The Trainer

We perceive what the unconscious transmits to the conscious mind. These can be feelings or thoughts. Sometimes it is sounds or words, occasionally images or scenes. Sometimes we become aware of a smell or a taste, we suddenly stand up, look somewhere, something touches our skin or we consciously feel warmth or cold.

The six basic needs favor different sensory channels. Our thoughts give us an idea of what is going on at the moment:

• Seeing: Enforcement likes vision. A need expresses itself through formulations such as: I don’t see it. I can’t see through it. I’d like to get a picture of it. It looks funny.
• Hearing: Belonging favors the auditory channel. Need: That’s too loud, too shrill … That doesn’t sound right. That doesn’t sound good.
• Thinking: Recognition is talking to itself. Need: How can I do this better? How will they react? I wonder what he meant by that.
• Sense of touch: Safety wants to grasp. Need: This is incomprehensible to me. I would like to understand it. It has strange rough edges. This guy is slick.
• Taste: The empathy smells and tastes. Need: It has a strange aftertaste. The thing stinks to me. It’s a matter of taste. I have a nose for that.
• Motor skills: Rationality wants to move something. Need: I can’t understand it. It doesn’t flow properly. You can see more from a higher perspective. You have to evaluate it from all sides.

Our feelings show us what is important at the moment. This expresses our basic needs and shows whether they are being provided for too much or too little. In the trainer, belonging and rationality determine our behavior the most. It can happen that we give them too much time and space, whereupon we put the other side (recognition and empathy) under pressure because they feel neglected:

• Too much belonging adapts too much to our fellow human beings. We literally bathe ourselves in the “we” feeling. Reaction: We should withdraw so that we don’t lose our self-esteem.
• Too much rationality makes us react coldly. We feel that we are erecting a barrier. Calm is then needed to pay attention to our feelings and the possible effects on others.

But the other needs could also become overloaded, because the situation and our tasks often determine our behavior:

• Too much safety makes us stay or hide. We are afraid of being attacked or feel thwarted. We can clench our fists and become active.

• Too much enforcement makes us act wildly. We go through the wall with our head. Now we should look down and stand on the ground.

• Too much empathy makes us ‘melt away’ and we forget space and time. In this state, we should get up, move around and focus on things in our surroundings.

• Too much recognition makes us only pay attention to ourselves. We are as proud as a peacock, but suspect that something is wrong. Reaction: We should talk to friends or partners about the situation.

We are satisfied when our basic needs are likely to be satisfied for the foreseeable future. We feel an inner peace.

Hungry: The feelings of fear are unpleasant and are readily repressed because back when we were a small child they seemed unbearable, and we have now banished them from our consciousness as much as possible. Most people try to consolidate the repression of fears through destructive behavior, for example: Anger, contempt, repression, blame, persecutory ideas, revenge fantasies.

It would be so easy to take care of ourselves, because basic needs don’t require much. We can also take all basic needs into account in our weekly planning or ask ourselves in the evening whether we have taken good care of everyone.

Relevant for the trainer:

• Belonging: Talking to each other, being together
• Rationality: Researching, analyzing and investigating

When they are satiated, we take care of:

• Enforcement: sport, adventure, visualizing goals
• Safety: health, order and regularity
• Empathy: eating, drinking, enjoying and ‘switching off’
• Recognition: cultivating hobbies, doing things alone

Everything in its own time.

Our unconscious is very fast. After one breath we know more about ourselves and our fellow human beings than after an hour of careful thinking. This speed has a disadvantage. It is based on our experiences and uses drastic generalizations. On the one hand, this is helpful when we want to drive a new car of a brand we are not yet familiar with. On the other hand, it can end terribly when we laugh at an armed gunman because we think he is just joking with us. Sometimes it makes sense to pause for a moment before implementing a spontaneous idea and think about it slowly.

Kahnemann described this change. *Wikipedia: Thinking, Fast and Slow is a book by Daniel Kahneman that summarizes several decades of research, most of which he conducted together with Amos Tversky. The central thesis is the distinction between two types of thinking: the fast, instinctive and emotional system 1 a…