Compulsive Needy: An Increasingly Frequent Profile

The compulsive necesitadores flit around us as persistent insects for food. They speak only one language, that of “I want, I need, I have to tell you …”. We are talking about people unable to manage their frustration, who lack personal autonomy and that drive with which to take responsibility for their lives in a consistent and mature way.

Many psychologists say that this excess of “need” is the true disorder of the 21st century. Perhaps it is society itself that has pushed us towards this type of behavior. A way of acting guided in many cases by a certain consumer craving and by an almost constant need to fill our existential voids.

We are missing “something” and we don’t really know what it is, hence sometimes we become souls in pain prowling around our social settings in search of reinforcement or a stimulus with which to satisfy our inexplicable craving. Sometimes we do it, we look for an impossible love, we look for new experiences, we look for a new mobile, new clothes, a new television series that makes us forget stress, food that relieves our anxiety, etc.

We all need things, we all need people, we are all in a way everyday needies . However, the problem appears when that lack makes us compulsive needy. We refer to that type of profile that searches with some desperation for something that it does not know how to define, disturbing others and placing them under the obligation to fill their gaps and satisfy their demands.

Compulsive needy fill psychologists’ offices

It is a growing phenomenon that deserves to be addressed, and above all understood. The compulsive necesitadores abound more than ever and are also one of the most common profiles in consultations of psychologists. They arrive confused, with a high level of frustration and often even angry at how the world treats them, at how essentially their family and friends treat them.

No one seems to live up to their expectations. Nobody has managed to give them the affection they deserve either. The people who are always there for them can hardly be counted on the fingers of one hand, and sometimes not even that. The compulsive necesitadores see and understand the world from their own perspective, therefore, they are unable to perceive how come your requirements constant, their selfish demands, its totalitarian demands.

Their attitude is so childish and demanding that the psychologist is obliged to first break that barrier, that palisade where they can understand that behind the constant need, there is an unfathomable emptiness. Achieving this is not easy at all, because we are dealing with a covert manipulator who has always been accustomed to minimal effort since it is others who nurture them, those who solve them, those who free them of all weight, fear or problem.

The compulsive necesitadores need to “consume” to live. They consume our energies and our spirits, they consume their money and their time in experiences with which to find a substitute for happiness. However, what they do in the end is consume themselves as well by intensifying their wants and despair.

Helping Compulsive Needies

The quality of life of a person who has the clear feeling that “something” is always missing can be terrible. Albert Ellis already said it at the time “thoughts of constant need make us lose control and lead to negative emotions.” If this is so, it is due to a fact as simple as it is evident: the feeling of “needing something” is related to our sense of survival.

In other words, this void that we need 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 or if I get something from beyond, everything will fall apart. Thus, the feeling of lack generates fear, fear of need and need, despair. We are facing a vicious circle that must be deactivated and worked in a more logical, healthy and meaningful way.

Keys to stop needing

The first step we will take with the compulsive needy is to work on their true needs. For this reason, it is worth doing a clarification exercise in which to substitute the “I need for the I want”. For instance:

• “I need others to listen to me”  ⇔ “ I need to feel valued because I don’t love myself enough”
• I need others to help me solve my problems  ⇔ I need help because I feel unable to cope with what happens to me.

Once the person has clarified their real gaps or weaknesses: low self-esteem, insecurity, inability to solve problems, lack of decision, etc., it is time to work in depth on each of these aspects.

Another determining point in this process is to get the compulsive needy to apply a simple rule in their day-to-day life: “look for myself what I need from others.”

• I mean, if I need someone to fix something for me, I’ll try to do it myself. If I want someone to give me support in a certain aspect, I will try to motivate myself first, find strength and positive words within me to put words to that goal that I am going to pursue.

• Likewise, this profile is characterized by having unfinished personal growth. It is advisable, therefore, to encourage new experiences in him that make him reflect, relativize schemes and work on his emotional openness.

Last but not least, it never hurts to work with them empathy, social conscience, that they understand that others also have needs and that in life, not only does it count on knowing how to conjugate the verbs “want or need”, but also there is another equally important, “offer.”