From Fear to Needs

Needs and fear frequently occur together. We want closeness AND we’re afraid to open ourselves to the other person.

The ability to feel fear is actually a marker of maturity. Someone who can experience fear carries within themselves a signpost to dormant needs.

Someone who feels no fear might say something like “I can’t leave this soul-crushing job because I’m security-oriented.” This often indicates an internal protective mechanism that prevents us from even feeling the desire for the need for freedom.

The need is defended against and locked away – because the wound attached to that need feels more painful than the chronic non-experience of the need itself.

Psychological basic needs are to our self what nutrition is to the body. We need them for psychological well-being. Security without freedom, distance without closeness, or uniqueness without belonging deny our mental-emotional-physical self essential nutrients. Without strength, resonance, vitality, relaxation, or self-contact, we dry up internally.

Our basic needs thus form central pillars of the inner architecture of our experience. They shape our perception, our contact, our self-regulation, and our relationships – they help determine how we feel, think, and act.

In this new series, I want to explore the rich and complex world of our psychological basic needs. I’ll pursue questions including:

◽️ What are psychological needs? How can we conceptualize them?
◽️ How do they shape our feelings, decisions, and actions?
◽️ What happens when a need is violated, overlooked, or linked with pain?
◽️ How do such couplings form our relationships with ourselves and others?
◽️ How do we distinguish functional strategies from living contact with our needs?
◽️ And how can we strengthen inner orientation, resonance, and self-contact again?

When we take psychological basic needs seriously, the opportunity arises to gain new perspectives: Away from “too sensitive, too demanding, too insecure” toward the question of which needs haven’t had a good place for too long.

It makes a difference whether we merely optimize ourselves or truly understand ourselves. Whether we quietly resign internally or take responsibility. Whether fear tips into withdrawal and polarization – or into contact, negotiation, and mutual development.