Difficulty acknowledging and meeting our own needs and wants

From Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody, Andrea Miller, & J. Keith Miller

Each of us has basic needs and individual wants that are our responsibility to satisfy. Needs are the things we must have to survive. All people have dependency needs, children as well as adults. The difference between a child's dependency needs and those of an adult is that the child must have his or her needs met initially by his or her major caregiver and be taught how to take care of each one in the course of growing up. An adult is responsible for knowing how to address each need and asking for help when help is truly needed.

The dependency needs for adults are food, shelter, clothing, medical/dental attention, physical nurturing, emotional nurturing (time, attention, and direction from others), sex, and financial resources (earning, saving, spending, budgeting and investing money).

There are some needs that can only be met through interaction with another person, such as physical nurturing or emotional nurturing. But we must be taught that it is our responsibility to recognize those needs and ask someone appropriate to meet them. We in turn must learn to meet others' needs at appropriate times in proper circumstances, which is called interdependence.

Wants can be divided into two categories: little wants and big wants. Little wants are truly preferences. They are things we don't have to have, but when we choose them they bring us great joy. The big wants take our lives in a general direction and bring us fulfillment. They include such things as "I want to be married to this person." " I want to be a doctor." "I want to develop this corporation." "I want to have a child."

The four categories of difficulty acknowledging and meeting our wants and needs:

We experience not being in touch with our needs and wants in one of four different ways according to the experiences we had in childhood.

1. I am too dependent. I know my needs or wants but expect other people to take care of them for me, and I wait, expecting them to know to do so as I do not take care of them myself.
2. I am anti dependent. I am able to acknowledge to myself that I have needs and wants, but I try to meet them myself and am unable to accept help or guidance from anyone else. I'd rather go without the thing needed or wanted than be vulnerable and ask for help.
3. I am needless and wantless. Although I have needs or wants, I am not aware of them.
4. I get my wants and needs confused. I know what I want and I get it, but I don't know what I need. For example, I try to take care of my needs that I am unaware of by buying everything I want. Though I may need physical nurturing, I buy some new clothes instead.

Not tending to one's needs and wants appropriately is often connected to a feeling of low self-esteem (shame). Whenever the "adult child" feels needy or has a want shame flares at the onset of the experience of needing or wanting. This shame originally came from childhood experiences, when expressing a need or want was met with abuse by a caregiver - even though that memory of abuse has long been "forgotten," is no longer conscious. The adult codependent feels as if he or she is terribly selfish to need or want something, however legitimate it may be.