I have to be real careful with this blog. It could be very offensive. The “N word” that we all know…unfortunately…is all too rampant in America. Not so, by the way in most of the rest of world, and not even very prevalent in North America. I never heard the N word when I lived in Canada partly because when a man was Black, he didn’t first define himself as Black, but as Canadian, or more likely a Newfoundlander or a Torontonian. This came to as a pleasant surprise when I was at a party with people of various colors and national origins, as Canada tends to be much more than the U.S. Somehow I had a conversation with this Black guy, and it was normal for me to think of him first as a “Black guy.” But that wasn’t how he thought of himself. I learned that he was from Toronto, that he was an engineer of some kind, and that he has a passion for music. Far down the line he would say something like, “Oh, yes, I am Black but that isn’t how I think of myself.” Not so in America…sadly. My two sons–in-law are Black. They were both raised by White mothers, and for one of them, predominantly by mother, and neither was particularly raised in a Black subculture. Blackness is important to both of them, perhaps one more than the other, but it seems not to be at the top of the list.

The N word originated more than 200 years ago and has remained a part of the English language, again, especially in America. It is primarily a derogatory term, but it can be used as a term of endearment among Blacks themselves, or a friendly way of engaging a competitor. I can’t say how that feels because I am not Black, but even this most hateful word can be used lovingly, if carefully. I don’t know how my one my son-in-law really feels when his mother jokingly says to him, “That is mighty White of you.” I cringe, but know that she means this as a term of endearment. This whole discussion reminds me of my previous blogs of Feelings, and it is in that light that I want to talk about “the other N word.” The other N word is need.

Need
Having thought about, read about, and written about feeling words recently, I continue to find myself intrigued by this other N word. Some people use it frequently, some use it sparingly, and yet others never use it Need tends to be a word that is used more by women than by men, but that is only part of the story. People with a feeling-based personality type use it more than people with a thinking-based personality. People with a “lover” temperament use it more than people with an “analyst” temperament. (I’ll discuss these personalities in later blogs.) It amazes me how natural and easy it is for some people to use the word need compared to many people who never use it.

It is important to distinguish between wants and needs. People for whom the N word works well tend not to make the distinction between wants and needs. Their preferred word is need, and this preference suggests that their use of the term includes both wants and needs. This can be confusing for someone who never uses the word need. Given that I am disinclined to use the N word, I always feel a bit uncomfortable when someone uses the word easily and frequently. I am even more uncomfortable when he or she uses it in regards to what they want me to do. Notice how I immediately translated the word “need” to “want” without event thinking. So I have come to realize that this want/need distinction may be a bit artificial. There may be a spectrum of want on one side of the spectrum and need on the other. This may help a bit, but I think the matter is more complicated than that.

I think the word need needs to be used, if sparingly and carefully. There: I used the N word. But I used the N word in regards to what I thought you need. It is much harder for me to use the N word when I have some need. I use it rarely, and I am far from comfortable with using it for myself, much less feeling the felt need that underlies the word need. I am coming to believe that felt need is real important but like any feeling, it is not exactly definable. If you read by blogs on Feelings, you will remember that we know what feelings are but we can’t exactly define them. Such seems to be the case with the N word. There are some dangers in allowing the N word into one’s vocabulary as there are dangers in failing to distinguish between wants and needs. Nobody likes “needy” people.

Neediness
“Neediness” may not be as bad as the original N word, but it is close. Who wants to be around a “needy” person? A “needy” person is someone who gloms on to you and you can’t get away from. You know what I mean. The guy in the gas station who wants to tell you about his sister’s cancer; the relative who always has some kind of physical ailment; the guy you try to avoid because you know that he will want more of your time than you can give him. “Needy” people are dependent. That is the essence of so-called neediness. “Dependent” is not much better than “needy” but it at least strikes a chord in my psychological understanding of things. Not the best word, but somewhat accurate, at least in psychological parlance. Even a bit harsher is the formal diagnosis of “dependent personality disorder,” one of the many diagnoses that is like a death curse.

Instead of needy, dependent, or personality disordered, I suggest that people with this tendency are looking for something. They are looking for what they never received as children. It is natural for children to be needy, 100% in infancy, 90% in toddlerhood, about 50% the rest of childhood, and about 20% in adolescence. Adulthood…well, we’ll get to that in a minute. So-called needy people didn’t get their needs met in these early stages of life and as a result are continually looking for someone to lean on. Unfortunately, they often lean on anyone they can find, and the more they lean, the more that people avoid them or tolerate their neediness. It’s a sad story. They’re just trying to get what they didn’t get as children, but they never get it. Fritz Perls (therapist, largely in the 1960’s time) said it right: you get your childhood dependency needs met in childhood or you never get them met. Note one important phrase in this statement: childhood needs. You get your childhood needs met as a child or you never get them met. Wow. That sounds awful, but this is not the end of the story.

When I failed to get my childhood needs met in childhood, I no longer need them met. I don’t need to have my diapers changed. OK, I’m 75 and may need palliative care someday, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t need to be fed; I don’t need to have a lot of physical comfort; I don’t need to be governed; I don’t need someone near me all the time; and many more childhood needs. When “needy” people are talking on and on or wanting a hug every time we meet or want more than we have to give, they are looking for childhood needs. They don’t know it, but that is what they are actually seeking. And you can’t give them what they need. That is why they keep asking for it and demanding it. They need to give up ever getting their childhood needs met. Then what?

They can get everything they need as adults. Needy people don’t know that, but that is the case. They can be listened to, hugged, cared for, cried with, laughed with, and all that is in a normal adult life. They can get these things, but it is work. And the work begins by giving up on ever getting childhood (and infantile) needs. Needy people need to grieve the loss of childhood needs in order ever to get their adult needs met. I would dare suggest they need to read our The Power of Positive Sadness, or some better book about how to grieve the losses of early life. Then they can face normal adult needs.

Normal adult needs
What are “normal adult needs”? Not an easy question to answer, but an important one to examine. I will not indulge myself in offering a treatise on adult needs, but there are several obvious ones: physical needs, like food, clothing, and shelter. Some people have special needs, while others seem to have few needs. I will simply state that outside of the special needs and physical needs categories there are some psychological needs present in all of us. They roughly fall into the additional categories of need to be alone and the need to be with people. As a result of these two needs, which we might say fall on a continuum, there are many secondary needs, but allow me to speak simply about these two quite different needs: away from people and with people.

I will defer the important discussion of introverted people and extraverted people to a later time, and her focus on what I perceive as natural independence and natural dependence. People who are naturally dependent know that they need people; people who are naturally independent know that they need to be away from people. I’m not talking about extremes, like the hermit who never sees people and seemingly doesn’t want to or the woman who works 80 hours a week and never sees her family…or doesn’t have a family to see. I am talking about these two needs that are quite different and both important.

I tend to be in the “need to be alone” category, the independent person. My wife tends to be of the same ilk. As we speak she is in Utah somewhere climbing and hiking to her heart’s content, while I am doing other things…like writing this blog. Both of us are quite content. Since we are rarely apart and talk incessantly, we need to be away from each other from time to time. I have no idea where she is and what she is going, and for the most part, I don’t care. I just hope she is happy and well and that she comes home when she has had her fill of her beloved canyons. Likewise, she doesn’t really care what I am doing, whether writing, seeing patients, or playing basketball. She just hopes I will hold the fort here and not get hurt on the court. Otherwise, each of us is content to be left alone while we do what we want. But having sung the praises of this independence that we have, I must admit that I am not good at the other side of the spectrum: dependence.

I am slowly, painfully learning to use the “other N word” in my vocabulary, which is an outgrowth of my actually admitting that I have needs. It has been a challenging ride to admit that I “need” anyone, and it has been a good thing for me to do. The need, the true need, the natural need for someone else in my life is now something that I can see without seeing it as needy. God forbid, I don’t want to be needy. I just need. I need Deb in my life. I need my friends in my life. I need a few guys who put up with my less than good skills at basketball. I need my office manager, Cheri, God love her. Unfortunately, she is not in the office to correct my misspellings on this blog, nor is Deb to add and subtract, which is her real art in writing. So I have to do the independent thing and forego my need for someone better than me to assist me in what I don’t do well.

I see many people like me in my office, and they all have the same trouble with the N word. Some feel it; some think it; but very few of them actually say it. I know their difficulty with the N word. But it is a good word. If used carefully.

Further reading
Johnson, R. and Brock, B. (2017). The power of positive sadness. Santa Barbara: Praeger
Johnson, R. (2018). Previous blogs on feelings.
Reik, T. (date?). The need to be loved. (A difficult read)