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Sunday 18 April 2010 "Nonviolent communication (NVC)" NVC techniques
help people to communicate with greater compassion and clarity
and avoid naming, blaming, and shaming. This seminar
was based on the talk on an "E-Prime and EMA and NVC"
article by Lois Einhorn, a Professor of
Rhetoric at Binghamton University Led by David Hewson Programme
1. Catching Up &
Introductions
2. GS Diary Reports - "Our GS
Experiences" 3. Nonviolent
communication (NVC) 4. AGS Business 5. Close. 1. Catching-up We
“always” allow a little time for review of our lives and activities. 2. GS Diary Reports - "Our GS Experiences" Some of us experienced events in the
month past, which demonstrated the value, and perhaps some limitations, in
the applications of GS principles.
Sharing of these is a valuable part of our time together. 3. Nonviolent communication (NVC) Today’s
discussions were based on a paper titled:
“E-Prime and EMA and NVC” by Lois Einhorn (a Professor of Rhetoric at Binghamton
University) See
Lois’ book at To
summarise: Nonviolent
communication (NVC) is a process developed by Marshall Rosenberg to
communicate with greater compassion and clarity. It focuses on: empathy -
listening with deep compassion, and honest self-expression. Frequently,
people name, blame, and shame themselves by saying things like "I'm a
moron” or "I'm lazy" and labelling themselves as "ugly,"
or "foolish." They seemed to
take their labels as facts. Or others may do this to them. To
help change the ways people spoke about themselves, ideas from nonviolent
communication (NVC) were used. NVC
follows a four step process: 1.
Observations: "the concrete actions we are observing that are affecting
our well-being." 2.
Feelings about the observations: "how we feel in relation to what we are
observing." 3.
Needs related to the feelings: "the needs, values, desires, etc., that
are creating our feelings." (i.e. by “needs” we mean those like the ones
in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, e.g. the need for love, belonging or self
acceptance, etc.) 4.
Requests as a suggested solution to meeting our needs and stopping the
unwanted feelings: "the concrete actions we request in order to enrich
our life." You
can use this on yourself or with interaction with others. Rosenberg
teaches how to “speak to ourselves with empathy” by empathizing with both the
"chooser" and the "educator" roles we play. Our
"chooser" is the role in which we chose to act in the past (for
reasons that we had), in ways we may now regret. Our "educator" is a role that
deals with present feelings and needs.
An example. You cleaned your
old house for sale until 11 pm. When you got home, your wife ridiculed you
for being so slow at getting the job done.
You shouted at your wife. The chooser
might say, "I felt exhausted and overwhelmed because I needed rest and
understanding about how big the job is.
I felt angry because I wanted acceptance." The educator
might say, "I now feel angry at myself because I prefer to act with
respect and cooperation toward my spouse." Whenever
we find these thoughts of judgment and criticism, we are in internal
conflict. Every moment we are making
choices, we have a part of ourselves that makes those choices, which we can
call our “chooser.” However, we also have a part of us that evaluates our
choices, which we can call the “educator,”.
This sometimes tries to educate through judgment, blame, and criticism. So part of NVC is to get our “educator” to
use more non violent language to ourselves. We
also talked about the Golden Rule in reverse: “Treat ourselves as we would
treat others.” I.e. have our
“educator” talk to ourselves as nicely as we talk to others. Even
with the NVC methods Professor Einhorn
found that students still fell into a major trap; their word structure
implied a one-to-one, direct, factual relationship between the subject
(themselves e.g. “I am”) and the predicate ("horrible", "foolish" or
"ugly"). Some methods from
general semantics helped: E-Prime and English Minus Absolutisms (EMA). E-Prime involves writing without using any form of the verb
"to be." E-Prime asserts
that using the verb "to be" results in identification and a
sense of permanent and complete, sameness, which can lead to rigidity and
stagnation of thinking. E.g. Note the
difference between “I am a jerk” and “I feel like a jerk.”. E-Prime, by eliminating "to be"
verbs, forces the speaker to use active verbs, and changes what we say from a
statement of "fact" to a description of a process or
condition. Some problems result when
people identify themselves with their appearance (or any other quality
like acting as a GS teacher for example).
These people then have problems dealing with the normal processes of ageing. English
Minus Absolutisms (EMA) involves avoiding the use
of absolutes like: "always," "all," "every,"
etc, and all-exclusive words
like:"never," "none," etc. [Also EMA avoids using
words like “absolute”, “certainly” and “infallible”, etc.] When students say, "I'm a jerk,"
they usually imply the "always."
I.e. compare. “I always act like a jerk.” versus "I acted like a
jerk last night at the restaurant." Replacing the absolute language with
the specific details orients the statement in time and place, providing
context. Finally,
Professor Einhorn advocates deleting loaded words such as "idiot"
or "stupid" that communicate judgment. So that gives a three-step
model which helps us make observations of experience rather than leaping to
abstractions not relating to the facts. Replacing loaded words with less
emotional, more precise words forces us to distinguish between subjective
opinions and verifiable facts and to think in gradations rather than in black-and-white
terms. For
example: "I'm a pig" versus "I ate
twice as much as I usually do at lunch today." "I'm
such an idiot" versus "I burnt my toast this morning." "I'm
tardy " versus "I arrived 20 minutes late at the GS meeting after
stopping off for coffee and an apple pie." She
also recommends using Korzybski's "extensional devices": indexing
and dating. Indexing helps us to notice, accept, and respect differences by
indicating individuality, despite similarities. E.g. Student1 (Laurie) is not
the same as Student2 (David). Dating
helps us to orient language in space and time. E.g. Laurie 1990 differs from
Laurie 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Then
we applied the NVC to a paper called: “How to talk about "difficult
issues" with your sweetie” by Janet Jacobsen To
summarise: This
article talked about complaints by you about your partner that you don't
think they want to hear. A
complaint can range from something about little irritants from their
behaviour through to things you will NOT tolerate! By
"complaints", she means things like: "You never ...!",
"You always...!" I.e. a similar communication pattern to the
“violent communication” mentioned in the NVC part of the talk. She suggests
that these sort of complaints NEVER pass your lips. There
are ways to ask for change that get results through to ways that fail, and
ways that actually hurt the relationship.
Complaining, nagging and whining generally don't get good results and
frequently erode your relationship. So
in a relationship: no nagging, no complaining, no whining. Ever. No matter
how justified you think you are. If
you want change, there are better ways. [Like the NVC four step method.] On the other hand, if you want them to dump
you, go ahead, nag, whine and complain. One
of the things we treasure in a relationship is the feeling that we can be
ourselves with the other person, that they appreciate us for who we are. So
every time we complain about them, we undermine their sense of acceptance in
the relationship. For
small irritants she suggests that you think hard before you say
anything. Some things are just best
left ignored. She
suggests that many changes can be made in a relationship by simply praising
what you like. [And by inference avoid punishing your partner. i.e. no tongue lashings!] Some
behaviour you find irritating you may want to address directly. Often the best strategy is a simple mention
of the behaviour, without blame or accusation. [I suggest using the 4 step NVC model or
just the first couple of steps.] Then, having made your point, let it go. [Or
as Gavan says “Build a bridge and get over it!” ] [Some
bigger ones you may use all four steps and ask for some change in their
behaviour.] Now
the other person can decide what they want to do: change their behaviour as
suggested, offer a compromise, suggest another solution or in the worst case
they can agree that the relationship isn't workable. No hard feelings. This
means, though, that you have to actually listen when they give their point of
view. And you may need to negotiate a
compromise or come up with some other type of solution. Preferably a win-win outcome. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- We
also read something from customer service where they try to keep the customer
happy by exceeding their expectations.
To do this many of us use the Golden Rule: "Treat others like you would
like to be treated.". They
suggest it’s better to follow the "Platinum Rule": "Treat
others like they would like to be treated!" [I.e. apply the GS
formulation of indexing!] One
can also apply this to your interpersonal relationships. They
suggested that most likely others are usually not truly difficult (unless
they are miserable, and then they’re just being difficult in an effort to get
you to join them!), but more often than not, they simply have a different
behavioural style. So when you
recognise their different behavioural style (for example, a GS group member
who wants to go on and on with all the details, and you would really prefer
to get to the point), think about how you can be flexible with your
communication when dealing with them. Again, you can use the Platinum Rule to
change your style to meet their needs.
[Of course following Korzybski’s advice and applying this in a
conditional manner can be very useful]. 4. ~ AGS Business ~ AGS National Conference 27-30 August 2010:
Call for papers etc. UN Conference 30 August - 1 September 2010:
“Global Health”
How will we participate? 5. ~ Close ~ Next Meeting: Sun 16 May at the AGS Sydney Headquarters, Bonnet Bay “Enemies of Science” A group discussion on how the program
“Enemies of Science” attempts to present the lack of science in therapeutic
medicine. To be led by Dion (Updated 21 April 2010) |
