Unmet Needs: What They Are And Why They Matter

According to the schema therapy model (Young et al., 2003), unmet emotional needs give rise to early maladaptive schemas (EMS, or ‘schemas’ for short): negative, longstanding themes or patterns in our lives that are pervasive and problematic. Schema therapy expands on related approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) by highlighting the developmental origins of psychological problems, targeting the maladaptive coping styles that perpetuate these difficulties, and emphasizing the importance of unmet needs.

What are emotional needs?

Every human being has the same basic needs: food, water, shelter, and rest. Children are also born with core emotional needs, such as the need for love and safety, independence, self-expression, playfulness, and limits and control.

Young and colleagues (2003) originally described five core emotional needs, which have since been elaborated:

1. Secure attachments and connection to others. Children need relationships characterized by safety, stability, nurturance, affection, trustworthiness, mutual sharing, and acceptance. This requires attachment figures that are loyal, dependable, predictable, and unconditionally loving.

2. Autonomy, competence, and sense of identity. Children need to cultivate a sense of mastery, capability, and self-reliance based on guidance, support, and direction from others. Children also need a sense of identity, direction, and an awareness of their personal boundaries.

3. Freedom to express needs and emotions. Children need to express their needs, preferences, opinions, and emotional experiences without guilt, rejection, or fear of punishment. This requires attachment figures that are attentive, curious, validating, emotionally open, and containing.

4. Spontaneity and play. Children need spontaneity, playfulness, and opportunities to have fun. This requires attachment figures that are playful, spontaneous, and value fun and relaxation.

5. Realistic limits and self-control. Children need limits to forgo short-term pleasure, understand societal rules, and fulfill routines, responsibilities, and longer-term goals. This required attachment figures that encourage goal setting, follow through, responsibility to others, cooperation, and frustration tolerance.

Additional core needs have since been proposed, although they have not yet been fully incorporated into the schema therapy model. They include fairness, self-coherence (Arntz et al., 2021), connection to nature (O’Sheedy, 2021), novelty and change (Flanagan, 2010), meaning (Meier, 2019), and creativity (e.g., Kudryavtsev, 2011).

What are unmet needs and where do they come from?

Interactions between a child’s temperament, parenting, sociocultural context, and significant life experiences can give rise to unmet emotional needs, which form the basis of early maladaptive schemas.

Young and colleagues (2003) identify four key childhood experiences that often contribute to the development of early maladaptive schemas:

• Toxic withholding. The child is given too little of what they need, such as insufficient attention, affection, or stability (e.g., “My parents weren’t affectionate towards me”).

• Toxic excess. The child is given too much of what they need, such as being overindulged, overprotected, or granted excessive freedoms (e.g., “I could do whatever I liked as a child”).

• Traumatization. The child is harmed, victimized, or humiliated, such as through parental abuse, bullying, or discrimination (e.g., “I was abused by someone in my family”).

• Selective internalization. The child internalizes maladaptive attitudes, such as a perfectionism or pessimistic outlook, that are modeled by a significant other (e.g., “My parents told me to never trust people”).

Contextual factors are often important too. For example, children can grow up in difficult circumstances which contribute to unmet emotional needs (e.g., “My family were very different to everyone else in my neighborhood”).

Temperament can also contribute by influencing parenting styles, which may in turn frustrate a child’s emotional needs (e.g., Pekdoğan & Kanak, 2022). For example, fearful children may elicit protective parenting, leading to increased anxiety and insecurity. Children are also believed to have a “differential susceptibility” to their childhood environments and experiences (Belsky, 2013). For example, reactive children are more likely to flounder in response to poor parenting. This explains why some individuals develop EMS in the absence of severe trauma (Lockwood & Perris, 2012).

Lastly, emotional needs arise in new arenas as children mature and undergo developmental events and transitions (e.g., establishing stable friendships, experiencing academic success, and so on). Research indicates that toxic experiences and associated unmet needs in these areas can contribute to EMS formation, such as bullying (e.g., Alba et al., 2018). However, Young and colleagues (2003) suggest schemas emerging in later development tend to be less pervasive than those rooted in early childhood experiences.

Six tips for exploring unmet needs with clients

1. Normalize emotional needs. Every human being has basic needs, including core emotional needs. All children are born with these needs, although the strength of these needs can vary from person to person.

2. Explore “too little” and “too much.” Core emotional needs may be unmet because a child is given too little of what they needed or because they were given too much, such as excessive freedom or overprotection.

3. Explore adolescence as well as childhood. Emotional needs in school, peer groups, and the wider community are important as children mature. For this reason, unmet needs in these areas can also contribute to schema formation (e.g., social exclusion at school leading to a social isolation schema).

4. Link needs to schema development. If core emotional needs were not met during childhood, a person is likely to develop early maladaptive schemas. Individual temperament, developmental context, and significant life experiences can also shape schema development.

5. Use concrete questions. Useful questions include: How were your core needs responded to as a child? Which needs were not met or met too intensely?  Do any memories or images come to mind as you think about your unmet needs? Can you see a link between your unmet needs and your current difficulties?

6. Explore the client’s experience of these conversations. Some clients may feel uncomfortable discussing unmet needs, especially if it feels like they’re blaming their family, caregivers, or community. Explore these concerns gently and collaboratively. These reactions can also draw attention to important schemas and modes.

Further reading

• Alba, J., Calvete, E., Wante, L., Van Beveren, M. L., & Braet, C. (2018). Early maladaptive schemas as moderators of the association between bullying victimization and depressive symptoms in adolescents. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 42(1), 24-35.

• Arntz, A., Rijkeboer, M., Chan, E., Fassbinder, E., Karaosmanoglu, A., Lee, C. W., & Panzeri, M. (2021). Towards a reformulated theory underlying schema therapy: Position paper of an international workgroup. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 45, 1007-1020. DOI: 10.1007/s10608-021-10209-5.

• Belsky, J. (2013). Differential susceptibility to environmental influences. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 7(2), 15-31.

• Flanagan, C. M. (2010). The case for needs in psychotherapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 20(1), 1.

• Kudryavtsev, V. T. (2011). The phenomenon of child creativity. International journal of early years education, 19(1), 45-53.

• Lockwood, G., & Perris, P. (2012). A new look at core emotional needs. In M. V. Vreeswijk, J. Broersen, & M. Nadort (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of schema therapy: Theory, research, and practice.

• Meier, I. (2019). Basic needs and complexes: similarities between feeling‐toned complexes, emotional schema and affective states. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 64(5), 761-779.

• O’Sheedy, B. (2021). Is connectedness to nature a core human need? Schema Therapy Bulletin, 23, 10–14.

• Pekdoğan, S., & Kanak, M. (2022). Child temperament as a predictor of parents' potential for emotional abuse. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 210(5), 330-334.

• Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema therapy: A practitioner’s guide. Guilford Press.