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Marco Bertaglia
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Marco Bertaglia
NVC concepts and key distinctions
1. NVC Model: Parts and Components
1.1. The NVC Model: expressing honestly and receiving empathically, the four components (purpose and characteristics of each), the Giraffe Dance
1.2. The four ears (four choices we have when hearing a difficult-to-receive message)
1.3. Three kinds of Giraffe request
2. NVC Processes
2.1. Hearing another’s anger (blame, criticism)
2.2. Expressing “no”
2.3. Hearing “no”
2.4. Self-empathy when (a) stimulus is external and (b) stimulus is internal
2.5. Mourning and learning from our regrets
2.6. Screaming in Giraffe
2.7. Interrupting
2.8. Expressing gratitude
2.9. Receiving gratitude
2.10. Making conscious choices with awareness of needs
2.11. Expressing an “apology”
2.12. Resolving an inner conflict through NVC dialogue
3. Key Differentiations
3.1. “Being Giraffe” vs. “doing Giraffe”
3.2. Giraffe honesty vs. jackal honesty
3.3. Empathy vs. sympathy and other forms of response (fixing, reassuring, storytelling, etc.)
3.4. Protective vs. punitive use of force
3.5. Power with vs. power over
3.6. Appreciation vs. approval, compliments or praise
3.7. Choice vs. submission or rebellion
3.8. Observation vs. observation mixed with evaluation
3.9. Feeling vs. feeling mixed with thoughts
3.10. Need vs. request
3.11. Request vs. demand
3.12. Stimulus vs. cause
3.13. Value judgment vs. moralistic judgment
3.14. Natural vs. habitual
3.15. Interdependence vs. dependence or independence
3.16. Life-connected vs. life-alienated
3.17. Shift vs. compromise
3.18. Persisting vs. demanding
3.19. Self-discipline vs. obedience
3.20. Respect for authority vs. fear of authority
3.21. Vulnerability vs. weakness
3.22. Love as an action vs. love as a need and a feeling
3.23. Self-empathy vs. acting out, repressing, or wallowing in feelings
3.24. Idiomatic vs. classical (formal) Giraffe
3.25. Empathic sensing vs. intellectual guessing
I consider Nonviolent Communication (NVC) simultaneously to be a model for how to express oneself honestly and listen to others empathically, as well as—and most significantly—a specific model, a vision, of what we human beings are.
I see the philosophical outlook on human beings that underpins the communication model of NVC as very different from the one into which I think most of us were born and within which we were educated. I think that most of us in most cultures were taught how to behave to be considered “good boys” and “good girls”. In my opinion, this has mostly, in most parts of the world, and in much of our history, been achieved using levers such as a sense of duty, guilt, fear of punishment and hope for rewards. The underlying idea in such visions is that human beings are inherently evil, and need to be controlled so as to behave in a way that protects society and our common welfare. In such societies, I see the corresponding language as one of moralistic judgements about what is right/wrong, good/bad, beautiful/ugly. It is a static language that attempts to care for needs of security, reliability, stability, predictability.
NVC considers that human beings do all they do to satisfy universal human needs, the life force within each and every one of us. In relation to needs being satisfied or unsatisfied, we human beings all experience emotions and feelings. In order to meet those needs, we choose strategies to satisfy needs. While strategies may differ greatly, feelings and needs are universal.
As illustrated in the figure below, the model of communication proposed by NVC suggests that we express ourselves in four steps, four components of what is really alive in us in a given moment:
OBSERVATION: What I observe, something tangible, that can be sensed with one or more of our five senses, what I hear, see, smell, touch, taste, or even remember or think about, that contributes or does not contribute to my well-being. The intention here is to begin to lay the ground for our communication, to set the scene in relation to which I then can communicate what is really important to me, i.e., what I need, and then what I would like you to do or say, my request. In NVC, we seek connection, and we aim to request with as much clarity as possible what would make our life more wonderful. The NVC model invites us to separate clearly what we observe from what we think, our observation as something different from our evaluation. With that clarity, the invitation is to choose to express what we observe, and choose to leave aside what we think, with a desire to connect to the human beings with whom we are communicating. I will say more about differentiating and separating observation from evaluation in Section 3.8.
FEELING(S): How I feel, the emotion I sense in my body, heart and soul, in relation to what happened. The feelings I express can be seen as smoke indicating that there is a fire below, or as a warning light on a dashboard. These are just as universal as the underlying needs: I may feel joyful, sad, excited, bored, upset, … because I need …
I will clarify the distinction between expressing feelings and emotions and expressing thoughts in Section 3.9.
NEED(S): What I need in this moment, in this situation. What is my satisfied (or unsatisfied) need—or needs—that determine how I feel? Needs are abstract universal life forces, the core of NVC consciousness, the drive that moves our lives: food, water, air, connection, companionship, hope, meaning, understanding, choice, purpose …
Needs are universal abstract concepts that are not attached to a specific action or a specific person, as I illustrate in more detail in Section 3.10.
REQUEST: What is the specific action that I would like you to take, what is it that I would like you to say or do, now, in relation to the situation, that would meet the need or needs that I have just expressed. The request is a gift of connection that I make to the person or persons I am speaking to (and that could well be myself): I state with as much clarity and precision as I can summon which strategy is my preferred one at this moment to meet my need or needs. NVC suggests that this be expressed in a language of positive action—that is, what I would like you to do, rather than “not do”—and in a way that is in the present moment, doable and concrete. NVC aims to connect with the other person or people, rather than to obtain what we want. It therefore suggests that we check our intention: to express honestly and clearly what our preference is—our strategy of choice for meeting our need or needs—while keeping this distinct from a demand. We check whether our intention allows the other person to be free to say no to our request. In NVC consciousness, we want people to offer us what we request only if they do so out of a desire to contribute to our well-being. We know the pain and dangers associated with obtaining what we request if people act out of a sense of duty, guilt, shame, fear of punishment or hope for a reward.
Figure 1. The four components of the NVC model.
Expressing oneself honestly in this model, I would say:
“When I see the dirty dishes in the sink and I see your name on the task rota as the person who would do them today, (observation)…
… I feel puzzled … (feeling)
… because I need clarity of our agreements. (need)
Would you be willing to tell me if and when you are planning to wash the dishes today?” (request)
Just as this model applies to my expressing honestly what I observe, what is alive in me (feelings and needs) and what I would like to happen, it also applies to listening for and receiving with empathy the same four components from another person or people.
This is shown in Figure 2.
In receiving empathically, I sense and check what the other person is observing, what the other person is feeling and needing, and what may be the request to contribute to satisfying the needs at play.
In NVC we can guess what we believe may be happening for the other person, no matter what is expressed (or not expressed). Beyond how we choose to communicate, NVC suggests that we have this model in mind. Hence, if I am, for example, the person sitting on the sofa, while the dirty dishes are in the sink, a few hours after we have finished eating, and the other person comes to me and asks “what the heck are you doing there?”, if I choose to receive empathically what the other person might be experiencing, I may put this into words such as:
“Are you referring to the dirty dishes in the sink and the fact that my name is on the task rota as the one who would do them today? (observation)
And are you feeling puzzled, (feeling)
because you need clarity of our agreements? (need)
And would you like me to tell you if and when I am planning to wash the dishes today?” (request)
Figure 2. The two parts of the NVC model and the Giraffe Dance.
The infinity symbol between the two people in the drawing indicates the connection that NVC is seeking in a “Giraffe Dance” between expressing oneself and receiving others.
“Giraffe” is a symbol for NVC. Marshall chose the giraffe as a symbol of life-enriching communication because giraffes are the mammals with the largest heart, proportionate to their size. With their long necks they see from afar; they are vegetarian and able to defend themselves from lions.
This dance aims to increase connection and mutual understanding at the level of what is alive in me and what is alive in the other person, so that we can find a strategy together that can take care of both my needs and the needs of all other persons involved. It is a dance through the four steps and between two parts: I and you. I express honestly what is alive in me, what I observe, feel, need, request, and receive empathically from you what is alive in you, putting my empathy into words through guesses: are you observing…? Are you feeling … because you are needing … ? and would you like to know if I am willing to do/say …?
We enter the space of this dance with the aim to connect to our shared humanity (feelings and needs) and with trust that we can find strategies together, possibly different from any initial preferred strategy of any of us: strategies that take all of our needs into consideration and care for them, and are mutually satisfactory, thereby attempting to meet the greatest number of needs at play.
In NVC we may find a way to reconnect with an awareness of what we aim to achieve when communicating with others (or with ourselves, too). In NVC, there is a core belief that we human beings feel better when we are connected to one another, when we give to one another from the heart, and our lives are more wonderful when we reach a deep connection even in conflict.
NVC uses the metaphors of giraffes and jackals to indicate communication that is connected to life, vs. communication that is alienated from life, respectively. Marshall chose the giraffe as a symbol of life-enriching communication because it is the mammal with the largest heart, proportionate to its size, and with its long neck it can see from afar and defend itself from lions. The jackal is used as a symbol for the language most of us in most of the world have been trained to use. This is a language alienated from life and disconnected from it, made up of moralistic judgements, right/wrong thinking, sense of duty and guilt, shame, and acting out of fear of punishment or hope for a reward.
We can discover we have choice in the way we respond to a difficult-to-receive message. NVC is based on an understanding that there are four different ways we can hear, and respond to, a message that we find difficult to receive.
Two of these are imbued with life-alienated consciousness of right/wrong, good/bad, static, dualistic thinking, and with communication that uses a sense of duty, guilt, shame, and fear of punishment or hope for a reward to leverage the behaviours we would like. In the NVC metaphor recalled above, these are two ways to use our “jackal ears”.
The other two are life-serving, connected, compassionate stances, that aim either to honestly express our life experience in response to a difficult-to-receive message, or to receive empathically what we sense might be the life experience of the person sending the difficult-to-receive message. In the NVC metaphor recalled above, these are two ways to use our “giraffe ears”.
When we hear a difficult-to-receive message, we can choose to respond to it with “jackal ears” turned towards ourselves and/or towards the other person. We can judge, blame, scold ourselves or the other person (we can do both simultaneously, too). Or we can choose to respond to it with “giraffe ears” turned towards ourselves and/or towards the other person. In this case, we would either express our own life with the four steps outlined in Section 1.1 or put into words our best empathic guesses about the life experience of the other person, using the same four steps.
An example might make it clearer.
Suppose you need help with the household chores. You ask your teenage son to postpone going out to play after lunch and to dry and put back in the cupboard some of the clean cutlery while you wash the dishes. He says:
“Mum, I’ve been sitting at school all morning, I want to go out and play NOW! Not dry some stupid forks and knives!”
Here are examples of how you could answer, depending on which of the two ears—and in which of the two possible directions—you are able to choose to use:
jackal ears towards yourself: “I am always so demanding and oppressive, I should understand him more, he is just a child and it is normal he wants to play!”
jackal ears towards your son: “You are so selfish! I have also worked all morning and we should all be helping one another. You’ll first do as I ask, and then go play. It won’t take long, that’s it!”
giraffe ears towards yourself: “When I hear you saying you want to go out and play now, and I know I would like you to do so, too, I feel tense because I need help and I need care for myself as well as contribute to your well-being. I would so much like to find a way in which we could both be satisfied.” [and I might end with a clear request of what I would like to happen]
giraffe ears towards your son: “Are you feeling impatient because you need play and movement and maybe lightness?”
In both (3) and (4), before opening my mouth, I could first offer a silent space of listening with giraffe ears to what is alive in me—e.g., “I feel confused, I need to contribute to his well-being and at the same time I need help. I also need security that I can transmit to my son some of the values I deem important, e.g., that he also sees the beauty of contributing to others’ well-being. And I feel tense, because I would so much want to find a way that does not use force, or my greater power over him. I understand he may need to play and run around a bit and at the same time I am worried because I need balance and care for my own needs, too.”
NVC offers a path, both a philosophical grounding and a practical approach, to grow our awareness of the choices we have in how we wish to respond to difficult-to-receive messages. We can choose to build greater connection and mutual understanding, receiving empathically the needs and requests other people express, even when these are hidden within a way of phrasing them that we find difficult to receive.
The fourth step in NVC is a request.
There are three kinds of “giraffe requests” in NVC. Two are requests for connection and one is a request that a specific action be taken.
As I will explain in more detail in Section 3.11, there is an important distinction between a request and a demand. All three kinds of giraffe requests are intended as requests in the sense that they leave the other person or people—or that part of myself I am addressing—the freedom to say no to our request. In other words, in NVC we really want people to do what we request only if they do it out of a genuine desire to contribute to our well-being. We prefer not to receive what we would so much like to receive if it were offered out of a sense of duty, guilt, shame, fear of punishment or hope for a reward, because we know that when we receive something offered from that energy, everybody ends up paying for it.
The first two kinds of requests are connection requests. We have shared what is alive in us and long to (a) be sure that our message has arrived as we intended it and (b) know the impact of our message on the other person or people.
The two kinds of connection requests are:
Would you be willing to tell me what you heard me say?
Would you be willing to tell me how you feel when you hear me say so?
The first type of connection request can at times be awkward to express because it is unusual—except maybe for some specific professional categories such as airline pilots or surgeons, where repeating and requesting repetition of the message sent can be literally vital. To most of us it is something whose importance we tend to be largely unaware of. Yet, we can find reassurance in recalling the times when we have shared something emotionally charged and we ask our interlocutor “do you understand?”
NVC suggests that we may gain in clarity by requesting with precision exactly what we wish to happen. Maybe what we hope to receive, so as to know we’re understood, might well be a reformulation of what the other person has heard us say.
Once this is done, we may long to connect to what is alive in the other person or persons, when they receive the message we intended to express. This could take various forms. The first step is to connect with full awareness to what it is that we would really like to know about how our message lands. NVC suggests that we can connect more deeply with others by looking at what is alive in them, our shared humanity in terms of what the other person is feeling and needing. On occasion, we may really want to know something about what they are thinking, and we may be inspired to be very clear on which of the thoughts we are particularly interested in.
Variants of (b) can include:
Could you tell me what you are feeling and needing right now when you hear me say this?
Would you be willing to share with me what you think of my choice of words in this sentence I used with my partner?
Could you share the first sentence that springs to your mind on hearing me say this?
And many other requests with a similar intention.
The third kind of NVC request is a request for a specific action.
We would like something to happen, something to be said or done, to make our life more wonderful, in other words, to meet the needs we have expressed. There is a clear distinction between the needs we expressed and the specific strategy that we would love to see actualised, which we communicate in our request. I will develop more on this key differentiation in Section 3.10. When we are requesting something, the invitation that NVC makes is that we persist in taking care of our needs, while we are open to the possibility that we may seek together a different strategy.
With this intention, we may offer the other person the gift of requesting with clarity precisely what our preferred strategy would be in this present moment.
Would you be willing to … (do/say/…)?
This kind of request in NVC has the following characteristics:
In the present moment (here and now)
Expressed in a language of positive action (what we want to happen, rather than what we do not want to happen)
Feasible
Concrete
Precise and detailed: it states exactly what we would like the other person to do, and exactly when.
A request provides all the clarity that may enable the other person to know exactly what saying yes entails, with the idea that we wish people to say yes to our requests only if they do it with their hearts, out of their own need to contribute to life, contribute to one another’s well-being.
There are several ways in which a request may be a gift to our interlocutor. One of these is that without a clear request for what we want to happen, the expression of our needs, in particular of unmet needs, may trigger the other person into thinking we are aiming to leverage the sense of guilt or shame.
Take this example:
“I am feeling annoyed that you left the rubbish there tonight, as I need order and cleanliness in the spaces we share!”
What does the person expressing this want from the person to whom they are speaking?
The sentence might complete in different ways depending on the underlying need.
There might be a need for empathy. Then the request could be: “Are you willing to tell me what you heard me say?” or it could be “Are you willing to sit for ten minutes and receive with empathy my feelings and needs around how much this is disturbing me?”
Or the person might be tired and need help, as they cannot muster the energy to bring the rubbish out now, and they need order and cleanliness now because of a need for comfort and relaxation in the surrounding space. Then the request might be: “Would you be willing to pick up the rubbish now and bring it downstairs?”
NVC encourages us to listen to the life flowing in the other person, in terms of feelings and needs, regardless of the way it is expressed. When anger (or blame, or criticism) is directed at us—something that can come from another person or from within ourselves—we can choose to focus on the unmet needs and possibly even unexpressed requests that are hidden behind whatever words the other person uses.
In NVC, we want to ‘translate’ any jackal language we receive—anything a human being says—as an expression of observation, feeling, need and request. When receiving anger, blame or criticism, we listen for the feelings and unmet needs behind the words the other person is choosing to use.
As I came out of the office one day, in Brussels over ten years ago, I took my bike, opened the garage door, and saw a man in a parked car hitting a woman. I approached and said something inviting the man to consider resolving the tension with the woman in a different manner. The man came out with a red face and a tight fist, talking to me in a volume I could have heard from a mile away, and telling me to “mind my own f****** business”—though what he seemed to say was more like “OK, I’ll beat you instead, you scumbag!”
Without justifying his hitting his wife a second before, and wanting to protect my own life, too, I quickly put my bike between him and myself, and ventured to ask “Are you angry because you need freedom to decide how to deal with your relationships?”
To date, I wonder at my sense of self-preservation. My intention was probably more towards taking care of my safety, and I knew anger is best met with empathy if we aim to establish some form of peaceful, safe connection that increases the likelihood that our own needs will be met.
When we develop the consciousness of the price we all pay for actions motivated by a sense of duty, guilt, shame, fear of punishment or hope for a reward, including punishment and reward in the form of intangible emotional consequences, we begin to sense the value of acting with care for our own needs, too. We begin to sense the value of saying a full yes, with integrity and a willingness to give from the heart.
We may still see value in taking care of everybody else’s needs. We also know one of our important needs is to contribute to other people’s well-being. We want to express our “no” in a way that leaves the door open for a mutually satisfactory solution to be found.
NVC suggests that we may choose to communicate what is alive in us when we choose not to satisfy whatever request we have heard from the other person. When we tell the person making a request which of our needs we are taking care of by saying “no”, it might be easier for the other person to connect with our shared humanity and remain connected while experiencing the frustration of receiving a “no”.
This might take, for example, the following form.
“Marco, could you please help me with finishing the enclosure we were building before the rainy weekend?”
“Not now, R. I am feeling worried about our crowdfunding and I need to protect myself from the possibility we may lose the main house here, so that I would like to prioritise that task now. Would you be willing to tell me what you heard me say? And after that, would you be willing to tell me how it is for you?”
There is also a way we can offer help to our interlocutor to find another strategy. So there could be a different ending to the sentence in the example, or a follow-up sentence after an additional interaction in the dialogue.
“How would it be for you if we asked S. whether she’s willing to help you with that?”
We may show simultaneous care for our needs and for other people’s needs. Creativity might come to the rescue. We can develop greater care for everybody’s needs and clarity of intention, along with greater creativity in the hundreds of different possible strategies that could satisfy the needs at play. We could heal from a belief system based on scarcity and discover the abundance of options the world can offer, and heal from a belief system based on separation and discover the joy of working together to find a way to meet the greatest possible number of needs for everybody involved.
As I have briefly described in Section 2.2 in relation to when we may express “no” to others, I have illustrated that we can do so by communicating the need to which we are saying “yes”.
In NVC, we are invited to hear the needs beyond right or wrong that underpin any single action we take, and which lie at the basis of any single word we utter. When we embrace this perspective on life, we may be willing to hear the need or needs behind the “no” that other people say to us. We can hear—as Marshall Rosenberg put it—“what people are saying yes to”.
When someone says “no”, I can choose to listen to the feelings and needs behind it.
For example, suppose I am sitting at the computer typing an email that I consider so important that I prefer not to stop and I have just asked my eight-year-old son if he is willing to bring me a glass of water. He replies:
“Not now!”
I could choose to empathise with whatever need I may empathically sense to which my son is saying yes to. While the sincere intention to connect is more important than “getting it right” in naming the need I believe lies deep within my son, I may have some hints. Maybe I see he is playing and I may ask:
“Are you feeling enthused by your game and needing play and fun right now?”
I might choose to see the beauty of the need my son is attempting to meet when he says “no” to my request.
The process of self-empathy is a path of greater connection with what is alive in me. To me, it has been a path towards growing awareness and discovery. In my experience and in the belief and value systems by which I choose to live my life, self-empathy enables me to choose how I intend to be in the world and in relationships.
In self-empathy, we intend to offer ourselves the same quality of presence, attention and curiosity about what is really alive in us at any given moment. We aim to search for the feelings and needs in anything that may arise in us after a stimulus triggers some reaction, regardless of whether the stimulus is external (someone did or said something, or behaved in a way that is not contributing to our well-being) or internal (I disliked something I did or said, or I am having unpleasant thoughts or emotions, or any unclear discomfort on which I wish to shed more light).
when the stimulus is external
I might choose to reconnect with myself, suspend immediate reactivity, maybe use my own breath as an anchor, and reach within, to ask myself “are you feeling… because you are needing?”
Something external may be the stimulus to activate a stream of thoughts, tensions in my throat or stomach, powerful emotions mixed with thoughts and much judgmental thinking that I have been educated into for so many years.
A government decree might authorise new gas drilling in the Mediterranean. I can connect with myself, and hear my pain. I can call my own name, and ask myself “Marco, are you feeling desperate and scared because you are needing safety, and protection from the consequences of global warming you are frightened about?”
A regular practice of connecting with myself empathically in this way can go a long way to train our whole system into a habit of self-connection which will enhance our capacity and capabilities to connect with others.
when the stimulus is internal
Similarly, we can do this when what is triggering the feelings we experience when our needs are not met comes from some internal workings.
I may react angrily with my ten-year-old son, and then regret it. The internal stimulus might be the voices telling me how badly I behaved with my beloved son. A bunch of unpleasant feelings, thoughts, judgments against myself are storming inside of me. Again, I can address myself asking “Are you feeling regretful because you need self-esteem and to protect the space of your relationship so it grows in mutual connection and love?”
With self-empathy, I can choose to move beyond any judgment, and any sense of powerlessness and frustration, to connect with my feelings and needs. I stay with this until I sense the relief of self-connection and self-compassion.
How we talk to ourselves when something we have done has not met one or more of our needs, possibly needs that are deeply valuable to us, can have a tremendous impact both on ourselves and on the way we relate to others.
Are we willing to outgrow the automatic responses we have acquired through our upbringing and choose how we want to respond?
When we evaluate ourselves on aspects of what we do or say that we see as “less than perfect”, can we hold our pain and our desire to learn and act in ways that we may find more satisfactory along with a compassion for ourselves that can then extend to others?
Mourning, or, as one CNVC certified trainer has put it, “the skill of brokenheartedness”, can liberate us from vehemently judging ourselves as “bad” or “wrong”, and open up ways to wholeheartedly and willingly grow in clarity of purpose and care for our and other people’s needs.
Mourning in NVC is an invitation to savour the painful feelings of unmet needs, and rest in the beauty of the needs unmet that are behind our regrets.
The invitation is to connect to:
the needs we met by doing or saying what we did or said and now regret;
the needs we did not meet through that same action; and
the different strategy that we now wish we had used to meet our needs, because it seems to us that this other strategy would also have taken better care of those other needs.
When we can offer ourselves a compassionate space to stay with our sorrows, we can increase our knowledge of how our whole being ticks, how all of our needs energise our lives, and learn from our experience so that we choose our future course of action in a way that we see as more likely to meet more of our important needs.
I have on occasion, or in certain groups encountered an understanding of NVC that is quite different from the way I understand it. To me, Nonviolent (very significantly in one single word) is related to the Gandhian concept of Ahimsa, the Kingian idea that we are “woven into the same garment of destiny”.
There is another interpretation that I have encountered, which seems to understand “non-violence” (in two separate words) as the absence of violence. I believe this reflects a desire to nourish needs for peace, harmony, care and tenderness, which I also value; at the same time, I am afraid when it becomes something closer to a normative “right way” to be. It would be as if one said “I am nonviolent, hence I never scream, I never can be angry, I am meek and mild”.
Giraffes can be upset. Powerful feelings can be alive. Needs can cry out loudly. Beyond right and wrong, there is a field of love and acceptance, a transformative power of empathy.
“Screaming in giraffe”, i.e. using a strong intensity of speech and expression, which corresponds to a strong intensity of feelings, can be an integral part of NVC consciousness.
The key difference between screaming in Giraffe and screaming in a more habitual way, within the life-alienated modes of the cultures in which most of us have grown up and been educated, is that whatever we scream in Giraffe mentions only what is alive in us, deep down inside. We do not scream with the intention to punish or obtain compliance with our desires; we have no intention to subdue or elicit fear, guilt or shame.
In giraffe, even while screaming, our intention, our objective is to connect.
Therefore, envision for example a restorative justice setting, where the mother of a ten-year-old girl may express to the man who has raped her, in a tone of voice as loud as 90 dB, and with powerful emotional and body-language intensity, in tears, something like:
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH PAIN I AM IN—such unbearable pain, desperate and devastated that my beloved little one may never fully recover from the trauma and I need safety and protection and I want for this pain I feel to be fully heard! What did you hear me say?”
I am not screaming judgments, labelling, insulting, accusing, or trying to leverage guilt, shame, fear, or in any way obtain what I want regardless of the cost to others. I am screaming what is alive in myself, with the power of my deep sorrow, and my unmet needs, with the intention to connect, the hope to be seen and heard in what is alive in myself.
There was one “true joke” that Marshall shared when teaching about mediation in NVC. “I prefer,” he said, “to mediate in the Middle East rather than in Switzerland. In Switzerland everybody waits as long as necessary for his/her turn to speak. In the Middle East everybody speaks at the same time, so it takes half the time!”
Most of us, raised in the paradigm of right/wrong, good boy/bad boy, in most cultures, were taught that one should never interrupt. Listen patiently till the other person has finished. Pretend to listen, and count the seconds until it finally becomes your turn to speak. Hope they stop soon! Marshall would invite us into a radical overhaul of all we learned regarding interrupting or not interrupting.
NVC invites us to consider interrupting, like all things, beyond the categories of right/wrong and should/shouldn’t. With an awareness of how NVC invites us to connect to ourselves and others, and a belief that needs are the key to a world of connection and well-being, we see interrupting as an action that may, or may not, successfully take care of as many needs as possible of all the people involved.
The assumption of NVC is that the deepest wish of the person who is talking is that they can be heard, seen, listened to and understood. There is no gain for anyone, not even for the person talking, if we unwillingly let the speaking person continue if all we do is hope the person will end soon.
NVC suggests that we interrupt as soon as we have heard one word more than we are willing to hear. That is, we may interrupt sooner rather than later, unless we really want to receive empathically any stream of words for the sake of supporting a person in distress who needs empathy and to be listened to, and we do so willingly, from the heart, out of the purest and most sincere desire to serve life and meet our own need to contribute to another’s well-being.
How do we interrupt a stream of words when we can take no more?
One option, and the one I would suggest more than anything, if we still find ourselves willing to be in the receiving part of the conversation, would be based on an intention to connect in an “active listening” modality, or in “empathic mode”. We might say something like, “Excuse me, I wish to check whether I understand. Do you mean that when [observation], you feel [a feeling] because you need [a need]? And maybe you would like [request]?”
We long for a deeper connection with people, in a modality where we remain constantly connected to both our needs and those of anyone else involved, and we can remain connected to a desire that everybody’s needs matter and are attended to with care.
If we find ourselves more on the expressing side of communicating, and we have needs of ours that are loudly requesting attention and getting in the way of us listening, we can again interrupt in NVC, in this case with an honest expression of what is alive in us. “Excuse me, I am telling myself that you are willing to continue talking and I value being fully honest with you at all moments, because I need human connections that are sincere and strong. I feel tired and I need rest, I am finding it hard to continue listening now. How would it be for you to meet again tomorrow at the same time to continue this conversation?”
Interrupting is seen in NVC as an act of love. Have you ever experienced what you tend to do with people to whom you have listened more than you would have liked, on more than one occasion? Most of us, and that includes me, would then punish the people for our inability to interrupt them: we end up doing all we can to avoid meeting them as much as possible, and when we cannot avoid them, we submit to the torture of hearing more words than we are prepared to hear, without complaining, only pondering how to avoid them next time, or repeating a mantra in our heads that it will soon be over and we can patiently wait till it is.
When we act out of a sense of what is right / wrong to do, and out of fear, we all end up paying for it. We can choose to value connection and honesty beyond all else and take risks by honouring life and our own truth, and choose to interrupt. In NVC, we also aim to summon as much care as we can to attend to the other person’s needs, too. Simultaneously. We may sincerely request to hear how the other person feels about being interrupted, and aim to find mutually satisfactory strategies, trusting in the abundance of life.
When we express our gratitude to someone, we want to be sure that the person we thank sees the need or needs that the action we are grateful for has contributed to meeting.
Gratitude is a celebration of needs met. It is a hymn of joy to the Universe for how much we have made one another’s lives more wonderful.
In NVC we express gratitude by stating clearly the action that has contributed to our well-being (an observation), how we feel and which need or needs of ours were met.
“When I receive your reply less than two hours after I wrote my email, I feel so grateful and happy, because I need clarity about progress on this matter that is so important to me, and I remember how embarrassingly impatient I was to have the pieces of information in your reply. Thank you!”
Most of us have grown up receiving at least a few messages—and some of us probably too many—that we were not “good enough”. Along with this, there is a pervasive social convention according to which we should play down whatever we contributed as “not such a big deal”.
When we hear words of thanks, the most frequent learned response I have encountered has been “not at all”, or “that’s all right”. In short, we dismiss the thanks and claim to have done “nothing of great importance”.
In NVC, we challenge this outlook on gratefulness, and recognise the magic power we human beings have to make life more wonderful, to enrich life, to contribute to everybody’s needs and well-being.
We can learn to receive gratitude by savouring the beauty of the need we contributed to meet.
We can do this silently, or we can put in words our empathic reception of the gratitude other people express to us.
Just as, in conflict situations, we can hear uncomfortable, sad or otherwise unpleasant feelings and unmet needs in whatever people say, we can similarly hear joyful feelings and needs that have been met, however people choose to phrase their gratitude to us.
People could just say “thank you” and we may silently connect to, or say out loud, our best empathic sensing of what is behind the gratitude expressed. An example of this could be: “Are you feeling grateful and happy because your need for company has really been met?”
Most of us have been educated in life-alienated ways of thinking that use a sense of duty as leverage. Our lives are full of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”. We must do this, we have to do that.
One of the things that NVC invites us to do is to transform our world from the slavery of duty and powerlessness to the freedom and joy of choice.
We may come to recognise that all we do is an attempt to meet needs.
One way to unearth the jewel of choice in our lives is to focus on anything we are doing out of a sense of duty or constriction or any “should” thinking, and see why we are doing so. Unearth the needs below the surface of powerlessness, and reclaim our power to enrich our lives and the lives of all around us.
What are the needs I am satisfying? What are the needs I am not satisfying? What other ways are there to satisfy the needs I am satisfying with a specific strategy, so that I can also take care of my other needs that I am not currently meeting?
We can focus on anything we tell ourselves “I have to …” and see what we can contact deep within if we instead tell ourselves “I choose to … because I need …”
Once all our needs are deeply felt, and we have clarity of why we are making certain choices, seeing clearly which needs these choices satisfy and which they do not, we can decide whether or not there are things we want to change in our lives, or at a minimum be aware why we are doing certain things.
I may tell myself that “I have to call my father”.
I may connect to myself more deeply and tell myself “I choose to call my father because I want to protect myself from hearing his rage when I have not called him for a few weeks.” I may not much like calling him out of a need for protection. I can also contact the unmet needs: I dislike calling my father because I need to make the best use of my time. I need to protect myself from the painful experience of not reaching the kind of connection I would hope to have with him. So I would rather avoid contact. I am also uncomfortable when I am not calling because I need self-esteem, and as I am a seasoned NVC enthusiast, I would like to see myself able to connect with him in a way that I may find more satisfactory…
Once I fully know the needs at play, both met and unmet, I can choose. I may decide to continue doing what I have been doing, and discover that maybe I can do it out of a different energy, with the awareness of the needs I am satisfying, and of those I am not satisfying, and with the awareness of choice. Or I can consciously choose to stop doing what I have been doing, if I discover that the unmet needs are more important to me than the met needs in that precise strategy. Possibilities may open.
There is a very specific way in which we express an apology in NVC. We do so free from guilt, shame, fear of punishment, beyond “right/wrong” thinking. We do so with profound care for everybody’s needs and with the recognition that our action has affected someone, stimulated pain and left some needs crying out. Although we are not responsible for how other people feel, we do care for the impact of our actions, recognise our interdependence and acknowledge that we can stimulate something in others with our behaviour. We may come to mourn when our actions have not contributed to other people’s well-being.
We do so by receiving empathically the feelings of the person impacted by our behaviour and the unmet needs that are there. We do this, regardless of whether or how these feelings and needs may be expressed. We do it because we recognise that we have a deep yearning, an important need of ours, which is to contribute to other people’s well-being, and we value openness in sharing the pain we feel when we do not get to contribute in the way we would have liked to.
This is very different from how I learned to “say sorry”.
“Sorry” entails the idea of right/wrong. More often than not, sorry means “I have been bad but please forgive me and tell me you still love me”. One of the needs behind “sorry” might be for safety and connection, where we would like to be reassured that the relationship is safe, in spite of what we may have said or done.
There can also be a sincere mourning of what we did and now realise had an impact that we would have preferred not to have.
In any case, the intention in NVC is to explicitly share what is alive in us that could be hidden in the word “sorry”. Which—Marshall said—might even be “too cheap” for reparation. In restorative justice settings, there have been cases where the person using some form of violence that affected the other person would rather say sorry, or be punished, than deeply listen with empathy to the pain experienced by the other person, and connect with the shared humanity of needs behind the pain.
The other person impacted by our behaviour may be needing empathy and/or reassurance that their needs count for us.
An “apology” in NVC might begin with receiving empathically the pain experienced by the other person, followed by expressing our sincere regret, or however we feel about it.
After listening to the other person with that quality of presence that may create empathy and connection, I may express my apology to my partner, for example by telling her:
“When I think of [what I did or said—observation], I now feel so sad because I realise the impact it had on you, and I see that this is not how I would like to relate to you. I need connection and contribution, and I also hope to offer a safe space for our relationship. I mourn what happened and would so much have liked to act differently.”
We can approach an inner conflict as a conflict between two (or more!) parts of ourselves. In much the same way as an empathic dialogue may occur between two parts in conflict, it can happen between two parts of oneself: a (hopefully empathic) dialogue within.
The key is staying focused on listening to one part at a time, if we can manage to summon the clarity and awareness of our parts that is necessary. The more we can connect with the deepest needs of one part, the more we can then connect with the deepest needs of the other part or parts.
This is the general idea.
There is, however, a deeper dimension to resolving inner conflicts, in a specific context.
Inner conflicts tend to happen especially strongly when something we have said or done has not met some of our needs, and we voice or hear moralistic judgments about ourselves.
We may have an inner judge, wanting to educate us, and an inner chooser, trying to justify whatever it is that we did or said.
There can be an inner voice telling us that we “should” or “shouldn’t” have said or done a certain thing. Or that we now “should” do something specific.
Another inner voice resists the “should”.
Each voice is attending to one or more needs. The invitation of NVC is that we listen to each voice and listen to the need or needs behind each thought that each part expresses, and to then hold those needs tenderly on the one hand, while on the other realising how important they are for each inner voice, and cherishing this awareness.
Inner conflicts, as all conflicts, can be opportunities to grow. We all have a powerful need to serve life. We want all we do to enrich life. We want to see if we are effective in doing so. Feedback, in this case inner feedback, is a profoundly useful, necessary part of learning and growing. It is a way to check whether we have contributed to life as much as we know we want.
If our actions—attempting to meet some needs of ours—do not manage to satisfy some other important needs of ours, the risk is that we lose connection with the beauty of the needs our actions were attempting to fulfil. Because of the way we have been educated, the inner voice that speaks for the unmet needs may express this in terms of “should / shouldn’t” or judgments about how we’ve been “stupid” or “insensitive” or “the same old wreckage of nervousness and self-absorption”, or whatever judgment we might have of ourselves.
The key to inner dialogue that makes it more likely that we develop life-connected forms of being and communicating, and that we bring more empathy into our relationship with ourselves and others is to receive empathically the unmet needs, as well as empathically listen to the need we were attempting to satisfy when we did or said what we now regret. NVC mourning (see Section 2.5) is connecting with the feelings and unmet needs stimulated by the past action that we now regret.
One way to do so is
Listen to what the “shoulding” inner voice is saying, reflecting back as when doing so in an external dialogue “are you feeling… because you are needing?” and connect empathically with whatever is alive in that inner voice;
Sense the relaxation that a compassionate presence to what is alive in the other part of ourselves might help develop.
Shift the focus to the part who took the action or said the words that we now regret and might now be resisting the “shoulding” voice. The inner voice previously judging our actions or “shoulding” us now receives with empathy (a) the needs we were attempting to meet when we did or said what we now regret and (b) the mourning we may express around our need to contribute and our desire to take care of our other important needs, or the need to contribute to life and the mourning where we now see that we would have liked to do differently.
Once connected with the needs our actions have not fulfilled, and to the needs our actions were attempting to meet, we may now connect to a request we have of ourselves: how would I now wish to take care of those specific needs of mine. In other words, we connect to any strategy to meet the needs we were attempting to meet when we did or said what we now regret, that can also take care of the needs we haven’t met by doing or saying whatever we did or said.
This is how we can contribute to our learning and growth moving beyond doing things out of an energy of “should” or sense of fear, shame, guilt or duty.
“Giraffe” is taken as a symbol of language and consciousness grounded in an awareness of what is alive in oneself and in others. It is a metaphor for NVC patterns of awareness, thought and speech.
When “doing Giraffe”, we are using the formal elements of NVC speech, without the full awareness and intention to connect to the other person. This could happen initially, as we begin to desire to transform the way we relate to ourselves and others, and begin to practise expressing ourselves in NVC. It can also happen later, throughout our entire lives, in challenging times, when we can resort more closely and mechanically to a strict application of the four steps of NVC, expressing our observation, feeling, need and request, as an anchor for our difficult times.
When we are faced with challenging circumstances, daunted by our own interpretation of power imbalances at play, or pushed by our need for self-protection or appreciation, or by other similarly powerful needs, we might find ourselves wanting to come across as “good Giraffes” in the presence of people whose judgment we might fear, or whose appreciation we might long for. In such situations, we may think that we “must speak proper NVC”, while this pressure might disconnect us from what is really alive in us.
“Doing Giraffe” might also happen, especially between parents, or educators, and children, when we formally apply the four steps of NVC while in reality we are not open to really hearing and caring for what is alive in the other person.
“Being Giraffe” goes far beyond the specific words we say. We can be Giraffes without uttering a single word, or without the precise structure and wording of the formal four steps of NVC. It has to do with a deep consciousness of what is alive in myself and in others, a desire to connect, openness to trusting in the possibility of finding together new strategies that can take care of the needs of all involved on an equal footing.
NVC uses the metaphor of giraffes and jackals, to indicate communication that is connected to life, vs. communication that is alienated from life, respectively. Marshall chose the giraffe as a symbol of life-enriching communication because it is the mammal with the largest heart, proportionate to its size, and with its long neck it can see from afar. Jackals are a symbol for the language most of us in most of the world have been trained to use. It is made of moralistic judgements, right/wrong thinking, sense of duty and guilt, shame, and acting out of fear of punishment or hope for a reward.
We may hold dear a value of honest expression to others. NVC distinguishes what we may call “giraffe honesty” from what we may call “jackal honesty”.
Giraffe honesty is an expression of what is truly and deeply alive in us, in terms of how we feel and what we need. It speaks about ourselves and seeks to communicate what is really important to us, what is going on within us, what is stimulated in response to what is happening in the outer world, or in our inner world.
Jackal honesty belongs to a thought and belief system where our focus is not on our inner workings and feelings and needs, but rather on the outer world of what we believe the other person or persons are doing. It is honesty that comes from a judgemental outlook on what we believe to be right, or wrong, in other people.
Thus, if someone does something that I do not appreciate, and I choose “jackal honesty” to express honestly my judgements about what happened, I would communicate my thoughts, my diagnosis of behaviour, and what I think of the person or persons. I would do so with a conviction that we have correctly interpreted what happened, and I may express what I think of them, or what I believe they should be doing.
“Honestly, mum, I think you are too obsessed with the way I dress and you should see a psychiatrist about your desire to control what I do despite the fact that I am 50 years old!” might be one example of jackal honesty.
If I chose to speak from a place of connection with what is alive deep inside me, I would express “giraffe honesty” without any moralistic judgement of the other person, and express my real feelings and needs. I might say something very different, such as, for instance:
“Mum, when you tell me that I dress as a homeless bugger, I feel unhappy because I need connection and closeness. I would really enjoy talking about something different with you. Would you be willing to call one or two friends tomorrow to agree on regular 15-minute appointments once a week to speak about how I dress?”
I maintain that it is not only the words we choose that matter. More than that, it is the intention behind our words that may have an impact on the quality of the connection. In giraffe honesty our desire is to establish a human connection. We are on the expressing side of a dialogue, and wish to tell the other person what is alive deep inside of us, be it satisfied or unsatisfied needs. Our intention is connection beyond right or wrong. Thus, we seek to express our honesty in ways that we hope may be more easily received as implying no rightness or wrongness whatsoever on the part of the other person.
Empathy is magic that can happen when there is a quality of presence and full attention to the life flowing in the other person, or in the part or parts of myself (self-empathy), with curiosity, focus, a desire for connection and trust that the other person has all that it takes to navigate emotions, needs and desires. The intention is receiving with full presence that which is alive in the other person, or the part(s) of myself, here and now, without memories of the past and no project for the future, with no intention to fix, solve, correct, or in any way attempt to bring the other person towards any specific outcome, or to a different place than that which is. Empathy is learning to stay with what is.
With empathic presence, including in tensions or conflict, it’s like we go down from our own hilltop and climb on another’s hilltop to see the world from their perspective. We do keep memory of our own hilltop, yet leave that aside for a while, and stay with what the other person is experiencing.
Empathy is not a matter of the specific words we use, and can be expressed silently. Although NVC suggests specific wordings and elements of speech if we wish to put in words our presence and empathic listening, formulating questions about what the other person—or a part of ourselves—is observing, feeling, needing or requesting, empathy is an intention, regardless of the words. The phenomenon of empathy is more likely to happen when we are not mixing in our needs, our desires, the things we are longing to receive or actions we would like to be taken.
Other, probably more habitual, forms of response generally focus more on us than on the other person.
Thus, we may, for instance, sympathise, reassure, want to fix or solve something, tell a story about ourselves, or otherwise bring the attention either back to us or towards something else.
Imagine a child tells you, in distress signalled by loud tears (possibly tearing apart the sheet upon which she was exercising her best attempts to master the art of representing life on two dimensions): “I can’t do this drawing; I am an absolute disaster!”
If we wanted to connect with curiosity and trust in whatever is going on in the child, and wanted to put this quality of presence and connection into words that can make empathy more likely to occur, we might say something like:
“Are you disappointed because you are needing beauty and ease to do what you are doing?”
Some examples of different forms of response that make it less likely for empathy to occur can include:
Advising: “Why don’t you try …?”
Stealing the other person’s thunder: “Well, don’t you realise who you’re telling that to? I’m the worst in the world at drawing!”
Educating: “If you try again and again, very calmly, you may really begin to learn.”
Shushing (the “pacifier act”): “Come on, don’t cry. We can do it together; you’ll see, it is going to be wonderful.”
Storytelling: “When I was your age, I was sitting on my grandmother’s lap; she was such a brilliant artist, and …”
Consoling: “Little darling, you are doing your best; you are so young and still learning, and I very much like seeing you draw!”
Sympathising: “Oh my dear, it must be terrible …”
Interrogating: “Have you tried another kind of pencil yet? Are you trying to draw something too complicated? Or have you tried a smaller drawing first?”
Two more forms of response may frequently emerge especially when in a conflict or tension.
The same child, for example, might be furious at us on another (or the same) occasion, and shout:
“You never take time to draw with me! You could teach me to draw! You know how to do it!”
Here, putting in words our empathic receiving of what is alive in the child, we could say:
“Are you feeling frustrated because you are needing attention and presence?”
Or we may find it too hard for us, and use some other forms of response such as the following:
Correcting: “That’s not true. Last week I even took an afternoon off to be with you, and it was you who did not want to draw then!”
Explaining: “You know, I had to go to work. I would really have liked to stay home and draw with you, but we have to pay the rent and the bills …”
Everything everybody does or says is an attempt to meet one’s needs. Remembering this, we may see there is nothing “right” or “wrong” about any of the other forms of response. NVC invites us to see clearly, to raise our awareness of what is at play, to notice which needs, whose needs, are on the table at any given moment.
Most of us have been educated in a “pacifier culture”, where babies should be consoled or shushed when they cry, and emotions should be kept at bay. Powerful feelings evoke distress or we may need peace or time to pursue our own objectives. Empathy requires that we are centred and connected to our own needs. It is harder to remain connected empathically to what someone else is experiencing when some of our needs are crying out intensely for attention.
“If pressure drops in the cabin, oxygen masks will automatically fall from the top. Pull the mask towards you and fix it with the elastic strip. Adjust your own mask before helping others with theirs!” The last sentence is a very clear metaphor for how we may first take care of our own need for empathy, so that we are able to be fully present to another person.
NVC invites us to care for our own needs, remain aware, and preserve the possibility of choosing how to respond.
In NVC, nonviolence is based on an awareness of needs and a desire to serve life. This includes a commitment to protect life, using the least amount of force that is effective in achieving this, with the greatest care.
The protective use of force aims at contributing to life, taking care of needs.
Consider a very young child and a parent’s need to protect the child’s well-being, health and physical integrity. If a child is moving into the space of public streets and roads on which cars and other vehicles travel and one or more vehicles are approaching, there may be no time to negotiate or seek the child’s willingness to listen to, understand and say yes to a request.
We may quickly and powerfully grab the child and use force to bring the child back to the pavement. This is the protective use of force.
We are then connected with compassion to whatever reaction the young child might have, even to the point of expressing our empathic attention to her feelings and needs as she might show powerful emotions of surprise or frustration, given her needs for autonomy and freedom of movement.
The punitive use of force is another matter. This is what we would apply, for example, once the same child is safe on the pavement. We might then scold her, tell her “you silly one, you shouldn’t run crossing the road like that without paying attention!” or even slap her on the cheek or spank her “so that she learns”. Punishment attempts to force a certain behaviour. While it is also an attempt to meet our needs, e.g. for security, it has powerful unpleasant consequences for both the one who applies the punishment and the one receiving it. While it can be effective in the short term, it brings the consequences of less connection and diminished heartfelt safety in the relationship, and everybody ends up paying for it.
I love Miki Kashtan’s definition of ‘power’: the ability to mobilise resources to meet needs. Power commonly has a dreadful, typically negative connotation. It is seen as a force that imposes itself. This has less to do with power in itself than it has to do with how power is used. If power has to do with meeting needs, the question is very much one of whose needs power is used to satisfy.
Power over is a frequent dynamic in the world as we know it—or, in any case, in the world as I have known it. It starts early on and is learned quickly, to the detriment of all relationships involved, in all the ‘directions’ of attention, care, expectations, frustrations. We first encounter it as very small, tiny creatures, with those fellow humans we call parents. Parents are stronger, both physically and cognitively. Parents are easily tempted to use their greater moral and/or physical strength to coerce, to impose, to determine the course of action.
Power over is a dynamic that prioritises the needs of people more able or more willing to use moral or physical force to obtain what they wish. Power over uses persuasion, threats, sense of duty, shame, guilt, fear of punishment or hope for a reward to impose one course of action regardless of whether the people upon whom this power is exercised are willing or not.
Power over goes hand in hand with power under, whereby one person may submit to another whom they perceive as having authority, or as being able to punish or reward them. This is done at a cost to all involved and tends to decrease connection and willingness to give to one another from the heart.
Power with is an utterly different dynamic, where the needs of all do count. All needs of all people involved are as a minimum acknowledged, welcomed, carefully listened to and recognised. Then there is a sincere willingness on the part of all people to mobilise resources to meet the maximum number of needs at play, for all people involved.
Thus, whoever holds a certain greater or lesser perceived power has a sincere desire to join others in searching for the strategies that can maximise everyone’s well-being.
As a parent, I remember with painful regret the occasions, say, ten or fifteen years ago, when I did not manage simultaneously to consider my needs and the needs of my very young children. I would for example tell them “now it is time to go to bed” and would not hear any different opinion about it. I am grateful that I had learned to act without ever resorting to punishment or reward. Yet somehow my authority meant that they tended to obey. They were mostly convinced by my rational indications that this was “the right thing to do”. I certainly recognise my needs for contribution to life and for security (in terms of what I perceived as being the healthier option, relative to the time when I would wake them up to have breakfast and reach the school bus stop on time). I believe I recognised their need for autonomy, yet I recall that less than half the time did I acknowledge their need, let alone enter into an empathic dialogue to establish together the course of action that could satisfy all or most of our needs, mine and theirs.
Sometimes it did happen. Something like “so you would like to play a little longer?” (yes!) “and you really like it when you can choose?” (yes! we’re not tired!) “mmm… you’re really having fun and need play and fun?” (yes!) “Are you willing to hear something?” (yes) “I am worried. Somehow I am afraid you might so much like your game that you may not realise how long you need to sleep to be rested and have fun throughout your day tomorrow. And I am also sad to think of the times when I forced you to bed, and I like to let you choose even while I am not very comfortable with letting you choose now. Do you have any ideas how we could find a way that is ok for you and for me?” (we play another ten minutes then go to bed) “how would that be for you if we washed ourselves, brushed our teeth, were all ready to go to bed and then play another ten minutes?” (ok).
Not that it was always as easy as this. Surely it worked wonders every time I was able to remember to connect, and acknowledge their needs and their frustration and made it clear I was committed to something that worked for me and for them.
Power with can be a lot of fun when we trust in the abundance of life.
Appreciation is the full expression of a life-connected force that has contributed to making our lives more wonderful.
Approval, compliments or praise belong to a world of judgmental thinking, of right/wrong, good/bad. They all rest on a mindset that orients towards determining how good or bad the other person (or it could be ourselves) has been. They use life-alienated communication patterns, as opposed to communicating what is alive in us.
When I express appreciation, I speak of myself, of my feelings when a very important need or value of mine has been met through something you’ve said or done.
NVC appreciation can be expressed in terms of observation, feelings and needs.
“When you told R. that you would like to know more about how he felt rather than just ‘I’m well’, I felt full of admiration and gratitude because I value transparency and honesty. That really met my need for communion.”
“When I hear you play the piano, I am carried away with rapture and feel so content because it meets my need for beauty and harmony. I love it when I feel so.”
It is a different world. It is a world where one chooses to be just one of billions of human beings, each with a spark of divine energy, no one person an Almighty God who can discern and state who’s good, who’s bad, what’s nice, what’s ugly…
In my experience, this was—on a personal level—one relatively “easy” shift of consciousness compared with other shifts kickstarted within my consciousness by adhering to the call of NVC. At the same time, it was one that met with many puzzled expressions, especially on parents’ and teachers’ faces. Whatever was wrong with praise and compliments, after all?
If I were to mention the ten most important books I’ve ever read, one Marshall suggested that I read about twenty years ago would be amongst those: Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards. This book, besides, of course, talking more broadly about rewards and their effects on children (and adults), sheds light on the problem with praise, which I further understood by reading Aletha Solter’s books, and Françoise Dolto’s too.
Praise and approval, besides belonging to a sterile world of alienated thinking—and communication—whereby NVC invites us to connect to the power and flow of life within us and in others, rather than dwell in the static world of moralistic judgments and keep playing one single game—who’s right? Who’s good?—begin early on to move children from the natural intrinsic motivation to contribute to Life with which they are born towards the extrinsic motivation of doing something in order to obtain approval or praise, ultimately to satisfy a need for security and affection.
It is a different world where we nourish our need to contribute to life and we receive precious feedback—in the form of appreciation expressed in terms of feelings and needs met—feedback that tells us how much we were indeed able to meet our own need to contribute to enriching people’s lives while enriching our own lives.
Nonviolent Communication is a path of awareness and connection that can give us back our power to choose. To me, the key to differentiating between choice on the one hand, or submission/rebellion on the other hand lies in self-awareness. What is it that I really want, beyond reacting to external requests? (In the hope of avoiding misunderstanding, I wish to highlight that in “what I really want” I might also be responding to my need to contribute to another’s well-being)
In my own experience, the possibility of choice has been activated and brought to the foreground of my mind when I have managed consciously to pause, to slow, and connect to the life flowing in me—how I was feeling, what I was needing, which strategies I would like to use in order to meet my needs.
Submission or rebellion are two sides of the same coin of a paradigm of scarcity, power-over, reactivity. When I submit (possibly aiming to satisfy needs for security, or safety, self-protection, or ease), I give my power to another person. This is often easier to notice in submission. However, rebellion also entails reacting against something or someone, rather than acting from one’s own centre, one’s own willingness or unwillingness for a particular course of action, in relation to one’s own needs and deeper values.
Choice is a conscious process whereby I can decide whether or not to follow a specific course of action, not in response to extrinsic motivations (e.g. fear of punishment or hope for a reward), but rather coming from a place of connectedness to my own needs, and recognising the other person’s needs. I retain my power. I am connected with myself and can offer my empathic, compassionate attention to the other person, free from labels and hierarchical positions of power as determined by norms or regulations. In every precious moment of my life, I see our shared humanity and take care of my own needs. I can choose and withstand the consequences, including any that I would rather not bear, with full freedom and awareness of myself.
Submission or rebellion both entail a dynamic of power-over and power-under with respect to people I perceive as aiming to coerce me into doing something. When I think of times I acted out of this power-over energy toward the human beings born of my ex-wife and myself, I mourn with deep grief that more often than I would have liked, I had forgotten what I had learned of NVC. My second son, Daniel, has a delightful, magnificent, huge need for autonomy. One may say that all human beings do tend to have this as a very important need. This resonates with me too. At the same time, I remember I saw it expressed more powerfully by him, when I forgot that I wanted to relate with him on a very different level, sharing power and caring for both my and his needs. When I forgot, he would do all he could to rebel against what I was demanding. I vividly recall the healing laughter we once shared when he concurred that if I happened to request something that he would have done without me requesting it, then he would not do it simply because I requested it.
Daniel had renounced his power to choose and became concerned solely with taking care of his need to assert autonomy and freedom in the face of my demands, so that he found it hard to connect to his own inner choice, regardless of what I requested, or did not request.
We eventually grew out of this dynamic, or at least found a way to reconnect with our awareness. I mourn the price we paid even while I celebrate the learning and growth that we could experience. Daniel realised he could choose for himself whether or not he wished to do something, and do it—if he so wished—regardless of whether I was requesting it or not. Out of his own choosing.
In NVC, an observation—the first step of the four-step process—sets the scene so that we can agree on what happened before we begin to exchange about the really important, juicy parts: what is alive in me and what is alive in you. NVC invites us to clearly state what we hear, see, smell, sense, or remember, as if it could be recorded by a camera with a microphone, separating that from evaluations, interpretations and judgments.
NVC does not imply that evaluations, interpretations, judgments are “wrong”. They simply are something different from pure observation. As the objective of NVC is connection, the experience of Marshall Rosenberg and countless others since, which resonates with my own experience, is that communicating our observations rather than evaluations increases the likelihood of establishing a human connection which opens up ways.
To me, NVC has been a path of developing greater clarity. Beyond right or wrong, differentiating between observation on the one hand, and evaluations, interpretations and other similar thought processes on the other hand, was key to gaining crystal-clear awareness of my inner experience and how I communicate it to others.
There are many ways in which one might mix observation with evaluation, interpretation, judgments. These normally go along with a lack of awareness. There tends to be a confusion between reality and my interpretation. Below are just a few examples to clarify the concept.
Evaluation: You are too generous!
Observation: When I see you giving more than half of what you collected as contribution for your workshop to that charity, I think that you are too generous.
Evaluation: You have forgotten your turn to wash the dishes!
Observation: When I see the dirty dishes in the sink, and your name on the task rota for today, I believe you have forgotten it was your turn.
Evaluation: You are always late for our meetings.
Observation: I remember that all through this past week you arrived at 8.10 or 8.15 for our regular 8 am meeting…
Evaluation: Department of Agriculture officials are so dumb! They have no clue what it means to have an excess wolf population around this area!
Observation: When I see that there are three times more wolves in the area now than four years ago, and farmers have lost 25% of their sheep and received no compensation, I think government officials do not understand the impact…
Evaluation: She is so closed!
Observation: When I ask her how she is doing and she tells me she does not want to answer, I think she is not [being as] open [as I would like her to be now].
Evaluation: This food is so good!
Observation: I like the taste of this food.
Evaluation: We change the sheet of our bed too rarely.
Observation: We change the sheets of our bed every three months.
Besides greater clarity, separating observation and evaluation brings about two major shifts in how we perceive (and communicate about) reality and in how we can connect with others. These are:
(1) we take responsibility for what we believe, think, evaluate, which becomes our own way of interpreting things, as distinct from the factual reality of what happens, and
(2) we “set the scene” of a form of dialogue in a way where it might be more likely that we agree, so that we leave space to communicate the really important things we aim to communicate (how we feel, what we need, what we would like to happen).
In NVC, one key invitation is to develop an awareness of, and a vocabulary for, feelings. Expressing feelings is the second of the four steps of the NVC model (see Section 1.1). Alongside needs—the third step, with which feelings are intimately connected—feelings are fundamental to establishing connection with one another’s shared humanity.
Feelings are the emotions we sense in our bodies and our minds and souls. Happy, calm, serene, anguished, worried, scared: these are qualities of our emotional life that result from our needs being met or not, at any particular moment. Ever-changing flows of life energy within us.
I was not trained to speak of my feelings and needs when I was a little boy, nor has society caught up with the missed opportunity throughout the many years I studied at university. From the many people I have known in my life, I have the impression that this is a common experience. Instead, we tend to use the verb “feel” to indicate thinking.
The following are examples of sentences where we use the verb “to feel” in a way that I consider to express thoughts or processes related to thinking and judging, rather than feelings. In these sentences we might replace the verb “feel” with “think”. We can juxtapose these sentences with what we might say if we chose to express feelings around the inner experience we are aiming to communicate.
Thought: I feel that you should not speak to me in this way.
Feeling: [When you speak to me as you just did,] I feel sad.
Thought: I feel I’m a useless organiser!
Feeling: I feel dissatisfied with the way I have organised things.
Thought: I feel that you do not understand me!
Feeling: I feel frustrated because I need understanding.
Thought: I feel they are mistreating us.
Feeling: [When I consider how they responded to us,] I feel hurt and upset.
Thought: I feel ignored.
Feeling: I feel in pain because I need consideration.
The last example above points to the use of words that indicate what we think other people do to us. In this specific example, I think that others ignore me. I can feel in different ways. The expression of what I think others are doing to me does not reveal what is alive in me. NVC invites us to share what is alive in us, as a more likely source of connection with myself and others, with our shared humanity, increasing the likelihood for that phenomenon that we call empathy, or compassion, to happen.
I recall Marshall Rosenberg saying, “I appreciate people more since I stopped hearing what they think,” and he advised especially to avoid hearing what people think about us. This remains quite a feat for me, more often than I would like. I know full well that I have experienced greater joy when I managed to hear how people feel and what they need.
One thing that I found helpful is awareness of the meaning and significance of the words we use, building a vocabulary of feelings, and transforming the habit of disguising words that indicate what I think others are doing as expressions of feelings. Such words are generally past participles of verbs. A few examples, by no means exhaustive, are as follows.
Examples: attacked, betrayed, cheated, distrusted, intimidated, manipulated, misunderstood, neglected, patronised, pressured, rejected, threatened, unheard, used.
NVC invites us to build a vocabulary of feelings. There are many lists of feelings available, e.g., in Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, as well as online, e.g., at https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/feelings-inventory. Only a few examples are shown below, to give a glimpse of the wondrously vast language of emotion.
Feelings we may feel when our needs are met:
Examples: alert, amused, blissful, calm, ecstatic, elated, enthusiastic, glad, grateful, happy, intrigued, jubilant, mirthful, peaceful, quiet, radiant, rapturous, refreshed, relaxed, satisfied, thrilled, touched, tranquil, warm.
Feelings we may feel when our needs are not met:
Examples: afraid, agitated, alarmed, bewildered, bitter, bored, broken-hearted, confused, dejected, discouraged, dismayed, dull, edgy, embarrassed, fearful, frightened, gloomy, heavy, hurt, impatient, irked, lonely, mournful, overwhelmed, perplexed, resentful, scared, uncomfortable.
NVC sees needs as the core, the fundamental life force that moves all we do or say.
Needs are universal, abstract energies shared by all of humanity, beyond any cultural border. Everywhere on the planet, people asked to draw a list of the most important things in life, or what is of most value in life, produce very similar lists.
Such lists comprise abstract values, concepts, that are not attached to a specific person, a specific action, a specific means of satisfying something deeply important to us.
Below are some of the most common words that are found in such universal lists. (This list is far from exhaustive and is intended to illustrate the concept.)
Examples: affection, belonging, cooperation, community, consideration, love, respect, support, trust, movement, safety, connection with nature, equality, freedom, independence, creativity, effectiveness, growth, learning, participation, play, purpose, understanding.
Lists of needs are found, e.g., in Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, as well as online, e.g., at https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory or other NVC websites.
Requests point to the strategies that each and every one of us might prefer, in a given moment and situation, in order to satisfy our needs. Requests are expressed after needs, separate from needs, and refer to practical ways to meet needs.
There are many strategies to meet one need, and every strategy can meet several different needs.
Many people can share a need for play in the same moment, or have known at other times in their lives what a need for play is. All may have a different preference for how to meet this need. I may like to pretend-fight on the ground, like wolf cubs; you may prefer playing chess, while my son might wish to go dribbling and shooting a ball towards a basket.
Similarly, playing basketball can meet other needs besides the need for play. In recent years, after a dreadful time in hospital and deep emotional turmoil as well as profound reconnection with my son Daniel, playing basketball together met a need for connection. The same activity can meet a need for movement, or other needs.
Uncoupling needs from strategies, I have found that more creativity and compassionate understanding can emerge. In dialogue, we might be able to seek a strategy that manages to fulfil the greatest number of needs at play in a given situation. When we take care of needs and persist in our desire to find something that contributes to making the lives of all people involved more wonderful, and, thanks to this distinction, we are able and willing to let go of specific strategies, miracles can happen.
I have presented requests in NVC in Section 1 (more specifically in Section 1.3). Here I wish to highlight the key differentiation between a request and a demand.
In NVC, requests are a gift we offer to the other person, based on a core belief that one of the strongest needs for all human beings is to contribute to one another’s well-being. As we know that everybody shares this important need, we express our own need to the other person (or to a part of ourselves) and then request what we would enjoy receiving in order to meet that need.
When we request what we want, we know there might be other strategies to meet our need. We may even be unaware of which strategy, and might go through some painful dialogue and stretching of our moment-by-moment capabilities to connect, in order to find other strategies. We can also connect deeply with trust in the abundance of life.
Or we may be trapped in some painful processes and not find the way to trust in the possibility to meet our need in a different way. In NVC consciousness, we know we want to receive what we request only if it is given in a spirit of full willingness from the heart. We know that we all pay a price if we receive what we want out of energies such as a sense of duty, guilt, shame, or fear of punishment or hope for a reward.
Requests leave the other person the freedom to say no.
Demands leave no real choice to the other person except between abiding by what we demand, regardless of their own needs, and accepting consequences they may prefer to avoid.
When we offer a request, showing the other person what we would like to happen and how we expect it to contribute to our well-being, we know the other person has needs too, and we can connect to our desire that everybody’s needs are acknowledged and cared for, and the greatest possible number of needs is satisfied.
We know that everything people say or do, or do not say or do, is an attempt to meet needs. Hence, we can develop great compassion through the awareness of needs, and reach out to hear the need to which the person is saying yes, when answering “no” to our request.
How do we know, in practice, whether a request is a request and not a demand? By how we react when we receive “no” as an answer.
Would you be willing to get me some water now? I am thirsty and so tired.
No.
You’re as selfish as usual!!
Here, we are expressing angrily a judgement about how selfish we consider the person to be. We may possibly be hoping to educate others into repenting and amending their ways. Or we might simply be replaying toxic learned patterns of communication, where we want to obtain what we want, at all costs. We tend to do so by leveraging a sense of guilt, duty or similar pressures. I see this as a risky and tragic continuation of the world of disconnection and violence that we know.
If ours is a request and we want people to do as we ask if and only if they do it from the heart out of a pure desire to contribute to life, when we hear a “no” we might be likely to answer very differently. We might choose to express honestly how we feel and what we need when we hear “no” or we might be willing and have the capacity to connect empathically with the feelings and needs of the other person.
If the above example were a request, our dialogue might look different, such as, e.g.,
Would you be willing to get me some water now? I am thirsty and so tired.
No.
Are you also feeling tired and needing rest? And maybe you’d like to remain seated and rest for a while longer now? So you would prefer I stand up and fetch the water myself?
Yes, you always want others to get you things!
Are you feeling frustrated because you need mutuality?
It is a very different world. It does not mean that we’ll give up on our needs; we might be willing to let go of our request, of the specific strategy we wanted to see realised. See Section 3.18 for the key differentiation between persisting vs. demanding.
In NVC, we see that our feelings originate from our needs, met or unmet. I feel in a certain way because of a certain need of mine. You feel in a certain way because of a certain need of yours. We aim to liberate ourselves from emotional slavery whereby we give away our power and our responsibility for how we feel.
Other people are never the cause of how we feel.
Yet we are interdependent, and our actions do have an impact on others, too.
What other people do (or say, or don’t do) is the stimulus that can trigger something, while the cause is our own need.
An example might illustrate this better.
Imagine you have agreed to meet at 10.00 in the main town square with one of your friends. He arrives at 10.30. This behaviour will be the stimulus in our example.
Now, imagine two different scenarios.
Scenario 1: You have arrived at the place of the appointment a couple of minutes earlier as you like to do. Punctuality is a value for you. You are so happy to meet your friend, it’s been a while since you met and you need connection, company, closeness. Time passes, your friend does not arrive, your phone does not ring. You begin to feel tense, maybe worried, maybe upset. You may connect with a need for reassurance that your needs matter, or the need to make the best use of your time. It is because you have these needs that you feel as you feel.
Scenario 2: You face a major unexpected event, and you are extraordinarily delayed. You arrive rushing, panting after a final run, upset, worried, you need to be seen as caring, you are hoping to receive understanding, you feel uncomfortable. You reach the appointment at 10.29, just a few seconds before your friend arrives, equally worried, equally running, beginning to voice his apology. You feel elated, relieved, because you need security, and you care for your relationship, and because you need to contribute to other people’s well-being. You find peace in the knowledge that your friend did not experience the discomfort of waiting for you so much longer than you would have liked.
In this example we see that the person who arrives half an hour after the agreed time for our appointment is doing exactly the same thing. This action of the person, the concrete event, is not the cause of how we feel. In our interdependent, connected life, it is clearly a stimulus. The effect that the stimulus has on us is very different, depending on the need or needs that we have at the precise moment when we encounter the stimulus.
There is a specific vision of anger in NVC that is related to the key differentiation of stimulus vs. cause. Anger is a complex feeling that is more than just an emotion, and is related to our thinking.
In anger, other people’s behaviour is again the stimulus, never the cause of our anger. While underneath anger as underneath all emotions, there are (in this case, unmet) needs, the cause of anger in NVC is our thinking implying wrongness on the part of others.
NVC invites us into a world beyond right or wrong, good or bad. I have met with participants in trainings who felt alarmed and upset, as they needed reassurance that life-affirming values had a place, and that there are actions that they are not prepared to accept. Most of them have named, e.g., killing, sexual abuse, or the practice of torturing dissidents imprisoned without a trial.
I have great empathy—and even resonance—with the values so dearly held by people who have shared with me their worries, feelings of unease and needs for security, integrity, meaning, among others, when hearing the invitation to leave behind all right/wrong, good/bad thinking.
The invitation is to leave the static world of moralistic judgements. The shift is from the idea that people are inherently evil, or, more broadly, from the idea that people are inherently something static that can be diagnosed and labelled once and for all. By diagnosing, labelling, and moralistically judging others, we assume we are a Divinity with the clear power to discern precisely who is right and who is wrong, who is good and who is bad. We polarise the world in binary, static thinking. We are looking outside ourselves. We are not connected to what is alive in us and/or to what is alive in others. We lose touch with the ever-changing reality of life, and the flow of energy that might connect us to one another.
When we are connected to what is alive in us, we know that we experience emotions of different “tastes” according to whether our needs are met and to how closely what happens is aligned with our most dearly held values. That is, we do—all of us—have deeply held values, and like to express value judgments about what happens in our lives and in the world.
Value judgments are intrinsic qualities of what we hold dear. I do not conceive them as a standard to evaluate who’s going to be admitted into the heaven of “the good people” and who is going to be thrown in the dreaded hell of the “persons to despise” (or punish).
I do have value judgements. I believe in loving-kindness, non-punishing approaches to education, peaceful resolution of conflicts and nonviolent unarmed defence. I value sharing what I have with others and I aim to nourish trust and reliability in my relationships with others. What NVC invites us to do, in my way of seeing this, is to express our inner life energy when what we see happening conflicts with our values, in terms of the feelings and unmet needs we have, rather than establishing that others are unkind, or violent, or unworthy of trust.
“Isn’t all this ‘are you feeling… because you are needing…?’ stuff a bit unnatural?”
I have heard this question, or variations on the theme, asked time and again when offering introductory trainings or short talks on NVC.
As Gandhi is reported as saying, “do not confuse nature and nurture”.
The specific choice of words, semantics and sentence construction that NVC suggests has also seemed to me thoroughly different from anything I was used to in terms of how to speak with people (and myself). The habitual patterns of communication are acquired in socialisation from parents, pre-school communities, and schools, reinforced by subsequent inputs and by shared (mostly implicit) agreements and the sense of belonging and familiarity that a specific set of rules governing what to say, what to expect to be said by others, create.
All this makes it so that habitual patterns of communication seem ‘natural’ because they are what we and most people around us are used to.
Marshall Rosenberg presented us with an idea that wanting to make one another’s life more wonderful was ‘natural giving’—he affirmed that there is a natural, innate desire to contribute to one another’s well-being, giving from the heart, with the joy with which a small toddler gives breadcrumbs to the ducks in a pond.
To him, NVC was the mode of communication which translated into words this natural giving from the heart, this desire to contribute, and connect deeply, celebrating and mourning life, developing and expressing compassion, feeling more joyful and serene when everybody’s needs are peacefully cared for, acknowledged, and as many are satisfied as possible in each moment-by-moment circumstance.
Sharing this core belief in the basic set-up of human beings and divine energy in the universe, NVC is seen as our ‘natural’ mode of communication, made non-habitual for most of us by years of domination societies, right/wrong thinking and its corollary of life-alienated, moralistically judgmental thinking (see Section 3.16 for a distinction between life-connected and life-alienated).
What is non-habitual might be uncomfortable, and as NVC aims at connection, we may choose to use words that people can recognise, while holding the sense of NVC underneath (see Section 3.24).
In our world of right/wrong, good/bad thinking, in so-called ‘modern’ societies, in particular though not exclusively in the Global North, independence is seen as good. People are valued when they are judged as strong, and ‘capable of standing on their own feet’. This can be seen as a way to take care of several needs, e.g., for autonomy, stability, safety, order, competence.
Conversely, dependence is seen as weakness, power-under, the persistence of ‘child-like’ traits.
The dichotomy is intimately connected, and generally judgmental—two sides of the same coin, belonging to the world of right/wrong, to a language alienated from life.
Interdependence recognises we are all connected, and that what affects one of us really affects all of us. One of the core beliefs within the frame of NVC is that human beings are happier and more satisfied in their core needs—including security, safety and self-actualisation—when everybody’s needs are equally cared for. When I focus my attention on interdependence, I realise I can contribute to another’s well-being, and other people can contribute to my well-being, yet nobody is an absolute necessity, and neither any one person nor any one strategy is the only way my needs may be satisfied.
We can give to one another from the heart, and there are many people, many strategies that can fulfil our needs. What I am doing or not doing has an impact on you and everyone, and what you are doing or not doing has an impact on me. In NVC, there is a consciousness that guides us, in the core belief that human beings are neither dependent (cannot be happy without you doing a certain thing) nor independent (I need nothing at all from other human beings, I can be self-sufficient).
We can mutually enrich our lives, contributing what can nourish our needs, mutually giving to one another from the heart.
The way we communicate in NVC comes from where we focus our attention.
Marshall called “life-alienated” the communication that focuses outside ourselves, looking at what other people ‘are’—using a static language of right/wrong, good/bad judgmental thinking. Or we focus on analysing, diagnosing, what is happening, in intellectual terms. In this way, we communicate our thinking without communicating how life is moving within us.
Life-connected communication in NVC focuses on what is alive in us, what might be alive in others, in terms of what we are feeling, what we are needing, and our deepest yearnings.
In a life-alienated world, when I hear the government has once again approved the delivery of arms to Ukraine, I may react saying something like:
“They are crazy. They do not realise that throughout history adding to violence has only brought violence. But all they are interested in is making money and retaining power. They want war. This is not what they should be doing. The magnificent Italian Constitution states that we reject war as a way to solve international disputes. We should respect that, it is our founding Charter, the will of the people, the very basis of our State!”
Although it might be easy to guess what is alive in the person speaking, there is no explicit account of the speaker’s inner world in the sentences above.
Life-connected communication in this example may sound something like:
“I feel so scared! I need security! When I hear they are doing this, I am angry because I think they are crazy and they do not respect our own Constitution! And what’s really inside of me, beneath the anger and the thinking, is that I am really scared, afraid of escalation, and want to protect life. And I would like to see humanity move towards active nonviolent civil resistance and nonviolent means to solve disputes. I so much need peace, and love, and safety for all and reverence and respect for all life! I abhor wars and arms and I feel so powerless to influence such a large majority of those making these decisions. I need to matter. I need to contribute. I am deeply convinced another way is possible. I feel such deep pain inside!”
I see compromise as the saddest thing that can come out of a dialogue. I see it as all the people involved suffering sufficient loss and pain, yet seeing that the others have also given up equally important things, so that all can be equally unsatisfied, and at least the needs for equality and mutuality are met. I see this as a lose-lose game.
Shift may happen when deep, empathic, compassionate connection occurs as we recognise our shared humanity. Where compromise entails, in my view, intellectually balancing a minimum level of mild satisfaction based on specific strategies, shift is the result of connecting at the level of needs, so deeply that all people involved let go of their initially preferred strategies, and search together for what can contribute to maximise everybody’s well-being, and care for and satisfy the greatest possible number of needs at play.
By empathically connecting, letting go of the intention to ‘get our own way’, a divine flow of energy can soften our positions and increase the likelihood that a shift occurs, opening up possibilities for mutually and willingly enriching everybody’s lives. I see this as leading to a win-win result.
NVC invites us to request what we would love to see happen to contribute to satisfying our needs. It invites us to choose to receive what we request only when the other person is fully willing to give us from the heart. The idea is that we are happier when everybody’s needs are satisfied and we may pay a high price if we obtain what we want at all costs out of an energy of duty, guilt, shame, fear of punishment or hope for a reward.
Requests are different from demands, as discussed in Section 3.11.
Demanding is an energy that focuses on obtaining what we want. In demanding, we see only one strategy. We want things to go in that particular way, and we are not willing to let go of it. In doing this, we may encounter resistance, because two of the strongest human needs are autonomy and freedom to choose. Or worse, we may encounter power-under, and complying with what we ask out of an energy of fear, where people are responding more to their need for acceptance and safety in the relationship, rather than to their need to willingly contribute to another’s well-being.
Persisting is very different. It has to do with letting go of a specific strategy while remaining carefully connected to expressing and seeking satisfaction for our need or needs. The key distinction is the focus on needs rather than strategies.
In persisting, we may explicitly invite the other person to find something together that would satisfy my need or needs while also working for the other person. We are neither giving in nor giving up when it is something so deeply important to us. At the same time, we are committed to taking care of the other person’s needs. Persisting is quite the opposite of wanting to obtain what we want at all costs. It is an invitation to continue searching together, as allies, for a strategy that works for both of us, for all of the people involved.
Persisting might still be received as “insisting”, especially if there are layers of past demands in our relational history with that specific person, or if that specific person has experienced many demands from key people in their life. If this happens, receiving what is alive in the other person with empathy might contribute to opening up ways.
When we are persisting, we are connected to life inside of us and have a desire to connect to what is alive for the other person. Thus, we might empathise with the other person experiencing our persistence as “insistence” on getting what we want, and then get back to an invitation to become allies to find a mutually satisfactory solution.
In persisting, we are open to letting go of solutions that we prefer, and even open to having our needs recognised, welcomed, acknowledged, and yet not satisfied in the way we hoped. There might be mourning to go through.
Self-discipline stems from our inner values and full connection with our own needs, with awareness of choice, and of the impact on our core values of the choices we make.
Obedience is outwardly orientated, connected with fear of authority (see Section 3.20). It is compliance regardless of how much we disregard some of our needs. It is motivated by a sense of duty, guilt, shame, fear of punishment or hope for a reward.
Acting in a certain way, abiding by requests, especially requests made by people that we may see as in a position of power, or that we label as authority (parents, teachers, line managers, police officers, government officials, you name it) can refer to the concept of obedience when what we do satisfies our needs for appreciation, security, safety, stability, peacefulness, to the detriment of needs for authenticity, integrity, self-respect, choice, freedom, participation, self-expression, for example.
Nazi officials at Jerusalem’s trial for war crimes for the genocide of Jews replied that they did what they did because of ‘superiors’ orders’, giving up responsibility, and pointing to obedience to authority, possibly to preserve their own lives. Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority showed us that about two thirds of the population would still kill people simply because of obedience.
Transferring decision-making power to someone in the position of authority may also serve life under specific circumstances. This then becomes a choice, and it is connected with freely and consciously chosen self-discipline. In a fire emergency, longer empathic dialogue to decide who does what may consume precious time and endanger lives. Fully entrusting that power to the chief of the fire brigade, based on agreements made well in advance, investing one specific person with that authority, means that lives are more likely to be saved. This is the power of applying self-discipline because we are connected to what it means, to the needs at stake, and to choice.
Self-discipline belongs to a partnership paradigm, whereby we are connected to our values, needs, desires, and we freely choose what has value and sense for us, in connection with others, and recognising interdependence.
I see this key differentiation closely connected to the previous one under Section 3.19.
I see fear of authority related to the world of punishments and rewards, and may be related solely to needs for security and safety, or maybe appreciation and stability.
Respect for authority is freely chosen, recognising the role it plays in the service of life. One example, as given above, might be the authority of the chief of the fire brigade in a fire emergency.
Respect for authority is based on choice, and on connection with everybody’s equal value as human beings. Authority then comes to be seen as a role, conferred collectively, explicitly or implicitly, with the intention of serving life, contributing to needs. If power is—using a quote from Miki Kashtan that really speaks to me—‘the capacity to mobilise resources to meet needs’, authority is conferred with the power to serve life. I would then choose to respect that specific authority as I see the value of what such authority contributes to making life more wonderful. I am connected with my choice, my own values, and the desire to recognise what other people can bring of value in a life-connected way.
Respect for authority in this sense is connected to choice, based on values, rather than to fear, submission, or rebellion (see also Section 3.7).
I understand vulnerability to be the life-connected force that is based on our desire to serve life. I understand it as the preparedness to show up fully, valuing honest expression and deeper connection, moving beyond our comfort zone and expressing our inner world, our deepest feelings, our core needs, values and deepest desires, opening up to the possibility that our requests are not welcomed or met as much as we would like. While we express ourselves openly and may feel vulnerable and afraid of doing so, we are deeply connected to our inner power, and recognise our fears as well as our strengths.
Weakness is a cultural, life-alienated moralistic judgment. It is a form of judgment of our value when we lose touch with our needs, and are scared of the consequences. It is juxtaposed with ‘strength’ in patriarchal domination societies whereby emotions are hidden, and behaviours are codified into right/wrong.
Embracing vulnerability is a conscious choice. It is based on a willingness to be fully connected to ourselves and others, and communicate openly about our inner world, even while we may be worried about the consequences, or uncertain about the reactions. Fear can be triggered in relation to needs for security, appreciation, consideration, love. We choose vulnerability in service of integrity and honest expression, valuing and nurturing who we deeply are, and opening up to growth. We choose vulnerability with an awareness of needs, and a desire to develop full compassion towards ourselves, in the fullness of who we really are.
I see this as a nested differentiation.
On one level, in my understanding of NVC, there is a key differentiation between love as a feeling and love as a need.
Love as a feeling points to the deep emotions related to needs for attachment, care, connection, nurturing, and many others. Love as a feeling reveals the intensity of emotions that we can experience when we connect to the life energy that is contained in love as a need. With affection, tenderness, hope, expectation, passion, excitement and joy, love as a feeling is an ever-moving, ever-changing energy, moment-by-moment, in the flow of life, as all emotions do.
Love as a need is seen in NVC as an ever-present force of life. We may experience love as a need in terms of receiving warmth, company, appreciation, belonging, closeness and much more. We may also experience love as a need in terms of giving: the powerful desire to contribute, enrich life, care, nurture, and express compassion and attention.
NVC looks at love as a need rather than primarily as a feeling. Love seen as a need shifts the attention to the universal power of love as life energy. It is seen as the divine source of our desire to connect, give from the heart, express compassion in thoughts, words and deeds.
This is where love comes to be seen as something we do, rather than something we feel or need. This is not meant to invalidate what we also clearly recognise in NVC, i.e., that we feel love and that we all need to love and to be loved.
When we connect with love as a universal need, and we look at what this can mean for how we live in the world, we may develop an awareness of a profound desire to be connected with ourselves and others, in all circumstances. To give and receive from the heart. To live in a space of self-awareness and connection, tapping into the power of compassion, care, trust, honesty, vulnerability.
Love as an action is seen in NVC as the manifestation in thoughts, words and deeds of an intention to connect to our shared humanity beyond notions of right or wrong, expressing our own truth freely and honestly, in openness and vulnerability, and receiving others in their own truth openly and compassionately, in empathy, connecting to what is alive in each and every person in terms of feelings, needs and requests. Love becomes, to use Marshall’s words, “giving and receiving in a certain way” that manifests our willingness that everybody’s needs be cared for, in a way that contributes to everybody’s life and make it more wonderful.
When I am connected to myself beyond right or wrong, I can remain in the flow of life, and stay with powerful emotions, related to met and to unmet needs, with equanimity.
Doing so, I can welcome all feelings, and reconnect with the choice of what I wish to do with them, how I wish to connect with myself and others, what my deepest desire is for my relationship with myself and everybody else.
When triggered, I can overcome the learned patterns of acting out, venting frustration, shouting anger, using force punitively, or even harming others physically. I can also overcome the learned pattern of repressing feelings: judging them as bad, considering the power of my emotions with shame or guilt, forcing myself to hide them, stopping the flow, considering them wrong and labelling them unacceptable. It is the self-imposed pacifier that does not want to give space to the disturbance of a crying baby. There might be an internal parent inserting a metaphorical pacifier in my mouth, or I may do that autonomously, wallowing in my feelings, avoiding, choosing not to listen, out of fear, or unease, prioritising my need for security, assuming I am safer if I do not show ‘unpleasant’ overwhelming emotions.
Or I can do something completely different. I could move beyond the land of right and wrong, and welcome myself with compassion.
I connect with myself with empathy, self-empathy—listening with a tender inner ear to what it may be that I am feeling and needing, and wanting (and so perhaps requesting something of myself or others).
Here, in self-empathy just as in empathy towards another person, I can phrase questions to myself: are you feeling … … … because you are needing … … … ? I can sense the reaction and remain with that part of myself that is needing empathy till I experience the relief of self-connection.
When I connect to myself in this way, I can gain more clarity about what is alive in me and what is in my power to mobilise in order to meet more of my needs. I can make requests of myself and others, seeing what can contribute to my life, and I can mourn any unmet needs with a sweeter taste of self-connection and care.
Reminding ourselves that we can connect in this way, and doing it as regularly as suits us, we can discover our greater power to choose. It can also help us heal from past pain, and old patterns of suffering.
When some of my deeper needs in my intimate relationship with my partner are unmet, and there is tension and disconnection between us, while I need contact, tenderness, intimacy, and signs of the affection that has drawn our lives together, I know that my automated response, likely based on some past trauma and on the experience of life-alienated patterns with parents, education, friends, is to see everything dark, really dark. I then tend to forget about the possibility of empathy. I lie down in the dark in the very early morning, and cannot go back to sleep, telling myself that I am destined to the continual frustration of some of my most important needs. I want to run away, or simply get out of bed and yet remain morose all day.
Until I suddenly remember I can connect empathically with myself. Are you feeling desperate because you are needing affection and contact right now? And I breathe into it. I have no intention to let my feelings go away. I have no project of “curing a disease” with some quick-fix pseudo-psychological therapy to “solve it”. I aim to stay present to myself. Are you feeling lonely because you would enjoy some listening and a smile right now? No intention to rush into what I could do, or not do. Just utter, deep, non-judgmental, compassionate presence to the reality of what I am experiencing there and then. When she replies she does not know what she wants and why she is feeling distant, are you feeling desperate because you need connection and you’d like to understand? Just staying there. Crying if that’s what comes up. Tensing my muscles as I feel powerless to immediately satisfy my needs and desires. Stay with what is.
Self-empathy can then expand into conscious choice, and the possibility to connect with others with the same quality of compassionate care, without an orientation towards what ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ happen.
In classical, or ‘formal’ Giraffe, we follow the model precisely, expressing an observation, a feeling, a need and a request. We use specific wording that reflects our different outlook on the world and on human relationships. We use a vocabulary that speaks of feelings, in terms of emotions, and needs as universal abstract qualities. We make requests that include connection requests, phrased in a way that makes it explicit we would only receive what we ask if it is given willingly.
NVC is about consciousness and intention more than about a specific wording of the things we say. I have found it—and still find it—deeply useful, I daresay necessary in my experience, to use the formal structure, semantics, and word choice, of the NVC model. It has helped me and still helps me to focus my attention, and train my brain to rewire and transform patterns of thought and speech that are as far removed from my ideals and values as I can imagine. Twenty-nine-and-a-half years of communication in a way that I now see as judgmental, violent, alienated from life has left a deeply rooted influence on my brain. These years include the marvellously open and dynamic first months and years, when babies and toddlers register deep connections in all the cells of their brains that form the basis of how they are in the world.
Formally and consciously shifting toward the patterns of communication and wording that NVC proposes has for me been fundamental to shifting my consciousness and helping me connect with myself and others in a way that I have experienced as more likely to make the lives of all involved more wonderful.
Throughout the ensuing twenty-three-and-something years since first encountering NVC, I realised ever more deeply that intention is fundamental, and that wording or careful adherence to the model, the four steps, and the way things are phrased in NVC, is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for connection.
This key differentiation has come to the rescue in many challenging settings, where I interacted with people who had never heard about NVC, and had been educated in a similar, life-alienated, disconnected and ‘jackal’ way as I was.
My intention was to connect, and At times, I experienced the usefulness of phrasing what I wanted to say in a way that I expected to be more familiar, in terms of syntax and word choice, so that the way I phrased things would be less likely to get in the way of connection. We can be careful when doing so to keep our awareness on feelings and needs, and connect our own feelings with our own needs, while reflecting other people’s feelings in connection with other people’s needs, even while we may choose to say different words from what we would typically say in NVC.
For instance, instead of saying
Are you feeling scared because you need security?
to a 70-year-old man who’s been taught males are strong, and girlies sensitive and weak, so that the choice of words may put him off, I may choose to say
I’d guess you might like to stay on the safe side when this happens, right?
When my main aim is to connect, not to assess how people are and what they want, my intention to simply be present to another’s experience is what matters most—connect, without a dogma on which words to use, without memories of the past or projects for the future. Connect here and now, for the sake of tapping into our shared humanity, see each other as beautiful, co-create the foundations of a nourishing connection and relationship, opening up spaces of trust and the possibility to be listened to, heard and seen in what is important for me, too.
Empathy in NVC results from a quality of presence, intention, attention, and curiosity about what is alive in another person. It includes a desire to see what is happening in another human being in this precise moment. ‘How is it to be you right now?’ is the driving force behind it, alongside a desire to be there, offering the fullness of our presence, trusting that our full presence is the greatest gift, and all that is necessary.
When receiving another person’s truth in a given moment, we attempt to ‘put ourselves in another’s shoes’ and sensing with our whole being, sensations, emotions, physical cues, body language, energy, in the present, what the experience might be of the other person.
We then may choose to put the result into words of anything that our intention to be present and sense the reality of the other person brings. The words we use are intended as a bridge, as a means to convey what we have been sensing, while accompanying the other person (or part of ourselves) with our full presence.
We may express questions to check the result of our connection with the other person’s experience, and say things such as
“Are you referring to when you heard her say ‘shut up!’ with a tone several decibels higher than a few minutes earlier?”
“Are you feeling wretched because you need tenderness in interactions?”
“Are you wanting her to tell you how she feels when you share the way you felt and what you were needing?”
Our objective might be to express out loud in words that we are connected to the other person’s experience, or we might want to check if we are really with the other person, or we may hope to contribute to the other person’s well-being by meeting a need for empathy or for reassurance that they have been heard.
It does not matter whether we understand correctly. This is one of the aspects to which this key differentiation points. The intention, sincerely held and empathically sensed by the person we are listening to, suffices to create an experience of connection. ‘Guessing wrong’ is not an issue when we are deeply connected.
The experience of full connection integrates body, heart, mind and soul.
Intellectually guessing is limited to the mind. We may express it using the same wording based on observation, feelings, needs and requests, applying NVC while simply coming from the mind, from rational thinking, without involvement of our whole being, risking leaving a sense of ‘incomplete’ connection, that does not reach each other’s hearts.