On having needs

[kaberett]

(This is tangentially relationship processing, but is part of a much broader pattern in how I interact with the world, hence not being cut.)

I appear to be quite bad at noticing that other people have needs up until I can't meet them. So I will meet requests without noticing they've been made (or possibly without their being made at all, because I try quite hard to respectfully anticipate -- offer culture, I suppose, and also I suppose part of my efforts to pass for allistic) and will tick along quite happily, only occasionally feeling guilty for not doing enough for other people.

And then I will slam head-first into a hard limit - an "I can see it would make your life easier and more pleasant if I could do this but I absolutely can't", and instead of trusting that response I try to second-guess my self into oblivion, eliding our shared history. (What does it say about me if I can't even give them this? It's the only thing they've ever asked me for! Surely I could manage if I weren't so selfish!)

This does us both disservice, and is I suspect at the root of my finding it very difficult to trust that people mean it when they say I have value to them.

eta obvs if you interact with me in ways that lead you to believe the above is complete bullshit, please do say, coz that's useful data too!

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

If it helps at all, you're not alone in this one, although the curation-of-self-for-passing-purposes no doubt gives it a special twist. I could see it a lot in the women of my mother's generation (and they saw it in each other, or I'd not have noticed at all) - not only the often-noted difficulty saying no, but frequent lack of awareness of all of the things they automatically do for others, because, well, it's just what they do (without being asked, without negotiation, and often without complaint, because gender roles entrenched by marriage and by the way church and school communities work).

Sometimes I think offer-culture backfires on people (women, often) in that as well as it being Rude To Ask, it becomes a sign of *your* failure if people have to ask you for things. Especially within marriages...

[kaberett]

Mmhmm. Which would then feed in in turn to feelings of guilt about not being able to Provide The Thing That Had To Be Asked For, Even.

I suspected it was not just me :-) I also suspected it might be helpful (to me & to others) to say out loud, so... here we are, heh, learning in public. Thank you so much for sharing your bits & insight. <3

[highlyeccentric]

*grin* I like your posts, they give me cause to think about thinking.

[jjhunter]

Oh, this is really interesting to me — I wonder if this is part of why I feel like I 'do better' / can relax more easily around ppl who are self-aware and comfortable articulating what they do or don't need from people. I don't have to guess, or worry I've guessed wrong, or wonder if they need anything from me at all or if I'm not someone they have much of a relationship with to begin with.

I tend to be fairly concerned with reciprocity — perhaps more than I should — in my relationships with most people, especially people I am relating to on personal rather than work or academic levels. There's part of me that still feels like *I* am constantly low- to mid-level needy in how I interact with people even if that's not necessarily really true anymore, but the insecurity of it remains & I have to consciously check in with myself now and then to let it go again.

[kaberett]

Hmm. I continue to think of myself as fairly high-maintenance (for reasons I can mostly point to, including periodic Surprise Collapsing, and the fact that if I'm socialising with people they have to know how to deal with it even if it never happens - because the last thing I want if I'm non-verbal with pain is to have to reassure people), so... mmm. Something to think about. And, hah, who'd've thought we'd both be folk concerned with not reciprocating well enough...

[silveradept]

I understand that idea, although I tend to hit the wall of "could not do even this most simple thing" or "did not do the eighth thing on the list of requests, despite completing the other seven" because the thing that did not get done gets the attention, often without mention of the others to contextualize. Which often leads to the binary response of "Well, if I can't do ALL THE THINGS correctly, then don't trust me with any of the things."

So yeah, that doesn't work out, either. I think it's a similar sort of feeling generated, though.

[kaberett]

Ye-ah, that sounds familiar too.

[alexseanchai]

I...need to think about this.

[kaberett]

♥.

[staranise]

A thing that was really hard and uncomfortable for me was finding out who I was when I wasn't meeting other peoples' needs, and learning how to be that person socially. Because I just assumed that if I didn't have something to offer (by which I mean "a thing I could do for them") I wasn't of any value and they wouldn't want to be around me. I think in part because I thought my neutral state, when I wasn't doing anything, was awkward, unprepossessing, and uninteresting, so I always had to make myself easier to be around by being kind and helpful and caring. (And then when failing to be kind and helpful and caring, and in fact demanding those things from other people, I thought I became shrill, needy, insensitive, and mean.)

So I ended up having to do small-dose exposure to the experience of not meeting peoples' needs, or asking for mine to be met, and learning to tell myself it was okay, to build up tolerance to it.

[kaberett]

Huh. Exposure. I wonder how that fits in with my patterns over the past few years?

I will go away and think about this more. Sorry for not more words, all my brainz are belong to... something unpleasant and probably viral, heh.

[calissa]

Hm. I find myself thinking about whether there are times when I try not to have needs and therefore don't ask for what I need. It occurs to me that my sweetheart would probably be very relieved if I articulated what I need more often.