Wild Lion*esses Pride by Jay

How to Stop Fighting and Start Understanding

0:00

-24:58

How to Stop Fighting and Start Understanding

I used to think my anger was the problem. It was a signal. My personal story shows how I followed those red flashing lights to find my unmet needs and build a life of my own.

Wild Lion*esses Pride by Jay

Aug 24, 2025

How to Stop Fighting and Start Understanding

My Personal Guide to Using Needs to Build Bridges Instead of Walls.

Today I am experimenting. This iisn’t some neat essay. Think of it as me talking from the middle of a rut. And here’s the thing about ruts: they don’t have clean edges. They’re muddy, uneven, and you can’t always tell if you’re climbing out or sinking deeper.

I'm in the middle of losing my old life. My brother will probably buy the house we both own. That’ll give me just enough to pay off my debts. And what’s left—maybe twenty, twenty-five thousand euros. I don’t know if I'll ever be able to work again, and the country I live in makes me feel sick and isolated. I'm not sure if any other money will be forthcoming. That this creates feelings and tensions within me is an understatement. And still that’s my starting point.

In the meantime, I’m living on unemployment money from the German state. I’m on medical leave. Trauma, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, and body pain are what I carry. The medical service is still deciding if I can work again or not. If they decide I can’t, I can apply for a disability pension. And here’s the important part: unemployment money ties me to Germany, but a disability pension I can take with me. That makes all the difference when I think about my future.

So here I am—debts, evaluations, not a lot of money, no clear plan. The ground keeps shifting.

Maybe you’ve had this, too: waking up and realizing the future is just a fog bank, and you can’t see what’s in it. I found out I can live with that fog. I don’t have another choice. Impermanence is always true, only now it shows itself clearly. So I try to stay with the moment and ask: what do I need right now? Some days it’s clarity. Some days it’s comfort. Sometimes just rest, without the guilt. Sometimes a voice, someone on the other end of the line. And sometimes—what I miss most—hugs. Shared dinners. Laughing together. A hand on my arm. Simple body contact.

When I started my healing process, I was completely checked out from myself. I couldn’t remember anything except what was written in certificates or shown in photographs. People would tell me, "You must remember, we were there together," and I'd just nod, pretend, and play along. But I didn’t remember. I just didn't know.

I lived like that for decades—a kind of ghost of myself, just walking through the world. I was flesh and bone, yeah, but hollow.

I played myself, acted my way through situations. I was there in body but not in being. No needs. No feelings. No memories, or only the most recent ones. My body needed to forget. Forgetting was survival. Forgetting was a need. Dissociation was a need. That was how I shielded myself.

And still—I refuse to give up. I refuse to let my life be defined by a state office, by a pension decision that may or may not come. My needs matter more to me than the safety they promise. I may not be sure yet where I will go or how I will do it, but I will try to make my life based on what I need for myself. That is the only ground I can stand on now.

But it wasn’t always this way, of course.

So how did I get here? How did I move from clinging to safety at any cost—the safety my little child-self built her whole life around—to saying out loud: my needs matter more than the safety anyone else might offer me?

It started in November 2020, when I began coaching. Right away it was about both: feelings and needs. My coach kept asking: "What do you feel, what do you need?" And I realized I didn’t know. I had lived so long without either. Safety had been everything. Survival had been everything. And naming? Naming was new. Naming was terrifying.

And yet—that’s what began to change me.

Right from the first session she asked me, "So what are you feeling right now?" And I just froze. Total blank. Nothing came. Then she asked, "And what’s the need beneath that?" Again—nothing. Blank.

She stayed with me. Patient. Gentle. Compassionate in a way I hadn’t known before. Every week the same two questions: what are you feeling, what do you need? And every week I stumbled. I thought, "I’ll never get it right. I’ll never get anywhere."

Those first two months felt endless. Just me, sitting there, with or without words. Sometimes I had them, sometimes I didn’t. And when I didn’t, it felt like standing in front of a wall.

She gave me lists. Lists of feelings. Lists of needs. Lists of what she called “fake feelings.” Even lists of violent words. Always lists. Because I didn’t have language for any of it.

Turns out my school taught me algebra, but skipped the whole ‘here’s how to name your feelings and needs’ part.

And In my world it was never about me, anyway. Wants? Needs? Those were off-limits. Any hint of ‘I want this’ or ‘I can’t do that’ got swatted down with, ‘Don’t make it about you.’ So the words went quiet. Mouth shut, radar off, vocabulary for feelings: deleted.

The lists opened up a possibility. They gave me a glimpse of how rich language could be. Not just six or eight words for feelings. So many. Layers, shades, subtleties. It was amazing. Totally amazing. To see that feelings could be described in dozens of ways, each carrying its own weight, its own color.

That was the beginning of me finding nuanced language again.

And then in January 2021—it happened. A quantum transformation. That’s the only way I can say it. I became Jay. It was direct. It came through naming. Naming feelings. Naming needs. Seeing how much of me was still tangled up in my mother’s script: obedience, compliance, silence. And when I finally said what I want, what I need, when I actually claimed it, Judith ended. Jay began.

So what happens after a moment like that?

Oh don’t misunderstand me, I was changed. I suddenly found something in me that was totally new to me. Confidence. Trust. And still, not everything changed in that second.

Still, you don't just float away in transformation. You sit down with yourself, and it’s practice, practice, practice. Over and over, like a drum you can’t turn off: what am I feeling, what’s the need underneath?

And needs?

Oh, nobody told me this—they don’t just disappear.

They don’t wander off when you ignore them. They pile up. Like bills you never opened, letters leaning in a messy stack until the whole table sags under the weight. And sooner or later, whether you read them or not, they shape every move you make.

That’s when the Navigators came along for the ride. Just two pages—feelings on one, needs on the other. Snapped photos, tucked them in my phone. Way easier than lugging around the eight-page starter pack. Whenever the fog closed in, out came the lists. Support? Care? Encouragement? Help? Each one had its own flavor, rolled differently in my mouth, felt different in my body. Still, half the time I was staring at the words like a tourist with a map upside down—clueless, clumsy, trying to figure out what the heck I was actually feeling.

And ease—that word kept tricking me. I’d circle it again and again, and almost every time what I actually meant was comfort. My life had been heavy, serious, too serious. Humor was never safety. Humor was pointed at me: queer jokes, fat jokes, smart-people jokes. Always the punchline, never the laugh. People said "harmless." It wasn’t. So ease, for me, meant comfort. A corner without ridicule. A seat where nobody sharpened their teeth on me.

And creativity? That one’s a whole meadow of its own. Do I mean adventure, a little kick, something to wake me up? Do I mean variety, just a change so the day doesn’t grind me flat? Do I mean making something, shaping it with my hands until it exists? Or maybe I mean just being entertained, setting the burden down for an hour. All of that fits under creativity. All of that is need

That’s why I took the Navigator into English. I hadn’t seen anything like it. I wanted others to have words too—to point at what’s missing, so it doesn’t just stay shapeless inside.

Infographics for Despcriptions of Needs and Feelings. — NVC Navigator Needs and Feelings

Hello my dear paid subscribers: you can grab my two Navigators—feelings + needs as PDF file—in English straight from the Download page. Everyone else can pick them up for about the price of a coffee. Links waiting for you at the end.

And then there were the "false feelings," as the lists called them. I knew them all too well. I feel disrespected. I feel not taken seriously. I feel ignored. I feel unseen. Those were the phrases that tripped me. "Not taken seriously"—that one is carved into me like a groove. Every time it happened, I blew up.

In Germany there was this old cigarette commercial. The HB Männchen — a little cartoon man who would suddenly explode in frustration, puff up, shoot to the ceiling. People used to say, “you’re like that HB person again.” That was me. Zero to blast-off in a second. And the worst part? I didn’t even know why. I just knew I was gone, up at the ceiling, out of reach. And that saying, it got me fuming all over again as I was now feeling ridiculed on top of it.

Coaching didn’t smooth me out. It pressed pause. Stop, look, listen. Why am I back at the ceiling again? What’s boiling underneath? Which need is throwing sparks, begging for air? The Navigator wasn’t what got me there—it only lent me words once I had a glimpse. What got me there was digging, descending, what I came to call subscendence: tracking the eruption back down inside, crawling along the fault lines, following each split until I reached the initial experience. I walked memory corridors, leafed through so cio lo gy, history, anything to make sense of why I blew like a volcano—lava spilling out of me, scorching conversations, burning trust, searing ground so badly I lost one employee, nearly two. My words smoked through the air, left a trail behind me. That was my fire. That was my fuming.

And what I found was that those so-called “false feelings” weren’t fake at all. They were signals. Red flashing lights. Behind not taken seriously were unmet needs for belonging, appreciation, connection, exchange. Add the anger, the rage that came with it, and the trail pointed to the unmet needs of justice, self-determination and authenticity.

Every blow-up became a clue. Every HB-moment was a map waiting to be read.

And then there was another big shift. I started to see how almost everything we say to each other isn’t about needs directly—it’s about strategies. That blew something wide open for me.

Take a hug. If I say to you, “can you please give me a hug?” it looks like I’m asking for arms around me. That’s the strategy. The need underneath? Connection. Warmth. To feel close.

Or take the kitchen. After cooking, I might say, “could you clean the kitchen?” On the surface, it’s about dishes, countertops, water running. But it’s not. It’s about order. Harmony. Maybe balance. I cooked, therefore you clean. It might be about peace, when I walk in the next morning and it isn’t chaos.

Or think about work. Asking a boss for a raise—sure, it looks like it’s about money. But really, it’s about appreciation. Recognition. Dignity. You want to know you matter, that your work carries weight. The money is only the wrapper.

And here’s the part that changed conversations for me: needs are never in conflict. Only strategies clash. The kitchen example makes that so clear. My need might be order. Your need might be relaxation—maybe connection if you want us to curl up and watch TV together. On the surface it looks like a fight: kitchen versus television. Underneath, it’s just two different needs speaking at the same time.

Once I saw that, I could change how I spoke. Instead of "you never help, you always watch TV"—which just makes things worse—I could say, "I want order. I see your need for rest. Let's watch first and clean together after." And suddenly there was room.

Needs aren’t just on or off switches. They live on scales. My need for order might sit at a four. Your need for relaxation might be an eight. That matters. Because once you see it like that, it’s not about winning. It’s about noticing the scales and finding space between them.

And it goes wider. Needs shape families, workplaces, even politics. One group may have security turned all the way up. Another may have individuality turned all the way up. At first it looks like opposition. Yet often, if you listen deeper, the unmet need underneath is the same. That is where bridges can be built. That is what Rosenberg showed: once you name the need beneath the strategy, you stop being enemies. You start being human with each other.

My future grows out of my needs. That’s the soil. Each time I name them, each time I live in ways that honor them, something steadies. When I don’t, the old patterns come tugging. I get pulled off my own ground. My little child is never far—ready to grab the wheel. She learned to keep me safe through compliance, through doing what was asked, through shrinking herself. That was her way of surviving. And she did it well. I thank her for that. I hold her close. She still tries. Now I can drive with her beside me—listening, caring—while guiding us forward.

Needs are also what that child never got. Appreciation. Being seen. Having an empathic witness. The lack of those is what left the deepest mark. Trauma is absence. Naming my needs now is how I give myself that witness. Each word brings something back that was missing.

So when I look forward, the questions rise: what do I need for a life that feeds me? What kind of ground lets me stand with ease? The first word that comes is belonging. Real belonging. A place where I don’t have to hide. A community that welcomes difference and celebrates it.

Here in Germany that feels hard. Belonging is tied to sameness, and I live otherwise. I speak otherwise. I carry expression that doesn’t fit. Too often that’s met with envy, mistrust, or the cold shoulder. My longing is for a culture where individuality isn’t punished. Where diversity is lived, not performed. Where dignity doesn’t mean blending in.

My search for a home is the same as my search for that culture. It may mean traveling, exploring, breathing in many places until one feels right. Until I can say: here I can stay.

Practical things matter—visas, money, laws. I may feel belonging and still face those barriers. Then the question shifts: what steps make it possible? Which path opens to meet the need? Because the need doesn’t vanish. And naming it keeps me moving closer to fulfillment.

That’s why my future and my needs aren’t two stories. They’re one thread. When I give voice to my needs, I set conditions for a future that holds me whole. When I listen, I give space to my child self, to the witness she never had. That is my choice. That is dignity.

Every day the question comes back: what do I need right now? Maybe clarity. Maybe comfort. Rest without shame. Connection. Sometimes the need is larger—a vision of community, a place to live, a ground for belonging. Each answer is a step.

That is the practice. One need at a time. Future and present bound together.

Thank you for walking this path with me.