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Started reading
June 5, 2025
Focus your attention on your needs: what are your needs in this situation?
Now that your attention is on your needs, how do you feel?
When we become aware of our needs, anger gives way to life-serving feelings.
Violence comes from the belief that other people cause our pain and therefore deserve punishment.
since any judgment of another person diminishes the likelihood of our needs being met.
We recall four options when hearing a difficult message: 1. Blame ourselves 2. Blame others 3. Sense our own feelings and needs 4. Sense others’ feelings and needs
Why would people want to tell the truth, knowing they will be judged and punished for doing so?
It is a rare human being who can maintain focus on our needs when we are expressing them through images of their wrongness.
The more people hear blame and judgment, the more defensive and aggressive they become and the less they will care about our needs in the future.
The first step is to stop and do nothing except to breathe.
If we judge someone to be racist, the need may be for inclusion, equality, respect, or connection.
Steps to expressing anger: 1. Stop. Breathe. 2. Identify our judgmental thoughts. 3. Connect with our needs. 4. Express our feelings and unmet needs.
we now open our mouth and speak the anger—but the anger has been transformed into needs and need-connected feelings.
if we want them to hear us we would need first to empathize with them.
The more we hear them, the more they’ll hear us.
My intention was to connect with him and show a respectful empathy for the life energy in him that was behind the comment.
Stay conscious of the violent thoughts that arise in our minds, without judging them.
“You feel distrust and the need to protect yourself when you’re involved in financial affairs with them?”
When we settle our attention on other people’s feelings and needs, we experience our common humanity.
but I’ve learned that I enjoy human beings more if I don’t hear what they think.
When we hear another person’s feelings and needs, we recognize our common humanity.
Our need is for the other person to truly hear our pain.
to whatever degree people hear blame, they have failed to hear our pain.
As soon as people think that they have done something wrong, they will not be fully apprehending our pain.
People do not hear our pain when they believe they are at fault.
Probably the most important part of learning how to live the process we have been discussing is to take our time.
if our intention is to consciously live life in harmony with our values, then we’ll want to take our time.
it’s still worth it to me. It’s important for me to know that I am responding to people the way I really want to.”
judgments, labels, and thoughts of blame, of what people “should” do and what they “deserve.”
“I don’t like people who are … ”
“When I make that judgment of a person, what am I needing...
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Judging and blaming have become second nature to us. To practice NVC, we need to proceed slowly, think carefully before we speak, and often just take a deep breath and not speak at all. Learning the process and applying it both take time.
By expressing our needs, we are far more likely to get them met than by judging, blaming, or punishing others.
The four steps to expressing anger are (1) stop and breathe, (2) identify our judgmental thoughts, (3) connect with our needs, and (4) express our feelings and unmet needs. Sometimes, in between steps 3 and 4, we may choose to empathize with the other person so that he or she will be better able to hear us when we express ourselves in step 4.
first connect to his own feelings and needs in order to stay in connection with his son.
are you worried that you’d be punished if you gave me accurate information?
It means that you tell me what you are really feeling about the things we’re talking about, and I tell you the same from my end. (in a firm voice) Are you willing?
really need to know that you are able to see how your actions have consequences.
I feel really stupid, Dad…. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
Are you saying you wish you had thought about it more and gotten clearer before you acted?
All it takes is a lot of patience, the willingness to establish a human connection, the intention to follow NVC principles until you reach a resolution, and trust that the process will work.
because it’s not until you have forged that connection that each side will seek to know exactly what the other side is feeling and needing.
Creating a connection between people is the most important thing.
With NVC, we’re trying to live a different value system while we are asking for things to change. What’s most important is that every connection along the line mirrors the kind of world we’re trying to create.
In short, how we ask for change reflects the value system we’re trying to support.
Instead we work to create that quality of mutual concern and respect where each party thinks their own needs matter and they are conscious that their needs and the other person’s well-being are interdependent.
Once that is accomplished, I help both sides create strategies that will resolve the conflict to both sides’ satisfaction.
Notice that I use the word satisfaction instead of compromise! Most attempts at resolution search for compromise, which means everybody gives something up and neither side is satisfied. NVC is different; our objective is to meet everyone’s needs fully.
They are not at all concerned with creating a quality of connection, thus overlooking the only conflict resolution tool I have ever known to work.
In my experience, connecting people at this level isn’t psychotherapy; it’s actually the core of mediation because when you make the connection, the problem solves itself most of the time.
