Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume - 3, issue 12, I June 2019 | Page 32

Another curious and often confusing aspect of Maslows hierarchy (which it
isn’t at all times) of needs is that everything beyond what is physically
necessary to sustain life, like sleep, water, food and such, are subjective and
relative from one person to another, and for the same person in one situation
to another. 
Six Human Needs
A slightly different model of the needs that drive human behaviour is that of
Cloe Madanes: Six Human Needs. It is built on the emotional needs we have
that help us survive in our interaction with other humans. 
Connection & Love are a basic need, and from an evolutionary point of view
we are dependent for our survival on connecting with others. 
Order is a need that drives our collecting of knowledge and processing of
experience. We do so to be able to predict how to best handle future
situations and we like for it to be correct. We have a need for order.
Excitement or disorder are the opposite of order. If everything is predictable
we become bored (hard to please we are). It is a balance and both are
needs. 
Significance, or meaning, is something we attach intellectually or emotionally
to every action we notice. When there is none we can easily become
apathetic, depressed, burned out and suicidal. A core driving need. 
Growth is about having a sense of learning, evolving. This can be expressed
in many different ways. 
Contribution is often underestimated. We are hard wired to contribute to the
flock we find ourselves in or an imaginary flock in the future. From one point
of view it gives us a standing in the flock, from another it simply makes us feel
great. Again the lack of an opportunity to contribute is a factor that becomes
obvious when some people retire and start feeling less important for not
continuing to contribute through work, which is an illusion of course. 
Our conclusion
Great as the Six Human Needs model is in categorising possible driving
factors of an emotion, thought or behaviour, there are factors it doesn’t take
into consideration, like stress, physiological needs and timing. Among
physiological needs an interesting fact is that they can differ radically