Do you feel a sense of dissatisfaction or boredom? Life may be OK, but do you still feel as though something is missing? (Psst! Don’t worry, if you feel that way, especially if you are a person who’s already working on yourself, I won’t tell anyone!)
Or are you downright unhappy and want to learn how to make yourself feel better?
Do you know what your critical bonding needs are, and do you know if they are being met? Let’s find out.
There are particular, basic and critical ways humans need to bond with others, ways we are wired to relate to others. While there are many ways to relate to each other, if our basic, critical bonding needs are not met, we are going to be in pain, or feeling a sense of dissatisfaction, boredom or unhappiness.
What are these critical bonding needs?
Briefly, here are our top four bonding needs. I have derived this list from my observations of clients and by delving into the literature and research on psychology and human development:
- We need safety, care, deep reflection and authentic approval for the duration of our childhood. If these needs are unmet, we suffer in relationships as adults.
- We need lots of social connections, many of which need to be close. Some can be more superficial.
- We need to matter to others, be approved of and be held in high esteem by others.
- We need one significant, permanent and loving partner. We will have a deep craving and sense of something missing – even if we force these feelings away from our consciousness and refuse to acknowledge them – until we find such a partner.
For many people, at least two if not all four of these bonding needs are going chronically unmet. In many cases, this state of chronically unmet bonding needs feels normal. It does not occur to the person that anything is wrong, except that relationships just don’t seem to work that well for them. In other words, he or she experiences relationship pain.
Could your feelings about life be caused by your unmet critical bonding needs? It’s a very strong possibility! The question now is, what are you going to do about it?
How does a person work on having his or her bonding needs met?
You would think the first step would be to go out into the world and to get people to bond with you, because after all, these are bonding needs. But this is not the case.
First you have to work internally to become the kind person who can go out into the world and get your bonding needs met effectively. In fact, it is more important to your ability to have full access to your own power and energy, that you become that kind of person.
But isn’t everyone capable of getting their bonding needs met? You would think so, but in reality this is not the case. You can have anything, so long as you can allow it. And most people can’t allow love.
They want it, they need it, it would make their life immensely better in all aspects, but they can’t allow it.
Learning to allow love, learning to unlock all the locked and stuck places inside of you that are keeping people out, learning how to trust while staying safe, learning how to conduct yourself in relationships so that they work, learning what you need and how to go about getting it, that is the internal work that a person must do in order to allow their bonding needs to get met.
And once your bonding needs begin to get met, your life will begin to fill with the energy and happiness you will tap into as a result.
