The Profoundly Complex Parallel Dimension of The Universe of Communicationš¤Æ
My introduction to Non Violent Communication
āJust finished this NVC course ā 9 hours, phewā¦ This course is INSANE in the membrane! REALLY! For whatever itās worth, I feel like bending spoons is actually an achievable skill now!ā
January 2018 ā my boyfriend, MountainGoat, and I have tried working together for a year now, but things tend to end up in arguments. So we decided, on his recommendation, that we watch a 9 hour Non-Violent Communication lecture*.
This blog series journals the chronicles of what we learned and how the course has helped me in, not just our relationship, but in all my relationships ever since.
For this introductory blog, I decided to introduce you to where I started and cover the basics of what I know now ā based on the actual notes I made while going through the 9 hour course I mentioned above.
OK so please remember, this was my intro to NVC. I havenāt even heard of it before watching the full 9 hours.
But wow was it worth it.
Let me give you some context ā
So MountainGoat and I are in business together āimagine, here we are trying our best to get along and putting in all our energy, yet to no avail. We just could not get through to each other.
There was something seriously wrong with the way we were trying to communicate with each other.
And thus we came to the conclusion that āour babyā aka ācompanyā needs to start where all babies start, by learning how to talk, to communicateš£ļø ā and successfully that is.
In retrospect, I can tell you that Communication is also the mother of all things that end up being called ādoneā
Previously we had decided to temporarily solve our communication problem by trying out the Google Sprint teamwork method. We started our sprint trying to make or find something that will help us communicate within our team ā
š Jokes, I even thought of an app that detects facial expressions of anger, non-understanding and semi-impossible things in that vein.
And then, MountainGoat remembered the good things he heard about Non-Violent Communication in his yoga teachersā training course. This is how we had decided that the NVC course would fulfil all our needs for this communication system and strategy we were seeking, and believe me, up to this day ā it has done so in all ways possible!
We broke the course down into 2ā3 hour daily sessions in order to make sure we focused on writing all the important things down and summarizing our notes the same day too, so as to make sure we properly got it all in our heads.
Starting at the end, I can tell you that currently, I am focused on learning to speak my needs out loud and not expect people to know what I need.
However, this might not be the first project you would focus on after learning more about what NVC is and how you can use it to better the relationships in your life.
So what is NVC and how can it help me?
āDonāt be subservient, be a human beingā ā Marshall Rosenberg
To me, NVC is about being human.
Like many teenagers, I went through a phase where I hated humans and like many millennials I ended up having this attitude late into my twenties. That was until life taught me how important relationships are if I am trying to stay alive, which I am definitely trying to do LOL.
Then there is the fact that humans are social, so yeah, no getting away from this one.
Well letās see, why is it that I hated humans so much?
In retrospect I can see that it was definitely the fact that I am scared of confrontation, being stuck with a typical female-type victim mentality I struggle to stand my ground and speak my needs.
So to me, it makes total sense now that confrontation is such a big thing for me, because every time someone did something the way they need to do a thing and didnāt think of me, I ran, because I myself didn't know what I needed, nevermind how to speak and request my needs to be met by othersā¦
āIf we rebel we still recognize power, ultimately it is our choice, I am free in any structure to choose what I want to do and how I want to do it.ā ā Marshall Rosenberg
NVC helped me realize that there are many other options other than running and rebelling against this need I have to be with other humans, live and breathe and work with them, and myself.
Like Rosenberg says āexercising our autonomy is scary sometimesā.
He also notes many times that the āproblem is that our thinking comes from an old language that does not connect us to our needsā and that āwe need to liberate ourselves from this old language that implies wrongness on the part of others as well as ourselvesā.
ā¬ļø This for me is the gist of NVC, liberating myself from the old language of oppression, resistance, struggle, suffering.
Alone and isolated, the teenage me blamed everyone and everything and myself for not being able to do the things I needed to do, however, I never really thought to sit down and think what it is that I really need and why I need it.
Understanding your needs and the needs of others
Rosenberg illuminates the fact that when you feel painful feelings it means that some or other need have not been met.
One of the biggest projects of mine so far has been to learn to relate my feelings to my needs. Itās utterly crazy how little I know about my needs and my feelings.
Rosenberg says that life is āneedā and āneedingā is being alive.
This is how important it is to understand our needs, well this and then knowing how to relate and communicate with others ā so knowing our needs means knowing othersā needs, only then life can really start happening.
The core values of Non-Violent Communication
- The old education has taught us to get our needs met in all the wrong ways
- We need to know how to meet our needs and liberate ourselves from the destructive strategies of the old education
- We can choose to be nice dead people VS compassionate alive people
- All human beings have the same needs
- Life is about emphatic connections and honest expression, to be connected is to be alive
Learning to understand and speak my needs really is like learning a new language ā āthe language of loveā Rosenberg calls it.
How shocking it was to discover how little I know of it.
To me, NVC has been about defining my spirituality in order to not succumb or rebel in the face of confrontation, all in the effort of living with my own values and to be ācomfortable in my own skinā. This is what it has helped me with so far.
Maybe NVC can help you find out more about your needs too.
What are the best ways you have learned to communicate with people who are complete opposites fo you?
Iād love to read more about it in the comments š¦
Or why not join our community of makers and continue the convo on Discord š
P.S. Stay posted for the 2nd blog in this series, coming soon!
Footnotes
*I would share the course, but it seems the video has been taken down, I will update this post when Iāve found a substitute, thanks for understanding ;)
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