Your Deficits Needs

Abraham Maslow created what he called a hierarchy of needs in 1943. The hierarchy orders what humans need to lead productive lives. From another perspective, it lists the prerequisites for self-transcendence. In Maslow’s hierarchy, stable physiological needs enable safety and security. Safety enables love and belonging. Love enables esteem. Esteem enables self-actualization. Self-actualization enables self-transcendence.
•Self-Transcendence: Collaborate in new ways
•Self-Actualization: Create new knowledge
•Esteem: Find Agency in the Knowing
•Love: Find Comfort in the Knowing
•Safety: Touch and Know for Certain
•Physiological: Eat, Sleep, Excrete

Physiology, Safety, Love and Esteem are “deficit needs.” Deficit needs must be addressed and fulfilled before you can experience the “being needs” of self-actualization and self-transcendence. Physiology places importance on physical health and the proper function of the body. Safety and security explores the certainty with which you approach the world. Love and belonging moves beyond the simple physical and mental operations to the meaning and relationships you derive from interactions with others. Esteem extends the concepts of certainty and meaning allowing you to formulate self-confidence and the ability to team together with others.

You require therapeutic intervention, discipline, and a great deal of introspection in order to overcome the trauma, disappointments, and longing that characterizes your deficit. But, you will be unable to benefit from any interventions until you are free. Freedom is not just to count yourself as deserving of something better or different as Eve did in the story. Freedom is to recognize the power of working with others to actualize you. Stop worrying about whether you belong and whether others will accept you. Stop worrying about what others want. What you have is yours to offer. The potential benefit of that sharing is in the relationship—what you have added to what I bring.

Your potential productivity is beyond the consideration of your deficit. If you had to do this alone, it would make sense to be preoccupied with your deficit. But, a focus on collaboration means that you do not have to have all the answers, all the gifts, and have it all together.