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.

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