By Maria Padhila
Over the past few years as I’ve met new people and told them I was relatively new to polyamory, nearly every one of them recommended that I read up on or take a class or two in Nonviolent Communication.
Also known as “talkin’ like a Unitarian,” Nonviolent Communication is described on the Center for Nonviolent Communication website in ways including the following:
With NVC we learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others, and to identify and clearly articulate what ‘is alive in us’. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, needed, and wanted, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening — to ourselves as well as others — NVC fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative. Founded on consciousness, language, communication skills, and use of power that enable us to remain human, even under trying conditions, Nonviolent Communication contains nothing new: all that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries.
That website will lead you to lots of sources if you’re interested in learning more. If you’d like to get a taste of what it’s like in action before delving deeper, there are a couple of online exercises that you can try.
This one is technologically awkward, but it’s useful in that it has the Official Lists of Feelings and Needs. The “official” part is a joke, of course, but the vocabulary lists there are what make me want to slap Nonviolent Communication. Upside the head, you know. Of course they don’t ‘make me’ do anything — I make myself feel slappy, I’m the one responsible for the slappy feeling. Plus, I would never do anything mean to Nonviolent Communication.