When I Stayed in the Car

On Liv Larsson, the Compass of Needs, and the freedom we don’t know we’re missing

I was sitting in my car outside a meeting, and I couldn’t go in. Not wouldn’t: couldn’t. The engine was off, my bag was on the passenger seat, and I just sat there.

Then something shifted. I saw myself sitting there and thought: I’m withdrawing. It’s one of the directions in the Compass of Needs, one I had heard Liv describe hundreds of times, in workshops, in conversations, at our kitchen table.

Right there in the car, the compass stopped being a model. It became something I could feel in my body and lean on when things were at their hardest. I got a little distance from the shame, and underneath it I found what I was really longing for: dignity. Five minutes later I walked into the meeting. Same room, same people, but I was much closer to myself.

Twenty years in the making

Liv began developing the Compass of Needs in the early 2000s. I’ve had the privilege of watching it grow, as her partner and as her colleague. It has been tested and refined in hundreds of conversations and courses around the world, and it has changed along the way.

Now it is gathered in a book: Compass of Needs, also available in Swedish as Behovskompassen. It is Liv’s third book on shame, after Anger, Guilt and Shame – Reclaiming Power and Choice and Unmasking Shame – Compassion and Connection at Every Stage of Life. If the earlier books were about understanding shame, this one is about finding your way through it.

Four directions, and what we’re really longing for

The compass describes four directions we often move in when shame shows up. We blame others, criticise ourselves, withdraw, or rebel. At the centre is what we are actually longing for: belonging, acceptance and dignity.

I move in all four directions. But the one that took me longest to understand was rebellion.

In working life, rebellion can be a superpower. It lets us stand firm, speak up and go our own way when others hesitate.

In close relationships it often looks different. It can sound like “I’m fine,” no matter what has happened. You become hard, self-sufficient, someone who can take it. It looks like strength, and sometimes it is. But it comes at a price: you end up alone, and you miss the chance to deepen your connection with the people you most want to be close to.

Letting go of that stance is frightening. But what I find so beautiful about Liv’s book is that she describes exactly that terrain so clearly that it becomes a little more manageable. It becomes possible to walk there, and to do it together.

I’ve also started to notice my humour. Sometimes it isn’t there for the fun of it. It’s a way of rebelling, of slipping away with a joke instead of staying with what is vulnerable. That wasn’t much fun to discover. But it was freeing.

What will surprise you

If I were to guess what will happen when you read this book, I think you’ll be surprised at how much shame you avoid in your everyday life. Or, put another way: how unfree most of us are when shame is steering, without our knowing it.

The book doesn’t point fingers. It gives you a language and a map. When you can see which way you are heading, you can choose something else. That freedom of choice is, to me, the book’s real gift.

For yourself, or to support others

You can read the book for your own sake, as a way into your own patterns. You can also use it if you want to help others navigate shame and vulnerability, as a coach, facilitator, mediator, parent or colleague. The final part is full of exercises for practical use, so the compass doesn’t stay on the page.

Books that carry

What I’m perhaps proudest of is all the people from different parts of the world who get in touch with Liv. They tell her that her books on shame have brought more freedom and depth to their lives. They are people she has never met, who have simply read one of her books.

I find it a remarkable thought that a book can carry so much: not just knowledge, but experience, tested in real conversations over twenty years, reaching someone in another country and making a difference in their life, so that they don’t have to walk that terrain alone.

The Compass of Needs is now a book. I hope it finds you.

Kay Rung