Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life, Second Edition @Team LiB (8 page)

In a world where we’re often judged harshly for identifying and revealing our needs, doing so can be very frightening. Women, in particular, are susceptible to criticism. For centuries, the image of the loving woman has been associated with sacrifice and the denial of her own needs to take care of others. Because women are socialized to view the care taking of others as their highest duty, they have often learned to ignore their own needs.

At one workshop, we discussed what happens to women who internalize such beliefs. These women, if they ask for what they want, will often do so in a way that both reflects and reinforces the beliefs that they have no genuine right to their needs, and that their needs are unimportant. For example, because she is fearful of asking for what she needs, a woman may fail to simply say that she’s had a busy day, is feeling tired and wants some time in the evening to herself; instead, her words come out sounding like a legal case: “You know I haven’t had a moment to myself all day, I ironed all the shirts, did the whole week’s laundry, took the dog to the vet, made dinner, packed the lunches, and called all the neighbors about the block meeting, so [imploringly] . . . so how about if you . . . ?” “No!” comes the swift response. Her plaintive request elicits resistance rather than compassion from her listeners. They have difficulty hearing and valuing the needs behind her pleas, and furthermore react negatively to her weak attempt to argue from a position of what she “should” or “deserves” to get from them. In the end the speaker is again persuaded that her needs don’t matter, not realizing that they were expressed in a way unlikely to draw a positive response.

If we don’t value our needs, others may not either.

My mother was once at a workshop where other women were discussing how frightening it was to be expressing their needs. Suddenly she got up and left the room and didn’t return for a long time. She finally reappeared, looking very pale. In the presence of the group, I asked, “Mother, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she answered, “but I just had a sudden realization that’s very hard for me to take in.”

“What’s that?” “I’ve just become aware that I was angry for 36 years with your father for not meeting my needs, and now I realize that I never once clearly told him what I needed.”

My mother’s revelation was accurate. Not one time can I remember her clearly expressing her needs to my father. She’d hint around and go through all kinds of convolutions, but never would she ask directly for what she needed.

We tried to understand why it was so hard for her to have done so. My mother grew up in an economically impoverished family. She recalled asking for things as a child and being admonished by her brothers and sisters, “You shouldn’t ask for that! You know we’re poor. Do you think you are the only person in the family?” Eventually she grew to fear that asking for what she needed would only lead to disapproval and judgment.

She related a childhood anecdote about one of her sisters who had had an appendix operation and afterwards had been given a beautiful little purse by another sister. My mother was 14 at the time. Oh, how she yearned to have an exquisitely beaded purse like her sister’s, but she dared not open her mouth. So guess what? She feigned a pain in her side and went the whole way with her story. Her family took her to several doctors. They were unable to produce a diagnosis and so opted for exploratory surgery. It had been a bold gamble on my mother’s part, but it worked—she was given an identical little purse! When she received the coveted purse, my mother was elated despite being in physical agony from the surgery. Two nurses came in and one stuck a thermometer in her mouth. My mother said, “Ummm, ummm,” to show the purse to the second nurse, who answered, “Oh, for me? Why, thank you!” and took the purse! My mother was at a loss, and never figured out how to say, “I didn’t mean to give it to you. Please return it to me.” Her story poignantly reveals how painful it can be when people don’t openly acknowledge their needs.

In our development toward a state of emotional liberation, most of us seem to experience three stages in the way we relate to others.

Stage 1: In this stage, which I refer to as
emotional slavery
, we believe ourselves responsible for the feelings of others. We think we must constantly strive to keep everyone happy. If they don’t appear happy, we feel responsible and compelled to do something about it. This can easily lead us to see the very people who are closest to us as burdens.

Taking responsibility for the feelings of others can be very detrimental in intimate relationships. I routinely hear variations on the following theme: “I’m really scared to be in a relationship.

Every time I see my partner in pain or needing something, I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I’m in prison, that I’m being smothered—and I just have to get out of the relationship as fast as possible.” This response is common among those who experience love as denial of one’s own needs in order to attend to the needs of the beloved. In the early days of a relationship, partners typically relate joyfully and compassionately to each other out of a sense of freedom. The relationship is exhilarating, spontaneous, wonderful. Eventually, however, as the relationship becomes “serious,” partners may begin to assume responsibility for each other’s feelings.

First stage: Emotional slavery: we see ourselves responsible for others’ feelings.

If I were a partner who is conscious of doing this, I might acknowledge the situation by explaining, “I can’t bear it when I lose myself in relationships. When I see my partner’s pain, I lose me, and then I just have to break free.” However, if I have not reached this level of awareness, I am likely to blame my partner for the deterioration of the relationship. Thus I might say, “My partner is so needy and dependent it’s really stressing out our relationship.” In such a case, my partner would do well to reject the notion that there is anything wrong with her needs. It would only make a bad situation worse to accept that blame. Instead, she could offer an empathic response to address the pain of my emotional slavery: “So you find yourself in panic. It’s very hard for you to hold on to the deep caring and love we’ve had without turning it into a responsibility, duty, obligation. . . . You sense your freedom closing down because you think you constantly have to take care of me.” If, however, instead of an empathic response, she says, “Are you feeling tense because I have been making too many demands on you?” then both of us are likely to stay enmeshed in emotional slavery, making it that much more difficult for the relationship to survive.

Stage 2: In this stage, we become aware of the high costs of assuming responsibility for others’ feelings and trying to accommodate them at our own expense. When we notice how much of our lives we’ve missed and how little we have responded to the call of our own soul, we may get angry. I refer jokingly to this stage as the
obnoxious stage
because we tend toward obnoxious comments like, “That’s
your
problem!
I’m
not responsible for your feelings!” when presented with another person’s pain. We are clear what we are not responsible
for
, but have yet to learn how to be responsible
to
others in a way that is not emotionally enslaving.

Second stage: “Obnoxious”: we feel angry; we no longer want to be responsible for others’ feelings.

As we emerge from the stage of emotional enslavement, we may continue to carry remnants of fear and guilt around having our own needs. Thus it is not surprising that we end up expressing those needs in ways that sound rigid and unyielding to the ears of others. For example, during a break in one of my workshops, a young woman expressed appreciation for the insights she’d gained into her own state of emotional enslavement. When the workshop resumed, I suggested an activity to the group. The same young woman then declared assertively, “I’d rather do something else.” I sensed she was exercising her newfound right to express her needs—even if they ran counter to those of others.

To encourage her to sort out what she wanted, I asked, “Do you want to do something else even if it conflicts with my needs?” She thought for a moment, and then stammered, “Yes. . . . er . . . I mean no.” Her confusion reflects how, in the obnoxious stage, we have yet to grasp that emotional liberation entails more than simply asserting our own needs.

I recall an incident during my daughter Marla’s passage toward emotional liberation. She had always been the “perfect little girl” who denied her own needs to comply with the wishes of others. When I became aware of how frequently she suppressed her own desires in order to please others, I talked to her about how I’d enjoy hearing her express her needs more often. When we first broached the subject, Marla cried. “But, Daddy, I don’t want to disappoint anybody!” she protested helplessly. I tried to show Marla how her honesty would be a gift more precious to others than accommodating them to prevent their upset. I also clarified ways she could empathize with people when they were upset without taking responsibility for their feelings.

A short time later, I saw evidence that my daughter was beginning to express her needs more openly. A call came from her school principal, apparently disturbed by a communication he’d had with Marla, who had arrived at school wearing overalls. “Marla,” he’d said, “young women do not dress this way.” To which Marla had responded, “F___ off!” Hearing this was cause for celebration: Marla had graduated from emotional slavery to obnoxiousness! She was learning to express her needs and risk dealing with the displeasure of others. Surely she had yet to assert her needs comfortably and in a way that respected the needs of others, but I trusted this would occur in time.

Stage 3: At the third stage,
emotional liberation
, we respond to the needs of others out of compassion, never out of fear, guilt, or shame. Our actions are therefore fulfilling to us, as well as to those who receive our efforts. We accept full responsibility for our own intentions and actions, but not for the feelings of others. At this stage, we are aware that we can never meet our own needs at the expense of others. Emotional liberation involves stating clearly what we need in a way that communicates we are equally concerned that the needs of others be fulfilled. NVC is designed to support us in relating at this level.

Third stage: Emotional liberation: we take responsibility for our intentions and actions

The third component of NVC is the acknowledgment of the needs behind our feelings. What others say and do may be the
stimulus
, but never the cause, of our feelings. When someone communicates negatively, we have four options as to how to receive the message: (1) blame ourselves, (2) blame others, (3) sense our own feelings and needs, (4) sense the feelings and needs hidden in the other person’s negative message.

Judgments, criticisms, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our own needs and values. When others hear criticism, they tend to invest their energy in selfdefense or counterattack. The more directly we can connect our feelings to our needs, the easier it is for others to respond compassionately.

In a world where we are often harshly judged for identifying and revealing our needs, doing so can be very frightening, especially for women who are socialized to ignore their own needs while caring for others.

In the course of developing emotional responsibility, most of us experience three stages: (1) “emotional slavery”—believing ourselves responsible for the feelings of others, (2) “the obnoxious stage”—in which we refuse to admit to caring what anyone else feels or needs, and (3) “emotional liberation”—in which we accept full responsibility for our own feelings but not the feelings of others, while being aware that we can never meet our own needs at the expense of others.

NVC in Action

“Bring back the stigma of illegitimacy!”

A student of Nonviolent Communication volunteering at a food bank was shocked when an elderly co-worker bursts out from behind a newspaper, “What we need to do in this country is to bring back the stigma of illegitimacy!”

The woman’s habitual reaction to this kind of statement would have been to say nothing, to judge the other severely but silently, and eventually process her own feelings safely away from the scene. This time she remembered she had the option of listening for the feelings and needs behind the words that had shocked her.

Woman: (first checking out her guess as to what the coworker was observing)
Are you reading something about teenage pregnancies in the paper?

Co-worker:
Yes, it’s unbelievable how many of them are doing it!

Woman: (now listening for the co-worker’s feeling, and what unmet need might be giving rise to this feeling)
Are you feeling alarmed because you’d like kids to have stable families?

Co-worker:
Of course! Do you know, my father would have killed me if I had done anything like that!

Woman:
So you’re remembering how it was for the girls in your generation who got pregnant?

Co-worker:
Sure thing! We knew what would happen to us if we got pregnant. We were scared about it all the time, not like these girls nowadays.

Woman:
Are you annoyed that there is no fear of punishment for the girls who get pregnant these days?

Co-worker:
Well, at least fear and punishment worked! It says here that there are girls sleeping around with different men just so they can get pregnant! That’s right! They have babies and the rest of us in society pay for it!

The woman heard two different feelings in this statement: astonishment that girls would deliberately get pregnant, and annoyance that taxpayers end up paying for children born in this way. She chose which feeling to empathize with.

Woman:
Are you astonished to realize that people are getting pregnant these days without any consideration for reputation, consequences, financial stability . . . all the things you used to consider?

Co-worker: (Feeling heard around her astonishment, she now moved to her other feeling, that of annoyance. As often happens when there is a mixture of feelings present, the speaker will return to those that have not received empathic attention. It is not necessary for the listener to reflect back a complex mixture of feelings all at once; the flow of compassion will continue as each feeling comes up again in its turn)
Yeah, and guess who ends up paying for it?

Woman:
Sounds like you’re exasperated because you’d like your tax money to be used for other purposes. Is that so?

Co-worker:
Certainly is! Do you know that my son and his wife want a second child and they can’t have one — even though they have two jobs — because it costs so much?

Woman:
I guess you’re sad about that? You’d probably love to have a second grandchild . . .

Co-worker: Yes, and it’s not just for me that it would make a difference.

Woman:
. . . and for your son to have the family he wants . . . (Even though the woman guessed only partially correctly, she did not interrupt the flow of empathy, allowing the co-worker to continue and realize another concern.)

Co-worker:
Yes, I think it’s sad to be a single child too.

Woman:
Oh, I see; you’d like for Katie to have a little brother?

Co-worker:
That would be nice.

At this point, the woman sensed a release in her coworker. A moment of silence elapsed. The woman felt surprised to discover that, while she still wanted to express her own views, the urgency and tension had dissipated because she no longer felt “adversarial.” She understood the feelings and needs behind her co-worker’s statements and no longer felt that the two of them were “worlds apart.”

Woman:
You know, when you first said that we should bring back the stigma of illegitimacy (O), I got really scared (F), because it really matters to me that all of us here share a deep caring for people needing help (N). Some of the people coming here for food are teenaged parents (O), and I want to make sure they feel welcome (N). Would you mind telling me how you feel when you see Dashal or Amy and her boyfriend walking in? (R)

The woman expressed herself in NVC, using all four parts of the process: observation (O), feeling (F), need (N), request (R).

The dialogue continued with several more exchanges until the woman got the reassurance she needed that her coworker did indeed offer caring and respectful help to unmarried teen clients. Even more importantly, what the woman gained was a new experience in expressing disagreement in a way that met her needs for honesty and mutual respect.

In the meantime, the co-worker left satisfied that her concerns around teen pregnancy had been fully heard. Both parties felt understood and their relationship benefited from their having shared their understanding and differences without hostility. In the absence of NVC, their relationship might have begun to deteriorate from this moment, and the work they both wanted to do in common—taking care and helping people—might have suffered.

Exercise 3:
Acknowledging Needs

To practice identifying needs, please circle the number in front of any statement whereby the speaker is acknowledging responsibility for his or her feelings.

1. “You irritate me when you leave company documents on the conference room floor.”
   

2. “I feel angry when you say that, because I am wanting respect and I hear your words as an insult.”
   

3. “I feel frustrated when you come late.”
   

4. “I’m sad that you won’t be coming for dinner because I was hoping we could spend the evening together.”
   

5. “I feel disappointed because you said you would do it and you didn’t.”
   

6. “I’m discouraged because I would have liked to have progressed further in my work by now.”
   

7. “Little things people say sometimes hurt me.”
   

8. “I feel happy that you received that award.”
   

9. “I feel scared when you raise your voice.”
   

10. “I am grateful that you offered me a ride because I was needing to get home before my children.”
    

Here are my responses for Exercise 3:

1. If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. To me, the statement implies that the other person’s behavior is solely responsible for the speaker’s feelings. It doesn’t reveal the speaker’s needs or thoughts that are contributing to his or her feelings. To do so, the speaker might have said, “I’m irritated when you leave company documents on the conference room floor, because I want our documents to be safely stored and accessible.”
   

2. If you circled this number, we’re in agreement that the speaker is acknowledging responsibility for his or her feelings.
   

3. If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. To express the needs or thoughts underlying his or her feelings, the speaker might have said, “I feel frustrated when you come late because I was hoping we’d be able to get some front-row seats.”
   

4. If you circled this number, we’re in agreement that the speaker is acknowledging responsibility for his or her feelings.
   

5. If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. To express the needs and thoughts underlying his or her feelings, the speaker might have said, “When you said you’d do it and then didn’t, I feel disappointed because I want to be able to rely upon your words.”
   

6. If you circled this number, we’re in agreement that the speaker is acknowledging responsibility for his or her feelings.
   

7. If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. To express the needs and thoughts underlying his or her feelings, the speaker might have said, “Sometimes when people say little things, I feel hurt because I want to be appreciated, not criticized.”
   

8. If you circled this number, we are not in agreement. To express the needs and thoughts underlying his or her feelings, the speaker might have said, “When you received that award, I felt happy because I was hoping you’d be recognized for all the work you’d put into the project.”
   

9. If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. To express the needs and thoughts underlying his or her feelings, the speaker might have said, “When you raise your voice, I feel scared because I’m telling myself someone might get hurt here, and I need to know that we’re all safe.”
   

10. If you circled this number, we’re in agreement that the speaker is acknowledging responsibility for his or her feelings.