Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (edition 2003)

I have the benefit of reading this book in conjunction with a class. Had I not had a weekly practice session, to discuss various chapters, I may not have gotten as much out of it, but I am incredibly grateful that I have had the chance to read (and understand at least a portion of) this book.

There are basic steps, as there are in any self-help book, on how to better navigate your life, and while I am not yet a natural at NVC, I hope to become a more frequent user of it. In the driver's seat (that of the speaker), the form of 1)Observation 2)Feeling 3)Unmet Need 4)Request is helpful, though difficult to make fluent (especially when trying to not put any of the true power of your feelings into the other person - ie not "When you do W, I feel X, because I need Y from you. Could you stop being an asshat (Z)?)

Perhaps more important for me in this book though, is the exploration of empathetic listening. Working to truly understand the other person's feelings and unmet needs is what I hope will make me a better mother, friend, and partner. ( )

What happens to disconnect us from our compassionate nature, leading us to behave violently and exploitatively?

How does the way we think and communicate influence our ability to be compassionate with others in the midst of conflict and with ourselves when confronting the dark places within?

How can we relate to one another in a way that makes it safe for us to give our difficult truths, respecting and appreciating the conflict that arises between us as an invitation from spirit to evolve a higher order of creativity?

How can we relate to one another in a way that invites and encourages a felt communion to arise between us? How can we communicate in a way that helps us to trust that the truth of our specific condition, when contributed courageously to the corporate whole, can so inform our evolution as to manifest the divine among us?

For me, Marshall B. Rosenberg has gone a long way towards answering these questions, in his 45 years of work developing and teaching Nonviolent Communication (NVC). In his book, Nonviolent Communication, A Language of Life, he comprehensively lays out the insights, principles and methodology that make this possible, sharing some of his experiences along the way.

NVC, also known as Compassionate Communication, guides us in reframing how we hear others, how we express ourselves, and how we connect with ourselves. Instead of habitual, automatic reactions, our listening and speaking becomes firmly based in an awareness of what we are perceiving, feeling, needing and wanting. Marshall describes how focusing the light of consciousness in these 4 areas helps us to transform our criticism and judgment into appreciation and compassion. He then goes on to distinguish the kinds of thinking and communication that alienates us from our natural compassion and each other: moralistic judgment, comparison, denial of responsibility, and demands. Then he offers many distinctions that help us discern what are and are not observations, feelings, needs, and requests. During this exposition, he reveals one of the core insights behind NVC: that everything we think, say or do, no matter how tragic, is an attempt to meet needs we have.

Recent research in interpersonal neurobiology has revealed that the capacity for empathy is built-in to our biology – but that only certain kinds of experience (nurturing, secure attachment, accurate mirroring and love) allow us to develop the neural networks to emotionally regulate and fully access our innate potential for compassion.

Marshall describes how effective communication begins with compassion towards ourselves, in the way we talk to and connect with ourselves – and how we can heal the conditioned and subtle self-hatred that pervades our culture and has us denying our needs and our power to serve life.

In reading this book you will discover a way of being present and authentic while nurturing a deeply connecting mutual regard that leads to harmony and fulfillment.

When this work is taken on sincerely and diligently, it can help us remember the “subtle, sneaky, important reason” we were born a human being – the unique gift to life that each of us is. When critical self-concepts prevent us from knowing the beauty in ourselves, it can help us re-connect with the divine energy that is our source.

There's no "there" there.

I'm sensing that you're frustrated.

Well, yeah! I mean, Nonviolent Communication is a great title. I think about the kind of inspirational shit your neighbour has on a magnet on their fridge, that could maybe benefit from being expanded into a whole program. Like, my friend talks about trying to only say things that are "necessary, true, and kind." I have some questions about exactly what that means in practice, but it sounds great as a principle from which to pursue nonviolence. And, like, yesterday I casually referred to a person of my acquaintance as a Nazi, and it's maybe a little bit brutalizing to your interlocutor to do that, right? Like, reserve that term for actual members of the National Socialist party? This is where the idea of "violent communication" takes me, and I think it's worth talking about how to avoid that stuff.

So if I hear you, you feel like Dr. Rosenberg's book doesn't help you avoid that kind of thing.

Thing is, like with so many of these self-help things, he doesn't give people credit for being able to keep two ideas in their head at one time. All the world's problems are due to people not feeling like they're heard. If we hear them, there's no limit to what we can accomplish. It's like that old joke: step 1--"implement the NVC process"; step 2--?????; step 3: profit! We all know listening is important--and while of course there is no the difficulty, at least one of the major difficulties, which isn't even touched, is the difference between listening, understanding, and agreeing, which makes it all the more unfortunate and egregious that Rosenberg leans so heavily on his work with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators for examples. Haven't really fixed that problem, have you, Marshall?

So you're feeling like you don't know how to engage with the process in a useful way.

The process doesn't know how to engage with me. And if it can't handle me, I'd love to see it handle scumbag investment bankers or Tamil refugees or, fuck, Joseph Kony.

It seems like you're feeling discouraged. How about a poem?

And this is the other thing. You can't take a platitude, pop it into rhyme, and present it as poetry. I recognize that I'm the one who's risking coming across as the anger bear here, but this process just seems so dishonest. Suffering people often need to hear that someone understands how they're feeling--yes. And we're all suffering--yes. This is the truth at the core of the book. But Rosenberg seems to want us to posit a world where nobody is going to engage insincerely in a way that can't be brought down by some good ol' NVC TLC, where our only disputes come from an inability to remember our common humanity, and crucially too, where if you guess wrong about what someone is feeling--and this is a process where for it to mean anything you sometimes have to guess in detail--it doesn't stymie the process. Everyone likes to be understood, but the more you leap out into someone else's headspace, the more you run the risk of getting it wrong.

It seems like you're worried about being misunderstood when you try to use the process, and feeling like you don't know how to communicate with people in a reliable way.

Well, we all face death alone, but no, I do okay at bridging the gap--as okay as the next guy. I just think that it's an art not a science let alone a management process, and I am highly suspicious of the fact that so many of your clients are Fortune 500 companies and MBA programs and shit, and nothing I've seen convinces me that this is anything more than understanding as manipulation. Empathy emerges between two people through a sort of alchemy, and both need to be open, and defusing someone's anger by parroting them back at themselves is doing them a sort of violence, even, and you're just teaching people to fake it. You're creating Mitt Romneys.

And I dunno, I think we do a decent job at hearing each other, mostly, I just think that's not the main issue, and if you presented this as a first step to dialogue in the spirit of "nothing ever changes unless you get the shitheads on board," I might be inclined to listen, but instead you treat the story like it's done when understanding is reached, sometimes explicitly dismissing the problems that remain and stem from systematic inequalities, like the woman who still couldn't go back to school or change her life but it didn't matter because she understood better why she blamed herself. But no! We don't blame ourselves because we haven't thought it out! We blame ourselves despite knowing better, because of human maladaptive things. Quit fucking us around, Marshall Rosenberg. The only people who need to be told what's in your book would never read it.

I'm sensing that you're frustrated.

Yup. ( )

Marshall Rosenberg's basic insight is that communicating clearly and compassionately takes practice. He has developed a technique called Nonviolent Communication, based on mindfulness of the feelings and needs of yourself and others. His ideas have a strong Buddhist flavor and offer an explicit technique for practicing the Buddhist precept of Right Speech, but they universal in application. Anyone in a committed relationship will benefit from reading this book. ( )

a life changing process that resonates with the heart