3 - The Need to Belong and Matter (Part 1)
Needs of the Heart by Chip Dodd
God designed us to be needy.
Having neediness is not a weakness.
What are some of our needs that are described in “Needs of the Heart”?
Belonging
Mattering
Security
Touch
Attention
Sexuality
Guidance
Accomplishment
Support
Listening & Trust
Freedom
Fun
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
A friend doubles your joy and halves your sorrows. (Old Proverb)
Trauma occurs when a person experiences a tragic happening, and they have NO place to take their pain. So, the feelings get frozen because they have no place to go except suppressed, repressed, hidden, gone, gotten rid of, disassociated from.
Intuition + Suspicion + Questions = Discernment
Intuition is God-given. It is a sense of what is going on around you.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Our most powerful needs are belonging and mattering.
“Needs of the Heart” by Dr. Chip Dodd, Chapter 9 “Guidance,” Page 51
Impoverishment is not knowing your heart and not being able to connect with yourself, others, and God.
We come out of the womb looking for who is looking for us.
“The Voice of the Heart” by Dr. Chip Dodd
We are born with 2 primary needs: the need to belong and the need to matter.
The need to belong is the need to be accepted as I am created.
The need to matter is to be valued for what I bring to creation.
There is someone outside of me who is invested in seeing who I am created to be so they can help me become that person who has gifts to be shared, and also to be accepted for how I am created.
Children really only need 2 things: belonging and mattering, to be accepted & valued, and then receive affirmation & confirmation.
The “Yes-Yes-Yes Parent” is a very dangerous parent because they will do anything to keep their child from feeling.
The “Codependent Parent” believes that their child’s feelings equal their own personal worth and self-blame. If a parent can’t tolerate their own feelings and learn the skills of what to do with them, their children will be unnecessarily harmed.
ALL parents unintentionally harm their children, so it is important for parents to learn to say, “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”
When children have feelings, they are being human. Children having feelings is not an indictment of poor parenting; it is an indication that they are fully human.
If parents are good at being human, they will show their children, through their own neediness, the way to God.
We never age-out of our need to belong and matter. It’s okay to need to be reconfirmed in our desire to belong and matter.
Human beings are the only living creatures, who carry DNA, who are capable of using their faces to hide their hearts. We’re the only creatures that can be incongruent.
We are powerless over our need to belong and matter. The only choice we have is… are we going to get our need to matter and belong met in legitimate or illegitimate ways?
People often attempt to get their need to belong and matter met through their performance,
care-taking, people-pleasing, approval-seeking, and an achievement orientation, and it always leads to some form of addiction. Which is getting your legitimate needs met in illegitimate ways.
We need to face that we all need to belong and matter. It is through vulnerability and healing and by feeling your feelings, telling the truth about then, letting yourself have needs, and wisely deciding who you can let know.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center
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The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) & The Voice of the Heart Center (www.vothcenter.com). Healthy people get help, and we would be honored to help you.