What ensures our health and our personal growth is the fulfillment of our needs, there are real and organismic needs and unreal or introjected needs knowing them and differentiating them will save us a lot of time and effort.
When it comes to health at all levels, there is a unique and effective way: respect my needs.
How Needs work
The trigger for emotion is necessity since our nature works in the following way:
1. We perceive the environment through our five senses
2. At that moment the thought arises 'It's hot'
3. Then comes the feeling 'I feel uncomfortable'
4. Then comes the need 'I want to refresh myself'
5. The awareness of the need will lead me to action 'I get water', 'I open the window', 'I take off my coat', etc.
6.1. If I fulfill my need through action then a feeling of positive energy comes that can be well-being, joy, satisfaction, tranquility, etc.
6.2. If I do not fulfill it, a feeling also comes, which will be negative energy: discomfort, anger, dissatisfaction, etc.
7. There are then feelings of a positive nature or cathexis that are what lead me to my personal growth, they drive me.
8. Those with negative cathexis are the ones that do not lead me to my growth but rather stagnate me.
Types of Needs
Exist:
- Physiological or survival needs Psychological needs (development, transcendence, security, affection, sense of belonging, freedom and communication) Obsolete or introjected needs.
Having all these needs tells us that we are alive, only that we must be alert if our need falls into the following two categories:
- Real, natural or organismic needs: they are to eat, drink, breathe, discard, shelter, sex, rest, affection. Unreal, unnatural, introjected or learned needs: they bring us constant dissatisfaction, within them we have; power, control, dependence, “to be good”, “I must ……”, etc.
It can be said that the difference between organismic and non-organismic needs is that when the latter are fulfilled, there is dissatisfaction and, as there is no resources to satisfy them, there is rigidity in the satisfier and its origin is mental “roll”.
As you will be able to realize when we do not have all this awareness we can spend a lot of energy and time in satisfying needs that are not real, and that after much effort to achieve them they will leave us dissatisfied, frustrated and empty.
Two great technologies for cultivating self-awareness about our needs are kundalini yoga and Gestalt psychotherapy.
