Meeting emotional and spiritual needs is the foundation of good mental health. But how do you know whether your needs are met? Is there an easy way to find out?
In this article we’ll explore the theory underpinning Human Givens psychology that emphasises the importance of meeting emotional needs.
I’ve included a Free Emotional Needs Audit that will help you easily assess your current situation. Then we’ll look at some of the things you can do to meet your emotional and spiritual needs and, subsequently, feel so much better about yourself and your life.
- Everyday problems and existential crises
- The real meaning of spirituality
- The drive toward enlightenment
- The merging of two separate approaches
- Refining perceptions of reality
- What are emotional needs?
- What are spiritual needs?
- What stops us meeting our emotional and spiritual needs?
- The Emotional Needs Audit: the first step to reclaiming better mental health
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Everyday problems and existential crises
When I started out as a therapist over 20 years ago, most people I treated had the typical everyday problems associated with visiting a hypnotherapist; they wanted to stop smoking, lose weight, or overcome a phobia.
Over the last decade I’ve noticed that more and more of my clients want to resolve what might be termed a spiritual crisis; a lack of meaning or purpose in life, feelings of dissociation, and a loss of connection to one’s True Self.
As Dante wrote in his 14th century epic, The Divine Comedy, “Midway upon the road of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for the right way had been lost.”
Those words ring true for so many of us, even hundreds of years after they were written, because they highlight a stage we all go through. It is part of the human condition.
Maybe it’s your turn to feel lost in a ‘dark wood’ right now? Rest assured, there is a way out…
The real meaning of spirituality
For lasting change and transformation we need to find the ‘right way’, to get back into our ‘right mind’. For this to happen I believe that we need to address both our emotional and spiritual needs.
But firstly let’s take a moment and figure out what we mean by the word ‘spiritual’…
To my mind, spirituality isn’t about praying or reading scriptures or going to church once a week to listen to a sermon or sing hymns. Neither is it about attending a retreat or going on a pilgrimage once a year.
These things might all contain elements of spirituality, for sure. But as far as I see it, spirituality is more about having direct experiences of The Other rather than reading scriptures or relying on faith alone.
When you are purposefully working on yourself, enquiring into the very nature of consciousness (and who you are) you can be said to be working spiritually.
True spirituality is about refining your perceptions of reality so that you are more enabled to have direct experiences of pure consciousness, unfettered by your own conditioning and prejudices.
The drive toward enlightenment
It seems that in our very DNA the seeds of Nirvana lie sleeping. The purpose of life, as I see it, is about nurturing that seed and ‘waking up’.
A.H. Almaas points out in his book, The Alchemy of Freedom, that we are programmed not only with a sex drive but also an ‘enlightenment drive’. Enlightenment is an experience of pure consciousness, or what Ken Wilber refers to as ‘unity consciousness’. The Sufis call it the ‘supreme identity’.
Life really is a quest to free yourself from the emotional attachments and conditionings from the past so that you can become who you really are.
And in so doing, you expand your consciousness and are then in a more favourable position to have a direct experience with a larger reality. In the west this is often referred to as God. In the east, Brahman or the Tao.
The merging of two separate approaches
After my own spiritual awakening experience in 2010 where I felt a sense of Oneness with All That Is, my approach to hypnotherapy naturally evolved.
I now merge both solution-focused therapy and transpersonal therapy to meet your emotional and spiritual needs.
So, let’s take a quick look at these two approaches…
Solution focused therapy…
This is mostly (but not always) brief in duration with an emphasis on the here and now. Its focus is on meeting your emotional needs and developing your resources and skills to help you make changes in the present and work toward future goals.
Much of my training has been with the Human Givens Institute, whose approach emphasises brief therapy (as opposed to older types of therapy that went on for years). In solution-focused therapy you won’t spend hours trawling through your past like in the old days of psychoanalysis.
Transpersonal (or spiritual) therapy
Transpersonal therapy means working ‘beyond the personal’ and thus is about transcending the ego. This enables you to function day to day from a more soul-based consciousness, no longer held in check by past conditioning.
Once you rise above the ego, you have a far better chance of experiencing a genuine connection with something outside and beyond yourself. This, in turn, can help you find greater meaning in life.
Meeting emotional needs will often solve your everyday problems. Meeting spiritual needs helps you refine your model of reality, leading to profound and lasting changes.
Your many human needs…are living apart from your divine sacred space. Your call is to let these two parts of yourself come together again.
Henri J.M. Nouwen – The Inner Voice of Love
Refining perceptions of reality
As Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell point out in their ground-breaking 2004 book, The Human Givens – a new approach to emotional health and clear thinking, “We cannot develop more refined perceptions without fulfilling more basic human needs and appetites first…”
This is why I combine the two types of therapy: solution-focused to help meet your emotional needs, and transpersonal therapy to help meet your spiritual needs so that you can change your model of reality.
What are emotional needs?
So let’s look closer at the Human Givens idea of emotional needs…
The premise is that we are all born with emotional needs; they are programmed into us even before birth. Problems arise when emotional needs are unmet. Unmet needs raise our stress levels which puts the more primitive, emotional brain in control, influencing how we feel, think and behave – often irrationally and impulsively.
This leaves us prone to anxiety disorders, depression, anger, addictive behaviours, relationship problems, low self-esteem, and the like.
List of emotional needs…
- Safety and security (at home, work, school, in your neighbourhood)
- Attention (to give and receive quality attention)
- To feel a sense of control and autonomy in life
- Emotional connection to others
- A sense of belonging in your community
- A feeling of status and/or recognition from others
- To feel competent in at least one area of your life (which helps raise self-esteem)
- To keep learning and achieving new things (to have goals that stretch and challenge you in a positive way)
What are spiritual needs?
The soul – the essence of who we are – is the core of our being and, once awakened, firstly brings us home to ourselves and then links us up to a greater reality.
To help connect up to a larger consciousness it’s important to meet spiritual needs…
List of spiritual needs:
- Time alone for quiet reflection; time and space to simply BE
- Connection to nature; to spend time outdoors
- Creativity; to make and create things
- Having meaning and purpose in your life
- The ability to experience awe and wonder – just like a child
- To be authentic; to be the real you
- Provide service to others; to get out of ‘ego-consciousness’ and into a more compassionate, altruistic ‘soul consciousness’
- To have a connection to something larger than oneself; religious/spiritual/philosophical beliefs etc. that connect you in some way to a bigger reality, something beyond yourself
It is when we address both our emotional and spiritual needs that real, lasting change occurs. Our model of reality shifts, our ‘ground of being’ moves from ego to soul. We operate from a different state of consciousness, more authentic and more connected to All That Is.
From an expanded state of consciousness, problems are seen from a totally new perspective. You’re no longer sucked in by old emotional issues from the past.
You’re calmer and more present because your ‘ground of being’ is based in the here and now. You feel more alive to life as it happens. You’re finally showing up in the world.
What stops us meeting our emotional and spiritual needs?
So if these needs are programmed into us from birth, what stops them being met? What gets in the way of us meeting our emotional and spiritual needs?
Do we sabotage our own best interests? Sometimes yes, we do. But most of the time other factors outside ourselves stop our needs being met.
The 3 main reasons that prevent you from meeting your needs…
- You are living and/or working in a ‘toxic’ environment
- Your innate guidance system is not working properly, has been damaged, or you are misusing it, e.g. you haven’t yet learned certain ‘life’ skills (such as good communication skills or the ability to connect with people), or you are misusing your imagination (where worry can soon lead to depression)
- You are suffering from psychological damage e.g. trauma, abuse (negative conditioning from the past)
Rest assured that good therapy will help you address all three reasons why your needs are currently not being met – and ways to help you meet them.
But without waiting around, there’s something you can do right now to start putting things right…
The Emotional Needs Audit: the first step to reclaiming better mental health
So, how well are your emotional and spiritual needs being met right now?
If you’re stressed, anxious, depressed, or suffering from addiction, self-harm, low self-esteem, or relationship problems there’s a good chance your needs aren’t being met well at the moment.
You can easily identify which needs are unmet by doing an Emotional Needs Audit. It will help pinpoint where the problem lies and give you some guidance to begin meeting those needs.
Download your FREE Emotional Needs Audit here
Once you’ve assessed your emotional needs you can take action straight away with this hypnosis download that will program your subconscious mind to find creative and healthy ways to meet your needs better.
Or if you’d prefer one-to-one online or in-person therapy with me find out more in a Free Discovery Session and get more free resources here
Read my article on 10 Steps to Self Mastery where we explore the use of resources to help meet your emotional needs.
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