A need is a request and can’t be unrequested. You are hungry – Meaning your body requests food. You are thirsty – Meaning your body requests to be hydrated. You are tired – Meaning your body requests rest, vitamins or some other support.

The same goes with other needs. Your emotional body have requests in order to be happy. To be safe. To be loved, to be accepted, and so on.

If we for some reason don’t listen to our needs, the subconscious might actually make you sick. As a rule, it will find a way to get your needs met, whatever it takes. This will then happen in a nonconscious way, meaning you can end up with unnecessary suffering.

For example:

You need to be safe – but you don’t know how to ask for it upfront so your subconscious start shutting people off, isolating you.

You need to be loved – but you don’t know how to ask for it upfront. You might not think you deserve it. Instead you take hundreds of selfies, post them on Instagram and anxiously wait for approval. If you receive none you feel the anxiousness coming.

You need help – but you don’t think you deserve it. You subconsciously will start to manipulate, by helping others. Or judging others as self-centered and so on.

On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people, and then I go home alone.

– Janis Joplin

Exercise – How can you ask for what you need up front?

Ask yourself: What do I give to others that annoys me when I don’t receive it back? This is you not asking for your need upfront, this is your subconscious manipulating your way to get your needs meet.

Read more about how to meet your needs here and here.

This is a guest post. The opinions expressed are the writer’s own.