Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life, Second Edition @Team LiB (15 page)

Because of our tendency to read rejection into someone else’s “no” and “I don’t want to . . . ,” these are important messages for us to be able to empathize with. If we take them personally, we may feel hurt without understanding what’s actually going on within the other person. When we shine the light of consciousness on the feelings and needs behind someone else’s “no,” however, we become cognizant of what they are wanting that prevents them from responding as we would like.

Empathizing with someone’s “no” protects us from taking it personally.

One time I asked a woman during a workshop break to join me and other participants for some ice cream nearby. “No!” she replied brusquely. The tone of her voice led me to interpret her answer as a rejection, until I reminded myself to tune in to the feelings and needs she might be expressing through her “no.” “I sense that you are angry,” I said. “Is that so?”

“No,” she replied, “it’s just that I don’t want to be corrected every time I open my mouth.”

Now I sensed that she was fearful rather than angry. I checked this out by asking, “So you’re feeling fearful and want to protect yourself from being in a situation where you might be judged for how you communicate?”

“Yes,” she affirmed, “I can imagine sitting in the ice cream shop with you and having you notice everything I say.”

I then discovered that the way I’d been providing feedback in the workshop had been frightening to her. My empathy for her message had taken the sting out of her “no” for me: I heard her desire to avoid receiving similar feedback in public. Assuring her that I wouldn’t evaluate her communication in public, I then conferred with her on ways to give feedback that would leave her feeling safe. And yes, she joined the group for ice cream.

We have all found ourselves in the midst of a lifeless conversation. Perhaps we’re at a social event, hearing words without feeling any connection to the speaker. Or we’re listening to a “Babble-on-ian”—a term coined by my friend Kelly Bryson for someone who elicits in their listeners the fear of interminable conversation. Vitality drains out of conversations when we lose connection with the feelings and needs generating the speaker’s words, and with the requests associated with those needs. This is common when people talk without consciousness of what they are feeling, needing, or requesting. Instead of being engaged in an exchange of life energy with other human beings, we see ourselves becoming wastebaskets for their words.

How and when do we interrupt a dead conversation to bring it back to life? I’d suggest the best time to interrupt is when we’ve heard one word more than we want to hear. The longer we wait, the harder it is to be civil when we do step in. Our intention in interrupting is not to claim the floor for ourselves, but to help the speaker connect to the life energy behind the words being spoken.

To bring a conversation back to life: interrupt with empathy.

We do this by tuning in to possible feelings and needs. Thus, if an aunt is repeating the story about how 20 years ago her husband deserted her with two small children, we might interrupt by saying, “So, Auntie, it sounds like you are still feeling hurt, wishing you’d been treated more fairly.” People are not aware that it is often empathy they are needing. Neither do they realize that they are more likely to receive that empathy by expressing the feelings and needs that are alive in them rather than by recounting tales of past injustice and hardship.

Another way to bring a conversation to life is to openly express our desire to be more connected, and to request information that would help us establish that connection. Once at a cocktail party I was in the midst of an abundant flow of words that to me, however, seemed lifeless. “Excuse me,” I broke in, addressing the group of nine other people I’d found myself with, “I’m feeling impatient because I’d like to be more connected with you, but our conversation isn’t creating the kind of connection I’m wanting. I’d like to know if the conversation we’ve been having is meeting your needs, and if so, what needs of yours were being met through it.”

All nine people stared at me as if I had thrown a rat in the punch bowl. Fortunately, I remembered to tune in to the feelings and needs being expressed through their silence. “Are you annoyed with my interrupting because you would have liked to continue the conversation?” I asked.

After another silence, one of the men replied, “No, I’m not annoyed. I was thinking about what you were asking. No, I wasn’t enjoying the conversation; in fact, I was totally bored with it.”

At the time, I was surprised to hear his response because he had been the one doing most of the talking! Now I am no longer surprised: I have since discovered that conversations that are lifeless for the listener are equally so for the speaker.

What bores the listener bores the speaker too.

You may wonder how we can muster the courage to flatly interrupt someone in the middle of a sentence. I once conducted an informal survey, posing the following question: “If you are using more words than somebody wants to hear, do you want that person to pretend to listen or to stop you?” Of the scores of people I approached, all but one expressed a preference to be stopped. Their answers gave me courage by convincing me that it is more considerate to interrupt people than to pretend to listen. All of us want our words to enrich others, not to burden them.

Speakers prefer that listeners interrupt rather than pretend to listen.

One of the hardest messages for many of us to empathize with is silence. This is especially true when we’ve expressed ourselves vulnerably and need to know how others are reacting to our words. At such times, it’s easy to project our worst fears onto the lack of response and forget to connect with the feelings and needs being expressed through the silence.

Once when I was working with the staff of a business organization, I was talking about something deeply emotional and began to cry. When I looked up, I received a response from the organization’s director that was not easy for me to receive: silence. He turned his face from me with what I interpreted to be an expression of disgust. Fortunately, I remembered to put my attention on what might be going on within him, and said, “I’m sensing from your response to my crying that you’re feeling disgusted, and you’d prefer to have someone more in control of his feelings consulting with your staff.”

Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it.

If he had answered “yes,” I would have been able to accept that we had different values around expressing emotions, without somehow thinking that I was wrong for having expressed my emotions as I did. But instead of “yes,” the director replied, “No, not at all. I was just thinking of how my wife wishes I could cry.” He went on to reveal that his wife, who was divorcing him, had been complaining that living with him was like living with a rock.

During my practice as a psychotherapist, I was once contacted by the parents of a 20-year-old woman under psychiatric care who, for several months, had been undergoing medication, hospitalization, and shock treatments. She had become mute three months before her parents contacted me. When they brought her to my office, she had to be assisted because, left to herself, she didn’t move.

In my office, she crouched in her chair, shaking, her eyes on the floor. Trying to connect empathically with the feelings and needs being expressed through her nonverbal message, I said, “I’m sensing that you are frightened and would like to be sure that it’s safe to talk. Is that accurate?”

She showed no reaction, so I expressed my own feeling by saying, “I’m very concerned about you, and I’d like you to tell me if there’s something I could say or do to make you feel safer.” Still no response. For the next forty minutes, I continued to either reflect her feelings and needs or express my own. There was no visible response, nor even the slightest recognition that I was trying to communicate with her. Finally I expressed that I was tired, and that I wanted her to return the following day.

The next few days were like the first. I continued focusing my attention on her feelings and needs, sometimes verbally reflecting what I understood and sometimes doing so silently. From time to time I would express what was going on in myself. She sat shaking in her chair, saying nothing.

On the fourth day, when she still didn’t respond, I reached over and held her hand. Not knowing whether my words were communicating my concern, I hoped the physical contact might do so more effectively. At first contact, her muscles tensed and she shrank further back into her chair. I was about to release her hand when I sensed a slight yielding, so I kept my hold; after a few moments I noticed a progressive relaxation on her part. I held her hand for several minutes while I talked to her as I had the first few days. Still she said nothing.

When she arrived the next day, she appeared even more tense than before, but there was one difference: she extended a clenched fist toward me while turning her face away from me. I was at first confused by the gesture, but then sensed she had something in her hand she wanted me to have. Taking her fist in my hand, I pried open her fingers. In her palm was a crumpled note with the following message: “Please help me say what’s inside.”

I was elated to receive this sign of her desire to communicate. After another hour of encouragement, she finally expressed a first sentence, slowly and fearfully. When I reflected back what I had heard her saying, she appeared relieved and then continued, slowly and fearfully, to talk. A year later, she sent me a copy of the following entries from her journal:

I came out of the hospital, away from shock treatments, and strong medicine. That was about April. The three months before that are completely blank in my mind, as well as the three and a half years before April. “They say that, after getting out of the hospital, I went through a time at home of not eating, not talking, and wanting to stay in bed all the time. Then I was referred to Dr. Rosenberg for counseling. I don’t remember much of those next two or three months other than being in Dr. Rosenberg’s office and talking with him.

“I’d begun ‘waking up’ since that first session with him. I’d begun sharing with him things that bothered me—things that I would never have dreamed of telling anyone about. And I remember how much that meant to me. It was so hard to talk. But Dr. Rosenberg cared about me and showed it, and I wanted to talk with him. I was always glad afterwards that I had let something out. I remember counting the days, even the hours, until my next appointment with him.

I’ve also learned that facing reality is not all bad. I am realizing more and more of the things that I need to stand up to, things that I need to get out and do on my own.

“This is scary. And it’s very hard. And it’s so discouraging that when I am trying really a lot, I can still fail so terribly. But the good part of reality is that I’ve been seeing that it includes wonderful things, too.

I’ve learned in the past year about how wonderful it can be to share myself with other people. I think it was mostly just one part that I learned, about the thrill of my talking to other people and have them actually listen—even really understand at times.

I continue to be amazed by the healing power of empathy. Time and again I have witnessed people transcending the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically. As listeners, we don’t need insights into psychological dynamics or training in psychotherapy. What is essential is our ability to be present to what’s really going on within—to the unique feelings and needs a person is experiencing in that very moment.

Empathy lies in our ability to be present.

Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word “no” without taking it as a rejection, revive a lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence. Time and again people transcend the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically.