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“Nonviolent Communication is one of the most important processes you’ll ever learn.”
-William Ury, author, Getting to Yes

ISSUE THEME:
Personal Growth and Healing

• Pumpkin Pie with a Side of Compassion, Please by Jan Henrikson
• Change Within Ourselves: Growth Through Self-Education by Marshall Rosenberg
• Five Meditations for an Empowered Life by Mary Mackenzie
• Money Fears: A Heart Dis-EASE by Kelly Bryson
• How Detachment from an Addicted Person can be Loving for All by Wayland Myers
• Save 30% on our Personal Growth and Healing Book Package

The Nonviolent or Compassionate Communication (NVC) process offers simple, effective communication skills to help you foster healthy, satisfying relationships—with yourself and others. Learn powerful tools to nurture your own self-esteem, help you heal from emotional pain, and effectively get what you want without using demands, shame, or guilt. Learn to stay calm and compassionate even in the most difficult circumstances.

Key Facts About the NVC Process
Life-Changing Benefits of the NVC Process

Use our page to inform visitors to your website about these life-changing skills. To add a link to our page, contact us today. We’ll provide the exact language and site code for you—you simply paste it into a page on your site, or add it into your site navigation. It’s that easy.

< Take a look at our About NVC page now >

Pumpkin Pie with a Side of Compassion, Please
Jan Henrickson, editor of Eat by Choice, Not by Habit

Chances are sugar plums and the weight gain to follow are dancing in your head this time of year. Self-deprecating body jokes are rampant. People are groaning and squeezing their bellies. Everyone’s stuffed. Vowing to eat “better” while breaking that vow almost instantly.

Parties. Family feasts. Food issues. How to survive?

“Compassion,” says Sylvia Haskvitz, M.A., R.D., author of Eat by Choice, Not by Habit. This holiday season and New Year spread some good will to yourself first. “Judgment and compassion cannot co-exist. So be kind to yourself. Start by translating your judgments into underlying emotional feelings and universal needs.”

It’s easy and popular to yell, nag, tease, and heckle yourself about what you’re eating and how you look, especially when emotions are high. You’re surrounded by your favorite food cravings. Challenging family members. Childhood food traditions.

Bullying yourself acts like a boomerang. What you don’t want comes back to you—quickly. The next time you find yourself about to launch into a tirade, “What a pig! Three pieces of pumpkin pie. I have no will power! I feel sick!” reframe it. “I’ve had more pie than I would like. When I’m conscious of what’s going on for me, I can make different choices.”

Allow yourself the freedom to choose. When you’re starting to eat more than you would like, pause. Tune in to your feelings and needs. Are you anxious at a work party and food is filling in the social gap? Are you trying to silence your Uncle’s non-stop diatribe against another family member with mashed potatoes? What are you needing? Comfort? Reassurance? Joy? What other choices can you make to meet those needs?

“When you tune into your emotional state in those moments, you are operating from a needs consciousness,” says Haskvitz. “From this place of choice, compassion is alive and needs can be met.”

Even food tastes better with compassion. If you’ve paused enough to realize pumpkin pie reminds you of home and you really want to eat one more piece, savor it. Instead of shoveling in another mouthful, let your taste buds celebrate the hot pumpkin, the cool ice cream. Chances are you’ll eat less and enjoy more.

You don’t have to kick off the New Year by kicking yourself. Give yourself a friend instead. You.

- Jan Henrikson is the editor of Eat by Choice, Not by Habit written by Sylvia Haskvitz. Jan is a freelance writer, editor, and writing/creativity coach. Thanks to her work with Sylvia Haskvitz on Eat by Choice, Not by Habit, she can say no to chocolate without feeling deprived. And, on occasion, say yes with absolutely no guilt.

Purchase Eat by Choice, Not by Habit by Sylvia Haskvitz

Change Within Ourselves: Growth Through Self-Education
Excerpted from Speak Peace in a World of Conflict
Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., international peacemaker and founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication

“Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”

— JOHN DEWEY

Now I would like to share with you how Nonviolent Communication can contribute to our attempts to bring about change:

• within ourselves
• in people whose behavior is not in harmony with our values
• in the structures within which we’re living

Earlier I outlined that the purpose of Nonviolent Communication is to create a connection that allows compassionate giving to take place. And I clarified the basic literacy that’s necessary to live this way, which is a literacy of feelings, needs, requests, and how to express them in a way that is a gift to other people so they can see what’s alive in us.

It’s a gift when they can see what would make life more wonderful because it gives them a chance to contribute willingly to our well-being. And I talked about how through empathic connection we can receive that gift from other people, even when they’re using a language that is quite violent.

When we look at how Nonviolent Communication can contribute to change, remember this: We want people to change because they see better ways of meeting their needs at less cost, not because of fear that we’re going to punish them, or “guilt” them if they don’t. First, we’ll look at how that change can occur within ourselves, then with other people whose behavior is not in harmony with our values, and then with social structures that are operating in ways that are not in harmony with our values.

First, ourselves: Think of a mistake you made recently, something you did that you wish you hadn’t done. Then think, How do I educate myself when I’ve done something I wish I hadn’t done? That is, what do you tell yourself at the moment you regret what you’ve done?

Not long ago I was doing a training session, and we were seeing how Nonviolent Communication can be used within ourselves to learn from our limitations without losing self-respect.

A woman told us she had been screaming at her child that morning before coming to the training. She said some things to the child that she wished she hadn’t said—and when she looked into her child’s eyes, she saw how hurt the child was. I asked her this question: “How did you educate yourself at that moment? What did you say to yourself?”

And she said, “I said what a terrible mother I am. I told myself that I shouldn’t have talked that way to my child. I said, What’s wrong with me?”

Unfortunately, that’s how many people educate themselves. They educate themselves in a way people educated us when we did things that authorities didn’t like. They blamed us and punished us, and we internalized it. As a result, we often educate ourselves through guilt, shame, and other forms of violent, coercive tactics. We know we’re doing that. How do we know that we are educating ourselves in a violent way?

Three feelings will tell us: depression, guilt, and shame. I think we feel depressed a good deal of the time, not because we’re ill or something is wrong with us, but because we have been taught to educate ourselves with moralistic judgments, to blame ourselves, to think like this mother did. She told herself that, because she had screamed at her child, there was something wrong with her, that she was a bad mother.

Incidentally, I often tell people, “If you want to know my definition of hell, it’s having children and thinking there is such a thing as a good parent.” You’ll spend a good deal of your life being depressed, because it’s a hard job. It’s an important job, and repeatedly we’re going to do things we wished we hadn’t done. We need to learn, but without hating ourselves. Learning that occurs through guilt or shame is costly learning. It’s too late now to undo that learning. We have it within ourselves. We’ve been trained to educate ourselves with violent judgments.

We show you in our training how to catch yourself when you’re talking to yourself like that and to bring those judgments into the light, to see what you’re telling yourself. You realize that this is your way of educating yourself—to call yourself names, to think of what’s wrong with you. Then we show you how to look behind these judgments to the need at the root of them. That is to say, what need of yours wasn’t met by the behavior?

And I asked this mother that very question: “What need of yours was not met by how you talked to the child?” With a little help from me, she got in touch with the need.

She said, “Marshall, I have a real need to respect people, especially my children. Talking to my child that way didn’t meet my need for respect.”

I said, “Now that your attention is on your needs, how do you feel?”

She said, “I’m sad.”

I said, “How does that sadness feel compared with what you were thinking a few moments ago—that you’re a terrible mother and the other judgments you were making of yourself?”

She said, “It’s almost like a sweet pain now.”

“Yes, because it’s a natural pain, you see.”

When we get in touch with needs of ours that weren’t met by our behavior, I call that mourning—mourning our actions. But it’s mourning without blame, mourning without thinking there’s something wrong with us for doing what we did. When I help people get to that connection, they often describe the pain in a similar way to how she did. It’s almost like a sweet pain compared with the depression, the guilt, and the shame we feel when we are educating ourselves through blame and judgments. I then asked her to look at the good reasons she did what she did.

She said, “Huh?”

I repeated my request: “Let’s look at the good reasons you did what you did.”

“I don’t understand what you mean. You mean screaming at my child the way I did? What do you mean by good reason?”

I said, “It’s important for us to be conscious that we don’t do anything except for good reasons.” I don’t think any human being does anything except for good reasons. And what are those good reasons? To meet a need. Everything we do is in the service of needs.

So, I said, “What need were you trying to meet when you talked to your child that way?”

She said, “Are you saying it was right?”

“I’m not saying it was right to talk to the child that way. I’m suggesting that we learn to look at the needs we’re trying to meet by doing what we do. We can learn best from it if we do two things. First, see the need that wasn’t met by the behavior. And next, be conscious of the need we were trying to meet by doing what we did. When we have our awareness focused on those two needs, I believe it heightens our ability to learn from our limitations without losing self-respect.”

“So, what need of yours were you trying to meet by saying what you did to the child at that time?”

She said, “Marshall, I really have a need for my child to be protected in life—and if this child doesn’t learn how to do things differently, I’m really scared of what could happen.”

“Yes. So you really have a need for your child’s well-being, and you were trying to contribute …”

She said, “That was a terrible way to do it—to scream like that.”

“Well, we’ve already looked at that part of yourself that doesn’t like what you did. It didn’t meet your need to respect other people. Now let’s be conscious of what need of yours was met by doing it. You care for the child; you wanted to protect the child’s well-being.”

“Yes.”

“I believe we have a much better chance to learn how to handle other situations in the future if we ask ourselves how we could have met both needs. Now, when you have those two needs in mind, can you imagine how you might have expressed yourself differently?”

She said, “Yes, yes. Oh, yes. I can see that if I had been in touch with those needs, I would’ve expressed myself quite differently.”

This is how we show people how to use Nonviolent Communication within themselves. When we do something we don’t like, the first step is to mourn, to empathize with ourselves about the need of ours that wasn’t met. And very often we’ll have to do that by “hearing through” the judgments we have been programmed to make. In this way we can actually make good use of our depression, guilt, and shame. We can use those feelings as an alarm clock to wake us up to the fact that at this moment we really are not connected to life—life defined as being in touch with our needs. We’re up in our head playing violent games with ourselves, calling ourselves names.

If we can learn how to empathically connect with the need of ours that wasn’t met, and then look at the part of our self that was trying to meet the need, we’re better prepared to see what’s alive in ourselves and others—and to take the steps necessary to make life more wonderful.

Often it’s not easy to empathically connect with that need. If we look inside and say what was going on in us when we did that, very often we say things to ourselves like “I had to do it; I had no choice.” That’s never true! We always have a choice. We don’t do anything we didn’t choose to do. We chose to behave that way to meet a need. A very important part of Nonviolent Communication is this recognition of choice at every moment, that every moment we choose to do what we do, and we don’t do anything that isn’t coming out of choice. What’s more, every choice we make is in the service of a need. That’s how Nonviolent Communication works within us.

SELF-EMPATHY FOR OUR ‘MISTAKES’

“Let us be glad of the dignity of our privilege
to make mistakes, glad of the wisdom that
enables us to recognize them, glad of the power
that permits us to turn their light as a glowing
illumination along the pathway of our future.
Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom.
Without them there would be no individual
growth, no progress, no conquest.”

— William Jordan

Many people have a great deal of pain surrounding things they’ve done or experienced in their lives. In helping people address the source of their pain, the first thing we do is get them to be conscious of the things they’re telling themselves about what creates their pain.

In this way, Nonviolent Communication is very much in harmony with the principles of psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, as expressed in his book The Myth of Mental Illness. Yes, there are some physical problems some people have that affect mental well-being, but the vast majority of people we call mentally ill are simply “well-educated” to think and communicate in a way that causes them great psychological discomfort. It doesn’t mean they’re ill; it means they’ve learned ways of thinking and communicating that make life pretty miserable.

So, our first step in helping people is to show them how to learn from their mistakes without losing self-respect. Or, as I say it in my Detroit way, how to enjoy mucking things up. We first have them learn by asking them to think of a mistake. That’s why we exclude perfect people from our workshops, because we don’t want people to come and having nothing to work on!

We start by asking people to think of something they have done that they didn’t like doing. Then we ask them to give us a little snippet of how they spoke to themselves. You know, it’s pretty brutal what people say to themselves—and not just on the golf course. The most common response, the number one comment of all time, is “You idiot!” I’ll tell you right now, there are a lot of idiots in the world. Still others use a violent word, one of the most violent words human beings have ever developed: should. “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have been more sensitive.”

The word should comes directly from this game of violence that implies there’s a good and a bad, a should and a shouldn’t. If you don’t do the things you should do, you should be punished; if you do the right things, you should be rewarded. This creates enormous pain. So we get people to identify what they say to themselves when they are less than perfect. And it brings back a lot of memories for people.

They can see that they’re still telling themselves the things they used to hate their parents saying to them when they were young children. “You should have known better; you’re careless; you’re stupid; you’re selfish; what’s wrong with you?”

They see now that they educate themselves the same way when they’re less than perfect. And the first thing they do is call themselves some pretty brutal names. No wonder forty-one percent of pharmaceutical sales are for anti-depressants. Teach people to blame themselves when they’ve made mistakes, and you’re going to have a lot of people spending a lot of their lives being depressed.

In helping people get past the pain of should, we start by helping them become conscious of this thinking. Then we show people that this thinking is all a tragic expression of an unmet need. It means that you didn’t meet a need of yours by doing what you did, and if you can identify the need of yours that wasn’t met, you’re far more likely to learn from it because you’ll start to imagine how you could have better met the need without losing self-respect. So, we get them to identify the brutal language they’re using to blame themselves, and then we teach them how to translate such language into need language.

At this point we show people how to connect empathically with what was alive in them when they did the behavior that they called a mistake. In other words, get clear what need they were trying to meet by doing it. So rather typically a mother might say in a workshop, “I was running late and screamed at my children today in a way that I shouldn’t have before I came to this training. I feel so guilty about it. I must be a terrible mother.”

“So, that’s what you tell yourself about the screaming, that you think you’re a terrible mother?”

“Yes.”

And then we help her to get clear:

“What needs of yours didn’t get met, needs that are being expressed through these judgments that you’re a terrible mother, that you shouldn’t have behaved that way?”

“I want to be respectful to all people, but especially to my children.”

“So, that is the need that wasn’t met?”

“Yeah.”

“Now how do you feel?”

“Oh, quite different. I feel sad, not so depressed, not so angry at myself.”

“OK. Now, what need of yours were you trying to meet by doing it?”

“Oh, there was no excuse for it.”

“No, there was in fact very good excuse for it. You were doing it for the same reason all human beings do everything: to meet a need the best way you knew at that moment. What was your need?”

“Well, I wanted to respect you and the other members of this group by being on time.”

We helped her to get clear about the desperation she was feeling from having this other need to be respectful of the time agreements we made. What we find is that when people can empathize with themselves in these ways … then if they do start to criticize themselves, they know how to translate that criticism into an unmet need. When people can practice self empathy, they are much better able to learn from their limitations without losing self-respect—without feeling guilty or depressed.

In fact, I would say that if we’re not able to empathize with ourselves, it’s going to be very hard to do it with other people. If we still think when we make a mistake that there’s something wrong with us, then how are we not going to think there’s something wrong with other people for doing what they do? When we can empathize with ourselves and really stay connected to our true self in a life-enriching way, we can hear or sense which needs we’re not meeting by our actions, at which point we also can see which needs we were trying to meet by doing what we just did. When our awareness is on our needs, we’re much better able to meet our needs without losing self-respect, and we’re also better able to avoid judging others for what they say or do.

NVC helps us learn how to create peace within ourselves when there’s a conflict between what we do and what we wish we had done. If we’re going to be violent to our self, how are we going to contribute to creating a world of peace? Peace begins within us. I’m not saying we have to get totally liberated from all of our inner, violent learning before we look outside of our self to the world, or to see how we can contribute to social change at a broader level. I’m saying we need to do these simultaneously.

HEALING OLD HURTS—MOURNING VERSUS APOLOGY

“He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.”

— SIR HENRY TAYLOR

Very often, a lot of healing work goes on in our trainings. Realize first of all that this takes place in front of as many as eighty or ninety people, so you might say there are many witnesses to the efficacy of our approach. Participants regularly tell me they get more out of thirty or forty minutes of what I’ve done than they received from six or seven years of traditional psychotherapy.

First of all, we talk very little if at all about what happened in the past. I have found that talking about what happened in the past not only doesn’t help healing, it often perpetuates and increases pain. It’s like reliving the pain. This goes very much against what I was taught in my training in psychoanalysis, but I’ve learned over the years that you heal by talking about what’s going on in the moment, in the now. Certainly it’s stimulated by the past, and we don’t deny how the past is affecting the present, but we don’t “dwell” on it.

How do I do this? I often play the role of the person who stimulated most of the other person’s pain in the past. Not infrequently this is a parent. I might be playing the role of a father who beat or sexually molested this person as a child. So now I’m sitting with this person who’s been in pain for years about this, and I play the role of the person who is the stimulus for the pain as though that individual knows Nonviolent Communication. I begin with empathy and say, “What’s still alive in you as a result of what I have done?” See, we’re not going into the past and talking about what I did, but about what’s alive in you now that’s still there from what happened in the past.

Often the person doesn’t know Nonviolent Communication, so they don’t know how to tell me what’s alive in them except through diagnosis: “How could you do it? You know, you were cruel. How could a father beat a child that way?” And I start by saying, “So I’m hearing you say _______,” then I translate that into what they’re feeling and needing, using Nonviolent Communication. Role-playing the father, I empathically connect with their pain, even if they’re not expressing it in a very clear way.

In Nonviolent Communication we know that all these diagnoses are just tragic expressions of what a person is feeling and needing at this moment. So I continue until they have been fully understood about what’s alive in them now that’s still so painful. And then when they have received all the understanding they need, I mourn—still in the role of the father. Not apologize, but mourn.

Nonviolent Communication shows us a big difference between mourning and apology. Apology is basically part of our violent language. It implies wrongness—that you should be blamed, that you should be penitent, that you’re a terrible person for what you did—and when you agree that you are a horrible person and when you have become sufficiently penitent, you can be forgiven. Sorry is part of that game. If you hate yourself enough, you can be forgiven, you see.

Now, in contrast, what is really healing for people is not that game where we agree that we’re terrible, but rather going inside yourself and seeing what need of yours was not met by the behavior. And when you are in touch with that, you feel a different kind of suffering. You feel a natural suffering, a kind of suffering that leads to learning and healing, not to hatred of oneself, not to guilt.

So, in the role of the father, having empathized with my daughter, I then mourn. I might say something like, “I feel terribly sad to see that my way of handling my pain at the time could result stimulate so much pain for you. And my needs were not met by that. My needs were just the opposite, to contribute to your well-being.” That might be what the mourning sounds like.

After the mourning, the next step is for the father to explain to the daughter what was alive in him when he did those horrible things in the past. We do go into the past at this point, not to talk about what happened but to help the daughter see what was alive in the father at the time he did this.

In some cases the father might sound like this: “I was in such pain in so many parts of my life—my work wasn’t going well, I was feeling like a failure—so when I would see you and your brother screaming, I didn’t know what else to do to handle my pain except in the brutal way that I did. ”When the father can honestly express what was alive in him, and the daughter can empathize with that, can see that, it’s amazing how much healing can take place. What’s surprising for some people is that all of this can happen in an hour—and in front of a room full of people.

EXERCISE:

Think of a person or event from the past that still brings you pain. What’s alive in you at this moment about that person or event? What may have been alive in the others involved?

Learn more about Speak Peace in a World of Conflict by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.

Five Meditations for an Empowered Life
Excerpted from Peaceful Living
Mary Mackenzie, certified NVC trainer and author of Peaceful Living

MEDITATION #1
Mere survival is an affliction. What is of interest is life, and the direction of that life.
—Guy Frégault

Loving Life
I spent much of my first 35 years just getting by. I didn’t feel much joy. I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t feel passion. I just got through each day. In essence, I spent my life reacting to my perception of other people’s feelings and needs, rather than being in touch with my own. Now, I understand that what is interesting about being alive is living. If I’m just getting by, unaware of what I feel or need, I do not fully experience life. It is the difference between living life in black and white, and experiencing full color. Why just get by when you can experience living color? Be aware. Be vibrant! This is your life. Make it work for you.

Commit to living today in full awareness of
what you feel and need in each moment.

MEDITATION #2
I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
—R. Buckminster Fuller

Being Present in This Moment
Have you ever noticed a tendency for your attention to be everywhere but where you actually are? You may be doing the dishes and stewing over a task you have tomorrow. Or changing the baby’s diaper while fretting about something you said earlier that day. You may be talking to a friend while worrying about your trip next week. Where is your attention right now as you read this meditation? Take a moment to connect with yourself. Tomorrow will come later and yesterday already happened. This is your moment to live.
How can you spend it in the way that you most enjoy? Be conscious and present as much as possible in your life and you will feel more connection and joy in all of your activities.

Commit to being present as much as possible
in each moment of your life today.

MEDITATION #3
To listen well is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well.
—Chinese proverb

The Power of Being Heard
I often hear people say this in my classes, “Yeah, but don’t you think if I say anything at all, it will cause the situation to escalate?” This question came up in a recent class. The person who asked it was upset with his spouse about something, so I reflected what I thought his feelings and needs were. Instantly, he started to cry because he felt so touched that someone understood what he was trying to say. He had been having the same argument with his wife for years, but in that minute of empathy, he was heard for the first time. To hear another’s feelings and needs is one of the most powerful methods to defuse anger and create space for resolution that I have ever encountered. It may seem awkward at first because we are not used to talking with people in this way. It is okay to feel awkward; do it anyway. Soon it will feel as natural as breathing.

Be aware of opportunities to empathize with someone today.

MEDITATION #4
The cure for all ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word “love.” It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.
—Lydia Maria Child

Speaking Up for Our Needs in a Group
Sometimes, when a person first realizes that her needs are important, she becomes over-zealous in trying to meet them. For example, she may interrupt a group process because she just realized that her need for being heard or understood wasn’t met. In her urgency to meet a need to be heard, she can lose perspective on the bigger picture—what the group is trying to accomplish. Or she may forget that there are many ways to meet her need. It’s tricky, because in my own experience, every single person in a group process makes a valuable contribution to the whole. Any person who is not fully present can hinder the group’s ability to succeed. On the other hand, if someone interrupts the group process to take time to meet a personal need, it can be a distraction. What can she do instead? She can consider empathizing with herself for a moment, silently connecting with her unmet needs and feelings. Then she can ponder whether it is worth it to her and the group to interrupt it for more empathy, or if she can meet her need in other ways that do not hinder the group’s progress. Remember, it’s about valuing everyone’s needs, not just her own. If you find yourself in such a situation, consider what would meet everyone’s needs. And remember that there are unlimited ways to meet every need. Often our first knee-jerk solution does not fully value everyone’s needs.

Notice how you participate in groups today. Are you
fully present and participating? What could you do to
meet your own and the group’s needs?

MEDITATION #5
I’m no longer afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my own ship.
—Louisa May Alcott

Achieving Safety
I spent most of my life looking for my personal safety in other people. With this attitude, I spent a great deal of time determining whether someone was safe or not, judging other people as abusive, and blaming other people when I felt hurt or disappointed. The result was that I felt afraid because
I depended on others to keep me safe, and I didn’t feel empowered to manage my own life. Nonviolent Communication teaches that safety is not something that other people can provide. I can best meet my needs for safety when I gain trust in my ability to take care of myself. In this model, safety can come from such tools as learning ways to meet my own needs, speaking up when I am unhappy or worried, and trusting my own instincts. When I trust myself, I am empowered to stop looking to others for my safety.

Be aware of how you look to other people
to meet your need for safety.

Learn more about Peaceful Living by Mary Mackenzie

How Detatchment Can Be Loving for All
Wayland Myers, Ph.D., certified NVC trainer

Many years ago, I heard a drug rehab counselor say, "Detachment is a means whereby we allow others the opportunity to learn how to care for themselves better.” I felt confused and disturbed. I was a parent. My teenage child’s life and our family were being ravaged by her struggle with drug and alcohol use. Was I being told I shouldn’t try to stop her from using drugs and alcohol? That I shouldn’t try to protect her from herself or try to control her recovery? I had heard about this “loving detachment” before and it sounded like a self-protective form of abandonment. But, this counselor made it sound like a gift. How could that be?

Over time, I began to understand what the counselor meant. I slowly discovered a number of mutual benefits that derived from practicing loving detachment when trying to support someone struggling with addiction. Over time, I came to see that these benefits could be realized in other situations I found challenging. Like when I was relating to someone who had a chronic illness that required wise self-care to be practiced over a long periods of time and I thought they were failing to do that. Depression, diabetes, attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia came to mind. Then I thought; what about people who are struggling to learn complex life skills like effective study habits, finding a job, managing their personal finances, handling friendships and love affairs? My interventions in those learning processes sometimes caused more troubles than they solved. Maybe loving detachment would be helpful there as well. With these expanded visions, I became very excited about the value of learning to be supportive and lovingly detached at the same time.

I developed my first understandings of loving detachment at the same time I was developing my first understandings and skills in Nonviolent Communication. I found them to share core values and to be mutually complementary. For instance, Nonviolent Communication suggests using compassionate inspiration has a way for people to get their needs met, rather than coercion, manipulation or demands. Nonviolent Communication highly values interpersonal respect – all parties granting each other the right to be who and how they are. And, Nonviolent Communication encourages everyone to engage in good self-care. These are all parts of loving detachment. The insights and values of Nonviolent Communication have greatly enriched my understanding of how detachment can be loving for all. So, let's take a look at loving detachment.

First, a definition: Currently, I consider myself lovingly detached when:

I am willing and able to compassionately, and without judgment;

• allow others to be different from me,
• allow them to be self-directed,
• and allow them to be responsible for taking care of themselves.

When I am able to do this, what benefits have I discovered? Here are four ways that I believe detachment is loving for my loved ones, and four ways I have found it loving for me.

How detachment is loving for others:

I. Those I care for might learn to look within, and trust themselves for self-direction, including when and how to ask for help.

If I refrain from trying to manage their problematic situation, the people I care about may learn something about thinking for themselves, problem solving, and when and how to ask for help. They might learn to better listen to their feelings and intuitions, to heed those little voices we all wish we listened to more. They might learn to better recognize when they want help and how to request it in ways that leave them feeling good, rather than embarrassed or ashamed. In short, letting them manage their own affairs gives them the opportunity to draw on their own inner resources, instead of mine, and from this direct experience of their abilities, no matter how groping or uncertain, they can build competence and that often leads to confidence. For me this is the most powerful and most natural avenue for creating an increased sense of self esteem.

II. They might learn more about cause and effect.

My not intervening allows others to have an uninterrupted experience of the cause and effect relationship between their actions and the natural consequences of those actions. In this way, they have a direct encounter with their personal power to contribute to their own pleasure or pain. Allowing people to have appropriate sized, real problems, and real responsibility for working out their solutions, seems to greatly facilitate this learning.

III. They might experience the motivation to continue on, or change.

Pleasurable and painful experiences often provide us the motivation to repeat what brought satisfaction and change what didn't. We all use this kind of emotional energy to move us forward in life. These motivating energies arise naturally within and feel much better to respond to than the attempts by others to motivate us through guilt, fear and other forms of coercion.

IV. Self discovery and self enjoyment might increase.

If I grant others the freedom to think, feel, value, perceive, etc. as they wish, and they relax because they feel respected and safe, they might discover many new things about themselves. They might discover what they really like, feel or think. They might have moments of creative insight that inspire, excite and encourage them. They might invent new, more satisfying dreams for their lives than ever would have appeared under the pressure of my controlling presence.

Whenever I find myself struggling with the impulse to step-in and begin trying to manage another's life or solve his or her problems, I find it helpful to review the four points just presented. They strongly motivate me to remain lovingly detached. Now, how about the ways loving detachment benefits me?

How detachment is loving for me:

I. I am relieved of the strain of attempting the impossible.
By carefully reviewing my experiences of trying to control other people's physical behavior, sobriety, health, learning, emotions and opinions, I have come to one conclusion: The only thing I might be able to control is a person's physical behavior and that requires that I possess enough physical strength, and the opportunity and will to use it. If I accept my powerlessness to control the other things, the inner lives and wills of others, then I relieve myself of the stress and strain of attempting what cannot be done. This is a primary way for me to create more serenity in my life. In fact, if I practice this process deeply enough, I sometimes reach the point where I form no opinion about what another should do. This is a truly liberated and refreshing moment for us both.

II. What other people think of me can become none of my business.
If I am powerless to control the thoughts, perceptions, values or emotions of another, then I can liberate myself by accepting that their opinions of me are none of my business. Accepting this as fact, I not only free myself, but the other person as well, because I cease my attempts to control their inner workings.

III. My attention and energy are freed to focus on improving my own life.
I have plenty of problem areas in my own life. Obsessing about another’s life can help me avoid the pain within mine. But, the time and energy I spend obsessing about another's life I don't spend on mine. If I do this too much, my life stays at its current level of unmanageability or gets worse. Loving detachment gives me the opportunity to invest my energies in my life.

IV. I can express my love or caring in ways that bring me joy and satisfaction.
When someone I care for is struggling with a problem, or feeling some kind of pain, I usually want to be supportive or helpful. But, I want to offer the kind of help that would bring me joy to offer, and them joy to receive. One of the ways that I have developed a picture of what this help could look like is to recall times when caring friends or others offered me assistance in ways that I enjoyed. What did they do? While showing no sign that they felt responsible for solving my problems, they offered me four things;

• their compassionate, empathic understanding of how I perceived and felt about my situation,
• their experiences and learning from similar situations for my consideration,
• their genuine optimism about my abilities to work through my struggles, and
• their willingness to help, on my terms, in ways that were congruent with their needs.

To be offered understanding, companionship, encouragement and assistance, but not interference, is the most satisfying help I have known. Offering this to others increases both the joy in my life and my self-esteem.

Looking at the eight ways that I see detachment as being loving, I conclude that the most basic reason for practicing it is to provide an opportunity for both people's lives to be improved. The lives of those I love may be improved because I respect their powers of self-care enough to let them have a chance to reap the potential benefits of struggling, learning and succeeding on their own. My life is improved because I avoid unnecessary distress, retain energy I might have used otherwise, and offer caring and support in ways that bring me joy. In these ways, loving detachment plays a powerful and rewarding role in helping me to both live, and let live.

When to Help – When to Lovingly Detach?
Okay, so I think loving detachment is great for everyone involved. But, how do I decide when to do it? I lovingly detach when I conclude that it is the most helpful action I can take. There are times when I believe that actually helping a person with their problem may be the most helpful thing I can do. Then I go ahead and help. There are other times when I conclude that allowing them the opportunity to learn how to take care of themselves better may be the stronger, deeper form of love, the deeper gift. Then I detach with love and compassion. And, they are not mutually exclusive. Often, I do some of both. But, how do I figure this balance out? I ask myself questions like these:

1. Which action, helping or lovingly detaching, do I believe will strengthen my loved one the most in the long run? This is my primary question. I want to contribute toward strengthening their well-being in the long run.

2. Does the "help" I am thinking of providing involve me picking up a responsibility which would normally be theirs, but which they are not performing at the levels I deem best? Am I remembering for them, organizing for them, planning ahead for them, making peace for them, apologizing for them, keeping track of something for them, anticipating consequences for them? It is been my frequent experience that as long as I continue to handle jobs like these for my loved ones, their level of job performance rarely improves, and they often resent my interventions. Oh, what fun we have. But, I don't let myself complain too much about this because, after all, I am a volunteer. (A corollary question is: Are any of the helpful things I've gotten into the habit of doing for them things which it might be better for them to learn to do for themselves? Are there any jobs I'd like to retire from that would be in the natural order of life for them to learn to take care off? If so, I invite myself to retire.)

3. Is the crisis I am tempted to help them with one that is a natural consequence of their choices or behaviors? Generally, I prefer to let people encounter the full force of the natural consequences of their actions because I want to allow them the maximum opportunity to learn and become motivated to change. However, I make exceptions to this preference if I believe the emotional or physical harm involved will be at a level I cannot live with in the long run. When in doubt, I always choose the action options that I believe I can live with best in the long run.

4. Will the intervention I am considering create a crisis, which is not in the natural order of things? If I express my hurt or disappointment concerning how they have treated me, and that creates a crisis between us, well that might be in the natural order of life, something that is natural to occur. However, if I consistently nag and pressure them, that might create a crisis that I would not label as natural because my choosing to nag is just an option in life, not a necessity.

5. If I think my loved one would benefit by encountering consequences for one of their actions, are there any naturally occurring ones available that I can let do the job? I'd rather have my loved one hate the consequences, than hate me for creating them.

6. With a child, how big is the exposure level to emotional or physical harm if I do not intervene? Am I reasonably confident that the pain exposure would be uncomfortable, but not harmful? My bottom-line criteria – when in doubt, choose the options I believe I can live with best in the long run. Advice from others is nice, but I have to live with myself from here on out.

I rarely try to answer these complex questions alone. I have found it very valuable and reassuring to seek the perspective, counsel and support of trusted others. And, I do so throughout the process of implementing and maintaining my lovingly detached support of my struggling other.

I hope all of these thoughts and suggestions help you figure out when, how and how much to help those you love, and to feel more at ease when you lovingly chose to abstain.

I have not found loving detachment to be painless. I often feel guilt, worry and doubt. But, my suffering is tempered when I believe that by resisting my urge to help, I may be offering the person I love the highest form of love I can. I wish you compassion, clarity and courage as you navigate your way through these complex waters.

- Wayland Myers, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in the Northern part of San Diego County (USA). He has 15 years of in-depth personal and professional experience in living with those who struggle with addiction. Myers has also written a book, Nonviolent Communication: The Basics As I Know and Use Them, which is published in English, French and Spanish and has sold 18,000 copies. He uses NVC extensively in his life and work with individuals, couples and families. If you have questions about this article or would like to speak with Wayland Myers about the application of NVC in addiction or recovery, please contact him at waylandpm@cox.net

Money Fears: A Heart Dis-Ease
Kelly Bryson, MA, MFT and certified NVC trainer

Lions and tigers and bills, oh my. Lions and tigers and bills, oh my.

Fear about having enough money is like cholesterol. Cholesterol clogs the arteries until the heart is working very hard just to supply a survival level of blood flow. When I am carrying the burden of money fear I work very hard just to get by.

Money Fear is a heart attack. It attacks the heart of our trust in nature/life. It can cripple us into a self-fulfilling prophecy of financial paralysis, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

“Money is like an arm or a leg - use it or lose it.”
- Henry Ford

The heart is the same way, if I don’t use my heart I will lose heart. That is sometimes called depression (as in the Great Financial Depression of ‘32). I was experiencing this loss of heart and total anxiety about money when a mentor of mine, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, director educational services of the international Center for Nonviolent Communication, said to me, “Kelly so many of your students tell me how deeply their lives have changed after working with you. Can’t you see that you are serving life, and therefore life will take care of you? It’s like in the Bible when it says ‘If you asked your father for some bread would he give you a stone?’”

That helped for a while but then the fear and distrust crept back in because I had not healed from the trauma of certain childhood realities. It was unfamiliar (not a part of my family experience) to feel secure. Up until the state social workers put us in foster homes when I was seven, if I ate, often my brothers and sister literally went hungry.

This experience triggered a loss of trust in the abundance and safety of my world. The anxiety created by the loss of trust either paralyzes you so your financial world starts to cave in on you, or it just kind of numbs you out into a la la limbo land of low grade depression and meaninglessness. And from the state of depression it’s a long way back to creativity and productivity. However there is a short cut, and that is give up looking for short cuts and start practicing principles of TRUE giving and receiving.

I never feel more given to than when you take from me. When you understand the joy I feel caring for you.
And you know my giving isn’t done to put you in my debt,
But because I want to live the love I feel for you.
To receive with grace may be the greatest giving,
There’s no way I can separate the two.
When you give to me I give you my receiving,
And when you take from me I feel so given to.
- Ruth Bebermeyer

The Course in Miracles says that giving and receiving are the same thing. And I believe they are related in the way breathing out is related to breathing in. Stagnicity (The spell checker on my computer tells me that I just invented a new word) occurs when the fear of giving out, stops the return flow of receiving in. Giving from the heart, to ourselves or others is a great Exlax for financial constipation. Giving out of obligation, duty, fear or shame is the great constipator. When stagnicity occurs there are a couple of ways to get the pump primed and flowing again. One is to allow ourselves to really be given to, the other is to allow ourselves to really give to other people. Either way can get the flow going again. It’s a type of psychofinancial (another new word) CPR, (That’s Compassion Presence Resuscitation). Here’s an example of this type of CPR from my own life.

Just a few weeks ago I had fallen prey to and was worshipping the god ‘ANXIETY’. Everything I was doing was motivated by the fear of running out of money and becoming a homeless person. Suddenly shopping carts were starting to look good to me. Especially those huge oversized rad red plastic ones at Home Depot with the really smooth, straight ride on wheels that don’t wobble. It is ironic that the stimulus for this sudden attack of survival/money anxiety was my buying a big beautiful home on a big piece of land. Images of ghosts and goblins of jackbooted government agents swooping down on me like at Ruby Ridge, seizing every thing because I had defaulted on my mortgage. The Wicked Witch of Wells Fargo Bank is screaming at me from atop of my refrigerator, “I am going to get that new house and that little relationship of yours too. Ha! Ha! Haaaa!“ I wish I had remembered to take some time out to play myself this song:

When the only money that you’ve got is money that you’ve had to borrow,
And the gas company’s going to turn the gas off if you don’t pay your bill by tomorrow.
And you tell your woman and kids, things’ll get better any day
But you can tell by the look on their faces, they don’t believe a word you say.
When you’re over forty and your dreams for thirty still haven’t come true
And everybody is making it, everybody in the world but you.
And your friends read the Wall Street Journal and all of their stocks advance.
While you sit thumbing through the Want Ads
just praying for any little chance.
That’s when I want to remember that losing at a money making game,
Doesn’t mean I’m worthless or that failure is my name.
- Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.

I was in the middle of my frantic flurry of less than efficient money making activities when I got the message that a client from Los Angeles who had called me. I quickly called her back hoping she was wanting to schedule an appointment, which would provide me with some money. It turns out that she was in crises because she had just been fired from her job of 25 years. As she continued talking about her anxiety and panic about how she was going to survive financially, I began to notice a gnawing twisting uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. I tried to just cope with it inside myself, but the longer she talked the more irritated I felt. I tried to understand where the stress was coming from by listening to what my inner Jackals (my inner critical voices) were saying to me:

“I can’t believe I am wasting my precious time listening to someone else’s money problems for free! Worse than that I am paying for this long distance call. I am a licensed psychotherapist. I am supposed to be getting paid for this.”

I started thinking she should intuit my need to get off the phone or get paid for the time without my having to speak up for myself. Now there’s a formula for resentment and poverty. Then I remembered one of the maxims I’m always telling others to follow in my workshops: “Only give when it’s from your heart. And never listen to one more word than you want to hear. To do so is violence to the relationship with self and the other.”

“Jane,” I started hesitatingly and awkwardly. “I am aware you are in a lot of panic and crises right now, however I need to talk about what’s going on with me, OK? I am feeling some irritation and fear and I am not really clear what it is about.” I felt better immediately just saying that much.

“I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you. I am terribly sorry,” she said with the embarrassment that comes from thinking you’ve done something wrong and that your needs are burdens to others.

“No I’m not in judgment of you. It’s more to do with my own fears about money right now.”

“Oh, do you want me to reassure you I am going to pay you for this call?” she said with some anxiety and embarrassment in her voice.

I was touched by her offer and it helped me become aware that I had a choice. To give from my heart or ask her to give to me. I also was able to see how my fear that there wasn’t going to be enough money for me, was preventing me from enjoying the opportunity to give my attention to her. I remembered a time years ago when I was in a lot of anxiety about money and I went to a counselor for some support. At the end of

the session the counselor told me I need not pay this time. I remembered how grateful and relieved and touched I had been by the gift of his compassion. I was really tired of the fear that was robbing me of the precious experience of giving that kind of a gift to another who needed it. Finally it became clear for me that I wanted to give her my time/presence because I knew how grateful and relieved she would be. I came to a crossroads within myself. Do I want to trust that if I feel like giving something from my heart I will still survive financially? Or do I chose to believe in a dog-eat-dog

world where fear is constantly monitoring every expression? Then It hit me:

I’d prefer to live out of a shopping cart,
Than to give up giving from my heart.
If I want a giving living,
I need to start living giving.
When I give up giving, I give up living.
When I am drivin’, I am not livin’.

I had traded living for panicking. I wasn’t enjoying my life because I was always running from the dread doom of Damocles’ sword of financial ruin about to chop my head off. And I was sick of it.

Maybe I am wrong, or I am just putting on rose colored glasses, I don’t know. I choose to believe that the psychologist William James was onto something when he suggested that it is highly beneficial to believe whatever you want to believe. And I choose to believe that if I give from my heart and remember to ask for what I want, I will survive quite nicely. I chose to believe if I put my money (time or other resources) where my heart is, I will start a cycle that will provide me rich returns. I was starting to realize that what Louis Agassiz the Swiss Naturalist had said was also true for me: “I cannot afford to waste my time making money.” This certainly isn’t anything new but it’s hard to believe when it looks like only the “greed is good,” bust your ass, Wallstreet lawyer types get all the babes in Toyland and the toys too. There’s even a Socratic slant on this:

“I do nothing but go about persuading you all not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue does not come from money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private.”

- Socrates

Now I don’t want to get too airy fairy here but it was quite a bit of synchronicity that after I had this realization and while I was still on the phone with Jane, two calls came in telling me of really big and good financial news.

“Warning...Warning...! Do not get Lost in Space, Will Robinson.” This does not mean that the key to happiness is to become an all giving Mother Teresa. I already burned out on that one. I spent many years living in an ashram and giving ALL my money and time to the World Welfare Organization to try to bring meditation to the world. (I worry that my need to mention it here stems from not getting the appreciation or acknowledgement I wanted then.) I ended up resentful, disillusioned and ignorant about how to take care of me. I had never learned that my needs were gifts; precious opportunities to serve the life in me. I know all kinds of techniques for “motivating” myself, but none for just giving to myself. But why do we have to motivate ourselves? Because we hate what we are doing. As a child did you ever need to be coerced or motivated to go out to recess? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we gave the same kind and quantity of energy to our work as we did to recess? Yes! Yes! Yes! I want to let myself out on permanent recess and find a way to play and get paid for it. Like by brother Jim who always loved to play dump truck in the dirt. Now he owns a couple of dump trucks and just plays all day.

If I want to leave the “adult detention hall” of have-to and should and must, and get back to recess. I need to learn to think and speak to myself in non-authoritarian, non-static language.

What do I mean by static language? Almost any use of the verb “to be” in relation to myself. Example: You are a shy, lazy, too old, uneducated, unassertive, unorganized, untalented, depressed, dysfunctional, nervous, angry person and a financial failure. Notice the finality and stagnicity of those judgmental concepts. Nothing in life is like that. Life is fluid and constantly changing. All self judgments are poorly articulated feelings and unmet needs. Rather than swirl in the overwhelm of static judgmental thinking I choose to convert it into process thinking. Example: “Kelly, you are no good at making money” converts to, “Kelly are you feeling helpless because you need some guidance on money making and right now would you be willing to take the small step of calling that financial advisor?”

The other huge de-energizing dynamic is making demands on oneself. When we make demands on ourselves we paradoxically put ourselves into a position of submission or rebellion. When I tell myself I have to or should do something, I have no choice except to submit out of fear, shame or guilt or rebel in angry defiance. When I submit, I feel depleted and depressed and when I rebel I feel too guilty to enjoy whatever other activity I have chosen. I would prefer to do the inner processing it takes to transform my conflict into some form of giving to myself.

Once, Dr. Rosenberg was trying to get some sleep when his child began crying. His first thought was, “Well it’s my turn, I guess I should feed the little brat.” As he was rising so was his resentment. He decided to lay back down and give himself empathy for irritation he was feeling about being woken in the middle of the night, and for the frustration about wanting a choice and then for the sadness about thinking of his child’s need as a bother. After a minute or two he got up not because he was thinking he had to or should but because he felt compassion and simply wanted the child to have food.

This is the intention I want to have when giving to myself. Because when I make me give to myself I am less motivated to give to myself in the future. I resent my own inner arm twisting. What is inner arm twisting? “Kelly, if you will do your paper work, I’ll stop berating you for five seconds.”

I also want to stop trying to buy my own love or approval. I want out of the coercive buy-and-sell relationship with myself. I have discovered that what I want from myself is not approval. Not, “now you are an OK person” but self-appreciation for caring for and meeting my own needs. And I want to learn to ask myself for things in a way that makes it easier to give to myself. Instead of, “You should start sending out your resume,” try “I’m feeling anxious to find that new job so I want to send out the resume.”

I also want feedback from myself if I am not caring well for myself. Whatever form this feedback comes in (depression, resentment, illness, self-loathing, inner criticism or just general crankiness), I want to empathize with myself (or get someone else to) until the underlying need emerges. I then want to formulate positive action steps I could take to better meet those needs.

I want to give to myself because I have compassion for my wants, instead of trying to convince myself that “I deserve.” It is much more important to me that I want something, versus theorizing that I deserve it. Besides, entertaining abstractions like I deserve or don’t deserve gets me caught up in the world of reward and punishment.

I don’t want to portray this process as quick and easy. It takes time, lots of external support, practice, empathy and a deep commitment to connect with, instead of correct, oneself. It is a process, not an event. I spent years as a monk in an Indian monastery called an ashram trying to meditate myself into “happily ever after” and slip the surly bonds of earth with all it’s petty materialistic lessons. I was like a wannabe hot air balloonist who could achieve a few seconds of ecstatic flight only to be brought back to earth by the sandbags of my own rotten relationship with myself and others. So I can relate to Ram Dass who one day heard a voice tell him, “Ram Dass, you are on the Earth plane, and it’s a sort of school. Why don’t you take the curriculum?”

So now I have a new goal:
I don’t want to live happily ever after,
I want to cry all my tears and laugh all my laughter!

 Additions

• Money will not give you security, but if you have security it’s easier to make money.
• If I contribute I will be contributed to.
• Put your money where your heart is. Bet on YOU. My personal power grows by acting on my inclinations and dreams. One powerful act of faith in myself is spending money in the service of my self development and my dreams.
• Money is energy, as are our other resources like time and attention. I need to choose what force I am going to allow to determine where I invest those resources. Do I always allow fear, anxiety, shame or guilt to determine how I spend my time or money? Or am I going to allow my heart and the pull of compassion to lead the way? I still remember, from the movie National Velvet, the horse groomer’s advice to Velvet, a girl trying to win the ‘boys only’ National Steeple race: “Just send your heart up over the hurdle first and then leap after it for all you’re worth!”

—Kelly Bryson MA, MFT, author of the best selling book ("Don't be Nice, Be Real - Balancing Passion for Self with Compassion for Others. COVER TEXT: A Handbook to Nonviolent Communication) has been featured in Elle and Shape magazines, appeared on many TV and Radio shows, lived in an ashram many years, is a humorist, singer and licensed therapist in private practice. He keynotes conventions (National Montessori, Salinas Peace Summit), is an inspirational speaker (Presented at the Association for Global New Thought conference) and has been an authorized trainer for the international Center for Nonviolent Communication for over 20 years, and has trained thousands in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. He trains, presents and consults with groups, corporations (Tony Robbins, Paul Mitchell Salons), churches (all flavors), schools, (U.Cal.L.B, Body/Mind College), clubs and all types of organizations. He also studied with E. Stanley Jones, Gandhi’s concierge and friend. The new edition of Kelly's book (rewritten and highly improved) Don’t be Nice, Be Real – A Handbook to Nonviolent Communication (sm) - $16 is now available thru the website above.

Teachers Take Up New Tools to Battle Burnout
By PuddleDancer Press

The day-to-day challenges of K-12 classrooms aren’t for the faint of heart. Teachers spend their salaries on classroom materials, and their leisure time on lesson plans and curriculum mapping. Pile on deep budget cuts, closer scrutiny of performance and the under funded guidelines of No Child Left Behind, and even the toughest teachers struggle—or look for another job.

Given the load today’s teachers carry, the thought of adding a soft-skills curriculum may sound as appealing as the cafeteria’s tuna surprise—but educators are celebrating.

“Teachers who practice the Compassionate or Nonviolent Communication (NVC) process discover surprising wellsprings of power,” says Sura Hart, co-author of The Compassionate Classroom with Victoria Kindle Hodson.

“They spend no more time on lessons than before, and they ride on higher levels of energy and optimism.”

The key—bring relationships front and center, including the important relationship a teacher has with him or herself. With little to no personal time in their day, an educator’s stress level can build quickly, especially when their needs for support or cooperation are not met. Jumping to strategies like punishment, blame, or anger are a far cry from relief.

By using self-empathy, a central component to the NVC process, teachers have permission to give attention to their own feelings and needs without wallowing in destructive patterns of self-pity, judgment, blame or criticism.

“Our feelings are important messengers, telling us when our needs are fulfilled and when they are not,” say Hart and Hodson in The Compassionate Classroom. According to Hart and Hodson, the problem is when people focus only on their feelings, which can leave them disempowered or disconnected, particularly when they begin to label others as the “cause” of their distress.

The NVC process guides educators through self-empathy using three key stages:

• Observations —objectively describe the action or strategy that triggered your feelings, absent of judgment or criticism (“When I hear Travis talking to Lydia while I’m trying to lead a lesson, and I know I’ve asked him to quiet down three times so far . . .”);
• Feelings —link your observations to your own feelings, absent of evaluation or blame (“ . . . I feel frustrated . . .”);
• Needs —link your feeling(s) to the need of yours that is met or not met by the action you’ve observed (“ . . . because my needs for cooperation, support, and learning are not met . . . “).

The empowerment comes in the absence of judgment, evaluation, or blame, which serve only to deplete energy and manifest tension, and more importantly moving beyond the expression of feelings to needs.

“Identifying our own needs empowers us to take action on our own behalf,” say Hart and Hodson. Once in touch with needs through self empathy, expressing doable requests to meet a need is an equally crucial component of the NVC process.

The Compassionate Classroom offers teachers interactive lessons and activities to expand their vocabulary of feelings and needs, utilize self-empathy, provide empathy to others, and understand how to make doable requests to get their needs met.

“One of the unique features of (NVC) is that it only takes one person who knows it to increase understanding and connection in communication,” said founder of the NVC process, Marshall Rosenberg. Self-empathy, even when practiced internally, improves a teacher’s relationship to his/her own needs, resulting in improved connection at any given moment between the teacher and all that takes place in their classroom.

Learn more about The Compassionate Classroom by Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson

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—Deepak Chopra, author, How To Know God