Dr. William Glasser proposed that all humans share the same basic needs: survival, love and belonging, fun, freedom, and power and control. Each of these plays a different and important role in our sense of safety and security, and contributes to our overall experience of life. If our needs are not being met, particularly at a young age when we are dependent on others to take care of us, we can experience emotional and physical distress that leads to long term consequences, including mental and health disorders.
Let’s take a look at each need specifically. The survival need includes all of the things our body requires to survive: food, water, air, shelter, warmth, etc. This is a pretty basic need and if we were to imagine a pyramid, survival sits on the base of the pyramid. We cannot meet any other need until survival is ensured.
Love and belonging encompasses our interpersonal relationships. We are social animals, and have a primal drive to be part of a community. When we are able to surround ourselves with healthy relationships where we are able to be authentically seen, understood, and appreciated by those in our lives we are able to meet our need of love and belonging. It is not a one-sided street. The need for love and belonging does not necessarily look for romance or adoration, it seeks balanced and authentic relationship. This could be with friends, family, partners, co-workers, etc. When our need for love and belonging is not being met we will often seek to fill that need through destructive or unhealthy behaviors. There was a time in my life where I quickly moved between relationships, fearing the idea of being alone and using shallow physical and romantic connections as a substitute for meaningful relationship. I didn’t know I was seeking to fulfill my need of love and belonging at the time, and without that personal awareness I got caught up in a cycle of unfulfilled love with partners that really were not the best fit for me, or me for them.
Power and control is an important one too, and this one is a little more difficult to suss out because it is in some ways similar to the idea of freedom. Power is connected to the belief that we have agency in our lives. It is not about having power over others, but rather power over our own personal experience. Our nexus of power lies in the ability to recognize that we cannot control others, we cannot control what happens to us, we cannot even control our own physiological and emotional responses to external triggers. The only two things we have absolute control over are our thoughts and our actions. As long as our belief of agency exists, and we can experience success in shifting the dynamics of our emotional experiences by shifting the direction of our thoughts and actions, we are able to meet our need for power and control. Again, this is not about controlling anything outside of us.
Freedom is the action of making choice and experiencing the consequences of our actions. No one can control our thoughts, or our actions. We often follow the rules of society because the consequences of not following the rules are unpleasant motivators, but we do still have the ability to choose our course of action. While it may not be a good idea to run naked down Main Street, and there will almost certainly be consequences, we do still have the ability to make that choice. When the ability to make choice is taken away, or if we perceive that it has been taken away, our need for freedom is not being met.
Fun is about enjoyment, laughter, learning, exploring, relating. It is about connection with others but it is also about connection with the self. We can meet our need for fun by reading a good book or painting a picture. We can also meet it by running through the park with our kids or playing with our pets. We can hike or play a game or simply do a small and short enjoyable task and meet our need for fun. This is where the idea of play therapy comes into play (see what I did there), and why it is so important to find ways to incorporate a sense of fun into our lives as much as we can.
I mentioned in the need about love and belonging that we will seek to meet these needs in potentially destructive or unhealthy ways if they aren’t being met in healthy ways. Think of all the ways we’ve tried to control others, or control situations, when we were feeling internally powerless. Think of the ways we’ve tried to create fun that had disastrous consequences to ourselves or our relationships (ex: a teenager that sneaks out of the house to go to a party and gets a DUI on the way home). Think of the ways we have sought freedom through unhealthy coping skills (example: isolation and withdrawal). A child that grows up without having their needs met by caregivers will neurologically hardwire a sense of insecurity in the world, which manifests throughout their entire life in relationships and belief systems. It is natural to seek to fulfill all of these needs, and as we develop our own sense of self-awareness it is important to look at all the healthy and unhealthy ways we tend to meet our needs. Look back on old patterns of behaviors or destructive decisions you have made: which need were you seeking to meet?