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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?
Judgments of others contribute to self-fulfilling prophecies.
I would like to suggest that when our heads are filled with judgments and analyses that others are bad, greedy, irresponsible, lying, cheating, polluting the environment, valuing profit more than life, or behaving in other ways they shouldn’t, very few of them will be interested in our needs.
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. So even if our present need is met in the sense that people do what we want, we will pay for it later.
The first step is to stop and do nothing except to breathe. We refrain from making any move to blame or punish the other person. We simply stay quiet. Then we identify the thoughts that are making us angry.
Steps to expressing anger: 1. Stop. Breathe. 2. Identify our judgmental thoughts. 3. Connect with our needs. 4. Express our feelings and unmet needs.
To fully express ourselves, we now open our mouth and speak the anger—but the anger has been transformed into needs and need-connected feelings. To articulate these feelings may require a lot of courage.
Because it will often be difficult for others to receive our feelings and needs in such situations, if we want them to hear us we would need first to empathize with them. The more we empathize with what leads them to behave in the ways that are not meeting our needs, the more likely it is that they will be able to reciprocate afterwards.
The more we hear them, the more they’ll hear us.
Stay conscious of the violent thoughts that arise in our minds, without judging them.
When we settle our attention on other people’s feelings and needs, we experience our common humanity.
I had a major conflict with what went on in his head, but I’ve learned that I enjoy human beings more if I don’t hear what they think.
I’ve learned to savor life much more by only hearing what’s going on in their hearts and not getting caught up with the stuff in their heads.
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.
People do not hear our pain when they believe they are at fault.
We may feel awkward deviating from the habitual behaviors that our conditioning has rendered automatic, but if our intention is to consciously live life in harmony with our values, then we’ll want to take our time.
As we have seen, our anger comes from judgments, labels, and thoughts of blame, of what people “should” do and what they “deserve.” List the judgments that float most frequently in your head by using the cue, “I don’t like people who are … ” Collect all such negative judgments in your head and then ask yourself, “When I make that judgment of a person, what am I needing and not getting?” In this way, you train yourself to frame your thinking in terms of unmet needs rather than in terms of judgments of other people.
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.
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.
Whatever the situation may be, resolving conflicts involves all the principles I outlined previously in this book: observing, identifying and expressing feelings, connecting feelings with needs, and making doable requests of another person using clear, concrete, positive action language.
Creating a connection between people is the most important thing.
When you make the connection, the problem usually solves itself.
Avoid the use of language that implies wrongness.
We all have physical needs: air, water, food, rest. And we have psychological needs such as understanding, support, honesty, and meaning. I believe that all people basically have the same needs regardless of nationality, religion, gender, income, education, etc.
Many of us have great difficulty expressing our needs: we have been taught by society to criticize, insult, and otherwise (mis)communicate in ways that keep us apart.
In a conflict, both parties usually spend too much time intent on proving themselves right, and the other party wrong, rather than paying attention to their own and the other’s needs.
Intellectual analysis is often received as criticism.
Learn to hear needs regardless of how people express them.
Criticism and diagnosis get in the way of peaceful resolution of conflicts.
People often need empathy before they are able to hear what is being said.
Action language requires the use of action verbs.
Maintaining respect is a key element in successful conflict resolution.
The objective is not to get the parties to do what we want them to do.
Use role-play to speed up the mediation process.
When relying on this method, I periodically turn to the person whose role I’m playing, addressing them as “my director” to see how I am doing.
Role-play is simply putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes.
It’s important to remember that the purpose of interrupting and grabbing people’s attention back in this way is to restore the process of making observations, identifying and expressing feelings, connecting feelings with needs, and making doable requests using clear, concrete, positive action language.
We need to be well practiced at hearing the need in any message.
The intention behind the protective use of force is only to protect, not to punish, blame, or condemn.
Fear of corporal punishment obscures children’s awareness of the compassion underlying their parents’ demands.
Punishment also includes judgmental labeling and the withholding of privileges.
When we fear punishment, we focus on consequences, not on our own values. Fear of punishment diminishes self-esteem and goodwill.
In situations where there is no opportunity for communication, such as in instances of imminent danger, we may need to resort to the protective use of force. The intention behind the protective use of force is to prevent injury or injustice, never to punish or to cause individuals to suffer, repent, or change.
The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking. Punishment damages goodwill and self-esteem, and shifts our attention from the intrinsic value of an action to external consequences. Blaming and punishing fail to contribute to the motivations we would like to inspire in others.
This transformation requires a literacy of needs and the ability to get in touch with ourselves, both of which are difficult for people in our culture. Not only have we never been educated about our needs, we are often exposed to cultural training that actively blocks our consciousness of them.
Our culture implies that needs are negative and destructive; the word needy applied to a person suggests inadequacy or immaturity. When people express their needs, they are often labeled selfish, and the use of the personal pronoun I is at times equated with selfishness or neediness.
We can liberate ourselves from cultural conditioning.
The ability to hear our own feelings and needs and empathize with them can free us from depression.
