Why I Could Never Say What I Really Needed
I could tell you, in detail, what other people needed from me. I could not, with any reliability, tell you what I actually needed from them. Ask me directly, and I'd default to "I'm fine" or some version of a need small enough to feel safe to name, regardless of what I was actually feeling underneath it. What I Assumed This Meant About Me For a long time I assumed I just didn't have strong needs, or that I was naturally low-maintenance, or that I'd simply never learned to identify what I wanted — a vague personal limitation rather than anything with a specific, traceable cause. What I Eventually Noticed Instead I didn't lack needs. I had a very consistent, well-practiced habit of shrinking them down to a size that felt unlikely to be refused, before I ever said them out loud — which isn't the same thing as not having needs, it's a specific strategy for managing the risk of asking. Where That Strategy Actually Came From Tracing it back, the pattern started somewhere real: a period where asking for what I actually needed had been met with disappointment or dismissal often enough that shrinking the ask down became the safer default, and it just never got updated once the original conditions changed. Why Naming This Changed Something "I don't know what I need" and "I've learned to shrink my needs down before voicing them" point to completely different problems — one suggests something's missing, the other suggests something's being actively managed, and only the second one gave me anything to actually work with.
Meet Ori — built to help you find the need underneath the shrunken version you're used to voicing.
Part of The Recognition Library →
Momar Lissa Ndiaye ("MLN") is the Founder & CEO of weyoga Inc., a Delaware company. — weyoga.ai · mln@weyoga.ai
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