By Mark Tyrrell

You can’t always get what you want – but you’ll try darn hard

We all have basic needs that are pretty obvious to ourselves. The needs to eat, rest, drink and sleep for instance. But it’s also true that each and every one of us have what we call ‘primal emotional needs’ as well – and they can be a lot less obvious. For instance, we all have a need to:

• feel safe and secure
• get enough attention
• have purpose and goals in life
• feel understood and connected and indeed intimate with others
• feel connected to something bigger than ourselves such as an organisation or community
• have a sense of status and feel recognized and valued for who we are and what we do
• feel we have control over at least some things in life.

If these needs are not met, people become unhappy and may become ill.

When they are met adequately, we feel fulfilled and have space in our minds for projects that extend beyond the immediate gratification of instant emotional fulfilment.

This is one of the most important things you’ll ever learn regarding psychology.

If people are not meeting their emotional needs – perhaps because they are not even really consciously aware of them – then much of their behaviour will be an unconscious drive toward fulfilling those emotional needs regardless of what they think or say they are doing.

Much strange or so-called ‘difficult’ behaviour becomes readily understandable once we consider what need that behaviour might be clumsily – and unconsciously – trying to meet.

For example, contrary or difficult behaviour might be a disguised and unconscious attempt to gain a sense of status, or feelings of control, which might be lacking in the overall context of a person’s life.

Rather than getting upset when a client displays resistant or awkward behaviour, I try to be objective and look for the need the behaviour is blindly trying to meet. If I can somehow help my client feel that their need for status (or control, or security, or whatever) has been adequately met, then we are freed up to work cooperatively with one another. Part of this working together would include ensuring that they start meeting their emotional needs effectively outside of situations where they really want to be concentrating on something else.

We all know people who seem to be doing one thing – such as attending a class to learn something – but really are doing something quite different – such as constantly seeking attention rather than learning what there is to be learned. Clearly, such a person is not getting enough attention in the right place (for example, at home), and is desperately trying to compensate in the wrong place (the classroom).

When someone is behaving strangely or obnoxiously, rather than taking it personally, or getting into a spat, consider what primal emotional need the behaviour may be unconsciously trying to meet. This will allow you to operate in a much more sophisticated way when dealing with and understanding other people.

So the fourth and last point here, one which is so important it underpins all the other points, is that we all have primal emotional needs and if we don’t meet them healthily we will try to meet them in any way we can.

But what’s really interesting is that, for the most part, we are unconscious of what emotional needs our own behaviour is trying to fulfill.

Now this may all seem a bit complex but it’s actually a lot simpler than it appears and once you truly understand these points then you’ll find you won’t have to think too hard about other people’s baffling behaviour, because things will occur to you spontaneously. People can be puzzles, but all puzzles can be solved and often much more easily than you may have thought once you know the method.

So, in summary, I have highlighted:

• The importance of remembering that people have conscious and unconscious minds.
• The fact that sometimes people don’t know their own true motivations and feelings about things so the conscious mind comes up with a theory or story that is at odds with their real unconscious motivation. You can look for congruence between what people say and what they actually do and how they communicate non-verbally. Remember that leakage of true feelings from the unconscious mind may take the form of incredibly brief ‘micro-expressions’. So stay alert.
• Peoples’ true feelings are often communicated metaphorically – remember the coughing psychiatrist I mentioned.
• And, most important of all, how so much human behaviour is driven by unconscious attempts to meet the primal emotional needs which each and every human being shares, and how if these needs aren’t met healthily they can cause people to act in all kinds of weird and not so wonderful ways.

About the Author

Mark Tyrrell is the Co-founder of Uncommon Knowledge – leading edge online trainingin hypnotherapy and psychotherapy.He has written many psychology articles and is a contributor to other sites.He does public seminars for health professionals on self esteem, bullying and trauma and lead trainer on Uncommon Knowledge’s online therapy courses.  And he runs.