Compassionate Communication

As we move into this new time cycle, represented through these Grand Trines in a pattern of unity, this places more pressure upon the represented polarities of the masculine and feminine principle. This brings to the forefront the male and female energies within our self, others, and how we orientate in the environment around us to bring these energies into balance. This process of awareness is very heightened for many of us during this time. We are being pushed to communicate with our wounded male and female parts, and to find more enlightened perspectives with how we interact between the male and female. Our relationships and interactions will be emphasized in this way to recognize old perspectives and clear out gender conflict issues.

Some of these issues that exist between men and woman are extremely wounded and painful. So this presents an opportunity to learn better skillsets with Compassionate Communication. Non Violent Communication (NVC) is a very productive method to learn how to apply nonviolent communication or “compassionatecommunication” towards every aspect of your interpersonal relationships. As we face these issues, may these NVC principles and methods empower you on the way to improved self-mastery, which is deeply related to how we communicate and perceive others around us. Focusing on the intentions of conflict resolution, is a very powerful process to bring peace and harmony between opposing views and interactions.

Conflict Resolution Skills

Nonviolent Communication holds that most conflicts between individuals or groups arise from miscommunication about their human needs, due to coercive or manipulative language that aims to induce fear, guilt, shame, etc. These "violent" modes of communication, when used during a conflict, divert the attention of the participants away from clarifying their needs, their feelings, their perceptions, and their requests, thus perpetuating the conflict.

NVC trainers Inbal and Miki Kashtan characterize the assumptions underlying NVC as:

• All human beings share the same needs
• Our world offers sufficient resources for meeting everyone's basic needs
• All actions are attempts to meet needs
• Feelings point to needs being met or unmet
• All human beings have the capacity for compassion
• Human beings enjoy giving
• Human beings meet needs through interdependent relationships
• Human beings change
• Choice is internal
• The most direct path to peace is through self-connection

Intentions

• Open-Hearted Living* Self-compassion
• Expressing from the heart
• Receiving with compassion
• Prioritizing connection
• Moving beyond "right" and "wrong" to using needs-based assessments
• Choice, Responsibility, Peace
• Taking responsibility for our feelings
• Taking responsibility for our actions
• Living in peace with unmet needs
• Increasing capacity for meeting needs
• Increasing capacity for meeting the present moment
• Sharing Power (Partnership)
• Caring equally for everyone’s needs
• Using force minimally and to protect rather than to educate, punish, or get what we want without agreement

Communication that Blocks Compassion

NVC suggests that certain ways of communicating tend to alienate people from the experience of compassion: Moralistic judgments implying wrongness or badness on the part of people who don't act in harmony with our values. Blame, insults, put-downs, labels, criticisms, comparisons, and diagnoses are all said to be forms of judgment. (Moralistic judgments are not to be confused with value judgments as to the qualities we value.) The use of moralistic judgments is characterized as an impersonal way of expressing oneself that does not require one to reveal what is going on inside of oneself. This way of speaking is said to have the result that "Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and are not getting."

Demands that implicitly or explicitly threaten listeners with blame or punishment if they fail to comply. Denial of responsibility via language that obscures awareness of personal responsibility. It is said that we deny responsibility for our actions when we attribute their cause to: vague impersonal forces; our condition, diagnosis, personal or psychological history; the actions of others; the dictates of authority; group pressure; institutional policy, rules, and regulations; gender roles, social roles, or age roles; or uncontrollable impulses. Making comparisons between people.

A premise of deserving, that certain actions merit reward while others merit punishment.

Focus on Four Components

NVC invites practitioners to focus attention on four components:

Observation: the facts (what we are seeing, hearing, or touching) as distinct from our evaluation of meaning and significance. NVC discourages static generalizations. It is said that "When we combine observation with evaluation others are apt to hear criticism and resist what we are saying." Instead, a focus on observations specific to time and context is recommended.

Feelings: emotions or sensations, free of thought and story. These are to be distinguished from thoughts (e.g., "I feel I didn't get a fair deal") and from words colloquially used as feelings but which convey what we think we are (e.g., "inadequate"), how we think others are evaluating us (e.g., "unimportant"), or what we think others are doing to us (e.g., "misunderstood", "ignored"). Feelings are said to reflect whether we are experiencing our needs as met or unmet. Identifying feelings is said to allow us to more easily connect with one another, and "Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable by expressing our feelings can help resolve conflicts."

Needs: universal human needs, as distinct from particular strategies for meeting needs. It is posited that "Everything we do is in service of our needs."

Request: request for a specific action, free of demand. Requests are distinguished from demands in that one is open to hearing a response of "no" without this triggering an attempt to force the matter. If one makes a request and receives a "no" it is recommended not that one give up, but that one empathize with what is preventing the other person from saying "yes," before deciding how to continue the conversation. It is recommended that requests use clear, positive, concrete action language.