What are your emotional needs?

[windowall]

My therapist asked me this and I couldn't come up with an answer.

 

[Phanelope]

I've got no idea! I think I know what I'm feeling and what I need from others, but then I try to express it and its like "Why don't you know what I want without me having to tell you!". So it just leads to frustration and irritability.

 

[SusanLR]

That's a bit difficult to answer OK.
I guess what I need is to feel happy.
That would be somehow to feel at peace with myself (happiness without feeling I need someone else.)
If I had that, which eludes me, then I would want to find someone I could trust, feel at ease and
enjoy being with. Then if they disappoint and hurt me, I would have myself contentment to turn to.
I also need to afford a half decent life and health that is good enough to live it.
So it all amounts to the emotional need of being happy with my life.

 

[OlLiE]

to be left alone

 

[Adora]

It is a difficult question but I guess just to be happy and feel safe.

 

[Progster]

I think that question would truly stump me and if I hadn't read the above examples I wouldn't know what it meant, but I think to have a sense of self worth, to be at peace with myself, to feel useful and that I can contribute.

 

[Larsieanne]

For people to see me as as competent and sentient as everyone else. Just for people to take it for granted, rather than me having to TELL or SHOW them I'm sentient/competent.

 

[Tom]

My wife, dogs, nature. And Pepperoni pizza.

 

[tree]

This seems like an obscure question, to me.
I'd need to know what "emotional need" means to
the person asking the question before I could
offer any answer.

This is one definition:

"emotional need
a psychological or mental requirement of intrapsychic origin that usually centers on such basic feelings as love, fear, anger, sorrow, anxiety, frustration, and depression and involves the understanding, empathy, and support of one person for another.
Such needs normally occur in everyone but usually increase during periods of excessive stress or physical and mental illness and during various stages of life, such as infancy, early childhood, and old age. If these needs are not routinely met by appropriate, socially accepted means, they can precipitate psychopathological conditions.

Appropriate measures common in nursing for anticipating and satisfying the emotional needs of patients in stress include physical closeness, especially remaining with the person during periods when the feeling is acute; empathetic listening as the patient discusses the feeling; encouragement to verbalize feelings; and planning activities that provide a constructive outlet for the feeling or the situation causing it."
https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/emotional+need

One list of needs:

1. To feel safe, stable, nurtured and accepted.
2. To have some autonomy, to feel competent and to have a sense of identify.
3. To have the freedom to express your own needs and emotions.
4. To be able to act spontaneously and to play.
5. To live in a world with realistic limits, which help you to apply self-control.
https://www.counselling-directory.o...re-emotional-needs-are-and-are-they-being-met

A way of visualizing (emotional) needs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

 

[VJCJ0628]

@tree had a good answer. as best as possible without asking in regards to what specifically

 

[Tom]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Oh no....! Its Maslow!

I guess Pepperoni Pizza would fit under 'Self Actualization'.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Oh no....! Its Maslow!

I guess Pepperoni Pizza would fit under 'Self Actualization'.

Depends who bought it.

 

[SusanLR]

Depends who bought it.

Or who made it...Papa John or Little Ceasar!!!

 

[the_tortoise]

To give and receive love, understanding, kindness, comfort, and compassion.
To feel safe, at least some of the time.
To feel the full range of emotions I can feel, without being made to suffer for it.

 

[MrSpock]

When I first read it I thought that another person or people were implied to be providing what was needed, as opposed to what is necessary to feel emotionally self-sufficient.

I do have to be pretty much self-sufficient, but it's not nice. I seem to have more needs now than in my twenties, or it bothers me more that they're not met.

I would have to try being with someone who made me happy before I could really say what would. I'm a different person than when I last felt that I was with someone who made me happy.