How often in your life have you experienced the feeling of being fully, honestly seen by another human being? We tend to expect this to happen in romantic relationships (which creates unrealistic expectations) but it can also be part of the value of having a long term therapist, counsellor, mentor, or spiritual director.
We often don’t realize that we’re looking for this experience. Because it is so rare, when we recognize the longing, we tend to dismiss it as being unrealistic.
The truth is that this longing is part of our emotional structure from the time we were born. Babies look for the smiles on the faces of their caregivers as reassurance that they are fully seen and accepted. Those who experience this mirroring, even in small doses, grow into children with more confidence and security than those who do not.
This longing doesn’t disappear with age. If we have exceptionally wise caregivers and mentors, we learn how to become our own “believing mirrors”, as Julia Cameron calls them. Most of us, spend a lifetime seeking that wholehearted acceptance, not sure what it is that we crave, and striving for approval instead.
The good news is that we are not doomed to seek what is forever unavailable. One of the gifts of soul-work is that it grows in us the ability to be our own loving gaze. The work we do in being present to all of our feelings and experiences cultivates in us an increasing connection to our being and worth separate from our achievements and relationships. We grow in our capacity to recognize ourselves as reflections of the Divine, beloved by the One who created us.
Paradoxically, the most fertile ground for this growth is in paying attention to ourselves as humans who have needs. So many influences in our culture have convinced us that the truly admirable ones are those who need nothing and those who weather great difficulty without letting on that they struggle are deemed heroic.
Thus, we grow the habit of hiding our struggles, even from ourselves. We do our best to ignore our own needs, in order to achieve the holy grail of being seen as “selfless”. Unfortunately, this keeps our attention focussed on garnering outside approval, and keeps us separate from our own loving attention.
Therapist Mara Glatzel has written an excellent book entitled, “Needy How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty”. She begins by saying, “It was humbling to realize how much of my power I had been giving away while waiting for someone else to tell me I had earned the tending I ached for.” She goes on to say, “(Needs and wants) are both essential for occupying the full breadth of your life with pleasure, satisfaction, and deep enjoyment.”
Feeling ourselves to be needy, at first glance, seems to be the opposite of a life of “pleasure, satisfaction, and deep enjoyment.” However, my experience has been that there is a soul-deep satisfaction in recognizing what I need in any given moment and taking the initiative to give that to myself. It takes practice to be able to feel my own needs, at first. It’s uncomfortable work, and, initially, feels somehow wrong.
That’s where the soul-practice of staying with discomfort is so helpful, as is the companionship of a wise friend, therapist or spiritual director. Such a companion can provide reassurance that this discomfort is not at all selfish or misguided. It is, in truth, essential for our flourishing.
The more we can stay with the discomfort of feeling our own needs, the more agency we can claim in meeting those needs. As Glatzel says, consistently meeting our own needs builds a relationship of trust with ourselves, and with that trust comes a growing sense of safety that has nothing to do with outside circumstances.
“As the sovereign leader of your life, granting yourself permission to to be who you are, love what you love, and approach everything in your life in a way that works for you are your ultimate responsibilities,” Glatzel writes. “Tending to these responsibilities requires investigating the belief systems you carry around what it means to do enough and be enough. It begs you to look deep into the ways you might be outsourcing your power and waiting for someone else to read your mind to know what you want and need … Stepping into your sovereignty means no longer waiting for someone else to tell you you’ve done enough or that it’s time to turn your energy back toward yourself. It means you are the final word on how you define yourself, even as your identities shift beneath your touch.”
When we can acknowledge our own needs, and make the choices to meet those needs, we are looking at our most tender selves without judgement. We are giving ourselves that loving reflection we offer to babies that says, “You are beloved. You are enough because you exist.”
We are giving ourselves the gift of being seen, and the more lovingly I can see myself, the more readily I can receive the loving gaze of another. I recognize myself as beloved by the All, and from that place will be able to give that loving reflection to others.
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