Marshall Rosenberg considered praise & compliments to be as violent as criticism & insults. Instead, he encourages us to express gratitude. Praise & compliments are often used to manipulate, to reward compliance, just as insults & criticism are used to punish non-compliance. Both “positive” and “negative” feedback of this kind perpetuate dominance cultures.

When they first hear about NVC, parents almost inevitably ask if they can use this with their kids. This looks like black belt level stuff to me even though Inbal Kashtan makes it look easy.

I’m going to post links to some of my favourite NVC resources here. There’s a huge and bewildering choice out there, particularly on YouTube. My intention is to direct people who are fairly new to NVC to useful information.

I am hosting a one-evening introduction to NVC in Narberth on 4th October, 2017. There is a Facebook event and you can download an A5 flyer: Narberth NVC Evening.

In the NVC sense, “needs” are those human longings we all have, and all humans have always had. There isn’t a definitive list of needs and it’s often the subject if conversation among NVC people. There are the pretty obvious physical needs like food, water, air and shelter. Then there are more tenuous ones like connection, kindness, love and being heard. We can survive without having all our needs met, and life will be more wonderful the more our needs are satisfied.

Having needs leads us to strategies to satisfy those needs. We can find ourselves focusing on strategies without being aware of the needs we are trying to fulfill. Awareness of needs may lead us to alternative strategies that have a better chance of fulfilling the need.

Sometimes, we can confuse strategies and needs and find ourselves holding tight to a strategy. I might say “I need a car”. Now having a car is clearly not a need — not all humans need a car, so having a car is a strategy. What need might I be wanting to satisfy by owning a car? I might say “I need to get to work”. Again, work isn’t a need it’s a strategy as not all humans have a need for work. If I keep unwrapping the strategy I’ll probably go through the strategy of money and end up with the needs of food & shelter and other needs having money allow me to fulfil.

Here’s a  list of needs from the Centre for Nonviolent Communication.

When we hear each other’s needs without hearing an criticism or demands, the solution will find us,

In this 18 minute video, Marshall Rosenberg explains much of the essence of NVC. He covers pretty well everything except the NVC understanding of needs. In particular, he discusses the moralistic judgemental language that leads to violence and disconnection.

The part where he talks about the love is particularly informative.