Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Marshall B. Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (1999) is a work of nonfiction that explores the importance of compassion and empathy in human relationships. Rosenberg’s own model of communication, Nonviolent Communication, prioritizes the recognition and expression of needs and feelings; it condemns the normalized practice of judging and blaming others, which disconnects us from our own compassion and therefore disconnects us from human connection. Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life has won a number of awards, including the 2006 Bridge of Peace Nonviolence Award from the Global Village Foundation and the 2014 Champion of Forgiveness Award from the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance.

This guide is written utilizing the 2005, 2nd Edition of Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life.

Summary

Rosenberg begins by suggesting that we are naturally predisposed to kindness and compassion, but that we are socially trained to see others’ actions as the source of our discontent. Through honesty and compassion, we can re-train ourselves to clearly express our own needs and the associated feelings that our met or unmet needs elicit. Rosenberg represents the expression of our needs to others as a gift, since it allows others to enhance our lives, something human beings naturally want to do. The first step in doing this is to separate our observations of others from our evaluations of them. Next, we can clearly and honestly state our needs and associated feelings and, finally, we can make a positive request articulating how our needs could be fulfilled by the other person.

Rosenberg labels communication that inhibits us from accessing our highest, most compassionate self as life-alienating communication. Types of life-alienating communication include moralistic judgments of the “rightness” or “wrongness” of others (rather than viewing others as trying to fulfill their needs), comparisons of ourselves with others, attributing our behavior to external forces (such as saying we “have to do” something, rather than choose to do it), and making demands of others rather than requests.

Developing a vocabulary of needs and feelings is an important aspect of self-expression, as often people feel discontent, but cannot express why or what needs they need to be fulfilled, which prohibits them from providing this information to others. Once an action-language request has been made, asking for rephrasing can be an effective way of ascertaining whether the other person has understood the request that you have expressed. Trying to influence people through punitive punishment, guilt, or obligation is damaging to relationships.

Rosenberg says that we can also utilize nonviolent communication (NVC) when we are listening to others. We do so by listening empathetically for needs and feelings that others are expressing. At these times, we should avoid sharing advice, giving reassurance, or “one-upping” by telling our own stories. We should instead paraphrase for clarification and include a reference to our own feelings as we do so.

Rosenberg states that we should take the same principle of compassionate and empathetic listening when listening to our own internal dialogues and avoid the societally normalized tendency to condemn, blame, or harshly recriminate ourselves for mistakes or negative feelings. Through compassionately listening rather than recriminating, we can better assess which needs are unmet and generate solutions on how they can be met.

Anger, argues Rosenberg, can be better felt and understood when viewed through the framework of unmet needs, rather than placing blame on others. Understood according to this framework, anger can be more fully realized than acting out in physical or verbal violence, as violence doesn’t get to the root cause of the anger. When we feel anger at another person, we should begin by rephrasing the other person’s feelings and associated needs in order to check for comprehension. We then can express our own feelings and needs in a way that will be better received by the other person, making it more likely that they were fully heard.

Rosenberg believes that we should also find opportunities to express our gratitude to others for the ways others enrich our lives. These comments should be limited to specific actions, rather than general in nature, suggests Rosenberg, and they should articulate how the person enriched our experience through meeting our needs.