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Our 9 essential emotional needs are:

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• Security — safe territory and an environment which allows us to develop fully

• Attention (to give and receive it) — a form of nutrition

• Sense of autonomy and control — having volition to make responsible choices

• Feeling part of a wider community

• Emotional intimacy — to know that at least one other person accepts us totally for who we are, “warts ‘n’ all”

• Privacy — opportunity to reflect and consolidate experience

• Sense of status within social groupings

• Sense of competence and achievement

• Meaning and purpose — which come from being stretched in what we do and think.

 

Along with physical and psychological needs nature gave us internal guidance systems to help us meet them. We call these ‘resources’.

The resources nature gave us to help us meet our needs include:

• The ability to develop complex long term memory, which enables us to add to our innate knowledge and learn

• The ability to build rapport, empathize and connect with others

• Imagination, which enables us to focus our attention away from our emotions, use language and problem solve more creatively and objectively

• Emotions and instincts

• A conscious, rational mind that can check out emotions, question, analyze and plan

• The ability to ‘know’ — that is, understand the world unconsciously through metaphorical pattern matching (Pattern matching will always be explained in session)

• An observing self — that part of us that can step back, be more objective and be aware of itself as a unique center of awareness, apart from intellect, emotion and conditioning

• A dreaming brain that preserves the integrity of our genetic inheritance every night by metaphorically defusing expectations held in the autonomic arousal system because they were not acted out the previous day.

 

 

When we are in a state of regular high emotional arousal, these resources simply aren't available.

When people are anxious, stress and depressed, I often hear the terms:

“It all seems hopeless”

“I can't work out what to do”

“I don't have options”

 

What high emotional arousal does, is keep us in a complex survival mode. I say complex because, as humans, our fight or flight mode is different to that of say, a Lion or Tiger. In fight or flight, a Lion will attack or flee. For us humans, with our vast array of emotions and conscious thought processes we continue to attempt to find reason and solutions while being under attack. And “under attack” for us could be anything from an unfair and heavy workload, unfair demands from bosses, colleagues or family and friends, and -believe it or not- over stimulus from oppressive, advertisement-heavy environments like shopping malls or congested city locations.

When you're in this human version of fight or flight, our brains are working very similar to that of a trapped animal, in the sense that only ONE main part of the brain is awake and firing...no surprise here, the survival brain. It can really only deal with keeping you safe. When we're in high emotional arousal, the resource and creative-solution parts of the brain are generally not accessible. So is there any wonder why we cannot help ourselves a lot of the time?

One of the biggest parts of my therapy is helping you stay out of emotional fight or flight, so that you have all of those creative-resource-solutions parts of you active, firing, working for you when you actually need them. This prevents anxiety, stress, panic attacks and a slew of other fight or flight symptoms taking hold. It allows you to make the best, most informed and healthy decisions in each moment. You'll see the forest for the trees and represent yourself in the most disirable way and come out of any situation on top.