from Understanding Me While Being We (page 59-61)

There Is No One Need

That Is Greater Than Another Need

There are times when an individual may feel a greater need from one aspect or another ... just so they can recover a sense of balance in their personal world.

We are all driven to fill these needs one way or another. It is the undercurrent of all our behaviours. These needs will be met by either a positive approach or negative approach ... When I use a negative approach it will be to my detriment ... and often at someone else’s expense ... When I approach this from a positive place it causes me to invest in me and thus causing a growth. It then follows that I am invested in me ... and this investment in me creates growth from within ... socially, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally ...

• From the front door ... positive ... the only expense here is to me ... this is my investment into me.

• From the back door ... negative ... I do this at the expense of others ... I invest in me by a negative approach.

Research asserts that 95% of all relationship problems are the misguided efforts of people trying to achieve a sense of self/power. The business of not having a sense of power is a learned phenomena and usually experienced initially early on in life. Now the classic aspect is that once learned, this misguided effort transfers into our Deep Core Belief Structure. That behaviour claims its place in Our Way of Doing Things. It then quietly moves forward with the individual into their adult life and slowly and deliberately wreaks havoc in their life ... (called the Adult Children Syndrome) ...

The business of trying to achieve a sense of self/power in one's adult life can (but doesn't have to) become an obsessive/compulsive expression of childhood neediness and unmet needs that stems from deep core belief structures. In the more extreme circumstances, this is expressed as personality disorders that can be coupled with addictions, obsessions and compulsions.

When one reaches out into life for adult relationships, the relationships so formed become a sounding board for buried pain and the repressed core issues. That is when all hell will break loose. So it follows that if one only tries to resolve the relationship problem(s) and the core belief issues are never dealt with ...that is, they remain quietly in the deeper and darker recesses of the mind, they will rise again at another inopportune time to keep the individual from having the very thing they want ... a loving relationship with another human being.

What one has to do is: take hold of what they are doing in the present ... then come to understand that they are being driven by parts of their past ... then come to terms with knowing they can act differently ... and finally, understanding there are deep forces at work here when our basic needs are not being met ... then begin the process of meeting those needs from the adult perspective and not the child's.

Note: In negative approaches to finding needs satisfaction, one of the most common indicators is that it is being done at someone else's expense ... “if he would only” or “if she could just” ... someone else is the brunt of my pain ... the reason why I can’t ... the hurt and pain is about transfer and counter transfer. This one is very important to understand.

If a child can't find the sense of power to identify themselves as an individual, then they will be on a life long journey of attempting to establish that Sense of Self as an adult. One of the inherent problems in this is that it is the child's needs that are in question not the adult ... Hence the Adult Children Syndrome. It can and usually does become a very ugly tread mill to be on.

By understanding the drives for SURVIVAL, POWER, LOVE, BELONGING, FREEDOM and FUN in people, we become more conscious of the need for our world to be a Quality World of our choosing.