Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life, Second Edition @Team LiB (21 page)

In situations where there is no opportunity for communication, such as in instances of imminent danger, we may need to resort to the protective use of force. The intention behind the protective use of force is to prevent injury or injustice, never to punish or to cause individuals to suffer, repent, or change. The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking. Punishment damages goodwill and self-esteem, and shifts our attention from the intrinsic value of an action to external consequences. Blaming and punishing fail to contribute to the motivations we would like to inspire in others.

Humanity
has been sleeping
—and still sleeps—
lulled within the
narrowly confining
joys of its
closed loves.

—Teilhard de Chardin
Theologian

We can apply NVC to resolve the internal conflicts that often result in depression. In his book,
Revolution in Psychiatry
, Ernest Becker attributes depression to “cognitively arrested alternatives.” This means that when we have a judgmental dialogue going on within, we become alienated from what we are needing and cannot then act to meet those needs. Depression is indicative of a state of alienation from our own needs.

A woman studying NVC was suffering a profound bout of depression. She was asked to identify the voices within her when she felt the most depressed and to write them down in dialogue form as though they were speaking to each other. The first two lines of her dialogue were:

Voice 1 (“career woman”): I should do something more with my life. I’m wasting my education and talents.

Voice 2 (“responsible mother”): You’re being unrealistic. You’re a mother of two children and can’t handle
that
responsibility, so how can you handle anything else?”

Notice how these inner messages are infested with judgmental terms and phrases such as “should,” “wasting my education and talents,” and “can’t handle.” Variations of this dialogue had been running for months in the woman’s head. She was then asked to imagine the “career woman” voice taking an “NVC pill” in order to restate its message in the following form: “When
a
, I feel
b
, because I am needing
c
. Therefore I now would like
d
.”

She subsequently translated “I should do something with my life. I’m wasting my education and talents” into: “
When
I spend as much time at home with the children as I do without practicing my profession,
I feel
depressed and discouraged
because I am needing
the fulfillment I once had in my profession.
Therefore, I now would like
to find part-time work in my profession.”

Then it was the turn of her “responsible mother” voice to undergo the same process. The lines, “You’re being unrealistic. You’re a mother of two children and can’t handle
that
responsibility, so how can you handle anything else?” were transformed into: “
When
I imagine going to work,
I feel
scared
because I’m needing
reassurance that the children will be well taken care of.
Therefore, I now would like
to plan how to provide high-quality child care while I work and how to find sufficient time to be with the children when I am not tired.”

This woman felt great relief as soon as she translated her inner messages into NVC. She was able to get beneath the alienating messages she was repeating to herself and offer herself empathy. Although she still faced practical challenges such as securing quality child care and her husband’s support, she was no longer subject to the judgmental internal dialogue that kept her from being aware of her own needs.

To be able to hear our own feelings and needs and to empathize with them can free us from depression.

When we are entangled in critical, blaming, or angry thoughts, it is difficult to establish a healthy internal environment for ourselves. NVC helps us create a more peaceful state of mind by encouraging us to focus on what we are truly wanting rather than on what is wrong with others or ourselves.

A participant once reported a profound personal breakthrough during a three-day training. One of her goals for the workshop was to take better care of herself, but she woke at dawn the second morning with the worst headache in recent memory. “Normally, the first thing I’d do would be to analyze what I had done wrong. Did I eat the wrong food? Did l let myself get stressed-out? Did I do this; did I not do that? But, since I had been working on using NVC to take better care of myself, I asked instead, ‘What do I need to do for myself right now with this headache?’

Focus on what we want to do rather than what went wrong.

“I sat up and did a lot of really slow neck rolls, then got up and walked around, and did other things to take care of myself right then instead of beating up on myself. My headache relaxed to the point where I was able to go through the day’s workshop. This was a major, major breakthrough for me. What I understood, when I empathized with the headache, was that I hadn’t given myself enough attention the day before, and the headache was a way to say to myself, ‘I need more attention.’ I ended up giving myself the attention I needed and was then able to make it through the workshop. I’ve had headaches all my life, and this was a very remarkable turning point for me.”

At another workshop a participant asked how NVC might be used to free us from anger-provoking messages when we are driving on the freeway. This was a familiar topic for me! For years my work involved traveling by car across the country, and I was worn and frazzled by the violence-provoking messages racing through my brain. Everybody who wasn’t driving by my standards was an archenemy, a villain. Thoughts spewed through my head: “What the hell is the matter with that guy!? Doesn’t he even watch where he’s driving?” In this state of mind, all I wanted was to punish the other driver, and since I couldn’t do that, the anger lodged in my body and exacted its toll.

Eventually I learned to translate my judgments into feelings and needs and to give myself empathy, “Boy, I am petrified when people drive like that; I really wish they would see the danger in what they are doing!” Whew! I was amazed how less stressful a situation I could create for myself by simply becoming aware of what I was feeling and needing rather than blaming others.

Defuse stress by hearing our own feelings and needs.

Later I decided to practice empathy toward other drivers and was rewarded with a gratifying first experience. I was stuck behind a car going far below the speed limit that was slowing down at every intersection. Fuming and grumbling, “That’s no way to drive,” I noticed the stress I was causing myself and shifted my thinking instead to what the driver might be feeling and needing. I sensed that the person was lost, feeling confused, and wishing for some patience from those of us following. When the road widened enough for me to pass, I saw that the driver was a woman who looked to be in her 80’s who wore an expression of terror on her face. I was pleased that my attempt at empathy had kept me from honking the horn or engaging in my customary tactics of displaying displeasure toward people whose driving bothered me.

Defuse stress by empathizing with others.

Many years ago, after having just invested nine years of my life in the training and diplomas necessary to qualify as a psychotherapist, I came across a dialogue between the Israeli philosopher Martin Buber and the American psychologist Carl Rogers, in which Buber questions whether anyone could do psychotherapy in the role of a psychotherapist. Buber was visiting the United States at the time, and had been invited, along with Carl Rogers, to a discussion at a mental hospital in front of a group of mental-health professionals.

In this dialogue Buber posits that human growth occurs through a meeting between two individuals who express themselves vulnerably and authentically in what he termed an “I-Thou” relationship. He did not believe that this type of authenticity was likely to exist when people meet in the roles of psychotherapist and client. Rogers agreed that authenticity was a prerequisite to growth. He maintained, however, that enlightened psychotherapists could choose to transcend their own role and encounter their clients authentically.

Buber was skeptical. He was of the opinion that even if psychotherapists were committed and able to relate to their clients in an authentic fashion, such encounters would be impossible as long as clients continued to view themselves as clients and their psychotherapists as psychotherapists. He observed how the very process of making appointments to see someone at their office, and paying fees to be “fixed,” dimmed the likelihood of an authentic relationship developing between two persons.

This dialogue clarified my own longstanding ambivalence toward clinical detachment—a sacrosanct rule in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy I was taught. To bring one’s own feelings and needs into the psychotherapy was typically viewed as a sign of pathology on the part of the therapist. Competent psychotherapists were to stay out of the therapy process and to function as a mirror onto which clients projected their transferences, which were then worked through with the psychotherapist’s help. I understood the theory behind keeping the psychotherapist’s inner process out of psychotherapy and guarding against the danger of addressing internal conflicts at the client’s expense. However, I had always been uncomfortable maintaining the requisite emotional distance, and furthermore believed in the advantages of bringing myself into the process.

I thus began to experiment by replacing clinical language with the language of NVC. Instead of interpreting what my clients were saying in line with personality theories I had studied, I made myself present to their words and listened empathically. Instead of diagnosing them, I revealed what was going on within myself. At first, this was frightening. I worried about how colleagues would react to the authenticity with which I was entering into dialogue with clients. However, the results were so gratifying to both the clients and myself that I soon overcame any hesitation. Since 1963, the concept of bringing oneself fully into the client-therapist relationship has ceased being heretical, but when I began practicing this way I was often invited to speak by groups of psychotherapists who would challenge me to demonstrate this new role.

I empathized with clients instead of interpreting them; I revealed myself instead of diagnosing them.

Once I was asked by a large gathering of mental health professionals at a state mental hospital to show how NVC might serve in counseling distressed people. After my one-hour presentation, I was requested to interview a patient in order to produce an evaluation and recommendation for treatment. I talked with the 29-year-old mother of three children for about half an hour. After she left the room, the staff responsible for her care posed their questions. “Dr. Rosenberg,” her psychiatrist began, “please make a differential diagnosis. In your opinion, is this woman manifesting a schizophrenic reaction or is this a case of drug-induced psychosis?”

I said that I was uncomfortable with such questions. Even when I worked in a mental hospital during my training, I was never sure how to fit people into the diagnostic classifications. Since then I had read research indicating a lack of agreement among psychiatrists and psychologists regarding these terms. The reports concluded that diagnoses of patients in mental hospitals depended more upon the school the psychiatrist had attended than the characteristics of the patients themselves.

I would be reluctant, I continued, to apply these terms even if consistent usage did exist, because I failed to see how they benefited patients. In physical medicine, pinpointing the disease process that has created the illness often gives clear direction to its treatment, but I did not perceive this relationship in the field we call mental illness. In my experience, during case conferences at hospitals, the staff would spend most of its time deliberating over a diagnosis. As the allotted hour threatened to run out, the psychiatrist in charge of the case might appeal to the others for help in setting up a treatment plan. Often this request would be ignored in favor of continued wrangling over the diagnosis.

I explained to the psychiatrist that NVC urges me to ask myself the following questions rather than think in terms of what is wrong with a patient: “What is this person feeling? What is she or he needing? How am I feeling in response to this person, and what needs of mine are behind my feelings? What action or decision would I request this person to take in the belief that it would enable them to live more happily?” Because our responses to these questions would reveal a lot about ourselves and our values, we would feel far more vulnerable than if we were to simply diagnose the other person.

On another occasion, I was called to demonstrate how NVC could be taught to people diagnosed as chronic schizophrenics. With about 80 psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and nurses watching, 15 patients who had been thus diagnosed were assembled on the stage for me. As I introduced myself and explained the purpose of NVC, one of the patients expressed a reaction that seemed irrelevant to what I was saying. Aware that he’d been diagnosed as a chronic schizophrenic, I succumbed to clinical thinking by assuming that my failure to understand him was due to his confusion. “You seem to have trouble following what I’m saying,” I remarked.

At this, another patient interjected, “I understand what he’s saying,” and proceeded to explain the relevance of his words in the context of my introduction. Recognizing that the man was not confused, but that I had simply not grasped the connection between our thoughts, I was dismayed by the ease with which I had attributed responsibility for the breakdown in communication to him. I would have liked to have owned my own feelings by saying, for example, “I’m confused. I’d like to see the connection between what I said and your response, but I don’t. Would you be willing to explain how your words relate to what I said?”

With the exception of this brief departure into clinical thinking, the session with the patients went successfully. The staff, impressed with the patients’ responses, wondered whether I considered them to be an unusually cooperative group of patients. I answered that when I avoided diagnosing people and instead stayed connected to the life going on in them and in myself, people usually responded positively.

A staff member then requested a similar session to be conducted as a learning experience with some of the psychologists and psychiatrists as participants. At this, the patients who had been on stage exchanged seats with several volunteers in the audience. In working with the staff, I had a difficult time clarifying to one psychiatrist the difference between intellectual understanding and the empathy of NVC. Whenever someone in the group expressed feelings, he would offer his understanding of the psychological dynamics behind their feelings rather than empathize with the feelings. When this happened for the third time, one of the patients in the audience burst out, “Can’t you see you’re doing it again? You’re interpreting what she’s saying rather than empathizing with her feelings!”

By adopting the skills and consciousness of NVC, we can counsel-others in encounters that are genuine, open, and mutual, rather than resorting to professional relationships characterized by emotional distancing, diagnosis, and hierarchy.