Listened to the show with Alissa Kriteman on Just for Women, on which she shared about using the NVC model in daily communication because she now could make sure her meets were met. As an example Alissa gave a not entirely unusual situation in which the partner leaves his pants lying on the floor. She approaches him saying something in the line of , “Honey, would you be willing to put your pants in the laundry basket?”. As I understand, in the NVC model we are to express our feelings, voice a request but also say what need this request would meet and why it is so important to us. In the example above Alissa did not do those steps so in fact the request was formulated in the usual way, not following the NVC model. In the partner’s place I might simply ask her “Why would I want to do that?” and carry on.
Say I were in the same situation and actually used NVC. What kind of need would I expect to be met in this case? Possibly the need for the house to be tidy. For starters, can we really see that as a need? Secondly, what if I before turning to the parner with my obsession about keeping the place tidy, looked at this so called need of mine and asked myself, “Why is it so important for me that the place is tidy?” I’d encourage myself to not accept any fluffy answers but really look into the “why” behind. After all, I am interested in the truth. This is how the inquiry could go (easy to imagine as I used to obsess about things being “in the right places”):
- Why is it so important for me that the place is tidy?
- Hmmm… Because I feel very uneasy when I see things lying on the floor.
- What is about it that you experience as uneasy? (The reformulated why).
- Hmmm… I feel guilty about not looking after the place.
- Why? (Where does the guilt come from?)
- Because my mother used to tell me how that “nice girls” always had their homes tidy.
- Anything else?
- Because if one of my friends pops in, they might think I am sloppy! I don’t want my friends to think I am sloppy while it is T. who is creating the mess around here.
(Getting somewhere with but still there is some digging to do).
- Why is it important for you that your friends don’t think you are sloppy?
- Because I want them to like me and think of me as someone who can take care of their home!
This is really hard work, challenging myself to go deeper and see what I am really asking for: it is about me trying to live up to my mother’s expectations of me being a “nice girl” and about my own ego. Are these my values? Do I really believe my friends will stop liking me if they see a pair of pants on the floor? What if they do (stop liking me)? For me the valuable piece of information in this internal inquiry is how my emotional well-being and a sense of self-worth is dependent on other people’s approval and actions: my friends’, my mother’s, my partner’s. I need to ask myself at this point if I really believe other people can give me self-worth and make me happy?
Also, can we really call this a need? To me it sounds more like a wish rather something that I need. If I do decide this is a need, is it really something I should push for being met? Maybe I can take this as an opportunity to instead of asking someone fix the situation for me, look at my own reactivity and choose otherwise? Whatever the result of this investigation, it allows me to be more honest with myself and others. Even if I still find that these pants on the floor are bothering me, I can voice the request with more understanding about where it comes from, “I have this neurosis about your pants lying on the floor in their place and I am working on it. Would you be willing to help me by picking them up and hanging them in the closet?” At the same time, I can see that just like I am acting out my habituated patterns so can my partner be acing out his and this is where I can feel more compassion for him, instead of simply being irritated and eager for him to take on my values (my mother’s values!). So the problem is not my partner being sloppy (they might as well be), but that these pants push my buttons and it’s helpful to know why.
Ok, enough with the pants. 
While I really appreciate the part of the model where we are to identify and express how we feel about things, I am ambivalent about the motives behind the whole structure: why do we want to become better at communicating in the first place? People often talk about having those needs met and how wonderful it is. That is I want to communicate better in order that you get to know what it is I need and satisfy my need. It is all about me and my needs. Is this truly a better communication? For whom? How non-violent is it? Of course, the model itself is not violent, but I anticipate that in many situations it can result in a subtle form of verbal and emotional manipulation: by telling people why this need is important to me (“It is important that the place is tidy”) I make it more difficult for them to say no to my request and lift something that can be a result of a habituated pattern to the level of a need.
My point here is we should try to become aware of the motives behind our requests before turning to others to fix our problems. One of the greatest needs of all – us feeling fulfilled and happy – cannot be met by others changing their habits or liking us.
What are our experiences of NVC? In what situations using NVC really helped you to resolve the situation?
Great article. I really appreciate your focus on the why of an action as being more critical than the ways in which it can be made more effective.
We should spend some time understanding our motivations before learning better ways to carry them out.
Well said!
Thank you Travis!
This is exactly my point and you seemed to have nailed it in just a few words.
I believe with all the new tools we get into our hands (for example the findings of neuroscience that give rise to NLP techniques), we have to consider the issue of ethics. Some of those techniques are now used by sales people who as we know not necessarily have the person’s best interests in mind.
Whatever the tool, we can always use it for self-growth and exploring my motives seems to be a good place to start, especially when I am on the path of asking another person to change their behaviour.
Warmly,
Irina
Hi!
Just pick up the goddamn pants! I keep tripping over them!
. Better to deal with them from the start.
Good question there I think. “Is this truly a better communication?”. What is better communication? What do I accomplish with it? How does it get me further on my path in life? DOES it get me any further, or does it help me stay in the same place, or what? An interesting discussion that never gets a complete answer.
I agree with the ethics issue you raise. Ethics/morality should always be a part of any discussion of relationships and tools to handle relationships. I’m don’t think that it’s even possible to avoid those issues. They’re a part of our basic setup as human beings. We can perhaps try to hide from them but they find us in the end
I get wary of shows/groups/whatever that are called Just for xxx, xxx only or no yyy. Setting a firm boundary between us and them, not the kind of whatever I can use to get me further on my path.
Cheers!
Jon
As I undertsand NVC it is about meeting the needs of other people in communication first. The idea is that one’s most basic need is empathetic communication and establishing that allows for one’s needs to be met without violence – partly because in the experience of empathetic communication we get a better insight into what needs are, and how to meet them.
It seems to me that your examples are at the wrong level – you are exploring strategies for meeting needs without getting to what the needs are. The result of that style of “NVC” is rather lacklustre I agree, but it isn’t really following the model.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing….
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Hi Jayavara,
The point that NVC is about meeting the needs of others first totally escaped me from what I read and heard about it so far.
I would then not see much sense in trying to figure out what it is I feel (the first step in the model) and communicating my needs and a request (also steps in the model) if it was about me meeting the need of another person. Would I not ask them about it for starters (provided I need to talk to them about their needs to begin with).
Respectfully,
Irina
It’s a model for christs sakes. Just pick up the goddamn pants.
My most basic needs are to breathe, eat, drink, sleep, dump and so on. They’re physical. If I can’t meet those needs, I can’t survive.
To live, I need other people. To meet, to touch, to feel.
I have a better chance to meet others if others feel they have room to be in a meeting with me. What’s the big deal?
In the words of the late great Bruce Lee:
“Don’t think, feel! It is like a finger pointing to the moon. Concentrate on the finger and you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
About a little knowledge: It’s one of the steps to more knowledge.
Thanks for bringing up this topic. I think NVC is not about asking someone to fix your problems. A request, according to the NVC model, is about asking for a contribution to your need. It does not make the other person responsible for your need, never, your need is yours and yours only. If the other person says no to your request, you are still responsible for checking other options to meet your need. Before making a request, make sure that the request is indeed a request and not a demand (sometimes a request is a demand in disguise)
Regarding your question (should we try to become aware of the motives behind our requests before turning to others) I think awareness will come automatically (but gradually) when applying NVC. The process of NVC raises consciousness.
Hi Peter and thanks for your input!
I really appreciate some of the points of NVC as bringing awareness about one’s feelings and being able to frame them. So often we hide behind the fluff of the language (“I feel that …” meaning “I think…” instead of saying how we really feel) and get disconnected from our feelings and consequently from the body that communicates to us all the time.
While I agree with you that NVC fosters awareness, I also think that to successfully apply NVC we already need to have a certain level of awareness. It’s not an easy model to apply and requires that one stays with the discomfort of first acknowledging one’s feelings, then expressing them, then voicing a request… We make ourselves vulnerable and it’s easy to get sidetracked by the partner’s response already in the very beginning unless we have a level of awareness that would allow us to stay with the discomfort of the unknown and face whatever reaction might come at the same time as we also have to see the person in front of us.
I find inquiring (in a gentle and exploratory way) about one’s motives to be a very useful exercise in all areas of one’s life. Sometimes I focus on the speech for at least part of the day and really get surprised by the discoveries.
Making a request and being able to deal with a “no” seems like a reasonable thing yet in my experience “finding a different way to have our needs met” often results in a break up of the first relationship. Can you relate to that?
I think that becoming aware of one’s feelings and needs is a lot as the first step. Too often though we tend to turn to others for meeting our needs as the second step. This is the part that I question and am looking into.
I’d like to read more on applying NVC in writing and see that my nederlands-engels dictionary might come in handy.
Hi Irina, You wrote: …in my experience “finding a different way to have our needs met” often results in a break up of the first relationship. I am not sure if we have the same understanding of your question but here is what I think about it:
If, within a relationship, someone won’t or can’t contribute to the particular need of the other person, it is perhaps because both persons (friends/partners) have different needs at that moment. It can be a real challenge to find strategies together that meet both needs. It requires some process-talk to figure it all out together. But of course, if one person again and again and again can’t or won’t relate to the other person’s need, it might cause the relationship to end.
Does this answer your question?
Hi Peter,
Thank you for trying to answer the question that was not clearly formulated.
I appreciate what you wrote about both parties making an effort to contribute to the other person’s needs. I would like to explore the following questions (once the need is identified):
a) How do I distingush the genuine need from an illusion?
b) How can I have my need met without “going outside”?
You wrote that people can have different needs at the moment and that might be the reason for one of them not being able/willing to contribute to the other person’s needs. Do we necessarily need to have matching needs? If a child walks up to the parent when the parent is busy with something and asks for some water, the parent might have a totally different need and might not be able to relate to the need of the child but he/she would go get a glass of water. I realise this is not a very good example in many ways (small children are dependable on the parents and need their help; we are biologically programmed to put the children’s needs over our own, etc).
Isn’t believing and acting on the idea that we should (and only can) have our needs met an illusion that will eventually lead to disappointment as we put oursleves into dependency upon something that cannot last?
I would like to have a look at those questions from the position of a self as a process rather than something solid, something that identifies with a certain aspect of one’s life – parent, creative person, employer – as well as an emotional or mental state. When I no longer identify with a certain state, emotion, image of myself, etc, those needs of mine do not feel as real or urgent, do they? Similarly, the other person’s response or unwillingness to respond to those needs can be perceived as less personal which can totally change the dynamics of the relationship.
Thanks for sharing the quote Steven!
The idea that “compassionate action” starts with ourselves and that involves seeing resonates with me. A lot of compassion is needed once I start noticing all that reactivity and conditioning.
Hi Irina, there is more interesting information and questions in your reply than I can deal with right now. Because of time I only relate to a small part of your comment.
To me it seems that, as human beings, we have needs. Taking care of our needs is essential in order to survive. This not only applies for our needs for food and water but also for other needs. Our feelings help us to identify our needs. If we never felt hungry, perhaps we would die because of neglecting our need for food. Hold your breath for one minute and notice what makes you want to breath fresh air? It’s the feelings in your body. At this human being level, we have needs, whether we like it or not. I agree we are not our feelings, we are not our needs, but we are responsible for dealing with this stuff whether we are a solid thing or a process thing or something else.
I agree we sometimes experience that not meeting another persons need, makes the relationship less personal. I know I sometimes do the same. But to me it seems it has nothing to do with the other person, it has nothing to do with the relationship but it has to do with the beliefs and assumptions about relationships.
I feel happy and surprised with our conversation. When I posted my first comment I never thought about what could happen. Thanks a lot for sharing. Cheers, Peter.
Theoretically NVC looks like a great model with empathetic listening at the core. But what happens when a person focuses solely on empathetic listening and forgets, along the way, to be honest and treat others as he or she would like to be treated?
Any course in NVC and any foray into NVC should include a reminder to remain honest and to avoid traps of emotional manipulation that can so easily come out of NVC.