𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 - Sharing My Story As I Heal My Soul, Surrender into My Feminine Power, and Learn to Live Through Heart

Episode #57 - Wants and Needs

Episode Summary

One of the things I have been navigating lately is the difference between wants and needs, and what I am allowed to ask for in my life and in relationship, versus what I should be giving myself. Listen to this latest episode of The Living Through Heart podcast for my current take on all of this.

Episode Notes

Episode Transcription

Hello, this is Donna Joy Usher, and welcome to this 57th episode of the Living Through Heart Podcast.

And today I want to talk about wants and needs.

And this is something, obviously, because everything I talk about is something I'm exploring in my own life and on my own journey.

Something when I came out of my relationship a few years ago, that I had no idea what my own wants and needs were.

And so what I want to do is I want to define, first of all, what wants and needs mean to me, like so that you understand what I'm talking about them, the difference between them.

In the context of this conversation.

Now, you might have different definitions for them.

That's absolutely fine, too.

But it's the concepts that I'm using the word to describe, which is important here.

So for instance, if my use of the word "need" triggers you in a different way, just listen to the concept of what I'm trying to say and what I'm trying to get across to you or listen to that transmission.

And don't just hang on to the words.

Okay, so needs, let's talk about needs first.

So, in my conversation that we're having today, needs are something that we need to survive.

So you know, we've got water, we've got food, we've got shelter, they're the most basic primitive needs.

From a soul, your soul level, we have needs that come from our woundings, our childhood woundings, and that come from a lack of safety.

So safety is a need.

And that's where the whole food, water, shelter.

Well, food and water actually stuff where we actually need to survive,

shelter, we do need to survive,

but they're all creating safety for us,

so safety we need to survive.

And safety is inherently, you know, one of the basis to things that we're actually doing in our unconscious is really just there to create safety for us that we can survive, we can procreate, right, from an animal point of view.

So, safety to us, is something that is more of a spiritual and emotional level.

That comes into the needs department.

So sometimes we have a need inside us.

It's like this craving dessert, like this desire, this craving need, almost like this scrabbling need to be loved, or to need to be found worthy or to need to be important.

And these will go back to our childhood woundings of beliefs that we learned to believe about ourselves that I'm not lovable. I'm not this, I'm not that.

And that creates a need within us, which, when it's not being fulfilled, leads to a feeling of lack of safety, which then creates discomfort and disorganization within our body and leads to physiological distress and pain.

And then we go into distracting from that and numbing ourselves from that.

So that's what I'm talking about when I talk about needs.

Now, from that point of view, I feel that needs is something that we should be able to meet ourselves, should be able to...

now, I'm not saying we can always, right?

And sometimes, we do need help from people, like if we hurt ourselves, or were injured or sick, we need people to step in and keep us safe, right?

We're not always capable of doing it for ourselves.

And when we're a small child, we're not always capable of creating the safety that we need, we need our caretakers to provide that for us.

But when we become an adult, and we've come more responsible for our own needs, and needs are something that we can be meeting ourselves.

So obviously, you know, finding a way to create an income so that we can create the shelter and the food and sanctuary that we need.

And sometimes it's an energetic exchange that we use to create and get what we need.

So you know, money is an energetic exchange, we exchange our time, we get money, and then we could use that money to get services, right?

So that's an energetic exchange.

And sometimes it might be like, well, you do this for me, I'll do that for you.

But we're creating, we're getting what we need, through our own creation in a responsible way.

But what tends to happen in relationship is that people try to get what they need from their partner or from friends in a non energetic exchange way.

They just expect this person to give it to them and they make this person responsible for this deep need that they have that they're not even aware of.

So they're not even aware of why they're a love addict.

You know?

Why they need love.

Because they actually don't believe that they're lovable, right?

They don't feel that they are lovable, therefore they need someone to love them.

Love me, love me, love me,

but it's never enough because when we have these woundings, we're like a bucket with a hole on them.

And that bucket can never be full.

And it's always having to be topped up.

So when we're relying on somebody else to give us those needs, we're always going to be the bucket with a hole in it.

And we're always going to be craving more, we're never going to be satisfied.

And there'll be moments in time where we feel satisfied, when we're really loved up.

But then the next day or the next week, we're not and then we make it that person's problem, we make it their fault, when we're unhappy.

So those sort of needs were responsible for, we need to be able to give ourselves the safety within our own inner union within ourselves, you know, masculine and feminine with our parts, our inner children or those woundings, we as adults need to be able to give ourselves what we need from a point of view of love, connection.

Connection is what we...

Now, we need to be able to get ourselves to a point where we are not having to use somebody else to get what we need.

Now connection is, you know, it's, this is the journey for me, when I came out of my relationship, I thought I had to give myself to everybody, right?

Now, I'm realizing that I don't.

So this is the difference between needs and wants.

So a need is something that comes from a wound, when I'm talking now that emotional stuff that we should be working on ourself.

It creates patterns in us, it creates our anxious, or our avoidant or our insecure attachment style, that then turns into how we relate within relationship and that push pull dynamic.

And the struggle, we're always trying to get this other person to be what we need them to be for safety.

And then they end up having to walk on eggshells, because, you know, sometimes they're not giving us enough, sometimes they're giving us too much.

Sometimes it's this, sometimes it's that,

this push pull dynamic that we're getting into,

and then they're not giving us what we want, and we're not giving them what they want.

And it actually becomes really unhealthy dynamic.

So what is a want?

A want is something that we want, just because we want it, because it'd be fucking amazing to have it.

So it's like, when we can go into our self, when we can identify these needs that we have, and go into ourselves and give it to ourselves.

Now sometimes it's the journey of the healing of the wound that allows that need to go away.

It's just not there anymore.

And that can happen.

That does happen.

But sometimes it's still there, right?

And then that's the identification of it.

And then taking responsibility for it and going in, and then the giving, like the recognizing, okay, what's happening here?

Why am I feeling this way?

What am I feeling insecure about?

Or what am I needing?

What am I trying to get from this other person?

What's my intent behind it?

Is there a fair energetic exchange here?

Or am I just takin?

And if it's just a taking then, okay, this is not good, this is not healthy, this is a need, that I'm being needy.

And I need to go in and work out what it is and find that part of me that needs something and be able to give it to myself.

And this is new to me, the actual realization that I don't have to be 100% healed.

I mean, obviously, that's my goal, right?

To be 100% healed...

My goal is to keep healing, okay, my goal is to keep working on myself.

Because when I do the work, I get more freedom, I get more expansion, I get less triggered, and I'm just happier, right?

That's my goal, is to keep working on my healing journey.

But I'm starting to realize now that there's going to be parts of me that I can't get to all of it at once, right?

So there's gonna be parts of me that are triggered up into a lack of safety.

And then I get this weird physiological symptoms, my body I've actually got at the moment, right?

I'm working through some stuff at the moment.

And when I recognize this in my body, it's like, oh, okay, and then allowing myself the time to go in to see what's going on to see what the trigger i,s to see what the lack of safety is.

And then to reassure the part of me that is stuck in that moment, that created this belief system, this physiological response in my body, the neurobiology everything that's creating the present moment experience, right?

Which is not true.

It's just this child created this thing that's still within me, energetically and biochemically and physiologically.

It's crazy how it works, right?

So for me to be able to go in recognize this and then give her what she needs.

As she then makes the symptoms in me go away and then I'm not some cray cray psycho trying to get what I want from somebody else and then blaming them, I don't get it and it allows me to come into relationship with people from a point of calmness, and to not be being needy but to being able to ask for what I want.

So for instance, the trigger I've got at the moment for me is rejection and silence.

So as a child, when I disappointed, my, my, you know, the masculine in my life, the main masculine energy in my life, when I didn't do what he wanted, I was punished with silence, withdrawal of attention and affection and silence, which led to a big patterning in me of like always having to stay safe by making sure that the men in my life, like, you know, happy with me and people pleasing and doing what I want.

And this is a pattern I'm breaking out of now.

So being able to notice within something where I actually created a space of, I created a space for somebody, and for myself, where now there is some silence within it, because there needs to be some work done.

But it's triggering me with rejection, into rejection and feeling like I'm being rejected and like, I'm disappointed, and I'm noticing this and being able to go within and calm and calm the storm, be with that person, rather than reaching out and being out of integrity and alignment with this container that I've actually set up that I'm, I'm the one that created it, right?

And then like, you know, over, hey, I'm going, hey, we need to be doing this.

But then I'm doing this right, which is out of alignment.

So that's just an example of what I'm talking about here.

So we need to be able to know what our wants are before we can actually ask for them to be met.

So what do we want? And in the last

episode, last video, like last podcast, I talked

about compatibility within relationship.

And part of that is a very healthy conversation to be had, where you actually talk to each other about your wants and needs, but you need to know what they are.

And most of us don't even know what they are, we don't know what we want, right?

Because we've spent so much of our life, just being what other people want us to be, or need us to be to stay safe that we don't actually don't really want.

So for us to go in and do and to be able to fulfill our own needs, to be to give ourselves the safety that we want, right?

That's the bare basics.

And then that allows our bucket to fill to overflowing, and then we can have what we want.

And we can have this most amazing life possible because we're able to make healthy requests for what we want.

And does everything that we want had to be met within our main relationship?

No, no, we don't when we shouldn't expect that from our partner.

Like for instance, if I want to go to the movies and watch a chicklit film, and he hates chicklit films, do I force him to go with me?

No, I'm going to either go by myself, I'm gonna go with a girlfriend, I'm going to enjoy it a hell of a lot more, when I'm either there by myself, rather than worried about what he's thinking and feeling and having that going on next to me, the eye rolling, or I'm gonna have amazing time because I'm gonna go Gold Class with a girlfriend and we're going to like, enjoy ourselves.

So we don't have to get everything that we want in our life from our main partner.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

In fact, it's a very healthy dynamic to have, where you can each have interests outside of the relationship, hobbies outside of the relationship that bring you joy.

And then you can flood that joy back into the relationship, what we should be able to have is an interest in our partner's things to the point where we don't have to become them.

We don't have to admit ourselves into that.

But we can listen to them.

And we can feel joy that they find joy in it.

And we can allow them the shape and the space that they need to have that.

So when we're wounded, it gets really hazy about what we're allowed to ask for, and what do we need to meet for ourselves. So I'm hoping that this conversation is making that clearer for you.

And I feel like, we need to know what we want, so that we can have healthy requests, we can also have boundaries in place.

And I think even the most enlightened person has boundaries, because even the most enlightened person is not going to sit there and wait and allow someone to assault them physically or sexually.

It's going to be a no, I'm allowing that.

So even when we're in like a Zen state, we still have wants and needs and boundaries and requests.

And in fact more, because we're more certain about who we are, we're more certain about what is right for us, we're more certain about what we want and what we're going to tolerate and what we're not going to tolerate.

And that's empowerment, right?

Knowing what we're who we are and what we want, what we tolerate, what's our non negotiables and that allows us to navigate life in a far more responsible way.

Because we're able to ask for what we want, and say no to what we don't want, rather than just putting up with stuff to stay safe and to have our needs met because we're actually meeting our needs ourselves.

Sometimes we need our partner to be aware of our triggers, but not so they can walk on eggshells, not so they can not trigger us that so that when we are triggered, they can not get triggered in response and instead they can hold space for us, and maybe even call us on it, to allow us to go, Oh my God, that riot and being a psycho, I need to this is something here for me that I need to go into.

But when you're in a really loving relationship, and a partner is aware of a trigger, then lovingly, and respectfully, they may choose not to trigger you.

But only if that's not out, that's not taking them out of alignment with who they really are.

So for instance, my ex used to trigger me on purpose because he got the sh*ts and giggles out of like, you know, arcing me up.

And I don't know, I don't feel safe in a relationship with someone's amusement is like, annoying me on purpose.

It doesn't give me a sense of safety, it certainly doesn't give me a sense of calm, right.

And ultimately, that was one of the issues where he wasn't respectful enough of my, my boundaries, when I asked for something not to happen, it would be like, Oh, that's a trigger, unconsciously happening, right.

And he was sort of stuck in this immature patterning of almost like, in grade six, where you pull the girl's hair to let them know that you like them, right, or you just flick their bra strap, and you annoy the fuck out of them.

I was kind of caught in that sort of dynamic.

And the more I asked for things not to happen, it was not respected.

And my boundaries were overstepped, and that would trigger me right.

So it's okay to let our partners know about our triggers, but not so that they have to f*cking walk on eggshells and make everything okay for us, you know, a trigger is our trigger. And it's our responsibility to go into it, to see what's there.

And either to heal it to a point where it goes away, or to go to take ourselves away, run the energy of the trigger, give ourselves what we need.

And then we'll come back to centered and grounded and come back into relationship and just show up with who we truly are not as the wound itself, not as the inner like the shadow child.

So it's really important for us to know, what we need and what we want, so that we can make healthy requests and not be needy.

And it's okay to ask for things.

This is what I'm discovering, it's okay to ask for things from a healthy request kind of way.

And it's okay to have boundaries about what you will and won't accept in your life.

And it's okay to have non negotiables, things that are really important to you, and to uphold them.

And really, the whole goal of this journey is to find out who we are, the transmission of who we are, and to stay in alignment with that.

And it's okay to have a partner who's not exactly the same as you.

In fact, that's what we're attracted to.

And the next, the next video installment and podcasts I have got planned is exactly about that chemistry of polarity, how important it is, for our partner to not be the same as us.

Because that's where the chemistry comes in, right?

And that's where the excitement is.

And that's where there's this thing that's new to us and different to us.

We ultimately don't want to date ourselves because that's boring, right? We already know who we are. But what ends up happening is we start dating someone different us and then we try to change them to be ourselves because of safety.

Nice reading my notes here, make sure you cut this part out, please.

So when I was journeying through this, and I'm sure like there's always an evolution, right, within our concepts of ourselves.

But when I was journeying through this, of what are the wants and what are the needs?

And what am I allowed to ask for?

And why can I do have to do it myself and blah, blah, blah, what I came up with,

it's okay for us to make healthy requests of people.

Because we want them.

And also because we're prepared to energetically exchange, right?

We can't just keep asking for stuff and never give right?

There has to be an energy exchange.

And it's not a case of if you do this, I'll do that.

It's a case of being asked for a healthy request.

But then also when it is asked of you to be able to say yes or no.

And we don't always have to do what we don't want.

And when we ask for a healthy request, a partner doesn't have to meet that.

They don't have to say yes, if it's out of alignment with them, or they don't have the time or whatever it is.

It's all about communication.

And it's also about compromise within that.

But if we're always asking for healthy requests for someone and it's never been met, then we really need to take another look at that and see what's going on here in relationship and are we settling in a relationship that's actually not compatible, because it's better than nothing, which is never actually a good situation.

Because to go from one phase to another, there always has to be a phase of nothingness.

For us to have what we truly want if what we have is not that rather than trying to force this to be what we truly want, we need to go through nothingness to be then able to attract what we really want.

So it's okay for us to make healthy requests to people.

It's not okay of us to force our emotional body and our pain onto somebody and to make them responsible for it.

It's not okay for us to have our triggers, and be aware of them and then to make everybody else hover around them and not do them, because you know what?

They've got their triggers too.

And do we want to be walking on eggshells? Do we want to be having to watch we say, do we want to be having to get punished every time we trigger them?

No, we don't. So we don't have the right to do that to other people.

So our triggers are our responsibility, either to heal, so the triggers are gone, or to run the energy in a responsible way so that we can come back to self.

And it's our responsibility to hold space for other people within trigger and to not react.

So I hope that that has helped you

Wants and needs, the difference between them, my concept, you might have different names for them, you might want to adapt it, that's totally fine.

I'm just telling you where I'm up to on my journey.

Wants and needs, what we are allowed to ask for, what we should be responsible for ourselves, healthy requests, boundaries, and how important it is actually know what is important to us.

What do we want, and actually take the time and sit and think about it.

If you haven't listened to it, go and listen to or go watch the video I did on compatibility within relationship because I go into that about the three centers, like the the sex like you know, animal, the heart and the mind which the three levels of compatibility and three levels that we have wants and needs from.

Anyway, I'm gonna see you in the next episode, I'm going to talk about polarity and chemistry in relationship, which is something I'm learning at the moment within the tantric space so I will see you then.