The Power of Knowing Your Needs

Needs Reflection Practice
“When we are with our own needs, we are no longer needy. We are in integrity with our own heart.” – John Wineland
This is a reflection practice to help you learn more about your relationship with your own needs, hopes, and desires in your relationship—how they live in you, how you relate with them, how you express them (or not) with your partner, or others in your life.
 
If the word needs doesn’t connect for you, feel free to use other language such as “important experiences, values, what matters to me.” Write for a few minutes using the prompts below. Repeat each prompt at least several times, feeling and listening for further or deeper responses each time you complete a sentence. After a few min drawing on your own responses, feel free to take a look at a list of needs to get other language or ideas such as: www.nycnvc.org/needs to see if any resonate with you. 
 
Prompts:
 
In our relationship (or in relationships in general)
 
I want…
I need…
It really is important to me to feel…
Reflecting on how you relate with your needs: 
On a scale from 1 – 10, 1 being hardly at all, 10 being most of the time:
 
How much do you accept that you have these needs, value and respect them as important, as mattering?
 
How much of the time, and how openly do you express, ask for these needs with your partner or others?
 
How much do you hope or expect your partner to know about these needs without communicating them (i.e. mindread)?
 
When your partner doesn’t meet your needs (either because you haven’t expressed them, or because you’ve asked for something and they can’t or won’t), what meanings do you make? How do you interpret the experience of not having your needs met? What feelings go with that interpretation?
 
This practice is adapted and expanded from Making Great Relationships by Rick Hanson