Practice Self-Empathy: Skill 5 : When you turn your attention toward them, identify universal needs as they arise

Each MCD Relationship Competency identifies 6 Skills, along with specific practices for learning each. For more context about MCD Relationship Competency 4: Self-Empathy, see Practice Self-Empathy: Skill 1: Identify the differences between self-empathy and other responses to your experience, Skill 2: Identify at least 3 anchors / regulation strategies that you can use weekly or daily, Skill 3: Shared humanity— recall that others struggle with the same difficulties, and Skill 4: When you turn your attention toward them, be able to name feelings (emotions & sensations) as they arise.

Skill 5: When you turn your attention toward them, identify universal needs as they arise

Identifying universal needs supports you in feeling alive in your life.  Moment by moment when you are grounded in and clear about the needs you want to meet with a given activity, life energy flows through you and inspires your actions. When you perceive any responsibility or action as an obligation or duty, it becomes heavy, tense, or boring. 

When you are grounded in your needs, you can trust yourself to show up for collaboration and negotiation in a way that maintains your boundaries. As you become aware of your relationship to each universal need, you will likely notice bias and reactivity with some needs. You might make particular decisions or engage in habitual behaviors in an attempt to protect yourself around potential pain associated with specific needs. For example, you might systematically neglect particular needs. These neglected needs then become a source of reactivity because when you are depleted with regard to a certain need, it is very easy to perceive a threat to that need.

Being able to identify needs met when things are going well teaches you about how you thrive. This understanding will inform and facilitate making requests of yourself and others.

Identifying your needs gives you  immediate access to a sense of shared humanity since we all share the same needs. 

Identifying your needs in the midst of reactivity, can interrupt the misperception of threat which calms your nervous system.

PRACTICE

10 Strategies for Identifying Your Needs

1. Appreciation and Empathy for Celebration. Enjoyable or positive experiences can be a fun way to identify needs. Set your intention to offer a certain number of appreciations everyday. You might choose a single relationship or a particular group or environment.

   • Any time you or someone else shares a success or positive experience, identify the needs met.

2. Imagine the ideal scenario. See yourself in the ideal scenario or outcome of your current difficulty, and then ask yourself what makes it ideal. What are the qualities, attitudes, and feelings present? What needs are being met?

3. Embody the experience of the need. In mindfulness, bring to your awareness a peak experience of aliveness in which a particular need was met. Notice and sort every aspect of that experience: body sensations, heart rate, breathing, posture, emotions, images, actions, thoughts, words, gestures, facial expression, beliefs, energy, and associated memories.

4. Memorize the list of universal needs. Without a clear vocabulary of needs, you will likely mix up needs with the strategies to meet them at the very times when it would be most useful to recognize them as separate. Divide the needs list into sets of 5 and memorize one set a week. Look up mnemonics to find strategies for memorizing.

5. Reflect on your experiences. Commit to a month of daily reflection practice. Each day review one positive experience and one challenging experience. Use the needs list to identify what needs were up for you in each experience. If you like to write, keep a journal of your practice. Begin each daily reflection with a period of mindfulness meditation.

6. Review past relationships. Choose a significant relationship from your past. Using the list of universal needs, make guesses about the needs you think were alive for the other person relative to the events or interactions you remember most clearly. Identify the needs that were alive for you in those moments.

7. Work backward from your strategy. That is, identify your request or the way you want something to go and ask yourself the question,

   •  "What needs will be met for me and the other person if it happens that way?"

8. Identify your own “tender” needs. One major source of reactivity is an insecure relationship to a few needs. Once you know what these “tender” needs are for you, you can review this short list in a moment of reactivity. 

   • The most common tender needs include: safety, belonging, support, intimacy, authenticity, autonomy, acceptance, to be seen/heard, and inclusion.

9. Use synonyms for the word “need.” Instead of asking "what do I need?" try asking yourself:   
   "What's most important to me about this?"
   "What do I really care about here?"
   "What matters most to me about this?"
   "What do I value most?"
   "What am I committed to right now?"

10. Get an empathy buddy: Set up a regular empathy date. Use a timer for sharing and empathy guesses. Stick to the traditional empathy guessing phrase: “Do you feel _____ because you need _____?” Use the feelings and needs list or cards for all of your guesses.