09 Oct It Is Good To Be Needy
If you had asked me so many years ago would I want to celebrate my dad’s 90th birthday I would have to think twice. Yet, celebrate it we did this past weekend with a full force of aunts and uncles and cousins and loved ones. I certainly didn’t think all these people would come. After all, my dad with his Irish Catholic legacy was prone to being dismissive of relationship and connection for so many years of my life.
Not that he didn’t value family. He did.
There was this sense of not needing to be engaged, certainly not emotionally or psychologically engaged with others. He learned through the Depression and growing up in that era to be independent, to do it all on your own, to not need (certainly not emotionally) need anyone.
That generational legacy has feed many of us, teaching us to hold our needs in, present what we want in a palatable way so no one gets scared, no one gets overwhelmed. We learned to keep our needs to ourselves.
It’s been in retrospect, in hindsight that I have gotten the owner’s manual.
I had to learn a lot of attachment theory which gave me a map and from that vantage point begin to put the puzzling pieces of my internal world together.
Growing up, well, to be honest, for much of my early adult life I felt internally clueless. I didn’t know how to put the pieces together. To make the outside world and the inside world match up.
Frankly, I don’t even know if this will make sense to you as you read it. It’s how alone and lost I felt, disoriented, not able to put these important pieces together. It’s rather awesome that I got through as well as I did because the fundamentals didn’t seem to be in place. Worse yet, I didn’t know what was missing, only that I felt deeply alone, ashamed, confused, and definitely NOT safe to talk about any of this.
Over the years of therapy, living in an ashram, going to graduate school, talking with my siblings, taking innumerable trainings to be a better therapist (and let’s not deny the drive to fix myself so I would be a better person) I came to a rather painful conclusion.
There is no fast, easy, way.
There is a steady, committed, step by step process of life, reshaping it into a life you want to live in, befriending your inner world so that you can enter your skin and live inside your body, welcoming your return home to yourself.
My family life has changed dramatically. People who hear about the complete about face that happened in my family tell me that they’re jealous that they are alone, that they don’t have the same kind of family. I understand that.
At the same time, I want to remind all of us, as I have to do with myself every day, choose a different life.
Choose a different outcome.
Every time I wanted to curl up and die when anyone would say something to me that triggered me into the abyss of despair I had to walk my way out of that torture chamber. Often I had to do it alone until I learned how to speak myself and surround myself with people who were trustworthy, people who would show me love even when I felt like total crud.
I’ve learned that life changes moment by moment each and every time I choose to find love in myself, in the other person rather than believing in the hurt words, the scathing remark, the disappointment, the derision, the contempt.
Attachment theory has taught me, shown me from inside and from working with so many people that connection is important, wanting – in fact, needing other people is essential.
Barbara Streisand singing “People, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world….” is singing one a song of attachment. It’s a great place to be, not always accessible to us.
This past Friday I was meeting with a small group of colleagues in a Healing Circle we’ve created. We’re still new to each other but the good will is palpable and I am honored they asked me to join them. At one point I brought up something I’ll be talking about at the IFS conference next weekend when I present my workshop, that is, how important it is to be needy, to admit how much I need them, need you, need people.
This is an idea that can be both interesting and horribly fraught for people. One person in our circle said how compelling she felt my speaking that was. Another person raised the concerns of getting hurt by others, being disappointed when others can’t reciprocate.
There are cautions to be aware of; the journey is not simple and unassuming. What the journey does offer us is an absolute confidence that love is greater than another else. That if we believe in love and take the step by step by step ways of concretizing love in our lives and in our relationships that we will life in a life we want to live in.
Better yet, we’ll create a world we all want to live in together.