Are You Needy? How You See Clingy People Can Reveal Your Secret Weakness — Or Strength
We all know someone who texts too often, texts obsessively, and demands to know our whereabouts all the time. This annoying, clingy behavior is not an attractive trait, but needy people aren't the ones with the problem — we are. In the video, "In Defense Of 'Needy' People", The School of Life explains that needy people hold the unexpected advantage of being confident enough within themselves to ask for help.
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We feel someone is sickeningly "needy" or "clingy" when we don't see ourselves as appropriate targets of their need. We become sunk in self-doubt that we're not reliable, strong, dependable, admirable, or decent enough, or in other words, not quite grown-up. This insecurity on our part is why we perceive someone as a perfect target for mockery when they need something from us.
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"We suspect that someone who needs us enough to depend on us for a pleasant weekend or evening must be diseased," says The School of Life.
The root of our disdain for needy people is self-hatred. For example, we all want love, but when this love is reciprocated, it could be alarmingly if we haven't convinced ourselves of our own lovability. We see people who cling to us as naive for finding us wonderful, or at any rate more wonderful than we feel we are.
Psychologists have proven that humans need to relate with others to be happy, and that being left out can be stressful. We have an innate need to feel connected, whether it's through asking for help or helping others. So, why do we harshly judge those who are more open to seek social connections?
We may encounter a lover that is too clingy, and see them as incapable of being self-sufficient. However, The School of Life takes a different perspective: "They most probably aren’t asking too much at all. They just aren’t afflicted with a sense that it is peculiar to be loved or to love."
Needy people are strong enough to reveal their vulnerability, which is a strength, not a weakness. We need to adopt a mindset that we're all both OK and sometimes awful human beings; this is a more accurate vision of what constitutes normality.
We start to find other people less needy when we accept that there's nothing strange about someone taking a liking to us.
After all, being called needy isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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