77. The Heart of the Matter: Understanding Our Core Emotional Needs

Welcome to another episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast!

In this episode we discuss core emotional needs and why they are so important for humans throughout our life.  We are born into the world with needs and our emotional, social, physical and psychological well-being depends upon them.  Our early care-givers are responsible for meeting our needs and as we grow and develop both ourselves and other people play a role in meeting emotional needs.
  
The needs discussed are: 

• safety, stability & predictability
• secure, loving, nurturing bond (warmth, validation, ‘being seen’)
• autonomy & growing independence
• expression of emotions, needs, thoughts (allowance of authenticity)
• spontaneity, creativity & play 
• realistic limits, self-discipline, impulse control

In schema therapy, early maladaptive schemas develop when these needs are not adequately met or are violated in some way.