Alcoholics Anonymous (the book) talks about “instincts gone awry”, far exceeding their god-given purpose. For example, most people have the “instinct” for sex, but it can certainly become compulsive and drive our behaviour, i.e. an addiction.
I’ve come to believe that they’re talking about the same thing as what NVC calls “needs”. We all have needs for safety, but many of us “feel unsafe” a lot of the time, due to past trauma, so to tell ourselves we have a need for safety in any given moment can lead us astray, in a way, looking for what we need to change in our current circumstances, when it’s actually a need to heal our past traumas, to regain a sense of safety in our own bodies.