The Language of Needs

In this episode, Jennifer explores the universal needs that underpin human dignity and healing after harm. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing and understanding these needs, both for oneself and in relationships with others. The conversation delves into the impact of dignity violations, the collective nature of needs, and the role of nonviolent communication in fostering understanding and compassion. Jennifer encourages listeners to reflect on their own needs and how they relate to their experiences of harm and healing.

Takeaways

• Understanding universal needs can aid in healing after harm.
• Dignity violations occur when needs are ignored or dismissed.
• Reclaiming our needs is an act of integrity, not selfishness.
• Needs are not demands; they are essential for our well-being.
• The language of needs can help us navigate relationships.
• Dignity is inherent and can be bruised by unmet needs.
• Collective needs must be recognized in communication.
• Ignoring higher needs dehumanizes individuals.
• Understanding needs fosters compassion and accountability.
• Reflecting on unmet needs can guide healing strategies.

Exploring what it means to live and lead with dignity at work, in our families, in our communities, and in the world. What is dignity? How can we honor the dignity of others? And how can we repair and reclaim our dignity after harm? Tune in to hear stories about violations of dignity and ways in which we heal, forgive, and make choices about how we show up in a chaotic and fractured world. Hosted by physician and coach Jennifer Griggs.

For more information on the podcast, please visit www.thedignitylab.com.
For more information on podcast host Dr. Jennifer Griggs, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/.
For additional free resources, including the periodic table of dignity elements, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/resources/.

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Transcript

This is The Dignity Lab, a podcast that seeks to define dignity, its violations, and its reclamation. No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what’s happened to you, you can reclaim your dignity.

Hosted by physician, narrative medicine practitioner, and leadership coach, Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

This season focuses on healing from past hurts through forgiveness and its alternatives.

Today’s episode is a dose of dignity, a solo, bite-sized episode that focuses on living and leading with dignity.

Hello and welcome to The Dignity Lab and this season on healing after harm. 

In this episode, I'll be exploring the universal needs we all have and explain the ways that understanding these needs can help us heal after harm, can help us forgive ourselves, and can help us repair relationships. Understanding needs can also help us understand the needs of others, however unskillfully expressed, and can soften our hearts without minimizing the impact of what they've done. 

It is critical that I be crystal clear right now. It is not your job to put yourself in the shoes of the person who hurt you. It is not the job of the oppressed to have empathy for the oppressor. All too often people whose dignity has been violated are asked to forgive the oppressor, are asked to give them a break, are asked to let people off the hook. It's not your job to do any of this. But if you are interested in addressing fractures in your most meaningful relationships, this vocabulary of needs can help us define our common humanity separate from the often violent and at best foolish actions of others. 

What do we mean by needs? I'm approaching the topic of needs from the language of nonviolent communication first developed by Marshall Rosenberg. Needs in the language of nonviolent communication are the universal qualities of life that keep us whole. Things like community, acknowledgement, growth, harmony, fairness, sustenance, belonging, safety, meaning, rest, play, contribution, autonomy, faith, and tenderness. If you go to our website, thedignitylab.com, you can download a PDF with a list of these universal needs. And I'd invite you to pause this episode and do that now.

There is no one on earth who doesn't have these needs. Having needs does not make you needy or in some ways a burden to others. Needs are not demands or desires. They are the living energies that motivate everything we do. 

What's the relationship between needs and dignity? Dignity violations, those moments or experiences that cut the deepest, often happen exactly when our needs go unseen, unacknowledged, or dismissed. When our need for fairness is overridden when rules are unevenly applied, when our need for belonging is denied through exclusion, when our need for autonomy is ignored and we're micromanaged or controlled, this is when dignity is violated. Dignity, recall, is not something earned or given. It is our inherent worth that lives within us, but it can be bruised especially when these fundamental needs are unmet. When our need for acknowledgement isn't met, we feel invisible. When our need for safety isn't met, we feel destabilized. When our need for autonomy isn't met, we feel small and often hopeless. 

Reflect for a moment. Which needs are honored in your life and which of those needs are unmet in your current relationships or at work?

Dignity violations can be not only interpersonal, but also cultural and systemic. Many of us are accustomed to having our needs suppressed in order to maintain harmony. Whether quiet or overt, suppression of our needs becomes internalized, what Carol Gilligan once called “an ethic of care that forgets the self.” We forget that part of being human is having needs. We may feel we don't deserve to have even our basic needs met. Reclaiming our needs then becomes a radical act, not of selfishness, but of integrity, of wholeness. 

For some people, identifying their unmet needs is a persistent challenge. If you're having a hard time naming your unmet needs, it can be helpful to name the needs that are met. If you look at the list of universal needs on our website, which of your needs are being met? Perhaps your needs for beauty and meaningful work are being met, but your home life leaves your need for stability unmet. 

Marshall Rosenberg's framework is powerful in the way it humanizes the people and the underlying energies involved in conflict. But many contemporary practitioners, and perhaps you yourself, ask “Whose needs does it center?” Menachi's book, Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication, adds an important layer to the understanding of needs. They invite us to see that nonviolent communication, as developed in Western contexts, often reflects individualistic assumptions. That communication, for example, happens between two autonomous people apart from history. 

A decolonial approach instead roots needs in relationship, ancestry, and community. Here needs aren't just personal, they're collective. The need for shared safety, cultural continuity, or communal mourning. This approach broadens Rosenberg's original frame to include structural dignity. What happens when an entire communitys’ needs for recognition or justice are unmet? These considerations are what I call “next level dignity.” 

Whose needs are easily heard in your workplace, your family, your community, and whose needs are treated as negotiable?

I'd also love to point out that when we organize needs the way I have on the list of needs on my website, some of the needs are at the bottom and some are at the top. I'd like to talk briefly about what you may have heard referred to as Maslow's hierarchy of needs or perhaps the pyramid of needs. There's this notion that we cannot meet our needs for transcendence, the needs at the top of the page, until our need for safety is met. That when addressing the needs of people who are poor, for example, we shouldn't think about art or poetry or flowers or beauty, but should rather focus on the basics of shelter and food. And yes, of course, we have to provide shelter and food and clean water to all people. But to ignore those other needs for belonging, for transcendence, for love, for growth is to further dehumanize people. Megan Albertson and I go on a riff and rant about this in our episode in Season 1. If you're interested in knowing more about what turns out was never meant to be a pyramid of needs, I'd encourage you to read Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman. 

We can also take the language of needs and look towards those who have hurt us. Again, it is not your job or your burden to do this, to look at the needs of those in power to the systems that have hurt you. It's rather an invitation to develop your fluency in the language of needs so that if you choose to, you may be able to make some sense of the behavior of others. Seeing the needs of others does not and cannot erase accountability, but it softens the rigid lines of judgment. We can say, “I still hold you responsible and I see your humanity.” Understanding that doesn't condone, but it can heal. It brings compassion into places where we once carried only blame. 

Dignity in the end is the space where our needs and others meet, imperfectly, vulnerably, but always in motion towards honoring our inherent worth and that of others. 

When you think about a time you were hurt, what needs were not met? Did you have an unmet need for safety? Did you have an unmet need for acknowledgement, empathy, kindness, autonomy? Being able to name the need that has been unmet can help you decide what strategy or strategies to take to meet those needs. 

Have you been blaming yourself for being in a situation and when you were hurt? This is so common. This is the shame and guilt that can arise with capital T trauma or lowercase T trauma. If you can, think back to the moment before you were hurt. What need were you trying to meet? Perhaps you stayed in an unsafe relationship because it was the safest place to be at that moment. Recall that there are no bad needs. Recall, rather, it's the strategies we pursue to meet those needs that can get us into trouble and can get us stuck.

Can you think about a time you hurt someone else? What need were you trying to meet in that moment? What need did the other person have? How can understanding your needs and those of others shift the way you see your relationship with them?

Understanding needs, the language of needs, is a helpful way to put a name to something about you that is so gloriously human, your own needs and those of your community. How can understanding your needs help you understand dignity? How can understanding your needs help you in your choice to forgive, to forgive yourself, to choose strategies to move forward and to heal whether through forgiveness or its alternatives? 

Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

This has been The Dignity Lab with Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

If you have experienced a dignity violation or have a dignity dilemma and want to be a guest on our show, contact us through our website, www.thedignitylab.com. Guests may remain anonymous. 

And If you’re a leader wanting to up level your leadership with a small community of like-minded people, visit our website thedignitylab.com to learn more about the Dignity Lab (yes, the same name), our group program for leaders.

Our website and the show notes have downloadable resources that you can access from anywhere.

More information about any of our guests can be found in show notes for that episode. 

This season of The Dignity Lab is produced by me, Vanessa Aron. Pete Carty is our audio engineer and sound designer. Chase Miller composed our theme music.

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The content discussed is intended to explore and raise awareness about dignity. Sensitive topics may be discussed that could evoke strong emotions; discretion is advised, and listeners are encouraged to engage with the material with empathy."

Remember, “...be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars.”