Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence

It is important to note that the values of the need for security are the most controversial. On the one hand some things may be a source of security, on the other hand they may be a source of danger. For example, authority can simultaneously protect you from the outside world, give you support, but at the same time you can completely fall under his influence and your level of freedom will be very low (this is not safe at all!). In such situations, a lot of doubts arises.

It’s worth paying attention to the theme of people communication with the same leading need for security and difficulties, which appear in such relationships.

➤ The Value Conflict

For both of them, freedom (value) will be important, that freedom which is WITHOUT responsibility, without expectations, without obligations. At the same time, both of them will be interested in information (value) about each other (what will happen tomorrow? What are our plans? What will we do? What will we eat?). Two people with the same leading need, in principle, should understand each other well, but the following can happen between them:

One is calling to the other:
– Hi! What are you doing?

What does the first think at this moment? “They control me! Why is he asking me? What does he want from me? What should I do? They want to accuse me of inaction? And what does it threaten? And if I say now that I’m not doing anything, what will make me do it? What if I don’t want to do this …», i.e. he feels that his freedom is being invaded, he feels anxiety and the need for security is not satisfied.

If you continue the chain of his thoughts, this simple question can lead to some serious consequences in communication. However, a person who asks “where are you?” “what are you doing?”, he wants to calm himself, he just needs information for clarity. People with a leading need for security very often ask such questions in order to get information about what is happening between them, is everything okay with me, can I organize your time and mine.

➤ Unwillingness to take responsibility.

Taking responsibility for decisions is unsafe. And when security is a leading psychological need, it is not easy for such people to take responsibility for themselves and their lives, and to be responsible for two partners is totally unsafe. In such relationships, the ball “who will make decisions” will constantly roll, there will always be expectations from each other that someone will do more in terms of responsibility. Moreover, if one constantly takes it upon himself, he feels the insult “why me?” and will feel unsafe. And the other one at the same time will also feel unsafe, because “if I do not make decisions, then I can’t influence anything, I’m nobody”, the partner’s responsible behavior is perceived as aggression and a desire to suppress.

If partners in such relationships are perceived, able to agree, they can say all the moments of interaction aloud and strengthen each other. To do this, we must share the responsibility: “I’ll do this, you’re doing that, I’m free at this time.” You need to say everything. If you arm yourself with this honesty and clarity in relationships, everything becomes cool. But if a person is not conscious, he is not ready for sincerity, because it is very unsafe. In the pattern, a person with a need for security lives a little bit secretly, just in case there should be workarounds: “I’m kind of with you, but I have hidden the waste routes. “I have 5 rubles, and I don’t tell you that there are 10 more in the back pocket”. There is always a desire to protect yourself even more.

There are three main strategies to satisfy the needs for security. As the strategies differ, values also may be different.

Strategies of getting values:

• Get support. In order to feel security and self-confidence, a person stocks up with the support of others. “I want to be friendly with everyone, I want to answer expectations of others so that I can count on reciprocal support and be in an environment that is well disposed towards me.” In this case, support will be a high priority value.

• Do not get involved. In order to feel security and self-confidence, a person tries to the maximum to not get involved in any relationships, so that others do not have any expectations of him. In this case, we are talking about the high priority of the value of freedom. “My safety is in my freedom, in the decline of responsibility for other people. I want no one to have any expectations about me. Let me not have support, it doesn’t matter. I can provide for myself, take care of myself, I can manage it. The main thing is that people around me do not press me and do not expect anything of me.”

• Get information. To feel security and self-confidence, a person constantly learns, reads, studies, watches popular YouTube channels, reads news sites, loads his mind with various kinds of information. “If I know, I’m safe. I’m prepared for any situation, I know a lot and can maintain a conversation on any topic using specific linguistics, give the impression that I understand the subject (even if not very deep and in theory).” Information is a high priority value.

Love. Strategies and Values

What is valuable when the need for love is important right now? This is what will bring to life the attention and acceptance of other people – relationships, close ties, sincere interest, compliments, praise, a sense of personal worth and uniqueness.

If I need love (this is a need), I want close relationships, so I need to find an exceptional person for such relationships. To achieve this, I need to attract him (even if we are not talking about relationships in a couple, but about a group of interesting people, which I want to belong to). What do we do to get attention? We are starting to decorate ourselves, we want to look in some interesting, attractive way, to fit into society, to please some specific people. We can decorate ourselves in different ways: through the appearance or through creativity we can express our inner world. Both these things in this case become values for satisfaction of need for love.

Values from the need for love and acceptance:

• Close relations. It is important to find the very one person among a million others who will become the most important for me, to whom I can discover something very sincere, secret. Intimacy here also means. In close relationships, we can touch each other, hug, kiss. Sex is the ultimate closeness of man and woman. A strong desire for intimacy often leads to complete loss, to the loss of a sense of own boundaries.

• Feelings. Feelings are a criterion of intimacy, so they are also very important if the need for love is significant. Of course, it is more preferable to have such feelings as tenderness, desire, joy, but if we do not have such feelings, so at least it is better to have any rather than to have nothing. Indifference means a lack of communication, a lack of love, so people with a leading need for love provoke a partner to show vivid and bright emotions, they can get hysterical in order to knock out at least some kind of emotions.

• Self-expression. Usually people with a leading need for love are very creative. Creativity is an opportunity to express your inner world and present it to others to receive attention, recognition, praise, understanding, emotional reaction, etc. Criticism or indifference to creative products is experienced very painfully, as it is perceived personally “If they didn’t like my poem, they didn’t like me.”

• Personality. As love is a feeling of exclusivity in the lives of other people, individuality becomes a high order value for people with a leading need for love. “In order to be loved, I need to be special, have my own distinction, uniqueness, and be different from millions of other people. Having a bright personality, I will have more chances to get love.” However, in this quest for individuality, a person can fall into another trap. Love implies a feeling of unity, similarity and individuality emphasizes the difference. Therefore, an imbalance in favor of individuality leads to a feeling of loneliness: “I am different, different, there are no more such people”.

• Sincerity. Sincerity is another criterion of intimacy. If we are close people, we should know everything about each other, we can and should share sincerely all our thoughts and feelings, talk about all events in our life. It also has some traps. A strong desire to get love often makes you talk about yourself only pleasant things, it is essentially a lie or not complete sincerity, which creates an internal conflict: “Sincerity is very important to me, but I’m afraid to lose your love, so I embellish myself.”

What strategies do people use to get values and satisfy their need for love?

Strategies for getting love:

• Deserve love. In order to feel love and connection with others, a person constantly pays attention to the object of his sympathy, fits into his problems and tasks with some help, constantly strives to be near. “I want to be so necessary and useful to you that you cannot live without me.” Such behavior greatly stresses the other person with the amount of help, attention and love that is given to him. In this behavior, values of the highest order are closeness and dependence.

• I am a delicate flower. To feel love and connection with others, a person demonstrates his uniqueness, beauty, weakness and vulnerability in order to attract his “parent”, who will fulfill all desires, because the parent must take care of his “tender flower”. Such a person constantly requires attention: “Put on all your matters, devote all your time to me, do something good for me.” This behavior of a capricious needy child aggravates a loved one. Such a strategy is often based on the manipulation of resentment. Here the values of the highest order will be individuality, feelings, beauty, creativity.

• Buy love. To feel love and connection with others, a person works hard on himself to build a smart shape that everyone will like. This strategy of getting love is built on high activity, productivity and the pursuit of status. The standard is the generally accepted current understanding of success, and all activities are aimed at achieving the status of “smart”. The guarantor of attracting love is all sorts of success attributes – brands, positions, achievements. Here the highest order values are fashion, style, image, attention, admiration.

• Avoid pain. This is a clever variant. In order to feel love and connection with others, I doom myself to loneliness. “I need love and acceptance so much that I can imagine in advance how much I will suffer when I lose love. Not to experience this suffering, I abandon relationships and love in advance”. In such cases, a person can be a recluse, a hermit, however, creativity will fill his life, although “for the desk drawer.” Here values of the highest order will be creativity, self-expression, individuality, feelings, beauty.

Respect. Strategies and Values

What values are the most significant, when we speak about respect and self-respect?

Values from the need for respect:

• Power. Self-esteem is directly related to self-respect. “I could. I managed, although it was hard, but others could not do it at all.” If we can say this, it allows us to be proud of ourselves, to respect ourselves and those others whom we can think about in this way.

• Autonomy. Autonomy is a criterion of strength, because if you can cope without outside help, you are strong enough. Autonomy and independence also allow you to feel clearly your boundaries, this is necessary for self-respect.

• Power. Power is also a criterion of strength. “I am so strong that I can influence the situation of other people. Everything happens according to my will.”

• Struggle. Despite the fact that we all try to avoid it, the struggle is a circumstance in which we can show our strength and, therefore, satisfy the need for respect. Struggle is a proof that the strong can fight and defeat circumstances and other people.

• Achievements. Achievements are victories that we record on our own account. “I am strong, my achievements are a real demonstration.”

• Professionalism. Professionalism is a tool for achievement. “I am a professional in my field. Significantly, my opinion is authoritative, they will listen to it and respect me.”

• Responsibility. Responsibility determines the degree of influence. “If the influence on the situation is in my hands, then I’m the main one. I will decide what, how and when to do, while I am ready to be responsible for any consequences.”

Strategies of getting values:

• Seize the power. To feel his worth and respect for himself, a person directs all his resources to ensure that one of his species says that he is a big person and that he needs to be obeyed. A loud, assertive voice, a heavy look and wisecracks help him to get respect. “I’m the boss, and just try to argue with that.” Here the value of the highest order will be power, authority and struggle. In relationships, other people feel aggression, often perceive a person as a tyrant.

• Depreciate a need. To feel his worth and respect for himself, a person depreciates his importance as much as possible himself: “This is garbage, I do not need any respect. Well, they take my things, well, OK. They didn’t listen to my opinion, well, they just didn’t hear it. This is unimportant for me. My opinion is not important.” Your opinion is depreciated on your own in order not to worry painfully when someone else does it. Such a person often chooses a lifestyle in which communication with people is minimal, life is organized away from others so that no one can insult, offend or devalue. This is a strategy of escaping from oneself, from one’s needs. Here, the highest order values are autonomy, non-interference.

• Earn respect. To feel his worth and respect for himself, a person strives to be a perfectionist, to be a super-professional in some narrow field. So that no one would even have the thought that such a person cannot be respected. “I will be irreproachable and people will be forced to respect me”. By definition, it is impossible not to respect him, because he only does what works. He works more than others, everything is fine, if you turn to such a person, he will always do everything clearly and on time. Everyone respects such a pronounced professionalism, even those who do not like him: “I do not like this person, I will not communicate with him. But he is worth respecting him.” For a person with such a strategy of behavior, the highest values are professionalism, principles, rules, discipline.

Values and Anti-values

Anti-values – this is exactly the opposite of values. If support is a value to me, then pressure will be an anti-value. Attention is a value, ignoring is an anti-value, strength – weakness.

Sometimes we find ourselves in conditions that create even more urgency in need. It is as if you want to drink and get into a dessert, where there is not even a shadow nearby, then you want to drink even more.

It also happens with psychological needs. For example, you need some attention from a person or a group of people, and instead you get complete disregard. Or you want praise, approval in order to feel your value, for this you do some work, and in return you get criticism. It turns out that in addition to the fact that you did not satisfy your need for love, you also got a greater deficit in this need.

For example, the anti-value of security is “uselessness” and “waste of time.” We are talking about situations where you, moreover, do not get the resource you were counting on, but also lose what you had. A common case: you go to an event to get a resource, for example, a weighty opinion or some new information, and when you come, you do not receive an authoritative opinion or useful information, but you spend money and your time (money and time are values from the need for security). As a result, you got “uselessness” and “a waste of time and money”, you feel no more relaxed as planned, but more anxious – the need for security has become even more urgent because you have just lost your resources.