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How do I stop feeling needy?

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Twoapenny:
Hi all,

Well this sort of folllows on from what I've been thinking about regarding friendships in my life.  I've been looking at myself and my own role in these situtations and I have to admit I think I am quite needy and feel like I constantly need people to be contacting me, thinking of me, offering to do things for me.  I don't communicate this - I think I'm aware on some level that it's too much.  So I don't say anything but I do feel it.  If I don't hear from someone I tend to think they don't like me rather than thinking they're just busy and haven't had time to ring.  I do spend a lot more time on my own than most people so I think it's natural that I crave company more than someone who works in a busy office would, for example.  But does anyone have any thoughts on how to feel more positive and less needy - less reliant on other people's thoughts, feelings and actions I suppose?

Thank you xx

sKePTiKal:
I wonder... If you could initiate a call to one of those friends and inquire about what they've been up to? Make the call about them and your interest in them. Consider it a gift. Don't expect a gift in return... Simply give a gift for the joy of it.

I'm kinda connecting a bunch of dots right now, about what we learn about relationships, expect from them, etc. based on our relationships with parents. How that first relationship colors all our succesive ones. If you try the above and the person still doesn't contact you back... It might be time to move on to someone else for awhile. I think it might be a possibility that you have been told you're needy... Coz nm couldn't make time to spend time with you. And that perhaps your friends aren't the kind of friends you were hoping they would be.

And I could just be too close to my own stuff to see clearly too. So trash the idea if you think this old lady needs some sleep instead of trying to distract her anxious brain talking to someone else!  LOL

Lollie:
Hi, Twoapenny.

I've wanted to reply to this post for a few days now. I still haven't gotten all of my thoughts together, so sorry if this sounds a bit disjointed.

The title of your thread is interesting to me. How do you stop feeling needy? Well, I don't think there's any way to stop feeling needy, especially if you're in need of something. And it's not as if you're acting outrageously needy. You'd like more friends in your life. Friendships where there's a nice balance of give and take.

There really is no shame in having needs. But I do think that many of us were taught to be ashamed of our needs. When everyone else's matter so much more than your own (our nutty N parents' needs always came first, right?), it's so easy to feel ashamed of our own. God knows, I do. But everyone has needs. Needs for love, affection, touch, friendship.

I'm dealing with the issue of friendships right now. For me, navigating friendships is one of the thorniest problems I've had to tackle. I tend to fall into frienships where I do most of the giving or listening or where I seem to put in much more effort, and I found that I felt resentful and depleted. I also have a very difficult time being open and authentic in friendships. I'm afraid that if they knew the real me or my history or how crazy my early life was or that if I'm not taking care of them or doing something for them or letting them use me,  they'll not want to be my friend. They'll run away screaming into the night. That, along with my tendency to mistrust women (can you say "mommy issues"?) made me want forget about this friendship business altogether.

But I do want friends in my life. I NEED friends in my life. So in the past year or so, I have very carefully reached out to one or two people who seem to genuinely know how to have a two-way friendship. One woman I met at work, the other in church. We go for lunch or coffee or to the gym together. It's been weird and awkward at times, but by going slowly and choosing people very carefully and really staying conscious of the balance of give and take, it's gotten better, I've gotten better. And I'm learning to enjoy real friendships for the first time in many, many years.

It takes time and effort and care. And there is always the risk that things will turn out sh*tty, but it's better than the alternative.

Hope that helps.

Hopalong:
Hi Tupp,
I loved Lollie's answer. So wise and warm.

I was stopped by your question because I was hit by the irony of it. It was a "needy" question. And I am the Queen of Need. If one needs something, and one ain't got it, one is "needy." Needy needy needy. It just fascinates me (in a frustrated way) that this has become the word it is today. Blech.

I wrote a lay sermon once that included this:
Loneliness is an inconvenient truth. Generally, loneliness gets a bad rap. It’s not a word you just sling around. You can say you’re so lonesome you could cry if you’re Elvis Presley or Roy Orbison or Bonnie Raitt, but nobody else gets away with it. It’s embarrassing. Sometimes it carries a whiff of something toxic. It’s almost like saying you’re unpatriotic. Loneliness is a very un-American emotion. Usually what comes right on the heels of naming it, if you even allow yourself to call loneliness what it is, is shame.

What if you just went around saying “I feel lonely” any time you actually felt that way? Right out loud. It doesn’t happen very often, does it? What holds us back from that simple piece of honesty? You can say, “I’ve got a hell of a cold,” can’t you? I know what holds me back. People might think:  That person is…CLINGY. A WET RAG. DEPENDENT. CO-DEPENDENT. WEAK. Or the worst epithet of all, the most humiliating: NEEDY.

I think most of these terms are relatively new accusations, and that they come from lives that are too pressured and fast and ambitions that are too strenuous to allow us to encounter and abide with each other, most days of our lives, in the graceful rhythms of community.

Haven’t we all had some friend or acquaintance, sometime or other, say to us, “I’m depressed. I’m bummed out. I’m in therapy. I’m in one of the stages of grief. I had a panic attack. I’m an alcoholic.” It might be a sobering moment to share with someone, but it’s probably not a very rare one. Any of these admissions are more likely to come from someone we know, even someone we know very well, than the words: “I am lonely.” One of the most remarkable phrases I read in a self-help book that described a man who sounded pretty lonely to me was that he was “walking around with his umbilical cord in his hand, looking for an outlet to plug it into.”

Ow! What’s up with that? It sounds like perfectly reasonable behavior to me. Isn’t this the sort of world that occasionally makes you want to climb a ladder back up into the womb? Even when we’re running from one thing to the next, busy all day long with work and family or this cause or that one, aren’t there times when we’re just struck cold by another dire piece of horrible news? There are times when the state of the world is so overwhelming to talk about that we just don’t. We stand limply in place saying “How are you?” and answering, “I’m fine.”

Anyway, Tupp, I think your needs for reciprocal, satisfying relationships, and an adult flowering of your own, and less isolation, and a change in your social approach -- are all just excellent.

How the heck can we ever meet a need if we don't identify it first? When it's just floating around under the surface and we don't: 1) have permission to think about it directly and boldly, or 2) have mercy on ourselves if that need reveals vulnerability or imperfection... then it just lurks around as shame. Rotting everything.

Don't be ashamed of feeling needy, Tupp. It's how you feel sometimes. But trust that if you do some of these new actions, make new choices, try new places, and abide with your growth in kindness toward yourself, you'll feel it less acutely.

I still have big spasms of it. And I accept them. But the intervals between feeling toxic about myself are much, much longer. And that is perhaps good enough.

love to you,
Hops

sKePTiKal:
OH MY.

Thanks for sharing that wonderful bit of sermon, Hops. Such a gift you have!

Penny, I think Hops is right that there is shame - as sort of a secondary affliction in response to the recognition of a need - that's programmed into us. My reaction to that, is to do my best Clint Eastwood imitation and say: "Needs? What needs? I don't got no stinkin' needs." Which is just as blessed dysfunctional as it sounds.

Except for all you patient, understanding folk... there are only a couple of friends that I'd feel comfortable pouring out all the gory details of something to. I think it's that way for all of us, you know? The "inner circle" where we can say anything... the other folks in the bigger circle - who get the "reader's digest" version, cleaned up for general audiences... and the acquaintances, who only get the executive summary bullet points.

One other thing, then I'll let wiser voices take over: I'm absolutely convinced that sometimes - when in a needy space - it's just as fulfilling to make the effort to give of myself; do something unwarranted and very nice for someone else - because through that action, I'm also receiving something that soothes the need.

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