Simple Steps to Nonviolent Communication

What is nonviolent communication, what is it for and who should learn it?

NVC, as it is otherwise known, is a communication system designed by Marshall Rosenberg that helps you to align your words and actions with your internal values. It can reduce conflict, de-escalate violence, help you stay connected more and reconnect faster after conflict, transform judgement and increase your chances of getting your message across. Basically it’s about effective communication that allows you to meet your own needs and everyone else involved. All lofty aims. I often talk about it as tools for consent-based living. But what does it actually involve?

Who is Nonviolent Communication for and when would you use it?

You can use Nonviolent Communication in all your relationships, including your relationship with yourself. It’s applicable in workplaces, schools, families, community groups, healthcare, justice system, mediation and with strangers. You can even use it with people who are nonverbal, too old or too young to speak, distant or deceased. It gives you new vocabulary to reduce the triggers in your language, name your emotions and identify your human needs. For most of us, it’s a paradigm shift in core beliefs around power, agency, blame and intent. Because most of us are raised in violent households and all of us live in a violent society.

What is violence?

Marshall defines violence differently to the United Nations definition of violence. The UN describes it as ‘the intentional use of force or power, whether threatened or actual, against another person that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, or psychological harm’. Marshall describes it as any behaviour that causes harm. As well as physical violence, ‘in NVC we also consider violence to be any use of power over people, trying to coerce people into doing things. That would include any use of punishment and reward, any use of guilt, shame, duty, or obligation. Violence in this larger sense is any use of force to coerce people to do things. Violence is also any system that discriminates against people and prevents equal access to resources and justice to all people.’

The key differences here are that you don’t have to intend violence for an action or communication to be experienced as violent by the other person. The example I often use is that when my toddler was having a tantrum, he wasn’t trying to stab me in the eyeball but if he did my body certainly experienced that as violence. Also violence in the NVC framework can include lack of action, for example stonewalling, exclusion or silence. And it includes systemic violence such as racism and sexism.

Violent sports are interesting, by the way, because although the aim of the game is to cause harm all the participants have consented to the risks so you could argue there is no use of force in this case. I wrote more about the surprising benefits of MMA here.

Much of our Western language and culture is violent: judging others (right/wrong, good/bad), discrimination, bullying, blaming, self-criticism, name-calling, patronising, neglect. The traumatic impact of violence includes witnessing violence, living in a culture that is hostile to your identity, systemic structures of power-over where certain groups of people are valued over others, and perceived threats regardless of whether they exist or not. Our default parenting methods usually lack consent and respect. It’s common to use shame to control children. We generally expect parents, teachers and other authority figures to act from ‘power-over’ and to use force if children don’t comply with instructions (and in fact many people have a strong reaction against adults who treat children as if they have agency and choice). These are all forms of violence.

So if we are all raised with violence, how can we unlearn this and operate any other way? What’s possible?

How to start using NVC

Here’s the basics of the Nonviolent Communication system.

Firstly, presence, awareness of your own intent and the state of your nervous system. This doesn’t mean judging yourself (that is also a form of violence). Just notice how calm you feel, or not. Is your nervous system activated right now? Being aware of your own level of agitation can give you information about whether it’s likely to be useful to go ahead with the conversation or actions now, or regulate yourself first and come back later. What are you expecting from this interaction with the other person? Are you looking to judge, manipulate or control? Or are you hoping to connect, celebrate or resolve?

When I teach this in workshops, at this point we step onto the ‘dance floor’, which is a physical map of a conversation laid out on the floor. We’re stepping into the intent to be present and hold the needs of both parties equally. Take a few deep breaths if you need to calm yourself or do whatever self-regulation strategy works for you.

Before we look at the next step, it’s important to know that connecting with the other person does not mean you should ignore your own physical safety. In situations where you are currently under threat, first seek safety. Then you can use the tools of NVC to help you process what happened. Our aim here is always to to meet everyone’s needs, including your needs for peace, safety and well-being. Remember that the goal of NVC is to serve life and to step into power-with, where your needs are equally as important as everyone else’s. You can use the NVC framework to become regularly aware of your own needs and notice when they are met or not met. For people raised to ignore or dismiss the existence of their own human needs, sometimes this is a huge paradigm shift.

Observation, Feeling, Need, Request framework

Nonviolent Communication has a specific framework called the OFNR (Observation, Feeling, Need, Request) for a conversation with a four part statement. It can feel clunky at the start but this is powerful so stay with me. There’s a lot of neuroscience backing up why this structure works. You can also watch my YouTube playlist for this four part statement here. To start with, we’ll look at these four parts from the point of view of one person. This is the OFNR ‘dance floor’ I sewed onto a doona cover that I use in my house and at my workshops:

Observation

1. Observation – what are you seeing, hearing, remembering or imagining? At this stage, we’re aiming to describe the trigger (what made us feel something, what set us off) as neutrally as possible. The reason for this is that it decreases the chances of the other person becoming instantly defensive, which is unlikely to help us connect with them or resolve the issue. So we want to avoid judging, interpreting or diagnosing here. Try to describe it so the other person is less likely to argue with you.

This means instead of words like:

‘You never clean up after yourself’

‘Learn to drive, arsehole!’

‘When you act like a paranoid control freak…’

We might say:

‘When I see the dishes still on the sink at 5pm…’

‘When I remember that car cutting in front of me at 100km/hr…’

‘When you sent me 20 texts in one hour…’

Feeling

2. Feelings – what do you feel in your body? We include this is because neuroscience shows that giving an accurate word to the internal state actually calms you down slightly. It’s called ‘name it to tame it’ in parenting lingo. Also, feelings are like flashing lights that point to our needs. They tell us what’s alive and how much.

In English, it’s possible to start with ‘I feel…’ and then finish with a thought. So try to just use three words here to make sure you’re describing an emotion.

Instead of:

‘I feel like you’re being lazy’

‘I feel like I’m surrounded by incompetent drivers’

‘I feel that you want to make my life difficult’

We might say:

‘I feel exhausted’

‘I feel alarmed’

‘I feel irritated’

Need

3. Needs – this is the core part of NVC. What is the universal, valid human need underlying this situation? What are you longing for? Sometimes the word ‘need’ itself is a trigger, so feel free to substitute ‘values’, ‘longings’ or ‘qualities’. There is no hierarchy of needs in NVC. We can use the word ‘need’, ‘like’ or ‘want’ interchangeably here. You can have lots of needs alive at once. Needs are never in conflict (it’s the next part, the strategies, where conflicts happen).

Here we also want to aim for three words only, because we’re looking to avoid skipping straight to the strategy. Needs belong to us. They are not person specific. Making the shift to realising this is incredibly freeing, because it gives us the power over our own happiness and fulfilment. We can find ways to meet our own needs, regardless of what others around us are doing.

Instead of:

‘I need you to do the dishes’

‘I need you to learn the road rules’

‘I need you to trust me’

We might say:

‘I need support’

‘I want safety’

‘I need trust’

Can you feel the downward shift in regulation? Of course we need support, safety or trust. It makes sense. Now let’s go to the final step.

Request

4. Requests – now we are at the stage of finding a solution. Here we want to value both parties equally. We don’t have to know the answers. Our request might be asking the other person for ideas, or just asking if they heard us so far or how the conversation is going for them.

For the best chances of being heard, aim for language that describes what you want and is as specific as possible.

Because we are trying to avoid the use of force, here it’s important to understand the difference between a request and a demand. It’s nothing to do with the words we choose. It’s clearly defined by whether we are willing to receive a no to our request. If we’re not ok with the other person saying no to us, then it was a demand. Sometimes a demand is appropriate, particularly in parenting situations or other unequal power relationships. But if you explore a little, you’ll find more and more moments you can offer a true request. And if you have relationships with anybody, you’ll already know that you can’t control other humans, even tiny ones.

Instead of:

‘Just do the dishes’

‘Stay away from my car’

‘Lighten up a little’

We might say:

‘Would you be willing to do the dishes on the nights you don’t cook?’

‘Would I be willing to drive 10kms slower?’

‘How are you feeling after hearing that?’

Putting it all together

So the full sentences look like this:

‘When I see the dishes still on the sink at 5pm, I feel exhausted because I need support. Would you be willing to do the dishes on the nights you don’t cook?

‘When I remember that car cutting in front of me at 100km/hr, I feel alarmed because I need safety. Would I be willing to drive 10kms slower?’

‘When you sent me 20 texts in one hour, I feel irritated because I need trust. How are you feeling after hearing that?’

You’ll notice that in these examples, the first one ends with a specific action request, something I would like the other person to do. If they say no, I would keep exploring ways I could meet my need for support (paying a cleaner, buying takeaway, asking the kids to help, etc). In the middle example, I’m remembering something that happened and the other person is not present, so my request is to myself. In the last example, I’ve ended with a check-in (or connection request) instead of asking for an action.

This is called the OFNR (Observation, Feeling, Need, Request) sentence or statement. All of this is from the perspective of one person. From my perspective, I can be in two places in a conversation – inside my head or speaking out loud. Each OFNR can be mapped silently in my head, or ‘across the curtain’ out loud to the other person. These correspond to two quadrants on the ‘dance floor’. The other side of the dance floor are places we are usually much less familiar with – guessing what’s going on for the other person. Here are the two quadrants from my perspective:

The four places we can go in a conversation

When we’re considering the experience of the other person, it’s important that we know we’re guessing – we’re not inside their head so we don’t know that they’re thinking, feeling or needing. So then we phrase it like:

‘When you left the dishes last night, were you also exhausted and needing rest? Would you like some nights off?’

‘When you cut in front of my car, were you feeling stressed and needing efficiency? Do you want to get somewhere very quickly?’

‘When you sent me 20 texts in one hour, were you feeling worried and needing reassurance? Would you like me to reply even if it’s only one word?’

Again, the middle example is silently inside my head because I can’t usually speak to the driver of the other vehicle, and certainly not in the moment. The other two could be either silently inside my head or I could speak them out loud to the other person.

So we can be in two different places as we connect to the other person’s needs – silently, inside our head just guessing what’s going on for them, or speaking out loud and guessing their feelings and needs. This means you can do NVC with people who have never heard of it or don’t have the vocabulary, because you can put on your ‘giraffe ears’ (more on that in a moment) and translate their everyday violence into NVC language.

Together, these make up the four parts of the ‘dance floor’ conversation – self empathy (silent connection with what’s going on for me), self expression (telling the other person what’s going on for me), silent empathy (guessing silently what’s going on for the other person) and spoken empathy (speaking out loud what I’m guessing is happening for the other person). ‘Stepping across’ to empathy for the other person, although unfamiliar, can be a powerful game-changer. Most of us get very little daily empathy from anyone.

Why things can shift even if you don’t change your spoken words

Another really interesting thing is that even if you don’t attempt to change your spoken conversation, when you start to practice connecting with your own needs and the needs of the other person in your head, things will start to shift. Why? Because around 80% of our communication is body language, tone and other nonverbal cues. So when you are more self-regulated and have more empathy, the other person will sense it even if you don’t have perfect NVC sentences to say out loud. I find this really reassuring for beginners.

People sometimes ask me if NVC is a form of therapy. It isn’t therapy but it’s therapeutic. Everyone can learn the skills of NVC. I taught it to my son from babyhood and I’ve worked in several schools where the students use it from kindy up. It’s really a way of life, something to use as often as you can rather than something to practice for one hour a fortnight. Also, starting small is the best way to build new habits so I recommend that my workshop attendees choose a one minute daily practice rather than periodic binges (and then beating yourself up because you ‘failed’).

Where giraffe and jackal fit into it

What do giraffes have to do with it?

‘Nonviolent Communication’ is not a great name. It names the system for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. So sometimes you’ll also see NVC referred to as Compassionate Communication, Words That Work, Empathetic Communication, Giraffe Language or other names. Marshall talks about giraffes as a metaphor for nonviolence because they can see the big picture, they eat thorns and turn them into nourishment, they have the biggest heart of any land mammal and they have no vocal cords which means they are good at listening. He calls violent communication Jackal Language because jackals are close to the ground, they sound harsh, they survive on scraps but they’re doing the best they can with what they have (like all of us). So you might find NVC resources such as books, YouTube videos or apps using giraffe references.

How do I put it into practice?

You can start by reading, watching or listening to NVC resources or attending a live workshop in your local area. Or you can do an online course. Often people will form practice groups after a workshop to help them embed the skills and strengthen the new neural networks of empathy and non-judgement in a supportive environment. Committing to an NVC buddy can also be helpful, where you agree to ring each other or meet every week/fortnight/month and practice the NVC tools together. You can find NVC buddies by doing a workshop or course. There are several apps that will walk you through the OFNR process, and these can be a useful way to regularly practice your NVC skills.

Want to learn more? Check out my free downloadable NVC resources here, my YouTube channel together with my mother here, our Facebook page with upcoming NVC events here and my NVC resource links here.