October 22, 2019

📚 Book Notes: Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life

I’d rate this book as my second best among the ones I read this year, after The Mom Test. This teaches you a valuable life-skill of dealing with conflict in those hard conversations. It contains a lot of practical examples and can be skimmed through again quickly! I’d love to attend a CNVC training someday. My key takeaway from this book is that anger is never caused by someone else but it’s a manifestation of your own needs!

Here are my notes from Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life:

1. There is a story of a man on all fours under a street lamp, searching for something. A policeman passing by asked what he was doing. “Looking for my car keys,” replied the man, who appeared slightly drunk. “Did you drop them here?” inquired the officer. “No,” answered the man, “I dropped them in the alley.” Seeing the policeman’s baffled expression, the man hastened to explain, “But the light is much better here.”
2. Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values.
3. NVC heightens our awareness that what others say and do may be the stimulus, but never the cause, of our feelings.
4. 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.
5. In addition to using positive language, we also want to word our requests in the form of concrete actions that others can undertake and to avoid vague, abstract, or ambiguous phrasing. A cartoon depicts a man who has fallen into a lake. As he struggles to swim, he shouts to his dog on shore, “Lassie, get help!” In the next frame, the dog is lying on a psychiatrist’s couch. We all know how opinions vary as to what constitutes “help”: some members of my family, when asked to help with the dishes, think “help” means supervision.
   A similar lack of clarity occurred between a father and his fifteen-year-old son when they came in for counseling. “All I want is for you to start showing a little responsibility,” claimed the father. “Is that asking too much?” I suggested that he specify what it would take for his son to demonstrate the responsibility he was seeking. After a discussion on how to clarify his request, the father responded sheepishly, “Well, it doesn’t sound so good, but when I say that I want responsibility, what I really mean is that I want him to do what I ask, without question—to jump when I say jump, and to smile while doing it.” He then agreed with me that if his son were to actually behave this way, it would demonstrate obedience rather than responsibility.
6. My theory is that we get depressed because we’re not getting what we want, and we’re not getting what we want because we have never been taught to get what we want. Instead, we’ve been taught to be good little boys and girls and good mothers and fathers. If we’re going to be one of those good things, better get used to being depressed. Depression is the reward we get for being “good.” But, if you want to feel better, I’d like you to clarify what you would like people to do to make life more wonderful for you.
7. When we simply express our feelings, it may not be clear to the listener what we want them to do.
8. In an exchange, the wife heard the husband’s frustration but was clueless as to what he was asking for. Equally problematic is the reverse situation—when people state their requests without first communicating the feelings and needs behind them. This is especially true when the request takes the form of a question. “Why don’t you go and get a haircut?” can easily be heard by youngsters as a demand or an attack unless parents remember to first reveal their own feelings and needs: “We’re worried that your hair is getting so long it might keep you from seeing things, especially when you’re on your bike. How about a haircut?”
9. Believing we have to “fix” situations and make others feel better prevents us from being present. Those of us in the role of counselor or psychotherapist are particularly susceptible to this belief. Once, when I was working with twenty-three mental health professionals, I asked them to write, word for word, how they would respond to a client who says, “I’m feeling very depressed. I just don’t see any reason to go on.” I collected the answers they had written down and announced, “I am now going to read out loud what each of you wrote. Imagine yourself in the role of the person who expressed the feeling of depression, and raise your hand after each statement you hear that gives you a sense that you’ve been understood.” Hands were raised to only three of the twenty-three responses. Questions such as, “When did this begin?” constituted the most frequent response; they give the appearance that the professional is obtaining the information necessary to diagnose and then treat the problem. In fact, such intellectual understanding of a problem blocks the kind of presence that empathy requires. When we are thinking about people’s words and listening to how they connect to our theories, we are looking at people—we are not with them. The key ingredient of empathy is presence: we are wholly present with the other party and what they are experiencing. This quality of presence distinguishes empathy from either mental understanding or sympathy. While we may choose at times to sympathize with others by feeling their feelings, it’s helpful to be aware that during the moment we are offering sympathy, we are not empathizing.
10. People are not aware that empathy is often what they are needing.
11. For example, if someone arrives late for an appointment and we need reassurance that she cares about us, we may feel hurt. If, instead, our need is to spend time purposefully and constructively, we may feel frustrated. But if our need is for thirty minutes of quiet solitude, we may be grateful for her tardiness and feel pleased. Thus, it is not the behavior of the other person but our own need that causes our feeling. When we are connected to our need, whether it is for reassurance, purposefulness, or solitude, we are in touch with our life energy. We may have strong feelings, but we are never angry. Anger is a result of life-alienating thinking that is disconnected from needs. It indicates that we have moved up to our head to analyze and judge somebody rather than focus on which of our needs are not getting met.
12. At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled.
13. All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.
14. Blaming and punishing others are superficial expressions of anger.
15. Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment to change people’s behavior. The first question is: What do I want this person to do that’s different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective, because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence someone’s behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn’t likely to work: What do I want this person’s reasons to be for doing what I’m asking?

If you liked the above content, I’d definitely recommend reading the whole book. 💯

Until We Meet Again…
🖖 swap