Non-violent Communication
I'm looking at this chap I just came across, Marshall Rosenberg. There's a book and some videos, and I'll leave one of them. I haven't anything I want to say just yet about it, but if you are more familiar or more impetuous, jump right in...
Comments (44)
Thanks for sharing. Looks so interesting. I am going to check it out :cheer:
There is an audio archive in podcast form (I also found it on Podcast Addict, the provider I use)
"I always hear the need behind the 'no', the compliment, the insult, the refusal to engage."
So compare this with this thread "Be a good person but don’t waste time to prove it."
The suggestion is that one can be a good person (or a bad person) but that a good person does not worry about making sure everyone knows how good they are. But someone who thinks this knows for themselves that they are even better for the fact that they 'don’t waste time to prove it'.
They pride themselves on their humility.
Giraffe ears translate this, I think, into "I need to see myself as better than others". One sees, perhaps the insecurity that needs reassurance. Giraffe ears do not hear identifications like 'good person' at all.
Yes. It's very hard to escape this structure. Is it possible to decide what is a gift (valuable knowledge, freely offered) and what is self-praise? Probably it's a mix, which is not all bad. We want people (I think) to value themselves as those who bring gifts to the tribe. But we can question the value of their gifts, and we can question the motives and judgment of those who question such gifts, and so on.
In this thread, as opposed to that thread, we don't want people to value themselves, because we have discovered that the valuation of people - others or self - is violent. So we say that everyone in their talk and in their action is intending to fulfil their needs. Hitler thought he was doing the right thing, and people who self harm are fulfilling their needs as best they know how. You can call this "unconditional positive regard" as proposed by Carl Rogers. Because it is unconditional, it does not compare or measure, it does not separate by identification.
"I don't want to be a burden." One hears this from old folks and disabled folks often. But when one questions the value of their gifts, one makes a burden of those that have no valuable gifts, a burden that one carries in order to be oneself a valuable member of the tribe. Thus one does violence in the act of kindness. I don't want to be a burden, but you have made me one.
If your kindness is a gift for me and brings you no joy, then I cannot afford it, and I would rather die. I don't want to be a burden. Compare: "He ain't heavy; he's my brother."
Excellent reply and I pretty much agree. I do think it's hard though to avoid the unequal valuation of people.
Marshall tells a story of a Mum coming to his seminar and saying she was worried about her 5 yr old son not wanting to go to school. And he says to ask the child if he could say what they didn't like, next day she arrives with the answer; "It's all about tomorrow, Mummy."
The culture is saturated with preparation for a life that is never reached, because there is always another phase of life to prepare for. A child cannot run round a field for joy, without some adult measuring it with a stopwatch and drawing up a league table. On television, cooking, sewing, gardening, pottery, every aspect of life is turned into a competition in which the mantra is recited "there can only be one winner". I fully expect the next big thing to be The Great British Fuck off, in which contestant are judged for their performance by experts and professionals and set unrealistic orgasmic time-limits.
It's hard to avoid the enculturation of thousands of years, sure enough. So we carry on fighting.
the distinction between the need and the strategy is important and subtle. I need food; McDonald's is my strategy. I need love; you are my strategy.
why not get angry and violent in a space where its ok to do so?
There's a violence and anger in any moral dialectic, no matter how far you zoom out. They're bad because they think they're good (and i'm good because I know I"m bad), fed through the dialectic machine, can spiral out into infinity (I'm a severely wounded veteran of that spiral.)
I feel you, strongly, but what if you just are mean somewhere with an equal who equally wants to be mean?
(i know this sounds dumb, but I can cite my sources to make it intellectually plausible. I don't say this as someone with an attraction to life-as-violence; I say it as someone with an abusive relationship with an internal moral-voice, which can dialectically unravel any attempt at being good I can muster. I agree that nonviolent conversation is the way to go; I also think that we can't will ourselves into it. Personal landing-point, as of now: accept original sin, hope for grace. But meanwhile, do meditation, help friends and family when they need, cook good meals, so forth. And maybe sometimes be the grumpy person when doing it?)
Think of J Krisnamurti and the process. There's always a shadow-undergoing underlying the goodness, right? If we can't process like jk, maybe we have to find a release for our anger elsewhere, until we're graced with freedom from it?
:up:
Exactly. A string of wounds, a necklace of ideologies.
:up:
Keep showing up for the jazz, forgive as you would be forgiven.
For fuck's sake dude! :razz:
No one's telling you not to get angry. There's nothing 'nice' about all this. Anger is a strategy folks can use to express and fulfil their needs. It's not a very good one.
To paraphrase our man while talking about the need for autonomy and the many autonomy wars around the globe, you cannot make your children do what you want, you can only make them regret not doing it. And then they will make you regret making them regret...
Get angry, have regrets. Be my guest.
Quoting csalisbury
So you are your own abusive parent and stubborn child. Of course there is a video for that.
--protagonist of [I] Homunculus [/I]
Do you feel hurt when people insult you? Is it because you want people to treat you with kindness or respect? I'm wondering if some insults [s]anger you[/s] lead to you feeling angry more than others.
Thanks for sharing this. NVC has been hugely helpful for me, in that it's given me new tools to look inward and understand why I'm doing things, and of course to understand why others are doing things - so that I can help them, or I can help them help me, etc. It's amazing. Total paradigm shift for me.
Being called brainless or someone saying I have a fucked up mentality.
But don't beat yourself up about it! There's 8,000 years of habit and social structure to overcome, and Rome wasn't carefully dismantled and repurposed in a day.
It's interesting how close this is to conventional psychology as we know and despise it.
*Condescending mechanistic blah about "fight or flight response".*
Oh, so there's always a choice?
Quoting The Opposite
Feeding that through google giraffe translate, I get something like "I need you to respect my intellect".
Quoting TLCD1996
I'm sooo glad someone else 'gets it'. For me, it's like -of course, I already knew all this, but I couldn't quite bring it together so that it worked.
I need this to be a partial truth because sometimes I must force people to meet my needs.
I need this to be wrong because no one could meet those needs.
I need this to be wrong because my needs are wrong.
That's personalised so as to become a tactic, not just a need. It should be "I need my intellect respected."
I want to keep this discussion more along the lines of discussion and not therapy, so I'll try to keep probing minimal. And I want to emphasize that one of the things about NVC that would make it helpful is not just that the framework allows us to connect to others, but that it allows us to clarify and make explicit what it is we're feeling, and what it is we want. If it doesn't help us connect with others, it can help us connect with ourselves; so if we find ourselves getting a bit flustered in our interactions, we can look inward to see why that is, and then take responsibility for that.
I'm assuming you would like them to recognize that you have some sort of knowledge, or that your views/thoughts/ideas/mentality are all humane/ethical/rational etc?
I had a little think, and tried to remember something you said ages ago about your own experience of violence, but I cannot make it add up to something, and I want to. Can you say more?
We are taught that retribution is redemptive?
Sometimes one has to intervene forcefully - perhaps the school shooter needs to be shot. Sometimes it is not the moment for communication of any sort. Afterwards, we can talk, maybe.
But how can needs be wrong? How can they be unmeetable?
I can need you to be subservient to me. I can need you to play a role which destroys you or others. I can codepend, I can confine, I can dominate. My ego can require thus.
You might say that this is not a need, but I wonder where the line is drawn, if "I need you to respect my intellect" counts, but "I need you to shut up and do what I say forever" isn't.
Quoting unenlightened
Anger is useful in reclaiming oneself or one's voice against a slight, intrusion or violation. If a riot is the language of the unheard, anger is its intonation. Sometimes you need to be a jackal to rip apart a chain.
Quoting unenlightened
You can need something which cannot be given. The modality of that cannot is practicality rather than abstract possibility - I might need flexible working hours, but my contract might say otherwise. Needs become unmeetable given a context.
Or a person, perhaps:
Quoting unenlightened
Perhaps some will not have the scope, introspective ability, insight, emotional integration, integration of self concept with behaviour, to see the peace giraffe speak would conjure into being. In other words, one must be in a place where they can make the choice not to be another's jackal.
Me? I'm sure I'm a jackal, I'm just not sure who I need to eat. Wolves reproduce wolves.
Well the theory, if I understand aright, is that you might need someone to to be subservient,{I'm not sure about that} but you cannot be so specifically dependent on my subservience. Choosing me is a tactic to fulfil the more general need.
Quoting fdrake
So one needs to change the context. Change job. But certainly one can die of starvation. Needs don't always get met. Unmeetable needs never get met - by definition - and that I think indicates that they are not needs.
The example Marshall gives is Mcdonalds. One needs food; one does not need a Big Mac; that's a tactic, {though they want you to think it's a need}. And anger is a tactic I employ to keep me away from Big Macs.
Quoting fdrake
Of course. If everyone had this understanding, the system of domination, of reward and punishment, would cease to be, there would be no wars, and we'd all be happy and friendly.
Quoting fdrake
I'm sure you're not. Though it is rather a jackal relation you are making with yourself, to declare what you are, rather than what you need. That's what we are taught to do and it's a 5,000 yr habit, so it isn't easy to stop. But give it a go, you might like it.
Quoting unenlightened
I guess this brings up what demarcates a need from a tactic. If I have a need for love and respect, is my
relationship with my romantic partner a tactic? Or can I have a need for my partner in specific?
I think there's an angle of attack on the problem with declaring that a need is a motivator for a tactic; aligning tactics with an attempt to actualise/satisfy a need. And that would tie into
Quoting unenlightened
the idea that an unmeetable need is a grammatical mistake/inconceivable - since needs must have a tactic that could satisfy them, by the above anyway.
What would this taxonomy make of trauma? A frustrated, festering past need which no tactic could address in context, leading to a frustrated present need - or a shadow of one. The past need is still implicated as an anchor in the psyche. "I need them to stop (tormenting me)". I imagine that some of this turns on the distinction between a need and a tactic?
Quoting unenlightened
I've been trying to do similar language adjustments for a while, learning a more E-prime.mentalese "I am" talk translates to "I did" talk, "I should" talk translates to "I will" or "I want" talk, "never/always" talk -> "here/now" talk. "It is" goes to "It seems to me".
This is an interesting question. I'll try a naive answer and see how it goes. Someone who has been abused as a child, say, probably has 'trust issues'. So the festering need is for security in a nurturing relationship. The need for security results in the tactic of relationship testing (eg will you still love me if ...). Testing relationships distorts and sometimes breaks them. Hence the festering.
So the taxonomy would be that a need for the past to be different is not a need as it is unfulfillable. But the trauma brings a present need, for quiet, for security, for comforting, or some such. Of course if if someone is actually being tormented in the present then that needs to stop. But then that's not the trauma we're talking about is it?
We know of all these people that they were difficult in their own lives - their own relationships fell ever apart - but razor-sharp and charming while appraising the situations of others. Why is that?
I read a blogpost by an anonymous psychiatrist to the effect of: there are a disproportionate number of psychiatrists' children hospitalized with personality disorders. Why is that?
Quoting unenlightened Underlines mine.
[Believing that tactics means personalized, and personalizing means tactics]
^
|
V
[going up a level to impersonally map the tactics of others]
Cause & Effect isn't clear (hence the weird format) but the two seem deeply related.
(I'm guilty here too, but do you see what I mean?)
'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach'. It's G B Shaw, not the Tao Te Ching. I've often found that the person who knows how others should live is often a deeply flawed or dangerous individual.
I'd add "and those who can do neither, post." I think I'm deeply flawed, hopefully not dangerous, but certainly confused and frustrated & deeply mistrustful of everyone (myself included)
I thought it went: 'and those who can't teach, take gym...'
Sounds like things are a bit tough for you. I'm sorry to hear that. I value your contributions here - you have a nimble mind and use language beautifully.
Quoting csalisbury
I like this advice. I can be grumpy sometimes and it is my least useful and most unattractive attribute.
Since you are generalising the personal here, I'll respond personally {arrogantly putting myself on a par with these heroes}. In my dotage, I have become more sensitive both to myself and to others. To the extent that I cannot abide for very long a superficial relationship any more, which is almost every relationship. Even at the great distance of the internet, too many people even on this site are not serious, but concerned with winning an argument or looking clever. I can't be bothered; life's too short.
Being an admin back in the day taught me to accept the need to be unpleasant to people at times - bans and deletes etc. And to be tolerant of the flames that tend to result. At first I was shocked and upset at being called a fascist or worse, but the support of the staff helped me get used to it.
And that's it really I think. Where does a therapist go for therapy? There is no individual entirely immune to the environment, and the more one deals in the day job with other people's shit, the more one needs a shit-free relationship at home. And a good man these days sure is hard to find.
Yes. Heuristics regarding people quickly become idealisations. Applies as much to mysticism as therapy as psychology.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't think the boundary is that clear. To the extent you can displace/distract to preserve your ego/self defend, your needs and tactics have a fungibility. If I need to beat you because I can't bear my own shame... What distinguishes a need from a strongly held desire which is critical in maintaining one's self concept?
In the end, I don't think it's that important.
Quoting fdrake
I didn't know you cared! Of course you can beat me if it is important to you. But wait; is it important to you that you beat me against my will? In that case, of course I will resist you.
Ok. When we are in this sado-masochistic relationship, it cannot be a non-violent one, and more people are in such a confused state than can admit it even to themselves. This is the situation of our society as a whole, that we take joy in punishment and retribution. It might even be hard wired - it has been suggested.
But did you misunderstand me? All I meant was that when we talk about the effects of trauma, we are talking about past trauma, not present trauma.
I think trauma blurs the distinction between the past and the future. The past has a frustrated need in it, the future is lived to compensate. Perhaps that's where we're talking past each other.
Right, this is the dialectical maneuver in a nutshell. So, to take that tactics lens: You're I know-you-are-ing the but-what-am-I. If we both nakedly did the dialectical maneuvers to one another it would be two mirrors facing one another and it would reflect infinitely out a glitchy emptiness. The dialectic is an engine that needs fuel, and another dialectic can't fuel it.
I think we both, in different ways, stumbled, at some point upon the insight - oh! you can 'zoom-out' a level and take others statements about stuff as the content for a 'higher-level' (zoomed-out) discussion.
I think we also both, in different ways, stumbled upon people who we ingenuously believed were pointing a way out of it.
And I think we both, in different ways, believe that pointing - the pointing of those we admired - to be genuinely pointing to something real. But while we soak up their vibes, and points, we nevertheless remain gummily-stuck to the security of the dialectically-able anchor point.
And - this is my main feeling - I think this is all wrapped up somehow in good/bad stuff. It's bad to post to look clever - but we both do it. At the same time - to get more personal - we both post stuff, occasionally, that attempts to create and sustain a shared-vibe. As when you post a youtube video with a song - trying to get closer to a shared feeling. I admire that because the end-point, telos, whatever, is to feel some shared attunement with others - a shared attunement where the person saying 'shared attunement' is missing the point. But what happens invariably is something disrupts that.
Gary Snyder - american poet if you don't know him, but i bet you do - once said that most western buddhism is crypto-protestantism. I thInk I agree. There is something in [all the pysch-systems guys i mentioned ] that is clinically, x-raying sin.* Hypocrisy. The pharisees say this, but they're really aiming to satisfy base urges through the veneer of spirituality. The real spirituality is: x. Not like those other threads.
I've been reading a lot about Shamanism and Taoism. There is transcendence but there's also a lot of pretty 'vulgar' everything. What comes out in a shamanic ritual? every emotion - a shaman (and the community watching) feel joy, anger, revulsion, happiness, sadness - it builds on itself - it builds and builds. Catharsis means getting all the emotions unstuck to fling them up. One of the worst feelings is being sick and wanting to puke but you can't. You're sick in every part of your body, you are sickness. And then the feeling after puking is great.
Imo, The greatest trick the ego ever pulled is to focus our attention on 'spiritual' emotions while foreclosing others. The more you foreclose them, the stronger they bubble up underneath, the more you have to resist them, the more appealing the idea of self who has the right emotions and approaches.
So: you never get to puke. You feel sick and, feeling sick, need a release. (this is why I brought up J Krishnamurti earlier. I imagine you know of his experience with 'the process' - but I found that, when I googled it, it takes some digging to get to it. If you don't know, 'the process' was a thing Krishnamurti experienced as a kind of agonizing nonsensical writhing of the body and emotions that would sometimes last for hours or more. He would undergo it constantly, before appearing on state, stiff and wooden, to talk spiritually of spiritual things.)
Needs and tactics: The thing with needs is they aren't just in 'the self' and then projected onto others through tactics. Back to Gary Snyder & cryptoprotestantism - & the language of the biblical prophets who are constantly saying that the people of israel have fallen into using tactics to manipulate God, and he won't have it any more (e.g. 'the smoke of your altars is irritating gods nostrils!' etc)
Babies needs are always other-directed, from the beginning. Needs are always personalized So are ours. We need to live and puke our emotions, personally, in order to live and enjoy them at others. Otherwise we'll oscillate between idealizing non-emotion and puking in the wrong spot - then, guilty, go back to idealizing the right emotions and so forth. This is why Alan watts is such a good example: dialectically right-on-the-money, getting onto the stage and saying it all, then leaving the stage, and his family, to drink.
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*'sin' in the original sense - a state of being that is off the path. Using tactics because separated from needs.
Same here. I'm trying to find a way to productively channel that grumpy energy. In the meantime, I've found that self-criticizing myself for being grumpy - as you describe, and which is what I usually do too - creates a bad feedback loop that gets me more grumpy. (it's what you see in kids too: if a kid is grumpy and parents make a thing of it, it perpetuates itself.) When I'm able to allow myself to just be grumpy, and unattractive and unuseful, it plays itself out much quicker. The cliche of relating to yourself the way you relate to friends seems true too - when a friend's grumpy, you just give them some space until it dissipates, and don't usually judge it too harshly.
Well yes to all of that, or most of it anyways - I might have a thought about the Process to express one day.
But actually, I don't think that is what non-violent communication is about. It's not a theory that only special non-violent people can understand, it's something grumpy, traumatised, people can learn to do sometimes, something your everyday relationship counsellor might try and do with their clients, or peace brokers could model and teach in their negotiations, or my wife and I might use to defuse our conflicts. It's a very humdrum revolution for part-time peacemakers, not enlightenment for the unenlightened..
Quoting fdrake
I agree/don't understand.
You say the distinction is blurred and then characterise it fairly precisely. The traumatised person finds the past intruding into the present. This is not what the traumatised person says though, it is the view from outside, where the distinction between past and present is perfectly clear, and we can talk about "post-traumatic stress". Which is exactly the reappearance of the stress of the past in the present as "inappropriate reactions"
I'm quite happy to characterise them as "inappropriate reactions", as it mixes up what counts as a need with the norms they are recognised by, and muddying the waters regarding that concept was my goal here.
Well shoot, I can't argue with that
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(no hidden meaning here, I just straightforwardly get what you're saying and it makes sense.)
So the 'stimulus' is what the other person does, the 'cause' is our thinking and the 'root' is the fact we were educated to think violently, or is it our unmet need? I don't understand what the root is
I think it is collective habit. perhaps even addiction. which is to say that the root is more or less "The Fall" if you can Adam and Eve it. Every stupid TV program includes the mantra "there can only be one winner." It's actually a contradiction to the fundament of capitalism that a trade must benefit both parties, but apart from that, it is the essence of violent thought And I suppose that violence always starts with a thought of winning , because the biology is 'fight or flight', not 'fight or else'.
You don't know why you angry, man? What kind of dumb is that?
I don't know really, try it on yourself first, and then on your good friend if you have one, and and then maybe on some grouch you meet momentarily. Don't try it on your worst enemy first. There are free courses you can do if you want to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict or some such.