This is a 15 minute post that goes around the world and back on this topic. Also a 2 minute video. And I cut out a lot, too! I clearly have some feelings here.
I can almost hear various people, and I can certainly hear my own voice, rising in protest at my assertion this last week that being “needy” is not the character flaw and moral failure we make it out to be. Isn’t it?
I can’t stand neediness, honestly. Especially in myself. And yet, I’m trying to reconcile my animals’ need for me to show up for them as bigger, stronger, wiser and kind, with the needs I have for safety, boundaries, an ordered time schedule (ha, but I keep trying).
Compounding this tension is my belief in their ability to develop their very own self-regulation skills, and my deep and sincere wish that they would do so, quickly.
There are a whole lot of knowledge bases fighting for the storyline, in other words. And I get confused. And this makes me more prone to sudden flashes of exasperation, irritation, and for sure some deeply mixed messaging. HOW on earth do I both support my various team members’ (the four-legged ones, but this concept sure does travel to the two-legged ones, too) needs for developmentally appropriate, contextually sensitive, and patient responses to their insecurities, while ALSO believing in their ability, capability, and adaptability?
Are there animals (and people) who are using feigned neediness to try to get a “free ride?” Are there animals (and people) who are manipulating my emotions by triggering all the deep responses to distress hardwired into my brain through appearance, cries, helpless postures, and failure to act in a self-protective way (e.g. not having the sense to come in out of the rain)?
Aren’t con artists everywhere using exactly these methods, and isn’t it often a con job when people are panhandling, busking, or outright begging? And to bring it back to the animal kingdom, when Kyrie yips desperate unhappiness from her safe kennel in the barn, every time I leave it to go get another horse, is this neediness real? Is she feeling literal pain akin to the homesickness so many children feel on their first night away from their own bed (and the second, third, and fifteenth, for some)? Or is she trying to use her most puppy-ish voice to convince me to not leave her alone, where she can’t see me, while the cat romps all around her crate?
How true is her communication (or that of anyone else)? How real is the distress of anyone who asks for my help? How can I know I’m not being taken for a mark?
This question goes deeper. When a person is engaging in self-destructive behaviours, and wants my help to do so, what then? Their “need” of my resources or support or presence, or whatever form of codependency is required, certainly feels real to them. How am I supposed to know what they’ll use my money, food, shelter, or even emotional support to do next? How can I “help” when the help just goes to further the “problem?”
Again, the narratives are fighting amongst themselves. It’s really tricky to make an accurate assessment of another person’s (or animal’s) need quotient. It turns into a values exercise real fast. My values - meaning my interpretation of how much of the expressed neediness is valid, vs a play for my resources (with the strong implication that there is some cheating going on) - are placed head to head with another being’s pitiful, and pity-inducing (or at least I’m sensing that attempt) stance.
What next? How do I respond? Where does my own empathy travel and is this an energetic flow made up of love, or something quite different?
There’s so much to this question. And so very many of my choices, my neighbourliness, my distribution of my own time, money, energy, and even how I treat my own various selves and their needs…are affected by how I interpret the appearance of desolation (the word I think most clearly describes the blend of fear or loss or pain or loneliness that is expressed across species through a universally effective look, posture, cry).
The parable of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. It is one of those timeless anecdotes that truly does sort our responses quite recognizably, doesn’t it?
A man is attacked by robbers, beaten, left for dead. Along comes a religious leader, surely someone with appropriate values and compassion for the “needy.” However, he does not feel up to, or maybe comfortable, with helping, and instead crosses on the other side of the road (presumably trying to put literal distance between himself and the situation). Then comes a Levite - one of the tribe tasked with caring for the Temple, teaching the law, and acting as a judge, sort of arbitrating between God and people. Again, this individual judges that this situation is not his concern, and also passes by at a distance.
Finally, a half-breed, a mixed blood, a religious outcast walks by. This “Samaritan” (not a friendly term) “took pity” on the unfortunate victim. He dressed his wounds, stuck him on his donkey, took him to the next inn, and paid for his care. No half measures. He made sure the man was going to be okay, even as he continued on his own journey (having lost considerable time).
The Good Samaritan Acts here in Canada reference the commonly held moral of the story: that this sort of sacrificial (and risky!) effort is a good response to tragedy, and should be protected. Nevertheless, and despite a consensus (I assume) that this is right action, there are still huge amounts of reluctance and reticence in my head and heart, seeing the average, obviously homeless, panhandler heading my way.
I think that there are sort of two worries we have, when we see people who are signalling a need for help:
One - that by helping them, we will reduce their own motivation, strength, and ability to help themselves, thereby contributing to a fellow human being slipping down, down, down towards apathy, ineffectiveness, passivity, and a slow death fuelled primarily by unnecessary but inevitable laziness (because “too much help” can do that).
Two - that by helping them, we will strengthen a connection with our own estates, persons, or social networks that will cause a flow of resources to speed up, widen and deepen, in one direction only (away from us!) such that all of our energy will drain out and become that other person’s energy. And in the end, it will be a situation that has reversed itself, with us requiring help, and the other having the power to give, or deny, us what we need (but foolishly gave away).
In the case of a panhandler, this is represented by the common thought/verbal processes that go like this:
One - “I do not want to encourage this behaviour when there are empty tills right there in that grocery store. Clearly there are jobs needing to be done. This person is choosing the easy way out, and I won’t be party to helping them succeed in such a shameful way of life.”
Two - “If I smile and open my wallet, this person could pull a knife, take everything I’m carrying, and maybe even (if I’m not careful) hijack my car and leave me stranded!”
It occurs to me that these sorts of narratives may come from the fact of infancy, and our long progress towards adult capacity, made necessary of course by the pelvic floor/skull circumference dilemma. (Bear with me. I’ll get to how, eventually.)
There is only so much give to a pelvis, letting a baby through, and the brain inside the skull (the largest part of a newborn) must therefore do most of its growing outside the womb. This means we have a relatively long period of dependency, compared with other mammals. Our helplessness in the first years of life is extreme, and possibly unparalleled in the animal kingdom.
Our species has survived, and thrived, and even exploded (population-wise) because we are willing to do the long, slow work of turning a reflexive, almost immobile little GI tract into a self-sufficient, talking, walking, skill-collecting, adaptable human being. This takes a lot of need-meeting.
Now, not every adult is a parent, but every adult was an infant. We all carry some recollections (mostly pre-verbal) of this critical period in our own lifespan. Many psychologists would agree that the first 5 years are their own thing - incomparable to any of the learning that comes later. In the first 5 years we are setting the stage, developing the bones of the story, building all the foundations, and creating a brain/body/heart alliance that will take us all the way to who we will become, and then present us with the array of choices that are apparent to us, based on the stage, bones, foundations, and quality of alliance that were formed.
Yes, we can attempt to “go back,” re-parent ourselves, find our inner child, and so on and so forth. But wow, that is labour-intensive and difficult digging. The advantages of someone who is well-supported, well-nourished, well-loved, and well-communicated with over anyone who was not? Absolutely unquantifiable.
Into this ultra-compressed, unspeakably vulnerable, and unparalleled (in terms of rate of growth of the brain) period come our caregivers. These people can be anyone. There is no test (as we know) that is necessary for being accepted into the role of parent. It can happen so easily, so quickly, so unintentionally, and even so violently (sad to say). And I’m not even (just) talking about sex and childbirth - although this is of course the major cue to begin this relationship - because so often older siblings care for younger ones. Or extended family members, or even near-strangers. There are numerous ways to construct a family unit capable of meeting the requirements for a young human to live. So, many people make it through that first developmental set of milestones with creative combinations of help.
And those caregivers, almost to a person, are still in development themselves, giving care, while needing it, too.
I’m laying all this common knowledge out just because it should be a consensus (and yet I fear it is not, always) that if there is an under-5 person in a group, that person is the most needy person, in that group. Objectively speaking, their needs trump everyone else’s. They are simply younger, smaller, with the least judgement, the least survival skills, and the most to lose by being neglected, even for a short time.
And while this is easy to say, and easy to agree with, on paper, in actual fact, with skin in the game, boots on the ground, diaper in hand (as it were), it’s hard to not sometimes feel that those infants, toddlers, and small children might just be trying to pull one over on us.
For some reason, our worries about instilling laziness, or else creating a sucking vortex of demand, even (at times) apply to humans who could not possibly be any more self-sufficient than they appear. I wonder if this is because our parents may have (hopefully unintentionally) conveyed exactly those sorts of judgements, to us.
Fair or not, most caregivers of very young children get so tired, so depleted, and so exasperated with the never-ending stream of “demands” made by these little “tyrants” that the big picture of their relative helplessness can get badly distorted.
Children who are “attention-seeking,” “manipulative,” “sly,” or “pathologically demanding,” are not objectively in positions of power over their caregivers. The language is deceptive, and the subjective suffering of the adults in charge is turning the narrative in on itself. The fact that that storyline seems to so often survive (for years, in people’s heads, and then on into their own interactions with their own needy children) is tragic. It is not true. Children need a lot. And their carers sometimes run out. No one is to blame. It’s not a plot. It’s math.
And here we are, as adults, looking at our most vulnerable, helpless, disadvantaged neighbours, and worrying that they may get the upper hand, if we give them an inch. That script goes all the way back, I bet. I just wonder if we didn’t hear it first (or infer it, pre-words) from exhausted, overwhelmed parents, or siblings, or aunties, or foster parents. I wonder if we’re not just taking a reversal of reality (understandable in the moment, but not applicable in any real life scenario) and applying it as a lens onto the most child-adjacent person we see, here, now, asking us for our help, and thereby posing a threat.
Where is the evidence that suggests our worries are clear and present dangers?
Here’s what I’d like to propose:
Our “worries” are not entirely honest. We are using them to bolster our self-esteem and self-respect even as we refuse to help. And we are refusing to help because we ourselves are in need of care (not something we like to admit!).
There is no way that sensitive, responsive, graded co-regulation is going to endanger anyone’s development. What may endanger all parties involved, though, is trying to give from an empty bank.
When we leave an infant to cry it out, we are not protecting them. We are protecting our own supplies (of sleep, separation, sanity…). This is not a judgement on the cry it out camp of child rearers, either. Those supplies are both critical (for the infant’s future) and also limited. If there is a compromise that will not cause foreseeable, catastrophic harm to the one in need of care, then that compromise may be the very best option.
Furthermore, teaching self-soothing through careful separations (as Kyrie is dealing with) is not an absence of care. It is appropriate and necessary care. The thing is, doing it in Kyrie’s best interest is more taxing for me (as the carer) than to “give in” to her cries. This particular process of helping my dog learn to be alone, and learn to settle herself down without my immediate and physically obvious presence is what she’s ready for, and what she needs next. I am finding it difficult to ignore her pleas for help simply because they are sincere and heartfelt; they arise from her strong belief that she can’t do it, which is in direct contradiction to my belief that she can.
In this case, if I was to do the easiest thing for me, I would probably let her out and/or punish her for her distress. Neither is me being my calmest, most regulated (rational, functional) self. No. Instead (most days!) I am doing the adult role of assessing her capability (complex, because I got her as an adolescent, and she came with some baggage), as well as the actual dangers of the environment (she’s in a crate for a reason - horses are Very Big compared to her). I am giving her some options, some information, and lots of praise when she gets it right. I am also needing to ignore my own wish to make my life easier by shutting her up rather than helping her through.
The fact is, helping others is always good. Always. If the help is meant as help, and not as a “please stop bothering me” placating gesture, a doing for when we could be doing with, or a doing with when the other is fully capable of doing it themselves (and doesn’t want to). Sometimes, the most helpful help I’ve seen is those kindergarten teachers who let their students struggle for almost the entire recess to do up zippers, put on mitts, arrange toques, and get their boots on. Yeah, it would be easier for all the adults to do all that work for the kids and let them run out and play. But the wise teachers know little humans don’t appreciate that, long term. The kids are initially frustrated, then become determined, and finally (and surprisingly early in the year, for most) competent. And those are some big, useful, commendable life skills, up here, in January, February, March (and October, November, December, too).
And yes, some children need more help for longer, and some even need special accommodations and may never do more than move a velcro piece close to its mate. But seeing them try, with their little tongues out, concentrating with their whole bodies, that’s the thing, isn’t it? True help is careful, in that it steps in when the help is actually both helpful, and dignifying.
I wish we could have this attitude to less cute members of society. There are so many people who would really benefit from the careful, thoughtful, graded help we give our early school age children. Not because they are like children, but…maybe yeah. Maybe they are like children. Because children have a ton of try. Children are incredibly motivated to do it themselves, if at all possible. When kids become pathetic pancakes on the floor, crying and helpless, we know they’ve got too much against them, and we give them a nap, and then a snack, and a start-over.
Why couldn’t we use this evidence to assume that adults are the same?
A panhandler is NOT choosing an easy way out. Clearly. It doesn’t take much thought to come to the conclusion that this is likely almost the worst way one could spend a typical Monday afternoon, especially when the weather is not very comfortable (which is a lot of the time, here). So, they’re not being lazy, and providing change for the astounding amount of self-denying courage it must take to walk up and ask a well put together stranger for nothing like enough to meet one’s needs, is hardly an encouragement to a life of lethargy.
And…a panhandler is also very likely not going to win a prolonged power struggle with someone who is middle class and has all the law, social opinion, and knowhow to manage insurance, etc. on their side. Yes, occasionally incidents can become violent and turn from talking to mugging, but that happens in every single socio-economic level, arguably. That’s an aberration that is both foreseeable (we know it can happen), and yet not (it’s probably not possible to be sure it will happen), and we are usually pretty bad at “reading” others’ intentions, whatever we may think. Simply refusing to help a pathetically dressed person is not going to keep me safe from being robbed, in other words.
I’m just scratching the surface of this topic, and I need to stop now, or it will be a Tuesday post, not Monday magic.
However, as regards magic, and Mondays, and the needy conundrum I’ve brought up, what do you think about the idea that neediness is a fact, neither shameful nor noble? Or that help that deserves the term would take into account a needy person’s abilities, and clear lack of abilities, in trying to make a difference?
When someone is lying bleeding on the side of the road, they need help. They don’t need social reprisal, shunning, a lecture, a sermon, or to be utterly ignored. They just need…what they need. No more, and no less.
A child needs what they need, too, and it is up to us to give as much to them (especially in those first few years!!) as we can possibly find it in our heads and hearts and bodies to afford. The dividends are enormous. We should give and give and give support to anyone caring for these little ones, too, because the caregivers can run out and be needy, as a result. And that’s okay (on an individual level - on a societal level it’s a Problem!) It’s to be expected.
In fact, all my animals need a lot. More than I can give, but I try. I need a lot. I am blessed and grateful for how many of my needs have been met by others, are being met by others. I can’t help it when I don’t have enough. I just need…whatever it is I ran out of. Period.
Monday magic: notice your own needs, and how quickly and generously others meet them. Lovely.
Deeper magic: notice someone else’s needs, and check if you have something that could meet that need - whether or not you yourself have ever experienced or imagined being that needy. Forget the judgement. Assume that the person is like a child. If they could do it, they would. If they won’t, it’s probably because something is ensuring they can’t.
Yet.
Help that is helpful?
Lovelier.