t been as kind to myself as I’d like to think I have been. Sometimes self-compassion and self-love are second nature to me, and sometimes they feel impossible. Self-compassion is the deepest form of self-care.
How can we practice self-care during therapy?
Self-care comes from that same place of worthiness. I’ve seen a million definitions of self-care, but I think Fanny Priest’s has been my favorite: “Self-care is the process of paying attention and responding to your own needs. The goal of self-care is to minimize the pendulum swing between a state of balance and a state of crash or crisis. When we get better at recognizing our triggers and clearer about those actions and practices that help bring us back into balance, it becomes easier to walk the middle path, where input of self-care is roughly equivalent to our energy output. We become more skilled at staying resourced and less prone to becoming depleted.”
Self-care means giving yourself permission to take care of yourself because you deserve it. Self-care can also mean giving yourself permission to put boundaries between yourself and the energy vampires in your life.
I’ve seen a lot of misconceptions about self-care so I think it’s worth giving examples of what does and does not qualify as self-care. There’s definitely a gray area when it comes to eating, exercising, and substance use. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re not sure if what you are doing is self-care, look at the function of the behavior.
What self-care is:
- Boundaries that allow you to find a healthy balance between selfish and selfless
- Connection – An honest conversation with a friend, your therapist, or yourself; asking for help when you need it
- R&R – Going to bed early and leaving tasks incomplete once in a while, allowing yourself to get bored
- Nourishment for your body, mind & soul – a balance of nutritious food that you enjoy eating (there are no “good” foods or “bad” foods, only exchanges), time for play and mindlessness, stillness and time to pause and reflect, setting intentions
- Positive daily habits – being on time (or close), some form of movement/exercise, budgeting finances, getting enough sleep
- Being honest with yourself
What self-care is not:
- A treat yo’self free-for-all
- Indulging beyond your means–buying material items you can’t afford, a lavish vacation that leaves you in debt
- Avoiding or procrastinating
- Exercise you hate–An hour on the treadmill where you watch the calories you’re burning every minute
- Numbing behaviors–bingeing on food or TV, excessive substance use (alcohol, weed or caffeine),
- Rationalizing
As you can tell, self-care has much to do with finding balance, but a big part of balance, self-care, self-love, and existential growth, in general, comes down to knowing what you need and how to ask for it. You might well know that asking for what you need is much easier in theory than actuality. Yet, even asking is putting the cart before the horse in many instances, because many people have trouble enough knowing what they need in the first place.
How does one identify what they need?
In two words: slow. down. Get quiet. Get still. Take inventory and track it over time. There are subtle hints all around and inside of us, but you’ll miss them if you’re moving too fast to notice. I especially see this when working with couples. Partners focus on the words coming out of each other’s mouths and completely neglect their internal experience and that of their partner’s.
If you’re getting worked up unexpectedly → H.A.L.T. Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? Are you all four? Start there.
By slowing things down, listening to your body at a deeper level, and identifying the way you actually feel in any given moment, we each begin to have more awareness about where we’d like to move from that position. Often, by identifying what we don’t want (perhaps a current feeling), we can more vividly articulate with we do want (a need that we’d like fulfilled, or a particular way we’d like to feel).
Is there a difference between needing something and wanting something?
Yaaass!! Very often in therapy, I see couples make requests or offers to do something. I have learned that the requests partners make in therapy are largely shaped by emotions. Some individuals are aware of the emotions shaping their requests and some are not. If people already know their emotional need is not going to be met, they intentionally look for a suitable substitute. If people are unaware of their emotional need, they flounder for something to make them feel better. In either case, what someone wants or asks for is often not what they really need.
The wants I usually see are: help (around the house, with kids, with errands), more communication, more quality time, more compliments, more sex, more money, less fighting, less complaining.
The needs I see are: connection, acceptance, acknowledgment/validation, and security/safety.
The wants are fairly easy to ask for or demand. There is a lot more work and vulnerability involved in addressing needs. Additionally, when what we want is not available to us, we have to find different ways to satisfy the deeper need.
What are the reasons that people do NOT ask for what they need?
It can be very confusing when someone smiles and says, “Oh, it’s no big deal” or “Yea, but I’m fine” when you ask them if they need something but later you find out that that thing was, in fact, a very big deal. It’s equally confusing when someone gives you zero indication (blank stare and no verbal response) of what they need. Before you mislabel someone as passive aggressive, please keep reading.
There are always adaptive reasons people do not directly ask for what they need, and it’s usually not just to drive you crazy. Part of therapy is uncovering how the current ineffective or indirect communication developed.
Rejection hurts! Asking for what you need is very vulnerable when you’re not sure if it’s okay to ask or if the other person will give it to you. When you ask for what you need, you’re admitting to yourself and your partner that you need something. Depending on someone else can be very scary.
As infants we don’t have a choice, we are entirely dependent on someone else for our survival and we don’t get to choose who that someone is. If your primary caregiver was consistently attuned and responsive to your needs, you probably felt secure in asking for what you needed and even felt okay about not getting your needs met all of the time. These individuals develop what is called a secure attachment style. They understand the give and take in relationships and are likely to give someone the benefit of the doubt when their needs aren’t being met. They are even okay with putting someone else’s needs before their own at times.
If your primary caregiver was inconsistent (selectively attentive to your needs) you might have learned how to ask for what you need but simultaneously anticipated rejection. These individuals usually acknowledge they have needs and will ask for them but simultaneously prevent you from meeting them. For example, your partner might say something like “You never help me!” but then critique or criticize every attempt you make to assist him or her.
If your primary caregiver was consistently unresponsive to your needs, you learned not to ask for anything. You might have even shut off those needs (or deactivated them) so you didn’t have to keep re-experiencing that rejection. It’s an adaptive response to stop depending on someone that isn’t reliable. These individuals tend to say things like “I don’t need you” or “Why can’t you just be happy?”.
Since parents are human, their availability to you might have shifted at times. Things like divorce, health issues, job switches, alcoholism, etc. might have interrupted your relationship and caused what is termed an attachment injury. Most people identify this as the root of their “abandonment issues”. If this injury was left unrepaired, you learned not to get too close to people which, again, means not depending on someone to meet your needs. Any injury in relationships left unrepaired often gets repeated.
As adults, we get to choose who we depend on, but we tend to depend on people to the same extent we felt it was acceptable to depend on our parents. This usually coincides with your partner’s comfort level of someone depending on them. This can mean choosing someone that is equally available, unavailable, or inconsistently available to you.
How can we use therapy to practice asking for what we need?
By the time couples come in for therapy, they are usually done asking for what they need or feel out of sorts as to how to do it. At this point, there are two layers to overcome: the ability to ask, and the other person’s ability to respond. First, both partners have to feel safe talking to me and to each other which takes time.
Next, the basic steps of learning how to ask for what you need are this:
- Acknowledge your need “I have a need or needs”
- Give yourself permission to have it “It’s ok to have needs”
- Identify the need “I know what I need”.
- Give yourself permission to make a request “It’s ok for me to ask you for what I need”
- Ask! “Can you meet this need?”
Then the other person gets to respond and ideally, it would go something like this:
- Validate your partner’s need “Your need is important”
- Acknowledge you care “I want to be able to meet this need”
- [If either of these aren’t present, we stop here]
- Give yourself permission to respond genuinely “I am okay with what I can and cannot offer”
- Respond “I can/will meet this need or I can’t/won’t”
- Establish where to go from here “Can you accept this?”
All of these steps involve the 5 principles of effective communication (taken from Attached) :
- Wear your heart on your sleeve
- Focus on your needs
- Be specific
- Don’t blame
- Be assertive and non-apologetic
This might seem simple, but trust me—it’s not. Each of these steps takes a lot of courage and processing to get to. Individuals and couples do all sorts of dances to avoid being this vulnerable. One of the hardest pieces to reconcile is having a need and knowing that it’s not going to be met. Your needs are always important, but naturally, they are not always going to be met. Sometimes partners are incapable or unwilling; sometimes needs compete. There are many times one person needs closeness at the same time as the other person needs distance. That’s just the reality of how relationships and life works.
When partners value and acknowledge each other’s needs there is a lot more leeway. You need to experience that your partner cares. One measure of security in the relationship is the story the injured partner tells him or herself when needs aren’t met–was it a fluke or is this person untrustworthy? When the offender messes up, it is essential he or she initiates a repair.
What are the rewards and benefits of asking for what we need?
Making a clear request using the five principles of effective communication produces the following outcomes:
- Your need is met.
- You learn how to cope with an unmet need.
- You end the relationship–you decide the need is too important.
In couples therapy, we have the opportunity to work with both sides–the request and the response. In individual therapy, we work on forming the request and processing the information you receive from the outsider’s response. Note: no response or an ambiguous response is still a response. For example, if you make a direct request and get the silent treatment, you probably got the message not to ask again. If every time you make a direct request you leave feeling confused or agreeing to something you didn’t want, the chances of getting your needs met in that relationship are slim.
Of course, my hope is always that you will get your needs met. But know there are benefits of outcomes 2 and 3 (above) as well. Remember, one sign of a secure attachment style is understanding the give and take in relationships. We all benefit from being selfless at times. However, if you realize the cost of the relationship is too great, there is a lot of value in walking away. You should not have to sacrifice your sense of self or self-worth to make a relationship work. If you have to deactivate all of your needs to stay in a relationship, you might be attached to the wrong person. Self-love and self-care allow you to enter a relationship from a place of worthiness which makes it easier to explore and ask for what you need.
If you would like assistance in identifying and asking for your needs, feel free to contact me directly or learn more about the variety of therapy I offer at the links below:
**Reliable support for domestic violence is always available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 and TheHotline.org
