I'd like to know how the issue of unmet emotional needs is dealt with in therapy.
In many different ways, I imagine. I think it has to vary depending on the client and therapist. I would think the same would apply to any therapeutic approach to dealing with unmet emotional needs - the type of therapy will have a fundamental approach, and then there will be variations depending on the individuals themselves.
My Therapist..., told me to 'befriend the pain of unmet needs'. I experienced those words almost as a physical slap
I couldn't know what your therapist's meaning was.
I do know that there are approaches of allowing negative emotions and the shadow side of ourselves, our attributes and our lives, without hating them. That includes what we feel we lack, or ways in which we feel defective or damaged. Part of the thinking behind this is that seeing those feelings as unacceptable only perpetuates them. Instead the idea is to allow them and understand, express, grieve, process and move through them.
Some people call this welcoming the feelings. I don't know if befriending is the same idea. It doesn't mean you're happy about what happened, or are preparing to live with the pain forever. It means accepting the pain that you feel in the moment, instead of fighting or hating it.
The way I see it, it's like what's called urge-surfing for addiction. When you're craving or fixated on the substance, rather than try to push that away and think about something else, you ride out the urge like surfing a wave. You keep your awareness on it without acting on it, go with the feelings behind it (however painful) and let them flow, until the urge ebbs away again. I learnt this last year, and I'm finding it very effective.
Feelings naturally wax and wane. We interfere with that process when we've spent years blocking them, resenting them or picking at them like a scab. I know that a feeling can come up and stay for hours, or days, or weeks, because our experiences mean that our natural reactions to feelings have been altered. Learning to manage the emotions, process them when it's appropriate to, contain them and work through them, is part of giving ourselves something we weren't given when we were young.
Saying that we need to provide our own emotional needs is a bit like telling to someone who needs money desperately for something important, such as life-saving surgery, but who has zero money, to lend him/herself some. Or, to tell a diabetic to provide him/herself with insulin.
I think saying we have to meet our own emotional needs doesn't mean we have to generate it all ourselves. I think often it means finding things outside us that meet our emotional needs, and focussing on them. Those things might be in nature, the elements, animals, creativity, beauty, other people etc. We can learn and practise skills taught by therapists, books, online etc. These don't have to be huge things that are equal in size to what we missed. Anything we do creates a shift and heals us a little more. I like Caroline Myss's example of building healthy self-esteem - start by keeping one promise to yourself. For example, if you say you're going to the gym on Tuesday, go to the gym on Tuesday.
IMO, it means we have to do the work instead of wanting someone else to fix us. If we look to a spouse to fill in the gap left by our parent's lack of care, then we're setting them up to fail. Every time they fall short of our expectation, that will only reinforce our feeling of lack. If they leave us (and given the pressure we're putting on them, a happy relationship wouldn't be likely) then we will be wounded all the more. If we learn to care for ourselves, for example by learning self-soothing, coping skills, problem-solving and emotion regulation, we will have that all our lives, and will have something to offer to a partner in a healthy relationship too.
