How Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Helped My Grief Journey
Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who practiced in the 1950’s and ‘60s. He is most famed for his theory that humans are motivated by five categories of needs which must be obtained within an ascending hierarchy. Starting from the bottom and moving our way up a pyramid, the categories are: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization.
According to Maslow, one cannot move upward in the hierarchy until the needs below it are met. To simply summarize each of the five categories, we first have physiological needs which consist of the very basics a human needs to survive. One needs air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and the ability to reproduce and continue humankind.
Once these basic needs are met, the next ascending level is safety needs, one’s personal security or how safe and taken care of they are. Things like reliable employment, a secure home, personal security, availability of necessary resources, and one’s health all fall here.
Third up, we have love and belonging. Friendship, intimacy, family, a sense of connection. Every human needs and craves love and belonging. The caveat within this hierarchy is that first before one feels loved and a sense of connection and belonging, one must have their basic survival and security needs met. Within families, and especially parent-child relationships, this is where the hierarchy gets some specific attention in psychology and sociology. We’ll touch on this later.
Fourth up, once one feels physiologically sound, safe, and loved, they can ascend to the need for esteem. This need seeks respect from self and others, can seek status and recognition, is self-esteemed, strong, and has a sense of freedom.
Finally, and I’d argue the most sought after need today, is self-actualization or the personal desire to become the most and best that one can be.
Now, as I mentioned, according to Maslow one cannot ascend up the pyramid until the needs below have been met. I don’t completely agree with this, as I’ve personally felt loved, cared for, with intimate connection, yet simultaneously worried for safety needs such as personal security of finances, or safety of a home during a severe storm. I never stopped feeling love, in fact sometimes that feeling of belonging was only amplified from scarcity. You see people in extreme poverty with unconditionally loving homes, full of interpersonal respect and personal freedom.
However…I’ve also witnessed the terror of a sleep-deprived toddler, unable to do anything safe or loving in the presence of weary fatigue, HA! (laughing & crying at the same time…)
I remember first learning about Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs in my Intro to Psychology course in college. It fascinated me. Yet, it never really came up again in my undergrad as I worked my way through more intensive psychology courses.
I had almost put it out of my memory, until one January day in 2021. I had newly embarked on a radical embrace of healing my grief from the loss of my mother months earlier, and as I would uncover, even more unresolved grief from the loss of my brother sixteen years prior.
As my mind swirled in wonder at the new enlightenments and discoveries I was making in therapy, suddenly I remembered Maslow. I grabbed my phone and googled it: hierarchy of needs. There it was. “Yes!” I nodded. My current deep-seeded pain, sorrow, and frequent apathy towards others got a fresh sparkle of light shone upon it. More than chalking up all of those emotions as “grief”, I realized I hadn’t been able to move through this pain because I was lacking two imperative needs: safety and love & belonging.
Losing my mom, my best friend, my confidante, my soulmate meant turning off an endless faucet of love that I had forever received, my whole life. And that love was returned from me to her. More than love, she understood who I am at the core because she watched me grow up; curious, strong, shy, sensitive, and determined. She saw through my sharpness, my occasional bitterness, and gave me full freedom of expressing myself. She had been my world for more than half of my life as I lived with her and grew into an independent woman.
Further, I had so much pent up fear about developing an autoimmune disease like what had ultimately taken my mother’s life, my grandmother’s life, and would have taken my brother’s if he hadn’t passed in a sudden accident. I was achy, lethargic, and generally unwell, fearing for my health.
Without my sense of security about my health, nor my mom here to love me for me, encourage me when I had outrageously wild dreams, or even just tell me that I was doing a fantastic job as a mom to littles, I just went black.
I completely lost any capacity to give love or receive it. I feared leaving my little children and husband without a mother and wife because of some disease that I was imagining in my mind. I also lost my self-esteem. Being the most that I could be, the best that I could be, being self-actualized was so far in the distance, I couldn’t even see a speck of it. There was no way I could try to be my best self when I was struggling to even meet my basic needs.
That’s when I got urgent about healing. That’s when I reached out to my best friend and my sister to connect about the simultaneous pain and apathy I was living in. That’s when I saw my doctor to make sure I was healthy. That’s when I got connected to a therapist and made an appointment for that same week.
After a few short weeks of therapy, spiritual and psychological homework from my sessions, a shift in my nutrition, a return to yoga, and most importantly, an unshakable commitment to honor my emotions and grief, I had this revelation about Maslow’s Hierarchy.
I realized that without this person who had played an instrumental, vital role in my life and meeting my needs I had painfully collapsed downwards on the pyramid. That realization alone allowed me to look at the pyramid, assess which needs were being met and which weren’t, and make some changes to ensure that I was once again feeling safe, secure, loved, belonged, and intimately connected.
As I set my boundaries, communicated my needs with my husband and friends, and did everything I needed to personally, I eventually found safety, health, and love again. I gained self-esteem once again. I blew past the level of confidence and strength I once had, and found myself with an astounding amount of those qualities that I once envied.
And finally, after carefully and meticulously monitoring my inner compass to be sure I wasn’t distracting myself from my grief, I’ve been on a blissful journey of again striving to be the best that I can be; sharing my story, wisdoms, struggles, triumphs, discoveries, love, and light with those who need it. And that’s truly what healing is about; Healing the self so fully that wholeness and compassion overflow into the environments around us, affecting, changing, and healing those nearest and dearest.
Always in your corner, here to serve and assist you on your personal journey through grief,