Relationships – What are your emotional needs? Nina Kundi explains…

With any relationship, it’s important to have our emotional needs met. This starts from the day we’re born – when are generally nurtured by our parents and taught simple tasks such as walking, talking, and how to feed ourselves, and we crave love and attention. The more our emotional needs are met, the more secure we feel as we grow into adults. For many, growing up without this can lead to a feeling of abandonment and unworthiness. 

Regardless of your upbringing, as adults we tend to forget about the basic foundations in a relationship that we require for our emotional needs to be met. We take on roles and responsibilities to help others and put their needs before our own, and in doing so we assume that by making others happy and fulfilling their needs, that it will make us feel needed, respected, nurtured and worthwhile. We wrongly believe doing this will help us grow through the invisible ranks of life – however, when we are disrespected or the other person doesn’t give us the acknowledgement or nurturing we want for our efforts, we feel let down and abandoned! This can be particularly hard for those who suffered feelings of abandonment as a child. 

Quite often, we then start experiencing unhelpful thoughts and feelings that just won’t go away! So, lets break it down, what is it that we require to feel our emotional needs are being met? 

To be listened to and understood

To be nurtured

To be appreciated

To be valued

To be accepted

Affection

Love

Companionship

Sounds a lot, right? What you need to remember though is that being stuck in relationships where you feel lonely, unloved and undervalued is actually worse than being alone. When you realise that you’re not getting what you need from your friends, loved ones, or boss, you tend to avoid facing it, and nothing gets better. You do this because you don’t want to rock the relationship, and you think avoiding facing up to the truth is easier, but it absolutely is not. The more you sit on the issue rather than sorting it, the more you are perpetuating your own emotional abandonment, and this gives us further issues down the line. Emotional abandonment issues can be seen even in the healthiest of relationships.

How can you fix these issues?

Being aware of your own emotional needs helps you to understand where some of the feelings you’re experiencing come from. It helps you to look at your relationships and put into practise what it is that you are missing. 

If your emotional needs are not being met and you’re wanting to learn more about how you can truly value yourself, get in touch.

I offer a free 30-minute 121 call to evaluate where you are in your journey, and how we can take you from surviving to thriving!!

www.ninakundicoaching.com