The Ultimate

MEET YOUR NEEDS

Guide
JENNY BLAKELY

Contents
Honoring Our Needs - 02
Primary Needs - 04
Emotional Wounds - 09
Speaking The Language - 11
Reflection Space - 12
 JENNY BLAKELY

Honoring our Needs

On all levels of our lives, including: primary attachment’s, social connections,
social structures, etc. we experience conditioning. Our conditioning is what
moves us away from our natural way of tuning into ourselves and our needs
by adding false layers on top of what is true.

This conditioning instills into us at a young age through attachment &

socialization, a pre-made set of rules and priorities for our lives. Usually, we
avoid going against this at all costs because if we don’t adhere to these
structures, we face an internalized risk of judgement, rejection, &
abandonment from our peer groups & those who we are socialized with.

Another form of conditioning that we experience is the wounds passed down

generationally, from our attachment figures. In every family history,
unconscious patterns exist. These patterns are passed down from one
generation to the next, continuously, until someone in the family breaks the
pattern. These patterns can look like any one of our core needs not getting met
& our boundaries being violated in some way, leading to unprocessed
emotions and beliefs.

False Priorities

Because we go through conditioning on the many levels in which it exists, we

“inherit” an unnatural way of prioritizing our lives and our needs. We learn to
begin ignoring our needs and the ways our body signals our needs to us.

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 Honoring our Needs

Sometimes we learn to do this because of certain expectations put upon us,

while other times we suppress our needs because we learned that we may get
an undesired reaction from our primary attachment figures. Whatever it may
be, we suppress our needs because we perceive it is needed for our survival.

This is when we become disconnected from our center, who we truly are. This
is how we remain in situations that do not promote our highest selves, and this
is how we repeat the same painful emotional cycles over and over without ever
fully resolving them. It is because we make ourselves blind to our authentic
selves and our needs, in order to accommodate for the society we live in and
the environment we grew up in.

If you are here reading this right now, it means you are breaking these patterns
and cycles. You are here to play a vital role in the creation of new structures
and new ways of being that are more supportive to our natural essence.
Whether this is the first time these concepts are being brought into your
awareness or you’ve been working extensively at unraveling who you are,
because you are here right now, it means you have already begun a process of
transcending everything that has been learned, every pattern that has been
passed down, and every belief that no longer serves. So thank you for
everything you have done thus far to lead you to this point, and thank you for
what you will do.

You are the change.

Jenny Blakely

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 JENNY BLAKELY

Primary Needs & Priority of Needs

Here is a list of our 4 core emotional needs in order of priority. Pay attention to
what resonates with you. It may reveal what is just beneath the surface. Keep in
mind this may change from time to time as certain things come up at different
times for a specific purpose & the opportunity to pay more attention to it.

Safety
What creates it or diminishes it
Hostility in environment
Abandonment (polarity between extreme love and loss)
Aggression
Physical boundaries
Lack of contextual understanding

What it looks like when imbalanced:

Feeling ungrounded or dissociated

Anxiety
Fight or flight / nervous system
In the mind constantly, difficulty connecting with emotions or the body
Physical boundaries being crossed by others or ourselves
Feeling on edge
Feeling like there isn’t time to slow down, a race against time
Our sense of time is off: we over or underestimate the time we have.
All or nothing thinking
Feeling like giving up or helplessness
Feeling enraged or like attacking another verbally or physically
Impulsively acting because there's nothing else to lose
Stress & a sense that you don’t have the resources to fight of or solve
current problems
feeling like you’re backed into a corner
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 Primary Needs & Priority of Needs

Love & Belonging

What creates it or diminishes it
Unconditional acceptance & positive regard (not turning away,
maintaining attachment)
Presence
Connection
Maintaining attachment
Emotion regulation

What it looks like when imbalanced:

Hyper attunement & losing our sense of self to others

Codependency
Fear of abandonment or fear of enmeshment
Fear of being alone or the opposite, isolating the self (or both)
Attracting emotionally absent partners or partner’s
Directing negative emotions towards self
Lack of emotional boundaries - falling into patterns of absorbing others
emotion
Hot & cold, turbulent relationships
Emotional highs and lows
Having people in your life but feeling like they don't really understand you
or - fears that they wouldn't love who you are deep down

Esteem & Worthiness

What creates it or diminishes it
Shame vs. Empowerment
Encouragement (rather than disempowering child with fear or lack of
confidence in abilities)
Independence
non judgement vs. being critical of self or others.
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 Primary Needs & Priority of Needs
What it looks like when imbalanced:

Dimming ones light to keep the piece

Feeling unable to move forward in life or staying stagnant
Overpowered in relationships or other dynamics
Conflict over authority
Being critical of one’s self
Stress & fear about the future
Feeling pressure to please others & ourselves; putting loads of effort in
towards meeting expectations (but no matter how hard we try it feels like
it’s never enough.)
Frustration towards self or others that comes out in sudden ways
Afraid of putting ourselves out in the world & fear of criticism
Attracting people into our lives who are critical of us or who do not
receive us.
Fear of failure
Feeling small or restricted

Purpose & Creativity

What creates it or diminishes it
Pursuing passions
Being connected to intuition
Connected to oneness
Sense of purpose
Creative fuel

What it looks like when balanced

Feeling abundant & seeing abundance in our lives

Free thinking - Following our own aligned thoughts, feelings, and
guidance. (Not from others unless we consciously chose to invite it in).
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 Primary Needs & Priority of Needs
Connection to our desires & passions
Connection to a sense of purpose
Actively pursuing our dreams with specific goals in mind
Grounded action - grounding our purpose into the physical world with
utilizing tangible tools, actions, and resources available to us
Flowing through time. Breaking through the concept of time by living in a
flow state, while also being able to keep track of time and appropriately
plan with the timing of life’s responsibilities
Living intuitively: balancing structure & flow by prioritizing aspects of
our lives in accordance to our desires, purpose, and goals. Creating a
container that allows for us to flourish & “flow” within this container

A Note on Physiological Needs:

Needs that have to do with regulating our bodily functions & systems such as
food, water, & sleep fall under a branch of the "safety" category. However,
contrary to popular beliefs, it is not always our #1 need in terms of priority.
Have you ever been so upset or nervous that you couldn't eat? This
demonstrates how our emotional needs such as our need for love & belonging
can take priority at times over our physiological needs.

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 Primary Needs & Priority of Needs

Our core needs in the order in which our system prioritizes

them. (My own variation of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs)

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 JENNY BLAKELY

Emotional Wounds
It is important to address emotional wounds when discussing our needs.
Emotional wounds are created when our most basic needs are not honored, and
they occur on the level of our need for safety. What happens when our needs
aren't honored by our attachment figures is that we proceed to not meet those
same needs for ourselves or allow those needs to be expressed. The reason we
don’t is because at some point we were made to feel that it wasn't safe to
express these needs.

How this inhibits us

Our primary needs follow a hierarchical structure, meaning that certain needs
have to be met before we prioritize or are inclined to meet other needs. Refer
to the previous page for a visual of our priority of needs.

An example of the hierarchy of needs you’ve probably experienced is if

you’ve ever been grieving the loss of a pet, loved one, or the ending of a
relationship. You might not be able to focus on work or may lack motivation
to go to the gym. This is an example of your need for Love & Belonging
taking priority over your need for Esteem & Worthiness. Or if you've ever
been in a high-pressure situation and snapped at someone you love, this is an
example of our need for Safety taking priority over our Love & Belonging
needs.

We can experience emotional wounds at any level of our needs. The main
point is that it is occurring on the level of our safety needs, and secondary
needs not being met as a result. Abandonment wounds occur and

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 Emotional Wounds

are related to our sense of love & safety. Children need to feel their
attachment figure’s presence & love to feel safe and secure so this is an
example of our love needs crossing with our safety needs.

Another common wound is the worthiness wound. If our attachment figures

rejected or abandoned us during a time in which we were expressing our true
selves and our sense of personal power and sovereignty, we learn that it isn't
safe to be ourselves. In the future when we go to express ourselves, if this
wound is active we will feel an urgency to keep ourselves small in theses
situations.

When we have emotional wounds, we will have less emotional energy for the
higher level needs such as purpose/creativity and esteem/worthiness. In other
words, we will have difficulty flourishing or seeing abundance in our lives
because at the most basic level, our needs are not getting met. It is only until
we release the stored emotions & begin meeting our needs that we can start to
return back to our natural, energized flow.

At their core, core wounds are unexpressed emotions. If we don't feel safe to
meet our needs, we will continue finding ourselves in experiences where those
needs do not get met. When the belief initial internalized false story around
the wound is released, then the emotion can be felt and integrated. This is the
process in which emotional wounds are healed.

Some common wounds and emotions that are trying to be honored:

Safety wound: Anger, fear, fight or flight.

Love & Belonging wound: Sadness, depression, fear, apathy.
Esteem and worthiness wound: Anger, jealousy, frustration, Insecurity.

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 JENNY BLAKELY

The Language of Our Needs

To heal emotional wounds & begin to meet our needs, we first have to be able
to detect when they are trying to get our attention. The way we do this is
through learning the language of our needs. In many ways, this is us learning
to communicate with our authentic selves and becoming less attached to the
mind while becoming more centered in our bodies. When we do these
practices, we will become more in tune with our true selves, and our lives on
the external will start to become more authentic and aligned with us as a
result.

To do this we have to learn to connect to our feelings and interpret them.

When we were young, this was the job of our parents, to receive what we were
expressing, interpret our needs, and to be able to do this they needed to attune
to us. For many of us, we may have had parents who didn't attune to us in all
the ways we needed, whether it be that our parents were always busy or
dealing with their own emotional issues in some way, if there were gaps here
then we missed out on the important teaching of how to properly meet our
own needs & self soothe.

Attunement to ourselves
Attunement to ourselves begins with one key factor, awareness. To begin
speaking the language of our needs we have to begin to practice bringing
awareness to our thoughts and emotions. This can be done through slowing
down, being intentional, and/or cultivating a regular mindfulness practice
such as mediation. This is an important element because in order to hear what
our bodies are trying to speak to us, we have to open up the space for this to
occur, which means we can’t be in problem solving or “doing” mode 100% of
the time. In the next section we are going to be going over ways to increase
awareness.
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 JENNY BLAKELY

Reflection Space
Where the magic happens.

Identifying & Cultivating Awareness

1. How am I currently meeting my core needs?

2. Am I content with this? Is this working for me? If not,

what isn’t working?

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 Reflection Space

Stepping into Conscious Creation

3. How would you feel if these needs were met & fulfilled
fully & permanently in your life?

4. What kind of things do you want to see in your life as a

result of better fulfilling your needs? How would life
change?

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 Reflection Space

Forward Action to Create Change

5. What are the long term changes you want to make? (These
reflect your long term life goals. Changes that take time,
resources, etc.)

6. we will be moving one step at a time. A change may be

able to be made easily with one swift decision & clarity, or
it may take time or getting certain things in order. What are
the short term actions or decisions that need to be made?

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 Reflection Space

Getting to Know Your Preferences

In order to begin building a new foundation for our lives, we
must reparent ourselves. This means tending to our needs in
ways that weren't tended to before. To get to know your own
needs and preferences, begin to pay attention to your body and
discover what your specific needs are asking from you.

Use the list below as well as your own ideas to fill out the table
on page 18.

Ideas for Meeting Each Need:

Safety:
Grounding, being still, breathing exercises, meditation,
being in nature, fueling body with water or nutrients, body
scan, getting in touch with your body, dancing, exercise,
taking pressure off yourself, giving yourself a choice, asking
for help, practicing coming back to the present.

Love and Belonging:

Being present with emotions, slowing down, giving yourself
space to process emotions, practicing loving kindness,
connecting deeply to your self, connecting to family,
friends, strangers, pets,

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 Reflection Space

Having compassion for what emotions are coming up,

putting ourselves first, taking care of ourselves, cultivating
healthy boundaries, talking to supportive people, forgiving
self or others.

Esteem & Worthiness:

Shining your light, being bold & standing out, trying new
things, complete a goal, celebrate yourself, giving ourselves
positive praise, giving ourselves approval, saying yes or no
when we need to, making a decision, consciously choose to
act or not act on something, prioritizing ourselves, connect
with people who empower & inspire you, reflect on what’s
working & what’s not working, delegating responsibility,
giving ourselves permission.

Purpose & Creativity

Connecting to intuition and inner guidance, tapping into
your purpose & passions & acting on them, get into the
“flow state” through meditating, singing, dancing, exercise,
playing a sport, cooking, etc. Using the “mirror” in others &
& in the world to reflect on ourselves, creating, gratitude,

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 Reflection Space

practicing kindness towards self & others, taking on the

perspective of “beginners mind” , setting intentions for our
lives.

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 Reflection Space
Getting to Know Your Preferences Table

Safety

Love & Belonging

Esteem & Worthiness

Purpose & Creativity

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Copyright © 2021 Jenny Blakely

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Copyright © 2021 Jenny Blakely

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