Nonviolent Communication

Highlights

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We are led to express ourselves with honesty and clarity, while simultaneously paying others a respectful and empathic attention.

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First, we observe what is actually happening in a situation: what are we observing others saying or doing that is either enriching or not enriching our life? The trick is to be able to articulate this observation without introducing any judgment or evaluation—to simply say what people are doing that we either like or don’t like. Next, we state how we feel when we observe this action: are we hurt, scared, joyful, amused, irritated? And thirdly, we say what needs of ours are connected to the feelings we have identified. An awareness of these three components is present when we use NVC to clearly and honestly express how we are. Four components of NVC: 1. observations 2. feelings 3. needs 4. requests For example, a mother might express these three pieces to her teenage son by saying, “Felix, when I see two balls of soiled socks under the coffee table and another three next to the TV, I feel irritated because I am needing more order in the rooms that we share in common.” She would follow immediately with the fourth component—a very specific request: “Would you be willing to put your socks in your room or in the washing machine?” This fourth component addresses what we are wanting from the other person that would enrich our lives or make life more wonderful for us.

Note: Makes sense to me

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He is not here to make me happy, nor am I here to create happiness for him. We have both learned to grow, to accept, and to love, so that we can each be fulfilled.

Note: She’s not here to provide entertainment either

Page 554

Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and are not getting. Thus if my partner wants more affection than I’m giving her, she is “needy and dependent.” But if I want more affection than she is giving me, then she is “aloof and insensitive.” If my colleague is more concerned about details than I am, he is “picky and compulsive.” On the other hand, if I am more concerned about details than he is, he is “sloppy and disorganized.”

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Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values.

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We all pay dearly when people respond to our values and needs not out of a desire to give from the heart, but out of fear, guilt, or shame. Sooner or later, we will experience the consequences of diminished goodwill on the part of those who comply with our values out of a sense of either external or internal coercion. They, too, pay emotionally, for they are likely to feel resentment and decreased self-esteem when they respond to us out of fear, guilt, or shame. Furthermore, each time others associate us in their minds with any of those feelings, the likelihood of their responding compassionately to our needs and values in the future decreases.

Note: This is true and obvious, but I feel like folks in general, me included, don’t think about it enough

Page 609

Our language obscures awareness of personal responsibility. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, which documents the war crimes trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt quotes Eichmann saying that he and his fellow officers had their own name for the responsibility-denying language they used. They called it Amtssprache, loosely translated into English as “office talk” or “bureaucratese.” For example, if asked why they took a certain action, the response would be, “I had to.” If asked why they “had to,” the answer would be, “Superiors’ orders.” “Company policy.” “It was the law.” We deny responsibility for our actions when we attribute their cause to factors outside ourselves: Vague, impersonal forces—“I cleaned my room because I had to.” Our condition, diagnosis, or personal or psychological history—“I drink because I am an alcoholic.” The actions of others—“I hit my child because he ran into the street.” The dictates of authority—“I lied to the client because the boss told me to.” Group pressure—“I started smoking because all my friends did.” Institutional policies, rules, and regulations—“I have to suspend you for this infraction because it’s the school policy.” Gender roles, social roles, or age roles—”I hate going to work, but I do it because I am a husband and a father.” Uncontrollable impulses—“I was overcome by my urge to eat the candy bar.”

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Unfortunately, most of us have never been taught to think in terms of needs. We are accustomed to thinking about what’s wrong with other people when our needs aren’t being fulfilled. Thus, if we want coats to be hung up in the closet, we may characterize our children as lazy for leaving them on the couch. Or we may interpret our co-workers as irresponsible when they don’t go about their tasks the way we would prefer them to.

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We demonstrate that we are making a request rather than a demand by how we respond when others don’t comply. If we are prepared to show an empathic understanding of what prevents someone from doing as we asked, then by my definition, we have made a request, not a demand. Choosing to request rather than demand does not mean we give up when someone says no to our request. It does mean that we don’t engage in persuasion until we have empathized with what’s preventing the other person from saying yes.

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Sometimes, however, even when we’re conscious of our intent and express our request with care, people may still hear a demand. This is particularly true when we occupy positions of authority and are speaking with those who have had past experiences with coercive authority figures.

Note: like me when i first moved to fb

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I was asked to meet with forty students who had been deemed “socially and emotionally maladjusted.” I was struck by the way such labels serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. If you were a student who had been thus labeled, wouldn’t it just give you permission to have some fun at school by resisting whatever was asked of you? When we give people labels, we tend to act in a way that contributes to the very behavior that concerns us, which we then view as further confirmation of our diagnosis. Since these students knew they had been classified as “socially and emotionally maladjusted,” I wasn’t surprised that when I walked in, most of them were hanging out the window hollering obscenities at their friends in the courtyard below.

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The presence that empathy requires is not easy to maintain. “The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle,” asserts French philosopher Simone Weil. “Nearly all those who think they have the capacity do not possess it.” Instead of offering empathy, we tend instead to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, on the other hand, requires us to focus full attention on the other person’s message. We give to others the time and space they need to express themselves fully and to feel understood. There is a Buddhist saying that aptly describes this ability: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

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We have seen how NVC contributes to relationships with friends and family, at work and in the political arena. Its most crucial application, however, may be in the way we treat ourselves. When we are internally violent toward ourselves, it is difficult to be genuinely compassionate toward others.

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For some items on your list, however, you might uncover one or several of the following motivations: (1) FOR MONEY Money is a major form of extrinsic reward in our society. Choices prompted by a desire for reward are costly: they deprive us of the joy in life that comes with actions grounded in the clear intention to contribute to a human need. Money is not a “need” as we define it in NVC; it is one of countless strategies that may be selected to address a need. (2) FOR APPROVAL Like money, approval from others is a form of extrinsic reward. Our culture has educated us to hunger for reward. We attended schools that used extrinsic means to motivate us to study; we grew up in homes where we were rewarded for being good little boys and girls, and were punished when our caretakers judged us to be otherwise. Thus, as adults, we easily trick ourselves into believing that life consists of doing things for reward; we are addicted to getting a smile, a pat on the back, and people’s verbal judgments that we are a “good person,” “good parent,” “good citizen,” “good worker,” “good friend,” and so forth. We do things to get people to like us and avoid things that may lead people to dislike or punish us. I find it tragic that we work so hard to buy love and assume that we must deny ourselves and do for others in order to be liked. In fact, when we do things solely in the spirit of enhancing life, we will find others appreciating us. Their appreciation, however, is only a feedback mechanism confirming that our efforts had the intended effect. The recognition that we have chosen to use our power to serve life and have done so successfully brings us the genuine joy of celebrating ourselves in a way that approval from others can never offer. (3) TO ESCAPE PUNISHMENT Some of us pay income tax primarily to avoid punishment. As a consequence, we are likely to approach that yearly ritual with a degree of resentment. I recall, however, from my childhood how differently my father and grandfather felt about paying taxes. They had immigrated to the United States from Russia and were desirous of supporting a government they believed was protecting people in a way that the czar had not. Imagining the many people whose welfare was being served by their tax money, they felt earnest pleasure as they sent their checks to the U.S. government. (4) TO AVOID SHAME There may be some tasks we choose to do just to avoid shame. We know that if we don’t do them, we’ll end up suffering severe self-judgment, hearing our own voice telling us there is something wrong or stupid about us. If we do something stimulated solely by the urge to avoid shame, we will generally end up detesting it. (5) TO AVOID GUILT In other instances, we may think, “If I don’t do this, people will be disappointed in me.” We are afraid we’ll end up feeling guilty for failing to fulfill other people’s expectations of us. There is a world of difference between doing something for others in order to avoid guilt and…

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Violence comes from the belief that other people cause our pain and therefore deserve punishment.

Page 308

Punitive action, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that people commit offenses because they are bad or evil, and to correct the situation, they need to be made to repent. Their “correction” is undertaken through punitive action designed to make them (1) suffer enough to see the error of their ways, (2) repent, and (3) change. In practice, however, punitive action, rather than evoking repentance and learning, is just as likely to generate resentment and hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.

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First, I wonder whether people who proclaim the successes of such punishment are aware of the countless instances of children who turn against what might be good for them simply because they choose to fight, rather than succumb, to coercion. Second, the apparent success of corporal punishment in influencing a child doesn’t mean that other methods of influence wouldn’t have worked equally well. Finally, I share the concerns of many parents about the social consequences of using physical punishment. When parents opt to use force, we may win the battle of getting children to do what we want, but, in the process, are we not perpetuating a social norm that justifies violence as a means of resolving differences?

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Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment to change people’s behavior. The first question is: What do I want this person to do that’s different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective, because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence someone’s behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn’t likely to work: What do I want this person’s reasons to be for doing what I’m asking?

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A woman studying NVC was suffering a profound bout of depression. She was asked to identify the voices within her when she felt the most depressed and to write them down in dialogue form as though they were speaking to each other. These were the first two lines of her dialogue: Voice 1 (“career woman”): I should do something more with my life. I’m wasting my education and talents. Voice 2 (“responsible mother”): You’re being unrealistic. You’re a mother of two children and can’t handle that responsibility, so how can you handle anything else? Notice how these inner messages are infested with judgmental terms and phrases such as should, wasting my education and talents, and can’t handle. Variations of this dialogue had been running in this woman’s head for months. She was asked to imagine the “career woman” voice taking an “NVC pill” in order to restate its message in the following form: “When a, I feel b, because I am needing c. Therefore I now would like d.” She subsequently translated “I should do something with my life. I’m wasting my education and talents” into: “When I spend as much time at home with the children as I do without practicing my profession, I feel depressed and discouraged because I am needing the fulfillment I once had in my profession. Therefore, I now would like to find part-time work in my profession.” Then it was the turn of her “responsible mother” voice to undergo the same process of translation. These lines, “You’re being unrealistic. You’re a mother of two children and can’t handle that responsibility, so how can you handle anything else?” were transformed into: “When I imagine going to work, I feel scared because I’m needing reassurance that the children will be well taken care of. Therefore, I now would like to plan how to provide high-quality child care while I work and how to find sufficient time to be with the children when I am not tired.” This woman felt great relief as soon as she translated her inner messages into NVC. She was able to get beneath the alienating messages she was repeating to herself and offer herself empathy. Although she still faced practical challenges, such as securing quality child care and her husband’s support, she was no longer subject to the judgmental internal dialogue that kept her from being aware of her own needs.

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