Meeting your needs is the key to happiness if you’ve been in a relationship with someone whose behaviors change when they abuse or are dependent on alcohol or other drugs explains guest author, Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT.

Darlene is the author of Codependency for Dummies and Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You, and her latest eBook is titled, Dealing with a Narcissist, 8 Steps to Raise Self-Esteem and Set Boundaries with Difficult People. She can be reached at info@darlenelancer.com or you may wish to follow her on Facebook or visit her website www.whatiscodependency.com.

Meeting Your Needs Is the Key to Happiness by Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT

Although codependents are very good at meeting needs of other people, the key to happiness is meeting your own needs. You may have problems identifying, expressing, and fulfilling your needs and wants, though be very attuned other people and even anticipate their needs and desires. You may have become so used to accommodating others you’ve lost the connection to your own needs and wants.

This pattern starts in childhood. As adults, we can’t stop ourselves from sacrificing our needs and wants in relationships, at the expense of our own happiness. If we leave the relationship but haven’t reclaimed ourselves, we’re sad to discover that we don’t know what we want or what to do with ourselves? except to get into another relationship?fast! Otherwise, the underlying emptiness and depression that we were unaware of will arise.

Why Meeting Needs Matters

The reason it’s important to satisfy our needs is because we feel emotional pain when they’re not met. You may be in pain and not know why or which needs are not being fulfilled. When our needs are met, we feel happy, grateful, safe, loved, playful, alert, and calm. When they’re not, we’re sad, fearful, angry, tired, and lonely. Think about how you meet or don’t meet your needs, and what you might do to start meeting them. It’s a simple formula, though difficult to carry out:

Meet Your Needs > > > Feel Good

Ignore Your Needs > > > Feel Bad

Once you identify your emotions and needs, you can then take responsibility for meeting them and feeling better. For example, if you’re feeling sad, you might not realize you’re lonely and have a need for social connection. Even if you do, many codependents isolate rather than reach out. Once you know the problem and the solution, you can take action by calling a friend or planning social activities.

Identifying Needs

We have many needs that you may not have considered. Although some of us are good at meeting physical needs, we may not be able to identify emotional needs if those were ignored. Here are some needs. See if you can add to this list from Codependency for Dummies:

Recovery

Recovery means implementing the above positive needs formula. It includes fulfilling your healthy desires. We become responsible to ourselves and develop enough self-esteem to make ourselves a priority.

First, you have to find out what you need and want. Then, value it. Think about why it’s important. If we don’t value a need, we won’t be motivated to meet it. Next, figure out how to fill that need.

Finally, some needs require courage to stretch ourselves to meet them, such as self-expression, authenticity, independence, and setting boundaries. Other needs are interpersonal and require courage to ask other people to meet them. We can only do this if we value ourselves and our needs and feel entitled to have them met. It also helps to learn to be assertive. (See How To Speak Your Mind – and webinar How to Be Assertive.

Recovery takes encouragement and support from others and usually counseling, too. This may seem daunting, but start simply each day by journaling and attuning to your feelings your body. Take the time to ask yourself what you want and need. Start listening to and honoring yourself!

©Darlene Lancer 2019