Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence - Inna Zakharova 2 стр.

Self-respect

All three needs are important for each of us, but there are also individual characteristics  their degree of relevance is different. The need, which is of great relevance according to the structure of our personality, is the leading one. Unknowingly, most of our life time we spend on it, sacrificing others. For example, a person who has a leading need for love can be involved in deliberately unsafe situations after the person from whom he wants to receive it. A person with a leading need for respect, wants to feel his own worth and makes himself respect, can sacrifice acceptance, attention, destroying ties with loved ones.

It is the same situation with security. When a person follows this need, he does not make important decisions, as he doesnt know what they may lead to, and eventually lose his self-esteem.

What is important to remember:

1. Safety, love, respect  basic psychological needs (survival conditions).

2. Prioritization of needs depends on self-perception.

3. The formation of self-perception of the child is the responsibility of the parent.

4. Satisfying the needs and development of a mature personality is the responsibility of its owner.

5. A low level of personality development  a stable negative attitude towards oneself. A high level of personality development is trust, love and self-respect.

Values

All people have values and treasure them very much. But some things are valuable to one person and absolutely indifferent to the other. So why do we assign the value to some things and phenomena, but not to others? Value means importance, significance, benefit. On the one hand, it seems that value is a real characteristic of an object or phenomenon and significance and usefulness are not inherited from nature, but they are our subjective measures. We consider the value important and valuable only if it is involved in our life and we are truly interested in it, and therefore need.

All values can be divided into three groups. It is connected, as you may guess, with the existence of three psychological needs. One group of values satisfies security needs, receiving them, we feel calm and anxiety is releasing. Another list of values satisfies the need for love, receiving which we feel acceptance, we feel a deep connection with the object, we feel beautiful. And the third group of values  values that satisfy the need for respect, having received it, we feel strong, large, significant, cool.

It means that values serve our needs.

The existence of valuable, in our view, things and phenomena in our lives leads to satisfaction, and the absence, on the contrary, causes states of depression and dissatisfaction with life and ourselves. There are a lot of such values in our life; it is a whole system in which there is a hierarchy. We make all our decisions on the basis of this hierarchy of values from buying products in the store to choosing a partner for business or family life.

The hierarchy of values is a system of guidelines in all spheres of human life. Usually, if you ask a person what is important to him, you can hear the answer: family, children, work, travel, etc. These are all spheres of life, contexts in which we satisfy our needs for safety, love and respect.

There is also a hierarchy in the spheres of our life, someone devotes himself completely to work, and someone to the family. The truth is that the more spheres of life which we are realized in, the happier we are. Speaking of values, we, first of all, talk about the quality of life. To understand your values, you need to answer these questions:

What does this subjective value depend on? Why does one person, buying a chair, pay attention to its reliability and durability, another to beauty and elegance, and the third one to the price. Moreover, its important for someone to buy cheaper to save resources, and for someone more expensive to emphasize their capabilities and significance.

The individual internal hierarchy of psychological needs prioritizes values exactly.

Nominalization

You must have noticed that different people, speaking the same definitions, often mean the different experiences that lie behind them. For example, when you say I will be soon, what period of time do you mean? Soon  it is when? Is it 510 minutes, 11.5 hours, immediately? To feel what we are talking about, answer yourself this question, and then ask it to your relatives.

Nominalization means words that do not denote a specific object, their meaning is often subjective and can be interpreted in different ways. Examples: happiness, support, individuality, control  each of these concepts can be understood in different ways by different people.

To estimate your values, you need to be as sincere with yourself as possible, it is 100% individual work, you have to unveil on your own what experience and meaning are behind such words as love, support, freedom, responsibility, respect, justice, etc. Sometimes people say: I need your support, but actually they feel the lack of love, presence, the other persons attention and call all these things support.

Support as a value which means the need for security, is not only the presence or approval of another person, support implies very often specific actions, assistance in some business, taking on some responsibility. In this case, support will have a broader meaning. Of course, there are situations when its enough to be near and just say: Well done! Everything is Ok! Do as you do. Such support helps to resolve internal doubts which sound something like this: Am I on the right way? Am I looking in the right direction? Am I normal? Am I good? In this case, approval really gives strength, because confirmation from a significant person weakens doubts and self-confidence increases.

Attention means the need for love, and when it comes to this, it is enough just the presence of another person nearby. A man can do nothing for you now, but if he looks at you with a keen look, catches your every word, at the very moment you feel loved, special, beautiful internally and externally. There is a message you are what I need now, it creates a very favorable state and satisfies the need for communication and acceptance.

In the same way we very often put different concepts into the word freedom. The value of freedom is more related to the need for respect. Freedom is to do what I want, I decide what I do, no one can limit me in making decisions, in actions, in movements. It is important to understand that such freedom cannot exist without responsibility. If Im in charge, I make decisions, so Im responsible for everything. Thus, the need for respect is satisfied and in this case:

However, there is another kind of freedom that satisfies the need for security. In this case, a person feels safe when he is free FROM expectations, FROM responsibility, FROM obligations. We also call such freedom childish freedom.

How do Values Form and Where do they Come from?

However, there is another kind of freedom that satisfies the need for security. In this case, a person feels safe when he is free FROM expectations, FROM responsibility, FROM obligations. We also call such freedom childish freedom.

How do Values Form and Where do they Come from?

Why is one kind of values important and other kinds are not so significant? Why do different people have different values?

Someone, for example, is ready to shout aloud, give up relations, leave work, remain without means of living in order to prove justice. This behavior will indicate that for a person at the moment the most important is the need for respect.

Another person will remain silent in the same situation, tolerate the fact that nobody listens to his opinion, it will be more important for him that he knows where he will be tomorrow, what he will eat and that somebody will take care of him if such a need arises. This is about the need for security.

And the third case, when the need for love is leading: My God, it doesnt matter if I have any justice or work, I can give up it at any time, if my love requires me to go to the worlds end, the main thing is that we are together, together we can cope with anything.

These examples are a bit exaggerated to demonstrate the difference in the attitude towards life according to the basic psychological needs.

How do leading needs form? Where do they originate?

First of all, each person has all three psychological needs. As an analogy we can draw your attention to the body needs, which are more obvious and understandable. We have a need to sleep, a need to eat, a need to breathe, all of them are vital. Its impossible to decide whats best for you  sleeping or eating, breathing or drinking. It is all necessary for survival. But! Having a certain level of satisfaction, when you cope with the satisfaction of all these needs, you will give preference to one of them. You can bother more about what you eat than whether your sleep is full, and the other person will not pay so much attention to food (it doesnt matter if he eats or not), but will take care of his healthy dream: If I sleep well, I wont care whether I eat or not, Ill have a good mood, Ill feel good.

Psychological needs work in the same way. One person may be indifferent what others think of him, what kind of relationships he has with his colleagues, what he is wearing. A coffee stain on trousers, a dingy yesterday shirt for someone can be nonsense, and someone can bother so much about his look that he will not leave the house in this form. These are our inner preferences.

As a rule, a hierarchy among needs arises genetically, i.e. there is a certain predisposition as a result of events that took place before our birth. It is usually said about children: He looks like his grandmother / grandfather / mother / father, i.e. there is a certain similarity of characters with a member of the family system, there is a certain transmission of information through genes. This genetic predisposition to a certain temperament, and therefore to certain needs, comes from birth.

And then the period of childhood and education that parents give us comes into force. We are brought up at the level of beliefs, thoughts that our parents offer us every day, talking about this, declaring some values, ideas, meanings. And it is inserted into us very clearly, as if it doesnt exist in other way.

For example, parents broadcast to the child that it is not necessary to make a bed every day, but when guests come to the house, the bed needs to be made up. It means its not important whether you make the bed or not its important what people say. This belief is quite safe in the context of the bed, but it is insensibly woven into other contexts of life. No matter what you think and feel, the main thing is how it looks in the eyes of others. And then a person in an effort to receive acceptance and approval may contradict his desires and principles.

If a child was born with a leading need for love, he will pay a lot of attention to relationships with other people, be interested in creative work, will strive to decorate the space where he lives, he will pay attention to his appearance. But if the parent has a leading need for security, he sees danger everywhere and every day he says to the child: Caution! You may hit here. Do not go there, there may be a deep puddle. Around the corner you are waiting for an evil man. A monster will come for you. Trust no man, and with the passing of time, having a leading need for love, the need for security becomes the next in the hierarchy. And the values from the security group will also become important, because the person was taught this way, these values were inserted into him. The experience gained in childhood is personal, this experience had already existed in your life before your birth.

For at least 12 years, our psychological needs and their satisfaction lie entirely in the responsibility of the parents.

To grow their children, it is important to create a safe space, an atmosphere of acceptance and opportunities for achievement.

Safe space is a feeling that there are enough resources to cope with any situation that may arise (there is always something to eat, there is where to sleep, the doors in the house are closed). The internal routine in the family also creates a sense of security: we go to bed at a certain time, we have dinner at a certain time, etc. If you dont have enough money, resources for safety, if your parent is constantly under pressure and anxious, thinks where to get money to buy food, shoes, textbooks, then, of course, this situations affects a childs life (and there are also situations in which parents do not care about these things, i.e. the child is left alone with these problems). In this case, the need for security becomes very urgent for him, and an adult child will think about it all his life, even when he has all the resources to compensate for his childhood experience.

Love, acceptance  it is a feeling that you are exactly the very person as your parent imagined in the most beautiful dreams. Any free time is given to me and a parents face has a slight smile and a gentle, friendly, interested look. A sense of unity, communication through joint activities, praise, a sense of self-worth and exclusivity in the life of the parent. If the child is not paid attention, shoved by one, the other nanny, then the need for love and acceptance is not satisfied, the child does not receive communication with the parents.

To satisfy a childs need for respect, parents must create a space in which he understands that he is doing something what he is able to do. It is worth giving small tasks for a child to help him to demonstrate his independence, improve and cultivate self-esteem. Children of 23 years old are trying to get the pots off the table, stir something on their own, sweep, carry. Boys of 79 years old want to hammer a nail, saw off something on their own. Girls of 79 years old want to cook, sew, clean. If parents create such a space for the child, he gets the experience I can. I manage to do it by myself. I am independent  this directly refers to respect. Often adults ask the child what he wants to do, where he wants to go, offer a choice of purchases, etc. If at the same time the adult does not listen to his opinion, this attitude shows disrespect. Therefore, if you are ready to give responsibility to the child for something, so that he feels more mature, more meaningful, so do as he said, as he chose. After all, it often happens that the choice of a child does not coincide with those criteria that the adult determined himself, as a result it turns out that his opinion is not important. Children, through their desire to be adults, may begin to demand something, to discuss, but this, ultimately, will not be useful for them. Up to 12 years old, important, big decisions should not be given to children, it is better to act as wizards and create space for them in a magical way, without involving them in all kinds of household activities (for example, buying furniture, choosing a school, choosing a place for spending vacations). A very cool space to content the need for respect is sports, dancing, creativity. These are areas where there are results and they are obvious. All sports clubs organize competitions where the child gets the obvious results  whether he was able or not, whether he succeeded or not. Thus, a child can give himself feedback in an adult way, because respect is always associated with a certain completed action. The competition system is loyal to children, almost always all participants receive medals or certificates. By the way, certificates on the wall or a place of honor at home with awards  this is what gradually creates a base of respect. At the end of stage performances, there are always recordings; after the concert, the child feels the process is complete and at home he can review how it was.