CONFLICT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE DESTRUCTIVE

Is there conflict in your life with people you care about? Have you ever had a conversation where you felt misunderstood?

With me you can learn how to share yourself honestly, listen compassionately, and create a flow of mutual empathy and understanding in your relationships.

I can help you move your frustrating and confusing interactions into clear and loving dialogue using a simple method developed by Marshall Rosenberg called Nonviolent Communication, or Connecting Communication.

“Nonviolent Communication guides us in reframing how we express ourselves and hear others. Instead of habitual, automatic reactions, our words become conscious responses based firmly on awareness of what we are perceiving, feeling, and wanting. We are led to express ourselves with honesty and clarity, while simultaneously paying others a respectful and empathic attention”

-Marhsall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Overview

Connecting communication (also called nonviolent communication) is a practice developed by Marshall Rosenberg as a process of communication which facilitates mutual heartfelt giving and receiving. One foundational belief of this approach is that human nature is one of compassion and connection, yet so often we find ourselves blaming, judging, diagnosing, demanding, etc… creating separation and dividing ourselves from one another, leaving us feeling bitter, hurt, sad or angry. Connecting Communication is an approach that moves us away from our thinking minds which sees the world in terms of right/wrong, good/bad labels that results in rigid expectations of what should or shouldn’t be, and moves us back into our hearts where we honor each individual’s values (including our own), recognize that everything anyone does is to meet their needs, and speak from what is alive in us in the present moment.

Instead of over-analyzing our conflicts, we drop into the feelings that are moving within us and see that underneath those feelings are needs that long to be met or celebrated. When we get in touch with our needs, we can empathize with those who normally would cause us to become defensive and we can share honestly with others what we feel and need without compromising our values, opening us to the compassionate connection that we all long for. This sharing and empathetic listening gives us the tools to address the root of conflict and create connection between anyone from your spouse, to your parents, or your friends, no matter how disconnected you may currently feel with them.

The Process

Connecting Communication has a simple yet elegant structure to help us arrive at a mutually compassionate giving and receiving from the heart. It involves four components that moves us towards gaining clarity and empathy for any situation.

  1. OBSERVING WITHOUT JUDGMENT

The first step in the process is to get clear about what happened, though this is not as easy as it sounds. So often our observations sound like judgments, “you’re so lazy!”, “you never listen to me!”, “I’m such an idiot!”. If your spouse often leaves his/her clothes on the floor, they are a “slob”. If they constantly need the house to be in perfect order then they are a “clean freak” or “controlling”. Our judgments are based on our own values, yet others may have different values and see things differently than us. Such judgments often cause others to shut down and disconnect. They can’t hear our experience or perspective, they merely hear blames, insults, and/or criticisms making it unlikely they will want to engage in compassionate dialogue with you. These judgments we have are actually tragic expressions of what’s going on inside of us, what we are experiencing that we want the other to hear and empathize with. When we can separate our judgments from our observations and view the circumstances more like a video camera taking stock of all the events that unfolded, we open dialogue and can create clarity around the specific behaviors that the other person is exhibiting that we like or don’t like. From there we can look deeper into the feelings that arise in ourselves and the other because of the situation.

2. FEELINGS VS. THOUGHTS

Feelings are our body’s way of drawing our attention to needs that require our awareness. So often we try to express ourselves in hopes of receiveing compassion, but what comes out are often interpretations of others’ actions, causing them to become defensive rather than open and eager to empathize. We may say things like, “I feel manipulated,” “I feel you should know better than that,” “I feel like a failure,” or “I feel as if I’m living with a wall.” this way of communicating may seem like we are expressing feelings, but we are actually expressing our interpretations of others’ actions. Such thoughts keep us in our heads, debating over who’s right and who’s wrong, rather than sharing feelings from the heart and learning how to make life more wonderful for each other. Truly sharing our feelings could sound like, “I feel frustrated and scared, because I have a need for trust and security”, or “I feel sad and lonely because I really want to connect and hear whats going on inside you.”

Honestly identifying and sharing our feelings helps us create space for mutual compassionate understanding. These feelings arise from the underlying motivation of our lives: universal human needs.

3. UNIVERSAL NEEDS: THE ROOT OF OUR BEHAVIOR

Every action has one goal: to meet a universal need. Everything we do is in response to these needs, and when we share them clearly, we are more likely to be able to have them met and meet them in others. Often, we want our universal needs to be met in a specific way or by a specific person saying things like, “I need you to be there for me,” or, “I need you to let me be myself.” These are strategies to meet needs, not the needs themselves. The needs would be expressed like this, “I need support, would you be willing to spend some time with me tonight?” or, “I need space, can we talk about this later?”. When we get focused on one particular person or event to meet our needs, we lose sight of all the different ways we can meet these universal needs ourselves. When we detach the needs from our expectation of how to meet them, we open a channel of understanding that creates this flow of giving and receiving that can lead us in the direction of meeting those needs whether it is by the person in front of us or otherwise.

4. CLEAR REQUESTS VS. DEMANDS

In seeking to meet our needs, sometimes our requests of others can be unclear, or felt as demands making it more unlikely for our needs to be met. “Will you just let me be myself!” is an example of a request that is vague and may be interpreted as a demand. They could be needing many different things when they say this, yet if they had said, “whenever I say something you disagree with, can you let me finish my thought before sharing yours?” then the other person knows very specifically what actions they can take to enrich your life.

Once we have clarified our observations, feelings, and needs, we now have the opportunity to request clear, doable actions from the other that may meet our need. However, we often hear a demand instead, especially if the feelings and needs are not expressed clear enough. You know if your request is perceived as a demand if others believe they will be blamed or punished if they don’t comply. Will the response to a ‘no’ be blame or punishment? Or will it be compassion for the other persons needs and their limitation to meet our own needs? Can we offer our requests without expectations of one another? Because if one person is not able to meet your needs then there are almost always hundreds of other strategies for meeting the need, sometimes it just takes a little creative thinking.