What are your needs?
A word that comes out of my mouth approximately 23,794,384 times is “needs.”
What are your needs?
Are your needs being met in your relationship?
How are your habits meeting your needs — or not meeting them?
Is work somewhere you get any of your needs met?
I love this word because the answer looks different for every person. Asking about someone’s needs gives me a window into their world. It helps me understand what matters to them, what may be missing, and what they may be trying to communicate through their emotions, behaviors, or relationships.
In graduate school, we were actually required to attend therapy as part of one of our classes. I know that isn’t everyone’s experience when entering the mental health profession, but our program placed a strong emphasis on understanding ourselves before entering a profession centered around understanding and caring for others.
And honestly, I learned so much.
Therapy helped me recognize the needs that had gone unmet during different seasons of my life. More importantly, I learned how necessary it is to regularly check in with myself and adjust my routines, boundaries, and priorities based on what I need now.
Because our needs change.
What you needed five years ago may not be what you need today. What you needed during college may look completely different from what you need in your career, your relationships, or this particular season of adulthood.
This is where self-care comes in.
“Self-care” has become a very popularized term, and I know certain generations may roll their eyes at it. But I’m actually glad we talk about it more openly now.
Because we cannot consistently show up as our best selves when we are consistently ignoring ourselves.
When our needs go unmet for long enough, we may become exhausted, resentful, disconnected, irritable, or overwhelmed. Sometimes we start resenting our jobs, our relationships, our responsibilities — when the deeper issue is that we have been running on empty for far too long.
Some of my own needs include, but certainly aren’t limited to:
Friend and family time
Alone time
Maintaining boundaries
Exercise
Rest
Spiritual practice
Laughing and having fun
Processing my own life in therapy
Notice that some of these things may sound like activities, while others are boundaries or relationships. That’s intentional. Meeting our needs isn’t always about adding another self-care activity to our calendar. Sometimes it means saying no. Sometimes it means asking for help. Sometimes it means resting without feeling guilty. Sometimes it means making time for the people who make you feel most like yourself.
I could probably write 100 blogs on this concept, but for now, I want you to sit with one question:
What are your needs?
And I mean beyond the food, water, and shelter we learned about in school. If you want a visual starting point, look up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — but remember that your needs are personal, and they may look different from someone else’s.
Take some time to identify what you need in this season of your life.
Then ask yourself a harder question:
What am I currently doing to make sure those needs are being met?
Maybe you need to set a boundary.
Maybe you need more rest.
Maybe you need connection.
Maybe you need more time alone.
Maybe you need to ask for support.
Maybe you need to laugh more.
Whatever it is, let’s stop treating our needs like an inconvenience and start treating them like valuable information.
Create a plan to honor them.
Your relationships, your work, your mental health, and most importantly, you, will thank you for it.
And if you needed permission to pause and pour into yourself for once, consider this your reminder.
