physical needs tagged posts

The Five Fundamental Human Needs – Physical Needs

As a new-born baby, your very existence depended on your parents touching you in a loving way. It might surprise you to know that this was just as important as the food they gave you.

In the first few days after a baby is born, and before the mother’s milk “comes in,” the baby discovers the mother through touch. The baby may suck from the breast not for food, but for the pleasure of the physical closeness that activity gives the baby.

The colostrum that the mother produces during this time is simply for boosting the baby’s immune system. It has very little food value, which is why in the first few days after birth, most babies tend to lose weight before they start putting it on.

Mutual bonding is also important for the mother at this time...

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The Most Fundamental Human Needs

What I have learned from my many years in a relationship, and as a Relationship Counsellor, Coach and Therapist, is that there are several fundamental human needs that need to be satisfied for someone to have a happy life and a rewarding and enduring relationship. These are the “secrets to making love last” I refer to in the subtitle of my book. I call them that because, even though they appear to be common sense when we read about them in context, it seems that these become invisible to us when we try to understand why something went wrong in a relationship.

These fundamental needs tend to form a ladder such that if the lower rung needs are not met, then the higher-rung needs cannot be met...

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Five Ways to Fund Your Love Bank

TOUCH

I use the acronym TOUCH to remember the five ways of funding my love bank.

T is for Time

Relationships aren’t part-time arrangements. And, if your relationship is fed on left-over time (the time you have after everything else has been done), your love bank will very quickly be depleted.

Your relationship must take priority over everything else (other than yourself). You come first, your partner comes second. Your family is third, your work is next, and finally there are your extended family and other friendships beyond that.

This is not to say that you can’t work because you must always be with your family. It just means that you must always keep your family’s needs in mind if you are doing something of lower priority (like working)...

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What Games Do Couples Play? (Part 7)

Lyn and James Game

Some people realize they are having problems at an early stage in their relationship while others they only realize there have been problems when their relationship is about to break down.

As with every other couple, with Lyn and James, the problems appearing are connected with both their childhoods.  Lyn had grown up in a family with three older brothers and a mother who was struggling to manage as she and her husband had separated some years before.

Lyn’s mother was anxious and depressed and on medication and her father was only occasionally available to take care of the children.

As she was still young at the time, Lyn knew very little of what happened to separate her parents...

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What Games Do Couples Play? (Part 3)

What Games Do Couples Play?

Tamara and Alex’s Games

Things need to be clear in order to be understood. By clear I mean the background story and the connection to the current issues to it need to be understood to fully comprehend what the current issues are about before responding.

Usually issues come up when something far distant in the past which has nothing to do with current issue impacts on the resolution and/or even the understanding. Consequently, what you might think about a situation will often be the exact opposite of what I think about it.

Understanding and being clear about each other’s past helps build the future of the relationship better and can prevent issues from occurring.

Each relationship has its stages and it’s important to recognize the stage and its needs.

In fact, to be in a happy relati...

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What Games Do Couples Play? (Part 2)

What Games Do Couples Play Part 2

Beth and Roger’s Games – What Obstructed Their Relationship Progress?

There are few things that obstructed Beth and Roger‘s relationship. Surely the first thing to mention is the miscommunications between them. Having in mind their childhood experiences and the way they have developed certain patterns in their way of relating to each other, it is obvious that their effective communication skills are limited.

By “skills” I mean the ability to say what you really want to say and to give yourself time to understand what the other person is saying.

I also mean the ability to listen not in order to answer, but in order to understand.

It also means being honest with each other in those communications.

Situations like this and the resulting crisis in the relationship are most often a sig...

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What Games Do our Couples Play? (Part 1)

Beth and Roger’s Games

Beth and Roger’s Games

The story of Beth and Roger may look superficial or like nothing is really happening and affecting their relationship, but if the situation is analysed and looked at more closely, a lot of underwater details appear and give some clues to something happening at a subconscious level not evident when looking at it consciously.

The problem occurs when one of their children doesn’t want to attend the other child’s birthday party. Beth gets upset and expects Roger to take care of her feelings and to console her, but he is unable to do it.

Questions immediately appear and some of them are: what is so distressing about this situation and why so and even more so what roles are both playing and why?

The truth is, as bystanders to the situation it seems that Beth and R...

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And If Parents “Don’t Have Enough Love” for Both Children?

And if they don't have ... ?

What do kid’s thoughts hide?

Every child is an individual and unique in the eyes of his/her parents. But what happens when a child does not understand the actions of his/her own parents?

It is really important to understand that the child’s thinking pattern is different from that of an adult. Very young children can really only think in concrete terms. That is, to them, something only exists if it can be seen, and it only exists in one form. The expansion in thinking follows a developmental path just as physical growth does.

Emotional growth also follows a developmental path. A young child feels all their feelings intensely and without any real capacity to control them. Just imagine a child throwing a temper tantrum and what’s really going on for them...

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Why We Choose To Be A Victor, Visitor Or Victim – A Closer Look At Childhood

A Closer Look At Childhood

img_3874 img_4342 Acoustic Grumpy Kids

Why we choose to be a Victor, Visitor or Victim

In previous articles we took a closer look at the basic features of the three typologies of human behaviour, namely: Victor, Visitor or Victim. However, a small secret has remained unrevealed – Why we choose to be a Victor, Visitor or Victim. I guess you are asking yourself why, despite willing to be Victors, we more and more often see ourselves as Visitors, and even worse for our ego – Victims. Where and how does our view of life transform? The answer, as usual, is short and very simple – within ourselves, in our views formed in early childhood.

And please, let me underline one more point here:

Visitors and Victims exist simply because survival is the prime concern for the child we all once were.

In the story of Alex and Tamara

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Dad Gets Mad and Mom Gets Sad

parents and childWhat is the difference between a boy and a girl? Both sexes have just the same number of chromosomes – exactly twenty-two pairs. The twenty-third, however, is different for men and women.

This is the pair that contains the sex chromosomes that comes to determine whether we become male or female. Let’s see what happens after this. If there is a gene that determines our sex is that the same gene that determines the path of our life? Why is it that we recognize so often our parents’ reactions and words in a given situation to our own reactions and words in similar situations?

So, if Dad got mad when something went wrong, you might get mad and respond in the same way he did...

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