1. Communication to resolve crises
Marshall Luxemburg is a doctor of clinical psychology who studied under Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychology.
Once, he went to a Palestinian refugee camp to give a speech. On the way to the speech venue, he saw tear gas casings stuck on the side of the road with the words "Made in the USA" written on them. These tear gas canisters were provided to Israel by the United States.
While waiting for the speech, Dr. Luxemburg heard someone whispering in the audience.
The translator told him that people were talking about him being American. At this time, a Palestinian man stood up and shouted at him, "Murder!" "Murderer of children!"
Facing a group of extremely angry and even irrational people, Dr. He did not leave the scene immediately, but started such a conversation with the other party.
Dr. Luxemburg: “Are you angry because you want my government to change the way it uses resources?”
Palestinian man: “God damn it, of course I’m angry! You Think we need tear gas? We need drainage pipes, you are your tear gas! We need to build our own country!"
Dr. Luxemburg: "So, you are angry, you Want some support to improve your living conditions and become politically independent? ”
Palestinian man: “Do you know what it’s like to live here with our children for 27 years?” Do you know anything about it?"
Dr. Luxemburg: "It sounds like you are desperate. Do you want to know whether I or others can truly understand what this life is like?"
Palestinian man: "You want to know? Tell me, do you have children? Do they go to school? Do they have a playground? My son is sick! He is playing in the ditch! There are no books in his classroom! Have you seen A school without books?"
Dr. Luxemburg: "I noticed how painful it is for you to raise your children here! You want to tell me that what you want is what all parents want to give their children - —Good education, and a healthy environment for them to play and grow..."
Palestinian man: "Yes, this is the most basic human right - don't you Americans say this is human rights? Why not let more Americans come here to see what kind of human rights you have brought here!"
Dr. Luxemburg: "You want more Americans to understand your great suffering and Are you aware of the consequences of our political activities?"
Dr. Luxemburg had a conversation with the other party for more than 20 minutes. The other party kept expressing anger and pain, but Dr. Luxemburg did not accuse the other party of "nonsense!" , and did not defend himself. He always listened carefully and understood the other person's feelings and needs.
The final result was that the man invited Dr. Luxemburg to his home for dinner.
Dr. Luxemburg believes that the core of anger lies in unmet needs. In other words, a person is angry because he has needs that are not being met.
If we can not regard the other person’s behavior as a denial or attack on ourselves when the other person is angry, but focus on the other person’s feelings and needs, then we can Effectively alleviate conflicts and achieve a feeling of emotional connection.
In her conversations with Palestinian men, Dr. Luxemburg paid careful attention to the other person’s feelings and needs, making him feel understood and accepted.
In the communication process, the communication method of paying attention to the feelings and needs of the other party is called non-violent communication.
Dr. Luxemburg himself is good at using non-violent communication methods to resolve international conflicts and violent incidents. In life and work, we can also use non-violent communication to achieve harmony and beauty in interpersonal relationships.
2. What causes communication barriers
Before learning specifically about non-violent communication methods, we need to first understand what factors make it difficult for us to communicate.
Just imagine:
If you were driving and a paper ball was suddenly thrown out of the window of the car in front of you, would you yell at the car owner for being "unqualified!"
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If your child's test scores decline, will you criticize your child: "Why do other people's children take first place in the exam every time, but you can't do it!"
When you are at work When something goes wrong in your work, do you think: "This is what my boss asked me to do, and I am very impatient when something goes wrong!"
Have you ever experienced a friend borrowing money from you? Or ask you for help, and they are very confident: "If you don't agree to this, I will never be your friend from now on!"
The above situations must be familiar to everyone, and they are also common. The four major types of communication methods that lead to communication barriers are: moral judgment, comparison, avoidance of responsibility, and forcing others to make things difficult.
Moral judgment means that if a person's behavior is not consistent with our values, it is immoral.
Just imagine, if the person who threw the paper ball was your friend sitting in your car, would you still think that he was "unqualified"? You may feel uncomfortable with his behavior, but then you think about it, there is no place to throw the paper ball in the car, and his behavior is "understandable".
As the saying goes, if you want to live a miserable life, compare yourself to others.
It happens more often in our lives. Comparing grades with others when I was in school, comparing wages with others after working, comparing house size with others after getting married, and starting to compare grades with other people's children after having children... This "curse of comparison" seems to be in the generation This is happening again and again for generations of people. We are miserable but unable to get rid of it.
We often hear some people say "You asked me to do it", "I have to do it...", which is actually avoiding responsibility. The root cause of attributing the reasons for one's actions to the demands of others is that one does not want to be responsible for the outcome of the matter. After all, it's easier this way.
Forcing someone to make things difficult is when a person threatens others overtly or covertly in order to achieve their own goals. What consequences will there be if they don't do this? It is usually used by the dominant party against the disadvantaged party. For example, in some families that favor sons over daughters, parents require older sisters to buy a marriage house for their younger brothers, otherwise they will not recognize the daughter.
Communication styles that involve moral judgment, comparison, avoidance of responsibility, and forcing others to make things difficult for others only focus on how to achieve their goals and ignore the feelings and needs of others. These methods may get you the results you want temporarily, but they won't fundamentally solve the problem.
In the end, this method of communication will only cause mental violence, stimulate the other party's resistance, and create obstacles to communication.
3. Nonviolent Communication
Please imagine that you are a wife who neglects herself because her husband is busy with work for a long time. You want your husband to spend more time with you. Which of the following expressions do you think is nonviolent communication?
The first method: "You know how to work every day, but you don't know how to accompany me? You were not like this before getting married? Do you not love me anymore?"
The second way: "You know how to work every day now. I feel ignored by you. You never care about me. Can you stop working overtime all the time?"
The answer is: two kinds None of the methods are expressions of nonviolent communication. You may find it strange that the second way of expression is obviously not violent at all!
So, what exactly is nonviolent communication?
Dr. Marshall Luxemburg mentioned in his book "Nonviolent Communication": The key to nonviolent communication is to pay attention to the feelings and needs of both parties during the communication process. There are four specific steps: Observation , feelings, needs, requests.
(1) The first step is observation. Observe carefully what is happening and state your observations clearly. The most critical thing at this step is to distinguish between observations and comments.
Let’s go back to the example now. Among the two communication methods, whether it is "You know how to work overtime every day" or "You know how to work overtime every day now", they are all comments. So how to express "observation"?
We can say something like this: "I noticed that over the past month, you have been working overtime until 10 o'clock every night before going home." Only express the observed behavior without making any evaluation of good or bad. .
There is a poem by Ruth Bebenmaier that I like very much. It explains very vividly what observation is and what commentary is.
I have never seen a lazy person;
I have seen
a man who sometimes sleeps in the afternoon,
who does not sleep on rainy days out,
but he is not a lazy man.
Before you call me nonsense,
think about it, is he a lazy person, or
His behavior is what we call "lazy" "?
I have never seen a stupid kid;
I have seen
a kid sometimes does things
I don’t understand
Or not doing what I tell you;
But he is not a stupid kid.
Before you say he is stupid,
think about it, is he a stupid child, or does he know something different from you?
I looked and looked again
but never saw a cook;
I saw someone preparing the food
Together,
started a fire,
looked at the cooking stove -
I saw these but not the cook.
Tell me, when you look,
do you see a chef, or someone
doing what we call cooking?
We say some people are lazy
Others say they are indifferent,
We say some people are stupid
Others say there is a difference in his approach to learning.
Thus, I conclude that
if we did not confuse fact
with opinion,
we would no longer be confused.
Since you may not care, I also want to say:
This is just my opinion.
The Indian philosopher Krishnamurti once said: Observation without comment is the highest form of human intelligence.
Comments make people tend to hear criticism and create a rebellious mentality. Observation without comment can minimize resistance.
(2) The second step of non-violent communication is to express feelings.
In the first method of communication, the wife did not express what she felt. She just kept blaming the other party.
In the second communication method, "I feel ignored by you" should be a feeling, right? In fact, this is not a feeling, it is called an idea. What is an idea?
Nonviolent communication emphasizes that statements including "I feel..." and "I am..." mostly express thoughts. "I feel..." is to express our thoughts, while "being ignored" reflects that we think others do not value us. At this time, we may feel sad, and "sad" is the feeling.
The author suggests that we can help us communicate our emotions smoothly by building a vocabulary library to express our feelings.
For example, words that express positive feelings include: excitement, gratitude, joy, satisfaction, relief, excitement, etc. Words that express negative feelings include: fear, worry, frustration, anger, despair, loneliness, etc. .
Let’s now think about how to express our feelings correctly.
We can say "I noticed that over the past month, you have been working overtime until 10 o'clock every night before going home. I feel very lonely/sad."
(3) The third step in nonviolent communication is expressing needs. Our feelings arise from needs.
Nonviolent communication emphasizes that the root of feelings lies within oneself. Our needs and expectations, as well as our perceptions of what others say and do, lead to how we feel.
Generally speaking, when we hear unpleasant words or feel uncomfortable, we have four choices: blame ourselves, blame others, understand our own feelings and needs, and understand the feelings and needs of others.
In the first expression, "Don't you know that I will accompany you? You were not like this before you got married? Do you not love me anymore?" It is blaming others. In the second statement, "You never cared about me" is also an accusation. This kind of communication method can easily cause the other party to fight back. The husband may say, "Why don't I love you anymore! But you, I work so hard, and you don't know how to understand me!"
It is easy to accuse others. Fighting back and stating your needs directly will make it easier to get a positive response.
In fact, criticism implies expectation. Criticism of others is actually an indirect expression of our unmet needs. For example, "You never understood me." expresses a desire to be understood, and "You like work but not me." expresses a focus on intimacy.
By analogy, "Don't you know how to spend more time with me?" expresses "I need you to spend more time with me.", "You never care about me" expresses "I hope to get Your concern."
Then we can say: "I noticed that you have been working overtime until 10 o'clock every night for a month, and I feel very lonely/sad. I need you to spend more time with me.”
(4) The fourth step of nonviolent communication is to express the request.
We need to state specific requests, that is, what we want the other party to do, not what we don’t want the other party to do. Otherwise, this may happen: In the second statement, the wife wants her husband to spend less time at work, so she says to him, "Can you stop working overtime all the time?" The result is that the husband does reduce his working hours, but signs up Attended a golf tournament.
Note here that requests are made, not commands.
The difference between a request and an order is: when the request is not met, if the person making the request criticizes and accuses, it is an order; if he wants to use the other person's guilt to achieve his goal, it is also an order. For example, "If you don't study hard, you'll be sorry for your mother." This is an order.
So we can say: "I noticed that over the past month, you have been working overtime until 10 o'clock every night before going home. I feel very lonely/sad. I need you to spend more time with me . I hope we can eat and chat together at home three days a week.”
By expressing observations, feelings, needs, and requests, we can pay attention to each other’s feelings and needs in communication and reduce mental violence. Achieve spiritual communication.
4. Start loving yourself again
Many times, we do not express our needs because society does not encourage us to express our personal needs.
Social culture tends to regard personal needs as negative. If a person openly expresses his needs, he is selfish. This is a limitation of culture.
Nonviolent communication makes us clearly aware of the existence of this limitation.
From now on, stop blaming yourself, pay attention to your feelings and needs, understand the motivations behind your actions, actively choose your own life, regain inner peace, and ignite the passion for life.
This is truly loving yourself.