How I Discovered Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

I first came across Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication (NVC) because I wasn’t getting my needs met in relationships with other people, and recognised that the communication skills I had inherited from my parents were terrible. I also wanted a way of communicating that would help me heal some of the pain from my past without forever going to therapy, and reduce the stress I felt around relating to other people.

I was a volunteer crisis counsellor with a local telephone hotline here in Sydney, Australia for 9 years, and the way we related to callers was all based on Rogerian therapy (“Sounds like you feel …”). Marshall Rosenberg studied with Carl Rogers and used Rogers’ empathy model as the basis for NVC, adding the concept of needs as the underlying basis for feelings. So when I came across NVC it was a natural fit for me.

I was raised by emotionally unavailable parents who I think felt fundamentally ashamed of their feelings, and I internalised this as well. Sharing feelings is a core part of NVC, and it has taken some practise to learn to share my feelings with other people, especially the ones I had been deeply ashamed of like anger and anxiety. The other essential part of NVS deals with needs, and sharing needs also felt very scary and vulnerable to me because I was raised in a religion that taught me to put everyone else’s needs ahead of mine, and to be ashamed of my core needs; especially the more primal ones.

Non-Violent Communication make it easier to connect and more likely that everyone will get their needs met.

When I first learned that I would have to share my needs with other people in order to really get the most out of NVC, I felt really anxious about the idea. I worried that if other people knew what my needs are, they might deliberately withhold them from me in order to manipulate me, like my controlling mother did.

I had an argument with my mother on Christmas Day where I was able to use some of the concepts from NVC since it offers a better way of managing conflict that’s less damaging for me than what I grew up with. I like that fact that NVC still generally works even if the person you’re communicating with hasn’t studied it, but I have found it challenging to implementing with my narcissistic mother. She gets really triggered when her feelings are acknowledged because I think she’s so ashamed of them and ends up feeling very exposed and vulnerable. Even just giving her empathy when she is upset can cause her to explode in narcissistic rage. That also means she never offers empathy to anyone else when they’re upset, because that would trigger her feelings too. It’s a real mind-fuck to think that the neurons in my brain were originally wired in response to that but using NVC has helped me rewire them so I can connect with other people more easily without getting triggered myself.

Learning to communicate using NVC takes time and effort, but I find it tremendously valuable as both a framework for communication, and a way of thinking about my needs and interactions with other people. The world would be a much better place if everyone knew how to communicate using NVC.