Welcome to the Meet Marshall Rosenberg / On NVC Topics Area. With its focus on interpersonal communication skills, a casual observer might suppose that NVC is all about relationships or conflict resolution. Yet people who practice Nonviolent Communication quickly discover its transformational impact in every area of the human experience-from the deep, inner self to everyday relationships to the world at large. NVC's wide application extends geographically as well. Marshall travels constantly to bring the power of NVC to the farthest corners of the world, including some of the most violence-prone regions of the planet, but the core of his message remains uniquely personal: try to focus on what's alive in us and commit to making life more wonderful for everyone. Given both the depth of NVC's life-enriching impact on individuals, and the breadth of its application for families, businesses, organizations, and governments, more and more people are searching out Marshall's views on subjects important to them.

In that light, we're pleased to provide you with Marshall's feedback on a few of the questions people raise after hearing about NVC. Please choose from the topics to the right to sample Marshall's take on a subject important to you.

We will continue to expand this list of topics so please check back from time to time, or sign up for our Newsletter to be informed whenever any new resources become available on our website. If you would like to see a specific topic addressed here please use our Feedback form to request it.

How to begin healing

1. How can I begin the healing process in a long-standing relationship that's been so full of pain?

The first step in healing, whether we want to heal ourselves or help somebody 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 the booklet Getting Past the Pain Between Us.

Back to the top

Empathy vs. sympathy

2. What's the difference between empathy and sympathy?

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 the booklets We Can Work it Out and Getting Past the Pain Between Us.

Back to the top

The role of intellect

3. Nonviolent Communication 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?

Nonviolent Communication 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.

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.

Back to the top

Domination Culture

4. You've written and spoken at length about "domination culture." What is a domination culture and what, if anything, is wrong with it?

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 who 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 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 the booklet The Heart of Social Change.

Back to the top

Alternatives to domination

5. What is the alternative to a domination structure?

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 Nonviolent Communication 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 the booklet The Heart of Social Change.

Back to the top

The problem with "deserve"

6. You've been quoted as saying that "deserve" is the most dangerous word in the English language. Why?

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.

Back to the top

Life-enriching structures

7. What needs are fulfilled in life-enriching structures?

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 book Life-Enriching Education.

Back to the top

Restorative justice

8. Instead of retribution, or punishment, for criminal acts, you've called for "restorative justice." How is that different and how does it work?

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 the booklet We Can Work it Out.

Back to the top

Dealing with anger

9. Anger is a strong emotion, a feeling. What role does anger play in Nonviolent Communication?

NVC 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, NVC 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 NVC are internal: 1) the identification of the stimulus for our anger, without confusing it with an evaluation or judgment, 2) the identification of the internal image or judgment that is making us angry, and 3) 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 the booklet What's Making You Angry?

Back to the top

When to make requests

10. How do I know that a person is ready to hear my request for them to do something?

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.

 

Back to the top