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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/02/needlevels.htm

        This is one of over 150 articles focused on building high-nurturance family relationships and preventing divorce. This introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more you read, the more sense they'll all make.

        These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help. The "/" in re/marriage and re/divorce notes that it may be a stepparent's first union. "Co-parents" means both bioparents, or any of the three or more related stepparents and bioparents co-managing a multi-home nuclear stepfamily. Clicking links below will open an informational pop-up or a full window, so please turn off your browser's popup blocker or allow popups from this nonprofit site.

        Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

        You and each child and adult in your life are ceaselessly motivated to fill current needs - psychological, physical, and spiritual discomforts. Problems, upset, conflict, and worries are caused by unfilled needs. The learnable relationship skills of awareness and metatalk can help your family members identify and help each other fill your primary (vs. surface) needs, and raise the nurturance-level of your homes. This article summarizes a useful concept about the needs that power all your thoughts, dreams, choices, and behaviors.

       In 1968, students of human behavior began to study psychologist Abraham Maslow's newly updated book Toward a Psychology of Being. A theme of his observations about how we all think, feel, and act has been called the "hierarchy of needs." It looks like this:

Maslow proposed that every child and adult has overlapping needs that fall into naturally-ranked levels or priorities:

Level 1: reduce current physical discomforts first: hunger, thirst, pain, air, temperature, smells, balance,  noise, light, and rest (sleep). When those are satisfied enough now...

Level 2:  We try to fill our need to feel safe enough in the near future. Safety comes from trusting that our level-one needs and protection from local dangers will be reliably met in the coming days and weeks (our safety zone). In our society, that translates into believing that we'll have a dependable source of money to buy those securities. The safety zone is short for some people, longer for fear-based (wounded) others.

        Maslow suggested that when we feel comfortable and safe enough, we then try to fill...

Level 3: our need for companionship: our primitive need to feel accepted by, and part of, a group of other people. We need to feel we belong to (are accepted by) a family, tribe, group, or clan. The alternative is feeling we're alone in the world, which is not only lonely, but less safe.

        For infants, being alone too long means dying. People abandoned emotionally or physically (neglected) too often as infants unconsciously grow personality subselves who remain terrified of abandonment in adulthood. Alternatively, their subselves protect them from (another) devastating abandonment by (unconsciously) never bonding with anyone.

        Semi-conscious terror of rejection and abandonment is one root of relationship enmeshment and addiction, including codependence. The other root is excessive shame. Unacknowledged codependence and it's underlying false-self wounds often cause adults to unconsciously pick wounded, unaware mates over and over again, until they choose to heal. Personal recovery can partially heal each root of co-dependence, over time. These ideas gained general public and clinical acceptance after (1980+) Maslow proposed this hierarchy of needs.

      If we feel our level 1, 2, and 3 needs are satisfied enough, then we focus on filling...

Level 4: our need to be recognized as special and valuable by our group. We need to be more than just a featureless face in the crowd, we need to be known and appreciated. Survivors of low-nurturance childhoods who were shamed too often as young children often endlessly search for the specialness and praise that they never got. Paradoxically, their false self discounts praise when it's offered ("I really don't deserve it..."). Until recovery releases them from this endless quest, such burdened, unaware people are never really free to achieve...

Level 5: the need to be self actualized. A key reason people still value Maslow's ideas is the universal longing to be fully ourselves. That implies we each have unique talents and abilities that we long to develop and use to benefit the world if all our other need-levels are filled well enough, often enough. Then we can become creative, energized, centered, focused, and productive and live "on purpose," "at our highest personal potential."

        Do you know what self actualization feels like? Do you know anyone whom you feel is "living at their highest personal potential"? Did your parents and key caregivers achieve this prize? Has your mate?

        Pause and reflect: does this natural ranking of primal human needs make sense to you? If it doesn't, do you have an alternate explanation for why we all behave the way we do? How does this ranking relate to why you chose to read this article?

  Four Key Implications

First - common sense and experience suggest that you and others have the best chance to (a) recognize and fill your mix of current needs, and to (b) become self-actualized over time - if your personality is guided by your true Self. Project 1 in this site is about assessing if that's true, and freeing up your true Self if that's needed.

        Second - divorcing families and stepfamilies are specially complex and dynamic, which creates many daily need-conflicts ("problems") for adults and kids. Co-parents can improve the harmony in and between their homes if they help each other remember that...

• Every moment, each family member naturally has a fluctuating group of psychological, physical, spiritual, and mental needs;

• Some needs are currently more important (intense) than others;

• People may perceive and rank their current needs differently; and...

• Digging down to identify each person's concurrent primary needs, ranking them, and filling the most important ones first, promotes personal, home, and family harmony and health.

        This probably seems obvious. Yet I've met hundreds of stressed co-parents who had lost sight of these points in their welter of personal, marital, and family conflicts. Adults and kids with significant wounds often lose the clear focus and prioritizing that their true Self (capital "S") provides. Doing Project 1 and evolving a true wound- recovery plan improves focusing, and empowers true Selves to fill everyone's needs well enough!

        Third - these five needs are primal - i.e. they're unconscious and instinctual. They are among - and influence - the primary needs that underlie the problems that most (unaware) people focus on every day. One result: most people are frustrated by trying to make first-order changes (problem-solutions), which don't last, like "failed" diets and attempts to "exercise more," "eat better," "slow down," and "quit smoking." People who are guided by their true Selves and clearly aware of their primary needs strive for second-order (core attitude) changes, which bring lasting satisfactions and comforts.

        The fourth implication of Maslow's ideas has to do with personal growth. Divorcing-family and stepfamily wounds, complexity, and conflict can keep kids and adults stuck in levels 2-4, and block them from growing towards "living at their highest personal potential." Like ground fog obscuring a mountain peak, ongoing internal and social conflicts can block seeing that there is a more rewarding long-term goal than just "learning to get along together."

        Maslow's key contribution is in proposing that we each can intentionally grow toward "self actualization" - i.e. developing our unique skills, and using them creatively and unselfishly to benefit the world and ourselves.

        Co-parents in any family can help each other and their kids focus on each person growing toward self actualization in their own unique way, at their own pace. These 12 co-parent Projects lay essential groundwork for this supreme life-long personal project - harmonizing our personality subselves under the expert leadership of our true Self.

        For more perspective, study this summary of how you and your partners and kids often may each rank each other's current primary (vs. surface) needs, and how that shapes the effectiveness of your shared communications.

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Updated  April 19, 2008