Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B Rosenberg: how to take personal responsibility for your feelings
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\nAbout the\xa0author
\nDr. Marshall B. Rosenberg was the founder and director of educational services for The Center for Nonviolent Communication.
\nGrowing up in an inner\u2013city Detroit neighborhood Dr. Marshall Rosenberg was confronted daily with various forms of violence. Wanting to explore the causes of violence and what could be done to reduce violence, he chose to study clinical psychology and received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1961. In 1966 he was awarded diplomat status in clinical psychology from the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology.
\nNonviolent Communication training evolved from Dr. Rosenberg\u2019s quest to find a way of rapidly disseminating much needed peacemaking skills. The Center for Nonviolent Communication emerged out of work he was doing with civil rights activists in the early 1960\u2019s. During this period he also mediated between rioting students and college administrators and worked to peacefully desegregate public schools in long-segregated regions.
\nWorldwide reactions have been inspiring. Evaluations indicate that this training vastly strengthens the ability to connect compassionately with oneself and others, as well as to resolve differences peacefully. Reports also indicate that the benefit of the training is not only stable over time, but actually increases.
\nSource: https://www.cnvc.org/about/marshall
\nAbout the\xa0book
\nNon-violent Communication is an enlightening look at how peaceful communication can create compassionate connections with family, friends, and other acquaintances, this international bestseller uses stories, examples, and sample dialogues to provide solutions to communication problems both at home and in the workplace.
\nGuidance is provided on identifying and articulating feelings and needs, expressing anger fully, and exploring the power of empathy in order to speak honestly without creating hostility, break patterns of thinking that lead to anger and depression, and communicate compassionately.
\nPractical nonviolent communication skills are partnered with a powerful consciousness and vocabulary that can be applied to personal, professional, and political differences. Included in the new edition is a complete chapter on conflict resolution and mediation.
\nSource: www.amazon.com\xa0
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\nBig idea #1-Observe, feel, need, and\xa0request
\nThe nonviolent communication process is made up of four key stages.
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- Observing concrete actions that affect your wellbeing \n
- Knowing how you feel as a result of what you observe. \n
3. Recognising the needs and the values and the desires that create the feelings that you are feeling.
\n4. The concrete actions you request in order to enrich your life.
\nGoing through this process allows you to express yourself better and notice the needs in others, more empathetically. It also allows more space for compassion, and allows you to reframe situations and feelings in a different way.
\nBy noticing the needs of others, more empathetically, you\u2019re able to actually connect with them a little bit more, rather than simply assessing how wrong they are for what they\u2019re saying or doing at the time. Because our analysis of others is often an expression of our own needs or values, not necessarily what the other person is thinking, or what they are needing at the time.
\nBig idea#2\u200a\u2014\u200aResponsibility and expression
\nMarshall says that we are particularly dangerous when we deny personal responsibility, and attach our feelings and actions to other people\u2019s or other group\u2019s actions.
\nSo essentially if we blame our actions or blame how we feel on what someone else does, we then deny personal responsibility for our own feelings and attach them to other people.
\nThere are several examples in the book that include situations like;
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- Blaming the actions of others on how we react; (eg. I hit my child because he ran into the street). So the action of another person has caused your reaction. And we\u2019re blaming them, rather than taking our own responsibility for what we did. \n
- Using group pressure (eg. I started smoking because my friends did). \n
- Blaming vague impersonal forces on what you do (eg. I cleaned my room because I had to) rather than assuming you have any control over what you choose to do. \n
On the topic of expression, there\u2019s stories in the book of people who have been angry at their partners for decades and decades for not meeting their needs. But having gone through the nonviolent communication training, they realise they\u2019ve never actually made their needs clearly known. Instead, they\u2019ve been stuck in resentment and anger and let these unmet and uncommunicated needs take over and really undermined their relationships. If we do not value our needs, and express them in a healthy way, we can\u2019t expect others to do the same.
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\nBig idea #3-The root of\xa0feelings
\nMarshall says that underlying our feelings, are our needs. We need to uncover these in ourselves and others, and we need to listen to what other people are needing, not what they are thinking.
\nOne of the techniques he uses for helping to uncover others\u2019 feelings is paraphrasing.
\nIn one example in the book, Marshall was doing a bit of coaching or mediation, between a husband and a wife who are not communicating very well.\xa0
\nHusband: \u201cwhat good does talking to you? You never listen.\u201d
\nNow, if you had received/heard that from your partner, there\u2019s probably a million different things you would respond with, some that are much more helpful than others.
\nWith some coaching, what the wife actually came back, using paraphrasing, was this:
\nWife: \u201care you feeling unhappy because you need to be heard?\u201d
\nRather than attacking his position, or asking something that brings the responsibility to her, such as \u201care you unhappy with me?\u201d she instead came back to that core underlying need.
\nWhat is the need that is causing that reaction or statement or action from the other person or that statement from the other person?
\nThere\u2019s so much nuance here, but the paraphrasing allows for a better conversation. It\u2019s okay to be wrong when guessing the need, because by getting it wrong, you get closer to them helping you uncover the need. And it\u2019s unlikely that you\u2019re going to be right the first time. There\u2019s usually going to be a bit of an uncomfortable exchange between the starting point and getting to that need.
\nImportantly, this conversation isn\u2019t about fixing, which is one of the traps we can fall into, it is about trying to understand the need and then the request or desire.
\nWe also need to distinguish between feelings and non feelings.
\nOne of the non-feelings examples of the book is:
\n\u201cI feel inadequate as a guitar player\u201d
\nIn that statement, you\u2019re assessing your ability as a guitar player rather than clearly expressing your feeling or your need. The actual feeling might be, I feel disappointed in myself as a guitar player, or I feel impatient with myself as a guitar player.
\nIt\u2019s important in order to do this well, both with ourselves and with other people, to have a better vocabulary of emotions and be able to spot what is an emotion, and what is not.
\nThere\u2019s another couple of examples here when you\u2019re attaching a feeling to other people. We have to distinguish the feeling we have and remove the connection to other people. For example:
\n\u201cI feel unimportant to the people with whom I work\u201d
\nThe word unimportant describes how you think others are evaluating you, rather than actually what you\u2019re feeling. Maybe you feel sad or you feel discouraged.
\nSimilarly something like:
\n\u201cI feel misunderstood\u201d
\nThat is an indication of other people\u2019s level of understanding of you, rather than your own feeling. You might be annoyed or anxious.
\nWords like bullied, cheated, abused, attacked, betrayed all related to our interpretation or judgement of someone else\u2019s thinking or behaviour, rather than our own feeling. It\u2019s such a subtle difference between between the two, and comes back to splitting out our own feelings and taking personal responsibility for them.
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