This psychology-based insight explains why your needs can start to feel like a burden instead of a right.
1 Reason You Feel Too Needy
When emotional invalidation is internalized, expressing needs can feel excessive despite being essential for healthy connection.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | Last Updated:
Many people do not struggle with having needs, but instead struggle greatly with believing they are allowed to have them. They might hesitate before asking for reassurance, downplay their disappointment or tell themselves they are being dramatic, needy or difficult, even when their requests are completely reasonable. Over time, they might internalize the quiet belief that their emotional needs are excessive or burdensome.
Psychologically, this pattern is rarely about the needs themselves. Research consistently points to early emotional invalidation as the core driver of such a belief system. When feelings are repeatedly minimized, dismissed or ignored early in life, people learn to minimize themselves. (If you want to know whether your inner voice tells you to take up less or more space, you can take my custom-made Inner Voice Archetype Test.)
Here's what psychological science shows about why your needs feel "too much" to you, and how this belief takes shape.
Emotional Invalidation Teaches You To Doubt Your Needs
Emotional invalidation occurs when a person's internal experiences are consistently dismissed, ignored or judged. This can be overt, such as being told to stop crying or to "toughen up." But more often, it happens subtly, when caregivers change the subject, respond with discomfort or treat emotional expression as inconvenient.
A 2025 study published in Affective Science shows that children rely on caregivers to help them understand and regulate their own emotions. When caregivers respond with attunement, children learn that emotions are meaningful signals. But when caregivers respond with invalidation, children learn that their emotions are unreliable or unsafe.
Over time, repeated dismissal of emotional experience disrupts emotional clarity and self-trust, until finally, individuals stop using their feelings as information and start evaluating them through external approval. This creates the foundation for even more self-doubt later. Eventually, the primary question one asks themselves isn't, "What do I need right now?" but some version of, "Is this acceptable to want?"
Internalized Minimization Of Needs Becomes A Personality Trait
One of the most enduring effects of emotional invalidation is internalized minimization. This is the habit of downplaying one's own needs automatically, without conscious intent.
Research from the journal Child Abuse & Neglect shows that people exposed to chronic invalidation often develop high self-monitoring. They scan others' reactions before expressing themselves, often preemptively softening requests by adding disclaimers like, "It's not a big deal" or, "I might be overreacting."
When emotional expression is discouraged early, individuals form self-schemas centered around being low maintenance, agreeable or independent. These traits are often praised and rewarded socially, which further reinforces the pattern of toning oneself down.
But internally, this can create a deep split in one's sense of self. Their needs still exist, but they somehow feel illegitimate or unwelcome. But when you don't pay attention to them, they go unmet. This often leads to frustration, followed by guilt for feeling frustrated in the first place.
Attachment Research Explains Why Needs Feel Risky
Attachment theory also offers one of the clearest explanations for why expressing needs feels unsafe for some people.
A 2023 study published in Current Psychology shows that children who experience inconsistent or dismissive caregiving often end up learning that expressing their needs may lead to rejection, withdrawal or emotional distance. As a result, they adapt to preserve their connection with their caregivers, a coping mechanism that might go on to haunt their adult relationships.
People who grow to develop avoidant attachment often use deactivating strategies in relationships, like suppressing their needs and emphasizing self-sufficiency. Anxious attachment, on the other hand, is associated with hyperactivating strategies wherein people feel intense needs but fear they are too much. In both cases, however, the underlying operating belief is similar: that their needs threaten connection.
These patterns can persist into romantic and other close relationships in adulthood. So, people may be emotionally articulate and relationally aware, but if their attachment injuries still steer the ship, advocating for themselves might still feel deeply uncomfortable for them internally.
When someone says, "I feel like asking for anything will push people away," they are often describing an attachment-based expectation, not their reality as a functioning adult.
Relational Self-Doubt Makes Needs Feel Like Favors
When someone has invalidated their emotions for most of their life, especially their formative years, they learn to do more than just suppress their expression. They also, unfortunately, learn to doubt their relational judgements.
People who grow up with invalidating environments rely heavily on external feedback to determine whether their reactions are reasonable and worthwhile. Often, these people don't realize when or how they internalize these external invalidations and, ultimately, start to second-guess their own perceptions without any prompting from outside.
To neutralize the cognitive dissonance of constantly having been over-ridden by internalizing the assumption that others are simply more objective than they are. As a result, they develop crippling relational self-doubt and get stuck in a loop of constantly asking for reassurance. In other words, they don't crave excessive validation because they're self-involved or vain, but because they were never taught to trust their internal compass.
Ironically, this can make needs feel even more burdensome, meaning that the person worries not only about having needs, but about needing reassurance that those needs are allowed. The emotional labor, therefore, isn't just limited to expressing need itself, but also extends to managing the shame around it.
What Actually Helps Rebuild Trust In Your Needs
Healing from internalized invalidation requires repeated experiences of emotional attunement.
Therapeutic work, for instance, often focuses on increasing emotional awareness, practicing self-validation and slowly expressing needs in safe contexts. This reinforces that the goal isn't to demand more, but to allow needs to exist without immediate dismissal. Self-compassion can also help people treat their own emotional responses with curiosity rather than judgment, reducing shame and increasing emotional regulation.
One must recognize, however, that learning to express their needs without apology is a skill that can only develop over time. Improvement happens slowly but surely, with each corrective experience weakening the belief that your needs pose a danger to your relationships.
Ultimately, if your needs feel "too much" to you, it's likely because you learned, early on, that having needs carried relational risk. Emotional invalidation may have taught you to doubt yourself, and internalized minimization and attachment injuries kept that lesson alive.
Do you allow yourself to rely on others, or do you take care of all your needs independently? Take my science-inspired Guardian Animal Test to know if your symbolic guardian animal reflects your nature.
Disregarding your needs can force you to grow up too soon. Take the research-informed Parentification Test to know if you had too many expectations placed on you as a kid.