Three fundamental human needs (Part IV): Can we be both autonomous and connected at the same time?

I think this is a question that many people struggle with from time to time. The apparent conflict lies in thinking in terms of "being autonomous/independent versus connected" as if these are two opposite ends of a continuum. If you also see them that way I invite you to take a different perspective – considering them as two different dimensions rather than being the polar opposites of the same dimension.

Being autonomous or independent - the third fundamental need we have - relates to the way we develop ourselves with a vision and goals we set to reach that vision. It is the almost the method/attitude with which we create our roadmap to who we want to be and how we want our lives to be like.

How you create that vision can either take an independent/ autonomous form with you tapping into your unique being, your desires and dreams - in a way very similar to tapping into your ideal-self. Or you could create a vision more in line with the expectations of others (e.g., family, friends, colleagues) and the norms of the groups you belong to (e.g., the company you work for, the society you live in) without too much reference to your unique potential. This latter way is parallel to emphasizing your ought-self when you create that vision.

Being connected relates to having close and intimate relationships marked by stability, emotional concern and continuation into the foreseeable future. That is quite a different dimension than what I’ve described above. Having those relationships does not mean you are not independent anymore. On the contrary, those relationships support you in the journey to your vision.

In other words, being autonomous or independent is a relatively within-person quality; whereas being connected is an interpersonal quality.

When you consider this way of looking at them it becomes clear that they are complementary rather than conflicting. In fact, our research findings show exactly that too. People who are both autonomous and connected experience higher levels of well-being compared to those who fall short in either or both of those qualities. They are less prone to depression; emotionally more stable; and enjoy higher levels of self-esteem and life-satisfaction.

Then it is not a good idea to pit autonomy against connectedness, but rather encourage both. But why are we sometimes tempted to think one would come at the expense of the other?

I think that comes from an assumption we make: “to be connected I need to incorporate other people’s expectations and desires into the vision I create for myself”. And I believe this assumption is partly sustained by the desire to fit in. It is important to become aware of that belief and to question if that is indeed a valid assumption. I invite you to do that with an open mind…

References

Imamoglu, E. O. (2003). Individuation and relatedness: Not opposing, but distinct and complementary. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 129, 367–402. Social Psychology, 142, 333–351.

Kurt, A. (2002). Autonomy and relatedness: A comparison of Canadians and Turks. Paper Presented at the Annual Convention of Canadian Psychological Association; June 2002, Vancouver, BC.

Three fundamental human needs (Part III): Being competent

One of the reasons why many of us are reluctant to try new endeavors is our need to feel competent. Especially if you are used to feeling competent in different domains in your work, relationships or leisurely activities it is uncomfortable to take on something new which will make you feel not so competent.

I am sure many expats can relate feeling incompetent when they find themselves struggling with the easiest tasks in their new environment. Again there are numerous examples in the tales of women told in the Expat.

An American woman who moved to Bangladesh shares her frustration in her search for a blanket. You might think how frustrating can it be to find a blanket?! But if you’re not sure where to shop for one on top of having to sleep in layers of clothing and still feeling cold night after night – it can be frustrating! Or consider another American woman who took a teaching job in Japan struggling to get her students to discuss the readings in class. Of course, I’m not even going to get into the whole language issue again – who feels competent while trying to express oneself with language capabilities worse than a 5 year old’s! The frustration accompanies feeling incompetent in areas that you are used to being competent – shopping, doing your job, expressing yourself…

But as important as the emotional costs, the expectation of feeling incompetent has other equally, if not more, serious consequences as it represents a major obstacle on the way of self-development. Sometimes we pass some potentially life-enriching opportunities because we don’t want to feel incompetent.

Achieving the sense of competence is one of the important developmental criteria starting from our early years in life. Erik Erikson – a prominent developmental psychologist – contended that each stage of life has its own “psychosocial” task, a crisis that needs resolution. In his model of social development he suggests the critical stage between 6 years to puberty to be about competence. According to him toddlers who have tackled the trust, autonomy and initiative issues by that time now strive for competence, feeling able and productive. This forms the foundation of our sense of competence which gets tested over and over again throughout the life span.

As adults we’re also in an on-going journey from incompetence to competence. Realizing and acknowledging that it is a process makes it easier understand the reluctance when it comes to learning a new skill – may it be a new language or a new career. Knowing the stages involved in the process will further help us make a more accurate assessment of the situation.

The Four Stages of Competence Model

Also called the Conscious Competence Learning Model, this model nicely acknowledges that learning is essentially a journey that involves moving from incompetence to competence.

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence ~ I don’t know what I don’t know

This is the stage that could be summarized as the bliss of ignorance. You’re living in your home country and don’t have a clue about the challenges of daily life if you were to move to a new country. And it doesn’t even matter because it’s not relevant at this moment.

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence ~ Now I now what I don’t know

This is when you realize that you need your neighbor’s help to buy a blanket or understand your electricity bill. It is also the stage you find yourself when you change your career and become aware of your novice status. A lot of us get overwhelmed at this stage with the daunting task in front of us. The danger of giving up is a real risk especially if you don’t recognize that learning is a process and there are two stages ahead.

This is also the stage when your self-limiting beliefs interfere the most. With the shaky sense of competence it’s easy to start questioning your confidence, abilities, potential and the plausibility of reaching your goal. It is vital that you persist at this stage and that you can rely on that self-control muscle you’ve been exercising. It will require quit a bit of self-control to continue your learning despite feeling incompetent and self-limiting beliefs. But remember, this is only the 2^nd and the most uncomfortable part of the process – it will get better! Having your vision to keep you on track also is vital to move on to the next stage.

Stage 3: Conscious Competence ~ I know what I know

Once you persist in Stage 2, you build of a sense of competence as a result of learning. You are aware of possessing some expertise while still doing conscious thinking when you apply that expertise. Now you know where to shop for blankets among other things and rely much less on your neighbor’s help with day-to-day tasks. Until we gain complete mastery the process looks like a tennis game between stages two and three. You are comfortable in using your newly required skills with enough concentration and focus, however you still run into situations where you find yourself in Stage 2.

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence ~ I’m not aware, and I know

This is when your expertise or skill flows naturally. You don’t need to concentrate hard on what to do next – you leave the house without carefully planning every step of your shopping trip! You engage in the necessary actions without much thought. You no longer think the past tense for an irregular verb – you just say it.

A lot of the times the difficulty of learning a new skill, being in a new context, or going through change is due to not realizing or acknowledging that these are processes that take time and follow a pattern. This awareness alleviates the feeling of being stuck – generally at the Conscious Incompetence stage.

Self-reflection into where you are in your learning journey will benefit you in several ways:

• it will give you the control over emotions associated with feeling incompetent – recognize and label the emotion (i.e., “I am feeling frustrated /impatient/upset because…. ) and acknowledge it is normal and part of the process and it will change.
• it will give you chances to celebrate as you move forward in the process. This is something most of us neglect to do – just like you acknowledge emotions do the same for your successes. Don’t be too modest or normalize them – take credit for them!
• you’ll be better in managing the swings you experience between stages two and three. You wouldn’t feel like all your efforts are gone astray just because you run into difficulties.

Finally remember to compassionate towards yourself. Recent research shows self-compassion to be as valuable a resource as self-esteem. Ask yourself how you would react to a friend when she’s experiencing ups and downs in her learning process – you’d champion her when she feels incompetent and you’d cheer when she succeeds, even when she's being modest. You deserve the same treatment for yourself!

Three fundamental human needs (Part II): How well are you fitting in?

Last time I wrote about one of our fundamental needs – the need to belong. There are a number of secondary needs that result from that. Wanting to fit in is a consequence of our need to belong. We all know the lengths we go to fit in – within our families, professional groups, friends, or even in a group of strangers. We comply with requests that we would rather not, or follow norms that we’re not convinced of – all in the service of fitting in. In some cultures – the collectivistic ones such as Japanese, Chinese, Latin American – fitting in takes on even a greater importance. A Japanese proverb says “The nail that stands out gets pounded down” or a Japanese comic poem warns:

Ecstatic at being
set free
the bird collides with the tree

A Dutch saying I’ve learned recently advises “The head above the cornfield gets chopped off”. In the expat lives the need to belong and a desire to fit in become even more pronounced – we become almost desperate, if I may dare to say, to blend in.

In the book Expat one American woman, living in Indonesia, describes how she started wearing ankle length skirts, both to be properly attired in Muslim eyes and to cover the pale color of her skin. One of the first things we’ve done when we moved to Amsterdam was to buy bikes – not only because it’s the best way to get around but also to fit in! This is a place where having a number of your bikes stolen is an indication of how local you’ve become! Same goes for the efforts to learn the local language . In the Netherlands where you can easily get by just by speaking English many expats still make an effort to learn Dutch (which requires quite an investment with respect to time and effort). Most people still want to learn it because they want to fit in.

There are numerous costs to not fitting in: ranging from being a target of aggression or ridicule to social exclusion - one of the most dreaded outcomes for humans. One expat complained how she felt excluded because her Dutch colleagues insisted on speaking in Dutch instead of English during meetings – ironically, in an organization whose mission is to serve and support expats. After a while, her response was to stop making contributions during these meetings.

This, disengagement or passivity, is a typical response to social exclusion. Other consequences are increased negative thoughts about the self, sadness, dejection, loneliness, and depression. Social exclusion is perceived as a painful, anxiety producing experience. Another grim outcome could be questioning whether one’s existence is meaningful, which on its own can pave the way for further damaging consequences. These negative thoughts, emotions, and behavioral patterns could be serious obstructions on the way of adapting and feeling at home.

So what’s the way around it? How can an expat make sure her needs to belong and to fit in are satisfied to make the best out of her experience in her host country? And what would be ways to cope with some obstacles along the way?

As for many other needs the first step is awareness. You might be experiencing some of the thoughts and emotions I mentioned above – but have you accurately identified the underlying reasons? You might very well be attributing them to homesickness or to your personality (for example, being an introvert). Ask yourself: How well have I been fitting in? How would I rate my sense of belongingness?

One can very easily get sucked up in the cycle of not having a sense of belongingness or inclusion; followed by disengagement and passivity; which further hinders taking steps to satisfy your need to belong and fit in. Try to break the cycle by first becoming aware of it, and then taking action. The action might take different forms:

1. creating new, more positive thoughts (e.g., "It is under my control to be included" or "It is very normal for the locals to speak their own language, their intention is not to exclude me")
   
2. trying on different perspectives about the situation (e.g., "This is a great opportunity to try different ways of interacting with others - an opportunity hard to come by at home" or "This is the first time where I feel very different from others, I could learn a lot from this experience.")
   
3. putting in effort to do things that will increase you sense of belongingness (e.g. learning the language or joining groups you can relate to)

One thing you need to remember is being compassionate towards yourself. Try to show the same understanding you would to others who are on a journey of living in a foreign culture. It is a process and how much you’ll enjoy will depend on your attitude and how much you take care of yourself.

Three fundamental human needs (part 1): Need to belong and why I might be having difficulty making Dutch friends…

“Life in a foreign country is a dance of submission and resistance. Self-knowledge comes in small repeated shocks as you find yourself giving in easily, with a struggle, or not at all. What can you do without? What do you cling to?” from Expat

I’ve been reading a book called Expat – Women’s True Tales of Life Abroad. The stories were written by a group of American women about their lives abroad – in countries as diverse as the group of writers: Japan, Egypt, England, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Australia, Taiwan… Even though each story covers a unique experience, by the time I reached the end of the 22nd and the last story the running thread was so clear in my mind: need to belong while trying to keep whatever you think constitutes your identity… It didn’t matter if it was a Taiwanese American going back to Taiwan or an American living in Borneo all women talked about their efforts to fit in to their host culture by learning the language and getting used to the local food and customs. But along with the efforts to fit in most of them also developed a yearning to connect with their own home culture – not only because that is partly what makes them who they are, but also because it is what is familiar.

Even though each of us, as individuals, is unique there are some universal needs that we all share. Three fundamental needs that we come across in different lines of research in psychology are: the need to belong; the need to be autonomous; and the need to be competent. These are needs that motivated humans to engage in behaviors that maximized their chances of survival as well as healthy functioning for many generations. So it’s no surprise that when expats tell about their experiences, how they struggled to meet these needs becomes the underlying essence of their stories. In the next few posts I would like to reflect on these fundamental needs and how they play out a bit differently in the lives of expats.

I referred to the need to belong numerous times in this blog as I kept on recommending building a social support network as one of the key resources – not only for expats but for anyone, especially at times of stress and challenges. Next to numerous other benefits a social network satisfies our need to belong. According to an extensive review of research on the need to belong, this fundamental need appears to have two aspects:

1. having frequent personal contacts and interactions – ideally, positive or pleasant or at least, free from conflict and negative affect.
2. having a perception of interpersonal bonds or relationships marked by stability, emotional concern and continuation into the foreseeable future.

While being included is associated with positive emotions such as happiness, elation, contentment, and calm; social exclusion has many negative consequences including sadness, disengagement, passivity, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and negative thoughts about the self leading to a decline in self-esteem. People who feel excluded also question whether their existence is meaningful (more on fitting in and social exclusion next time).

For expats, most of whom left their families and friends behind, the need to belong becomes more salient in a new environment. No wonder one of the first things people do when they move to a new country is to start seeking out other expats who are in a similar situation. It is the fastest way to make connections when everyone has a strong motivation to satisfy the same fundamental need. It generally takes longer to establish connections with locals, who already have their social networks. Generally the first of the two aspects of the need to belong – frequent personal contacts and interactions – is taken care of rather quickly. It’s the second aspect that takes more time and effort – building bonds that are perceived as stable, continuous and involve emotional concern.

The good news is that the need to belong seems to conform to the motivational pattern of satiation and substitution. That is, people need a few close relationships and forming additional bonds beyond those few has less and less impact. Therefore, there is a world of difference between having two close relationships as opposed to none; but not so much difference between having eight versus six (Actually, three seems to be the magical number here).

This might also explain why many locals are not as keen as expats to form friendships or are content with just staying as acquaintances – because they already have enough relationships in their lives and the additional value they’ll get from new ones might not be worth the investment they’ll need to make. My husband and I have been complaining about the difficulty of making Dutch friends – it’s never difficult to chi-chat or go for a beer; but as I also hear from other expats going beyond that is proving to be tough.

How do I make Dutch friends, then?
What does an expat to do if she really wants to make local friends? I believe reciprocity might just be the answer here. When we look at the social influence literature reciprocity emerges as one of the most powerful tools in getting what we want. Reciprocity is a deeply ingrained rule of social interactions – give people something they value and appreciate they feel the need to reciprocate almost automatically. I think in the Netherlands the key might just be the effort you put in learning Dutch! Almost all Dutch people speak English well, so speaking Dutch doesn’t seem to be necessary to communicate. However, I keep on hearing from people who have lived here long enough that if you want to make Dutch friends speaking Dutch is the way to go. It makes more sense when I think of it from the reciprocity perspective: “If you make the effort to learn my language (which is not only quite difficult to learn but also quite limited with respect to its use in other places) then I would reciprocate by including you in my friends circle.” That doesn’t mean people are consciously thinking that way or actually aware of reciprocity being a key player in deciding to become friends with expats. In any case I think it is an explanation worth considering - what do you think? Well, I guess that also means Dutch classes for me!


References:

Expat: Women's True Tales of Life Abroad
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.