THE NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION – THE ART OF LIVING TOGETHER
“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see its light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore, see to it that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.” – Luke 11 (33 – 36)
It is not easy to think about all the challenges we face in life, whether at home with family or in our careers. Can you imagine how many times we have faced difficult or embarrassing situations and often acted inappropriately, only to regret it later? Those disconnected conversations, those rude gestures. Those baseless arguments where we often acted critically and selfishly. How many criticisms and fights could have been avoided! How many times have we unfairly judged! How many battles could have been avoided if we had a deeper understanding of relational intelligence.
Try to imagine how much simpler and better our lives would be if we had developed knowledge that helped us improve our ability to communicate more honestly, benevolently, contributing to the common well-being.
You are not the only one who needs something like this. In fact, I believe it is a greater need for every human being, especially now, as society is undergoing a process of relational transformation, values, morals, and ethics, deep isolation, a victim of an immediate world, losing space for human relationships to digital ones.
Changes are significant, and the challenges of this globalized environment, organizational and social crises, behavioral changes, as well as what the digital world has brought us, such as the discrepancy of using communication tools that were created to be the MEANS to connect us to each other and not to serve as ENDS to relate to us.
Understanding Nonviolent Communication can represent success in our lives. So today, I will talk about Nonviolent Communication and its importance in life and the well-being of each one.
The world today is indeed a world of immediacy, instantaneity, superficiality, existential emptiness where we are no longer able to pay attention to our behaviors in the human system of relationships. We are increasingly in “automatic” mode, living between past anguish and future anxiety, but never in the present. Reacting almost always unconsciously, unable to recognize our violence when communicating, slaves to ignorance about ourselves and how we relate.
There is an urgency to review the way we are relating. The world today is directed towards and privileges individualism. This goes against human nature itself. History shows that the only possibility for humanity to progress lies in social interactions, affections, relationships, being the urgency of humanity. The problem is that we are numbed by the painful daily work, by the absence of our own essence, separated from ourselves, out of touch with our own emotional connection.
We are prisoners of failing to recognize our own virtues, in the sad sensation of emptiness, unsympathetic, superficial, without realizing it, we turn life into a sad existence where we almost never live.
We are more intolerant, whether at home, at work, in traffic, everywhere. Very close to losing the basic notions of behavior and the rules of ethical social coexistence, which seem to fade in the face of daily stress. No one listens to anyone anymore; there is selfish isolation, forming inflexible, polarized, cold, and superficial people. There is no harmony. They are social demands that seek to establish a social norm, forming people without ideas. All equal to all. True “religions.” Ready-made recipes that define how each of us has to be, what we have to think, what we should create, how we have to live, what we have to have, how and who we have to love, and so on, following manuals for the frenetic pursuit of happiness that is never achieved.
It is not necessary to go far to realize this; just look at the person next to you, and you will soon notice a similarity in fashion, cars, hairstyles, houses, decorations, and even the names given to their own children. This leads to the understanding that the human capacity to think, create, invent, and extrapolate in other ways of living through different possibilities has been swept away from everyday life, making us indistinguishable. “As if a flood of ready-made ideas and images had washed away (brainwashed) our ability to think, extracting our intelligence to reflect on our lives and autonomously create our own choices.”
“What I aim for in my life is compassion, a flow between me and others based on mutual surrender, from the depths of the heart.” – Marshall Rosenberg
There is no human activity that is not constituted in relationships. We must rediscover this natural power. Communication is the element that sets humans apart from other beings. It is in language that the important sense of the free flow of ideas, the development of knowledge, the act of thinking, creating, expanding, inspiring, feeling, living life resides; it is in language the inherent capacity of each person’s cognitive and emotional intelligence.
“Non-violence means allowing what is positive in us to come to the surface and being dominated by love, respect, understanding, gratitude, compassion, and concern for others instead of being dominated by egocentric, selfish, greedy, hateful, prejudiced, suspicious, and aggressive attitudes that often dominate our thinking. (…) The world we live in is what we make of it.” – Arun Gandhi
We can go through a whole life without realizing who we are and how we affect people, relating disrespectfully, brutally, and violently without realizing it. Missing opportunities, distancing ourselves from people, creating a legion of opponents.
From there arises within us oppressive, resentful, angry, and frustrated anguish. We need to re-establish an authentic, empathetic relationship, promoting harmonious coexistence. Relearning to listen, observe, and reason about proposed ideas, where each one begins to expose themselves, think, seek to understand, create a point of view, engaging within themselves the potentiation of wisdom that only exists in the sharing of a discussion.
“Every violent act is a tragic expression of an unmet need.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
If there is no purpose in communicating, the mind cannot surpass limits, create, innovate, see beyond the world observed only by eyes and perceive through the heart, systemically. Fading any possibility of moving forward from other vicissitudes, converting eloquence in the face of life and people.
Communication represents our evolutionary foundation, the systematic exchange between the individual knowledge of each one. Therefore, it is necessary to rethink what kind of relationship we are building and what are the true values that are being standardized among us.
How Did Nonviolent Communication Originate?
Marshall Bertram Rosenberg, the American psychologist who developed the fundamentals and theorization of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), studied the relationship between therapeutic assistance to individuals with emotional maladjustments and obstacles to communication through his professional activity in psychotherapy. It is a process of continuous research initially developed by him and his international team, focusing on supporting the establishment of partnership and cooperation relationships, where effective communication and empathy prevail. It emphasizes the importance of determining actions based on common values. Nonviolent Communication is a significant foundation for the constant improvement of relationships.
Its development goes hand in hand with the “battles” of everyday life, making them lighter, much more efficient in a perfect exchange in relationships. Communication and its relationships become much more present in life, distancing ourselves from isolation in a stressed and depressive world.
Nonviolent Communication seeks to introspect within each one, finding the best in ourselves, recovering our virtues for relationships. All issues related to communication are directly linked to our choices. They all involve complex, cognitive choices related to the ability to develop ideas and thoughts. Rosenberg presents in his work fundamental questions about human behavior and its relationship with the world in this sense.
To understand his work, we initially have to understand that “although he refers to Nonviolent Communication as a ‘communication process’ or ‘language of compassion,’ it is more than a process or language. “On a deeper level, it is a permanent reminder to keep our attention focused where we are most likely to find what we are looking for.”
With this, it can be said that it is directed towards the set of knowledge that each individual has within themselves to understand and discern what is being addressed, in a high-level behavioral approach applied to language. Interestingly, his work began from two fundamental observations in favor of life in relationships: the first of them is directly related to the fact that there are people who often deviate from a natural empathetic behavior and begin to act in certain situations with exorable behaviors represented in violent and exploitative ways, and others abusive; the second issue he raises is precisely the opposite of this, that is, regarding people who, even in difficult and distressing situations, continue within their empathic field, relating to life in a harmonious and natural way. With these doubts, Rosenberg delved deeper into behavioral studies, focusing on communication established by language.
His goal has always been to raise awareness that all of us, humans, are social beings and live in constant relationship. We are relational beings, and our life is precisely the representation of our relationships with the world and everything in it, finding in empathy the ability to live in a better society. So, to understand and effectively develop Nonviolent Communication, it is necessary to know and practice empathy effectively. Therefore, we must emphasize it.
But What Is Empathy?
Empathy is the key to Nonviolent Effective Communication. In short, we can say that empathy means having the ability to feel others’ feelings and perceive things as they do. You show genuine interest in their concerns, capturing the nuances of what they are feeling and thinking. With empathy, you experience emotions that are not manifested. Actively listening to understand the other person’s point of view, the terms in which they think about what is happening, is essential.
“Listening only with the ears is one thing. Listening with the intellect is another. But listening with the soul is not limited to a single sense—such as the ear or the mind, for example. Therefore, it requires the emptying of all senses. And when the senses are empty, then the whole being listens. Thus, there is a direct understanding of what is there right in front of you, something that can never be heard with the ears or understood with the mind.” The Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu, quoted by Rosenberg, Marshall B.
If Aristotle were alive, I believe he would be an enthusiastic advocate of “philautia” as a necessary basis for empathetic understanding. He would believe that people who do not feel good about themselves or harbor aversion to themselves would have difficulty relating to the feelings, needs, and worldviews of others. If you want to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you need to feel comfortable in your own; therefore, first and foremost, we need to explore how we can become discerning in our choices, observe, perceive, and understand that, beyond the present moment, there are intentions for each one. Only then, much more than being connected, will we be safeguarded, without the risk of becoming victims of our own empathy.
For a long time, human behavior was formed by the rejection of others, with unsympathetic people. It was with Christianity that our culture changed; we began to take responsibility for others’ feelings and to take messages personally. Therefore, often when faced with another person’s problem, our first reaction is to find something within ourselves that can alleviate that distress, trying to relieve and, in some cases, resolve. Many consider this behavior as empathy. However, it is important to understand that any process of help, opinion, guidance, or advice aimed at supporting another person to get out of a problem is not empathy.
Some also understand that simply sharing another person’s feeling, in a supportive and pleasant manner, can be interpreted as empathy. No. In this case, we are talking about sympathy. Perceiving the feeling and conveying pleasant feelings to someone, managing to evoke positive emotions, is a sympathetic way of dealing with people.
The fundamental basis of an empathetic process is to be present, in the now, completely. When we start to empathize and propose a direction in another person’s life, we are not in the present. Any cognitive proposal aimed at providing help or a solution blocks the type of presence that empathy requires, as we start to act in temporality, that is, instead of empathy, we give opinions and explain our own points of view based on our experiences.
When we engage in a dialogue where our perception leads us to reflect according to our beliefs and experiences, we cease to be present and start evaluating it in temporality.
Empathy is being present with the other and with everything they are feeling. In another way, the foundation of empathy is to truly hear what the other person is saying, removing all layers from ourselves so that the other person’s message permeates within our “heart,” accepting it as it is, without criticism or judgment, not making it personal. We open space to understand the other based on their experiences, allowing the person to completely free themselves, feeling safe, supported, and understood.
Empathy is the basic premise not only for the other to be well but also for us to be well. Certain of understanding that to be well, it is necessary to offer the other the certainty that our peace, stability, internal harmony do not belong to external forces but exclusively to us, and no one can take that away from us because what is intrinsic in our consciousness is formed by values that will never be lost, allowing us to traverse life in a path of peace, wisdom, and certainly more harmonious for the encounter with happiness.
Empathy is a state of full consciousness of ourselves with life. Awareness of everything we want, believe, know, and desire. By being a conscious person, we become autonomous, thinking, perceptible in the clarity of choices, recognizing in ourselves our own virtues, our own values, and the ability to recognize our own mistakes, our own successes, identifying imperfections, and always focusing on the best for ethical interaction among people. Certainly, with this awareness, we will rarely suffer from those who are unsympathetic; we will hardly be shaken by attacks, offenses, and disrespect. On the contrary, the fruit of our consciousness is wisdom; we will then be able to transform unsympathetic individuals into empathetic ones.
“The two parts of Nonviolent Communication: expressing oneself with honesty and receiving with empathy.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
Understanding empathy, we can then understand that Marshall considers there is a constant need to learn from our relationships, as they are alive and transform. In this way, we avoid our communication becoming automatic, ceasing to be conscious and empathetic, stepping out of the present state.
Nonviolent Communication, therefore, has the noble perspective of minimizing unsympathetic and destructive relationships. Breaking situations where there is manipulation, blackmail, or abusive conduct. Using communication as the most celebrated and practical way to break voracious patterns such as rudeness, lack of respect, criticism, and judgments, within this social misconception of right or wrong.
“We become dangerous when we are not aware of our responsibility for our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
The fact is that while our body can usually recover from physical blows, it is true that emotional wounds inflicted by words will likely remain in our memory forever. Therefore, it is feasible to understand that Nonviolent Communication depends not only on satisfying our desires but, in a broad sense and in view of its social development perspective, the proposal contemplates the objectivity of ethics in our relationships. In shaping attitudes that can represent the improvement of rules for everyone’s coexistence.
The idea here is not the outdated concept that good manners, respect, and empathy are due only to those within the socio-economic and educational context in which we live or wish to live. The application of Nonviolent Communication goes far beyond that. It is ingrained in the moral conception that we must respect everyone. Be ethical.
From this point of view, we can then remember here that Communication is intrinsic to ethics. As described in the “great” Ethics, which Aristotle named after his own son, Nicomachean Ethics: “Ethical virtue is acquired by habit; we are not born with it, but our nature is capable of acquiring and perfecting it.” From this perspective, it is the full conscious understanding that there are other human beings in the world besides us, and that everyone, without exception, has the right to live life within social harmony. Ethics in our relationships directly implies the responsibility of each of us for our own actions. Thus, in the Aristotelian perspective, it is having a clear understanding of bringing the SELF in responses to social interaction. In other words, this means that ethics is to assume what we say, what we do, what comes from us, and not cowardly transfer our own guilt to others.
Therefore, Nonviolent Communication is grounded in ethics. It is a living process that changes with behavioral and social transformations for individual well-being in agreement and balance with the common good. There is no ethics when something is good for some and bad for others. It is the concession to live in a group, within a relational process where constructive communication exists.
Like ethics, Nonviolent Communication is far from being treated as something perfect. Like ethics, it is also a living process that permeates individual and social growth through lived experiences. This allows us to appreciate the present lightly, without worrying about the consequences of past mistakes. Always being in the present, in the real, in the now, without the company of what has been given by fear, guilt, shame, or the selfish desire to falsify.
“Certain forms of communication alienate us from our natural compassionate state.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
The deeper we delve into the concepts developed by Marshall, the more we realize his concern for the nature of the human being and his state of BEING. His knowledge in psychology made a difference by sensitizing his idea to developed foundations on this subject. His principles point, in my view, to the vital need to know where we stand in relationships with the world, being aware that no one can be responsible for making us happy. To achieve this, it is imperative to move away from social norms, break with temporality without carrying the weight of our own history, of the pending issues, of traumas from the past, allowing changes, avoiding turning our anxieties into beliefs that limit us from being who we are. Turning circumstances responsible for making us take the part for the whole and judging passing moments as responsible for all aspects of our lives. For him, communication is always a fact in the now, in the lived life, in the moment and instant it happens.
Developing Nonviolent Communication, you develop excellent resources that seek to improve the systemic ability to observe, feel, but never judge. This concern was very well elaborated in the development of “Nonviolent Communication”. Within its principles, it is precisely the insistence on making it clear that there is only “Nonviolent Communication” when there is no judgment. The act of judging possibly represents one of the greatest motivators for conflicts that occur in relationships we experience throughout our lives. When we judge, we are expressing our most intimate void. It is not knowing who we really are, representing the tragic way of expressing the introspective anguish of our own values and needs. This lack of recognition of our own existential condition is reflected in a trajectory without meaning, without purpose. The lack of reason prevents distinguishing and honoring our own trajectory. With this, the essential virtues of BEING end up being victims of the ineptitude to live our own lives, renouncing our own responsibilities, finding in the other the reason for what we are not.
There is a very high cost when we become judges in our relationships. We express our storms and the mistakes that frighten us. The one who attacks, offends, and insults the other is fundamentally speaking from the space of their own pain. Much of what bothers, irritates, reveals much about ourselves and very little about the other. Unfortunately, these people turn the relationship not into an exchange but into a common sense of blind egocentric ignorance. Insufficiently capable, their life responses consist of their failures, bringing unhappiness through the constant search for right or wrong. Living enclosed in the perspective of guilt, anger, anxiety, and instigating critical thinking within themselves. Sooner or later, they will suffer the consequences of the decrease in the goodwill of those who submit to our values through coercion from outside or within.
“We can never force people to do anything.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
In the relationships we experience throughout life, we are always presented with constant encounters of the desired longings of each individual. All relationships must have, by themselves, a reason to occur, being a harmonious pact of exchange between all involved, not turning into something unnecessary or contemptible. Without this balance and relevance, we can then be mistaken and turn the harmony of our relationships into anguish, satisfying the desire of others and not our own. At this point, we start to be driven by demand, providing in the face of the need of the one who torments us, transforming a relationship that should have empathy as its principle into fear. The fear of freedom is the anguish of choice.
Fear of freedom is our greatest fear, it is anguish in its nature. As a result, guilt, emptiness, and loneliness arise. The inability to choose our own desires makes life dull, futile, where dreams are lost in the infinite dump of impotent sadness of being who we are. We then become dependent, susceptible to accepting the opinions of others, those who suit us best and welcome us, not building a reason, avoiding exposure and contradiction in relationships, submissive to our own personal insecurity. Rosenberg “says that a demand explicitly or implicitly threatens listeners with guilt or punishment if they do not meet it… The alienating communication of life both originates from societies based on hierarchy or domination and sustains these societies. Wherever a large population is controlled by a small number of individuals for the benefit of the latter, it is in the interest of kings, czars, nobles, etc., that the masses be educated in such a way that their mentality becomes similar to that of slaves.”
In other words, the fact is that when we have no conviction about where we stand in the world of relationships, who we really are, about our desires and principles, we become puppets in the hands of those who wave to us, giving the false sense of completing the failure we have with ourselves, be it due to lack of security, control, self-esteem, and everything that encompasses our emotional maturity.
What Are The Fundamental Guidelines For Nonviolent Communication?
Nonviolent Communication has its structure developed in four areas. Marshall Rosenberg details his work by referring to the four fundamental components to achieve Nonviolent Communication. These four components are:
1. Observe – Observe Without Evaluating
Observe without evaluating, so says Rosenberg. All communication must begin by observing others and oneself. This first component is directly related to the capacity that we must initially develop to achieve Nonviolent Communication. Because it is in this pillar that the understanding of the need for conscious maturation is to develop the ability to observe without adopting evaluators based on depreciative criteria, in other words, being able to enter our relationships without negatively assessing, devoid of mental and emotional standards of always finding faults in oneself, in others, and in everything that happens in life, impacting the circumstances in which we live. Marshall says: “However, when we combine observation with evaluation, we decrease the likelihood that others will hear the message we want to convey to them. Instead, they are likely to hear it as criticism and thus resist what we say.”
The lack of knowing how to observe makes us create hallucinations, mental models that harm the clarity of our relationships. In this way, we will omit more, distort more, imagine more, and generalize more. In practical terms, our mind will formulate our thoughts through the models in front of the information we are receiving, interpreting them according to our experiences, making them always biased.
It is difficult to make observations, evaluating what it is in our relationships without judgment and criticism because we often confuse this with the search for reason. But this is the exercise we have to practice daily.
After all, when we evaluate, we are ultimately judging, being biased, and often expressing feelings about what bothers us, torments us, and that we often carry within ourselves. With this comes anxiety, stress, anger, shame, and guilt, and then we start to believe that it is necessary to punish, pressure, criticize, and demand too much from ourselves and others.
We live in groups and constantly relate to life. We are relational beings, and like all relationships, they can only occur through our senses. It is they that motivate our emotions that are expressed through language. We will only know how to relate and communicate masterfully with anyone in this world when we know how to understand who we really are, perceive ourselves before trying to understand the other. And this is nothing more than our ability to first know how to deal with ourselves and then know how to deal with others. Recognizing who we are and being mature in interactions by understanding how we relate, in the permission to understand the ability to identify our faults, qualities, limitations, as well as the perception not of how we think people see us, but rather having the awareness of how people really see us. This makes all the difference and brings us closer to Nonviolent Communication.
In this sense, when we bring to ourselves the ability to observe, we are, indeed, accepting who we are and then accepting the other without judgment, criticism, or negative evaluations, respecting that we are different, unique, exclusive, and that each one has their way of being, thinking, and acting. Each one has their model of living life, experiences, and reasons. In fact, we are systemic beings, and, therefore, we are not capable of determining what is right or wrong.
2. Feeling – Identifying And Expressing Feelings
There is a social misunderstanding that thinks communicating is addressing others by uttering words and making gestures. This is not true when it comes to authentic communication. Communicating is relating, and relationships are affective. Expressing our feelings while relating is a key foundation in all communication. In Nonviolent Communication, the absence of the act of expressing feelings is one of the main causes of inefficient communication.
In general terms, we almost always struggle to express our feelings. We spend most of our time worrying about expressing our way of thinking, always directing ourselves to how others perceive us and not developing the sensitivity of this introspective gaze on ourselves. Without knowing how to communicate with our sensations, becoming aware of our own feelings, and then expressing them fully.
Nonviolent Communication encourages a revealingly emotional form of expression, even if it risks exposing weaknesses. Dialoguing with others based on feelings disarms a hostile counter-reaction. Within the context of Nonviolent Communication, our relationships can only occur through our senses, and it is these senses that motivate our emotions expressed through language in our communication. We will only truly master relating and communicating with anyone in this world when we understand who we really are, perceive ourselves before trying to understand the other. By knowing how to control ourselves within a psychic balance of being, only then can we effectively lead the fullness of living life in harmony with another being, always being consonant and never dissonant, in other words. It is nothing more than our ability to first deal with ourselves and then deal with others.
Relationships with the world are intrinsically linked to how we work with feelings, resulting from our emotions. Much of our success in life is related to the ability to understand what people are really feeling. It is surprising how often a single concession or action could have avoided so many conflicts and wasted time, effort, and resources. In general, people can be very bad at recognizing their own feelings, as well as those of others, which, in turn, leads to many misunderstandings and mistakes. Life and professional and personal interactions would be much easier if everyone had the ability to assimilate and respect each other’s and our own feelings.
Rosenberg says that developing a vocabulary of feelings is essential to have clarity on how to express our true feelings. This allows us to name or identify our emotions clearly and specifically, connecting more easily with each other. By allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, for example, by expressing our feelings, we help resolve conflicts.
3. Needs: Taking Responsibility For Our Feelings
Rosenberg, in his book, defines this pillar as the “awareness that what others say and do can be the stimulus, but never the cause of our feelings. With it, we see that our feelings result from how we choose to receive what others say and do, as well as our specific needs and expectations at that moment.”
Emotion is always the initial basis of any relationship we have with the world. It will define what kind of perspective we have on something and how we will relate to it. Therefore, the choices of how we react to the world are intrinsically related to the perspective we have of ourselves. Basically, there are three forces related to external influencing factors that act as denominators in our emotions. These three forces affect our decisions in ways we usually do not foresee: Internal forces, which are factors that reside both in our minds and in our hearts, existing by the very nature of being human; forces from our relationships that characterize our relationships and interactions with others; and external forces, which are factors that characterize the context in which we operate and make decisions.
This pillar in Nonviolent Communication is precisely related to this ability to first perceive these influences and secondly take responsibility for what we do to generate our own feelings and, from there, recognize our real needs. It presents the practical sequence of how we evolve towards Nonviolent Communication, to develop the need for awareness of the foundation and importance of feelings when receiving messages in Nonviolent Communication. These are:
3.1 Blaming ourselves:
This represents a significant part of the wear and tear in our relationships. The lack of knowledge about our own values often allows us to subject ourselves to violent communication, whether verbal or non-verbal. Our values are the virtues of who we are and what really matters in our lives. We are bothered by what we recognize or what we are not sure about but somehow represents a mark within us that we carry as a burden of guilt. Guilt enslaves and imprisons the life of a human being. “We choose this alternative at a great cost to our self-esteem because it leads us to feelings of guilt, shame, and depression, bringing out the worst in us.”
3.2 Blaming others:
After the first stage, we seek the “easier” path, transferring our blame. For humans, it is very difficult to admit mistakes. In this model of society in which we live, we are born with the idea of competition all the time, and that is why we have fear as our greatest enemy. In them are hidden all our fragilities and deficiencies. The lack of self-respect, self-love, makes most of us try to dodge imperfections, transferring blame to protect our narcissistic ego. The minds of these people always try to distance themselves from problems, especially guilt, as a kind of protection against others’ judgment. People like this mask the reality of who they really are to fantasize about their supremacy and are willing to fight for it, turning their relationships into violent communication. For these people, there will always be someone to blame for everything, be it bad luck, the boss’s fault, the wife’s fault, the husband’s fault, the rain, the horoscope, or even the alignment of the planets.
3.3 Listening to our own feelings and needs:
During this maturation process in Communication, it awakens in us the need to listen to our own feelings and needs. Here we stop being content with a non-existent reality that always results in immense existential emptiness, keeping us tied to the same, and we begin to accept and understand who we are. It gives the person the opportunity to recognize their values, respecting who they really are. Understanding that there is not only the joy of life, which allows a person to realize values in the experience of what is beautiful, in the experience of art or nature. There is also meaning in a life that rarely offers a chance to be creatively realized in terms of experience, even in moments of suffering and pain, which offer the possibility to reconfigure the meaning of existence. Respecting any and all relationships, respecting opinions. Creating awareness of our own feelings. A fundamental aspect of Nonviolent Communication.
3.4. Listening To The Feelings And Needs Of Others:
We have now reached the culmination of Nonviolent Communication. Acceptance; this is the complete concept of respecting others and ourselves, understanding that the feelings of the other person are inherent to human nature, developing according to the present moment in which they find themselves, free from prejudices, judgments, or criticisms, expressed with respect and courtesy. Facilitating communication, as well as the resolution of our problems, in a harmonious and healthy way. We are moving towards the supremacy of relationships, which is empathy.
4. Request – Asking For What Will Enrich Our Lives
This last pillar is presented to form the basis of the concept of Nonviolent Communication. It is exactly about highlighting the importance of the exchange that occurs in every relationship. After observing, feeling, and identifying the needs, understanding the purpose of the relationship, we then begin to perceive what is truly necessary to make it productive, practical, and respectful. To do this, we must understand what underlies to recognize the effective desire. Thus, communication becomes clear and harmonious, avoiding vague, abstract, or ambiguous phrases. It is possible to formulate our requests in the form of concrete actions that others can or cannot perform.
At this point, Rosenberg makes it very clear that we should always use positive language when starting any conversation, and not less important is that we should always express what we want and not what we don’t want. In other words, all communication happens when we relate. We relate through emotions, and all emotions come from an exchange. If there is an exchange, then there is a request at the core. When in many relationships requests are almost always formulated negatively, people often get confused about what is really being asked, and moreover, negative requests will likely provoke resistance.
Of course, we don’t need any of this. We can continue to destroy our relationships, our respect, and our image through gross attacks, imposing order on our desires. It is possible to achieve something from someone through disrespectful communication, especially when we embarrass or threaten, but this type of approach has a high cost. Aggression, demand, threat, coercion always imply negative results, such as anger, hatred, revenge, etc., and this is never the result of a healthy, lasting, admirable, and respectful relationship.
“Formulating requests in clear, positive language and concrete actions reveals what we really want.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
It is also a fact that we cannot expect to have a warmer reception in communication if we start by saying only what we don’t want, what we don’t accept, what we don’t desire, etc. “No” exists only in language and not in experience. Therefore, it is wiser and much less conflictive when we express exactly what we want, leaving no doubts, contributing to the other person faithfully believing that we are asking and not demanding, and making it clear that the person should only attend to the desire if they can do so freely.
Making clear what the intentions and desires are becomes much more productive and less offensive in a conversation. “When people hear us make a demand, they see only two options: submission or rebellion. In both cases, the person making the request is perceived as coercive, and the listener’s ability to respond compassionately to the request is diminished.”
When we clearly express our desires, we distance ourselves from any doubt, preventing the other person from hallucinating. Expressing ourselves clearly gives us a much better chance of getting what we want. “Vague language fosters internal confusion.”
“Requests not accompanied by the feelings and needs of the requester can sound like demands.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
Finally, I hope this summary highlights some important points Marshall B. Rosenberg relied on to develop his work. His work is an essential part of each of our lives and should be part of everyone’s library, to be read and reread, to never forget its importance for the well-being of our coexistence.
It is crucial to understand that Marshall makes it very clear that, when true relationships occur, we engage in dialogue through understanding the other’s thoughts, which clarifies the script of one’s own life, stimulating the best in each of us in our souls, flourishing motivating emotions, generating an essential internal impulse for the development of intelligence and life strategy.
In this way, it is understood that the misunderstanding of others is not due to their lack of intelligence but rather the lack of clarity in our own thoughts. It is pointless to engage in dialogue without understanding what perpetuates from ideas, thoughts, and feelings. We cannot truly know ourselves or maintain a genuine relationship, by definition, without establishing clarity and the implicit purpose of shared reflections, creating sincere empathy between each other.
Nonviolent Communication is the possibility of journeying together on the path of life. In the constant encounter with self-awareness, capable of demonstrating the improvement of our vital relationships, which lies precisely in the consistency of our better selves continuously demonstrated in daily behaviors where we respect ourselves and others, in thoughts, actions, and in the most suitable use of language. In this sense, we become much more aware beings for the reality of action and relationship with the world, expanding our perception in relation to others and also in relation to ourselves.
The continuous pursuit of how we communicate brings each of us the condition of freedom. Free to remove the various layers that cover us and hide the best in each of us, manifesting our true selves, allowing us to appreciate the power of vulnerability, opportunities to become what we truly are, minimizing the feeling of always thinking we must defend ourselves and opening the way to the possibility of transformations and learning, thus expressing our potential truthfully.
Every genuine, Nonviolent Communication begins with the acknowledgment of our humility in perceiving the greatness in the other person, in the heart where courage, honor, love, hope, dreams, and life story reside. Honoring the place in the person where we also exist, and vice versa, with only one objective: to mutually respect each other. Only then is it possible to offer something genuine and sincere to the other person.
When we relate to another person, be it at work, during travels, or at home, what do you feel exactly? Do you look into their eyes? Without saying a word, do you honor the greatness in them, based on their grandeur?
Rosenberg makes it clear that “when others trust that our primary commitment is to the quality of the relationship, and we expect this process to meet everyone’s needs, then they can trust that our requests are truly requests and not camouflaged demands.”
The challenge, then, is to understand that, above all, true communication lies in the fullness of dialogue, the real possibility of seeing ourselves. We can converse, have a discussion, a chat, a pleasant conversation, but not communicate — without a prior genuine emotional state. If we don’t know what is real within us — something about the story of our life, what we like and defend, what we feel and know — we don’t truly exist; we are merely a name, a position, an appearance, and that is not communication.
“When someone really listens to you without judging you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it’s very good. When I feel I’ve been heard and listened to, I can perceive my world in a new way and move forward. It’s amazing how problems that seem unsolvable become solvable when someone listens. How confusions that seem irremediable become relatively clear streams flowing when you are heard.” – Rosenberg, Marshall B.
To learn more about Nonviolent Communication, consider exploring resources such as the Center for Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg’s quotes, training offered by the NVC Academy, and materials that delve into NVC.
https://nvcacademy.com/index.php
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