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Do you care about things like acceptance, autonomy, intimacy, safety, and trust?

If so, you might have emotional needs.

Actually, everyone has emotional needs. But, many people think their emotional needs are unimportant, or even a sign of weakness. It’s almost as if admitting they have emotional needs is akin to admitting they’ve committed a crime.

Why is this so?

Many of the people who are afraid to accept their emotional needs were raised by parents who viewed emotions as burdensome. Even though most parents want the best for their children and attempt to get it right in the parenting realm, raising children with no emotional needs is shockingly easy.

We will address how this happens soon, but I’d like to begin by emphasizing the basis of emotional needs: emotions. Emotions live in the deepest part of our central nervous system. They are the essence of who we are as human beings. They give us information about our past and present experiences, our sense of self, our motivations, our desires, and, you guessed it, our needs.

Emotions are at the heart of connecting two people in a loving relationship. Emotions are what motivate athletes, scientists, and artists. Emotions are the driving force behind value-based decisions and living authentically in the world. Emotions give life meaning.

If it’s not already clear, emotions are tremendously important. And, yet, we live among people who feel a deep sense of shame for having emotions and emotional needs. To understand how this happens, let’s first discuss what it means to have an emotional need.

What Does It Mean to Have Emotional Needs?

1. You are human. Every single person alive has emotional needs, there’s no way around it.
2. You are open to messages from your internal world. Emotional needs come from inside you. When you are attuned to yourself and your emotions, hearing and honoring your emotional needs comes with a greater sense of ease.
3. You are open to showing vulnerability in your relationships with others. When you are able to express your emotional needs with another person, you open up the possibility of having genuine and resilient connections.

While we all may have emotional needs, we all don’t have the luxury of allowing ourselves to know them, express them, and try to meet them. The answer to why this happens lies in the repercussions of childhood emotional neglect.

Childhood Emotional Neglect Sets You Up to Believe You Shouldn't Have Emotional Needs

Childhood emotional neglect happens when your parents do not attend to or respond to your emotional needs enough throughout your upbringing. That’s all that needs to happen for you to believe (1) your emotional needs are unimportant and/or (2) you should have no emotional needs.

This happens with parents who belittle or shame their children’s feelings, but also with well-meaning, loving parents who unknowingly ignore, hide, or minimize their child’s feelings. Either way, the children attempt to squelch their feelings to fit into their emotion-intolerant environment. The lesson learned, that their feelings and needs are unimportant or shameful, follows them into adulthood.

Most people who experience childhood emotional neglect, along with their emotionally neglectful parents, are simply missing emotional knowledge, awareness, and understanding. While emotions are a natural and normal part of being human, they are also something that needs to be learned and modeled in order to use them in a healthy way.

Put simply, we can’t model something that was never modeled to us, just as we can’t give something that was never given to us.

Let’s examine Shelly and Duncan, two folks facing the present-day constraints of being raised in an emotionally neglectful household:

Shelly

Shelly was raised by strict parents. She was not allowed to date when living in her parents’ home, much less have a friend of the opposite sex over. Now, at the age of 25, Shelly finds herself single without any dating experience. Many of her friends are beginning to settle down with their partners, and Shelly has been feeling like the odd one out—something she would never share with her friends. Shelly fiercely denies wanting a partner and prides herself in her independence and dedication to her career. But, deep down, she yearns for that connection and envies her friends for their romantic experiences.

Duncan

Duncan’s girlfriend recently made a comment observing the lack of closeness between Duncan and his father. Duncan brushed the comment off, but he’s starting to become more aware that the only connection he has with his dad is sports. While he enjoys those conversations, he’s beginning to realize he doesn’t know much about his dad, and his dad doesn’t know much about him. That thought hurts him, but he pushes it down. His girlfriend suggested trying to connect with his dad in another way, but Duncan won’t admit, even to himself, that he wants a deeper connection. He doesn’t want his dad to think he’s unappreciative or asking for too much, so he continues ignoring the disconnection he feels.

Does Having Emotional Needs Make You Needy?

John Bowlby, long known as the father of attachment theory, once said, “We’re only as needy as our unmet needs.”

As you saw with Shelly and Duncan, people can be quite fearful of sharing their emotional needs. They don’t want to appear as though they are needy or “too much.” These people are usually the ones shaped by childhood emotional neglect. They don’t know that having and expressing emotional needs is not a nuisance. In fact, it’s a superpower.

How to Let Yourself Have Emotional Needs

1. Know that your feelings are real, valid, and worth taking the time to listen to.
2. Remember that emotional needs are a normal part of being human. It doesn’t make you weak or needy. Expressing them is a sign of emotional maturity and strength.
3. If you notice hesitation around expressing your vital emotional needs to someone else, acknowledge that this process involves taking risks. It’s OK to feel scared. Showing vulnerability is how you connect deeply with others.

It makes sense that you need things like comfort, attention, love, connection, and support. These basic requirements are essential to living a rich and rewarding life. Each time you deny your needs, you are denying yourself the possibility of the reward.

It’s one thing to know it’s OK to have emotional needs, and it’s another to know that it is OK to fulfill these needs. Acknowledge them. Express them. These needs are inside you, waiting to be met.