It has taken me 47 years to figure this out. There is only one question, a really HUGE one: "Am I able to get my own needs met?"

It sounds simple, it sounds selfish, it sounds like a lot of things it isn't. Beyond The Question lies a whole landscape of personal details. Let's really parse this.

We each have individual needs - yours may not be mine. We also have needs in common to every human being. Some of those needs concern personal competency, safety, and individual power. Some of those needs are social needs, such as the need to give and receive love, to be accepted, to be able to negotiate, to be able to express ourselves freely, to understand others as well as ourselves. This is not selfish. So I ask you again, ask yourself, "Am I able to get my own needs met?"

After all the experiences you have had, good and bad, do you expect to be loved? Do you think you can love? Is the world a safe or threatening place for you? Do you make sense? Do others? Can you learn from a mistake, and gain control over your circumstances? Are you able to get all these needs met on your own, or do you constantly lean on others to do it for you? Do you put others' needs before your own too much? Conversely, do you think you have to go it alone, because it "is weak or futile to ever ask for help or reach out to anyone"? And, is the world trustworthy? How do you get your needs met if it isn't?

Do you see what I mean though? That one huge question underlies EVERYTHING!!! And we ultimately must get to the point where the answer, across all the multiple areas of our lives, is YES. It makes total sense when you start to blend all of our human needs together, to see how the pieces fit to make a whole person, a whole life experience, how we see ourselves and how we impact others.

"Am I" (do these feelings originate inside me, not you? YES. Do I have responsibility for them, then? YES)
"Able to get" (do I have the intelligence, capacity and right to affect my world? YES)
"My own needs" (can I do it myself, without totally relying on you? YES. Are these needs personal and valid, do I have the right to want them and stand up for them? YES.)
"Met?" (this implies finality, closure, security. Is there a way this can really happen? Do I expect, sooner or later, to succeed with a rational degree of effort? YES)

Don't you see how freeing and psychologically healthy it really is to be able to answer the question with YES!?

One more insight. We have a Genetic Self (our own individual set of impulses and preferences and default thought patterns), and we have a Learned Self (the sum of every experience we ever had). The two define who we are. The two need to cooperate, to mesh together in such a way as to make a whole, complete person without too many inner conflicts that cause distress and distorted thinking. What happens when they just don't operate in sync? Another useful question, which explains why the Big Question too often equals "No" for a lot of people. Think about it.