Stop Ghosting Your Needs: Making Room for Self-Care
When was the last time you stopped to ask yourself, "What do I actually need right now?"
It sounds like a simple question, but for many of us, it can be surprisingly difficult to answer. We get used to moving through our days focused on what needs to get done, who needs us, and what comes next. We push through being tired. We ignore the tension building in our neck and shoulders. We say yes when we really need some space. We tell ourselves we'll rest later, make time for movement tomorrow, or take better care of ourselves when life slows down. Little by little, our own needs keep getting pushed to later.
And sometimes, we don't recognize what we need until we're already overwhelmed, exhausted, irritable, or completely depleted.
That's what I mean by ghosting your needs.
It isn't necessarily that you don't care about yourself. Sometimes, you've simply gotten so used to pushing your own signals aside that you stop noticing them altogether.
We Have More Needs Than We Realize
When we think about taking care of ourselves, the basics probably come to mind first: food, water, sleep, and safety.
Those things absolutely matter. But our needs extend well beyond basic survival. We also have needs for things like connection, support, belonging, autonomy, space, play, purpose, creativity, and understanding.
And what we need isn't necessarily the same from one day to the next. One day you might need connection. Another day, you might desperately need an hour alone. Sometimes you need movement; other times you need rest. You might need help, reassurance, a boundary, something fun to look forward to, or simply five quiet minutes without anyone asking you for something.
Part of taking care of ourselves is learning to recognize what we need and understanding that it may look different from one day to the next.
Your Emotions Can Give You Clues
One way to start noticing your needs is to pay attention to how you feel. Instead of stopping at "I'm stressed" or "I'm fine," try getting a little more specific. Are you overwhelmed? Irritated? Lonely? Restless? Anxious? Resentful? Disconnected?
The ability to distinguish between different emotional experiences is sometimes called emotional granularity. Research suggests that being able to identify and distinguish between different emotions is associated with more adaptive coping and psychological well-being.
That doesn't mean every uncomfortable emotion has one obvious unmet need hiding underneath it. Emotions are more complicated than that, but they can give us useful information.
So what can you do? Notice the emotions you're experiencing and then get curious about what they might be telling you. Instead of immediately trying to make an uncomfortable feeling disappear, try asking yourself:
What am I feeling?
What might be contributing to this feeling?
Is there something I need right now?
Sometimes, irritation may be a sign that you're exhausted. Loneliness may point you toward connection. Resentment might make you realize you've been saying yes when you really wanted to say no.
The goal isn't to perfectly decode every emotion. It's simply to start paying attention to what your emotions might be telling you.
Your Body Can Give You Clues Too
Your body can also provide valuable information about how you're doing. Interoception is the process through which the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals coming from within the body. It plays a role in things like hunger, thirst, breathing, heart rate, pain, fatigue, temperature, and emotional experience.
In everyday life, those signals might look like:
Your shoulders creeping up toward your ears when you've had a stressful day
Noticing a headache and then realizing you haven't had water in hours
Feeling heavy and depleted after pushing through a packed schedule
Feeling restless after sitting and working all day
Holding your breath or clenching your jaw when you're feeling overwhelmed
Your body's signals don't always provide a simple answer, and a physical symptom shouldn't automatically be assumed to come from an unmet emotional need. But learning to notice these signals can give you another source of information about how you're doing.
That awareness is especially important to me as a physical therapist. The body isn't separate from the rest of our experience. Sleep, stress, movement, pain, energy, emotions, environment, and life circumstances all interact. Paying attention to those connections can help us better understand what our bodies may be responding to and what might help.
Sometimes, the first step isn't immediately changing something.
It's noticing.
Why Do We Ignore Our Needs?
From a young age, we receive messages about how we're supposed to behave, what we're supposed to prioritize, and even what we're allowed to need.
Just go with the flow.
You're overreacting.
You're too sensitive.
Walk it off.
Be strong.
Rest is lazy.
Putting yourself first is selfish.
Over time, messages like this can influence how comfortable we feel recognizing, expressing, and responding to our own needs. We may learn to push through discomfort, minimize what we're feeling, or prioritize what other people need before considering ourselves.
Maybe you learned to be the dependable one.
Maybe being productive makes you feel more valuable.
Maybe asking for help feels uncomfortable.
Maybe you're great at anticipating what everyone around you needs but rarely extend that same attention toward yourself.
Eventually, ignoring your needs can become so automatic that you don't even realize you're doing it.
Self-Care Doesn't Have to Become Another Job
Taking care of your needs doesn't mean creating the perfect morning routine, meditating every day, or adding six more things to your to-do list.
Sometimes what you need is remarkably ordinary. A glass of water. A hug. A quiet moment. A good laugh.
Self-care doesn't have to look a certain way. What matters is learning to recognize your needs and finding ways to respond to them.
And that isn't always as obvious as it sounds.
Maybe you find yourself scrolling through your phone when what you really need is a mental break. Maybe you withdraw from others when what you need is connection. Or maybe you automatically say yes to another commitment when what you actually need is permission to say no.
We all have habits and familiar ways of responding to stress, discomfort, and the demands of everyday life. But those responses don't always address the needs underneath.
The goal isn't perfect self-awareness. It's getting a little better at noticing what you need and giving yourself permission to respond to it.
Start With One Question
You don't need to overhaul your life to start taking better care of yourself. Instead, pause once in a while and ask:
What do I actually need right now?
You may not have the answer immediately, and that's okay. Start by noticing what's happening within you.
What are you feeling?
What is happening in your body?
What have you been pushing through?
What would make today feel just a little more manageable?
Then consider one small way you can respond to what you've noticed. Maybe it's taking a break, asking for help, setting a boundary, or simply acknowledging that something feels difficult. You don't have to change everything at once. Sometimes, simply recognizing what you need is a meaningful place to start.
Final Thoughts
If you've been wanting to make space for your own needs but don't know where to start, I'd love for you to join us at our upcoming workshop. I'm teaming up with Kelsey Wild from Self-Care Social Hour to bring you Stop Ghosting Your Needs: Real-Life Ways to Reconnect with Yourself.
Together, we'll explore the different types of needs we have, why it can be so easy to push our own needs aside, and how we can become more aware of what we need. Through conversation, reflection, mindfulness, body awareness, grounding activities, and breathwork, we'll practice ways to reconnect with ourselves and better respond to our needs in everyday life.
Stop Ghosting Your Needs: Real-Life Ways to Reconnect with Yourself
🗓️ Saturday, October 10
🕛 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
📍 Indepth Physical Therapy, Hinsdale
☕️ Light refreshments will be provided
References
Khalsa SS, Adolphs R, Cameron OG, et al. Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. 2018;3(6):501–513.
Chen WG, Schloesser D, Arensdorf AM, et al. The Emerging Science of Interoception: Sensing, Integrating, Interpreting, and Regulating Signals within the Self. Trends in Neurosciences. 2021;44(1):3–16.
Hoemann K, Nielson C, Yuen A, et al. Expertise in Emotion: A Scoping Review and Unifying Framework for Individual Differences in the Mental Representation of Emotional Experience. Psychological Bulletin. 2021;147(11):1159–1183.
Kashdan TB, Barrett LF, McKnight PE. Unpacking Emotion Differentiation: Transforming Unpleasant Experience by Perceiving Distinctions in Negativity. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2015;24(1):10–16.
Erbas Y, Ceulemans E, Lee Pe M, Koval P, Kuppens P. Negative emotion differentiation: Its personality and well-being correlates and a comparison of different assessment methods. Cognition and Emotion. 2014;28(7):1196–1213.
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