my psychological hierarchy of needs

a creative interpretation of personal needs based on a therapy thing i learned about "Maslow's Pyramid" Δ

you know what genuinely changed my life recently?

realizing I was trying to climb all the way to the top of “Maslow’s Pyramid¹” (also sometimes goes by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) while my nervous system was somewhere near the bottom screaming:

“girl, we literally do not feel safe yet.”

and suddenly years of self-judgment started making sense. for a long time i’ve suffered: thinking i was… lazy. inconsistent. too emotional. too much. antisocial. when really? my body was spending almost all its energy trying to survive each day.

♡ level 1 :: physiological needs

my body is a creature, not a productivity app.

ugh. this was the hardest for me to wrap my head around… this level sounds obvious? until you realize you’re trying to unlock purpose, confidence, creativity, relationships, and self actualization… while actively dysregulated and chronically exhausted.

because i really did spend years trying to think my way into being healed: analyze harder. journal more. understand myself harder. optimize more.

meanwhile my nervous system was basically begging for:
sleep.
water.
quiet.
softness.
sunlight.
stillness.
safety.

…the very things that dropped off my priority list complete the moment my body started feeling unsafe in the past. and i never picked them back up.

a huge reveal in therapy recently was me realizing my body responds better to sensory and physical regulation rather than endless psychological torture… i mean analysis.

things that genuinely help me:

✿ dawn walks before checking my phone
✿ greeting the ducks like tiny emotional support coworkers
✿ walking around the lake trail when my thoughts feel sticky
✿ bubble baths before emotional collapse
✿ touching grass, plants, sunlight, wind
✿ eating a meal before processing emotions
✿ drinking water before existential analysis
✿ sleeping enough to stop living in my perceived-rejection fever dream
✿ reducing doomscrolling Facebook (slowly convincing myself that app is evil)
✿ ambient nature instead of constant stimulation
✿ carrying tiny notebooks everywhere
✿ analog journaling instead of typing spirals
✿ sitting near windows and natural light
✿ tactile art instead of intellectualizing pain
✿ soft textures, cozy lighting, clean bedding

i think i’ve massively underestimated how deeply my literal environment can impact my behavior, activation, and functioning, on a core psychological level.

it was only until i felt the physical difference in my body moving from my last apartment into my current one by the lake, with ducks. the change was intensely physiological. my body finally stopped bracing all the time. and, boom: the brain fog began to clear.

moving didn’t solve all my life’s stressors. but what it did solve was a percieved attack on my safety. and in response my body was able to stop spending 95% of its RAM trying to survive.

habit cues my body responds to now:

before I spiral, did I eat?
before I catastrophize, did I sleep?
before I psychoanalyze this relationship, have I gone outside?
before I call myself lazy, am I actually overstimulated?
before I decide my life is over, maybe we walk the lake first.

because when I consistently: walk. sleep. hydrate. create. reduce overstimulation. exist in beauty?

…I stop feeling hunted internally. and suddenly there it was. that feeling of exiting survival mode. the feeling of my body unclenching in such a way i hadn’t even known it had been clenched to begin with. wow, so this is nervous system regulation?

♡ level 2 :: safety needs

can my body stop bracing for impact now?

this level, for me? is about predictability. think: “are we okay enough to exhale?” this is what my therapist kept trying to explain to me that my high-activation self at the time could not pause to process:

you cannot deeply process higher-order emotional identity work while your nervous system still thinks survival is happening.

and…. yeah. i was mad at her words at the time, feeling dismissed. but… yeah. eventually I realized she was right.

because I was trying to process too much at once: identity, purpose, boundaries, relational grief, self actualization, while my nervous system was basically going:

⚠️ “HELLO??? WE NEED STABILITY FIRST.”

uhhh… no wonder I was emotionally flooding? no wonder I was hyper-analyzing everything. no wonder my thoughts kept looping.

what actually helps me here:

✿ stable housing
✿ soft predictable environments
✿ gentle routines
✿ financial organization instead of avoidance
✿ keeping groceries stocked
✿ resetting my space when overwhelmed
✿ brain-dumping worries onto paper
✿ repeating familiar grounding walks
✿ consistent morning rituals
✿ building cozy little systems
✿ emotionally intelligent calming content
✿ limit input from draining or emotionally unavilable people
✿ reducing social media chaos (high-key avoiding Facebook)
✿ not forcing conversations or life decisions while dysregulated

i’ve also realized my overwhelmed self can not interrogate, overthink or self-help-book her way out of a safety deficit. instead, my dysregulated self deeply lusts for: movement. structure. grounding. nostalgia. water. quiet. routine. diary journaling.

my actual regulation sequence now is:

1. shower or bath
2. water and food
3. sunrise walk
4. diary dump in a journal
5. tidy one small area
6. then: emotional processing

i’ve learned my brain loops harder when my environment feels unstable. once my home environment felt safe again? my creativity returned. clarity became easier. emotional nuance didn’t feel draining. my compassion and tolerance increased. survival mode finally stopped using up all my available mental bandwidth.

♡ level 3 :: love & belonging

who allows me to exist without needing to be useful?

this level hurt me the most. a gut punch, really. because I realized how many of my relationships were built around me doing too much in the relationship...

being understanding.
being accommodating.
being emotionally available.
being indispensable.

which by itself? fine. but eventually i had the devastating realization: i often felt more like a resource to people than anything else. i craved being witnessed myself, to be emotionally known in return.

this level for me is not “who needs me most?” but rather “where can I be emotionally honest without over-functioning?”

what actually helps me here:

✿ reciprocal conversations
✿ people asking about me too
✿ permission-based venting
✿ reading emotionally attuned essays
✿ being mirrored instead of managed
✿ friendships where I don’t have to earn care
✿ playful, safe, humorous connection
✿ relationships where I don’t feel like “too much”
✿ being witnessed without having to fix myself first

that is part of why reconnecting to writing and joining Substack this past week has changed me so much, i feel. for the first time in a long time, i genuinely feel met, witnessed, emotionally mirrored, accepted without masking or being forced to perform emotional labor or give useful resources to people in order to have a deep conversation or express myself. in fact, my standards have since changed accordingly… permanently.

signs my nervous system actually feels safe with someone: my body unclenches. i stop rehearsing responses. i stop overexplaining. silence stops feeling dangerous. i stop carrying the entire interaction emotionally, myself. i can exist imperfectly, as myself.

i ask myself now, “can I remain connected to myself while connected to them?” because self-abandonment was a self-inflicted horror i’ll never endure again.

♡ level 4 :: esteem

do I trust myself enough to stop abandoning myself?

this is where my self-trust lives. important, because i never realized until recent years i have been resigned to allow my confidence and self-trust to live buried beneath: clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder, suicidal thoughts, bipolar disorder, hypomania, and derealization, and mean girl friendships all my life.

i used to wonder why i thought i couldn’t do hard things. a couple years back i realized: i may not be able to “cure” my disorders, but i sure as hell can do something about my current lack of agency and limiting beleifs.

for most of my life, i genuinely thought kindness demanded self sacrifice. i thought being compassionate and empathetic meant overextending, overexplaining, making myself smaller, absorbing unequal emotional labor quietly + staying longer than i should. now?

i realize how deeply i equated self abandonment with love.

because now i’ve realized empathy without personal boundaries eventually becomes a slow erasing of the self.

what actually helps me here:

✿ finishing creative projects
✿ keeping promises to myself
✿ maintaining routines that nourish me
✿ doing dawn walks even when no one sees
✿ creating for joy instead of validation
✿ making weird little zines
✿ publishing writing anyway
✿ saying no faster
✿ noticing resentment as data
✿ honoring exhaustion instead of overriding it
✿ choosing environments that soften me
✿ disengaging from people and content that dysregulate me
✿ allowing myself to be a beginner again

my esteem grows when i create consistently, honor boundaries, trust my intuition, anddd stop outsourcing my self-worth.

♡ level 5 :: self actualization

what does my life look like when survival mode is no longer my full-time job?

and here we are. the crux of the situation. because for my entire life… i thought self actualization meant completely stepping into a new alter ego and abandoning my current self.

with the help of my therapist and the concept of Internal Family Systems… i now think it looks more like integration. such as returning to the parts of yourself that existed before survival mode swallowed everything whole:

✿ tiny notebooks.
✿ journaling.
✿ internet nostalgia.
✿ nature walks.
✿ photography.
✿ analog art.
✿ reading.
✿ curiosity.
✿ softness.

all of these weird behaviors i’ve been engaging in lately have felt like a returning home. a return to my inner artist, my inner child… me reconnecting with myself underneath who i was when hypervigilance and fear ruled my life.

what actually activates this level for me:

✿ journaling outdoors
✿ witnessing sunrise regularly
✿ duck observations
✿ tactile and analog art
✿ coding cozy digital worlds
✿ personal websites
✿ zine making
✿ photography walks
✿ voice note poetry
✿ reading essays and diary writing
✿ doodling badly for fun
✿ romanticizing ordinary life
✿ emotionally honest storytelling
✿ creating without monetization pressure
✿ collecting moments instead of optimizing productivity
✿ reconnecting with childhood creativity
✿ letting fascination and play lead again

which basically confirms for me, my “highest self” was never missing. she was buried. and the second safety appeared… she started resurfacing naturally.

---

TL;DR, the answer is usually:

✿ dawn lake views
✿ nature walk
✿ hydrate and eat
✿ bubble bath
✿ write by hand
✿ make something
✿ visit the ducks
✿ reduce noise/lights
✿ reconnect to body first
✿ let my nervous system catch up to reality

thanks for reading. 💕 xoxo, nikki

1. “Maslow’s pyramid, formally known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, is a psychological framework introduced by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper, “A Theory of Human Motivation”. It categorizes human behavior and motivation into five ascending tiers, proposing that foundational needs must be met before individuals can pursue higher-level psychological growth.” [source]