Neediness is the condition of wearing other people out because of our excessive emotional demands. These demands can be both unconscious and conscious. These demands on others stem from a deep sense of anxiety, loneliness, insecurity, and a general fear of life, which psychologist Erik Erikson tells us creates a deep-seated need to be loved. Most of us have a generous dose of neediness but within moderation we would be called Needy Stage 1, which would be normal.
Others have an excess of neediness, to the acute level, but their neediness can be offset somewhat by their self-awareness of their neediness. They would be called Needy Stage 2.
Others have absolutely no self-awareness of their excessively needy condition and as such they are Needy Stage 3, a very annoying and sometimes even dangerous breed.
There is another class of people we must address as well. These are the spiritually strong, magnanimous, and completely secure class of people. We’ll call these people the Charismas.
Charisma Stage 1 enjoys all of the above characteristics but his charisma is diminished somewhat by the vanity and self-consciousness that is produced by his popularity.
Charisma Stage 2 is similar to Stage 1 but is less vain.
Charisma Stage 3 is miraculously absent of vanity and self-consciousness and as such is most charismatic person imaginable. He or she is one of the figures whom the rest of us aspire to be like. To become a Charisma Stage 3, we read books on spirituality, religion, philosophy, psychology, self-help, but alas we find that while we can imitate this or that characteristic of Charisma Stage 3 we are for the most part shackled to our needy qualities and that in fact the aspiration to conform to Charisma Stage 3 actually is a symptom of our neediness and its unstoppable strength to extend its tentacles to all human endeavors.
Are we all doomed to suffer the shame of our neediness? Perhaps. But there is one rare breed of people who do a sort of psychological jiu-jitsu with their neediness, using it as material to make us laugh at our universal pathologies. I'm talking about the best comedians. Perhaps that ability is what Conan O’Brien meant in a recent interview when he said being able to make others laugh was the comedian’s “consolation prize” for being trapped in his incurable mental disease.
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