PDF Summary:Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall B. Rosenberg

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a way of interacting with ourselves and others that’s rooted in empathy and compassion. The ultimate goal of NVC is to foster authentic connections between people regardless of their differences. That focus on human connections makes NVC a powerful conflict resolution tool—once there is a genuine human connection, the original problem tends to solve itself. You can use NVC in almost any relationship or environment, including in families, schools, governments, businesses, and personal relationships. NVC can also help you reshape your inner dialogue to promote self-compassion, improving your relationship with yourself.

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• Autonomy (the right to choose your own goals and values in life)
• Celebration (to celebrate happy life events and to mourn our losses)
• Integrity (authenticity, creativity, meaning, self-worth)
• Interdependence (acceptance, empathy, love, respect, support)
• Play (fun, laughter)
• Spiritual Communion (beauty, inspiration, peace)
• Physical Nurturance (air, food, water, shelter)

Step 4: Make Specific Requests

If you want others to meet your needs, it’s more helpful to request what you do want them to do than what you don’t want them to do. Making negative requests (like “Don’t do that” or “I’d like you to stop interrupting me”) gives the listener very little information about what you’re actually requesting. For example, if you ask someone to stop interrupting you, you probably mean you want them to listen to what you have to say before adding their own thoughts. If they respond by tuning you out and checking their phone while you’re speaking, they’ve technically complied with your request not to interrupt—but neither of you is getting what you really wanted.

Requests should also be specific. For example, if you ask someone for “help,” they’ll respond based on their interpretation of “help,” which may not be what you had in mind.

Avoid making requests that are actually demands. In a true request, there is no coercion or manipulation—the listener is free to say “no” without fear of repercussions.

After making requests, make sure the person understands those requests the way you intended by asking them to reflect back what you’ve said in their own words.

Example: Expressing Concern Using NVC

To put all this together, imagine you’ve just discovered a pack of cigarettes in your teenage daughter’s car. To express your concerns nonviolently, you’d work through the four steps:

1. Observe. “Honey, I saw a pack of cigarettes in your car.”
2. Identify and express feelings. “I’m feeling very worried about you smoking...”
3. Connect feelings to needs. “... because I need to keep you safe.”
4. Make specific requests. “Can we talk together about the health risks of smoking?”

Empathic Listening

Now, you can apply that same approach to listening empathically when others share their observations, feelings, and needs. In a typical conversation, it’s easy to drift into mentally preparing a response or coming up with solutions while the other person is talking. On the other hand, empathic listening involves staying present in the conversation and resisting the temptation to argue, give advice, or try to “fix” the situation.

The NVC Approach to Empathy

Just like in expressive communication, when we use NVC to listen to others, we focus on four things: observations, feelings, needs, and requests. People always express their feelings and needs when they communicate, so try to focus on listening for those feelings and needs, even when they’re expressed indirectly. For example, if someone says, “I hate my job,” they may really be trying to say, “I feel empty at work because I need recognition when I do a good job.”

Paraphrasing With Questions

When you focus on someone’s feelings and needs, it’s best to check in frequently to make sure you understand exactly what they’re saying. This prevents miscommunications from spiraling out of control and gives the other person a chance to make sure they’re being heard correctly.

Paraphrasing is especially important when someone is expressing powerful emotions because the person is particularly vulnerable. In that state, empathy is crucial because offering advice or criticism is likely to make someone feel unheard and unsafe. For example, if someone says, “Everything is so hard, I just want to give up,” responding with “Cheer up!” or “Have you tried exercise?” minimizes the person’s feelings. Instead, validate those feelings by saying, “So you’re really struggling lately and you’re feeling defeated?”

When Empathy Hurts

There are times when true empathy is impossible, particularly when you’re exhausted or starved for empathy yourself. Likewise, if you’re feeling attacked or insulted by the other person, it’s natural to be pushed into a fight or flight response that blocks empathy. If the topic affects you personally, it may not be possible to focus on the other person’s feelings and needs.

Recognizing when you’re not able to give someone the kind of empathy that NVC requires is an important part of the process. In that case, it’s best to step away and offer yourself some emergency first-aid empathy. Taking a break and coming back to the conversation when you’re able to offer empathy is more productive than trying to push through when you feel defensive.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts With NVC

NVC is especially useful for conflict resolution and mediation. When the people on both sides of a conflict establish a mutually respectful connection, they’ll understand that their own needs and the other person’s needs are equally important. Therefore, the goal of conflict resolution in NVC is not compromise. In a compromise, neither party’s needs are fully met, and those remaining unmet needs will only cause further problems down the road.

The Five Steps of NVC Conflict Resolution

The NVC conflict resolution process has five steps. (As noted, the first two steps are reversible.)

Step 1: Express your own needs.

• Be careful to differentiate between needs and strategies. Needs are the fundamental physical and psychological resources that sustain life, like water, food, meaning, and support. Strategies are the specific actions we take to meet those needs.
• The fundamental difference is that need statements don’t refer to any person doing any particular action. For example, the statement “I need you to leave me alone for a minute” is a strategy, not a statement of need, because it references someone doing something. A true statement of need would be, “I’m feeling overwhelmed and I need to rest for a minute.” It’s sometimes difficult to tell needs and strategies apart because we’re not used to openly and vulnerably sharing our needs.

Step 2: Identify the other person’s needs (this step can also be done first).

• If the person you’re communicating with isn’t practicing NVC, they might express their needs in more indirect ways. Silence, rejection, and judgmental comments are all veiled statements of need. By recognizing these and translating them, you can keep the conversation flowing nonviolently even if the person you’re talking to isn’t using NVC.

Step 3: Verify that both of you accurately understand each other’s needs by repeating the other person’s needs back to them and asking them to do the same for you.

Step 4: Provide empathy by focusing on their unmet needs.

Step 5: Propose strategies that meet everyone’s needs.

• Propose solutions using present language by requesting what you need in this moment in order to move forward. This gives the other person the chance to either agree or refuse right in the moment. For example, ask, “Would you be willing to tell me if I can borrow your car tomorrow?” instead of “Can I borrow your car tomorrow?”

Mediation

In NVC, a conflict resolution mediator is a third party who keeps the conversation on track by continually refocusing everyone’s attention on feelings, needs, and requests.

If you find yourself in the role of informal mediator, your first priority is to empathize with the aggressor in the situation (assuming there is no immediate threat of physical violence). If someone is already worked up to the point of shouting, judging their behavior will only escalate the situation and put the other person at risk. Instead, listen for the feelings and needs behind the aggressive behavior and offer empathy for those experiences. Once the person feels fully understood, they’ll be calm enough to work through the other steps of NVC conflict resolution.

Expressing Anger

Fully expressing anger starts by taking responsibility for it. To do that, you have to accept that other people are never the true cause of your anger. Causal language (like the phrase “He made me angry”) implies that someone’s behavior directly created your emotion—in reality, what you feel is the result of how you interpret that behavior.

Again, this doesn’t mean anger is something you can turn on or off depending on the situation. The process of turning an external stimulus into angry feelings plays out unconsciously, and that anger often disappears when you decide to tune into your needs and emotions instead.

For example, if you were unexpectedly fired from your job, you might rage about how your boss is an idiot and attribute your fury to his decision. In reality, your boss is just the stimulus—the cause of that anger is the fact that your needs for financial security and a positive self-image are now being unmet. In that case, anger is a secondary emotion that obscures your fear and sadness about not being able to financially provide for yourself or your family.

Before you fully express anger, offer empathy to the person triggering your anger. This helps defuse the situation by reconnecting you to a sense of common humanity.

After offering empathy, there are four steps to expressing anger in NVC. For example, here’s how this process might play out after being fired unexpectedly.

1. Stop and breathe. Try not to respond until you’re able to do so calmly.
2. Identify any judgmental thoughts—but without judging yourself for having them. Internally bawling out your boss is a normal response to being fired. Instead of trying to stem the flow of thoughts, simply observe it and let it pass without criticizing yourself.
3. Connect to your needs. When you feel calmer, try to identify the needs underlying your anger (for example, the need for financial security).
4. Express your feelings and needs. For example, you might say, “I feel terrified because I need to support my family financially.” By working through each step, you’ve allowed yourself to fully feel your emotions (both the anger and the underlying fear) and to express them without placing the blame on your boss.

When Using Force Is Necessary

Unfortunately, we can’t always resolve conflicts through formal or informal mediation, especially if there’s a threat of immediate harm (for example, if you witness two teenagers launch into a fistfight). In that case, it may be necessary to use physical force to keep people safe. The NVC paradigm recognizes that force is sometimes necessary to prevent immediate harm, and that force can be a tool of nonviolence as long as you use it protectively, not punitively.

To understand this distinction, imagine a parent playing outside with their young child when the child suddenly darts into the street. Physically grabbing the child’s arm and pulling them back to safety is an example of protective force because the intent is to prevent immediate bodily harm. The parent’s focus is protecting their child, not making judgments about the child’s behavior.

On the other hand, if the parent then turns around and spanks the child for running into the street in the first place, that’s a punitive use of force—the parent has evaluated the child’s behavior, judged it as “bad,” and determined that the child deserves to be punished with force.

Showing Compassion for Yourself

You can also use NVC as a way to approach your own self-talk, since many of us tend towards violent communication filled with judgment and criticism when we speak to ourselves.

Translating Internal Judgments and Demands

To heal your relationship with yourself, treat it like any other relationship by focusing on feelings and needs. When other people act in ways we dislike, NVC asks us to empathize with them and understand the feelings and unmet needs that drove that behavior. Try the same for yourself: Instead of, “I’m so stupid,” think, “What unmet need prompted me to act that way?”

Making Choices That Contribute to Self-Compassion

The way you speak to yourself is only one part of being self-compassionate. Another important part is how you spend your time. NVC recognizes the constant drudgery of the “daily grind” as a form of self-violence because of the mental, physical, and spiritual toll it takes on us. That doesn’t mean you should quit your job and move to a tropical island somewhere—it just means you should reconsider your relationship with the way you spend your energy.

For example, when you say you “have to” do something, it immediately becomes a chore; if you “choose to” do something, you acknowledge that you’re responsible for the way you spend your energy. Transforming “have to” into “choose to” is a powerful, practical tool for increasing self-compassion and turning obligation into play. For example, if you dread driving your kids to school, remember that you choose to do that because you value quality time with them. That naturally shifts your mindset to one of gratitude for having that time together.