It’s tough!
If someone you depend on isn’t able to be there for you in the way you need them to be, it’s time to reevaluate the relationship. By reevaluating the relationship, I don’t mean drop the person out of your life (at least for most cases).
Why is it that they cannot meet your needs?
In most cases, people will answer because “they don’t care,” or “they aren’t trying.” Let’s take a closer look here.
If someone really and truly doesn’t care to meet the needs of people that depend on them, then I would say they are at a level of consciousness that doesn’t allow them to be dependable. In ayurveda, we call these murky states of consciousness tamasic states of mind.
However, it’s actually quite rare for people to really not care about your needs.
If someone communicates that they care about your needs, but they are still unable to meet them, take a look at where they are in life.
- Are they overwhelmed with all they have on their plate?
- Are they able to meet anyone’s emotional needs (including their own)?
If they are at a place in their lives where they are physically (e.g. time, energy, health, money) or emotionally (e.g. unaware, overly stressed, emotionally unstable) unable to meet your emotional needs, that’s important to recognize.
So what should you do?
Well, most of us get frustrated, angry, and take it out on that person. That’s definitely not going to incentivize any positive change in the situation.
So then what? Have compassion. Yes, compassion for the person that isn’t meeting your needs. Compassion because they are at a certain stage in their lives, or conscious evolution that does not allow them to.
Likely, they cannot show up for your emotional needs because they don’t know how to show up for their own.
I’ve found when I can remember this, it melts away my anger and I am empowered to move forward.
Moving forward is an important second step. It means meeting your own needs, with other people and situations. This is easy to write, much harder to practice. (But, hey, even love is a discipline.)
How do you move forward? Well, simple. Take a look at the greater patterns in your internal decision making, and learn how to meet your needs with the vast resources of the Universe.
No one person, or situation is going to meet all of your emotional needs in life. So, we’ve all got to manage our own emotional need library and mix and match people and situations to attend to all of them.
This is a constantly in flux process. We keep changing the people and the situations as our needs change, and as their ability to meet our needs change. Like all natural phenomenon, it’s cyclical, and as we fully accept that, we’ll have less resentment and pain as we go through the natural cycles of relationships.
With regards to the internal reflection that is an important part of changing your experience from one of “needs unmet” to “needs met,” I’d take a look at how you got to be in the current situation.
What were all the decisions you made/ are making that are NOT reflecting your needs as a priority? In other words, are your words and actions in alignment with your intention to have a need met?
Oftentimes, we find ourselves in “needs unmet” because we haven’t experienced having our emotional needs robustly met early in life, and so we are choosing situations that are familiar subconsciously. You can tell this is the case when you’re in “needs unmet” container across multiple areas in life (e.g. work, relationships, self care).
And that’s actually good news, because it means that you can do some really significant shifting of your experience by shifting your internal decision making framework surrounding your needs. From what I’m seeing these days, most all of us have this work to do: line up your decisions as if your needs are a priority.
You can do it. While you are at it, have compassion for yourself too. It takes time and practice, and some days you will be better at gauging your needs, the other’s ability to meet them, and meeting your needs in alternative ways; and some days you won’t.
It’s all a function of how plugged in you are to yourself (daily self care must include time to be with your emotions!), and how depleted you are. So, for many of us, learning to have our needs met begins with making time to be aware of our needs.
Then we can communicate them effectively, and attract people and situations that meet them with greater ease.
The natural law of attraction is perhaps the most important reason to do this shifting. We can all deal with not having all of our emotional needs being met for some amount of time, however that whole time we are attracting more experiences that match our “needs unmet” container. This is a super costly energetic situation.
The more you meet your needs in alternative ways and start to prioritize them in your decision making, the more you embody “needs met” and the more you attract people and situations that meet your emotional needs.
In sum, 1. accept the situation; 2. have compassion; 3. move forward by looking inward 4. meet your own needs 5. attract more of what you want/ need.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.