Ascetics and monks illustrate this for us, and I'm glad they do. They are a useful reminder of how little we actually 'need'. And thanks to them, I don't have to prove it for myself....
But they have already benefitted from much within my list too..
It's just a thought Don that maybe these words exist as more than just a bit of an error.
I would agree with the example of home size - utterly!! But I'm not arguing that evrything is a need, just that the shoulds/oughts/musts may often address real need.
For example, I believe (perhaps wrongly) that if a poster reported they were told at a meeting they didn't need their prescribed medication, that their taking it only expressed a want for it on their part you may be as hot as me to dispute that!!
For some people a medicine is as needed as food is for me, so where does that need fit? To get medicine you need the knowledge of it, whether it's a highly refined blood thinning product or the knowledge of plants that thin blood passed on through generations.
The relation between knowledge and having needs met is reflected in both the human and animal kingdom in the role and care given to animals/humans that have passed breeding/rearing age. The obligation is related to need for something.
Take another example - law. I need food to live but starvation is not the only threat to my survival, I can be equally dead from a bullet! If we look at collapsed states like Somalia we see the impact of a lack of some of the things I would list as needs and you wouldn't. The impact on life expectancy is to shorten it just as surely as from lack of regular food.
Even if I take the example of food, in a heavily populated city my food is not home grown, some degree of co-operation is needed. Again I would point to the correlations between war and famine to suggest the need for food leads to other needs which unless met results in starvation.
As a treatment avoiding must/need/should etc makes sense - of course if you believe all that you need is readily available then anxiety will drop. The problem arises when that almost irresistable temptation to turn treatments into philosophies occurs. Frighteningly accompanied with a new dictionary and a suggestion of restricting thoughts.
CBT works - it's excellent, a superb treatment I'd use myself at the drop of a hat. However it falls short as a philosophy to understand life by.