Are you needy?

When I say “needy person,” we all get a picture in our heads – face it, you’re thinking of someone right now (hopefully they’re not in the room with you – that would be awkward). They want to be close to you – too close. They want your time – too much of your time. We get the sense that they’re less “needy” and more “want-y” and that gets on our nerves. When I’m put in this situation I try fruitlessly to understand their situation from my perspective. On a better day when I’m more honest with myself I try to understand it more globally.

People need people. It’s not a bad thing, don’t be ashamed; it’s not some weakness or failure (I’m telling this to myself as much as I’m telling it to anyone else).

We need other people like we need water: Not a big deal when you have plentiful supplies – when it’s safe, abundant, and cheap. But, if we look closely we see around the world that when water is scarce or unsafe people begin to change. People go mad. Think the comparison is a bit over the top? Check out the research on solitary confinement: Former Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Grassian states that in a relatively short amount of time “ordinary stimuli become intensely unpleasant, and small irritations become maddening” and that individuals enter into a “dissociative stupor”. Remove people from someone’s life and you push him or her to the edge of their existence.

Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away demonstrating that a person stripped from human interaction gets to be just a little bit weird.

We need steady, trusted, and safe supplies of human interaction the same way we need water. Can you remember the last 24-hour period water wasn’t involved in some aspect of your routine or diet? No luck? Now try to remember the last time you went 24 hours without interacting with another person at all. No phone calls, no hugs, no greetings or goodbyes, not even Facebook? What would it look like to be completely alone for a day. I suspect going without people would be similar to going without water: You wouldn’t be quite the same person. Your motivations would change.

Are you needy? Yes – you are. We all are. Sometimes we think needs don’t exist as long as they’re being met. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m the biggest perpetrator of this. Are we cognizant of the fact that we need other people and in what ways we need them? What are we doing to secure steady and safe “supplies” of relationship?