I mention “NVC” sometimes. Along with Zen and a few other things, it has informed my daily practice, and feels like a big part of who I am. Sometimes I hear curiosity about what it is, so I thought I’d try to talk about it a little.
I can describe what it is pretty quickly, but it feels like something’s missing if I don’t also talk about what it’s not. It has a long tangled history, and (unfortunately, to me) exists in kind of a private world. I enjoy pulling it into real life, talking with people who maybe don’t want to sign up for a weekend “life-changing” workshop, and all that.
Briefly, it’s a practice that involves
- noticing what’s happening inside me
- discerning the difference between what’s happening in the world (what observers can agree on) and what I’m telling myself about it
- paying attention to the common human experience, the things we all treasure and long for, to help me see things from another person’s perspective
- learning to see the world sometimes without looking through the lens of my own ideas about how things should be.
There’s more to it, of course. I actually find weekend workshops and stuff pretty helpful. Books, discussion and practice groups, stuff like that. Otherwise, someone could have shown me that list, I’d have got it, and my life would have instantly become easy. ^_^ So while it’s not complete, I think it’s a pretty solid summary of what I mean when I use the phrase.
But NVC is hard for me to talk about.
What I really wanted to start with is what NVC is not, and all the reasons I talk about “the path” and “compassion” rather than talking specifically about NVC these days.
…what NVC is not.
- It’s not limited to people who are in the club. Sometimes it seems that way, but the practice only has a place in my life if enhances my relationship with myself and then with regular, non-NVC people.
- It’s not the robo-speak that sometimes comes out of workshops or reading The Book that started it all… It’s not a way of talking to other people that’s rehearsed, awkward, and… well… fake. This is one reason why I don’t practice it as some sort of communication method. If it’s about what’s going on inside me, I can be content speaking naturally, and know that I’m welcoming connection. Since other people are their own people, I can’t create connection. I can only invite it, welcome it.
- NVC or compassionate communication is also not a way to get people to do what you want. It can be seen as a way to solve problems but it involves new ways of seeing these problems.
(* The robo-speak I’m referring to looks like this: “When I see ___ I feel ___ because I need ___. Would you please ___?”)
So these are things that I say NVC is not, but others might suggest NVC is. “Reasonable people”, as they say, “disagree”. I have a deep love for what I’ve learned from NVC, and what some practitioners call “NVC consciousness”. Yet if those things defined it, I’d be completely uninterested.
For those who are still with me, some comments about what gets called “NVC”.
NVC evolves.
There are people who have claimed to have a service mark (trademark) on the name, and who want to decide who can define it. Remember when ideas didn’t work that way? A philosopher who took a utilitarian approach to ethics didn’t have to ask anybody’s permission to call it that. Fruitful arguments could even happen about whether someone was or wasn’t, and what it really means to be utilitarian.
I like when ideas work that way, rather than we live as though someone has ownership and control over them.
It’s been hard for me to talk about what NVC is, partly because I’ve had to learn to feel free to talk about it as an idea in the world, rather than a rigid, unmoving system. (I think I’m there now.)
Which brings me to the (not unrelated) issue of the name…
Nonviolent Communication is a weird name.
I’m pretty sure the guy who named it (Marshall Rosenberg) didn’t mean that other communication is violent. The way I understand it, it’s about communication based on principles of “nonviolence”, which Mahatma Gandhi said is only a rough translation of the word ahimsa. In fact, he said “ahimsa … is more than just the absence of violence; it is intense love.” So think of it as that sort of communication, from a place of love and trust.
But wow. That’s almost scarier than the word “nonviolent”, isn’t it?
Some people use “compassionate communication” instead. But that brings me to another problem…
It’s also not about communication.
NVC, as an evolving practice in my life, is about what’s inside me. It’s about how I hear and respond to others, and about how I hear and respond to what’s in me. But it’s not, at least at this stage of its evolution (at least in my life) mainly about communication. It’s about being human together. (Oooooh! I like that!)
Care to give some feedback?
So I see this big, long post about NVC, and I notice something. I’m really torn. The typical NVC model goes like this: take an intro class, then go to weekend workshops, then longer “intensives” (up to a week or two), then become a teacher to bring new people in. I don’t like that model much, but I do like sharing these ideas with folks. I guess I’m swimming around in that tension, and that’s why I’m posting all this (possibly TMI) about it. I’m not willing to not teach it, and I’m not willing to teach it. Looks like I have some work to do on that, huh? ^_^
And maybe my ideas have evolved so that they’re not really NVC anymore. Feels lonely, thinking about that. I like the little bit of “NVC community” I do have…
I guess what I want to end with here is my curiosity. If you’re up for commenting (I hope you are!) I’d like to know about you.
Is this your first intro to NVC, or have you been practicing for a while? Something in between? Does my description (way up top) match how you see NVC? Or did I miss important things? If NVC is new to you, does it sound interesting? Scary? Confusing? Delightful? Are there questions I didn’t answer?
7 Comments on “What’s all this NVC stuff?”
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I’m glad Ian Mayes sent me here to read this. I’ve been studying NVC for just over five years, mostly with Miki Kashtan.
Your description of NVC matches how I have COME TO SEE NVC. The piece I believe you are missing is that YOU have evolved. Setting aside for a moment the question of whether a person can own an idea, the way NVC is taught works for me until it comes to the “intensive residential training retreats,” at which point it begins to have some scary, cult-like characteristics – not to mention the elitist aspect. Yes, OFNR is stilted, but then so are memorized multiplication tables.
So thank you for your heartful analysis.
Posted on September 4, 2010 at 2:26 am.
Hi, Susan, I’m so glad you’re here…
I’m struck by your analogy with the multiplication tables. One of my favorite math teachers/writers, Paul Lockhart, wrote about what happens when kids learn math that way. The article makes me cry, it’ so beautiful… (pdf) http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
Personally, I learned the multiplication products organically… I’m glad I did. I have a lot of fun with math. I think I might not have if I’d memorized them.
By the way, I have evolved, but ofnr wasn’t how I first learned nvc ideas. My first mentor taught me the ideas in a swirl as they came up. I like that approach.
Posted on September 4, 2010 at 1:19 pm.
Hi
When I read “What’s all this NVC Stuff?”,I feel…excited, curious and scared,because I need…clarity and growth. Would you read my translation below? Creak,Creak.
Thanks.
I enjoy and agree with your What NVC is.
“What it Isn’t” I have questions and statements about.
My understanding of the name :Nonviolent Communication
includes the homage to Ghandi.
Also, I remember Marshall saying that the way we have learned to speak/think
(Jackal Language) makes violence enjoyable and much more likely to occur (if not inevitable).
I have learned so much of value in my six years of study in NVC.
I have hosted a study group for five years with a total of about 40 people and the issue of the “Weird Name” comes up intermittently.
I rarely talk about “NVC ” outside our group anymore ( I have had some “hard-to-hear” responses to my preaching NVC in my first year or so .)
I just try to be at home and curious with myself and others.
The OFNR sequence to me is useful like training wheels are useful to a new bike rider,although i still use this tool at times of being triggered (scared mostly).
Breathing is my most reliable touchstone for reconnecting to heart energy.
Guessing we agree that it is very easy for students to confuse the OFNR technique with the “love consciousness “? Sounds insincere (robot or fake)
I guess the word “communication” for me is broad so that it includes self connection and interpersonal relations with or without words.
Is your point about the word that it doesn’t include the beingness ,the foundation of authenticity?
Thanks for your invite to reply
Mark
Posted on September 4, 2010 at 6:10 pm.
Hi, Mark,
Thanks for making contact here. I think I hear that some of my “what NVC is not” is hard for you to hear. That reading it felt yucky? Am I getting that right? Would you care to say more about that?
It’s interesting that you bring up training wheels. I got my son a Balance Bike (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_bicycle), which is different sort of approach to learning to ride a bike, without training wheels. I like it because it seems like a way to learn to ride with more fun, less fear. (Which I suspect can produce useful knowledge faster.)
Posted on September 5, 2010 at 11:38 am.
For my part I was happy to find a concrete method, the OFNR formula, so as to try to resolve conflicts. That in turns open up a possibility to create awareness and direct attention in new ways. It is like I was told at art school – you learn the rules of painting so as to break them with awareness. They are not to be followed in a robot like fashion once they’re learned, but the learning them is a transcending previous limitations of ignorace and an enabling one a new type of freedom.
I see the OFNR as a tool, a training tool. As such it is limited and has its primary use at certain levels. As I have children I love it. It is a type of instruction, like how do you beat egg whites to make a cake, etc. The metaphore of multiplication table is kind of… interesting. Because I beleive the point is not the learning to recite it, but to understand the “rythm” of it and give a sense of how “it all fits together”. I, myself, took pride in a refusing to learn the multiplication table “by heart”. I still don’t know all of it (I figured out alternative ways to get the answers). Yet I work as an accountant, keeping books, etc. A sense for mathematics is not gained by learning the multiplication table by heart…. But the multiplication table can be of good use by ones mere relating to it and knowing it exists, because it shows something about the nature of mathematics…
Thus I find NVC a method that serves as a good introduction to “what it’s all about”, but it is not the “thing”… and the “thing” can be arrived at by other means. But I don’t mind the “trademarked” NVC method at all! I love it being there! :-)
Somehow I’m reminded of the hippie movement of the sixties, and the slogan “Going beyond the trip”….
Posted on September 6, 2010 at 9:59 am.
Ah, thanks for the comment, Maria,
I’m still puzzling over this, whether I want to use the strategy of OFNR as a starting point, or whether the ways in which it limits growth and gets in the way of connection mean I’d rather start with noticing and empathy, and skip OFNR. I’m definitely still not convinced that I want to embrace it.
I wanted NVC to help me connect with my mother, for example. I attended a workshop once where the trainers did a demonstration of how the process made communicating with a hurt, closed off mom go smoothly and enhance connection. That demonstration didn’t match my experience with OFNR-based NVC and mom-types at all. Instead, hearing NVC-talk, mom just got more pissed. And I hear this over and over.
It really looks to me like mechanical NVC isn’t just “beginner NVC” but rather, it often actually creates more distance, unless you’re talking to someone else who is in the club.
Posted on September 6, 2010 at 10:10 am.
I’ve taken classes in NVC, joined a practice group and remind myself to use it when I automatically revert to hurt if I feel someone criticizing me. It’s also been very useful as a way to share my empathy with others, when you really can’t say “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.” Mirroring the other person’s feelings back to them can really make a difference — they feel understood, they feel a connection, and they are more able to express their feelings and needs to you then. I like your explanation of it. I’ve often thought of trying to write a simpler explanation of Marshall Rosenberg’s books, which often sound too complicated for some of my clients and friends.
Namaste!
Becca Chopra
TheChakras.org
Posted on September 8, 2010 at 7:40 pm.