Human Needs: Safety & Security
Maslow is imperfect, and core needs are often overlooked. Still, core needs dictate our lives more than we recognize, especially safety and security
You’re probably familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. The order, selection, and categorization of these needs has been met with scrutiny and debate by scholars over many decades, but this hierarchy is still largely taught in PSYC 101 classes around the world, and highlights the hidden-in-plain-sight human needs that many of us are not meeting. Likely, most of us might not even be aware of the existence of the breadth of our needs in the first place. I blame the school system for this failure.
Given that humans are complex and our experiences vary, its possible that we can be getting our higher-order needs met, while not necessarily meeting some needs on the lower-end of this hierarchy, which can still create inner conflict, distress, or suffering. Importantly, not meeting lower-order needs doesn’t get in the way of being able to meet higher-order needs.
You might not have financial stability (Safety/Security), but still have confidence and a general sense of achievement in your life (Self-Esteem). You might not have intimacy (Love/Belonging), but still have the ability to be creative and spontaneous (Self-Actualization).
Maybe graphing his theory like a pyramid wasn’t the best strategy, since it kind of implies that lower-order needs must be met, before moving up the ladder to our higher-order needs. This is somewhat-kinda-loosely true in theory, but seldom true in practice.
Even if we find ourselves near the top of this hierarchy, apparently having all of our needs met and being self-actualized, there’s days or weeks where we “wake up on the wrong side of the bed”, and feel all over the place, with varying needs being met and unmet, across these different categories.
Life isn’t static and perfect, but dynamic and imperfect.
Humans and Animals
Humans are complex and we’re all very different from each other. Even within families where genetics (nature) and behavioural environments (nurture) are similar, siblings can be so different in their attitudes, beliefs, and values (nature x nurture).
There’s a reason why we don’t have many universally agreed-upon rules or conditions about human behaviour. For every action that we might theorize as universal across humans, there’s some person or cultural group in the world that proves the exception.
However, if we do identify something that is pretty universal across humans, AND we can see a similar degree of universal needs expressed in other species within the animal kingdom, these cross-species needs might point to something universal, and merits further exploration.
When there’s commonality between humans and animals, its indicative that we’re possibly witnessing a universally identified trait, or attribute. I use the term universally a bit loosely here, since biology always has exceptions, and I’m broadly comparing humans and animal species here, as a non-biologist.
Most theories in the social sciences are somewhat true for a specific population at a given point in time, but might not hold their weight in most other contexts (see replication crisis). It’s important to recognize universals, even if they’re not always true (90 - 99.99% true), can tell us a lot about human nature, and help identify signal in a field like psychology, where there is otherwise so much noise.
In-turn, understanding our core wants and needs can help us understand and work with human suffering, especially when certain base-level needs are not being met.
Looking back at Maslow’s Hierarchy, its safe to assume animals also have the same two base-layer needs as humans, since animals need to have their physiological needs met to survive, and cross-species behaviour illustrates that animals seek safety/security in their own ways, across different periods of their ontogenic development.
For example, bears hibernate during the winter to seek safety for their sleuth, and birds build high-elevation nests to keep their hatchlings safe/secure from predators. These species have adapted to build safety and security for themselves, and their kin.
Any need higher than the two lower-order needs (Physiological + Safety/Security) could be argued by animal psychologists as unique animal needs that help them thrive in their own way, but that isn’t the main focus here (I’m not here to convince you that a duck can self-actualize).
The two base layers of needs on Maslow’s hierarchy are pretty consistently observable across human and animals. Anything above that, could be argued and debated on, as different animal species have their own language, intelligence, communication patterns, and environments.
The non-debatable stuff: Consistent lower-order needs between humans and animals are the same (though expressed differently). This is a non-trivial observation, tells us a lot about human suffering, and can possibly explain some complex human behaviour.
Physiological Needs
We’ll gloss over these as they’re not the primary focus here, but still important. Base physiological needs include things necessary for our survival: Food, water, shelter, and sleep. Without these needs, no living organism can survive for long.
If you’re reading this blog post, you likely have internet access, a roof over your head, and aren’t worried about where you’re getting your next meal from. Of these basic needs, perhaps the biggest unmet need in modern times, is the need for sleep. Even the American CDC has described it “a public health epidemic”, as lack of quality sleep is linked to many chronic health conditions.
In most developing and developed countries around the world, our basic needs are generally being met, with some exceptions like getting adequate sleep in developed countries, and access to food and clean drinking water in developing countries.
As the world continues to grow out of extreme poverty, more of us will hopefully have our most basic needs for survival met. For animals, if they don’t meet their most basic physiological needs, they die or get preyed upon.
Safety and Security
In Maslow’s hierarchy, Safety/Security is defined as “health, employment, property, family, and social stability”. These needs can be broken down into personal (health), financial (employment, property, social stability), and interpersonal (family) needs.
Health, finances, and family stability are seen as essential for human needs of Safety/Security to be met. Animals of course don’t pay taxes or have jobs, so their “Safety/Security” will look differently for each species, within the context of their adaptive traits and environments.
However, there’s plenty of people who live with varying health, financial, and family conditions, and are still able to meet higher-level needs on Maslow’s hierarchy. Thus, scarcity in health, money, or family aren’t the only sources of feeling unsafe or unsecure. You might even feel unsafe or unsecure if you lack self-confidence (Self-Esteem), or when you find it hard to identify your inner potential (Self-Actualization).
This means that lacking in higher-order needs on Maslow’s hierarchy, can still affect our basic sense of Safety/Security. Physiologically, we know that we experience automatic bodily reactions when we’re in this state of feeling unsafe or unsecure.
For example, if you get lost in the mall as a child and separated from your mother, you might start to experience intense anxiety. You’ll clench your fists, your breathing might get shallow, pupils might dilate, and you’ll start looking around and feeling unsafe without mom. At that moment, you don’t care about shopping for a new toy, or the lollipop in your pocket. All you care about is finding mom and returning to that earlier state of safety/security.
These automatic reactions tend to come up as Fight-Flight-Freeze, which is an adaptive response that most living organisms have (RIP Dodo Bird), and which keep us safe from potential danger.
We both physiologically, and psychologically react to fear and potential danger, and our responses are near automatic. The strength of our reactions tell us about the importance of safety and security, and explain why Maslow’s hierarchy is more fluid than it looks. In experiencing potential danger to our safety and security, we can go from a state of “Self Actualized” to “Physiological Needs” real fast.
Parsimony
The law of parsimony dictates that given a set of possible explanations, the simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct.
If we try to understand the complexity of human behaviour, why we do what we do, and try to rationalize things post-facto, it doesn’t really work, since humans aren’t rational creatures.
My thinking is, we all have different coping mechanisms. When we’re stressed, some of us excessively eat and drink alcohol, while others meditate or exercise. Some coping mechanisms are more sustainable and healthier than others, but these are all still ways in which we’ve learned to cope with stress, and self-regulate our bodily emotions.
However, before we jump into our automatic reactions, its important to notice that these reactions all come from an ingrained sense of feeling unsafe, or not secure in the first place, even if for a brief moment.
Thus, a parsimonious answer to a lot of human behaviour, especially when we are feeling distressed, can come from understanding how we respond to a lack of feeling safety and security.
Here are a few examples, where one might respond in distress, fear, or potential danger:
-Public speaking
-Watching the news
-Calling the suicide hot-line
-Getting lost in a foreign location
-Losing a loved one, due to sudden death
-Thinking about, or planning your future/goals
-Feeling behind in school or work, procrastinating
-Putting yourself out there (dating, making new friends)
-Getting flashbacks from a traumatic incident in the past (PTSD)
You can probably imagine other situations that could apply to your past experiences. Everyone responds differently to the feeling of stress, and different types of stressors. However, going through this list, you can picture how an automatic bodily response might kick in for a person, and they might act out the stress and deal with their suffering in their own unique ways (coping mechanisms).
Importantly, these experiences bring out that initial feeling of being unsafe or unsecure. We are all different, and react to stressors differently in life.
To a 35 year old sales executive, public speaking isn’t as daunting as it is for the introverted 12-year-old.
To a goal-oriented high achiever, planning for the future might not be as daunting as someone who feels behind in their lives, and doesn’t want to think about their future at all.
The same stimulus can cause a different response. In heightened moments of stress, we all still experience the same thing: We feel threatened by a lack of safety and security, and this kicks us into the Fight-Flight-Freeze response.
To summarize:
-Maslow’s hierarchy is more fluid and complex than a simple pyramid
-Safety and security are very important on the hierarchy, and can directly affect a lot of our behaviour and mood
-Maslow’s definition of safety and security is rooted in health, finance, and family, and not in physiological states of arousal (different from Maslow’s physiological needs), which more deeply reflect human emotion and coping mechanisms
-Humans and animals have instinctive responses to perceived lack of safety and security, thus safety/security are a core need among living organisms
-Humans and animals experience a (near) universal set of emotional responses to potential danger in heightened situations, but humans have more complex ways of coping
Mental Health
Revisiting the laws of parsimony, if humans and animals have these instinctive responses to stress, then lack of safety/security can be considered a major causal determinant of distress and mental health problems in our lives. After all, it is the simplest explanation that can describe a lot of stress-based, reactive behaviour in both humans, and animals.
We still don’t fully understand why some people might cope with stressful situations differently, but we can recognize the importance of the felt sense of feeling unsafe or unsecure, in that moment.
If its true that safety/security are so crucial to our needs, then therapists and healthcare workers should be more attuned to the perceived sense of safety and security of their patients/clients, especially as the patient/client undergoes their own vulnerable healing process with the trusted professional.
It can help that we look at drug abuse, self-harm, emotional breakdowns, disorganized attachment patterns, and other destructive behaviours through this lens of wanting to ultimately feel safe/secure.
A lack of safety and security can be overwhelming and overbearing for the individual, in the moment. From the outside, some of the ways in which people deal with distress might look like harmful, self-deprecating behaviours (they certainly can be). From the inside, the person might have learned to deal with their unsafe/unsecure feelings this way, and the feeling is so overwhelming that the person engages in harmful behaviours as a form of escape. Its a complex matter of unlearning, and re-learning healthier and more adaptive ways of coping with this acute stress response.
Whether we suffer from mental illness or not, introspection, journalling, self-reflection, exploring our values, and identifying unmet needs can go a very long way in the road to self-discovery and healing. Through this process of doing our own work, hopefully we can learn a thing or two about our own unique needs for safety and security, especially as they have or haven’t been met in our lives, thus far.
Feelings of safety and security might be some of the strongest core needs for both humans and animals, and should probably be considered more seriously, in the context of mental and physical healing. Ultimately, a functioning individual is one that can feel safe and secure, and learn to self-regulate their feelings of being unsafe or unsecure in adaptive, proactive, and healthy ways.