Nonviolent Communication is a way of interacting with ourselves and others with compassion. We’ll start by discussing the philosophy behind Nonviolent Communication and how it differs from “life-alienating communication.” Next, we’ll learn how to apply the four steps of NVC: observe, identify and state feelings, identify and state needs, and make requests. Then, we’ll learn how to use NVC as a listener rather than a speaker. Finally, we’ll discuss practical applications of NVC, including practicing self-compassion and resolving conflicts.
NVC is about communicating, but it is also a framework for attention. In everyday communication, we often focus on analyzing or making judgments about a situation. For example, “Traffic was terrible today” and “He’s always crabby after work” express our interpretation of a situation rather than pure observation. Making judgments like these won’t get us what we need and want out of the conversation. NVC helps us refocus on qualities like empathy that help create a genuine human connection. Ultimately, that connection is what helps everyone get what they need from the conversation.
In this context, the words “violent” and “nonviolent” don’t just refer to physical conflict. Any communication that causes pain or harm to anyone (including ourselves) is “violent,” while any communication that stems from true compassion is “nonviolent.” To counter violent communication, focus on a sense of common humanity (instead of getting distracted by strong emotions) because that human connection keeps you grounded in compassion.
For any communication to be truly nonviolent, it has to come from a place of compassion, not from a desire to make another person do what you want them to do. Paradoxically, when done well, NVC is more likely than arguing or traditional mediation to create a satisfying outcome for everyone. In the following sections, you’ll learn how to do that both as a speaker and a listener.
In contrast to Nonviolent Communication, “life-alienating communication” describes any form of communication that blocks our ability to focus on our core humanity and establish real connections. Here are some important types:
Surprisingly, compliments are also a form of life-alienating communication in NVC because compliments are really a type of judgment. If someone calls you “brilliant” or “talented,” they’re making a judgment about who you are as a person.
Instead of making positive judgments about someone, tell that person how they have specifically improved your life. This requires three pieces of information:
Imagine you’ve attended a lecture and want to compliment the speaker afterwards. Instead of saying, “You’re so brilliant!”, recognize a specific action, the need that action met, and the positive emotions you feel as a result: “When you talked about ways to resolve a conflict, I felt hopeful because your words showed me a new way to connect with my son.”
How can you accept appreciation without squirming away? Reframe how you view your accomplishments. Instead of seeing others’ appreciation as a judgment of your worth, think of yourself as a conduit for goodness in that person’s life. That way, you can celebrate the fact that you helped connect someone to the wonderful parts of life without fretting about whether or not you are wonderful as a human being.
For example, instead of focusing on whether you’re talented enough to “deserve” someone’s compliment on your skill as a musician, focus on the fact that music itself is life-enriching. When someone compliments your skill, they’re really thanking you for bringing music into their life.
These sections focus in depth on the four steps of expressive NVC: observing, identifying feelings, identifying needs, and making requests.
One fundamental component of NVC is separating observation (“I feel afraid”) from evaluation (“That is scary”) because evaluative language is a form of moralistic judgment. This is deceptively difficult because the English language relies on labels and generalizations (for example, “You’re always late”), which are inherently judgmental. But like any skill, you can get better with practice.
Being fully objective is difficult and not always possible or even desirable (for example, when you have strong moral objections to someone’s behavior). In those situations, it's still possible to use NVC as long as your language separates the observation from the evaluation. Do this by referencing specific behaviors you observed rather than using a convenient label—like “John used two racial slurs in our conversation yesterday” rather than “John is a racist.”
After making an observation (without attaching an evaluation to it), the next step of NVC is to identify and express your feelings. Feelings refer to internal physical and emotional states, not judgments or interpretations of external events. That may sound obvious, but it’s easier than many people realize to conflate feelings with thoughts.
As a general rule, if the words “I think” can replace the words “I feel,” then whatever is being expressed isn’t really a feeling. For example, “I feel I did a good job” isn’t expressing a feeling because you can change it to “I think I did a good job” without altering the meaning.
Once you identify what you’re feeling, it’s important to identify why you’re feeling it. When our needs aren’t met, we often instinctively place the blame on our circumstances with expressions like “He drives me nuts” or “You disappointed me.” But in reality, it’s the way we react to our circumstances that determines how we feel, not the circumstances themselves.
This doesn’t mean our feelings aren’t justified or that we can simply choose to feel happy instead of miserable. It just means we acknowledge that our feelings stem from our own needs and expectations and not from the actions of others.
One way to express your feelings without blaming others is to stick to a simple “I feel [emotion]” template. Be sure to state your actual emotions, not your thoughts about a situation.
To give people guidance on how to respond when you express your feelings, you need to connect the feelings to your underlying needs. Hearing the needs underneath your feelings helps other people empathize with you because most human needs are universal.
Every feeling arises from a particular need that is or isn’t being met. Identifying the need underlying a certain feeling helps you get clear on what your goals are for this communication, but it’s not always easy to identify these needs. For reference, here is a list of universal needs:
If you want others to meet your needs, it’s more helpful to request what you do want them to do than what you don’t want them to do. Making negative requests (like “Don’t do that” or “I’d like you to stop interrupting me”) gives the listener very little information about what you’re actually requesting. For example, if you ask someone to stop interrupting you, you probably mean you want them to listen to what you have to say before adding their own thoughts. If they respond by tuning you out and checking their phone while you’re speaking, they’ve technically complied with your request not to interrupt—but neither of you is getting what you really wanted.
Requests should also be specific. For example, if you ask someone for “help,” they’ll respond based on their interpretation of “help,” which may not be what you had in mind.
Avoid making requests that are actually demands. In a true request, there is no coercion or manipulation—the listener is free to say “no” without fear of repercussions.
After making requests, make sure the person understands those requests the way you intended by asking them to reflect back what you’ve said in their own words.
To put all this together, imagine you’ve just discovered a pack of cigarettes in your teenage daughter’s car. To express your concerns nonviolently, you’d work through the four steps:
Now, you can apply that same approach to listening empathically when others share their observations, feelings, and needs. In a typical conversation, it’s easy to drift into mentally preparing a response or coming up with solutions while the other person is talking. On the other hand, empathic listening involves staying present in the conversation and resisting the temptation to argue, give advice, or try to “fix” the situation.
Just like in expressive communication, when we use NVC to listen to others, we focus on four things: observations, feelings, needs, and requests. People always express their feelings and needs when they communicate, so try to focus on listening for those feelings and needs, even when they’re expressed indirectly. For example, if someone says, “I hate my job,” they may really be trying to say, “I feel empty at work because I need recognition when I do a good job.”
When you focus on someone’s feelings and needs, it’s best to check in frequently to make sure you understand exactly what they’re saying. This prevents miscommunications from spiraling out of control and gives the other person a chance to make sure they’re being heard correctly.
Paraphrasing is especially important when someone is expressing powerful emotions because the person is particularly vulnerable. In that state, empathy is crucial because offering advice or criticism is likely to make someone feel unheard and unsafe. For example, if someone says, “Everything is so hard, I just want to give up,” responding with “Cheer up!” or “Have you tried exercise?” minimizes the person’s feelings. Instead, validate those feelings by saying, “So you’re really struggling lately and you’re feeling defeated?”
There are times when true empathy is impossible, particularly when you’re exhausted or starved for empathy yourself. Likewise, if you’re feeling attacked or insulted by the other person, it’s natural to be pushed into a fight or flight response that blocks empathy. If the topic affects you personally, it may not be possible to focus on the other person’s feelings and needs.
Recognizing when you’re not able to give someone the kind of empathy that NVC requires is an important part of the process. In that case, it’s best to step away and offer yourself some emergency first-aid empathy. Taking a break and coming back to the conversation when you’re able to offer empathy is more productive than trying to push through when you feel defensive.
NVC is especially useful for conflict resolution and mediation. When the people on both sides of a conflict establish a mutually respectful connection, they’ll understand that their own needs and the other person’s needs are equally important. Therefore, the goal of conflict resolution in NVC is not compromise. In a compromise, neither party’s needs are fully met, and those remaining unmet needs will only cause further problems down the road.
The NVC conflict resolution process has five steps. (As noted, the first two steps are reversible.)
Step 1: Express your own needs.
Step 2: Identify the other person’s needs (this step can also be done first).
Step 3: Verify that both of you accurately understand each other’s needs by repeating the other person’s needs back to them and asking them to do the same for you.
Step 4: Provide empathy by focusing on their unmet needs.
Step 5: Propose strategies that meet everyone’s needs.
In NVC, a conflict resolution mediator is a third party who keeps the conversation on track by continually refocusing everyone’s attention on feelings, needs, and requests.
If you find yourself in the role of informal mediator, your first priority is to empathize with the aggressor in the situation (assuming there is no immediate threat of physical violence). If someone is already worked up to the point of shouting, judging their behavior will only escalate the situation and put the other person at risk. Instead, listen for the feelings and needs behind the aggressive behavior and offer empathy for those experiences. Once the person feels fully understood, they’ll be calm enough to work through the other steps of NVC conflict resolution.
Fully expressing anger starts by taking responsibility for it. To do that, you have to accept that other people are never the true cause of your anger. Causal language (like the phrase “He made me angry”) implies that someone’s behavior directly created your emotion—in reality, what you feel is the result of how you interpret that behavior.
Again, this doesn’t mean anger is something you can turn on or off depending on the situation. The process of turning an external stimulus into angry feelings plays out unconsciously, and that anger often disappears when you decide to tune into your needs and emotions instead.
For example, if you were unexpectedly fired from your job, you might rage about how your boss is an idiot and attribute your fury to his decision. In reality, your boss is just the stimulus—the cause of that anger is the fact that your needs for financial security and a positive self-image are now being unmet. In that case, anger is a secondary emotion that obscures your fear and sadness about not being able to financially provide for yourself or your family.
Before you fully express anger, offer empathy to the person triggering your anger. This helps defuse the situation by reconnecting you to a sense of common humanity.
After offering empathy, there are four steps to expressing anger in NVC. For example, here’s how this process might play out after being fired unexpectedly.
Unfortunately, we can’t always resolve conflicts through formal or informal mediation, especially if there’s a threat of immediate harm (for example, if you witness two teenagers launch into a fistfight). In that case, it may be necessary to use physical force to keep people safe. The NVC paradigm recognizes that force is sometimes necessary to prevent immediate harm, and that force can be a tool of nonviolence as long as you use it protectively, not punitively.
To understand this distinction, imagine a parent playing outside with their young child when the child suddenly darts into the street. Physically grabbing the child’s arm and pulling them back to safety is an example of protective force because the intent is to prevent immediate bodily harm. The parent’s focus is protecting their child, not making judgments about the child’s behavior.
On the other hand, if the parent then turns around and spanks the child for running into the street in the first place, that’s a punitive use of force—the parent has evaluated the child’s behavior, judged it as “bad,” and determined that the child deserves to be punished with force.
You can also use NVC as a way to approach your own self-talk, since many of us tend towards violent communication filled with judgment and criticism when we speak to ourselves.
To heal your relationship with yourself, treat it like any other relationship by focusing on feelings and needs. When other people act in ways we dislike, NVC asks us to empathize with them and understand the feelings and unmet needs that drove that behavior. Try the same for yourself: Instead of, “I’m so stupid,” think, “What unmet need prompted me to act that way?”
The way you speak to yourself is only one part of being self-compassionate. Another important part is how you spend your time. NVC recognizes the constant drudgery of the “daily grind” as a form of self-violence because of the mental, physical, and spiritual toll it takes on us. That doesn’t mean you should quit your job and move to a tropical island somewhere—it just means you should reconsider your relationship with the way you spend your energy.
For example, when you say you “have to” do something, it immediately becomes a chore; if you “choose to” do something, you acknowledge that you’re responsible for the way you spend your energy. Transforming “have to” into “choose to” is a powerful, practical tool for increasing self-compassion and turning obligation into play. For example, if you dread driving your kids to school, remember that you choose to do that because you value quality time with them. That naturally shifts your mindset to one of gratitude for having that time together.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a way of interacting with other people and ourselves with empathy and compassion. The author, Marshall B. Rosenberg, was drawn to the idea of encouraging compassion after witnessing the deadly 1943 Detroit race riots as a child. He founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication, a nonprofit organization that trains community leaders in NVC.
In the first few chapters of this summary, we’ll discuss the philosophy behind Nonviolent Communication and how it differs from “life-alienating communication.” In Chapters 3-6, we’ll learn how to apply the four steps of NVC: observe, identify and state feelings, identify and state needs, and make requests. Then, in Chapters 7-8, we’ll learn how to use NVC as a listener rather than a speaker. Finally, we’ll discuss practical applications of NVC, including practicing self-compassion, resolving conflicts, and expressing anger.
The purpose of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is to foster authentic connections with ourselves and others. These connections have to start with compassion, which NVC naturally creates. You can use NVC in almost any relationship or environment, including in families, schools, governments, businesses, and personal relationships.
NVC is about communicating, but it is also a framework for attention. In communicating, we often fixate on unhelpful things (like judgment and defensiveness), but these behaviors won’t get us what we need and want out of the conversation. Nonviolent Communication helps us refocus on what will.
In this context, the words “violent” and “nonviolent” don’t just refer to physical conflict. Any communication that causes pain or harm to anyone (including ourselves) is “violent,” while any communication that stems from true compassion is “nonviolent.” On a philosophical level, the core idea of NVC is to keep your attention focused on a sense of common humanity when you communicate (instead of getting distracted by strong emotions) because that human connection keeps you grounded in compassion.
For example, imagine someone has just insulted you. If you focus on your anger, you’re likely to communicate violently by hurling an insult right back. But if you focus on the feelings and needs you have in common, you might recognize that insulting you was this person’s way of expressing their insecurity and their need for self-esteem. Keeping your attention on that common humanity allows you to tap into empathy (since we’ve all felt insecure at some point), and empathy makes it easier to respond with compassion.
This doesn’t mean you can’t feel strong emotions in NVC—feelings are a core component of this framework—it just means that you don’t allow those strong feelings to stop you from communicating in a compassionate way. That way, you can communicate with anyone, even people you have serious disagreements with, without compromising your values around how human beings should be treated.
For any communication to be truly nonviolent, it has to come from a place of compassion, not from a desire to make another person do what you want them to do. Paradoxically, when done well, NVC has a much higher chance of resulting in a satisfying outcome for everyone. In other words, to get what you want, you have to forget what you want and focus instead on the other person’s humanity.
We’ll explore this paradox in more detail in later chapters, but the basic reason NVC is more likely to help you get what you want is that people are much more motivated to be compassionate and empathetic when they are first shown compassion and empathy themselves.
In practice, NVC applies both to expressive and receptive communication, which means we can use this framework as both a speaker and a listener.
Before we dive into each step of NVC in detail, let’s look at the types of communication that can prevent us from relating to others with compassion. Rosenberg uses the phrase “life-alienating communication” to describe any form of communication that blocks our ability to focus on our core humanity and establish real connections. Many of these ideas are so embedded in our language and culture that we’ve lost sight of how they create distance between ourselves and others.
These judgments stem from the belief that our values are good, and anyone who doesn’t share our values is wrong or bad. This can take the form of blame, labels, insults, criticism, or diagnoses. Moralistic judgments are different from value judgments, which express our beliefs about the world rather than a specific person or group. For example, “violence is bad” is a value judgment; “violent people are evil” is a moralistic judgment.
Making moralistic judgments of others is really a roundabout way of expressing our own values and needs (for example, if we label one political party as “bad,” that’s a way of communicating that their values don’t align with our own). Unfortunately, when we express our values and needs through labels, it creates conflict and moves us even further from getting our needs met.
The moment we label someone, we create distance between them and us, which allows us to forget our common humanity. This distance is dangerous—the root cause of violence is attributing “wrongness” to another person or group.
This kind of communication is especially prevalent in societies with strong hierarchies of power because it upholds the notion that some people are “good” (and so “deserve” to be in power) and some people are “bad” (and “deserve” whatever punishments they get).
Rather than label someone based on our own beliefs or analyses, NVC asks us to stick to pure observation. For example, instead of saying, “Sarah is so lazy,” someone practicing NVC would say, “Sarah has been late to work three times this week.” This is an objective observation of what someone does, says, or believes, rather than a judgment of who they are as a person.
As the saying goes, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” When you compare yourself to other people, you’re really making a moralistic judgment about whether they are “better” or “worse” than you are.
When you attribute the causes of your feelings and actions to an external source, you deny your own responsibility. For example, the phrases “He makes me so angry,” “I was late because my partner took too long getting ready,” and “I have to wear a skirt to church because I’m a woman” are all denials of responsibility. Taking responsibility for your feelings is a major theme in NVC because failing to do so can cause all kinds of conflict.
One way to practice taking responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, and behavior is by replacing the words “have to” with “choose to.” For example, instead of saying, “I have to get up early,” you can say, “I choose to get up early because getting to work on time is important to me.” That way, you remind yourself that you’re responsible for your own choices and that many of the things you do out of “obligation” are actually choices that serve your higher values.
This exercise might feel strange at first because we’re so used to thinking in terms of obligation. You might even be thinking that some things really are “have tos,” not “choose tos.” But underneath everything you do is a choice you make based on your needs or values. Even something as basic as eating is something you choose to do because you need energy and value being alive.
Expressing requests as demands is life-alienating because it implicitly threatens blame and punishment if the person refuses (for example, a parent asking their child to clean up the kitchen is a demand if the child assumes she’ll be punished if she doesn’t obey). In fact, the concepts of reward and punishment themselves are forms of life-alienating communication because they depend on moralistic judgments. The idea that someone “deserves” reward or punishment stems from our judgment of whether they are “good” or “bad.”
Surprisingly, compliments are also a form of life-alienating communication in NVC because compliments are really a type of judgment. If someone calls you “brilliant” or “talented,” they’re making a judgment about who you are as a person. The fact that it’s a positive judgment doesn’t change the fact that it prevents you from forming a genuine human connection with the person making the judgment.
Another reason even positive judgments can be life-alienating is that people often use compliments as a tool of manipulation. Managers might compliment their employees as a way to increase productivity; parents use praise to encourage their children’s “good” behavior and discourage “bad” behavior. But even genuine appreciation and praise can be difficult to accept gracefully because it directly contradicts that self-critical inner voice.
A secondary reason for avoiding positive judgment labels is that they give the person very little information about what they did right. If you tell your child, “You’re so smart,” they may have no idea what they did that earned them the label “smart” and be confused about what you expect of them.
In Nonviolent Communication, the focus of every interaction is feelings and needs. Instead of relying on compliments, you can show appreciation nonviolently by telling someone which of your needs they’ve met and how that made you feel.
Similarly, when someone else expresses appreciation for you, don’t get caught up in whether or not you “deserve” that appreciation. Reframe their praise by asking them to articulate which needs of theirs you’ve helped to meet and how that made them feel. That way, their appreciation isn’t a judgment of who you are, it’s an expression of gratitude for something you’ve done. By reframing praise in this way, you can celebrate the joy you’re able to bring other people without worrying about their judgment of you.
Expressing appreciation with NVC doesn’t involve compliments. Instead of making positive judgments about someone, tell that person how they have specifically improved your life. This requires three pieces of information:
You can express these statements in any order and in varying degrees of detail. For example, imagine you’ve attended a lecture and want to compliment the speaker afterwards. Your instinct might be to use a positive label like “You’re so brilliant!”, but that doesn’t give the speaker any valuable, specific feedback. Instead, recognize a specific action, the need that action met, and the positive emotions you feel as a result: “When you talked about ways to resolve a conflict, I felt hopeful because I’ve been arguing with my son and your words showed me a new way to connect with him.”
It might feel awkward to express appreciation in this way because talking plainly about needs and feelings is a vulnerable act. If you feel hesitant to tell someone just how important they are to you, take a moment to imagine how you might feel if you never got the chance to express your appreciation to this person. If you think you’d feel regret, let that inform your choice to express your appreciation while you have the chance.
Have you ever felt uncomfortable after receiving a compliment? That’s a common reaction in a culture that encourages emotional detachment. You might squirm or worry about living up to the complimentary label in the future. When someone expresses appreciation, your ability to accept it stems from how you feel about yourself.
Typically, people respond to compliments in one of two ways: They let it inflate their ego, or they shrug it off and downplay their accomplishments. This is often a form of false modesty that stems from being uncomfortable with the compliment, not a genuine evaluation of their efforts.
Despite how much we struggle to accept compliments gracefully, we all have an instinctive desire for genuine appreciation. Human brains naturally focus on the negative. You’ve experienced this if you’ve ever been in a situation where you received loads of praise and only one piece of criticism, only to find yourself dwelling on the criticism hours later. Receiving genuine appreciation helps balance the exaggerated weight of negativity.
How can we accept appreciation without squirming away? Reframe how you view your accomplishments. Instead of seeing others’ appreciation as a judgment of your worth (that you may or may not agree with), think of yourself as a conduit for goodness in that person’s life. That way, you can celebrate the fact that you helped connect someone to the wonderful parts of life without fretting about whether or not you are wonderful as a human being. In other words, think of yourself as the messenger, rather than the gift.
For example, imagine someone compliments your skill as a musician. Instead of focusing on whether you’re talented enough to “deserve” that praise, focus on the fact that music itself is life-enriching. When someone compliments your skill, they’re really thanking you for bringing the gift of beautiful music into their life.
The NVC approach to appreciation might feel foreign if you’re used to relying on compliments. Let’s practice expressing appreciation without those judgments.
Think of the last time someone in your life did something that directly benefited you. For example, maybe your coworker brought you a cup of coffee or your spouse cleaned up the kitchen. What positive labels (like “helpful” or “generous”) come to mind to describe that person?
Instead of relying on those labels, how would you rephrase the compliment in the NVC formula? Remember, you want to express three things:
Now, think of the last time you felt the urge to compliment someone for something that did not directly benefit you. For example, maybe your daughter aced her science test, your friend got a new job, or your neighbor worked hard to improve her health. What positive labels (like “smart,” “talented,” or “dedicated”) come to mind to describe that person?
Instead of relying on those labels, how would you rephrase the compliment in the NVC formula?
Now we’ll focus in depth on the four steps of expressive Nonviolent Communication: observing, identifying feelings, identifying needs, and making requests.
One fundamental component of NVC is separating observation (“I feel afraid”) from evaluation (“That is scary”). The philosopher J. Krishnamurti calls this “the highest form of human intelligence,” perhaps because it is so difficult to do. Our brains are natural storytellers, so we often don’t even notice when we make evaluations based on what we see, hear, and feel. But evaluative language is a form of moralistic judgment that can easily alienate others by reducing them to a label rather than making a human connection.
Being fully objective is difficult and not always possible or even desirable (for example, when you have strong moral objections to someone’s behavior). In those situations, it's still possible to use NVC as long as your language separates the observation from the evaluation. To do this, reference specific behaviors you observe—like “John used two racial slurs in our conversation yesterday” rather than “John is a racist.” Whether or not the label is warranted doesn’t matter if the goal is to have a productive conversation about the issue rather than an argument.
To make this idea more concrete, here is a table of examples. The statements on the left have observations and evaluations mixed together, while the statements on the right express the same ideas but keep observations separate from judgments.
| Type of Communication | Observation and Evaluation, Mixed | Observation and Evaluation, Separate |
| Using the verb “to be” to express opinions as facts | You’re too pessimistic. | When I hear you say, “There’s no point,” I think you sound too pessimistic. |
| Expressing opinions as facts (without the “to be” verb) | She definitely won’t win this race. | I don’t think she’ll win this race. |
| Expressing opinions as facts (through judgmental adjectives/adverbs) | This class is boring. | I struggle to pay attention in this class. |
| Judging ability as fact, rather than opinion | Reina is terrible at math. | Reina got a C on her last math test. |
| Using words with judgmental connotations | Janella procrastinates. | Janella doesn’t study for tests until the night before. |
| Confusing predictions with certainties | If you don’t stop smoking, you’ll get cancer. | If you don’t stop smoking, I’m afraid you could get cancer. |
| Attributing a description to a group rather than a specific person or interaction | Immigrants don’t want to work. | My next-door neighbor is an immigrant, and he is unemployed. |
| Making always/never generalizations | You’re always busy. | You weren’t able to come to my last two parties. |
After making an observation (without evaluation attached), the next step of NVC is to identify and express your feelings. Again, this sounds easy, but it’s often surprisingly difficult in practice. Our culture doesn’t value expressing feelings, so we’re never taught healthy ways to express strong emotions—instead, we’re told to suck it up, tough it out, and walk it off. That inability to identify and express feelings is an even bigger struggle in some career fields (like law, engineering, corporate management, and the military), where stoicism is a professional value.
The cultural taboo around showing emotion means that most of us have a limited vocabulary for expressing feelings. When we don’t have the words to talk about our feelings, we struggle to even identify them beyond broad categories of happy or sad. Building up a “feelings vocabulary” will help you identify and express your feelings more clearly.
The first major hurdle in expressing a feeling is understanding exactly what a feeling is (or, more importantly, what it isn’t). Feelings refer to internal physical and emotional states, not judgments of external events. That may sound obvious, but we often conflate thoughts and feelings because we use “I feel” to express opinions, not true feelings, in three distinct ways:
These red-flag expressions can help you spot thoughts masquerading as feelings, but sometimes individual words are the problem. For example, the phrases “I feel inadequate” and “I feel ignored” express judgment rather than true feelings. The word “inadequate” is a judgment of your own worth; “ignored” is a judgment of someone else’s actions.
The phrase “I feel ignored” is especially helpful for illustrating the difference between feelings and judgments. If you’re chatting with a group of friends, feeling “ignored” might mean you’re actually feeling hurt. But if you’re a shy person surrounded by a group of strangers, feeling “ignored” might translate to relief, not hurt.
To spot judgments posing as feelings, try not using the word “feel” at all. In English, true feelings can be expressed without that word (for example, you can say “I’m sad” instead of “I feel sad”). On the other hand, judgments naturally sound strange if you swap in the verb “to be” for the verb “to feel” (for example, “I’m ignored” and “I’m unheard”). These sound unnatural because we know that “I am” only describes states of being, not judgments.
Another important factor in how we talk about feelings is specificity. When you say you feel “good,” you could mean ecstatic, mellow, fascinated, or many other specific feelings. If you feel “bad,” you might feel scared, bored, or furious. Each of these specific emotions merits a different response. By just using the words “good” and “bad,” you give the person you’re speaking to very little information about how to connect with you in that moment, so you’re more likely to be disappointed when they aren’t able to meet your needs or expectations.
Building up a vocabulary of specific feeling words can help you express yourself more clearly. Here are some examples of specific ways you might feel when your needs are being met.
Here are some ways you might feel when your needs aren’t being met.
Once you identify what you’re feeling, identify why you’re feeling it. When our needs aren’t met, we often instinctively place the blame on our circumstances with expressions like “He drives me nuts” or “You disappointed me.” But in reality, it’s the way you react to your circumstances that determines how you feel, not the circumstances themselves.
It’s important to understand that this doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t justified or that you can simply choose to feel happy instead of miserable. It just means you acknowledge that your feelings stem from your own needs and expectations and not from the actions of others.
Just as in identifying and expressing feelings, language plays an important role in taking responsibility for our feelings. There are three ways we deny responsibility for our emotions.
You can reword each of these statements to express a feeling (and take responsibility for it) by stating the feeling followed by the phrase “because I.” The table below shows three examples.
| Original Statement | Taking Responsibility for the Feeling |
| “It annoys me when you do that.” | “I feel annoyed because I don’t want to be distracted from my work right now.” |
| “I feel sad because he didn’t show up.” | “I feel sad because I was really looking forward to seeing him.” |
| “When you forgot my birthday, I felt lonely.” | “I felt lonely because I want to know that you care about me.” |
Taking responsibility for your feelings benefits everyone involved. Blaming a negative feeling on someone else’s actions creates a sense of guilt in that person—if their behavior changes after that, you have no way of knowing whether they’re motivated by guilt or genuine affection.
Taking responsibility for your feelings isn’t easy, especially when you’ve been mistreated in some way. When that happens, you have four choices for how to react: You can blame yourself, blame the other person, notice your feelings and needs, or notice the other person’s feelings and needs. For example, imagine your partner says, “You’re so needy.” What are your choices?
Choosing to blame yourself or the other person is unlikely to move the conversation toward a satisfying resolution for everyone. Communicating your own feelings and needs is important, but it might not help you establish the empathy required to resolve the issue. The final choice—noticing and communicating the other person’s feelings and needs—is most in line with the principles of NVC and helps create a genuine connection.
Recognizing and expressing your feelings helps others to understand you, but it doesn’t give them much guidance on how to respond. For that, you need to connect the feelings to your underlying needs. Hearing the needs underneath your feelings helps other people empathize with you because most human needs are universal.
Every feeling arises from a particular need that is or isn’t being met. Identifying the need underlying a certain feeling helps you get clear on what your goals are for this communication, but it’s not always easy to identify the needs underlying our feelings since this is such a new idea for most of us. For reference, here is a list of the categories of universal needs that all humans share as well as some specific examples:
Once you’re aware of your needs, express them out loud along with your feelings. For example, you could say, “I’m feeling nervous to tell you something because I need your acceptance” or “I’m feeling exhausted because I need to rest.”
Expressing needs can be terrifying in a culture that actively discourages us from expressing vulnerability. Instead, we often express our needs indirectly by judging or diagnosing others (for example, instead of saying, “I felt hurt when she yelled at me,” we might say, “She’s crazy”). This can make people feel criticized or attacked, which puts them on the defensive and makes them even less likely to recognize and fulfill our needs. As uncomfortable as it may be, being open about our needs makes it easier for other people to respond to us positively.
Gender roles can make this kind of vulnerability even harder. The “ideal woman” is the ultimate caretaker and sacrifices her own needs to meet those of others. For women, admitting to having any needs at all often feels like a failure. This is doubly true for women with partners or children, who are expected to give up their own needs the moment they become wives or mothers.
When people begin to focus on identifying and expressing their own needs, they often pass through three stages: “emotional slavery,” “the obnoxious stage,” and “emotional liberation.”
Identifying and expressing the needs underlying your current feelings is an important step. But just stating your needs isn’t enough. Without a specific, action-oriented request, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming others intuitively know exactly how to meet your needs. If they don’t, you may end up unfairly resenting them for not intuiting what you need them to do.
People often request what they need from others in indirect ways. A child misbehaving in front of their parent might be indirectly requesting attention or autonomy; a man accusing his husband of working too much might be indirectly requesting connection or affection. These approaches are unlikely to result in our needs being met. If you want someone else to meet your needs, you need to make specific requests using positive action language.
If you want others to meet your needs, it’s more helpful to request what you do want them to do than what you don’t want them to do. Making negative requests (like “Please don’t do that”) gives the listener very little information about what you’re actually asking of them. For example, imagine you’ve asked your spouse not to spend so much time at the office, and they respond by going out to eat with friends every night instead. Technically, they’ve complied with your request—but if your goal was to spend more time together, your need is still unmet.
On top of being unclear, people often perceive negative requests as criticism, which makes the listener unlikely to respond with compassion. Words like “don’t” or “stop” imply that whatever the person is currently doing is wrong, which is a judgment of their behavior.
In addition to positive language, requests should be specific. For example, if you ask someone for “help,” they’ll respond based on their interpretation of “help,” which may or may not be what you had in mind. If you ask a friend to “be supportive” during a tough time and they respond by dropping off a meal, you’ll be disappointed if what you needed was a listening ear.
Sometimes, people might make vague requests because they haven’t thought through what it is they actually want. For example, a father asking his son to “be more responsible” is making a vague request. If what he really wants is for his son to do exactly as he’s told, then asking his son to be responsible is really a roundabout way of asking him to be obedient.
This kind of uncertainty can have serious consequences. In the case of the father and son, realizing that he’s really asking his son to obey his every command might make the father reflect on the values he wants to instill in his son. In other cases, not being clear on what we’re really asking for can contribute to depression. If we don’t know what we really want from other people, we won’t be able to ask for it, and our needs may go perpetually unmet.
Making requests before stating your feelings and needs is dangerous because requests sound like demands or attacks if we don’t communicate the feelings or needs behind them.
For example, if a parent asks their child, “Why don’t you get a haircut?” without explaining their motivation, the child might hear, “I don’t like your hair.” Parents can avoid causing unintentional hurt by prefacing the request with a statement of their feelings—for example, “I’ve noticed how your hair gets in your eyes when you’re riding your bike and I’m afraid you could get hurt.”
Even if you clearly state your reasoning, it’s possible for the listener to hear your request as a demand if there is an implicit (or explicit) threat of punishment if they choose not to comply. In this context, “punishment” can mean any kind of violent communication such as judgment, criticism, or guilt trips. If you respond to someone’s “no” with any of these tactics, it becomes clear that our request was really a veiled demand. In a true request, there is no coercion or manipulation—the listener is free to say “no” without fear.
So how can you use Nonviolent Communication to clearly communicate that you’re making a request rather than a demand? Although it can help to specify up front that the person is free to say no, the way you react to that “no” sends a far more powerful message. Even if the organizational hierarchy says this person “should” obey your requests, if you respond to their “no” by invoking your authority, it blocks empathic communication and may lead to bitterness.
In NVC, the first response whenever someone denies your request is always empathy. This doesn’t mean you can’t advocate for what you want or make further requests—it just means that before you push back, you take the time to fully understand and empathize with why this person is saying no. Making people feel heard helps to strengthen the relationship and increases the likelihood of finding a solution that works for everyone.
Any time you communicate with another person, you make implicit requests, even if those requests are simply for acknowledgment that you’ve been heard and understood. Go into each interaction with a clear idea of the requests you’re making of the other person. Without knowing what you’re asking for, it’s hard to know when and if you receive it.
Once you’re aware of what you’re expressing and requesting, make sure that’s the same message the other person is hearing. To do that, ask them to reflect back what you’ve said in their own words. It might feel strange, but this extra step can save enormous amounts of time and struggle by catching any misunderstandings immediately rather than waiting for them to blow up. Keep in mind that you’re asking the other person to risk being “wrong,” which puts them in a vulnerable position. Regardless of how well they understood what you meant to say, be sure to show sincere gratitude for their willingness to risk being vulnerable.
If there is a misunderstanding, your response should make it clear that you accept responsibility for it. Language is key here—the phrase “that’s not what I said” implies wrongness in the listener, but “I wasn’t as clear as I wanted to be, can I try again?” contains no judgments and is less likely to make them feel attacked.
Once you’re sure your needs and requests have been understood the way you intended, it’s important to clarify what kind of feedback you’re asking for from the other person. When you’re asking for someone’s thoughts on something you’ve said, be as specific as possible to avoid wasting anyone’s time on feedback that isn’t valuable for you. For example, “What did you think of my presentation?” is vague, but “Did the order of the slides make sense?” indicates exactly what feedback you’re looking for. Specifying what kind of response you’re looking for increases the chance of getting it.
To put all this together, imagine you’ve just discovered a pack of cigarettes in your teenage daughter’s car. To express your concerns nonviolently, you’d work through the four steps:
Identifying feelings and connecting them to needs takes practice. Try it out now by revisiting a past conversation.
Think of the last time you had a disagreement with someone close to you (this could be a partner, child, friend, or coworker). What were you feeling during that disagreement?
What were you needing? For reference, here’s the list of universal human needs from this chapter: Autonomy (the right to choose your own goals and values in life) Celebration (to celebrate happy life events and to mourn our losses) Integrity (authenticity, creativity, meaning, self-worth) Interdependence (acceptance, empathy, love, respect, support) Play (fun, laughter) Spiritual Communion (beauty, inspiration, peace) Physical Nurturance (air, food, water, shelter)
Now, think about the person you disagreed with. What were they feeling at the time?
What were they needing?
Making objective observations instead of judgments about people you disagree with is difficult. Practice this skill by starting with positive judgments you’ve made.
Think of a person or group that you’ve made a positive moralistic judgment about recently. (For example, “My son is so smart” or “The U.S. women’s national soccer team is the best team in history.”) Write that judgment below.
How can you rephrase that judgment as an observation? (For example, “My son got an A on his spelling test” or “The U.S. women’s soccer team has won four gold medals.”)
Now, think of a negative moralistic judgment you’ve made in the past. (For example, “My neighbor is a jerk” or “Gun owners are bad people.”) Write that judgment below.
How can you rephrase that judgment as an observation? (For example, “My neighbor blew all his leaves into my yard” or “Nonviolence is important to me, so I don’t support owning weapons.”)
The first six chapters of this book focused on expressing your own observations, feelings, and needs honestly. Now, we can apply that same approach to listening empathically when others share their observations, feelings, and needs. “Empathic listening” requires listening on a deeper level than you may be used to by emptying your mind of preconceived ideas and judgments about the other person or the situation.
Empathic listening is different from a typical conversation, where it’s easy to drift into mentally preparing a response or coming up with solutions while the other person is talking. We unconsciously focus on thinking and acting rather than truly listening. On the other hand, empathic listening requires resisting the temptation to argue, give advice, or try to “fix” the situation. In other words, “don’t just do something, stand there.”
Most of us are never explicitly taught how to listen with empathy. Listening empathically is hard, even with people we love, because modern culture encourages quick fixes and constant striving rather than empathy and stillness. Allowing someone to feel the full extent of their feelings without offering advice or reassurance requires staying present with someone else’s pain without flinching.
On the other end of the spectrum, listening empathically to people you have strong disagreements with can be equally difficult. In that case, empathic listening might require you to listen to hurtful words, accusations, or hatred without being provoked into anger and judgment. Maintaining a focus on hearing someone’s feelings and needs underneath layers of insults or bigotry might stretch your capacity for empathy to the breaking point—which is exactly when you need it most.
Rather than connect empathically with someone, we often turn to easier options. Here are some common mistakes people make when responding to someone expressing their feelings and needs.
| Tactic | Example |
| Consoling | “It’s okay, you tried your best.” |
| Advising | “If it were me, I would…” |
| One-upping | “That’s not so bad, I’ve been through way worse.” |
| Storytelling | “That reminds me of when my aunt went through the same thing…” |
| Shutting down | “Cheer up! It’ll all work out.” |
| Sympathizing | “I’m so sorry. You poor thing.” |
| Interrogating | “How did it happen?” |
| Explaining | “I was only late because of traffic.” |
| Correcting | “Are you sure that’s what he said?” |
| Educating | “You can learn a lot from this experience.” |
All of these tactics involve engaging with someone intellectually, turning them into a project rather than a person. Even mental health professionals often make the mistake of responding to someone’s pain with analysis rather than empathy.
Nonviolent Communication provides a helpful framework for maintaining empathic presence when people express themselves. Just like in expressive communication, when we listen to others in a nonviolent way, we focus on four things: observations, feelings, needs, and requests. Keep in mind that people are always expressing their feelings and needs when they communicate. Focus on listening for those feelings and needs, even when they’re expressed indirectly. For example, if someone says, “I hate my job,” they may really be trying to say, “I feel empty at work because I need recognition when I do a good job.”
When you focus on someone’s feelings and needs, be careful not to take your own interpretations of their words as fact. Instead, check in frequently to make sure you understand exactly what they’re saying. This prevents miscommunications from spiraling out of control and gives the other person a chance to make sure they’re being heard correctly (which ultimately saves everyone time and struggle). To do this, try paraphrasing the feelings and needs you hear in the form of a question.
To illustrate this, let’s look at an example based on a real-life married couple who attended a workshop on NVC techniques. When the husband told his wife, “You never listen,” Rosenberg challenged her to listen for the feelings and needs behind the statement and respond with empathy. Here were her first few attempts:
You can also ask paraphrasing questions to clarify what someone is specifically observing (“Are you reacting to your boss skipping the meeting?”) or what they are requesting (“Are you wanting me to help you with this assignment?”).
Notice how these questions are different from questions like “How do you feel about that?” or “What do you need me to do?” These questions are well-intentioned but in practice can sound like analysis, which makes the listener feel like a problem you’re trying to solve. Instead, asking paraphrasing questions makes it clear that you’re really listening and empathizing with someone’s experience, even if you don’t interpret them correctly on the first try.
Paraphrasing is especially important when someone is expressing powerful emotions because the person is particularly vulnerable. In that state, empathy is crucial because offering advice or criticism is likely to make someone feel unheard and unsafe. This applies to both what you say and how you say it. In an emotionally vulnerable situation, people are extremely sensitive to any hint of criticism, even through subtle vocal or body language cues.
Again, this may be especially difficult when someone’s feelings and needs are buried beneath insults and hateful words. Thankfully, over time, focusing on those feelings and needs makes it easier to see people as hurting human beings rather than irredeemable monsters, which ultimately takes away their power to hurt or dehumanize us.
When you paraphrase someone’s feelings and needs back to them, you act as a mirror that lets them take a deeper look at their own inner world than they may have otherwise. That kind of introspection can trigger new insights as buried feelings are unearthed. As the listener, this may sound like the speaker has switched topics entirely, but that doesn’t mean they no longer need you to listen empathically—in fact, those deeper wounds are the ones most in need of true empathy. For that reason, it’s important to continue listening without offering solutions for as long as it takes.
Once someone feels fully heard, there’s often a palpable sense of relief for both the speaker and the listener. You may notice a release of physical tension in your own body as the speaker winds down. When the process is fully worked through, the speaker will naturally stop talking as they sense their feelings and needs being fully understood.
It’s not always necessary or helpful to paraphrase someone’s feelings and needs verbally, especially if directly acknowledging the person’s emotions would cause embarrassment because of cultural norms. For example, Rosenberg once met a man who used NVC to transform his relationship with his father without ever paraphrasing out loud, because for a son to discuss his father’s emotions directly was socially taboo in traditional Chinese culture. In that case, it’s even more important to listen carefully for the feelings and needs being expressed, since you may not get the chance to check your understanding.
There are times when true empathy is impossible, particularly when you’re starved for empathy yourself or worn out from empathizing with others. Likewise, if you’re feeling attacked or insulted by the other person, it’s natural to be pushed into a fight or flight response that blocks empathy. If the topic affects you personally, it may not be possible to maintain focus on the other person’s feelings and needs. Recognizing when you’re not able to give someone the kind of empathy that NVC requires is an important part of the process. In that case, you have a few options.
Practicing empathic listening can feel strange, especially when we’re not used to talking about emotions at all. But mastering this skill is important because empathy is an extremely powerful tool to create healing, improve performance, defuse danger, revive conversations, and provide a sense of safety.
The power of empathy affects both the speaker and the listener. When you offer someone deep, focused attention and keep your focus on their feelings and needs, it often becomes much easier to relate to them on a human level. For the speaker, having those feelings and needs fully heard and understood often provides enormous relief—in many conflicts, true empathy may be all it takes to fully resolve the problem.
Empathy is powerful even when there isn’t a conflict to resolve. For example, when several university faculty members learned the skills of NVC and began listening empathically to their students, the students responded by opening up about their personal lives. The relief of feeling heard and the trust created within that relationship led to students completing more work than they could before.
Practicing NVC requires vulnerability, which is especially difficult when there is an uneven power dynamic at play. This makes the college faculty example all the more impressive, because the professors were willing to let go of their authority figure personas and relate to the students on a common human level. Likewise, when talking to your boss, it might be difficult to open up for fear of seeming presumptuous or admitting to anything that might compromise your work performance. In these situations, empathy can help you transcend hierarchy and relate to each other more genuinely.
Even in situations where we’re on equal footing with another person, empathy can make it easier to connect authentically. In everyday conversation, being vulnerable and opening up about our feelings and needs can be scary. But the more we offer empathy to the other person, the easier that kind of vulnerability becomes, since focusing on that person as a human with feelings and needs just like us makes opening up seem far less intimidating.
In volatile situations where there is potential for violence, the power of empathy to create common ground becomes even more important. For example, Rosenberg tells the story of a young woman who worked at a drug detoxification center and attended several NVC workshops. One night, while working alone, a man walked in off the street demanding a bed—when she explained that all their beds were full, he threw her to the ground and pulled out a knife, screaming that he knew she was lying and that he deserved more respect.
In that situation, the woman’s first instinct was to defend herself by arguing that they truly did not have any beds, but she stopped herself when she remembered her NVC training. Since arguing with an angry person often just escalates the situation, she focused instead on empathizing by reflecting the man’s feelings back to him, beginning with, “It sounds like you’re really angry.” After a full 35 minutes of offering empathy, the man finally got up, put the knife away, and allowed the woman to help him find a room at another detox center.
Empathy can also help with everyday issues like boring, lifeless conversations. Many times, when someone drones on incessantly, tells the same stories over and over, or sticks to banal topics like the weather, it is a sign that they are disconnected from their own feelings and needs in that moment. Interrupting with empathy can help the speaker connect to what they’re really trying to express and revive the conversation for everyone. For example, if a friend is telling you the story of his breakup for the twentieth time, you might interrupt with, “Wow, it sounds like you’re still feeling really hurt because you needed him to show you more respect.”
Of course, interrupting someone while they’re speaking is often considered rude, but in this case, it’s the kind thing to do. The goal is not to talk over someone or shut them up—the goal is to give them the empathy that they may not even realize they’re asking for.
Let’s look at this from the speaker’s perspective. Imagine you’ve been talking to someone who is totally bored with what you’re saying and counting the minutes until they can excuse themselves politely. Would you rather they pretend to listen, or interrupt you to express genuine empathy and their desire to connect? When asked that question, most people would rather be interrupted than humored because no one wants to be a burden or a bore.
Sometimes, it can be more difficult to empathize with silence than with someone’s words. In the face of silence, our storytelling brains invent all sorts of worst-case scenarios for what someone else must be thinking and feeling. NVC challenges us to check those assumptions with the other person rather than assume we can read their mind.
For example, if you share something deeply emotional with someone who turns away with a disgusted look on their face, you may automatically interpret those silent cues as a sign that you’ve overshared or that this person disapproves of you somehow. But if you check those assumptions with empathy—“I’m sensing that you feel disgusted and you’d like me to keep my feelings to myself”—you may discover that their silence had nothing to do with you and everything to do with their own emotions about an experience you reminded them of.
If you sense disgust or rejection in someone’s silence, it can be difficult to empathize. But silence can convey other feelings, too. Maybe you’ve noticed a friend who looks visibly upset but doesn’t want to talk about what’s wrong. Or imagine a teacher pulling a depressed-looking student aside to ask if they’re okay and getting only a shrug in response. In these cases, use empathy to “listen” to what someone is expressing nonverbally and reflect it back to them. This may encourage them to open up, or it may not—either way, what’s important is your ability to stay present and continue giving them your focused attention rather than walking away because you can’t “fix” their emotions.
Sometimes, you may feel so threatened or upset by someone that you’re not able to offer genuine empathy. This exercise will help you make a plan for those situations.
Think of a person or group that violates your values so profoundly that you find them impossible to empathize with. When you’ve interacted with that person or group in the past, what emotions were you feeling?
When you think about that person or group now, what emotions come up?
Thinking about that person or group right now, while you’re not directly interacting with them, do you still find it impossible to empathize with them? What feelings or needs of theirs can you identify?
The next time you have to interact with this person or group, how can you show yourself some emergency first-aid empathy?
If you make a request of someone and they refuse, empathizing with their reasoning can stop you from accidentally turning the request into a demand. Try it out below.
Think of the last time you asked someone to do something and they refused (this could be a child, a friend, an employee, or someone else). Why do you think they refused?
What do you think they were feeling at the time?
What do you think they were needing?
Can you think of a time when you experienced that same feeling or need? Looking back, how did you want other people to respond to you in that moment? (For example, if you were feeling sad or needing affection, maybe you wanted someone to give you a hug.)
How does empathizing with this person’s feelings or needs change how you feel about or interpret their denial of your request? How will you approach similar situations in the future?
Up to this point, we’ve explored how to use Nonviolent Communication in dialogue with others. You can also use NVC as a way to approach your own self-talk. Many of us tend towards violent communication filled with judgment and criticism when we speak to ourselves, which makes it even more difficult to relate compassionately to others. Our ability to connect to other people stems from our core humanity and the belief that there is some spark of good in everyone; when we lose sight of our own inherent worthiness, we risk extinguishing that spark in ourselves.
Healing those internal wounds is especially difficult because cultural programming actively discourages talking about feelings and needs. The imperialist roots of the English language play a role as well—we use “needy” as an insult and view anyone who says “I need” or “I feel” as selfish or immature. Over time, we internalize those judgments and learn to distance ourselves from our own needs as much as possible.
Making mistakes is part of being human, but many of us chronically punish ourselves for not being perfect. Over time, that critical self-talk can evolve into debilitating shame that prevents us from showing up authentically for others. Shame is an unproductive emotion that blocks our ability to learn and grow from our mistakes.
It’s true that guilt and shame can sometimes motivate us to change our behavior. We may even see it as simply “tough love.” But even when we have good intentions or are trying to respond more compassionately to other people, shame is a selfish motivation—we do good for others to alleviate our own pain, not out of genuine care for their wellbeing.
Creating a more compassionate internal dialogue begins just like interpersonal NVC—by withholding judgment. Self-judgment is easiest to catch when it takes the form of criticism (like “I can’t believe I did that, I’m so stupid!”). The more insidious form of moralistic self-judgment comes in the form of “should”—as in, “I should have known better” or “I really should exercise more.” These statements are demands, not true requests, because we know we’ll punish ourselves severely if we don’t comply.
To heal your relationship with yourself, treat it just like any other relationship by focusing on feelings and needs. When other people act in ways that contradict our values, NVC asks us to empathize with them and understand the feelings and unmet needs that drove that behavior. You can do the same for yourself: Instead of thinking, “I’m so stupid,” practice thinking, “What unmet need prompted me to act that way?”
Bringing awareness to your unmet needs gives you a healthy, compassionate way to grow from the experience rather than getting mired in self-hatred. In the language of NVC, this process is known as “mourning,” and it can be a very emotional experience as shame and self-hatred give way to sadness, disappointment, fear, or grief. Allow yourself to feel all those emotions about what happened without raking yourself over the coals for it.
Transforming your inner dialogue using NVC is powerful. For example, the author once worked with a deeply depressed woman who was wrestling with her choice to stay at home with her children. At the root of her depression were two judgmental voices: the “career woman,” who told the woman she was wasting her education by not working and that she should be doing more with her life, and the “responsible mother,” who told her she couldn’t possibly handle the responsibility of being a working mother. These voices were a constant source of internal criticism that left the woman feeling miserable and stuck.
As a first step to alleviate that misery, Rosenberg asked the woman to translate the words of those critical voices into the four steps of NVC: observation, identifying feelings, identifying needs, and making requests. The simplest way to do this is to phrase the issue as, “When a happens, I feel b because I need c. Therefore, I would like d.” See how you can rewrite those critical voices using this formula:
| Critical Self-Talk | NVC Statement |
| I’m wasting my education. I should do more with my life. | When I spend this much time at home, I feel depressed because I need professional fulfillment. Therefore, I would like to get a part-time job. |
| I can’t handle the responsibility of being a working parent. | When I think about going back to work, I feel scared and overwhelmed because I need to know my kids are still being taken care of. Therefore, I would like to find quality child care options. |
Rephrasing those inner judgments in the language of NVC takes the focus off blame and criticism by acknowledging the reality of the situation, examining feelings and needs nonjudgmentally, and using those observations to make a plan. Empathizing with your needs and feelings helps you naturally move toward a solution instead of staying stuck in a cycle of self-judgment.
You can also use this technique when those inner voices direct their criticism at other people. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you might instinctively react with anger and blame—which, over time, takes a toll on your physical and mental health. Instead of blaming others for those feelings, try showing yourself empathy: “I’m feeling terrified because we almost crashed just now. I wish people would drive more cautiously because I need to feel safe.” Empathy can act as a pressure release and defuse the stress of the situation.
The way you speak to yourself is only one part of being self-compassionate. Another important part is your external reality—the choices you make about how to spend your time. Rosenberg’s advice is, “Don’t do anything that isn’t play!” In other words, joy and compassion should motivate your choices rather than duty, shame, or obligation.
At first glance, this may sound like a ridiculous philosophy, or one that’s only possible for millionaires. The rest of us are accustomed to working hard on tasks we dread; we see that as normal because our culture encourages the “daily grind.” But NVC recognizes that constant drudgery as a form of self-violence because of the mental, physical, and spiritual toll it takes on us. That doesn’t mean you should quit your job and move to a tropical island somewhere—it’s about transforming your relationship with the way you spend your energy.
Language creates and reinforces the way we think about our everyday lives. When you say you “have to” do something, it immediately becomes a chore; in contrast, if you “choose to” do something, you acknowledge that you are responsible for the way you spend your energy. Transforming “have to” into “choose to” is a powerful, practical tool for increasing self-compassion and turning obligation into play.
Again, turning “have tos” into “choose tos” may seem impossible because some things seem like true obligations—we can’t just choose not to eat or not to go to work. But “choosing to” do something in the context of NVC doesn’t imply that you could simply “choose not to” do it without consequences—it means connecting that choice to the needs and values underlying it. We make active choices about even the most basic activities: We choose to eat because we value staying alive and healthy; we choose to go to work because we value having a place to live (which costs money). Evaluating the needs and values behind the choices we dread gives us an opportunity to either change the situation or change our mindset.
Notice that the need behind the choice to go to work isn’t “to make money.” Money, itself, is not a “need”—it’s a strategy for meeting a much more fundamental need. If you have no other strategies to meet that need, taking responsibility for your choice to go work (rather than miss rent) can at least help you feel less helpless in the situation. If you do have other strategies for meeting that need for a place to live, becoming aware of the motivations behind your choice to work might prompt you to meet that need in a different way.
Take a moment to think about the things you do regularly that feel like “have tos.” For some of them, identifying the underlying need or value might help you reframe the act as play. For example, maybe you dread having to drive your kids to school, but you realize that you choose to do that because you value quality time with them. That naturally shifts your mindset to one of gratitude for having the chance to spend that time together.
On the other hand, some of the needs and values underlying your choices may be less joyful, like the need to gain approval, escape punishment, avoid shame and guilt, or fulfill a sense of duty. If you discover one of these motivations, you have the same two options: Change the situation or change your mindset.
For example, if you realize you hate putting on makeup and only do it to gain others’ approval, you might decide to prioritize self-compassion and change that habit. On the other hand, if you realize you only pay taxes to avoid punishment, you could choose to change your mindset by focusing instead on the essential services your money supports (like hospitals, schools, and roads) and all the people that might benefit from them.
Many people seek out therapy to help tame their inner critic. Today, most therapists are trained in methods that are compatible with NVC, but that wasn’t always the case. Until the mid-20th century, clinical detachment was the cardinal rule of psychotherapy. Therapists were trained to keep their feet firmly planted in the realm of analysis, not empathy, and to think of themselves as a mirror—an inanimate object that reflects clients’ feelings back to them in an organized way.
This practice continued until prominent psychologists began to question whether clinical detachment was really the best way to help someone deal with emotional difficulties. They worried that the hierarchical patient/therapist relationship prevented therapists from being authentically present with their clients, which in turn prevented clients from feeling fully seen and heard. When clients expressed vulnerability, they were met with cool detachment, which often discouraged clients from sharing more.
Psychology has evolved since that time, and modern graduate programs now train aspiring therapists to respond to their clients with empathy and to focus on feelings instead of analyzing and diagnosing. This isn’t universal—in medical contexts where a particular diagnosis determines treatment options or insurance coverage, psychiatrists and psychologists often spend more time debating diagnoses than empathizing with a person’s feelings.
There is a big difference between the diagnostic mindset and the Nonviolent Communication mindset. A psychologist who is focused on diagnosing someone will think in terms of “What’s wrong with this person?” In the same situation, a psychologist practicing NVC would think, “What is this person feeling? What do they need? And which of my feelings and needs are being triggered by this situation?”
Showing up authentically like this requires the therapist to be vulnerable, which evens out the balance of power in the relationship. Obviously, therapists still need to be careful not to overshare or to take up clients’ time with their own issues, but overall, using NVC in a therapeutic relationship is helpful. Making a genuine human connection with a client in pain can be more powerful than years of detached analysis.
Practice self-compassion by reframing obligations as choices.
List one to three tasks you do regularly that you don’t enjoy (like doing laundry, exercising, driving in traffic, and so on).
What need or value motivates the choice to engage in those tasks? (For example, if you hate doing the laundry but choose to do it anyway, you might connect that choice to a need for clean and appropriate clothing.)
For each of those three choices, does changing your mindset alleviate some of the dread? If not, what changes could you make to the tasks themselves that would help?
It’s not always easy to talk back to your inner critic. Luckily, NVC provides an easy formula to turn those judgments into solutions.
Think of the last time you judged yourself harshly. What was your inner critic saying about you?
Now, try rephrasing that criticism using the NVC formula: “When a happens, I feel b because I need c. Therefore, I would like d.”
If you reframed all your self-critical thoughts this way, how would it change the way you see yourself?
How would it change the way you interact with others?
How could you remind yourself to practice this skill in your everyday life?
NVC is a helpful tool for any type of communication, but it is especially useful for conflict resolution, mediation, and counseling others. In the author’s years of experience applying NVC with all kinds of people and all types of conflicts, he found that almost every conflict can eventually be resolved if everyone commits to following NVC principles.
In this context, “conflict resolution” refers to the process of resolving conflicts between yourself and another person; “mediation” refers to helping others resolve a conflict in which you are not involved.
Establishing a human connection between the people involved in a conflict is the most important part of Nonviolent Communication. Without that connection, none of the other steps will be useful because neither party will be motivated to truly understand the other. In fact, creating a genuine human connection is the true goal of NVC—either party getting what they want is a byproduct of that relationship. To successfully resolve a conflict with NVC, everyone involved must understand and agree to that goal.
The emphasis on human connection differentiates the NVC approach from traditional mediation and conflict resolution techniques. In traditional mediation, the mediator’s goal is to get everyone to agree to a single solution. Establishing any kind of genuine connection between the people involved is out of their purview—many mediators even see the NVC approach as a form of psychotherapy, not mediation. In reality, the NVC approach to conflict resolution is much more efficient: Instead of offering solutions first and asking for feedback, NVC focuses on what both parties need and creates solutions that will meet those needs in full.
When the people on both sides of a conflict establish a human connection and a sense of mutual respect, they’ll understand that their own needs and the other person’s needs are equally important. Therefore, the goal of conflict resolution in NVC is not compromise. In a compromise, neither party’s needs are fully met—even if the immediate problem is smoothed over, those remaining unmet needs will only cause further problems down the road.
Throughout the entire process of resolving a conflict using NVC, both parties should avoid language that labels, blames, or implies wrongness, since that kind of language often brings empathic conversations to a halt.
The NVC conflict resolution process has five steps. (As noted, the first two steps are reversible—the important thing is to focus on giving everyone a chance to express their needs before moving on to solutions.)
In this step, be careful to differentiate between needs and strategies. Needs are the fundamental physical and psychological resources that sustain life, like water, food, meaning, and support. Needs can be met with a number of different strategies—specific actions that fulfill a need. It’s sometimes difficult to tell needs and strategies apart because we’re not used to openly and vulnerably sharing our needs. The fundamental difference is that need statements don’t refer to any person doing any particular action.
For example, the statement “I need you to leave me alone for a minute” is a strategy, not a statement of need, because it references someone doing something. A true need statement in that situation might be “I need quiet in order to focus.” That statement leaves the door open for many possible solutions (like earplugs or going to a different room) instead of mandating a certain action.
It can be tempting to couch need statements in intellectual analysis by starting a statement with “I think” instead of “I need.” Unfortunately, people often interpret analysis as criticism, which can shut down the conversation. For example, saying “I need to express myself more clearly so I can feel understood” instead of “I think you’re misunderstanding me” avoids the analysis trap and keeps the focus on needs.
If the person you’re communicating with isn’t practicing NVC, they might express their needs in more indirect ways. Silence, rejection, judgmental comments, and nonverbal cues are all veiled statements of need. By recognizing these and translating them, you can keep the conversation flowing nonviolently even if the person you’re talking to isn’t playing along.
Identifying needs expressed through judgment or silence usually involves a degree of guessing. People often use the same cues to express different needs or emotions (like sighing heavily to express exhaustion, frustration, or sadness), so it’s important to check that guess with the other person. This might be a continual process, since most people are more likely to respond with a second indirect expression rather than a clear “Yes, you interpreted my needs correctly.”
Once you’ve expressed your own needs and identified the other person’s needs, it’s helpful to check that you both understand each other correctly. We often skip this step because we incorrectly assume that when one person clearly expresses a need, the other person hears that need exactly the same way.
In practice, this process is a simple but powerful way to avoid further miscommunication down the line. After you’ve listened to someone’s needs, paraphrase those needs back to them to check your understanding; after you’ve expressed your own needs, you can ask them to do the same.
When people are hurting, they often can’t hear the needs and feelings of others until their own pain has been recognized and understood. The conversation can’t move forward until they get the empathy they need (but just like in any conversation, if you’re feeling too many strong emotions yourself to provide that empathy, it’s best to step away and give yourself some emergency first-aid empathy first). If you skip ahead to the solution phase, the underlying feelings and needs will linger—even if you resolve the conflict on a practical level, the relationship will suffer.
Remember, solutions in NVC are courses of action that meet everyone’s needs rather than asking people to compromise. Propose solutions using present language by requesting what you need in this moment in order to move forward. This keeps the conversation moving because it gives the other person the chance to either agree or refuse right in the moment. This creates an immediate feedback cycle—if they refuse, you can continue problem solving—rather than having to resume the conversation days or weeks later.
For example, instead of saying, “I want you to come to the party with me this weekend” and then having to wait several days to see if the person follows through, you can say, “I’d like you to tell me if you’d be willing to go to the party with me this weekend.”
It’s also helpful to use positive action language when proposing a solution (by asking for what you do want right now instead of what you don’t want) so that your request is clear and specific. However, word choice is important, as some positive action language is easy to mistake for a judgment or attack. For example, “I want you to listen when I speak” or “I want you to be responsible” feel like accusations.
To avoid this, focus your request on things that can be immediately seen or heard. Imagine your conversation is being filmed—your requests should be for things that would be picked up on camera (unlike “listening” or “being responsible,” which are abstract ideas).
Remember, a true request is one that the person is free to say “no” to without fear of punishment. If they do refuse your request, listen for the need behind that refusal that is preventing them from saying yes, then try to propose solutions that will also meet that need.
Let’s use a real-life example to illustrate this process. In one of Rosenberg’s NVC workshops, he mediated a conflict for a married couple who had been arguing about their finances for almost forty years. He began by asking the wife if she could identify her husband’s needs in this conflict. Her answers reflect common mistakes people make when identifying needs:
At this point, Rosenberg intervened and asked the husband to express his needs directly. The husband responded with “She’s a wonderful wife, but she’s totally irresponsible with money.” That’s a diagnosis, not a statement of need. Rosenberg listened for the underlying need and took a guess by asking the man if he was afraid because he needs to provide for his family economically. His guess was correct—they’d finally identified the husband’s underlying need.
After the husband finally expressed his need clearly, Rosenberg asked the wife to repeat that need back to him. She responded, “Just because I overdrew the checking account a few times doesn’t mean it will happen again.” This is self-defense, and it’s a common response that indicates someone is in too much pain to really hear someone else’s statement of need. In this case, the wife was so hurt from years of feeling distrusted that she wasn’t open to hearing her husband’s needs until that pain was validated. Rosenberg empathized by paraphrasing her feelings and needs around the issue of money.
A few minutes of focused empathy didn’t instantly erase forty years of hurt, but it did provide enough reassurance that the woman’s pain was being heard that she was able to finally hear what her husband was saying. In turn, she was able to express her own needs and clarify that her husband was hearing them correctly.
Once the two spouses had fully expressed their own needs and verified that they each understood the needs of the other, coming up with solutions to the problem only took about 20 minutes. Solving a forty-year-old issue in 20 minutes sounds impossible, but it highlights just how much of a conflict isn’t about the issue itself but the needs and feelings of the people involved.
In Nonviolent Communication, a mediator is a third party that helps two people through the five steps of conflict resolution. The mediator keeps the conversation on track by continually refocusing everyone’s attention on feelings, needs, and requests. Mediation can be especially helpful in conflicts where those directly involved are experiencing emotions strong enough to prevent them from listening with empathy.
For mediation to be effective, the mediator must establish trust by reassuring both parties that they are not taking sides. Even if they have personal opinions about the conflict, the mediator’s job is not to secure a particular outcome but to help both parties express their needs, identify each other’s needs, and brainstorm solutions that will meet all those needs.
Mediating a conflict using NVC can be difficult because people often interpret the mediator’s empathy as taking sides. Empathy is the mediator’s best tool for helping both people feel heard enough to effectively communicate. For example, the mediator might respond to an accusation of taking sides by saying, “It sounds like you’re feeling annoyed, and that you need to know you’ll get a chance to say your piece?” This brief detour can help everyone stay open to communication instead of retreating into self-defense.
Informal mediation happens when someone intervenes in a situation and plays the role of mediator without being asked. While you may not want to make a habit of barging into other people’s disputes, it’s sometimes necessary to intervene if you suspect that one person could somehow harm the other (for example, if an argument between your coworkers starts to escalate into shouting).
To be helpful as an informal mediator, you need to be well-practiced in all the steps of NVC and particularly skilled at interpreting needs that are expressed through aggression, derision, or violence.
If you find yourself in the role of informal mediator (assuming there is no immediate threat of physical violence), your first priority is to empathize with the aggressor in the situation. If someone is already worked up to the point of shouting, making judgments about their behavior will only escalate the situation and put the other person at risk. Instead, listen for the feelings and needs behind the aggressive person’s behavior and show genuine empathy for those experiences. Once the person feels fully understood, they’ll be calm enough to work through the other steps of NVC conflict resolution.
One of the mediator’s biggest responsibilities is ensuring that everyone gets a chance to fully express their needs, which can be especially difficult when tensions run high and people talk over one another. In that case, it’s helpful to keep a running list of what’s been expressed and by whom. As a bonus, making a note of what was said last on a whiteboard or large paper can be a visual cue that helps everyone involved stay on topic and be reassured that they’ve been heard.
Additionally, it’s important to keep the conversation focused on the present. People in conflict may continually bring up things that happened in the past or their demands for the future. Keeping the focus on what everyone feels and needs right now helps move the conversation toward resolution rather than dwelling on old issues or future possibilities.
In particularly thorny conflicts, people often get stuck in a cycle of repeating their position over and over and making no real progress. The mediator can help break that cycle by using role-play to represent the needs and experience of both sides. To start, the mediator will assume the role of one person and state that person’s needs and feelings to the other. This has two benefits: It reassures the person being represented that their needs are being understood, and it makes it easier for the other party to hear those needs because they’re being spoken by a neutral third party.
To keep things even, the mediator would then switch parts and repeat the process. The mediator should check in periodically with “the director” (the person they’re portraying) to make sure they’re on track. You don’t need to be an actor to use role-play—the important part is to tap into a common humanity and try to understand what that person is feeling and needing.
Role-play can also be a useful tool if the parties aren’t willing to meet in person. In that case, you can role play with each person individually, film it, and then show that filmed role play to the other party. This isn’t as effective as in-person mediation, but it can be a helpful tool if necessary.
If a mediation gets especially heated, the mediator might need to interrupt in order to keep the conversation on track. One way to do this is to repeat “excuse me” as many times (and as loudly) as necessary. When the shouting stops and you have the group’s attention, refocus the conversation on the most recent expression of needs that hasn’t been fully addressed. If you suspect you might need to interrupt the group frequently to keep the conversation productive, it helps to clarify in advance that you’ll only interrupt to keep the process moving and that everyone will get a chance to express themselves.
Historically, some groups promoting nonviolence have (consciously or unconsciously) used that approach to silence the anger of people experiencing oppression and unfair treatment. The implicit message was that being angry about being mistreated was part of the problem, so members of oppressed groups should just accept discrimination for the sake of keeping the peace. The irony is that demanding someone repress their feelings is an act of violence in itself. Instead, NVC outlines a way to honor the feeling of anger and express it fully—and in a nonviolent way.
Just like with any feeling in Nonviolent Communication, fully expressing anger starts by taking responsibility for it. To do that, we have to accept that other people are never the true cause of our anger. Causal language (like in the phrase “He made me angry”) implies that someone’s behavior directly created your emotion—in reality, what you feel is the result of how you interpret that behavior.
To illustrate this, imagine you have a friend over for dinner and they accidentally break a glass. If the glass was expensive or had sentimental value, you might be furious; if it was cheap or brought back unpleasant memories, you might not be bothered. Either way, how you feel about the glass determines whether you get angry—not the broken glass itself.
In the logic of NVC, we unconsciously cause our own anger by making judgments about other people and their behavior. In other words, when you feel angry, you’re not reacting to someone’s behavior—you’re reacting to your own unmet needs, and that person’s behavior is just the stimulus that provoked the reaction.
This doesn’t mean anger is something you choose to turn on or off depending on the situation. The process of turning an external stimulus into a feeling of anger plays out unconsciously, and that anger often disappears the moment you decide to tune into your needs and emotions instead.
For example, if you were unexpectedly fired from your job, you might rage about how your boss is an idiot and attribute your fury to his decision. In reality, your boss is just the stimulus—the cause of that anger is the fact that your needs for financial security and a positive self-image are now being unmet. In that case, anger is a secondary emotion that obscures your fear and sadness about not being able to financially provide for yourself or your family.
Making that distinction between stimulus and cause is especially difficult in a culture that discourages emotional vulnerability. It’s much easier and more culturally acceptable to be outraged after losing a job than to be honest about being afraid or dejected. The English language blurs the line between stimulus and cause even further—we use phrases like “You make me angry” and “I’m upset because he did that” to place the blame on others rather than taking responsibility for our own emotions.
It can be especially hard to take responsibility for anger when it feels like “righteous indignation” or in situations where you’ve been directly harmed by someone else’s behavior. In NVC, that anger can be either a harmful distraction or a helpful tool depending on how you respond to it.
On a philosophical level, staying stuck in anger isn’t consistent with NVC because it requires committing to a moralistic judgment of someone else. Anger stems from the judgment that a certain behavior is “wrong,” and that kind of judgment hinders our ability to authentically connect with someone else, which is the goal of NVC. Refraining from judging someone as “wrong” doesn’t mean you endorse their behavior—it just means you’re choosing to frame it in terms of your own feelings and needs instead of name-calling.
On a practical level, anger can also be a helpful indicator of an unmet need—noticing the bodily sensations that go along with anger can act as a reminder to observe and identify our feelings and needs. However, once you’re aware of that unmet need, anger makes it even harder to get that need met because it distracts you with a focus on punishment and blame.
For example, if you hear a relative make a racist comment, your automatic response might be anger. Once you notice that feeling, you have two options: Stick with the anger or dig deeper for the underlying need. If you choose to stick with anger you might find yourself in a shouting match with your relative that ultimately goes nowhere. On the other hand, if you choose to look for the unmet need and approach it with empathy, you may discover that your anger stems from a need for all people to be treated with fairness and respect. If that’s the case, shouting at your relative or calling him a racist is unlikely to help you meet that need. Armed with that awareness, you can now consciously choose to approach the conversation with empathy and have a better chance at meeting your needs.
The example above is an ideal scenario. In reality, resisting the urge to lash out when someone says something ignorant or derogatory is easier said than done. Anger is a powerful emotion, so like every aspect of NVC, this requires extensive practice before it becomes a habit. But if the goal is to create a world in which people are treated fairly, anger isn’t the best strategy. People immediately shut down when they feel judged or blamed, so they’re far less open to hearing our needs and feelings.
Before you can fully express anger, you need to be sure the other person is in a position where they’re able to truly listen to that expression. In other words, you need to offer empathy first before you can expect to be heard empathically. This is one of the most difficult parts of dealing with anger nonviolently because it runs so counter to our fight-or-flight impulse. If your uncle starts making racist comments at the dinner table, offering empathy may be the last thing you feel like doing—but launching into expressing your anger without that step sets the conversation up to fail.
If you feel too worked up to offer empathy at first, it may be best to take a break and offer yourself some emergency first-aid empathy before engaging. In practice, this means allowing yourself a moment to feel the full extent of your anger without judging yourself for being angry or thinking judgmental thoughts.
Although it’s difficult, offering empathy to someone who makes you angry helps defuse the situation by reconnecting you to a sense of common humanity. If you’re able to observe without judging, identify the person’s feelings, and connect to their needs, you’ll likely discover that you have something in common with them because all humans have the same fundamental needs. Connecting in this way instead of focusing just on the person’s opinions makes it much easier to engage respectfully.
After offering empathy, there are four steps to expressing anger in NVC:
For example, here’s how this process might play out after being fired unexpectedly.
Even if you’re careful to express your feelings in a way that shows you’re taking responsibility for them, other people may hear that expression as blame. Since blame puts people into either self-defense or self-deprecation and shuts down their ability to listen empathically, slow down and clarify if you sense someone feeling blamed.
Unfortunately, we can’t always resolve conflicts with conversation, especially if there’s a threat of immediate harm (for example, if you witness two teenagers launch into a fist fight). In that case, it may be necessary to use physical force in order to keep people safe. The NVC paradigm recognizes that force is sometimes necessary to prevent immediate harm, and that force can be a tool of nonviolence as long as it is used protectively and not punitively.
To understand this distinction, imagine a parent playing outside with their young child when the child suddenly darts into the street. Physically intervening by grabbing the child’s arm and pulling them back to safety is an example of protective force because the inten is to prevent immediate bodily harm. The parent’s sole focus is protecting their child, and they aren’t making any judgments about the child’s behavior.
On the other hand, if the parent then turns around and spanks the child for running into the street in the first place, that’s a punitive use of force—the parent has evaluated the child’s behavior, judged it as “bad,” and determined that the child deserves to be punished with force.
Protective force can take many forms in addition to physically restraining someone who is about to harm themselves or others. For example, in schools, the use of a “do-nothing room” where students can go if they’re not ready to work is a form of protective force. Students aren’t physically forced into the room—they can ask to go, or be asked by a teacher to go, if they’re causing a distraction for other students. (“Force,” in this case, refers to the distractions caused by rowdy students being contained to the do-nothing room.) The intent is to protect students who do want to work, not to punish students for being off task.
What truly sets protective force apart from punitive force is the set of assumptions behind it. When we use force protectively, the assumption is that the threat of danger is a result of ignorance, not malice. In this context, “ignorance” can take several forms:
All of these definitions of ignorance acknowledge that when people endanger themselves or others, they do so because they have unmet needs (for justice, attention, medical care, and so on), not because they are fundamentally bad people.
On the other hand, the assumption behind the use of punitive force is that some people are evil, and when they do things we disagree with, they deserve to be punished. The punishment should be severe enough to make them really suffer because only suffering will make them repent and change their behavior. These assumptions are the polar opposite of the tenets of NVC, and punishment often backfires by creating hostility or resentment instead of positive behavior change.
Even if punitive force does create behavior change, it’s likely motivated by fear or shame rather than a genuine desire to do better. This distinction matters more than many people realize in day-to-day situations. For example, if you tell your child to clean their room, what do you want their motivation to be for doing it? Do you want them to do it because you hope to instill an appreciation for neatness and help them develop skills they’ll need in adulthood—or because they’re afraid of being punished if they don’t comply? Most parents would choose the former, but using punitive force is more likely to result in the latter.
Punitive force is not always physical. Using blame or name-calling as punishment is a form of punitive force because it assigns a value judgment to a person or their behavior. Withholding privileges can also qualify as punitive force when the intent is to punish someone and ultimately make them change their behavior.
Corporal punishment is a type of punitive force that is mostly directed at children. Any use of physical force on a child for the purpose of “teaching them a lesson” is corporal punishment—including spanking. Some parents swear by spanking as an effective method to alter their children’s behavior. They think of spanking as a genuine act of love because it prevents their children from doing things that could be dangerous and provides the strict limits that generally make children feel safe.
The flaw in this argument is that viewing spanking as a loving act requires logical reasoning, which children haven’t yet developed. For a child, there is nothing loving about spanking—it just hurts. Over time, repeated experiences with spanking send the message that violence is an acceptable way to solve problems.