Unmet Needs are at the Root of Our Chronic Issues

To heal stress-induced illness, TMS, and chronic anxiety you don’t have to go digging into every single past trauma and process every single feeling about stressful events. Nor do you have to meditate in a perfect state of bliss and calm yourself every day.

The only thing you really need to do in order to heal these issues is be willing to be present with yourself on a daily basis so that you can address any unmet needs that are underneath the struggle you’re facing.

What does that mean, exactly?

It means being willing to pay attention to the sensory experience of living in your body and allowing yourself to connect to your body instead of staying up in your head, thinking and analyzing.

People say, “I got stuck in my head.” This is the biggest shift you’ll want to make in order to heal - noticing when you get stuck in your head and shifting to a broader awareness of your body.
Most of us who tend to get stress-induced maladies are really amazing at getting stuck in our heads! Me included. 😉

You might have had experiences where you got stuck in your head and then couldn’t do something as well as you’d hoped. This happens to me when I’m playing the violin. If I get too focused on what I’m thinking (aka the inner critic noise in my head) then I suck at playing the music right in front of me.

In college, when this would happen my professor would tell me to focus on the sound of the music coming out of my violin instead of my thoughts. I would almost hum the music in my head as I played in order to get back into the music and out of my thinking mind.

I mention this because it’s actually really well-known in sports, music, and other skills that if we’re too focused on our thinking, we can’t perform as well. This is exactly the same for healing chronic issues.

When you shift into sensory awareness, it’s the same thing as focusing on the music coming from the violin. To do that, I had to tune into my ability to listen, which is one of the five senses.

To reconnect to your body, you’ll use your senses. You can notice the sensation of touch (rubbing your palms together, for example), sound (noticing sounds in the room), taste, and even smell.

Then you can go deeper into your body, noticing what you feel inside your throat, chest, stomach, and low belly.

For example, you might discover that you feel a tingling, bubbling feeling in your chest. Whatever you notice, just describe it to yourself. This is the same as humming along with the music!

When you have to search for descriptive words to describe the sensations inside your body, your mind immediately has to focus on your body. It can’t stay stuck in the inner critic noise or your to-do list.

That’s why this works!

As soon as you start to notice your body more often, something incredibly powerful happens. This is where it gets REALLY good!

When you’re noticing your body throughout the day, you’re naturally able to feel emotions that are arising as you go about your daily life. This helps you to feel them instead of suppress them.

Suppressing emotions is something we’re all taught to do, and it creates enormous tension inside your body and uses up a lot of energy. Imagine holding a beach ball under water in a pool, preventing it from surfacing. It takes a lot of energy!

That’s what your body has to do when you’re holding in emotions and suppressing them.

So, you’ll naturally start to unwind your chronic health or anxiety issue when you start paying attention to your body and the emotions that are present in it.

Then, something even more important will happen!

You’ll begin to be really aware of your needs.

We are so deeply trained to ignore our own needs in our culture and focus on what others need instead. This becomes a habitual part of our daily lives, our parenting, our relationships, and our work.

Unmet needs create an enormous internal pressure in your mind-body system.

If you want to know the big root cause of chronic stress-induced illness and anxiety, this is it!

Your inner self can’t stand having all these needs unmet! And there are so, so many. Eventually your body expresses the issue physically because it’s just too much internal pressure. Something has to bend!

As you start to notice your needs, you might find yourself experiencing emotions. Anger, sadness, and fear are all very normal. It’s going to feel a bit nerve-wracking to suddenly acknowledge these needs.

For example, when I check in with my needs, I find that often I need more sleep than I’m getting, more time alone, more space to do the self-care activities I love, more time to connect to my angels, and time to just goof off.

Recently I was doing a check in and discovered that my inner self and my body really wants more gourmet, herb-filled sauces for my lunches and dinners. It was so fun to realize that and to start creating yummier meals!

You’ll find that if you don’t stay tuned in to your body and your emotions, you’ll backslide into not realizing your own needs almost instantly.

We’ve simply been taught to ignore our needs, suppress them, and override them, so you’ll be quick to do this if you’re not aware. And, of course it’s going to happen. There’s no need to be perfect. You just pick back up and reconnect whenever you notice you’ve forgotten to check in with yourself.

For example, I already knew this cooking preference that I have. I have always loved fancy, delicious herb-infused soups and sauces. However, I managed to forget this for an entire year!

It’s wild how easy it is to push things down in favor of taking care of others, like cooking for my child and partner and making sure they love what I’m making while forgetting what I adore.

How did I realize something was off? My body. It was not feeling great digestively, and I know that the first place to look when my body starts speaking is my inner world.

Now, several days and many gourmet soups and sauces later, I’m feeling much better!

It might even help to maintain a mantra on a post-it note somewhere you’ll see it regularly. Maybe you can remind yourself with this sentence: “Having needs is part of being human and I acknowledge, express, and take care of my needs.” Or, “I get to have needs.”

I always feel this delicious, exciting, aligned feeling when I discover a need, acknowledge it, and address it. It feels amazing to have this level of self-care in my life. It’s the same sort of feeling I get when someone gives me flowers.

I also feel a deep sense of relief. A letting go inside myself. Whatever tension was there while that need was buried inside me is finally released.

You might find that you have lots of unmet needs when you first start doing this kind of check in. You’ll know because any time something is off - you feel anxious or your body isn’t feeling well, you’ll be able to ask what your needs are and find buried needs you didn’t realize you had.

You don’t have to fix and address all of them instantly. Just gently notice them and jot them down. Notice any emotions around them. The awareness of them is a great place to start. Then you can slowly decide what the best way to meet them is for you.

Often, the reason we don’t allow ourselves to know our own needs is that we might have to speak up and set boundaries, ask for support, or take actions within our relationships that freak us out. We tend to feel like we shouldn’t rock the boat.

I totally get this, and go through this myself. I encourage you to feel the fear around sharing your needs and then gently ease yourself into speaking up when you need to. You might find you have to discover the best ways to do this for yourself, and it might feel very new. Be gentle with yourself.

And, of course, helping you to discover your own needs, release tension, feel feelings, and finally offload stress, tension, anxiety, and pain is just one part of my group program. You can come to class and get coaching around how to speak your needs, how to be gentle with yourself, and how to discover what your needs really are.

You’ll also be able to take all of the mind-body tools you’re learning from me in the program and use them with your clients to help them release chronic issues, too! The mind-body work I’ll teach you is powerful for relationships, body image, careers, parenting, healing, and connecting to inner wisdom. Whatever you help your clients with, the tools will help you go deeper, find those suppressed needs, and great huge shifts for your clients.

For example, I was noticing I was overeating at dinner a lot and wasn’t feeling aligned with my hunger. Addressing the need around delicious gourmet taste was the solution. You’ll be able to help yourself and your clients solve issues in every area with these practices that address true inner needs, emotions, and stored tension.

You can learn more about this program and others here.