Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

Saying what is going on — observation, feeling, need, request — without an accusation smuggled inside it.

Description

Nonviolent Communication is Marshall Rosenberg’s method, developed from the 1960s onwards, and it fits in four words: observation, feeling, need, request. What happened, as a camera would have recorded it. What you feel about it. The need underneath the feeling. And something concrete the other person could actually do, which they are free to refuse. Easy to remember, much harder to do — especially the first step, because most of what we call observation is judgement in disguise.

The distinction doing most of the work is between needs and strategies. Needs — rest, safety, being seen, contributing — are shared by everyone, and are rarely what people are actually fighting about. Strategies are the particular ways of meeting them, and there is always more than one. Two people stuck on “we’re going to your mother’s” versus “we’re staying home” are arguing about strategies; find the needs under each and there is usually a third option nobody had put on the table.

This is why it pairs so well with IFS. A part is, more or less, a strategy attached to a need: a protector has picked one way of keeping you safe and will defend it hard. Ask what it needs instead of arguing with what it does, and it often turns out to be open to other strategies. The same grammar works inside and out. NVC’s self-empathy is very close to listening to a part from Self, and the four steps give speaking for a part some structure when the words won’t come.

Like every technique, it doesn’t solve everything and can be misused. Without the true intention underneath, it can sound like a formula to other people’s protectors… it can also be (mis)used to win: a “request” that can’t be turned down is a demand in nicer clothes, and “I feel that you’re being unfair” is an evaluation with the word feel in front of it. The form is training wheels. What you are after is the attitude, and once that is there you can say it in your own words.

What Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is NOT:

Not being nice, and not avoiding conflict — it is a way of having the conflict about the actual thing. Not a way of getting what you asked for: a request is only a request if “no” is an acceptable answer. And not a vocabulary for telling other people what they feel or need, which is the same mistake as diagnosing somebody else’s parts.

Examples:

“I feel abandoned” becoming “I feel lonely, and I need to know I matter to you” — the first was a verdict on the other person.
A critic asked what it needs, rather than told to stop, and answering “for this not to fail in public”.
A request phrased so that “no” is genuinely fine, and then the “no” being fine.

see also:

IFS-Informed Communication; Negotiation; Empathy; Boundaries; Rupture and Repair; Compassion