How the hell am I supposed to know what I need?
I hear this often from the therapy couch.
If you grew up in a family system where your primary caregivers weren't attentive to your needs, this question can feel impossible. If you were or are constantly tending to those around you, rather than yourself, this question can feel silly. If you feel shame about being someone who needs things from others, this question can feel preposterous.
When you over-focus on others, or are not accustomed to being focused on, it's difficult to know what you need from yourself, let alone from others.
The good news is that you can learn to tend to yourself. You can learn what you need, over time, and begin meeting those needs yourself, and letting your support-people show up to meet your needs, too.
1) Practice asking yourself "what am I feeling right now?"
Your emotions are often a primary signaler of met or unmet needs. Example: If you're feeling lonely, it is because a need for connection is going unmet.
2) Follow-up that question with "what might I need right now?"
Once you've identified the feeling, you can ask what you need. This might be for soothing, for release, for distraction, for reflection, who knows! Especially early in the process, you might come up with a big blank here. That's okay and to be expected. Ask the question anyway. Part of meeting your needs is just learning how to ask about them.
3) Experiment.
Walk, talk, draw, journal, watch TV, eat a snack, drink some water. Make a big-ass list and try a bunch of things over time. It's okay if this feels random at first.
4) Check in on the impact.
Does the feeling seem more manageable? Do you feel more grounded? Don't expect whatever negative feeling you started with to just go away. That's not the barometer for meeting your needs. Check in whether you have more capacity, if the intensity of the emotion changed, if you feel more able to breathe, etc. This will tell you whether the thing you tried to meet the need actually filled that need, or not.
5) Take mental (or physical) note of what felt helpful and what didn't.
This helps you hone in over time on what you need.
6) Repeat. Over and over again.
The more you try, the more you know. Over time, you might realize that when you're feeling anxious, what you really need is to go outside, play out the worst case scenario ONCE, and then distract with a good book. You might find that when you're depressed, you need to journal and do something productive.
This is an iterative process. Be patient with yourself, and keep asking the questions.