Psychology Today | 23.12.2025 07:10
Our most basic needs for physical and psychological survival are safety, love, and freedom. When these needs are not met, we enter a state of distress and develop survival mechanisms that preserve life energy and compensate for the deprivation we experience. A lack of love may lead to dependency and people-pleasing, or alternatively to emotional distancing (as if we do not need love at all). A lack of freedom may lead to self-negation, denial of one’s needs (appeasement), or to active resistance and rebellion.
