With its focus on interpersonal
communication skills, a casual observer might suppose that
the NVC process is only applicable to relationships or conflict
resolution. Yet people who practice the Nonviolent Communication
(NVC) process quickly discover its transformational impact in every
area of the human experience—including transforming
our classrooms and organizations, improving productivity
in the workplace, transforming anger and emotional pain,
enhancing our spiritual development, and creating efficient,
empowering organizational structures.
Below, Marshall Rosenberg answers some important questions
that help viewers understand the breadth of application,
and the powerful impact of the NVC process. To jump to a
topic of your interest, simply click on the topics listed
below:
How
to Begin Healing
Q. How can I begin the healing
process in a long-standing relationship that's been so
full of pain?
MR: The first step in
healing, whether we want to heal ourselves or help someone
else to heal, is to put the focus on what's alive now ,
not what happened in the past. If there is a discussion of
the past, say five words, no more: “when you ran away
from home,” “when
you hit me,” whatever.
The second step is to deal with what's alive in us now
in relationship to that. The best way I know to help that
happen is to empathically connect with what is
alive in you and the other person, and doing that requires
certain things.
The first component to empathic connection is what Martin
Buber calls the most precious gift one human being can give
to another: presence. You make yourself fully present to
what was alive in the other person now, in this moment. You
don't think of what you're going to say next, or what happened
in the past.
This is a hard gift to give to somebody because it means
that I can bring nothing in from the past. Even a diagnosis
I've had of this person in the past will get in the way of
empathy. This is why my clinical training in psychoanalysis
was a deficit. It taught me how to sit and think about what
the person was saying and how to intellectually interpret
it, but not how to be fully present to this person (which
is really where the healing comes from). To be fully present
I have to throw out all of my clinical training, all of my
diagnoses, all of this prior knowledge about human beings
and their development. That only gives me intellectual understanding,
which blocks empathy.
The best I can tell you about what empathy feels like to
me is that it's like surfboard riding. You're trying to get
with the energy of the wave, trying to hear what's alive
right now. I'm trying to go with this rhythm of life that's
in this person. And sometimes just looking at the floor I
can get more with it than looking at the person and being
distracted by things.
For more on this topic please consider our publication, Getting
Past the Pain Between Us.
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Empathy vs. Sympathy
Q. What's the difference between empathy and sympathy?
MR: Sympathy, empathy—let's
get clear about the difference. If I have strong feelings
in me, just being conscious of them is sympathy, not empathy.
So, if I say to someone who's hurting, "Boy, I feel
sad when you say that," that would be sympathy, not
empathy. Remember a time when you had a pain in your body,
maybe a headache or a toothache, and you got into a good
book? What happened to the pain? You weren't aware of it.
It was there, I mean the physical condition hadn't changed,
but you weren't home. You were out visiting: That's empathy.
You were visiting the book.
With empathy, we're with the other person. That doesn't
mean we feel their feelings. We're with them while they are
feeling their feelings. Now, if I take my mind away from
the person for one second, I may notice I have strong feelings.
If so, I don't try to push my feelings down. I say, "Go
back to them." My own feelings tell me I'm not with
the other person. I'm home again. "Go back."
If my pain is too great, I can't empathize. So I can say, "I'm
in so much pain right now hearing some things you've said—I'm
not able to listen. Could we give me a few moments to deal
with that so that I can go back to hearing you?"
It's important not to mix up empathy and sympathy, because
when someone is in pain and then I say, "Oh, I understand
how you feel and I feel so sad about that," I take the
flow away from them, and bring their attention over to me.
For more on this topic please consider our publications, We
Can Work it Out and Getting
Past the Pain Between Us.
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The Role of the Intellect
Q: The Nonviolent Communication process focuses
a lot on feelings. But what is the role of the logical,
analytical part of our being? Should we try to suppress
it or keep it quiet?
MR: The Nonviolent Communication
process focuses on what's alive in us and what would make
life more wonderful. What's alive in us are our needs, and
I'm talking about the universal needs, the ones all living
creatures have. Our feelings are simply a manifestation of
what is happening with our needs. If our needs are being
fulfilled, we feel pleasure. If our needs are not being fulfilled,
we feel pain.
To better understand what Marshall Rosenberg means
by universal human needs, see Feelings
and Needs We All Have.
Now, this does not exclude the analytic. I simply differentiate
between life-serving analysis and life-alienated analysis.
If I say to you, "I'm in a lot of pain over my relationship
to my child. I really want him to be healthy, and I see him
not eating well and smoking," then you might ask, "Why
do you think he's doing this?" You'd be encouraging
me to analyze the situation and uncover his needs.
Analysis is a problem only when it gets disconnected from
serving life. For example, if I said to you, "I think
the president is a monster," we could have a long discussion,
and we might think it was an interesting discussion, but
it wouldn't be connected to life. We wouldn't realize this,
though, because maybe neither of us has ever had a conversation
that was life-connecting. We get so used to speaking at the
analytic level that we can go through life with our needs
unmet and not even know it. The comedian Buddy Hackett used
to say that it wasn't until he joined the army that he found
out you could get up from a meal without having heartburn;
he had gotten so used to his mother's cooking, heartburn
had become a way of life. And in middle-class, educated culture,
I think that disconnection is a way of life. When people
have needs that they don't know how to deal with directly,
they approach them indirectly through intellectual discussions.
As a result, the conversation is lifeless, disconnected from
the needs alive in us right now.
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Domination Culture
Q: You've written and spoken at
length about "domination
culture." What is a domination culture and what, if
anything, is wrong with it?
MR: I started using
the term "domination
culture" after reading author and theologian Walter
Wink's works. His concept is that we are living under structures
in which the few dominate the many. Look at how families
are structured here in the United States: the parents claim
always to know what's right and set the rules for everybody
else's benefit. Look at our schools. Look at our workplaces.
Look at our government, our religions. At all levels, you
have authorities that impose their will on other people,
claiming that it's for everybody's well-being. They use punishment
and reward as the basic strategy for getting what they want.
That's what I mean by domination culture.
Drawing from Riane Eisler's work, Wink, in his book The
Powers That Be and other writings, points out that
about eight thousand years ago a new story came into being.
It was passed down from generation to generation and answered
the question of how the world began: It began when a very
heroic, virtuous male god crushed to smithereens a nasty
female goddess, and out of that crushing of the evil force
by the virtuous force, the energy created the earth. Now,
this is pretty well documented. We don't know where it
started because it evolved over hundreds of years, but
it gradually evolved and became this kind of history in
people's minds about how the world began. How were we meant
to live? And the answer to that is we were meant to live
by crushing out evil forces. The good life is the virtuous
forces crushing out the evil forces.
And if you really want to maintain domination structures,
you have to give people a language of moralistic judgments.
So, you've got to have psychologists and psychiatrists to
say there is such a thing as mentally ill and healthy people.
You have to have authorities—or church people—to
say what's good and evil: We have to educate people in a
language of moralistic judgments. Why? Because, Walter Wink
says, one of the key characteristics of domination structures
is to make violence enjoyable. And this is a very good language
for doing that. It reduces people to objects. When you think
of what somebody is, you really don't see the
life in that person. You're reducing them to an abstraction,
to a static phenomenon. And then along with moralistic judgments,
you need a language that obscures choice. Words that imply
we have no choice except to do what the authority says is
right. Words like have to, should, ought to, must, can't,
supposed to . And then you need this very important
concept if you want to maintain a domination structure, such
as our judicial system and economic systems, the concept
of deserve, or worth. It's very important in maintaining
domination structures to get people to believe that certain
actions deserve reward, certain actions deserve punishment.
For more on this topic please consider our publication, The
Heart of Social Change.
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Alternatives to Domination
Q: What is the alternative to
a domination structure?
MR: Life-Enriching is
a key concept in my paradigm: every action comes out of an
image of seeing how human needs would be met by the action.
That's the vision that mobilizes everything. A life-enriching
structure, or organization, is one in which all work in the
organization, everything that every worker does, comes out
of seeing how it's going to support life in the form of meeting
needs—needs
of the physical planet, trees, lakes, or human beings or
animals—and it's clear how life will be served through
meeting of needs. And that's the vision that inspires the
actions, purely. In a life-enriching structure, nobody works
for money. Money plays the same role as food for a mother
who is breastfeeding her infant. She doesn't receive food
as payment. The food is nurturance so she has the energy
to serve life. It all boils down to human needs, which is
why the Nonviolent Communication process is so rooted in
the consciousness of needs. Everything we do is in the service
of needs and the pleasure that is felt when needs are fulfilled,
especially spiritual needs. Those are the most fun needs
to fulfill.
For more on this topic please consider our publication, The
Heart of Social Change.
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The
Problem with "Deserve"
Q: You've been quoted as saying
that "deserve" is
the most dangerous word in the English language. Why?
MR: The concept of "deserve" is
at the basis of retributive justice. For thousands of years,
we've been operating under this system that says that people
who do bad deeds are evil—indeed, that human beings
are basically evil. According to this way of thinking, a
few good people have evolved, and it's up to them to be the
authorities and control the rest of us. And the way you control
people, given that our nature is evil and selfish, is through
a system of justice in which people who behave in a good
manner get rewarded, while those who are evil are made to
suffer. In order to see such a system as fair, one has to
believe that both sides deserve what they get.
I used to live in Texas, and when they would execute somebody
there, the good Baptist students from the local college would
gather outside the prison and have a party. When the word
came over the loudspeaker that the convict had been killed,
there was loud cheering and so forth—the same kind
of cheering that went on in some parts of Palestine when
they found out about the September 11 terrorist attacks.
When you have a concept of justice based on good and evil,
in which people deserve to suffer for what they've done,
it makes violence enjoyable. And making violence enjoyable
is a primary feature of domination cultures.
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Life-Enriching
Organizational Structures
Q: What needs are fulfilled in life-enriching structures?
MR: Life-enriching structures—the
kind of structures that I would like to see us creating and
participating in—are structures whose vision is to
serve life. And how do we know if an organization—whether
it's a family, or work team, or government—is a life-serving
organization? We find out by asking: Is its mission to meet
the needs and enrich the lives of people within—and
affected by—the organization?
And what do people need? Money is not a need. It's a strategy
that sometimes might meet a need. Fame is not a need. Status
is not a need. These are things that domination structures
use to mislead people—take a real need and misrepresent
it, and get people to think that these false things are the
needs. So, a life-enriching organization, in fact, serves
life, serves needs.
Next, all work done within a life-enriching structure is
motivated by the mission. Not by money, not by salary, not
by position, not by status. Every bit of work that a person
does is coming from this joy of meeting that mission. And
life-enriching organizations give the workers within them
the nurturing they need to live that mission. Now, here's
where money comes into play. They might get a salary for
some food for their family and themselves, but that's not
why they're doing the work. They're motivated to do the work
purely by the life-serving mission. But the most important
part of an organization in this respect isn't the money.
A life-enriching organization must be set up to do very well
to get genuine gratitude to every worker. That's the fuel
necessary to keep people working in a life-enriching organization:
sincere gratitude. When you do so people can see how their
efforts are instrumental in the life-serving mission.
For more on this topic please consider the publications, The
Heart of Social Change and Life-Enriching
Education.
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Restorative vs. Retributive Justice
Q: Instead of retribution, or
punishment, for criminal acts, you've called for "restorative
justice." How
is that different and how does it work?
MR: Restorative justice
is based on the question: how do we restore peace? In other
words, how do we restore a state in which people care about
one another's well-being? Research indicates that perpetrators
who go through restorative justice are less likely to repeat
the behaviors that led to their incarceration. And it's far
more healing for the victim to have peace restored than simply
to see the other person punished.
I have seen it work, for example, with women who have been
raped and the men who raped them. The first step is for the
woman to express whatever it is that she wants her attacker
to understand. Now, this woman has suffered almost every
day for years since the attack, so what comes out is pretty
brutal: "You monster! I'd like to kill you!" and
so forth.
What I do then is help the prisoner to connect with the
pain that is alive in this woman as a result of his actions.
Usually what he wants to do is apologize. But I tell him
apology is too cheap, too easy. I want him to repeat back
what he hears her saying. How has her life been affected?
When he can't repeat it, I play his role. I tell her I hear
the pain behind all of the screams and shouting. I get him
to see that the rage is on the surface, but beneath that,
lies the despair about whether her life will ever be the
same again. And then I get the man to repeat what I've said.
It may take three, or four, or five tries, but finally he
hears the other person. Already at this point you can see
the healing starting to take place—when the victim
gets empathy.
Then I ask the man to tell me what's going on inside of
him. How does he feel? Usually, again, he wants to apologize.
He wants to say, "I'm a rat. I'm dirt." And again
I get him to dig deeper. And it's very scary for these men.
They're not used to dealing with feelings, let alone experiencing
the horror of what it feels like to have caused another human
being such pain.
When we've gotten past these first two steps, very often
the victim screams, "How could you?" She's hungry
to understand what would cause another person to do such
a thing. Unfortunately, most of the victims I've worked with
have been encouraged from the very beginning by well-meaning
people to forgive their attackers. These people explain that
the rapist must have been suffering and probably had a bad
childhood. And the victim does try to forgive, but this doesn't
help much. Forgiveness reached without first taking these
other steps, is just superficial. It suppresses the pain.
Once the woman has received some empathy, however, she
wants to know what was going on in this man when he committed
this act. I help the perpetrator go back to the moment of
the act and identify what he was feeling, what needs were
contributing to his actions.
The last step is to ask whether there is something more
the victim would like the perpetrator to do, to bring things
back to a state of peace. For example, she may want medical
bills to be paid, or she may want some emotional restitution.
But once there's empathy on both sides, it's amazing how
quickly they start to care about one another's well-being.
And caring about one another's well-being is the basis for
restorative justice.
For more on this topic please consider our publication, We
Can Work it Out.
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Transforming Anger
Q: Anger is a strong emotion,
a feeling. What role does anger play in the Nonviolent
Communication process?
MR: The NVC process
focuses attention on whether people's needs are being fulfilled,
and if not, what can be done to fulfill these needs. It shows
us how to express ourselves in a way that increases the likelihood
that others will willingly contribute to our wellbeing. It
also shows us how to receive the messages of others in a
way that increases the likelihood that we will willingly
contribute to their well-being.
When it comes to managing anger, the NVC process shows
us how to use anger as an alarm, an alarm that tells us we
are thinking in a way that is not likely to get our needs
met, and is likely to get us involved in interactions with
others that are not going to be very constructive for anybody.
Our training stresses that it is dangerous to think of anger
as something to be repressed, or as something bad. When we
tend to identify anger as a result of something wrong with
us, then our tendency is to want to repress it and not deal
with anger. That use of anger, to repress and deny it, often
leads it to be expressed eventually in ways that can be very
dangerous to ourselves and others.
The first three steps in managing our anger using the NVC
process are internal:
- The identification of the stimulus for our anger, without
confusing it with an evaluation or judgment,
- The identification of the internal image or judgment
that is making us angry, and
- The transformation of this judgmental image into the
need that it is expressing. In other words, bringing our
full attention to the need, which is behind the judgment.
These three steps are done internally. We are not saying
anything out loud. We are simply becoming aware that our
anger is not caused by what the other person has done, but
by the judgment, and then we are looking for the need behind
the judgment.
Now, the fourth step involves what we would actually say
out loud to the other person after we have made this transformation.
The transformation I am referring to is transforming the
anger into other feelings by getting in touch with the need
behind the judgment creating the anger.
The fourth step involves now saying to the other person
four pieces of information. First, we reveal to them the
stimulus, what they have done, in other words, that is in
conflict with our needs being fulfilled. Secondly we express
how we are feeling. Now we are no longer angry because the
anger has been transformed into other feelings. Notice we
are not repressing the anger. The anger has been transformed
into a feeling such as sad, hurt, scared, frustrated, or
the like.
And we then follow up our expression of our feelings with
the needs of ours that are not being fulfilled. And now we
add to those three pieces of information a clear, present
request of what we want from the other person in relationship
to our feelings and unmet needs.
For more on this topic please consider our publication, What's
Making You Angry?
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When to Make Requests
Q: How do I know that a person
is ready to hear my request for them to do something?
MR: I stay in a dialogue
until I feel that we're at the bottom of what's really alive
in this person right now. Now, it's not too easy to know
when you really have reached this point. We have two clues
that can give us a little bit of data. One, when the person
really feels understood we'll feel it in our body. There
is a certain release of tension that goes when any human
being gets the understanding at this moment that they needed.
Anybody in the room will usually feel it in their body as
well. It's an "ahhhhhhh" (release of breath). The
person usually stops at that point; they don't just keep
going on. So, those two clues may indicate that they've had
the understanding they need to move down to the request.
Now, it's always good to be slow and conservative before
we move the attention away from them back to ourselves. To
say something like, "Is
there more you want me to hear about this?" Give them
plenty of space to explore all that's going on in them.
I look for ways to get both that other person's need met
and my need met. I'm not trying to sell, I'm trying to get
both needs met. So, my first job is to create the quality
of connection where I see clearly what the other person's
need is, and where they see what my need is. When the person
trusts that I'm equally interested in their need as mine,
90% of the problem is over. Making a request of someone without
getting to the need sounds like a sales job.
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