hierarchy of needs

Just looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs:



I think many of us here will never fulfil our full potential as we will never move past the 3ed step on the triangle.

I am not sure I can make it past any of those. The Esteem one makes me kind of nervous just reading it.

Oh gods. That's scary to me that it would happen to be posted here, because the idea that *the way I am* (whether or not it's eventually diagnosed as AvPD) would stop me from ascending Maslow's hierarchy of needs occured to me recently.

We were doing something in English class recently about Maslow, and I thought it was a remarkably good expression of the way I've always thought my inability to interact with people halted my intellectual and emotional development. It is definitely true. I saw that same triangleypyramid on Wikipedia.

I don't see how anyone with AvPD could ever get past the Safety tier, much less attain self-actualization.

Bright eyes wrote:Just looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

I think many of us here will never fulfil our full potential as we will never move past the 3ed step on the triangle.

Well, sex being at the bottom of the hierarchy, I guess I haven't even moved past the first step.

Thats a scary thing to look at. I have only achieved the first one. I don't even know how I could manage to get to the third one.

My psychology teacher didn't count sex as a physiological need because you don't need sex to survive, although some people might argue that point.

I went over 40 years without having sex and I'm still alive. Does that mean sex with another person? I'm good at having sex with myself. I guess if I didn't do that I would be insane. So I've got the base of the pyramid down for now. I'm breathing, I have some cheese doodles and peanut butter in my kitchen, OJ in the frig, I'm sleeping 12-14 hours a day, and I hit the crapper regularly.

Step 2 has been a problem all my life. Up until a few months ago I had a job. Didn't have any family. Not even a cat anymore. Health? I'm all crippled up with a bad foot.

Step 3 is totally hopeless. Step 4. I used to have some self esteem. My bosses chopped away at it and it is gone now. Maybe I can get another job and get some of that back.

I don't understand this top part. Self actualization. huh? Why can't I get there without having the other parts of the pyramid. They say you can't. Can't you just accept the fact that you're a loser? That should count.

Ane here's something:

Maslow discovered that most self-actualized people do not have the same sense of humor as the average person. For example: they do not laugh at hostile humor (hurting someone to laugh), superiority humor (laughing at someone’s short comings), or authority-rebellion humor (laughing at unfunny, smutty jokes

)

That's ridiculous. South Park would go of the air. There's nothing wrong with South Park. Anyone who says otherwise is just nuts.

Bright eyes wrote:I think many of us here will never fulfil our full potential as we will never move past the 3ed step on the triangle.

You can jump about a bit. I fit most of the self-actualization things, except the creativity of course. This despite the complete absence of rows two through four.

hanna wrote:My psychology teacher didn't count sex as a physiological need because you don't need sex to survive, although some people might argue that point.

Indeed, I would argue that since there is a physical drive to do it (or so I gather from the behavior of other humans), just as there is one to eat, or breathe, or drink, or not freeze to death in the rain, it should be counted with all those other things.

Parador wrote:That's ridiculous. South Park would go of the air. There's nothing wrong with South Park. Anyone who says otherwise is just nuts.

Maslow also said that few people actually were self-actualized. Indeed, most people seem to find South Park amusing.

Maslow never saw South Park. If he did I'm sure he would have changed his mind.

I'd be quite happy to get to the 3rd level, let alone higher. I remember that pyramid well. It was one of the first big concepts that I worked on in a therapy. At that time I had spent a couple years working my way up only to have a couple elements on the 2nd level fall out under me at once. Needless to say, I was temporarily wounded and trapped in a pit of despair, and still haven't gotten a stable foundation back. Seeing the diagram makes it look so simple, but it couldn't be further from the truth, especially for anyone with emotional/mental issues. I've tried forcing an output on the lower levels to get higher, but it only works in theory.