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Sometimes, it feels like all anybody tells you, is what you need to do.
It might be a teacher, a friend, a parent, or a professional. Sometimes, it can be well meaning and supportive, and at other times, it can just feel overwhelming and stressful.
The challenge is that there really are things that we need to support our emotional and mental well-being. And no, I don’t mean doing the dishes, concentrating, sitting still, or walking the dog!
Learning from Nature
Think about a plant – stay with me, it will make sense in a bit. What does a plant need to thrive?
For a plant to thrive it needs these things:
Sunlight
Water
Nutrients from the soil.
Now, each type of plant is unique – cactus, spider plant, pond lily, lavender, poppy, which means they each need to find the balance of these three things to thrive. If you give a cactus as much water as a pond lily, it is not going to be very happy.
But what does this mean for humans? Because last time I checked, we are not plants.
Human Needs
Well, just like plants, humans have needs, but being a bit more complicated than plants – we can move, talk, and have a brain therefore we have a few more needs. And just like plants, we each need to find our unique balance so that we can thrive and feel well.
So, what are these needs? It helps to separate them out into our physical needs and our emotional needs, and remember, our physical needs are an important foundation for our emotional needs.
It might help you to check-in with what each of these emotional needs means for you, for your friends, for your family, because it can be different for everyone.
Once you know what the emotional need means for you, ask yourself “is this being met in my life right now”? Sometimes, emotional needs are met in one area of our life but not another, for example, there might be differences between home, school, work, clubs etc. That is ok.
Just remember that if one of more of your needs are not being met somewhere in your life, you are more likely to feel stressed, sad, anxious or alone.
If you want to find out more about your emotional needs, you can see our other blogs, with a post dedicated to each emotional need, or here are some resources you might find interesting:
What Do You Need, An Alternative, Compassionate, Guilt Free Guide to Emotionally Healthy Families, by Bindi Gauntlett
