Compulsive Needy: Increasingly Frequent Profile

Compulsive needy people move around us like insects looking for food. They only speak one language, that of “I want, I need, I have to tell you that …” We refer to those people unable to manage their frustration, who lack personal autonomy and the impulse with which to take responsibility for their own life. in a congruous and mature way.

Many psychologists say that this excess of “need” is the real ailment of the 21st century. Maybe it’s the same society that pushed us towards this kind of behavior. A way of acting guided in many cases by a certain consumerist anxiety and an almost constant need to fill our existential voids.

We need “something” and we don’t really know what it is, so sometimes we become souls in pain who roam their social scene looking for a reinforcement or stimulus with which to satisfy our inexplicable anxiety. Sometimes we do, we look for an impossible love, we look for new experiences, we look for a new cell phone, new clothes, a new TV series that makes us forget the stress, food that relieves our anxiety, etc.

We all need things, we all need people, in a certain way we are all needy daily . However, the problem appears when this lack turns us into compulsive needy . We refer to that profile that looks with a certain desperation for something that it does not know how to define well, disturbing others and forcing them to respond to their needs and satisfy their requests.

Compulsive needy people fill psychologists’ studies

It is a growing phenomenon that deserves to be addressed and, above all, understood. Compulsive needy people abound more than ever and are also one of the most frequent profiles in psychologists ‘ studies. They arrive confused, with a high level of frustration and often even angry at how the world treats them, how they are treated, in essence, by their family and friends.

Nobody seems to live up to their expectations. No one has managed to give them the affection they deserve. The people who are always there for them can barely be counted on the fingers of one hand, and sometimes not even in that. The compulsive need see and understand the world from their perspective, so they are not capable of receiving up to where they came from their constant needs, their selfish demands and totalitarian.

Their attitude is so childish and demanding that the psychologist is obliged to first break that barrier, that fence, so as to make them understand that behind the constant need there is an unfathomable void.  Succeeding is not easy, because we find ourselves in front of hidden manipulators always accustomed to the least effort and that it is others who feed them, give them solutions, free them from any burden, fear or problem.

How to help the compulsive needy

The quality of life of a person who has the distinct feeling that “something” is always missing can be terrible.  Albert Ellis had already said it: “thoughts of constant need make us lose control and lead to negative emotions”. This is due to a fact as simple as it is obvious: the feeling of “needing something” is linked to our sense of survival.

That is to say, that emptiness that we have to fill leads us to think that we will not be able to move forward. If they don’t help me, if they don’t support me, if I don’t have this or that, if I don’t get this other thing, then everything will fall apart. The feeling of lack generates fear , fear , necessity, need, despair. You enter a vicious circle that must be deactivated in order to function in a more logical, healthy and meaningful way.

Solutions to stop needing

The first step with the compulsive needy is to work on their authentic needs.  It is worth doing a clarification exercise in which to replace “I need” with “I want”. For instance:

• I need others to listen to me ⇔ I need to feel appreciated because I don’t love myself enough.
• I need others to help me solve my problems ⇔ I need help because I can’t deal with what’s happening to me.

After the person has clarified their true gaps or weaknesses (low self-esteem, insecurity, inability to solve problems, lack of decision, etc.) it is time to delve into each of these aspects.

Another decisive point in this process is to induce the compulsive needy to apply a simple rule in their daily life: “seek for myself what I need from others”.

If I need someone to fix something, I’ll try to do it myself. If I want someone to give me their support in a certain aspect, I will first try to motivate myself, to find the strengths and positive words within me to give voice to that goal that I will pursue.

Q T his profile is also characterized by an incomplete personal growth. It is therefore advisable to encourage new experiences that make us reflect, relativize patterns and train emotional openness.

Last, but not least, it never hurts to work on the empathy of the compulsive needy, on their social awareness, so that they understand that others also have needs and that in life one should not only know how to conjugate the verbs “want” or “Needing”, because there is also another equally important: “offering”.