Beautiful
Human Needs
A reflective worksheet to help you find, feel, and honor what you need, and deserve, in your relationships and your life.
⬇ Download FreeWe all have needs.
Yours matter too.
We all have needs as humans, and yet so often we deny, ignore, or dismiss our needs in service of others. This worksheet is here to help you explore what you need, and deserve.
We all deserve to know and feel our desires, needs, and wants within ourselves and our relationships. Knowing what we want helps us create clear boundaries and build trust by making clear requests of others.
Your work is to learn to feel, sense, and honor your uniquely beautiful needs. Review the list in the Human Needs download below, and find 10 to 15 that are important to you right now. Then, review your list and see what patterns emerge. See if you can map them to current or past challenges in your relationships.
Oftentimes when we feel disconnected in partnership, or any relationship (work, friend, family), it's because a core need is not being met. Learning to articulate your needs and state them clearly allows the other person to respond to it, and gives them the opportunity to show up in a different way.
How to state your needs
and make requests.
Learning our needs is the first part. Practicing expressing them is the next. Throughout our lives we're told not to be needy, greedy, or ask too much in this world, and yet, when we don't ask, others cannot give us what we need. Many couples struggle with intimacy, communication, and desire because neither partner has clearly stated their needs.
Your partner isn't required to meet all your needs. Esther Perel famously reminds us that our partner cannot be all the things to us all the time: partner, passionate lover, co-parent, domestic roommate, best friend. The foundation of a good partnership is knowing yourself, stating your needs, and finding compromise wherein your partner wants to meet many of your core needs.
One of the ways to practice stating your needs is the classic Non-Violent Communication tool. It can be clunky at first, and it takes practice to master. The framework is to observe, state your feeling, state your need, make a request.
"When you do/did [______], I feel/felt [______]. I have a need for [______] and I'd like to request [______]."
For example: "When you do not text me to tell me you're going to be late, I feel dismissed. I have a need for connection and communication, and I'd like to request that you text me when you'll be late next time."
Finding your
hell yes.
One of the ways Andrea helps couples practice this is to play a game of making requests, practicing saying no, and feeling into what a YES and a NO feel like in the body. So many of us are disconnected from our needs, and therefore not attuned to our intuitive yes and no.
Learning to speak a no, and to hear a no from someone, can be simple but deeply profound work. Learning to find your hell yes can be self-nourishing and healing.
If you'd like to practice this with your partner, please reach out to connect for a session.
Get the worksheet.
This list comes to us freely from the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Find them at cnvc.org.
⬇ Download the WorksheetYour needs deserve
a real voice.
Explore coaching, Tantra Mini Sessions, and monthly Love in Adulthood workshops with Andrea.
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