Escaping the Experience of Anxiety by Neil R. Oliver

Author:Neil R. Oliver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Unpacking Psychological Needs

As we progress through the timeline of our lives, we are constantly striving to meet our psychological needs as we need them met. Often, we strive to fulfil our psychological needs as we need them met without any conscious awareness. Without conscious awareness, psychologically blind and unable to observe our internal experience, it can be very difficult to discern the intent of our actions in an attempt to meet our needs. Every decision you execute into action comes from the desire to meet one of your psychological needs. Most of the time we are in pursuit of what we perceive will satisfy our wants and needs, fulfilling our desires without any true understanding as to why.

There are no limits to what we may want and desire in pursuit of fulfilling our psychological needs. Our psychological needs are so powerful that we will do everything and anything we can to have our needs met as we need them met. The desire to meet our needs is so strong that, at times, we will even attempt their fulfilment by settling for less than we deserve. Compromising what’s right, ignoring the truth, and the potential our actions have to cause pain and suffering in others are commonly overlooked in favour of fulfilling our needs. What we want and desire is so compelling, it often overrides our capacity to be rational. Regardless, as long as we find a way to fulfil our needs, we are satisfied in knowing that our attempt to pacify them has been temporarily successful.

Ignoring the cost, we strive to meet our needs as we need them met to ensure we can experience the emotional experiences and fulfilment of a desire being met that manifests within our internal experience. Our addiction to the emotional experience we most desire can lead us to be deluded into believing that the path we take to meet our needs is justified. To protect ourselves from the realisation that the path we choose to fulfil our needs was unhealthy, we create a narrative for ourselves to justify our actions, and many times we attempt to sell others our narrative, too. Illusion leading to delusion is often justified through narrative in order to protect ourselves. After all, if we can’t justify why we did something or why it happened that would lead to our psychological need of certainty being compromised. This goes against everything we want and desire, so we have to create a narrative to ensure that we can stay certain despite our actions.

There are no limits to what a person will do to meet a psychological need. Think about your experience of anxiety. What have you done in the past in an attempt to gain a sense of certainty when you’ve felt so uncertain and overcome with fear and maximum uncertainty? Did you pick up the cigarette? Did you indulge in alcohol? Did you protect yourself by procrastinating? Did you try and distract yourself by using ignorance to cope? Did you turn

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