3 Steps That Nurture Your Needs
By Marshall Burtcher.
Codependency is a strategy – not a disease, identity, or character flaw – that results from your nervous system’s attempt to create safety, belonging, and worth.
I repeat this because this understanding is crucial to actually creating the change you seek in your life, especially if it entails having healthy, fulfilling relationships and purpose.
Such outcomes depend on you having an intimate experience-based understanding of the 10 core emotional needs that drive your life right now.
I’ll be sharing with you how to approach needs over the next several articles. Today, we start with the A.R.C. Framework for nurturing needs.
Fulfillment, feeling seen, feeling valued and cared about depends on how your emotional needs are recognized, received, and connected with. I teach a 3-step framework to nurture my needs within myself and to be nurtured by others. It is:
- Step One: Attention
- Step Two: Reception
- Step Three: Connection
Let’s look at each.
STEP ONE: Attention
This step is about being aware of and acknowledging the need. You are able to detect the sensations that need gives you. You’re able to name it and then communicate it. An example: Person A notices an anxiety growing in their chest about how their partner feels about them. They’ve felt some distance from them lately. Person A acknowledges this anxiety and gives it a name, “I see I’m feeling a bit of anxiety about the space between me and Person B. I think I need some closeness and attention.”
This step is the foundation of knowing yourself. In my work, this begins with the Inner Awareness skill. When you can pause, acknowledge, and observe what you’re experiencing, you build that habit of self-attunement, empowering your ability to know what you’re feeling and needing.
STEP TWO: Reception
This step’s objective is to warmly welcome in the need. “I see you. You are welcome here. I’m grateful for you”. This is first achieved within the person and then between two or more people. Reception of the need with warmth and concern creates a safe space for the need and often, just in that moment, nourishes it.
This step is an advanced step, as it involves speaking our need to a person we’ve chosen to trust with this vulnerability and allowing them in a bit more. Communication, trust, and compatibility are central factors in this working reliably and effectively.
STEP THREE: Connection
Most often, steps one and two result in a sense of connection and presence with the need and the person’s involved. The validation and caring for the need produces the sensation of feeling seen and valued, leading to a sense of belonging with the other person.
Connection also involves actions being taken in response to the need. For example, the need for closeness Person A identified would require Person B to invest dedicated time and focus on Person A in a way that felt like a connection for Person A and, ideally, Person B.
This step is advanced as well, as it requires effective communication skills and attunement to each other, as sometimes Person B will not be able to connect with Person A due to their own capacity, needs, and such.
When this happens, the focus will be the mutual acknowledgment and care for the pain and needs happening for both persons. “I see we’re both really needing things right now from each other that we can’t yet give. Can we sit with this together?”
This is a powerful approach, bringing deep care for all involved.
All of these steps have to happen in 3 stages for a reciprocal experience to be normalized into a relationship. Those stages are:
- Stage One: You-to-You. This is where you are able to acknowledge, name, and advocate for your need. This requires a combination of self-awareness, self-trust, and self-worth be in place to effectively fulfill
- Stage Two: You-to-Others. This is where you are able to share what you need with another and feel safe, seen, and valued by their response.
- Stage Three: Others-to-You. The other person is able to respond to your bid for connection with warmth, availability, and willingness to understand. This is where much of the challenge in relating happens, and having outcomes that actually nurture require a partner or person that is committed to emotional availability and willingness to do receive and contribute.
Next month, I’ll share with you the first 5 of the 10 core needs we each have, and then you can begin to implement A.R.C. and start experiencing more care and nurture in your relationships.
See you next month!
Marshall Burtcher helps codependents, people-pleasers, and perfectionists rewire their mind, body, & identity for healthy, satisfying relationships, purpose & prosperity after codependency. Close the 3 gaps that keep you stuck with your pain, self-doubt, and low self-worth with the Breakthrough Bundle: https://bb.freetheself.com
