Hello, listeners, the turkey holiday is upon us, meaning typically a holiday of gratitude, appreciations, Turkey and the complexities of family. We’re going to cover a little bit of all of that on today’s episode. First, let's model a bit of empathy around the things we love, and maybe don't love so much about the holidays.
What do we mean by empathy? For those people that are new to our podcasts and new to NVC, we mean presence, reflection, and taking guesses about the needs the person is trying to communicate. Non-Violent Communication is based on this idea that all conflict is a tragic expression of an unmet need, and by needs we mean things like love, courage, things everyone wants. Things like beauty, play, stability, security, there's lots of needs, lots of universal human needs, we often get caught up in strategies when we're fighting strategies to get needs met, and most of us don't even have an awareness of what the need is that we're actually fighting about in the first place. When we're trying to deeply hear somebody with empathy, we're taking needs guesses, and one thing that we're not doing is keeping from using what I call other conversational responses.
Learn more about these responses and much more, listen in…
Key Points Discussed:
• I used to think that NVC was pretty strictly used when people were fighting with one another. It's really helpful in those situations, but honestly, I think judgment, even in relatively benign situations, is the root of all the violence that we see around us. It's a lot to go into here, and we did a whole episode on trauma and the epidemic and cycle of trauma, but I will try and state this quickly, is to help people understand why even stating appreciations without judgment can help us have more safety in our world. (5:32)
• So, language becomes very important, if someone hears judgment in their conversations, that fight, flight or freeze could be easily activated. And even if someone's making a compliment like, Oh, you're so considerate, you're so sweet, a positive judgment, then there's a chance that that person may make another not so good feeling judgment and safeties out the window. So, it's helpful to provide an appreciation free of judgment, or at least to become more mindful of this and strive for it. (6:20)
• It provides a lot more communication, which is what this is all about. At the Community Connections Restorative Justice Program that ran for years with teens, we would have a class near the end of each session where people gave appreciations using this format of stating their observations and then the needs met, and it was really something to experience that there was so much connection across people of all types, a mini version of the world that we want. (9:07)
• And one of the things that you can do in the way period, is find a friend or another relative that you're not angry with, and give them the needs list and ask them to help you figure out what your need is in that moment, even if they don't know NVC, you could just give someone that needs list and then you direct them, you ask them not to do those other conversational responses. (11:55)
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