[Yearning0723]

We do it a lot on here. We do it a lot with our Ts. We worry about being too much for them, too dependent, too "needy," like it will scare them away. But today my perspective on that word completely changed and I've decided [to try] not to use it anymore. At my volunteer training today we were talking about that word and the volunteer coordinator had us do this really great activity. She asked us to list all of the things we are dependent on, and I realized after filling about three pages and watching everyone else do the same that everyone is dependent on a lot of other people.

Most of us depend on other people to design/sew our clothes for us, to grow food for us, to take away our garbage, to keep our streets clean, to serve us at restaurants, to teach us reading and writing and math when we're in school, to take care of us and change our diapers and feed us when we're babies, to create the technology we use every day, to run the Internet and public transit and cable, to drive trains and airplanes and taxis, to manufacture things like Kleenex and toilet paper and dishwashers and vacuums and fridges and cars. We rely on people to employ us or to be employed by us; we rely on our government to keep our currency strong and our economy running; we rely on police officers and firefighters and doctors and EMTs...pretty much, everyone relies on everyone else.

And everyone has different needs, too. Like I rely on people to reach things on really high shelves when I'm in a store, because I'm tiny, and my mother relies on her hairdresser to keep her hair from being completely gray, and my brother relies on people to translate metaphors into literal language because he has Asperger's and has a hard time with figures of speech. So, everyone is dependent, and everyone is dependent in different ways, and everyone's dependence is a reaction to the context that they're in - if I was in a store made for little kids, I would probably be less dependent on others because I would be able to reach things.

So if "neediness" is something that is common to all humans, and shows up in different ways in different people based on their circumstances, then why should we berate ourselves for being "needy?" Everyone is needy in a lot of ways, and I think that's okay! So, who's with me?

There are needs we all have that are in the realm of " normal" and manageable and workable. Totally agree there. The problem I've experienced is being on the receiving end of a spouse who has a huge, deep, well of need that he often expects me to fill up when the reality is that there will never be enough of me to fill that hole in his life. He has to learn that he is going to have to work on himself to seal up and heal the gaping wounds at the bottom of that hole so that what gets poured into the hole from me or his kids or his interests or his friends, etc. doesn't just continue to drain out the bottom.

That's where a good therapist certainly can come in. A person to work with and talk to and learn from who is skilled enough that those wounds and the hole they have created won't overwhelm or exhaust. It is important to remember that the therapists objectivity allows them to hear our stories and witness our distress with skill that others in our lives may not have been able to simply because they are not professionals. We don't generally have to woory about draining them like the "laypeople" in our lives might have been. That's one of the great blessings of a good therapist.

[Depletion]

Yay for this, I couldn't agree more.