To Need or Not to Need

  I recently broke my ankle and have had to rely a great deal more than I am usually comfortable with on my children, friends and colleagues. As such I have been thinking about the challenges many of us have with seeking/needing support. 

  I feel that a lot of the issues around this span from the fundamental (faulty) belief of our inner child in response to parents who didn’t necessarily meet our emotional or even physical needs when young. Interestingly such conditioning provokes two very different but equally unsustainable survival plans.

  On the one hand we have those whose subconscious belief is that “I cannot survive without the parent.” For them life is spent waiting for the parent to step up, or seeking others to replace the ‘missing in action’ parent. They demand a lot from friends/partners and rarely feel fully safe and supported. At the other side of the pendulum swing (where I have long sat) is the inner child with the fundamental belief that “I must survive without the parent.” Again the parent has failed to provide completely but the response is to ‘not need’. We are notoriously resistant to help and insist on struggling on our own. To seek help is to fail or to set up the possibility of being let down.

  Both are fed by evolutionary instincts. At one end is the biological fact that humans are born at a developmental stage where they cannot survive without significant input and care from the adults, especially the female. While at the other we have the evolutionary driver of the survival of the fittest.

  Both are equally distorted and damaging and both set up patterns which can take years to break. Ironically the end result is the same - both induce feelings of continually being alone and inadequately supported by the world

  The safe and healthy place is of course always in the middle. We have to address the inner child and replace its fear with the knowledge that as adults our survival is not threatened and we can let go of either ‘the need to need’ or ‘the need to not need’. We have to learn to accept that we can survive without the parent/surrogate parent, that absolutely as strong individuals we can get by on our own but equally importantly that, if we open to the generosity of others, we don’t have to.