Needs - what are they and why do they matter? (Part 1)

If you're doing Schema Therapy, it's likely you're hearing the word 'needs' a lot.

It's a small word, but it has a big backstory. Hopefully this post will help to demystify why it's so important that we get our needs met in childhood.

The basic premise of Schema Therapy is that as children, not only are we dependent on our caregivers for survival, but we all have basic needs.

These needs are:

• Secure attachment (caregivers who are safe, present, consistent, and reliable)

• Emotional attunement (caregivers who are attuned to our internal world and can be welcoming of and responsive to our emotions)

• Autonomy, competence and a sense of identity (the opportunity to learn do things ourselves and be our own person)

• Spontaneity and play (being free to express joy and spontaneity, and engage in "silly" play)

• Realistic limits (boundaries and consequences).

These needs are pretty much universal, by which I mean all kids have the same needs.

Our caregivers don't have to meet these needs perfectly - in fact, 'good enough' is fine. The problem arises when our caregivers are unable to meet our needs in even a 'good enough' way. That's when schemas, or emotional wounds, tend to develop.

When our needs are met in a 'good enough' way, and there's no other major issues in our lives, we tend to develop quite a wide "window of tolerance". This is basically the bandwidth that our nervous system has to tolerate external inputs, whether they be emotional (eg. big feelings) or environmental (eg. loud noises). If we have a wide "window of tolerance", our nervous system can tolerate a lot, and we don't easily get overwhelmed. If we have a narrower window, it's more likely that we get catapulted outside this "window" into either high anxiety (hyperarousal) or a freeze/depressive state (hypoarousal).

As a child, not getting needs met may seem to be unremarkable, and feel 'normal'. Like all children, we only have our own experience to go by. So let's say we have an experience of not having needs met. For example, we have a parent who over and over again doesn't 'show up' for us in the way we need. We might learn, "I can't rely on Mum, I have to look after myself". And this might lead to an overdeveloped sense of autonomy and independence. By this I mean, we might think, "I need to do everything myself and make sure I'm independent, because no-one else is really looking out for me".

This overcompensation (being overly self-reliant) for an unmet need (a reliable caregiver) could result in nervous system activation such as prolonged anxiety. Because the human body wasn't built to tolerate extended periods of anxiety, as a survival mechanism, we might drop into hypoarousal. This might feel like being numb, dissociative, shut off from the world, demotivated, depressed, physically 'heavy'....you get the drift.

So a child who doesn't get needs met, might over time go from being anxious and activated, to an adult diagnosis of depression. This depression might be maintained by difficulty feeling connected to others due to inability to trust they'll show up as needed.

As you can imagine, and adult who shows up in therapy feeling depressed, is going to have some work to do to join the dots before they can see how it relates to unmet needs in childhood.

To use Schema Therapy terms, what I've just outlined is an unmet need (for a consistent, reliable caregiver) resulting in the development of a schema (this could be Emotional Deprivation, Defectiveness, and/or Mistrust/abuse..depending on the exact experience of the child and the meaning they take from it).

The way of surviving, or the 'coping mode' that the child developed was self-sufficiency, or hyper-independence. It's a way of overcompensating for the schema, as if to say "If I can do everything myself, I'll never have to risk being let down".

There might even be an inner critic in place too, which could perpetuate the whole cycle by saying things like, "you've gotta look after yourself", "other people might let you down", "you're the only one you can really rely on".

Starting to understand what childhood needs are - and that all children deserve to get these needs met - is an important first step in Schema Therapy. From there, we can be curious about our own childhood experiences, where our needs might not have been met in a 'good enough' way, and how this has impacted how we are as adults.

Tune in to Part 2 of this post, where I'll talk more about identifying and getting needs met in adulthood.