It has been a terrifying time for us this week/end as we awaited news of the safety of family and friends in the direct path of Hurricane Helene. After no communication for almost 48 hours, we just got word Saturday afternoon that all is well with them, but they are surrounded by utter destruction. My heart goes out to all of you who have been impacted in any way by this tragic event.
I had written an entirely different essay to share this week, but this entire experience has made me think about fear and its absence and distortion, our human needs, and how many of them are unmet in a timeline when we need each other more than ever. So, I’m thinking aloud a bit in this essay while we take concrete steps to be of most assistance to those in need— read to the end for one of the still-coviding informed ways you can support those in need.
What is often labeled as fear-driven behavior is really just a combination of actions driven by our universal human needs for survival: certainty, significance, love and connection, variety, and our spiritual (non-religious) needs for fulfillment: growth and contribution. Our overculture’s lack of understanding of human needs is a primary driver in our inability to connect across differences and influence each other toward positive change.
Renowned Psychologist Cloe Madanes and Tony Robbins assert that every human has the same six fundamental human needs but with varying levels of importance and unique beliefs about how to satisfy them. Their approach is known as Human Needs Psychology, but many refer to it as “practical psychology”. While it is like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in some ways, it is much more of an action-based, meta-approach used to help people see their own unique combination of needs as one of the primary drivers of the choices they are making and the outcomes they are experiencing in their lives.
It is often said in training with Chloe and Tony (I am certified in their approach to coaching, known as Strategic Intervention) that the top two needs for most humans on the planet are certainty and significance. Well, there’s nothing like a global pandemic that began ravaging the world in 2020 to completely drain us of all certainty and overwhelm us with uncertainty at levels most of us have never experienced before. Our experience this week saturated us in uncertainty that we are still sitting with as the situation unfolds.
There are many reasons for people’s choices in the pandemic that extend far beyond the scope of this essay, including but not limited to the abuse of power, money, manipulation, and eugenicist policies. Thankfully, there are fellow substackers like Julia Doubleday and Walker Bragman who are providing us with thorough reporting and analysis from these accounts, and I strongly recommend all Still Coviders to follow them. In this essay, however, I am focusing on the internal human experience in a much more granular way.
I would argue that most people are allowing the powers that be to passively fill their certainty buckets through belief. Believing promises from “powers that be” and/or clinging to beliefs (e.g., faith over fear, COVID to their own be was an event that’s now over, masks don’t work, vaccines are evil) has certainly become our overculture’s preferred path to living like it’s 2019. A much smaller group of us have chosen to fill our certainty buckets through actively “verbing”: masking, testing, improving air quality, measuring, monitoring, researching, shielding, procuring, and applying multiple mitigation layers.
This is a profound example of how we have the same need for certainty as those who are living like it's 2019, but the way we choose to meet them is informed by our own unique beliefs, which radically shift the outcomes and the way we perceive Others. They say we are “living in fear,” but in my view, those of us who are still coviding have moved far past acting out of an emotion of fear and are acting on intentional habits that fill our certainty buckets through informed actions. It appears like fear to them in part because we, as humans, are generally bad at applying practical psychology.
If you are passively anchored in belief rather than action, and a masked individual appears in some corner of your life who is testing the air and carrying Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and Far UV lights with them, it certainly could turn over the bucket of empty promises and beliefs you’ve accepted as your certainty, couldn’t it? And that could apply to any of our human survival needs. As a matter of fact, I’ve had several experiences in healthcare settings where I am confident that my mask was a direct assault not on certainty, but on the provider’s sense of significance. How do I know? The code words for significance pepper these interactions. You know the drill if you’ve been through this, as you likely have. They saturate the air with stories of their expertise, their years of service, their deep knowledge of how viruses impact humans, and questions that assert them as the source of knowledge and seek to undermine your very visible choice to assert your own knowledge and personal sovereignty.
There are also the rare experiences of meeting a professional who, despite their credentials, is driven by growth and contribution. (I’ve had one over the last 5 years). The code words and feelings in our interaction were curiosity, questions, interest, vulnerability, encouragement, wisdom, learning, and reciprocity. At the end of this delightful visit with this nationally sought-after doctor at a leading research university, he followed me to the waiting room (in our masks) and asked me to play something for him on the piano in the waiting room before I left. Yes, he has a piano in his waiting room, and yet, that in and of itself was a tangible marker of how this doctor is anchored into growth and contribution.
I’ve learned over the last 4.5 years how to navigate visits that aren’t so unique and welcoming in a few different ways. If the professional is making it hard or impossible for me to be safe in terms of transmission risk, it’s a fast exit for me at this point. I recognize /theorize about what’s going on internally, and I make a path out of harm’s way, or I request that they leave, and while unpleasant, its the best option. I just recently requested that a mask-friendly nurse replace an anti-masker nurse at a recent appointment. I reported her behavior about my mask to the doctor and had a note placed in my file for all future visits to avoid this situation ever being repeated.
But even as recently as yesterday, I had a situation at a local clinic that illustrates some of why this matters. I saw the start of what I consider an eye roll when my duckbill 95 came into view as the nurse opened the door. It’s a safe assumption with most humans that significance and certainty are important needs, and I know that masks are a direct threat to both of those. When I saw her expression, I shifted to talking about the vaccine, why I chose her clinic over my last pharmacy, etc., and I focused on making my voice light and my eyes welcoming.
Note: If you’re rolling your eyes that you shouldn’t have to do all this labor in an interaction where they should thank you for masking, you’re absolutely right. I believe that we all deserve to have interactions like the one with my “piano playing doctor”- and I know we don’t even expect that kind of red carpet treament; just don’t be nasty about it!
But I’m at a place of needing less resistance and more support for my still coviding life in my local community, so it’s more important to me to try to make these connections via the pathways practical psychology gives me rather than being right, or not doing some extra work to connect beyond the mask. I knew my approach worked this time when she showed me pictures of her kids and followed me into the lobby, commiserating about some recent tik-toks. I told her my husband would be back for her excellent shot-giving skills. The people in the waiting area were clearly perplexed by this playful interaction taking place with me, someone who, based on all the ways the overculture has labeled us, is supposedly so fearful and conspiracy-driven that they would never waste words or time with a nurse in a local clinic.
But here’s the thing: I now have a healthcare professional who works 4 minutes from my house, who will not try to school me out of masking (out of a threat to her significance or certainty needs), and who has a connection to us as a family! So, for future visits of any kind, or if my child should need urgent care, my chances of getting her to mask up and accept any other mitigations we request are astronomically higher than without this connection being forged.
Remember, had she made my safety difficult OR been outright critical and violated boundaries, I would have left the way I do in other situations, but this time, it worked. I filled her significance cup, and it was authentic- I meant it; she did give an amazing shot! I shared about our kids and listened as she shared about hers. It felt good. I need wins like that. Understanding human needs gets me much farther than assuming fear or ignorance at first pass. I’ve seen people say recently that those who are not coviding must be afraid of masks. Maybe so, but I prefer an interpretation that opens some new space for our interactions with people. We can see how far being labeled as fearful has gotten us in terms of influencing the masses (nowhere). And in my view, it’s not going to move anyone else anywhere closer to where we want them to be either.
Is this an excuse for the invalidating, sometimes vile behavior we receive as maskers/still coviders? Absolutely not, but it certainly could help influence more people to make changes that increase our ability to live in as much safety as possible while limiting transmission.
Let’s dig into the 6 Human Needs a little more before we apply it to masking and identify some interesting possibilities for increasing our own fulfillment, even in the midst of this current hellscape.
Chloe describes the Six Human Needs: (Linked so you can read in more depth)
1 – The need for certainty
The first need is for certainty. We need to feel safe, avoid pain, and feel comfortable in our environment and our relationships. Every individual needs to have some sense of certainty and security– a roof over one’s head, knowing where the next meal will come from, knowing how to obtain care when one is sick, knowing that a neighbor won’t attack us. These are just a few examples of what constitutes a basic sense of certainty.
2 – The need for uncertainty/variety
The second need is for uncertainty — for variety and challenges that will exercise our emotional and physical range. Everyone needs some variety in life. Our bodies, our minds, our emotional well-being all require uncertainty, exercise, suspense, surprise.The person caught in the same routine day after day will seek change and look for uncertainty. Just as a sense of security is reassuring, so the excitement that comes from variety is necessary to feel alive.
3 – The need for significance
The third need is for significance. Every person needs to feel important, needed, wanted. As babies, we all needed to feel that we were number one. Children in a family compete with each other and find a way to be special, to feel unique. Significance comes from comparing ourselves to others – in our quest for significance, we are always involved in hierarchical pecking orders and questions of superiority or inferiority. We can feel significant because we have achieved something, built something, succeeded at something, or we can seek significance by tearing down something or somebody.In its positive aspect, significance leads us to raise our standards. But if we are overly focused on significance, we will have trouble truly connecting with others — comparisons focus on differences rather than commonalities.
4 – The need for love and connection
The fourth need is for the experience of love and connection. Everyone needs connection with other human beings, and everyone strives for and hopes for love. An infant needs to be loved and cared for during a long period of time if it is to develop normally. Infants who are not held and touched will die. This need for love continues throughout our lives. It is epitomized by the concept of romantic love, the one person who will devote their life to us and make us feel complete. In some cultures, romantic love doesn’t exist; it’s replaced by the love of relatives, friends, and tribe. Some people rarely experience love, but they have many ways of feeling connection with others— in the community or in the workplace. The need to be loved is characteristic of all human beings. Code words for love/connection are togetherness, passion, unity, warmth, tenderness and desire.
5 – The need for growth
The fifth need is for growth. When we stop growing, we die. We need to constantly develop emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. We grow and change physically as we develop from infancy to adulthood and old age. We grow and change emotionally with every experience, and we grow intellectually as we respond to events and to the world around us. Anything that you want to remain in your life — your money, your health, your relationship, your happiness, love— must be cultivated, developed, expanded. Otherwise, it will degenerate. Some people satisfy the need to grow by working out physically or by reading books. Others need to study and learn constantly in order to feel that they are truly growing.
6 – The need for contribution
The sixth need is for contribution—to go beyond our own needs and to give to others. A life is incomplete without the sense that one is making a contribution to others or to a cause. It is in the nature of human beings to want to give back, to leave a mark on the world. Giving to others may mean giving time to community service, making a charitable donation, planting trees, writing a book, or giving to one’s children. Not only can everyone contribute in some way, but contribution is essential to a sense of fulfillment and to happiness.
Match the Feeling About Masking to the Human Need
Let’s do a matching game to apply the 6 Human Needs to our most visible sign of Still Coviding: the mighty mask! Read these expressions about masking from maskers and non-maskers. Check which of the 6 human needs appear to be most threatened with not being met OR the one that is most likely to be met by masking: (each feeling can relate to more than one need).
It creates unwanted attention for me.
It indicates some form of personal fear/weakness.
It is a temporary inconvenience with worthwhile outcomes for my life and others near me.
It eliminates my ability to fit into social settings easily.
It is a visible way to identify and connect with like-minded people.
It curbs/diminishes my sense of personal style- and distorts my appearance.
It curbs my pleasure/convenience (e.g., drinking, lipstick application, eating quickly, etc.).
It is an act that doesn’t align with my political group/faith group.
It limits my ability to have lots of new experiences and meet different people.
It is too uncomfortable to navigate/sustain on a sensory level.
It makes me look weak.
It makes me look informed and caring.
It makes people question my intelligence.
It makes people think I am a sheep.
It makes me intentional about smiling with my eyes when engaging with people, and listening more deeply to people
It allows me to connect with other people in a safer way.
It asserts that I have personal sovereignty over my body and makes my lack of consent to be infected visible.
It requires another monotonous step in the routine of leaving the house.
It enables me to keep Others safe and makes it more possible for disabled and immunocompromised people to engage in public life.
It limits the risk of repeated infections interfering with my ability to continue to learn and develop throughout my lifetime.
It interferes with my sense that life has moved on.
I enjoy picking out different colors/filters and frames for my masks and coordinating them with my outfits.
It makes others uncomfortable and impacts relationships negatively.
It enables me to be in public spaces I must be in to manage my life more safely even without other assurances in place (e.g., 2-way masking, clean air, tests, etc.)
Now, if you’re curious how your analysis aligns with my thinking, tally up how many feelings you have matched to each of the 6 human needs (my totals are at the bottom of the essay).
What did you notice? Did you see the pattern again? The fact that we are all experiencing the same NEEDS but with radically different outcomes shows up repeatedly. I can experience masking as a threat to one of my primary needs that are driving my decisions being met OR I can see masking as an opportunity to meet a primary need. #8 and #16 are both all about our human need for love and connection. The first statement perceives masking as a threat to love and connection and the other as an opportunity to have more love and connection. #2 and # 12 are both about our need for significance, the latter just makes masking part of meeting the need rather than an obstacle. In spite of how this exercise might make it seem, this isn’t just about how we “see” or frame things- the power lies in identifying our core needs, which are the strongest drivers for us, and how our unique beliefs and rules shape how we seek to meet those needs.
So, in case you are wondering, as people often are when human needs psychology is discussed, if our needs shift in different contexts, the answer is yes and no. We all have a center of gravity where we are most comfortable- so like the old cliché you take yourself everywhere you go, we tend to believe that these remain consistent across circumstances and contexts. That said, there are times when we may experience a different set of needs drivers (e.g., a brand new job or professional opportunity may shift us into the need for more certainty than what we experience in our lives in general). With something as extreme as the pandemic, it’s possible that our need structures and tendencies were entirely uprooted.
Mine were! Prior to the pandemic, I had a pretty established need-meeting structure that I was proud of. It was a long journey to get there. In different seasons of my life, I, like most humans, was unknowingly driven by a shifting combination of my top two needs. There was the immediate post-college priority on variety/uncertainty and love and connection, the career-building phase driven primarily by my needs for significance and contribution, the first marriage/divorce phase driven by my needs for certainty and love and connection overshadowing all the others, and each of these seasons had outcomes related to the unique need combination I was unknowingly driven by.
I recall the season of career building as one of the most painful because I was tirelessly serving in some pretty intense roles and giving everything I had, but I was still driven to be recognized for it, and my inner and outer worlds suffered as a result. Circumstances, age, and preferences would shift, and so would my top two needs.
The other primary difference in my outcomes arose from the combination of my first and second driving needs. Different combinations of needs create radically different outcomes. Eventually, thanks to my own therapy post-divorce, I hit a wall that led me to the realization that even though I thought I was in control all along, it was the immense horsepower of my unidentified human needs that was driving most of my choices in life.
After years of intense focus on my own growth and development, I inhabited a sweet spot of being driven by the two human needs of Growth and Contribution for a few shining years prior to 2019. And here’s what Chloe says about that:
The first four needs — certainty, variety, love and significance— are essential for human survival. They are the fundamental needs of the personality — everyone must feel that they have met them on some level, even if they have to lie to themselves to do so. The last two needs, growth and contribution, are essential to human fulfillment. They are the needs of the spirit, and not everyone finds a way to satisfy them, although they are necessary for lasting fulfillment.
When our needs for love, growth, and contribution are satisfied, they tend to encompass all our other needs. When we focus on something beyond ourselves, most of our problems and sources of pain become less significant, Contribution is the human need that effectively regulates your other five needs. If you are focused on contributing to others, you have the certainty of being able to contribute (there is always a way); you have variety (contribution is highly interactive); you have significance because you know you are helping others and improving their lives; the spiritual bond created when you help others gives you a deep sense of connection; and you grow by creatively helping others.
Ya’ll, those years were the best years of my life. I felt like I had crawled out of the miry pit and been washed in joy. I am not exaggerating. I fully anticipated living out of this rich, nurturing place in my inner being and my new marriage for the rest of my life. But giving birth just as the pandemic started catapulted me right back into a different need base I thought I would never return to. Certainty and Certainty is what I jokingly called my two top needs for the first six months of 2020. But seriously, my every need with my Mama Bear hormones surging and listening to ambulances in the background in calls back “home” (I spent most of my adult life in NYC) had me doubled down on certainty AND also love and connection because the ability to meet those needs seemed so fleeting in those early months of the pandemic.
I had no resources, time, energy, or focus to apply to my previously primary need for growth- and I definitely had nothing to contribute to anyone other than rage and anger and, yes, the very real emotion of fear in those early days ( aside from helping my family of course) but it sucked. I didn’t only lose the spiritual path I had followed to meet my other needs through contribution, but I also lost all the survival entry points I had developed over the years to meet my needs as well. My strong need for variety had been met through being a foodie and a world traveler for work and pleasure- that was clearly out the window. It was a huge loss because I met lots of connection needs through these activities as well- AND significance needs fit in there too (e.g., look how unique I am, “entreprenuering” my way through Africa and Europe). On and on, my previous ways of meeting my needs evaporated one after the other as the pandemic continued and worsened.
Did yours?
I talked about this to my husband (also trained in Strategic Intervention Coaching) yesterday, who said, “It’s true; our need-meeting structures were disrupted/ destroyed by the pandemic. The things I see you writing about, like letting people in and applying your thinking to these new problems, are in part answers to the question you and I started asking after the initial trauma wore off: how will we ever meet our needs in this new world rather than paying the high price (both now and in the future), for trying to live or even just survive with so many unmet needs. It’s like you’ve been pushing your strong need for certainty post-pandemic into the back seat again (now that we have a lot of mitigations we trust to engage in a safer way), and you are actively inviting growth and contribution back into the driver’s seat by being vulnerable, sharing your own challenges and emerging understandings, etc.” (yes, he’s amazing).
And I think he’s right. When I look back over the last few months of my writing, I see a clear theme of my commitment to live an “extraordinary life,” even on a hellscape of a timeline. What I’ve really been saying is I want to experience fulfillment in my life. I spent years wanting and working for success. But as Tony says, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. In this case, success could be considered managing to avoid being repeatedly infected——— but to accomplish that incredibly difficult task and not experience fulfillment in my life would feel like a failure to me. I don’t get another timeline, and neither do you. Thankfully, human needs psychology illustrates that I don’t have to choose success or fulfillment- it can be used as a path to experiencing both.
So the question is, “How can we use our current context and conditions while Still Coviding to focus on our spiritual needs for contribution and growth?” All of our needs are valid, but it is unlikely that we will be able to reconstruct the ways we met them before the pandemic, so why not create some new focus on the spiritual needs that effectively regulate all the others and create a clear path to fulfillment?
FROM CERTAINTY TO CONTRIBUTION
Still Coviding to meet the universal need for certainty in the most uncertain times is not wrong- it’s actually wise. But can you imagine how different the outcomes would be in our Still Coviding lives if we were doing it with an intentional and explicit focus on meeting our needs for growth and contribution? We would still get the certainty, the variety, the significance, love and connection, AND fulfillment, and we would lose a LOT of the emotions and experiences that don’t serve us during this critical time of our lives. We need to nourish ourselves, and we need to nourish others.
This group is full of examples of people who have anchored themselves in contribution in so many different areas of life and work, and I am beyond grateful for their examples. I also realize that all of us don’t have the capacity or the health necessary to create the kind of programs, advocacy efforts, entrepreneurial ventures, and more that we see in our still coviding groups and on covid-Twitter, BUT we can all contribute in our own way. I can’t tell you how many messages I’ve gotten from people thanking me for the essays I work hard to share each week in an attempt to validate you and encourage you on this challenging path in some way. Prior to writing, I hit many dead ends in seeking to contribute due to real-life obstacles, like child care for our special needs children, etc., before landing on something within my reach, like writing each week. And even though it sometimes feels like such a smaller scale effort than some of my pre-pandemic ways of contributing, it has made a world of difference in my outlook, and, yes, it has been consistently filling my contribution and growth cups. The more I write, the more I contribute, and the more I grow, the more I write- it’s becoming a virtuous cycle in many ways.
TAKE ACTION
Obviously there are endless ways / options for contribution. Since this essay focuses on contribution, I am sharing a few paths we are taking action on in case it serves you in deciding how to help.
I just saw an update from Chef Andres, posting from my cousin’s town where they have no water and power that World Central Kitchen is now mobilized in Appalachia. WCK’s life- giving teams are currently serving in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mexico, Gaza, Lebanon, Israel and Ukraine.
https://wck.org/
I don’t know about the political orientation of this group, but given the incredible need for water rescue in the Carolina’s, their work is needed now more than ever:
https://unitedcajunnavy.org/
The NC Diaper Bank has published an Amazon list: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3BGBPLS35F96P/ref=hz_ls_biz_ex
Given the current conditions a couple of hours from my home in Western North Carolina, it is only fitting for me to close with a contribution-focused call to action! For any of you who want to support an NC-based non-profit advocating for safe health care and community engagement who is extending their local efforts to the impacted regions of our state, please follow Covid Action GSO. The group has already begun dropping off masks to local groups who are flying supplies into the hardest-hit areas. The situation is changing rapidly, but COVID Action GSO will be coordinating with regional mask blocs and working to make sure that as much PPE, air filters, and other layers of mitigation as possible are available to individuals and shelters. Right now, there isn’t much information posted widely about drop-offs and local donations, but check the account later this week for more info. which will be shared as it becomes available, and feel free to contact me for more information as well.
MATCHING FEELINGS AND NEEDS TALLY: ( note: some feelings can relate to more than one need, and the totals do not imply that this exercise indicates the primary needs at play when it comes to masking). Love to hear in the comments what you came up with or any ideas/thoughts about the essay.
Certainty: 4
Uncertainty/Variety: 4
Significance: 8
Love and Connection: 5
Growth:1
Contribution: 5
P.S. ( I will share a version of this as a note on the Substack App this week)
As our community grows, I’ve been working on new ideas about how we can create new forms of contribution and growth-focused acts of nourishment for ourselves and each other before we enter our fifth Pandemic Holiday season. 5!!!! I can hardly believe it!
We know the drill the holidays bring- the questions come, we answer with painstaking detail and thought to still typically be met by invalidating, judgmental statements of one kind or the other, sometimes we are pressured to abandon our standards and safety, and sometimes we experience threats of disconnection or even a complete relationship rupture.
As the years and holiday seasons mount, it seems to intensify- so before we start hearing some version of “it’s 5 years already, how many more holidays are you going to miss?” Let’s get our needs met before they get jostled around in the toxic stew of other unidentified and unmet needs from the people in our lives, and do our best to experience a fulfilling holiday season even amidst all the damage we’ve witnessed. I’ll share more soon!