How We Communicate with Ourselves - Session #2 - Nonviolent Communication Training - Marshall Rosenberg
Working with anger, depression, self-judgement, and not giving away our power to cultural programming
In this session, I would like to focus on how we apply Nonviolent Communication within ourselves.
Training Session # 2 Marshall Rosenberg CNVC org
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- Introduction
- Working with Anger
- How to learn from our mistakes without losing self-respect
- Depression and self-judgement
- Our feelings tell us what is happening to our needs
- Judging yourself for judging yourself
- Training ourselves never to give our power away
- Resources
Nonviolent communication requires quite a transformation from how many of us have been programmed to communicate. Many of us have been programmed to communicate in a language of categorizing people and their actions to judge what they are, for doing what they're doing.
I was working in one culture in Malaysia, that had a radically different language than the one I was taught.
My interpreter wanted to start the day by having a half hour with me. He said, I need to explain to you some things about our language which may be different than yours, that I'd like you to be aware of. Because if you're not aware of this, it will make my job as an interpreter more difficult. We met for a half an hour before the day started. He said, you know, Marshall, it's important to be aware that in our language, we have no verb to be in the sense of judging what people or their actions are. If you use any language today that judges people or their actions in that way, it will be very hard for me to interpret. I thought of this for a moment.
I thought to myself, how can I go through a day without insulting people? My brain had been programmed to think moment by moment in terms of what will people think of me.
Will they judge me right or wrong, good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate? And I was taught to judge other people this way. The thought of a language that didn't contain this, it kind of amazed me.
I said to the interpreter, "how will you interpret today then if I should say to somebody, you're selfish?"
He said, Oh, Marshall, that would be a real challenge. Because as I tell you, we don't think that way. I said, Well, how will you interpret that, then?
He said, If you say to somebody, you're selfish, here's how it would sound like in our language, I would say, Marshall sees you taking care of your needs, but not the needs of others. He'd like you to take care of the needs of others as well.
When I heard that, I smiled. I said to myself, my goodness, that's pure Nonviolent Communication. Well, then why was I there to teach them their native language?
(2:48) Actually, I wasn't there to teach them Nonviolent Communication. Nonviolent communication was their native language. Their one senator for 60,000 people asked me to work with his people, because logging interests were coming into their habitat and destroying their environment, and his people didn't know how to speak with people who worked for the logging interest, who spoke a different language. So he was wanting me to show them how you communicate with people who speak this different language.
OJ Harvey at the University of Colorado, went around the world and took samples of literature from different cultures to see how often this verb "to be" was used in judging people's actions good, bad, right, wrong, etc. He correlated this with measures of violence - violence toward oneself, violence toward others, and he finds a high correlation. The more cultures think in terms of what people are and their actions, the more violence in those cultures.
We have four friends that can help alert us that we are thinking in a way that contributes to violence.
These four feelings are very helpful because when we feel these feelings, we can use them as an alert, that we're thinking in a way that's contributing to violence on the planet. Here is an opportunity for us to transform that thinking.
(4:27) What are these four friends that we have?
Anger - Depression - Guilt - Shame
Whenever we're feeling those feelings, we are thinking in a way that we have been taught to think for about 10,000 years. A way of thinking designed to make us obedient to authority, but a way of thinking that is not conducive to safety and peace on our planet. We can use those feelings as a wake up signal. Wake up, we're thinking in a way that's not conducive to peace on the planet. Let's transform the thinking into one that promotes peace on our planet.
So let me show you what I mean.
(5:17) When we work with groups on the subject of anger, that's a good feeling to teach us Nonviolent Communication, because anger tells us that we are disconnected from our needs, the central part of Nonviolent Communication.
I was working on this subject with a group of prisoners. One of them was very angry on this particular day. I asked him what the stimulus for his anger was. What did somebody do that was triggering his anger? I could just tell he was so angry.
He said, I made a request to the prison officials two weeks ago for some job training. I still haven't heard from them.
I said, Yeah, that tells me what the stimulus was for your anger. Now, what's the cause of your anger? He said, I just told you. I said, Oh, no, you remember from our previous session? I tried to make clear to you that it's never what other people do that makes us angry. It's how we think that makes us angry. So what are you telling yourself that's making you angry?
He said, I don't know what you're talking about, people can make you angry. I said, No, people can't make you angry. If you followed me around in my work, you'd see this very clearly.
(6:44) For example, I'm working in several places around the world where there's been a lot of violence such as Rwanda. I was working with a group of people all of whom had had at least one member of their family killed. Some of them were so angry that all they could live for was vengeance, and thinking of getting back at the other people. Some of the people who had had horrible things happen to them were not angry. They weren't repressing the anger denying, but they were not thinking in a way that creates the anger. So not even something as dramatic as having a member of one's family killed can make you angry.
So I said to this prisoner, so what are you telling yourself that does make you angry? After a moment, he said, I'm telling myself, it isn't fair. I need the training that I requested. They're just ignoring me and treating me like I'm nothing. He went on to give several other statements of the judgments he had of the prison officials for not having gotten back to him about his request for job training. I said okay, Now you've answered my question of what causes your anger.
(8:04)
Anger is caused by how you think, language that is disconnected from your needs, and makes violence enjoyable
As the Christian theologian Walter Wink said, we've been educated for thousands of years to make violence enjoyable. All you need to do to make violence enjoyable, is think there's bad guys, and that these bad guys deserve to suffer for what they've done. It can make it enjoyable for you to create pain for these people. So anger is a very valuable feeling. It tells us we are perpetuating the thinking that creates that kind of anger.
With this prisoner, I showed him that it's valuable, when you are angry, to be conscious that you're angry because of your own thinking, and not because of what the other person did. The other person's action is a stimulus for your anger, but not the cause. The cause is your thinking.
(9:20) Then I said, it's also very important, once you have identified the thinking that causes your anger, it's important to be conscious, that, that thinking is a tragic, suicidal expression of an unmet need. See, anger tells us, in other words, that a need of ours isn't getting met. But our thinking doesn't connect with that need. Our connection goes to judging the other person who was the stimulus for the anger.
I said to this prisoner, go behind those judgments that you're making of the prison officials, for not responding to your request for some job training. What's the need behind all these judgments that they're not being fair, they're treating you like you don't exist? What's the need, that's behind all that thinking?
He thought for a moment and said, I need to develop myself, I need skills for developing myself so I can earn a living when I get out of here. Otherwise, I'm going to end up back in here very quickly. I said to him now, how are you feeling at this moment that your attention is on those needs? And he said, I'm scared, I'm scared.
What I mean by connected to life is to be connected to our needs or to the needs of others.
(10:45) We can only be angry when we get disconnected from life, and go up to our head, and think in a way we have been programmed to think, in terms of wrongness of the other person. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being angry. That would be unfortunate if I come across that way, because a lot of people have been educated to think that if you're a nice person, you don't get angry. They've been taught to repress their anger. I'm certainly not saying that. I'm saying the opposite.
Anger is a friend of ours. It tells us we're thinking in a way that's contributing to violence on the planet. We're a part of that violence, and anger wakes us up and gives us a chance to transform our thinking, to a kind of thinking that creates peace on our planet. I said to him, notice how differently you feel when you're in touch with your needs. When you're judging the other people.
When you tell me that you're scared that you're not going to get that need met. He said, That's right. Now I said to him, you tell me you have an appointment to talk to them later this afternoon, the prison officials? He said yes.
I said, Do you think you're more likely to get your needs met if you go in there thinking of what's wrong with him for not having contacted you by now, and feeling angry about that, or are you more likely to get your needs met, if you go in there connected to your need for wanting to develop yourself and aware of your fear that you may not develop those skills?
No matter what you might say to them, do you think you are more likely to come out with your needs met, if in your head, you have judgments of them implying wrongness on their part, or if you are conscious of your needs?
(12:41) He said it's obvious. I'm much more likely to come out of there with what I want, if I go in conscious of my needs. I said I'm glad you see that. At that moment, he walked over to the other side of the room and sat down and had a very sad look on his face. I said to him, Hey, what's going on? He looked at me and said, I can't talk about it right now. After lunch, he came up to me and said, with great sorrow in his voice Marshall, I wish you had taught me two years ago about anger, what you taught me this morning. If I had known that two years ago, I wouldn't have had to have killed my best friend.
He went on to tell me this tragic story about how the friend said some things that just totally outraged him. Then he was thinking that he was angry at his friend for saying those things. He wasn't aware that the friend didn't cause his anger. The statements didn't cause his anger. It was how he thought about them that caused his anger. He saw that if he could have connected to what his friends needs were, behind what the friend said, or if he had been connected to his own needs, at that moment, there would have been ways of finding out strategy For meeting everybody's needs, and he wouldn't have had to have killed his best friend.
(14:06)
This principle is very important to liberating ourselves from language which is not conducive to our well being or peace on the planet.
The awareness is that all language that implies wrongness, that is a criticism, insult, diagnosis of pathology of others, all such languages, are the cause of anger. Other people are never the cause, only the stimulus. The cause of anger is our thinking. that thinking that causes the anger is a distorted expression of an unmet need. A distorted expression that not only interferes with getting the needs met, but makes it enjoyable to be violent to others.
Whenever we're angry, Nonviolent Communication shows us how to stop, breathe, and become conscious of what you are telling yourself that makes you angry. When you see the thinking that makes you angry, transform it into the need that it's distorted. Ask yourself, wait a minute, what need of mine is not getting met thats being expressed through judgment of the other person?
You'll know that you have gotten connected to your need. Your body will tell you so your spirit will tell you so. We live in a different world when we are connected to what is alive in us meeting our needs. We live in a different world than when we are up in our head, judging other people in terms of rightness and wrongness.
Learning how to become literate with a language of life, and our needs, is going to take some practice. We're going to need to practice transforming language which stimulates violence into a language of life. What's helped me over the years, to develop more of a language of life, and less time of my life being angry and judging other people, is an exercise that I do that I would recommend to you.
(16:33) And this exercise, I keep a book with me something to write on at all times, so that anytime I get angry, I write down the stimulus for anger. Very often, at that moment, I don't have time to transform the thinking that creates that anger. But I don't want to miss this learning opportunity. When I get angry at someone, I make a note about what did this person say or do that stimulated my anger. Then when I have time later on, I then say to myself, now what was I telling myself that made me so angry, and I become conscious of the thinking that was going on in my head that made me angry.
Just that is helpful because it keeps reminding me that it's not other people that make me angry, it's what I tell myself. Then when I see what I have told myself that makes me angry, I ask myself now what need of mine was not getting met at that time, that was hidden behind the way I was thinking about the person?
Again, as soon as I get connected to that need, I'm in a different world than when I'm up in my head judging people.
(18:03) I like the way Rumi the poet expresses this. He says 'there's a place beyond right and wrongdoing, I'll meet you there.' Nonviolent communication supports us to live in the place beyond right and wrong doing. In a place where people see each other's needs and enjoy contributing to each other's needs. Anger tells us that we are thinking in a way that blocks our needs, that blocks our awareness, of our needs, and the other person's needs.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.”
So it can be a helpful friend, anger. We can use it as a wake up call, to identify the thinking that's making us angry and transforming it into an unmet need.
When I was first learning how to do this transformation of my anger, it would take me a while. Because I was very skilled at judging what's wrong with other people in a way that would make me angry. But I wasn't very skilled at understanding my needs, getting connected to my needs. It would sometimes be awkward when I was angry, because I would stop right there at that time, take a deep breath, identify the thinking making me angry, connect to the need behind it, and then I would open my mouth. But this would take me some time and this was awkward in certain situations.
(19:37) For example, one time my oldest son and I were having a disagreement. This was at a time when I was first learning Nonviolent Communication and something he said, and the way he said it, just really stimulated some anger on my part. I took a breath and I saw what I was telling myself self that made me angry. I saw the need behind that. As soon as I saw the need, creating the anger, I no longer felt angry. Then when I opened my mouth, I came out of a different energy than if I had reacted immediately out of the anger. But this was taking me some time.
Meanwhile, his friends were outside waiting for him. He said, Dad, it's taking you so long to talk. I said, let me tell you what I can say quickly, do it my way or I'll kick your butt. He said, Take your time, dad. Take your time.
People who have known me in the days before I learned Nonviolent Communication are very patient when I take my time. They know what comes out quickly. They're willing to wait to hear what's really alive in me, and to hear that life in me, described in a way that doesn't imply wrongness on their part.
One way in which we can make our own life much more enjoyable, is whenever we are thinking in a way that is causing anger, depression, guilt, or shame, to transform that thinking into what need of ours is being distorted by the thinking that's causing those feelings.
(21:27) Now, let's look at another way in which, by transforming that thinking, we can make our life richer and more enjoyable. That's looking at how we can learn from our mistakes without losing self respect. In my workshops, I do this exercise by asking people to identify a mistake they've made recently, and when they have identified the mistake, I asked them to tell me what they said to themselves when they saw that they had made this mistake. If you can't remember exactly what you said to yourself, I'm sure by now you have a pretty good idea of how you usually talk to yourself when you're less than perfect, guess what you might have said to yourself.
(22:24) Here are very typical statements of how people tell me they talk to themselves when they're less than perfect.
"What a stupid thing to do."
"How could you be such an idiot?"
"That was so selfish, what's wrong with you?"
(22:44) They have hundreds of these statements that run through them very quickly, whenever they make a mistake. All of these statements imply wrongness of a sort that deserves for them to suffer for what they've done. It's not hard to understand where this comes from. Because I asked the people, what are the first messages you could remember said to you by adults in your life when you did something the adults didn't like. It's very clear that they are simply repeating to themselves, the kinds of messages that they heard, when they were children who did things that the parents didn't like. That's bad. That's stupid, what's wrong with you? You shouldn't do that.
These are the first words we've heard from other people, when we haven't done what they wanted. Of course, then we learned how to do that to ourselves.
Now we'll know we're doing that to ourselves when we feel depressed, guilty or shame. Because those feelings are a result of our judging ourself in a way that implies there is something wrong with us for what we did.
(24:04) This is a very costly way to think. Not only is it costly by how it creates depression, guilt and shame, but it also has a very negative effect on our bodies. The more we think in ways that create anger, depression, guilt and shame, the more heart disease in the medical research, the thinking that creates those feelings that is referred to as Type A think. It's essentially thinking that implies badness or wrongness of a kind that is deserving of blame or punishment. It's a language, tragically, that the majority of people in our society have been trained to think in terms of.
In the exercise where I have asked people to identify what they tell themselves when they have made a mistake. Once they identify this thinking, I then suggest that they transform that thinking into the need that wasn't met, that stimulated the thinking.
(25:23) In other words, I tell them that all of the thinking that makes us angry, depressed, guilt or shame is a tragic expression of an unmet need. To really learn from this mistake, without losing self respect, we need to mourn but to mourn without blaming.
This is a very important difference in Nonviolent Communication, the difference between morning and blaming ourselves. Morning requires that we be connected to our need that wasn't met by our behavior. When we're connected to that, we might feel sadness, frustration. These are quite different feelings in terms of their effect on our spirit and on our bodies, than how we feel when we blame ourselves and feel the depression, guilt, shame.
So, we suggest that whenever you see yourself blaming yourself for a mistake, become conscious of the blame, see what you're telling yourself, be conscious that it's a tragic expression of an unmet need, and hear the need that's being expressed behind it.
(26:41) Now, this takes some practice on the part of people because they very often have a very weak need vocabulary. we suggest that everyone build at least a vocabulary of about nine words that describe various needs that you have and at see if one of those words, or more, resonate when you're blaming yourself.
The quicker we can transform a thinking of blame into a thinking of unmet needs, the quicker we're going to be able to learn from our mistakes without losing self-respect.
We call this kind of self empathy, empathizing with the need being expressed behind self blame, we call that morning. Morning our limitations that we didn't meet a need by what we did. After we have helped the person to mourn, that is to see how they're blaming themselves for the mistake.
(27:47) And after we get them to see that the blame is a tragic expression of an unmet need, and when they get in touch with the need to see how they feel, sadness or discouragement, but never depression, guilt or shame.
Then we teach people self forgiveness. And we do that by asking them this question. What need were you trying to meet by doing this behavior that we're calling a mistake. Now, that's very confusing for many people because they don't think in terms of what needs were they trying to meet. They just go quickly to blaming themselves. It takes people a while on this exercise to stop and say to themselves, what need of mine was I trying to meet by doing what I did?
For example, if it's a parent who is mourning how they screamed at their child and some of the things they said to a child, might come out with this: I had a need for his safety and I was scared that what he was doing would harm him. Then the person can see the need they were trying to meet by doing what they did.
(29:07) Now, once people do understand the need that they were trying to meet by doing what they did that we're calling a mistake, there's again a relief. They can feel some pain for what they did. But it's a relief to see that they didn't do it because they're a bad person. They did it to meet a need of theirs. That's what we call self forgiveness. Because as they say, in a course in miracles, when we empathize, there's nothing to forgive.
First, be conscious of what you tell yourself, as a result of making the mistake, and translate the self-judgment, that's likely to be there, into an unmet need, and that's morning.
Then empathize with what need you were trying to meet by the action that we're calling a mistake. that's self forgiveness.
Now, sometimes the two needs are the same. That is, the need that wasn't met is very often the need we were trying to meet. However, the strategy we used for trying to meet the need just didn't work.
(30:40) For example, one night I was in a hotel in one country, and I needed some relaxation. I got my guitar out and started to play it. This was meeting my need for recreation and rest. But then the telephone rang. It was the front desk letting me know that my playing the guitar was keeping my neighbor awake. Well, then I started to blame myself Oh, how can I be so dumb, etc. Then I caught myself doing that and I said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. What need of mine wasn't meant by what I did? Immediately I saw that I had a need to be more sensitive and responsive to my neighbors well being. When I got connected to that, I felt sad that I didn't feel guilty, or shame that I wasn't angry at myself.
In this case, the need that I was trying to meet by playing the guitar was being met, my need for recreation, but my need for respecting my neighbors health was not met. When I get both those needs in my consciousness, I can learn from the situation without losing self respect.
(32:06) Over the years, a lot of people have asked me to work with them who were very depressed. In my clinical training, I was taught to look at depression as an illness as a mental illness. I now come to see it in quite a different way. I now see that depression is created in the same way that anger is created by the language which we have been educated to use. Anger is created by a language we use when other people behave in ways we don't like. I find that depression is created by people judging themselves in a way that creates that depression.
(32:59) When I'm seeing somebody who's very depressed, I ask, what needs of yours are not being met? They very seldom are able to tell me that. They haven't been educated to be conscious of their needs. They've been educated to blame themselves and others. So, it takes a while to help these people see that they are depressed because they are thinking. What's wrong with them, and being disconnected from what needs of theirs are not being met.
So the conversation often goes like this. I asked them,
What needs of yours are not being met?
And they say,
I'm a failure.
See, I asked about needs, they tell me a judgment they have of themselves. I point out this difference to them. I say, well,
You're telling me now what you think of yourself. I'm asking what need of yours is not being met.
And they think again, and they say, I compare myself to my brother and sister and I see what they've accomplished in life. I see what I have and it just shows me what a failure.
Now notice there again not telling me the answer to my question of what needs of yours aren't getting met, yet telling me this analysis they have of themselves that comes from comparing themselves to their brother and sister.
(34:33) I often tell such people to read the book, How to Make yourself miserable by Dan Greenberg. You'll see in there, how we make ourselves miserable when we compare ourselves to other people. For example, He has a picture in that book of a very attractive man and a very attractive woman and all of their measurements are on the picture. The exercise is take your measurements, compare them to these beautiful people and think about the difference. This book produces if you do that exercise, you'll be miserable in a short time.
What we tell ourselves about ourselves, that we judge ourself in a way we've been trained to judge people. It's these judgments that imply badness, wrongness, inferiority, abnormality, that creates the depression.
Once people have identified these judgments that create their depression, I showed them how to transform these judgments into unmet needs. They experience what a different world they live in when they get connected to the need that isn't getting met, rather than get stuck in the ways in which they judge themselves.
(36:03) One day, I was going to a workshop in one country in the evening. One of the people coordinating my schedule in that country said Marshall, would you think it'd be alright if I brought my daughter to the workshop tonight? She's in a mental hospital. She's been there for some time, and she's terribly depressed and she just sits and doesn't say anything and stares at the floor. Do you think it would hurt her to come to your training this evening? I said, Well, there's going to be a lot of people there and I don't think I'll be able to do any work specifically with her but if you want to bring her I don't see any problem.
So that night, the mother brought her daughter about 19 years old to the workshop and I could see as soon as she walked in, how sad she looked. She just looked down at the floor and she sat down and looked down at floor the whole night, she just seemed to be very, very depressed.
During the course of that evening, I told the group some thoughts about depression, I mentioned a few minutes ago, that I saw depression not as a result of an illness that people have, but simply that they're thinking about themselves in a way that creates the depression.
That if we can get people to identify this thinking, and be conscious that that thinking is all a distortion of their needs, and teach them how to hear their needs, there's a radical transformation comes about, people don't get stuck in the depression. They can start to imagine ways of getting the needs met in a more fulfilling way.
(37:35) I gave a couple examples of that that evening. At the end of the evening, they were going to take a picture of me for publicity purposes. Just at the moment that they we're gonna snap the picture. It looked to me as though somebody was coming to hit me because I saw an arm being thrown toward me. I quickly looked over. It was this young woman, and she was throwing her arm around me. But the picture got snapped just at that point where I was still thinking that someone's kind of hit me. I looked very deranged in this picture. But she had such a benevolent look on her face. It's been one of my favorite pictures that I've kept for years. I look like the person who earlier that day had been in a mental hospital.
As she's throwing her arm around my neck. She's saying, Thank you, Marshall. Thank you so much for showing me that my depression is the result of what I'm telling myself. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me.
(38:51) She came out of the hospital, the next day, and that was about 10 years ago now. I've kept track of her progress with her mother, who told me she's doing very well. The next day when she came out of the hospital, I did work with her and give her a little bit of practice on how to identify these inner messages that tell us there's something wrong with ourselves, and how to translate these messages into unmet needs. To see that when we hear our unmet needs, what comes to our consciousness, our possibilities for meeting these needs.
When we think in the static language of what's wrong with us, that are we selfish, stupid, inconsiderate. When we have that language going on inside of ourselves about ourselves, that doesn't lead us to get our needs met.
Our needs are buried behind that kind of thinking.
(39:57) As I said in an earlier session, we think that way, because we have been educated to think that way. We have been educated to think that way. The structures we have been living under for a long time require people to be nice, dead people.
They teach this language of blame, so that we will be forever looking outward to authorities to see whether we are getting the right answer or the wrong answer, whether we're being judged as good or bad.
In those cultures, you get punished if you're bad, and rewarded if you're good. This programs people's brains to live in that world of judgment.
One of my favorite plays was written by Herb Gardner called A Thousand Clowns.
(40:48) In one part of that play, two people from the educational authorities come to the heroes house. He kept his nephew, age 12, at home and not going to school. The school authorities are questioning him about why he is not sending his nephew to school.
He answers this way, I just want him to stay with me till I can be sure he won't turn into another carbon copy of that ever popular modern hero, Norman Nothing. I want to be sure he'll know when he's chickening out on himself. I want him to stay awake, and to know who the phoneys are. I want him to know how to holler and put up an argument. I want to be sure he sees all the wild possibilities. I want him to know it's worth all the trouble just to give the world a little goosing, when you get the chance, and I want him to know the subtle, sneaky important reason why he was born a human being and not a chair.
(42:10)
That's why Nonviolent Communication focuses our attention on what's alive in us and what's alive and other people, and doesn't get us stuck in thinking of what we are. To really stay connected to our humaneness, moment by moment, requires a language different than that in which we have been educated. It requires a language of life.
This language of life as I have described, its core ingredient is our needs. To be able to say at any moment what need is alive in us, when our needs are being fulfilled, we want to celebrate. When our needs are not being fulfilled, we want to mourn.
When we feel pleasurefull feelings, we know that our needs are being fulfilled. When we feel painful feelings, or unpleasant feelings, we know our needs are not being fulfilled.
To be fully alive requires a language of life. That requires a language of feelings and needs.
We need to know how to translate all the judgments that have been put in our head that involve wrongness and to be conscious that they are all tragic expressions of unmet needs.
As soon as we feel the anger, depression, guilt or shame, we need to be able to look up in our head and see the thinking that's causing it. Then translate that thinking into what needs of ours are not getting met.
(44:09) Another thing we need to liberate ourselves from if we want to really enjoy being a human being, we need to liberate ourselves from thinking that we can cause other people's feelings. We need to be real clear about this important word, responsibility. We need to see what we can be responsible for, and what we are not responsible for. When we get this mixed up, we can be victimized by guilt tripping.
Let me show you what I mean.
Many parents tried to motivate their children this way. Let's say the child has not done something that the parent would like the child to have done. For example, clean up their room. Now the parent puts themselves in the line of sight where the child can see them. The parent looks very pathetic. Then when the child sees the parent looking that way, they say, "What's the matter?" And the parent says, nothing. The child says, yes, it looks like something's the matter, what's the matter? The parent says, it hurts me when you don't clean up your room. Now, if the child loves the parent, and the child believes that it was their behavior, that hurts the parent, they feel guilty.
(45:39) They may go in and clean up the room then but it will be very costly. Any action we take out of that kind of guilt, is not taken out of caring for people. It's taken to release ourselves from guilt, and this brings negative associations to the guilt inducing person. Whenever we motivate by guilt, it's costly to us.
In Nonviolent Communication, it is stressed to be aware that we are responsible for our own feelings
Other people can't make us feel anything. Our feelings are a result of how we take things. We cannot make other people feel as they do. They are responsible for how they take it.
We show we're not responsible for how other people feel. We are responsible for our actions.
To demonstrate this, I often asked somebody to insult me. Somebody might say to me, Marshall, you're telling boring stories. I show the group now I have several choices of how I interpret that. I could interpret what this person just said that I am a boring person, that I tell boring stories. If I take it that way, I'm likely to feel shame.
But then it isn't what the other person said that made me feel shame. It's how I took it. I believed that I was boring, and that it's bad to be boring. I would be responsible for how I took it, and the shame I felt. The other person is responsible for what they said, and how they said it.
Now, when the person said that to me, I could have interpreted that that was rude of them to say that they had no right to say that to me. If I took it that way, I would be feeling angry. But it wouldn't have been the other person making me. They're not responsible for my anger. My anger would have been created by my thinking, that they were rude, and had no right to say that to me.
Once again, I would be responsible for how I took it, and how I felt, and they are responsible for what they did.
(48:21) One of the things that people often go through when they're learning Nonviolent Communication, and they see how what they're telling themselves creates their feelings, they see that they're killing themselves with thoughts like, "that was a stupid thing to do", and its the way they took it that's making them feel such shame and guilt.
Very often when people see that they're thinking in that way that creates their feeling of shame and guilt, they say to themselves, I shouldn't feel that way, what's wrong with me? I've been studying Nonviolent Communication long enough that I should no longer think that way. they judge themselves for judging themselves, which just makes them feel even worse than ever.
We suggest that in learning Nonviolent Communication is very important to keep conscious at all times:
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The goal of life is not to be perfect. It's to become progressively less stupid.
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So let's learn from our limitations.
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Let's learn from our errors, and see them as opportunities to develop ourselves.
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Keep in mind that anything that's worth doing is worth doing poorly.
I'd like to give a couple examples of how we can learn from our limitations when we transform our self-judgments into needs
(49:55) I was presenting in front of 800 teachers in a school system. I was asked to speak at their once a year meeting. After I presented what I had to say about how to create schools in harmony with Nonviolent Communication, four of the school administrators were on a panel to react to what I said.
One of the persons said to me, when he heard that I was suggesting, in our schools, we have no punishments. We didn't judge students as bad, but that we spoke honestly with them about whether or not their behavior was in harmony with our values or needs. We judge that way, but not judgments of a moralistic sort that implied wrongness.
I wasn't surprised that this might upset some of the school administrators since this way of looking at the world is quite different than how many people have been educated.
He said with rather intense voice. You know, it's people like you that are causing the problems we're having in the schools nowadays with all of your permissiveness. Above all, we administrators and teachers must teach students to obey authority and do what they're told.
(51:23) Now, something about the way he said above all just really stimulated me. Instead of acting in harmony with the principles I was teaching, I got very defensive and said to him, it's attitudes like that, that we should just obey authority above everything else is why 6 million people got shoved into ovens.
This started a very unproductive discussion between us. What made it worse. Some people in the audience applauded what I was saying. I then got into an argument with him about who's right, and we weren't connecting with what each other's needs were.
That evening, as I was driving from that workshop to another one in another city, I didn't like it all how I responded to him. The first few minutes I was in the car, I blamed myself, Oh, what a stupid thing to do. How could you have talked to him that way? You just ruined everything. You're never going to be invited back to that school system again.
Then, when I caught myself blaming myself, I stopped, saw the self blame and asked myself, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What need of mine didn't get met by how I responded to that man? Right away, I could see what the need was it. I was not responding to him with the respect that I would like to respond to people.
I wasn't meeting my own need for respecting people. When I saw that need, I was very sad, but at least I didn't feel the kind of feelings I felt when I was blaming myself... The shame, the guilt, the anger toward myself. I felt a deep sadness, I could see that I was not responding to him in a way that met my need for respecting with people.
(53:29) Then I asked myself, What need of mine was I trying to meet by behaving in the way that I did.
All of a sudden, it became very clear to me what I needed was, I needed understanding for how frightening it was for me, to hear somebody saying, above all, we have to teach people obedience to authority.
The word 'above all' stimulated in the memory of how in Nazi Germany, people were educated to believe, above all, you have to obey the Führer.
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When I saw both parts of myself, I mourned, that I didn't meet my need for respect the way I treated this person.
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I could also see that I behaved as I did, out of my need for understanding for how frightening it was, for me, for authorities to have this belief that above all, we have to teach children obedience to authority.
Now, by being in touch with both of those needs, I have a better chance to learn because I said to myself now, how would I have liked to have behaved differently in that situation?
(54:55) I realized if I had behaved differently, I would have liked to have understood what that person was feeling and needing behind his statement, "above all, we have to teach children obedience".
I realized that he probably had a need for order and safety in the schools and believes that this is important for having rules to maintain this order and safety, and I had the same needs.
Then I could see that we didn't have different needs. We might have had different strategies, but we didn't have different needs.
If I would have heard that message with empathy and seeing that we had the same needs, I would have responded to him in a much different way in a way I believe we could have learned from each other without becoming enemies.
That night, I was presenting in another school system and a person responded to me in a very similar way, to how the principal had responded to me earlier that day.
This time, thanks to the learning that I went through driving in the car, when this person said, we have to teach children obedience to authority, that's people like you with your permissiveness that's causing the problems we have nowadays. I could hear behind those words that could hear the need for order and safety.
I said to him, Sir, are you concerned with what you hear me saying, because you want to be sure we have order and safety in the schools and we need rules in order for that to happen?
He said, That's right.
Then I could show him that I was also in favor of rules, but that I showed him a different way of establishing rules based on the protective use of force and not the punitive use of force and we connected in a very positive way.
After that meeting, he came up to me and said he was a minister at one of the local churches. He wanted to apologize for saying the things he had said at the beginning. He said, I see now I didn't understand the kind of program you and the superintendent for trying to create here in the system. He said, I would like to invite you to come to my church and give a presentation to the people in my church, I think it would be very helpful for them. That started a connection I had with him and his church that lasted 20 years, where twice a year, I would go to his church and do training in Nonviolent Communication.
I offer this as an example of how we can learn from our limitations without blaming ourselves hating ourselves
(57:52) We do that by being conscious of what need isn't met by our behavior. Then empathizing with what needs we are trying to meet at those times, that we are behaving in a way that doesn't meet some of our needs.
Another way in which Nonviolent Communication supports people and living the life they choose to live, instead of the life that sometimes they have been programmed by their culture to live, is to know how to deal with other people's messages, that come at you, in a way that never gives other people the power to dehumanize you. I'm going to be talking in greater depth about this in a later session on the subject of empathy.
(58:46) For the moment, I'd like to concentrate on how we can train ourselves never to give our power away to other people.
I asked a lot of people, What are you afraid to say? Give me examples of when you're afraid to be honest, afraid to be yourself, to say something.
When people in the group have thought of what they're afraid to say, they write down what the message might sound like. I then ask them, what makes you afraid to say that?
Almost everybody answers my question of why they're afraid this way. Well, I'm afraid that if I said that, the other person might, and then they tell me what they think the other person might say to them, or think of them.
(59:44) And I point out to people how concerned I am about thinking that's what we have to be afraid of, how other people might respond to us. That is, what they might say about us, or think about us.
I pointed out that by doing that, we're giving our power to other people. We're thinking that our safety depends on how other people might respond to us.
I then tried to show people that our need is to be concerned with how we respond to how the other persons response.
That's where our safety is, in how we learn to respond to other people's judgments or criticism of us. Not to give our power away by thinking that our safety is solely how they might respond.
in other words
I show them how we have all these choices when people say things to us:
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we can take it personally and feel shame
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we can judge them and feel angry
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or how we can empathically connect with them
When we do that, we can learn from whatever that person is saying in a way that's valuable to us.
In this way, people can see that our safety is a result of how we respond. That puts our safety in our hands, and doesn't give our power away to other people.
(1:01:30) In schools that we've created, which we call non-violent communication schools, in some areas, and we have other names for them in other areas. In these schools, we teach the teachers, the administrators, and the students how to speak Nonviolent Communication. My oldest son went to a school like this, where the students all learned Nonviolent Communication, and we want students to know, what I was just saying, that your security rests in your hands.
Don't ever give up your security, to the structures in which you're in, or to other people's messages toward you.
One of my happiest days, as a parent, occurred when my oldest son came back from a public school for the first time.
The school he had gone to, I had had a chance to train the teachers, but in the public school teachers communicated in a way that's not what I would like to see teachers or administrators would communicate with students.
(1:02:39) My son came home the first day and I asked him, how is the new school, Rick?
He said it's okay dad, but boy dad, some of those teachers. Wow.
I said What happened?
He said Dad, I was only halfway through the front door of the school, and some man teacher comes running up to me and says "my my look at the little girl".
The teacher was reacting to my son's hair which was down to his shoulders.
So this is unfortunately rather typical of many schools.
Lesson number 1
- There's a right and the wrong way to do everything such as how to wear your hair.
Lesson number two
- Who knows what's right? people with the highest title in this case, the teacher knows what's right.
Lesson number three
- Influence shame and guilt to get people to do is you want.
Lesson number four
- It's a shame to be a girl.
All of those lessons very quickly and my son's halfway through the door of the school.
(1:03:57) He said I remembered what you said dad that when you're in that kind of structure, never give the structure, or the people in it, the power to make you submit or rebel.
This is one of the things that I would hope we all help our children to learn how to come from your own spirituality, how to answer for yourself, what's the way in which I choose to live? To learn how to sustain that, and stay conscious of it regardless of the structures you're in, or regardless of how people within those structures speak to you.
I said to my son, wow, am I glad that you could remember that under those conditions. I said, What did you do then?
(1:04:43) I just tried to hear his feelings and needs dad. I just guessed that he was irritated and wanted me to cut my hair. This is another lesson that we would like children to learn how to see people's humaneness no matter how they communicate. Once again, I was very delighted that my son could remember to do that. I said to him, how did you feel after you heard what you thought he might be feeling and needed. He said that I felt sad for the man. He was bald and seemed to have a thing about hair.
This is one of the lessons, that Nonviolent Communication is designed to help us remember at all times, no matter what structures we're in, to never give the structure or its rules, the power to determine what we do to make sure that each of our actions comes from our consciousness of our own values, and our choosing to act in harmony with our own values.
In this way, we are not submitting or rebelling. We're acting in harmony with our own values each moment.
(1:05:53) Walter Wink, the theologian, says it's very important to be conscious, that institutions have their own spirituality. Many structures are set up in a way that are designed to get people to obey authority no matter what the authority wants them to do.
I hope that we educate ourselves that no matter what structures we're in, we stay connected to our own spirituality. Neither submit nor rebel. Then I hope that we all develop the skill that my son demonstrated, by no matter how people speak to us, whatever their titles, that we try to see their humaneness, and not to give them the power to make us submit or rebel. Not to give them the power to create shame on our part, depression on our part, but this requires some skills that we'll be talking about in subsequent sessions that will show us how to see other people's humaneness, even when they are speaking to us in a violent language, even if they have positions of power within institutions that do not share values of compassion.
- O J. Harvey - Publications - NeuroTree - University of Colorado, Boulder
- Theologian Walter Wink Website - web.archive.org
- Beyond Right and Wrong
- Clinical Psychology and Cardiovascular Disease: An Up-to-Date Clinical Practice Review for Assessment and Treatment of Anxiety and Depression
- A Course in Miracles – Chapter 16: The Forgiveness of Illusions – I. True Empathy
- How to Make yourself miserable by Dan Greenberg
- A Thousand Clowns
- The Oath to Adolf Hitler. Speech by Rudolf Hess on 25 February 1934
- On the Punishment and the Protective Use of Force; by Jim Manske