Meeting Conflict from the Heart: Practical Skills for Communicating in Intimate Relationship

By LaShelle Lowe-Charde

This book offers a resource for immediately applying NVC consciousness and tools to specific conflicts that arise in daily life. It contains hundreds of articles on NVC that are organized in an easy to access way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LaShelle Lowe-Charde
• Release date: Jun 8, 2014

LaShelle Lowe-Charde

LaShelle Lowe-Chardé is the founder of Wise Heart, with a mission of helping create a shift in consciousness about how we relate to life. A former school psychologist and resident of Great Vow Zen Monastery, Lowe-Chardé’s work emphasizes Mindful Compassionate Dialogue. To learn more about LaShelle and her work, visit WiseHeartPDX.org.

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Introduction:

Your personal relationships are one of the most central and important parts of your life. They can also be the most challenging. If you are reading this, you are well aware that having intimate relationships that are mostly happy and supportive requires an incredible amount of energy, skill, caring, and willingness to grow and stretch. I am hoping this little book will be one of the many resources you access for support in your relationships.

This book can be read through as it is presented in order to become familiar with the overall paradigm offered. Once you are familiar with the framework of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and mindfulness practice you can use this book as a resource guide for issues and situations as they arise in your relationships. I am hoping you will find the concepts and skills immediately applicable and the examples relevant to your experiences.

Originally, the content of this book appeared as weekly articles sent to my email list. After several requests I edited and compiled the articles to create this resource. It may be helpful to read one article each week and focus on the suggestion given for practice in that week.

What follows is a brief introduction to Nonviolent Communication (as founded by Marshall Rosenberg) and to specific terms you will see throughout the book.

The purpose of NVC is to create a quality of connection that inspires a natural giving from the heart. The premise of this work is that our natural state is one of compassion and connection.

Our experience of life isn’t always compassionate or connected. What gets in the way? Use of language and the way it can unintentionally and intentionally send messages of blame and judgment keeps you disconnected when you want to be heard and understood. In NVC any language that stimulates disconnect is referred to as jackal.

Jackal language comes in many forms. Jackal honesty is one. Jackal honesty refers to the expression of judgments, diagnoses, and analyses of yourself or someone else. It might sound something like this, I just have to be honest with myself. I am a hot-tempered person. This judgment doesn’t connect us to what’s alive in the heart. In giraffe the phrase might sound like this, When I think about how I raised my voice at my kids last night, I feel regret and sadness, because my needs for self-awareness and contribution are not met. I will let my kids know I have made a commitment to taking a time-out the next time I feel that frustrated.

A judgment tells you what you are and a diagnosis tells you what’s wrong with you. When faced with someone else’s pain, you might be tempted to think that if you can determine what’s wrong with them, that will alleviate their pain. When a friend tells you how irritated they are because they can’t focus in class, you might be tempted to diagnose them with ADD and suggest some helpful herbs. Offering a diagnosis is likely to stimulate defensiveness, rather than being received as helpful. What your friend likely wants to know first is that you hear him and that you care.

Analysis outlines a matrix of causality for someone’s pain. It might sound something like this, You know, Mary, the man you married is just like your dad. So all your anger at your dad is being taken out on your husband. This analysis doesn’t help Mary connect with her self or the person she is talking with.

One of the most popular jackals is what I call the resistance jackal. This is the jackal that doesn’t want to accept life as it is. Should is the most common way this jackal expresses itself. Some examples are:

"You should be working more."

"You should have been on time to pick me up."

Depression, anger, guilt, and shame are alarm feelings that let you know this jackal is howling.

The three D’s make up other forms of jackal language categories or life-alienating communication—demands, deserve, and denial of responsibility. Demands are anything that communicates that you are willing to meet your needs at the cost of others’ needs. Deserve is most explicitly found in the practice of reward and punishment. Deserve thinking sends the message that you only deserve to have your needs met if you behave according to some standard or rule. Denial of responsibility is found in ideas of obligation and duty and is characterized by phrases like:

I have to.

Those are my orders.

I am just following the rules.

It’s my duty to take care of my father.

This kind of thinking disconnects you from the fact that you always have a choice.

Overall, jackal language is characterized by attempts to push reality into static boxes of what should and shouldn’t be, what is right or wrong, what people are or are not. Jackal language also tends to point away from the life of the present moment toward the world of ideas and analyses, of past causalities, or ideas of what should be in the future.

Giraffe is the metaphor we use in NVC for life-connecting consciousness and communication. In giraffe consciousness, the intention is to continually connect to what is alive in the present moment with acceptance and compassion and then take action from this place of connection.

Giraffe has two basic modes: receiving with empathy and expressing with honesty. When you are listening with giraffe ears, you are listening for the speaker’s feelings and needs regardless of the words they are using. You remember that everything anyone ever says or does is an attempt to meet or be in harmony with universal needs. Wearing giraffe ears makes life a lot easier. You find that where you once heard criticisms or attacks you now hear someone expressing their needs. Giraffe ears can also be turned toward yourself. You can learn to hear your own inner voices of doubt, judgment, and criticism as expressions of feelings and needs. With your giraffe ears turned inward, you can be released from the pain of self-criticism.

Speaking giraffe means you are choosing words that reveal the contents of heart and mind in a direct way. You are able to make five basic distinctions and your language reflects this understanding.

One, you distinguish what actually happened from your interpretations of the event.

Two, you acknowledge that what causes your feelings is actually a need by saying, I feel sad because I need understanding, rather than, I feel sad because you won’t give me understanding. The latter of these quotes blames the other for your feelings.

Three, you know the difference between feelings and interpretations. For example, rejected is not a feeling; it is an interpretation of what you think someone is doing to you. When you interpret someone’s behavior in this way, you likely have feelings of hurt and sadness.

Four, you know the difference between universal needs and the strategies to meet them. For example, He feels anxious because he needs efficiency, identifies a need. He needs to control everything, identifies a strategy.

Last, you express requests that are specific and connected to needs rather than vague invitations. For example, I need predictability in our work together. Would you be willing to let me know a day in advance if you won't attend the meetings on Fridays? states a need and a specific request. Be more considerate implies a need and doesn’t make a specific request.

The most important thing to remember about giraffe consciousness is that it is about creating connection by listening and speaking from the heart.

For a complete introduction to Nonviolent Communication (NVC), please read Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg.

Section One

Understanding

the Foundation

~*~

1. Basic Framework and Key Distinctions

It’s not About NVC

When you’re first learning something, it’s easy to focus on the details and forget the larger picture.

The purpose of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is not to learn NVC. It’s about experiencing what’s alive, being in your heart, and feeling the heart of others. It’s about noticing when there is a lack of connection and then finding that connection with yourself or someone else.

As you become more and more aware of what is alive in you—without judgment, interpretations, or stories—a heart connection is naturally there. From this connection you can act from what is true rather than from ideas about what should or shouldn’t be. You can live your life from a place of integrity and aliveness.

As you go through your day today, bring your awareness back again and again to what is alive in your heart. Ask yourself—what feelings and needs are alive now? Don’t worry about being able to name feelings and needs exactly. Just to ask the question is a step on the road to enlightenment.

Doing NVC versus Living NVC

NVC is a consciousness as well as a clear set of concepts, tools, and directions. Doing NVC means you have lost the consciousness and are using the tools without the intention to connect.

Creating connection is the purpose of NVC. Living NVC means that you are conscious of connection. You carry the intention to connect to life moment by moment—the life in yourself, in others, in nature—wherever it may be.

In doing NVC, you might miss a doorway to connection because you get caught by the words rather than hearing the heart of the person speaking the words.

For example, you may have said something that triggered hurt in a friend. She responds by saying, You humiliated me by saying that. How could you? I demand you apologize!

Marshall Rosenberg has been known to say, Never apologize. He says this because often an apology is used to assign blame or make someone wrong. However, apologies can be made from a NVC consciousness.

You can hear your friend’s feelings and needs and respond to them. You might guess that she is feeling hurt and scared and needs reassurance about your caring for her.

Rather than refusing to apologize because it’s not NVC, you can offer a giraffe apology. A giraffe apology might sound like this, Yes, I want to give you my apology. I want you to know that when I see the pain my words have stimulated in you, I feel sad and regretful because I want caring and respect in our friendship and what I said didn’t support that. Or even a simple I’m sorry might suffice if you are connected to your own feelings and needs and those of your friend.

Another example of doing NVC is offering education when empathy is needed. For example, a co-worker is angry and complaining about a supervisor and says, I feel belittled and manipulated. I need her to treat me like human being who has a brain.

If you are doing NVC, you might say, Belittled and manipulated are not actually feelings. They are interpretations of what you think she is doing to you. What she does is about her not about you.

If you are living NVC, you ask yourself what is needed to create connection. My guess would be that your co-worker needs empathy. You then give empathy in a way that your co-worker can best receive it.

This might mean listening silently while connecting to his feelings and needs. It might mean reflecting back the tone of what he says, Sounds miserable. Maybe you silently name the feeling and verbally guess a need, Sounds like you’d like some acknowledgement for the skills you bring to this job. Or you could just reflect feelings, You must be feeling pretty angry and frustrated.

Living NVC is about carrying the intention to connect. It’s about following the life energy in the moment and letting it guide you to connection.

Choose an interaction today in which you set aside all your ideas about how it should go. See if you can just feel and follow the energy of connection. Where is the most life? Is it in expressing a thought, a feeling, or a need in you? Is it in getting more clarity about the experience of the person you're talking with? This is something many of you may do automatically. If so, bring your awareness to just how you do that. Make the unconscious conscious.

Getting Started with Mindfulness & Jackals

The foundation of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is mindfulness. Awareness of what’s happening and what’s creating disconnect sets the stage for change. Thus I continually encourage those wishing to transform the way they communicate and relate to conduct consistent meditation and mindfulness practices. These practices strengthen your ability to think, speak, and behave from your deepest values rather than from reaction to your own conditioning and interpretations of reality.

As you cultivate this mindfulness and begin to learn NVC, you may find yourself on a jackal hunt. You catch yourself and others in judgment, blame, demands, evaluations, and have to’s.

At first, this is all you can do. You notice jackals and disconnect and watch as reactivity escalates. As your mindfulness and skill evolve, you are then able to notice disconnect and keep yourself from feeding it.

At this point you are standing on a precipice. You are ready to take a step out of the old way of relating into a whole new paradigm.

If you don’t develop the skills and consciousness to step off the precipice into a new paradigm, you can get stuck in a jackal-catching program. You know just enough to catch yourself and others in the subtleties of violent communication. You find yourself saying things like, That’s not NVC, that’s jackal talk. If you can’t use NVC, I won’t talk to you. I know this is jackal, but . . . (more jackal).

Taking that next step means catching the jackal and then releasing the feelings and needs it is always carrying.

With yourself, you catch the jackal—preferably before you express it—look for the feelings, needs, and requests that are behind the jackal, and express those.

When others express in jackal, you work to hear the feelings and needs underneath. For example, Hearing you say ‘I should have been there,’ I’m guessing you feel disappointed and sad and would like support and caring? Regardless of what someone is saying, you are continually listening to the feelings and needs underneath.

So, the purpose of catching a jackal is not to catch a jackal. The purpose of catching a jackal is to release the universality of feelings and needs underneath, thereby joining with the Beloved in yourself and the other.

From Attachment to Abundance

Attachment in NVC means that at some level you’re thinking, My needs have to or should be met in this one way. You have attached one particular strategy to a need or bundle of needs.

Sometimes your strategy is another person. This happens most often with people who play important roles in your life: mother, spouse, best friend, son, or boss.

It’s pretty easy to get caught in the idea that those people are supposed to meet certain needs of yours.

Your spouse is supposed to meet all your needs for intimacy and support. Your mother is supposed to or should have met all your needs for nurturing and unconditional love.

When you are attached and others don’t respond the way you expect, feelings like anger, resentment, anxiety, desperation, or devastation arise. You might find yourself making demands or threats. You often feel as though you are in an impossible bind. All are good signs that you have attached a bundle of needs to one strategy.

In some cases, attachment has you carry anger and resentment around for years by thinking over and over again, My dad should apologize for the mistakes he made as a father. He should take responsibility for what he did. You want acceptance and understanding around what happened to you in your childhood and you’re attached to those needs being met by your dad.

Abundance in this context means you have many strategies to meet one need. When you have a lot of strategies for meeting your needs, you respond differently when one strategy doesn’t work. For example, if your spouse is your favorite strategy for intimacy and support and he or she is unavailable, you’ll likely feel disappointment and sadness rather than anger and resentment.

The key to an abundance of life satisfaction is to get subtle about noticing when your needs are met. When needs are met it’s easy to sort of sail along unconsciously—until you hit a bump. When you give more attention to those times when you are feeling content, fulfilled, inspired, or energized, you learn what strategies help you be in alignment with yourself and your life. Begin to ask yourself these questions: What needs were met and how were they met? If you felt happy after meeting with a friend, examine exactly what transpired. What did they say? How did they listen? What actions did they take? What were you saying or doing? What kind of attitude, state of mind, or attention were you bringing? What needs were met?

The more aware you are of an abundance of strategies to meet your needs, the more your life will be imbued with a sense of confidence and equanimity.

Today, notice positive feelings when they arise and connect them to the strategies that met your needs.

The Spirituality of NVC

Spirituality is a word that gets thrown around a bit. Tragically, a disconnected calm can be mistaken for spirituality. In my own practice of Zen this is a common trap.

Again and again I have caught myself in the trap of living from an idea or ideal rather from what’s real and alive in the moment.

Honoring life by consciously experiencing what’s alive in the moment, fully in body and heart, is the spirituality of NVC as I know it.

When I live from an idea of how I think life should be, I push life away—I push away my connection with the Beloved Divine.

When I am teaching Nonviolent Communication I often speak of the importance of acceptance as a doorway to connection. But when I say acceptance, I don’t mean being a doormat for others’ behavior or to shut down your feelings and needs in order to try to maintain a facade of calm acceptance.

By acceptance I am talking about watching, but not buying into, the jackal show that says, It shouldn’t be this way. You shouldn’t feel like that. It’s not okay to get angry. You should change. I am right! etc . . .

Acceptance is saying, This is the way it is right now. I am having these particular thoughts, sensations, feelings, and needs and that’s okay.

If you are truly accepting a tough situation, you will likely feel grief and then access clarity about what actions would truly meet the needs present.

If you are operating under the idea of acceptance as maintaining calm in all situations, you will likely feel numb and eventually depressed.

Relating to my mom has been a lesson in acceptance for me. I want to see her healthy and happy and I have very specific ideas about what she should do to be healthy and happy. I spent years haranguing her with advice, Mom, you need to exercise. Just start by walking 10 minutes a day. Watching so much TV is contributing to your depression. You need to get involved. What about volunteering at the humane society? On and on I tried in vain to change her.

It doesn’t matter if I was right about what would help her. The message she received was that I didn’t approve of her. That I didn’t accept her and her life as it was.

To move to acceptance, I stopped pushing for things to be different. I acknowledged that my mom was suffering and I let myself feel the grief and pain in knowing that. When it comes up for me now, I express that to my mom instead of giving her advice and pushing her to change. It sounds something like this, Mom, hearing you say you’re lonely, I feel sad wishing you had more connection where you live. I so much want you to be happy. My mom hasn’t changed her behavior, but I do feel a loving connection with her that wasn’t there before.

Take a three-minute time-out today just to experience what’s alive. Notice the sensations in your body, the sounds you hear, the way the light lands on what’s in front of you. The state of your heart—is it expanded or contracted? Does it feel warm and light or is there tension and darkness? Whatever it is, just let yourself be aware of the experience.

Your Heart’s Longing

Sometimes during the practice of NVC, you can lose sight of the consciousness and foundation. I had an experience last weekend that reminded me of the larger purpose of NVC.

I was up making breakfast preparations as my partner snuggled in bed. When I’d left him, I’d said, I live to serve. I was being playful in the moment but after the words were spoken, I felt a sense of satisfaction and resonance with the deeper truth of those words. I do live to serve. In my heart of hearts there is nothing I want more than to contribute to life.

I am not alone in this, of course. Serving and contributing to life is the deepest longing of every person’s heart.

The beauty and miracle of cultivating a NVC consciousness of clear observations, feelings, needs, and requests is that such a consciousness allows this service to be ever more subtle and meaningful.

Take a moment now to feel into your own heart of hearts and your longing to contribute meaningfully to life. Then acknowledge at least three times that you have felt satisfied with providing a sense of contribution and service this week.

Sharing NVC

Sometimes the best way to share NVC is not to share NVC. That is to say, it is usually not so connecting to educate people who haven’t asked you to do so.

There is a natural inclination to share with others something you are excited about, to celebrate this new thing you are learning. In the case of NVC, it can be a slippery slope from celebrating, to educating, to telling others how they should communicate.

I have seen examples of this in situations where both people have had NVC training and in situations where just one person has had training.

For example, if you and someone close to you have both had some NVC training, you might have heard yourself say something like this, You are not using NVC! If you were using NVC, we wouldn’t have this problem!

Of course, the irony is that, in saying this, you yourself have stepped out of NVC consciousness and into blame and demand.

The most powerful way to share NVC is to let awareness of connection inform your thoughts and words.

Living from a NVC consciousness in the example above you might say, I am feeling frustrated because I want to connect and I don’t know how right now. Would you be willing to wait a few moments while I take a few breaths and find different words?

With a partner, family, or friends who don’t know anything about NVC, you can teach them by offering empathy and honest expression consistently in your interactions. They might notice something different is going on and get curious. Wait for that question—How did you do that?—then offer a few sentences and see if they want more.

This week choose one person you would like to share NVC with. Look for opportunities to offer empathy and share what’s most alive in you.

NVC Consciousness in Daily Life

In Nonviolent Communication (NVC) we talk about the kind of thinking and language that gets in the way of compassion, that disconnects us from life.

One subtle and pervasive form of disconnected thinking and behavior is regarding others as its. That is, objects that either meet your needs or get in the way of you meeting your needs.

This sounds a little harsh, but I’ve caught myself in this consciousness in subtle ways.

In traffic I’ve heard myself say, Come on, get out of the way, dude. Could you make that turn a little slower?!

Or at the store, have you ever been in line feeling tired and grumpy and just wanting to get your food and go home? Does an it ring up your groceries and an it fill your grocery bag?

What about in your close relationships? Do you find yourself getting angry and resentful when your loved one doesn’t do what you think they should?

I have caught myself in it consciousness in all of these situations. At such times, I’ve noticed how dead I felt inside. I’ve noticed that I had put little blinders on and had become attached to some immediate outcome.

The result of attachment combined with the mind state that turns sentient beings into objects that either serve your needs or interfere with your needs is violence as we define it in NVC. It is a disconnection from life. If not caught, this violence gives rise to irritation, resentment, anger, hostility, and then cruelty.

So where do you start when you catch yourself slipping into it consciousness?

Create a mantra that brings you back to the values you want to live by. Mine is "I want to live in and enjoy this