Why does neediness continue after it has been satisfied? — YouTube from the CEC Library

Moisés, could you clarify whether the neediness we feel is one thing that only appears to be several or whether there are several kinds? I ask because if we always feel a need for something—sex, purchases, confirmation of ideas, affection, among others—and manage to satisfy that need, theoretically we should not feel it again. However, that is not what happens. The neediness seems to persist, as though it were something we are not identifying correctly; that is, we are not meeting our real needs.

Listener, I see myself in this world as someone who should make the most of it, but we know that we cannot fill every moment of the life we have. Neediness is something we cannot clearly detect. I would say that it is an emotional burden resulting from many things. When we direct our neediness toward something specific, we are merely channeling it in one direction, but it may be present in other areas as well. Because we cannot identify the exact origin of this neediness, when we buy something we do not eliminate it, because it is a bottomless pit. We do not address the neediness at its source.

Neediness is a set of situations and needs that must be satisfied but do not have a specific name. We cannot simply say, "My neediness is called such-and-such," and resolve it. We may be heading in the wrong direction. When we make many purchases, we try to resolve our neediness, but that does not happen. I have already talked about several situations like this. For example, a person is at the mall, sees a shoe, and decides not to buy it. They walk around, return, and end up buying it without knowing why, since they may not even wear the shoe; if they wear it once, that is already a lot. Upon arriving home, they may have 100 pairs of shoes, some of which they do not even remember why they bought.

This is an attempt to fill the void created by the neediness we have not identified, something we can perceive only through a search in the conscious and unconscious. This neediness arose at some point in our life, not in one specific situation but in several that added together, forming a complex of things.

This is a very complex subject that deserves much conversation and reflection. Neediness in human beings is something created by the need to acquire things and keep up with other people. The media constantly repeat: "Buy this, buy that," creating unrestrained competition within us, and advertising itself fosters this need to spend money. Consider the example of cell phones: you buy one, and six months later another comes out, and so it continues. We need to reflect on this because it is also a form of neediness.