A bit over two years ago, I attended a one-week long training on Non-Violent Communication (NVC). It was one of the rare occasions in my life where I felt that my worldview was fundamentally changed and I have benefited a lot from what I learned during this week. Since then, I tried to apply the principles of NVC in my everyday life, in my relationships and also at work, with various levels of success. Every now and then, I shared my take on NVC with people and got mixed responses: Some people knew about NVC already and were quite taken by it (as am I), others found it a bit esoteric or far-fetched, and some people actively disliked it due to some negative experiences they had made in the past. I am currently preparing for another introduction into the principles of NVC at my current job, which I found a good time to reflect on NVC as a whole, how I practice it, and how my perception has changed over the past two years.
The principles of Non-Violent Communication as seen through my eyes
While writing I initially thought that I don't want to do an introduction to NVC as there are already a lot of resources out there. Upon investigation, I found that the major resources didn't quite cover what to me is the essence of NVC, so I'll try to summarize it from my own perspective, just so that we are all on the same page.
Non-Violent Communication is a tool that helps us build stronger connections with each other and through that resolve conflict in an authentic and peaceful way. While NVC is centered heavily around the concept of empathy, I prefer to think of NVC as a tool for gaining insight. This insight comes in the form of understanding needs, which are fundamental to our survival as human beings. Needs come in a bunch of flavors, most of us are probably familiar with our physiological needs (food, water, sleep, shelter, sexuality and so on), but there are other needs as well which are just as vital for living sustainably: Self-centered needs (e.g. autonomy, self-confidence, honesty, creativity), social needs (e.g. belonging, being valued, trust, love) and holistic needs (e.g. peace, beauty, excitement, compassion, spirituality). The exact list is not as important, what matters is that these needs are universal: Every humand being shares the same set of needs, no matter their age, gender, nationality, upbringing and so on. While we do not all have the same needs at the same point in time (you might be hungry, I just ate), throughout our live, we will all experience moments where each of these needs might be relevant to us, either by being fulfilled or, more often, by being unfulfilled.
Why does NVC talk about needs? The idea is that, since every human being shares the same set of needs, needs are something that we all have in common. This is a good thing for resolving conflict in a peaceful (non-violent) way: If I understand what you and I have in common, I am much less likely to act violently towards you than if I see you as fundamentally different (and potentially less) than myself. Conflict often arises over different strategies that we have to solve a problem, or over different values that we hold. An example that many couples might be familiar with is that of household chores:
- Alice: "Why can't you just pick up your dirty clothes from the floor? The whole house gets messy because of you!"
- Bob: "I'm super busy all the time, it's much more efficient to pick them up all together on washing day! Quit stressing me out!"
It is easy to argue about whose way of doing laundry is 'better', but it might be hard to find a solution that both parties are happy with. If the conflict persist, it might move from an argument about strategies to a more visceral argument about values:
- Alice: "You are such a child! Why can't I have a partner that is disciplined and organized?"
- Bob: "You are always nagging, why can't you be more flexible and easygoing? I can never do anything right for you!"
Discipline, order, flexibility, these are all values that are often deeply ingrained into our personal identity. They depend on our upbringing and our culture and as such are very well-suited for creating conflict. What prevents such conflicts from being resolved is often a lack of understanding and connection, which is precisely where the needs come in. It is not unreasonable to assume that in this particular argument, both Alice and Bob actually have a similar need that is unfulfilled. Both seem fairly stressed out and might be longing for rest and maybe support: Alice because she might feel overwhelmed and left alone with all the chores that she thinks she has to manage on her own, lest they never will get done. And Bob by feeling helpless and also left alone due to not knowing how to support his partner while not feeling forced to do things that don't make sense to him. Even if the needs are different (Bob might instead have a need for autonomy), it still is easier to relate to the needs of another person than to conflicting values or strategies:
- Alice: "I could really use support, when I see your dirty clothes lying around I feel stressed out and overwhelmed and like I have to do all this work on my own!"
- Bob: "I didn't realize that you were so exhausted by these chores. I also felt really lost because I didn't know how to resolve this situation. Let's talk about how we can better split our work so that be both feel supported!"
Of course this is just an example, real-life arguments are typically more complex and nuanced and don't happen in a vacuum, but it illustrates the core principles of NVC: By openly sharing our feelings and needs, thus making ourselves vulnerable, we can reestablish connection in a conflict and from there look for solutions.
To figure out our needs and to stay with ourselves in an argument, NVC provides a bunch of tools: Self-empathy to (re-)connect with yourself, guiding principles for empathic listening, common pitfalls that cause us to judge instead of listen, a long list of emotions and needs and how they relate, and a specific way of formulating requests instead of demands.
How I practice NVC in my life
The three major 'modes' of NVC are self-empathy, empathic listening, and self-expression. To me, self-empathy is by far the most powerful one and it radically changed how I view myself and how I approach conflict. Not that I am a super-human conflict resolver, but if I compare how I communicate now (both with myself as well as with others) to how I did a couple of years ago, I can hardly believe that I am the same person. But maybe I'm not, people do change every now and then.
So why self-empathy and not the other two modes? To me, the biggest hurdle with being empathic has always been that conflict made me feel threatened and guilty. If a conflict happens, surely it must be because I did something wrong?! It turns out that guilt, together with anger and shame, are natural (as in expected, not healthy) reactions to unmet needs. The way I understood it, this depends heavily on your childhood experiences, which either make you gravitate towards anger as your modus operandi during a conflict, or towards feelings of guilt or shame. I recall a quote from The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté where he asked a very distinguished and well-loved colleague about his life's work, to which he replied (I'm paraphrasing): "Did I do enough? Yes, I'd like to think so. But am I enough? That is much harder to tell."
This is what I discovered through self-empathy: The feelings of guilt and shame, rooted in a belief of "I am not enough", are not universal truths. Through NVC I learned about the validity of human needs and it was here I felt truly connected to myself and my needs. By observing closely, I managed to identify one specific need that was unfulfilled and I encountered a feeling of immense relief and a certainty that no one can take this need away from me. For some people this might be obvious as they have an intuitive grasp of their needs (and by extension their boundaries), but I also met a lot of people who were struggling with the same sense of doubt: Do I really need this? Can I ask for this? Does this make me look lazy? Do I even deserve to have this?
After this significant experience during the NVC training, I started to take time for frequent "self-empathy sessions", as I call them. The process as it was explained to me follows 5 steps: Observation, judgement, feelings, needs, and lastly a request. The idea is to feel into your own mind and body and perceive the emotions that are going on with regard to a specific situation (the observation). There will typically be many emotions going on at the same time, different feelings within the body (cold feet, tight chest or shoulders etc.) and they can be all over the place, which is a bit frustrating at times. But by sticking with this process, we can start to ask: "What unfulfilled need might these emotions point to?" After some time, there will typically be one primary need that sticks out. They key seems to be to ask myself: "How would it feel to have this need fulfilled?" If I identified the right need, this will almost instantly give an intense feeling of relief. From here, things typically improve quite quickly, I come up with ideas for solving my current problem or I might feel energized again where before I was tired and procrastinating. It doesn't work every time, sometimes it takes multiple approaches throughout a day to get to the core of the current issue. Overall though, this practice has helped me more than anything else over the last years to improve my well-being.
One major positive effect of self-empathy is that it gives me the confidence to express my needs (this is the self-expression part of NVC) as well as the strength to hold other people's emotions and criticisms more easily. Self-empathy shows me what my self currently needs, and this need is always valid. It is a universal truth: If I need rest, I need rest, no arguing with that. The same goes for safety, support, belonging, excitement and all the other needs. If I express these needs, other people might react in less-than understanding ways, they might argue, ridicule, dismiss, whatever it is that we learned to do in conflict. This might still hurt, but I am much less likely to deny myself. Here, another core tenet of NVC helps: Needs are not tied to specific people, situations, places, things and so on. I might have a need for closeness, my go-to strategy to fulfill that need might be to see my partner, but that might not be the only viable option to fulfill this need. I might have other people that I could ask that might want to share some closeness, or I might try a different route and use sensory stimulation to feel close to myself. For me, this helps to reduce that feeling of desparate dependence on a person or situation that you sometimes get: "I really need to see you tonight, with you everything feels so much brighter!" A romantic but also quite dangerous notion in my opinion. Incidentally, ethical non-monogamy and relationship anarchy explore the same observation.
Does NVC help me to resolve conflicts?
I learned NVC as a tool for conflict resolution, so this is a natural question. I observe positive effects due to NVC, but not specifically for resolving direct confrontations. Instead, what I observe is similar to what people that practice martial arts describe: You build up confidence which in turn reduces the likelihood of getting into a conflict. The martial arts metaphor feels quite powerful to me, I did martial arts for many years, and while it made me feel more confident in my body, I was well aware that an actual fight might still go very badly for me. It is similar with interpersonal conflicts: I believe that I prevented several conflicts from arising in the first place by being honest and proactively communicating needs and setting boundaries, but I also had some pretty exhausting conflicts nonetheless. NVC, by its very nature, does not feel like the right tool to deal with injustice, for example. People who have power over you and abuse that power will typically not be persuaded by me pointing out my needs. I know that the roots of the non-violence idea of NVC come from Gandhi, who of course practiced non-violence as a means to fight injustice and opression, so maybe there is a way to make it work. Personally, I have not yet found that way.
Where NVC does help however is in mitigating the fallouts of nasty conflicts. Your boss is an insensitive prick that treats you like garbage? This sucks, but self-empathy can help to at least mitigate any feelings of shame and guilt that might arise from such an interaction. A more effective way of fighting injustive might be to build a support network, find people that also feel abused and powerless and would like to change something but don't know how. I believe NVC can help here, by establishing strong connections and finding allies. While you might not (yet) be able to stand up to your abusive boss, you might be able to open up to your colleagues and show some vulnerability, which might be the push that others need to open up as well. I'm surprised by how often people actually feel the same way as me in debilitating situations, but only speak up once someone takes up the courage to state: "I am not ok with feeling like this!"
No mention of Marshall Rosenberg, what is going on?
I very deliberately did not talk about Marshall Rosenberg, the "inventor" of Non-Violent Communication. Personally, I don't believe (anymore...) in this cult of personality that you often find in various social movements, politics, tech etc. I get why people tend to idolize other people, especially if their teachings help them with their personal struggles. Too often though this turns into an almost religious worship of the person, and a dogmatic interpretation of these teachings. Especially with NVC, which is simply a tool that is meant to help you, it makes no sense for me to be dogmatic: "Marshall Rosenberg said that you should only do things with the enthusiasm of a small child!" might sound impressive and superficially thought-provoking, but ultimately useless to me. Does it matter if Marshall Rosenberg said that or if my (fictional) neighbor Joe said that? If yes, why is there a difference? Marshall Rosenberg was a psychologist and mediator, so by his profession he might be more qualified to comment on interpersonal relationships and conflict than my neighbor Joe who works as an accountant. Then again, maybe Joe has a really interesting life story and plenty of experience with conflict, resulting in a lot of wisdom, so maybe I should listen to what he says?
Ultimately, I see NVC as a framework that contains a bit of psychology (the theory of needs), a few tools of the trade (self-empathy, self-expression, requests etc.), and a lot of ideology (violence is bad, always strive for empathy etc.) I might agree with many things in that framework, mostly because it helped me, but ultimately who developed it and where it came from doesn't matter as much to me. To be fair, there might be situations where this matters, especially when trying to uncover biases and prejudice in frameworks, idelogies, even scientific theories. If it turns out that Marshall Rosenberg actually was a toxic guy that did a lot of bad stuff that only got uncovered decades later, I'll do my best to reevaluate my take on NVC. Until then, it is enough for me to go the route of science and put the idea first and the person who came up with the idea second.
Why self-empathy works - My explanation
I want to conclude with a thought I had about self-empathy and the reason why it works. If you ever had the pleasure to attend a workshop about NVC with a really good trainer and you did self-empathy as an exercise in a group, you might have seen first-hand what effect the identification of that one unfulfilled need has on a person. I found that to be deeply touching, seeing how such a small observation ("I really need rest" for example) can change a person's behavior completely: From tensed up, frustrated, oftentimes angry and stressed out, to calm and empowered and vulnerable at the same time, all in a manner of minutes. It feels almost magical. So why does it work?
My theory is that it uses a fact about our brains that has gained some support in recent years in areas such as cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness: Our brain can't distinguish between things that are real and things that are imagined! This is why we get physical reactions when we worry about things that didn't even happen (ever heard of stage fright? :D): Our brain creates an artifical reality and treats it like actual reality. Self-empathy uses this insight to help us experience stress relief. If we try to identify an unfulfilled need and then think about how it would be to have this need fulfilled, our brain can't detect that we are only thinking about the need being fulfilled. Instead, it goes: "Oh this need is actually fulfilled, neat, time to regulate our nervous system" Which we experience as an immediate reduction in stress.
Of course this doesn't work actual magic, thinking about food does not remove our need for nourishment, but for stress relief this seems to work fairly well.