Last night, I attended a class in intimacy for which the topic was Nonviolent Communication. The instructor, clearly, was very enthusiastic about it. As he shared it with us, he explained that not being aware of or able to express and meet our own needs is the reason for all of our problems in relating to others.
Right away, at the mention of needs, my ears pricked up having put a bit of attention on sorting that out for myself over several years. I raised my hand and asked how the founder of NVC defines needs and how he distinguishes them from wants. In our handout was a "Needs Inventory", and I was shocked to see over 50 items. Clearly, I wasn't going to be in agreement with this part of NVC.
That word "need" is a powerful little bugger with the ability to cast us into survival and worth issues, lack of fulfillment, and even comparison and resentment when our "needs" aren't being met. So, I have decided to define "need" simply as something that is necessary for my survival. Food, water, shelter and clothing, oxygen, sleep, touch, and as a dear friend so eloquently puts it, "a place to shit." These are needs. Everything else is something else.
When I shared my opinion on the matter with the group, I felt the prickly barb of the words "argue" and "philosophize" in a sentence directed toward me. You would think I was taking away everyone's hope or right to these things by offering up that maybe nuturing, beauty, harmony, and community weren't actually needs but wants. With all due respect, I wasn't dissing NVC nor the importance of these things to a happy life. I was simply posing a question about whether the model could use a slight adjustment in how it defines needs and wants. In my own experience, the confusion over needs and wants can create panic and anxiety. When we see our wants as needs, we think we have to "do" something to "get" something we "don't have". It takes us out of the moment and out of our gratitude. And it sets us up to blame, compare, and wither in our fear or wanting when we don't get it.
I even found that many of the things on the needs list in question were niether needs nor wants. We don't need love, for example. Love is what we are. It is all pervasive. If anything, we need to remember who we are. Maybe we need to feel or accept love, but we don't need love itself. The idea that we"need" love is a dangerous mental construct that separates us from what we are, creating a sense of something missing, and "need" implies it is something we will die without. Imagine the ugly duckling having died of being a duck. He wasn't even a duck! The misperception of needs opens the door to our old friends, fear of survival, despair, separation, and a whole host of other less than fun feelings (which ironically are on another class handout of what one feels when one's needs aren't met). Seems to me this way of thinking serves as a nifty tool for generating justifications to feel miserable.
Try this: Do you have food available? Do you have clean water to drink? Do you have a roof over your head? Are you clothed? Are you breathing?
If you answered yes to these questions, congratulations!!! In this moment, all of your needs are met and you are completely safe! Wow! Doesn't that feel amazing! You have everything you need! You are one fortunate human! Now, in this moment, and most likely the next and the next, you don't have to feel afraid, neglected, resentful, nervous, or frustrated! There is no immediate threat to your survival.
Granted, life seems pretty pointless and bleak without such things as companionship, self-expression, empathy, and inspiration, but that doesn't mean they are needs. We all want these things, but the truth is humans survive without them all the time. You would survive without them.
One still has to effectively identify and find ways to meet his or her wants. Our inability to do that, as my instructor said though he substituted "needs" in place of "wants", truly is a cause of much of our suffering. But let's not confuse wants and needs and subject ourselves to a highly disempowering illusion. The confusion over needs and wants creates panic in us. We think we have to "do" something to "get" something we "don't have". And it sets us up to blame, compare, and wither in our wanting...to die of being a duck.
Recognizing that our survival is truly dependent on much less than we think, we free ourselves to be immensely grateful for what is and patient with the moment. And in creating that space, life floods us with so much fufillment...effortlessly.
