Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life, Second Edition @Team LiB (18 page)

I emphasize the distinction between cause and stimulus on practical and tactical as well as on philosophical grounds. I’d like to illustrate this point by returning to my dialogue with John, the Swedish prisoner:

John:
“Three weeks ago I made a request to the prison officials and they still haven’t responded to my request.”

MBR:
“So when this happened, you felt angry because
what
?”

John:
“I just told you. They didn’t respond to my request!”

MBR:
“Hold it. Instead of saying, ‘I felt angry because
they
. . . ,’ stop and become conscious of what you’re telling yourself that’s making you so angry.”

John:
“I’m not telling myself anything.”

MBR:
“Stop, slow down, just listen to what’s going on inside.”

John (silently reflecting and then):
“I’m telling myself that they have no respect for human beings; they are a bunch of cold, faceless bureaucrats who don’t give a damn about anybody but themselves! They’re a real bunch of . . . ”

MBR:
“Thanks, that’s enough. Now you know why you’re angry—it’s that kind of thinking.”

John:
“But what’s wrong with thinking that way?”

MBR:
“I’m not saying there is anything wrong with thinking that way. Notice if I say there is something wrong with you for thinking that way, I’d be thinking the same way about
you
. I don’t say it’s
wrong
to judge people, to call them faceless bureaucrats or to label their actions inconsiderate or selfish. However, it’s that kind of thinking on your part that makes you feel very angry. Focus your attention on your needs: what are your needs in this situation?”

John (after a long silence):
“Marshall, I need the training I was requesting. If I don’t get that training, as sure as I’m sitting here, I’m gonna end up back in this prison when I get out.”

MBR:
“Now that your attention is on your needs, how do you feel?”

John:
“Scared.”

MBR:
“Now put yourself in the shoes of a prison official. If I’m an inmate, am I more likely to get my needs met if I come to you saying, ‘Hey I really need that training and I’m scared of what’s going to happen if I don’t get it . . . . ’ or if I approach while seeing you as a faceless bureaucrat? Even if I don’t say those words out loud, my eyes will reveal that kind of thinking. Which way am I more likely to get my needs met?”

(John, staring at floor, remains silent).

MBR:
“Hey, buddy, what’s going on?

John:
“Can’t talk about it.”

When we become aware of our needs, anger gives way to life-serving feelings.

Three hours later John approached me and said, “Marshall, I wish you had taught me two years ago what you taught me this morning. I wouldn’t have had to kill my best friend.”

Violence comes from the belief that other people cause our pain and therefore deserve punishment.

All violence is the result of people tricking-themselves, as did this young prisoner, into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.

One time I saw my younger son take a fifty-cent piece from his sister’s room. I said, “Brett, did you ask your sister whether you could have that?” “I didn’t take it from her,” he answered. Now I faced my four options. I could have called him a liar, which would, however, have worked against my getting my needs met since any judgment of another person diminishes the likelihood of our needs being met. Where I focused my attention at this moment was critical. If I were to judge him as lying, it would point me in one direction. If I were to interpret that he didn’t respect me enough to tell me the truth, I would be pointed in another direction. If, however, I were either to empathize with him at that moment, or express nakedly what I was feeling and needing, I would greatly increase the possibility of getting my needs met.

The way I expressed my choice—which in this situation turned out helpful—was not so much through what I said, but through what I did. Instead of judging him as lying, I tried to hear his feeling: he was scared, and his need was to protect himself against being punished. By empathizing with him, I had the chance of making an emotional connection out of which we could both get our needs met. However, if I had approached him with the view that he was lying—even if I hadn’t expressed it out loud—he would have been less likely to feel safe expressing truthfully what had happened. I would have then become part of the process: by the very act of judging another person as a liar, I would contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why would people want to tell the truth, knowing they will be judged and punished for doing so?

We recall four options when hearing a difficult message:
1. Blaming ourselves
2. Blaming others
3. Sensing our own feelings and needs
4. Sensing others’ feelings and needs

Judgments of others contribute to selffulfilling prophecies.

I would like to suggest that when our heads are filled with judgments and analyses that others are bad, greedy, irresponsible, lying, cheating, polluting the environment, valuing profit more than life, or behaving in other ways they shouldn’t, very few of them will be interested in our needs. If we want to protect the environment and we go to a corporate executive with the attitude, “You know, you are really a killer of the planet, you have no right to abuse the land in this way,” we have severely impaired our chances of getting our needs met. It is a rare human being who can maintain focus on our needs when we are expressing them through images of their wrongness. Of course, we may be successful in using such judgments to intimidate people into meeting our needs. If they feel so frightened, guilty, or ashamed that they change their behavior, we may come to believe that it is possible to “win” by telling people what’s wrong with them.

With a broader perspective, however, we realize that each time our needs are met in this way, we not only lose, but we have contributed very tangibly to violence on the planet. We may have solved an immediate problem, but we will have created another one. The more people hear blame and judgment, the more defensive and aggressive they become and the less they will care about our needs in the future. So even if our present need is met, in the sense that people do what we want, we will pay for it later.

Let’s look at what the process of fully expressing our anger actually requires in concrete form. The first step is to stop and do nothing except to breathe. We refrain from making any move to blame or punish the other person. We simply stay quiet. Then we identify the thoughts that are making us angry. For example, we overhear a statement that leads us to believe that we’ve been excluded from a conversation because of race. We sense anger, stop and recognize the thoughts stirring in our head: “It’s unfair to act like that. She’s being racist.” We know that all judgments like these are tragic expressions of unmet needs, so we take the next step and connect to the needs behind those thoughts. If I judge someone to be racist, the need may be for inclusion, equality, respect, or connection.

Steps to expressing anger:
1. Stop. Breathe.
2. Identify our judgmental thoughts.
3. Connect with our needs.
4. Express our feelings and unmet needs.

To fully express ourselves, we now open our mouths and speak the anger—but the anger has been transformed into needs and need-connected feelings. To articulate these feelings, however, may require a lot of courage. For me it’s easy to get angry and tell people, “That was a racist thing to do!” In fact, I may even enjoy saying such things, but to get down to the deeper feelings and needs behind such a statement may be very frightening. To fully express our anger, we may say to the person, “When you entered the room and started talking to the others and didn’t say anything to me and then made the comment about white people, I felt really sick to my stomach, and got so scared; it triggered off all kinds of needs on my part to be treated equally. I’d like you to tell me how you feel when I tell you this.”

In most cases, however, another step needs to take place before we can expect the other party to connect with what is going on in us. Because it will often be difficult for others to receive our feelings and needs in such situations, we would need first to empathize with them if we want them to hear us. The more we empathize with what leads them to behave in the ways that are not meeting our needs, the more likely it is that they will be able to reciprocate afterwards.

The more we hear them, the more they’ll hear us.

Over the last thirty years I’ve had a wealth of experience speaking NVC with people who harbor strong beliefs about specific races and ethnic groups. Early one morning I was picked up by a cab at an airport to take me into town. A message-from the dispatcher came over the loud speaker for the cabbie: “Pick up Mr. Fishman at the synagogue on Main Street.” The man next to me in the cab muttered, “These kikes get up early in the morning so they can screw everybody out of their money.”

For twenty seconds, there was smoke coming out of my ears. In earlier years, my first reaction would have been to want to physically hurt such a person. Now I took a few deep breaths and then gave myself some empathy for the hurt, fear, and rage that were stirring inside me. I attended to my feelings. I stayed conscious that my anger wasn’t coming from my fellow passenger nor the statement he had just made. His comment had triggered off a volcano inside of me, but I knew that my anger and profound fear came from a far deeper source than those words he had just uttered. I sat back and simply allowed the violent thoughts to play themselves out. I even enjoyed the image of actually grabbing his head and smashing it.

Giving myself this empathy enabled me to then focus my attention on the humanness behind his message, after which the first words out of my mouth were, “Are you feeling . . . ?” I tried to empathize with him, to hear his pain. Why? Because I wanted to see the beauty in him and for him to fully apprehend what I had experienced when he made his remark. I knew I wouldn’t receive that kind of understanding if there were a storm brewing inside of him. My intention was to connect with him and to show a respectful empathy for the life energy in him that was behind the comment. My experience told me that If I were able to empathize, then he would be able to hear me in return. It would not be easy, but he would be able to.

“Are you feeling frustrated?” I asked.

Stay conscious of the violent thoughts that arise in our minds without judging them.

“It appears that you might have had some bad experiences with Jewish people.”

He eyed me for a moment, “Yeah! These people are disgusting, they’ll do anything for money.”

“You feel distrust and the need to protect yourself when you’re involved in financial affairs with them?”

“That’s right!” he exclaimed, continuing to release more judgments, as I listened for the feeling and need behind each one. When we settle our attention on other people’s feelings and needs, we experience our common humanity. When I hear that he’s scared and wants to protect himself, I recognize how I also have a need to protect myself and I too know what it’s like to be scared. When my consciousness is focused on another human being’s feelings and needs, I see the universality of our experience. I had a major conflict with what went on in his head, but I’ve learned that I enjoy human beings more if I don’t hear what they think. Especially with folks who have his kind of thoughts, I’ve learned to savor life much more by only hearing what’s going on in their hearts and not getting caught up with the stuff in their heads.

When we hear the other person’s feelings and needs, we recognize our common humanity.

This man kept on pouring out his sadness and frustration. Before I knew it, he’d finished with Jews and moved on to Blacks. He was charged with pain around a number of subjects. After nearly ten minutes of my just listening, he stopped: he had felt understood.

Then I let him know what was going on in me:

MBR:
“You know, when you first started to talk, I felt a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, sadness and discouragement, because I’ve had very different experiences with Jews than you’ve had, and I was wanting you to have much more the kind of experiences I’ve had. Can you tell me what you heard me say?”

Man:
“Oh, I’m not saying they’re all . . . ”

MBR:
“Excuse me, hold on, hold it. Can you tell me what you heard me say?”

Our need is for the other person to truly hear our pain.

Man:
“What are you talking about?”

MBR:
“Let me repeat what I’m trying to say. I really want you to just hear the pain I felt when I heard your words. It’s really important to me that you hear that. I was saying I felt a real sense of sadness because my experiences with Jewish people have been very different. I was just wishing that you had had some experiences that were different from the ones you were describing. Can you tell me what you heard me say?”

Man:
“You’re saying I have no right to talk the way I did.”

MBR:
“No, I would like you to hear me differently. I really don’t want to blame you. I have no desire to blame you.”

I intended to slow down the conversation, because in my experience, to whatever degree people hear blame, they have failed to hear our pain. If this man said, “Those were terrible things for me to say; those were racist remarks I made,” he would not have heard my pain. As soon as people think that they have done something wrong, they will not be fully apprehending our pain.

People do not hear our pain when they believe they are at fault

I didn’t want him to hear blame, because I wanted him to know what had gone on in my heart when he uttered his remark. Blaming is easy. People are used to hearing blame; sometimes they agree with it and hate themselves—which doesn’t stop them from behaving the same way—and sometimes they hate us for calling them racists or whatever—which also doesn’t stop their behavior. If we sense blame entering their mind, as I did in the cab, we may need to slow down, go back and hear their pain for a while more.