Those Triggering Words of Shame

Prepare Yourself to Hear Upsetting Words

The Conversation After a Disagreement

The reason it is so important to take the time to come back into equanimity after being emotionally triggered is so you can talk to the other person in a way that will feel caring and open. When we are triggered, there is no way we can be caring and open. For one thing, when people are triggered, it feels like a threat to the brain. The older mammalian part of the brain switches into high gear to either get you out of there or to fight your way out. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain instrumental in empathy, understanding, caring, and thoughtfulness literally shuts down. So one's inability to listen and be understanding when triggered has nothing to do with morals! We are just made to streamline into action.

Therefore, it is critical to get the prefrontal cortex back online before trying to repair a relationship after a disagreement. Self-empathy and reflection as we just did in earlier posts can only occur with the help of the prefrontal cortex, so by doing self-empathy and reflection you are getting your whole brain working again.
That calmness you feel now is brought to you by the prefrontal cortex's ability to understand your daughter's side, your own side, remember past events, and creatively think of new ways to approach the problem.

However, one thing that is very important to remember before you call your daughter: she is probably still triggered. The exercises I had you do for self-empathy and self-reflection are designed to get your whole brain integrated again. Your daughter has probably been doing the Amygdala Loop, my name for when you get triggered and then you think thoughts that trigger you more. The brain perceives even more threat and releases even more chemicals for fight or flight, emotions fly higher, and then you have more thoughts that seem to confirm your bad feelings and voila! caught in a loop. An example: I'm hurt, I need to get away. She will hurt me again. I need to stay away. She will hurt me forever more, I need to leave permanently. I've even known people to still be in that emotional loop twenty years later. If the subject is brought up, they react exactly as if it had just happened!

So expect your daughter to still be triggered. That's why in the first part of the conversation, you are going to essentially do with her what you just did for yourself when you self empathized. I'll step you through helping someone by empathizing with them next week.

The Turn Around

Byron Katie's 4 Steps end with turning the original thought around, so that one see it quite differently.
The belief that my daughter doesn't understand my side can be turned around to I don't understand my daughter's side. Could that be just as true as the first belief?

Yes. I can see that. I could definitely see how it would look that way from her perspective.

When you talked to her last, did you listen to her talk about her side of things?

Not really. I was so upset. I just cut her off. Wow. I guess I did the exact thing to her that I think she did to me.

In fact she may have the same hurt feelings you have and she may be waiting for you to call.

That's ironic. We are both going through the same thing.

Now, check into how you feel at this moment. Are you as upset with your daughter as you were at the start?

No, I feel a lot better. I feel like I understand where she is coming from and I sympathize. I also understand where I am coming from and I sympathize with myself. I feel calm and actually, compassionate.

That's wonderful. You've just used two wonderful processes for regaining your own emotional balance and perspective. The first process involves empathizing with yourself and the second process involves reframing your perspective. Both together are absolutely amazing for transforming emotional pain.
Tomorrow we can talk about how to approach your daughter.

My Daughter Doesn't Understand My side

Continuing from yesterday's post:
Do you believe that your daughter doesn't understand you?

Yes.

Byron Katie's 4 steps asks specifically: Do you think it is true that your daughter doesn't understand your side?

Yes, I definitely don't think she does.

The second step is to ask if, after thinking it over, you still think that thought is true?

I do. After the last time we talked, I know that she doesn't.

The 3rd step in Katie's 4 steps is to ask how you feel when you think about how your daughter doesn't understand you.

I feel really sad...depressed...I don't want to do anything. I feel really lonely.

Now the 4th step asks you to imagine that you could not think the thought that your daughter doesn't understand you. Imagine that thought could not exist for you, how would you feel then?

If I couldn't think that my daughter didn't understand me? That's hard to imagine. Well, if for some reason that thought never crossed my mind, I guess I'd feel peaceful and close to my daughter and I probably would just call her.

So you haven't called her?

No, I've been waiting for her to call me and apologize.

So if you couldn't have that thought, you wouldn't wait? You'd just call?

Yeah, I wouldn't be upset with her. I'd just call her like usual.

So that thought is really making a difference in how you treat your daughter?

I hadn't thought of it that way.

The last step in Katie's way of working is to turn around the thought and look at it from another perspective. We will continue with the Turn Around tomorrow.

Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet

The Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet on Byron Katie's website (Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet) invites you to bring up to the surface the thoughts that you might be having about someone or something. Most of the time we bury our more bitter thoughts because we are ashamed of them. Yet, just because you won't let yourself think something like: "she's an irritating busy body" doesn't mean that you don't feel annoyed. The thought just becomes unconscious and continues to operate subliminally.

Byron Katie's worksheet tries to bring those unhappy thoughts to the surface. So when you fill out the worksheet, the more truthful you are about how you really feel, the faster you will be able to heal.


The second question on the worksheet asks: In this situation, how do you want them to change? What do you want them to do? You might answer this question this way: "I want my daughter to call me and tell me that she understands why I am upset. I want her to understand my side of things. I want her to forgive me."


My guess is that the part where you say, "I want her to understand my side of things." reflects a very strong belief that she doesn't understand your side. When I think someone doesn't understand my side of things, I feel very alone and sad. It can be a very lonely thought.


Tomorrow we will go through Katie's steps to reach a different perspective.

Talking to My Daughter and The Work by Byron Katie

Continuing from the last post: So let's say you have felt your feelings and written a compassionate letter to yourself empathizing with the pain you feel around your daughter not calling you. Notice how you are feeling now. I usually notice that my feelings have shifted. I might not feel so afraid or angry anymore. By just allowing feelings to be, they tend to lessen on their own. And once your feelings are less intense, you can start working on your story. The story is what you are telling yourself about your experience. So you might be telling yourself that your daughter will never call you again. That story might then throw you into another bout of emotional suffering.

Byron Katie was a middle aged woman who suffered from addictions and shame. She eventually had a nervous breakdown which required institutional care. One day she woke up from her pit of despair to self-acceptance and self-awareness. To keep her new found peace she discovered a way to look at her mental stories in a new way and she called her steps The Work. I have used her method for my own stories for years. Her method pulled me out of the almost constant sense of shame that I felt. I think it is incredibly effective.

The following is a link to a download called "Judge Your Neighbor" worksheet. Print out the worksheet and fill it out. Tomorrow we can go over her steps towards a different perspective.

www.thework.com/downloads/worksheets/JudgeYourNeighbor_Worksheet.pdf

Question: My Adult Daughter Won't Call

I encountered this question recently:

My adult daughter is upset that her dad and I have separated. She hasn't called me in weeks
and I don't know what to do. How can I get a conversation going with her?

Here's my answer: When a loved one stops communicating it's really painful. When it has happened to me, I've felt loneliness, despair, and even fright. I would guess that you have a lot of the same painful feelings inside of you right now. Before trying to connect with your daughter, I recommend that you work with yourself first. It's important to remember that your daughter is having strong emotions, too. If you try to talk to her now, while you are triggered, chances are you won't be able to give her the attention she needs to work through her feelings with you. The more calm and peaceful you are, the more likely you will be able to reach your daughter.

So the first thing you need to do is allow your feelings full reign. I know it is counterintuitive, but those feelings want to be felt; they carry a message for you. If you push them away, chances are they will keep trying to get your attention. However, as you feel your emotions, name them. You might even want to write them down in a journal. As you name your feelings, notice where you feel them? Do you feel sadness in your heart? How big is the feeling? What color would it be if it had a color? What shape? What fantasies come up around the feeling? For example: I might fantasize that my child will never call me again. Then I would notice how that thought made my feelings worse. Write down your fantasies and be aware of them.

As you self reflect on your feelings, notice any secondary voice in your head that criticizes you. Does someone keep telling you that you are a bad person, that you are handling this all wrong, that you shouldn't have done....whatever? What you need to hear is a compassionate voice. Can you be that compassionate voice for yourself? For many of us, it's very difficult to find that compassionate voice, so you might write a letter to the most compassionate person you know and then pretend to be that person and write a letter back to yourself. Or you might make a puppet or any object that can play a wise compassionate part. I have a statue of the compassionate Buddha I can use. Have the puppet empathize with your feelings and accept you as the innocent sweet child that you are.

The idea is to give comfort to the stressed part of your mind that houses your young memories of loneliness and shame. That "inner child" is doing the best she can and needs acceptance and understanding. Next week, I 'll show you what you can do next on the way to communication.

TED talk on Empathy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IgOVOPLTYI&feature=relmfu

By leading the Americans in his audience at TEDxPSU step by step through the thought process, sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge: can they understand -- not approve of, but understand -- the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? And by extension, can anyone truly understand and empathize with another? ~ TED


Most of us can easily reach one level of empathy, where we intellectually understand how another person feels. But it takes an open heart and an ability to put ourselves aside for a moment to reach the deepest level of empathy, when you can feel within yourself not only how the other person might feel, but how they might see things from their perspective. Richards does a wonderful job of leading one through to this second level in this 20 minute video. It's a heart opener!

Nonviolent Communication Principle #10

Human beings change: Both our needs and the strategies we have to meet them change over time. Wherever we find ourselves and each other in the present, individually and collectively, all human beings have the capacity to grow and change. ~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

Recently I heard a lecture by Bonnie Badenoch on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOPr8MPzdvA   Bonnie teaches Interpersonal Neurobiology at Portland State University. A lovely lady, really well respected, she focuses on how therapists get trained to do their jobs. In the lecture, she said something that inspired me and gave me a lot hope. She said that the brain has natural self-healing properties. That our mind knows what it needs to heal from past trauma and distorted thinking. Therapists, she said, must be self- aware and self-compassionate in order to stay present with their patients. Therapists need to be receptive to what is being said and non-judgmental.

The training of therapists should focus on healing themselves, because patients need a fully present and compassionate person to talk to. But that's all they need. The therapist doesn't have to fix things or give advice. the therapist doesn't have to lead the healing process, because the brain knows how to find its own healing path. 

If we are wired to find our own health, then we are wired to be able to change. It's exciting to me that we can best help another by being as open and receptive as possible to what is being said. I just love that we have the ability to change towards increasing mental health, especially with the help of an unconditionally loving witness.

Nonviolent Communication Principle #9

Our world offers abundant resources for meeting needs: When human beings are committed to valuing everyone’s needs and have regained their skills for fostering connection and their creativity about sharing resources, we can overcome our current crisis of imagination and find ways to attend to everyone’s basic needs. ~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

In two weeks, the world population will hit 7 billion. I wonder at what point do we drop the notion of separate tribes and embrace a global tribe? What does it take to make the evolutionary leap from protecting my family, my tribe to seeing everyone as part of my group? Because the moment we truly believe that the family in Africa or Greece or China is as valuable as our own personal family, is the moment we distribute goods and services in a completely fair way.

Elisabet Sautoris, biologist and author of Earthdance, writes about the same evolutionary leap happening to bacteria millions of years ago. That at some point, cells realized that there was more to gain by joining together and thinking of the many cells as one body. Our own bodies once were separate organisms that at some point stopped consuming one another and began to cooperate.

When we buy widgets from a poor country in which the people are not paid enough to eat, we are essentially preying on them. Then when some of us empathize with the suffering and demand that the people be paid properly, we make that same amazing evolutionary leap.

Nonviolent Communication Principle #8

Human beings meet needs through interdependent relationships: We meet many of our needs through our relationships with other people and with nature, though some needs are met principally through the quality of our relationship with ourselves and for some, with a spiritual dimension to life. When others’ needs are not met, some needs of our own also remain unmet. 

~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

That last line particularly moves me. I am thinking of all the depression in this country. Not only among people without much, but in people who have security, family, and health. Prozac is a very popular drug. And though the rest of us may not be clinically depressed, most of us have a low lying sense of anxiety from the sense of despair and hopelessness emanating from the people who have no security. We are group animals. We are wired to cared about another and more than that we are wired by mirror neurons to feel another's pain. When we turn on the TV and see starvation or war, we feel it. 

Our natural empathy drives us to join others in such movements as Occupy Now, even when we are personally doing OK. I saw a picture of a woman recently with a sign saying that she was a member of the 1%, so tax her to share with others. And the ferocious methods of the police in New York come out of the pain of seeing people distressed over financial unfairness. The Wall Street investors cannot help but feel that pain and their response is to try to remove the unhappy people. Over and over people demonstrate their need for others to get their needs met. In some ways, people are all Bodhissatvas, we can't find real peace in Nirvana till all are at peace.

Nonviolent Communication Principle #7

Human beings enjoy giving: We inherently enjoy contributing to others when we have connected with our own and others’ needs and can experience our giving as coming from choice. ~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

This seventh principle is perhaps the most difficult one to believe for most people. "Yeah, right, people like to give...sure, I can't get my sister to give me an old shoe."

What I've noticed is that people hate demands and will not give when demanded. On the other hand people love to give when they feel that it is a true gift. Human beings and I think maybe animals in general long for and need autonomy. For example, my cat loves to sit on someone's lap and get the pets.  If she jumps into my son's lap and he doesn't have time to attend to her, he will put her into my lap. From his point of view, she will be happy to get pet no matter who's lap she is in. 100% of the time, Keiko will immediately leap out of my arms. I can almost hear her mind saying, "I didn't choose your lap." Then a few minutes later she will come back to me, but now it was her choice.

We like to choose. When our friend demands our attention, or nags us for something, something inside us says, "I didn't choose that." But if our friend explains what he needs and requests our help, often we choose to give to him. The choice to give feels good, when it is a choice.

Nonviolent Communication Principle #6

All human beings have the capacity for compassion: We have an innate capacity for compassion, though not always the knowledge of how to access it. When we are met with compassion and respect for our autonomy, we tend to have more access to our own compassion for ourselves and for others. Growing compassion contributes directly to our capacity to meet needs peacefully. ~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

The New Yorker has an article about Taylor Swift this week. My musical tastes run in another direction than anything MTV covers, so I was not familiar with the unfortunate incident whereby a drunk fellow artist stormed the stage and grabbed the microphone out of MIss Swift's hands while she was accepting the 2009 Best Video award. He ranted that she should not have won right through her designated time and she lost her chance to thank people for the honor. Later that evening, another artist called Swift to the stage and gave her some of her own time, so that Swift could complete her acceptance speech. 

Through the magic of the internet, I was able to listen to an interview with Swift about the incident that happened two years ago. When asked how she recuperated after such a shaming incident, she spoke about all the caring texts and calls she received from fans, friends, family, and fellow musicians. Their compassion made the evening a wonderful memory instead. 

Nonviolent Communication Principle - #5

Choice is internal: Regardless of the circumstances, we can meet our need for autonomy by making conscious choices based on awareness of needs. ~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

"I need you to support me during exams. Can I count on you to make the dinners and take the dog out?"

"No, sorry. I told you that I'd be busy all month getting ready for the marathon."

"I think an MBA is far more important than a marathon you do every year. It's not like you're one of the leaders; that you will lose some sponsors if you miss a year. I really need your support."

"I train all year for this. It keeps me sane. It's not my dog. When we got together, you said that you'd take care of your dog."

The student needs support and she has asked for it. In this culture, we are taught that if we can't get what we need from the people we ask, then we just can't get what we need. We connect the satisfaction of our needs to specific people. We say things like, "I need your love." when what we really need is love in general. Autonomy comes when we understand what we need, and then are flexible about how we achieve it. In the above example, the student may realize that she can ask her friends or neighbors to walk the dog and use the school cafeteria for her meal support. 

As the MBA student contemplates her longings, she may realize that she doesn't really need dinner from her partner at all. It may be that her true need is reassurance that her partner cares about her and is willing to be there for her when she needs her. By understanding the real motivation behind her disappointment with her partner, she might have a conversation like this:

"You know it's not so much dinner and the dog that has me so upset. I just need to know that you care about me and want to help me."

"I feel the same way. You know how much this marathon means to me. I'd like to know that you care about me by supporting my participation. You never seem happy about it."

"I guess I resent all of your training. I want more time with you. Sometimes you feel more like a room mate than a partner."

"I train during the day, so that we can be together at night. But you have to study."

"That's true. When I start working, I'll have my evenings free. I guess I haven't been all that much fun to be with either."

"You think? Between your internship and studies, I never see you."

It took a while, but finally the MBA student was able to empathize with her partner's point of view and get a broader understanding of the real needs and longings underlying both of them.

In the end, the solution may still be the same - get a neighbor to walk the dog and eat at the cafeteria, but the relationship is different. By understanding her own longings and the longings of her partner, she is reassured that they are still committed and caring. The relationship is richer and stronger.

Principles of Nonviolent Communication - #4

The most direct path to peace is through self-connection: Our capacity for peace is not dependant on having our needs met. Even when many needs are unmet, meeting our need for self-connection can be sufficient for inner peace. ~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

Have you ever had the situation where you couldn't figure out why you were upset? Negative thoughts would go round and round in your head, but you could not find any relief? And then at some point, you realize just why and suddenly you feel  much better. That would be an example of self-connection. Another way of saying it is self-awareness. 

I have been learning about the effect of thoughts and the environment on the mind. Dan Siegel,a clinical professor of psychology and author of some wonderful books on parenting and neurobiology, explains a little about what is going on. When we are upset, certain sections of our brain shut down. Biologically, shutting down parts of the brain streamlined the fight or flight response. When being chased by a tiger, we can use all the streamlining we can get! Unfortunately the brain can't tell the difference between a tiger and the thought of a tiger. In modern life we are threatened by the thought of the tiger much more than the tiger itself. Therefore it's to our advantage to get the part of the brain that shuts down, which happens to be the part that thinks rationally, can take an over-view of the situation, and connect with oneself, back online as quickly as possible. Getting back online requires calmness.

The NVC process asks us to name our feelings and then to think about what those emotions say we are needing. Researchers have found that as we think about our emotions and reasons behind them, we begin to access the prefrontal cortex again. The process of naming our needs, by itself, has a calming effect and brings peace of mind.

Principles of Nonviolent Communication - #3

Feelings point to needs being met or unmet: Feelings may be triggered but not caused by others. Our feelings arise directly out of our experience of whether our needs seem to us met or unmet in a given circumstance. Our assessment of whether or not our needs are met almost invariably involves an interpretation or belief. When our needs are met, we may feel happy, satisfied, peaceful, etc. When our needs are not met, we may feel sad, scared, frustrated, etc.

~Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer

I am especially interested in the part where Miki says that feelings may be triggered but not caused by others.

An acquaintance comes up to me and says, "You don't know what you are talking about." My need for fair interpretation is not met. Good so far, but here is the tricky part. To fix my sense of lack, I do not need to 'make' the acquaintance change his mind. All that I need to do is change my internal belief that I may be ignorant. It's my belief about myself that gives the sting, not the man's belief. To see this another way, a woman on the bus comes up to me and says, "Your mind is warped by invisible rays from the government." I have no negative reaction. Her statement is also based on interpretation, but I have no internal critic for secret government rays warping my brain. Without an internal critic, the man's words sound just as nonsensical. Do you see what I mean? Isn't that fascinating?

You can check this idea out on statements that trigger you. Look and see if there is another voice, your critic, adding itself to whatever was said. Then try to imagine that criticism doesn't exist. You might imagine that you live on a planet in which, to keep the above example, no one is supposed to know what they are talking about. Now watch how the sting begins to dim down. 

Creating a safe environment for all view points

Wow! Another rousing forum at the Process Work Institute last night. This time the crowd consisted of the gay and lesbian community. The challenge revolved around the community’s response to a new evangelical, mega-church called Mars Hill, which has just moved into Portland city. Mars Hill takes a particularly vehement stance against gays and lesbians. The Q Center director Logan had stirred up controversy in the gay and lesbian community by attempting to reach out to Mars Hill and open dialogue. While many of the community applauded his actions, some were incensed and felt that the only proper response was to abhor and avoid the new church. I’d say there were about forty people, so it was a decent sized crowd especially since emotions ran high. Dawn Menken and her student Alex ran the meeting. I loved watching her work. It was like watching an improvisational dance moving to the needs and responses of the group. It was so instructive of really good group work, especially for a group that size; I thought I’d go over the highlights of the meeting.

First of all, here’s the structure of the meeting. Dawn started by laying out the issue, the history, the present, and then said some inspirational words around the goal of open dialogue to understand the problem more deeply. She brought up the concept of hearing all points of view, even of people not necessarily in the room but who are involved. Then three speakers spoke for about five minutes a piece to share there point of view and a bit of history with the group. After they spoke, microphones were handed out to anyone who wanted to share a thought or question. After an hour and a half, Dawn and Alex summed up what was learned. So far, as you can tell, the meeting was not so different from other meetings. Now I will go over the differences…

First of all, Dawn reframed the outside conflict by bringing up the concept that the conflict on the outside had a mirror on the inside, that many in the gay and lesbian community had internal conflict over how to handle prejudice even in their own families. Then she asked people by a show of hands how well they handled high emotion. Then she asked the same for a bit of emotion and then a tally of who had difficulty with even a little emotion. (I think asking people to measure the their level of comfort with emotions is brilliant. It brings that issue immediately into awareness.) She then asked that people to be aware of the different levels of comfort as they spoke. She asked that people share themselves instead of giving speeches, and to be aware of the amount of time they took at the microphone.

What really caught my attention, however, was that Dawn continually asked for opposing viewpoints. Traditionally, a few people set the preferred viewpoint early on and everyone just repeats it or stays quiet. Dawn specifically requested the different viewpoints and pointed out the value of hearing them. When someone had the courage to state a different view, Dawn praised that person. At one point, Dawn pretended to be the view point of the Mars Hill Church member, because they were clearly involved with the issue and no one had come to the meeting to represent that viewpoint. Yes, some people were shocked to hear such a different viewpoint, but Dawn had done such a good job expressing the value of hearing all viewpoints, even that rigid view was accepted. But what really pleased me was the sudden freedom some of the more marginalized people at the meeting felt to now express themselves. And because these normally quiet voices got to speak, everyone learned very valuable things about the prejudices with their own community and about the nature of prejudice itself. I could feel a level of compassion deepen throughout the whole room. Such is the value of hearing from all points of view in a safe environment. Dawn created a truly safe place to hear from everyone and everyone was blessed by the result.

Principles of Nonviolent Communication - #2

All actions are attempts to meet needs: Our desire to meet needs, whether conscious or unconscious, underlies every action we take. We only resort to violence or other actions that do not meet our own or others’ needs when we do not recognize more effective strategies for meeting needs. ~Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer, Blog: baynvc.blogspot.com

Now that I live in a city with great public transportation, I'm frequently riding the bus. I encounter a tremendous variety of human beings this way, not all of whom are easy to be around. Once I watched a woman plop down next to a man with a toddler and begin to ask to touch the child. She had old clothes and no front teeth. Her hair was half tied back and half wild. She leaned over the little girl, clearly delighted, and praised her. The man immediately pulled the child around to the other side of him and when the bus stopped moving, he changed seats. The woman continued to entreat him to let her hold the little girl. 


I would guess that she had a need for touch, affection, family, and most of all, a longing to nurture. Although she wasn't physically violent, she did invade the man's space and she couldn't take his nonverbal "no" for an answer.  I felt badly for her, because the strategy she chose to try and get her need to nurture met didn't work. Her pleading only served to alarm the man even more.


All strategies that people choose, even the strategies that alarm us, are tragic attempts to meet a fundamental need. When a person robs a store, or scrawls graffiti onto a parked bus, he is trying to meet something necessary to his physical or emotional well being. If we understood this concept deeply, our entire punishment and incarceration structure would change. Instead of seeing the person as the"other": as a perilous, dangerous, chaotic marauder, we would see ourselves, see our own human longings in the other person. We would relate to that person and our compassion would see that we shared the same needs.
Instead of punishment, I believe we would want to give the person effective strategies so they could meet their need. Just as I wanted to help the lonely woman on the bus.


  

Principles of NVC

All human beings share the same needs.

I love Nonviolent Communication, so it's sad to hear when people don't use it because they were taught a formula that sounds, well, formulaic. So classical NVC as it is taught sounds like this:

I see that you have not eaten your ice cream.

Are you feeling sad, because you are needing community and friendship?

Would you be willing to talk about it?

My teen-aged sons hated when I first learned NVC and talked to them like this. I thought it was great to have some way of approaching difficult issues. But they wanted to throttle me. Over time I began to really understand the principles behind Nonviolent Communication. Then I didn't need to use the formula. The way I teach NVC now is by teaching the basic principles behind it. So I was excited to hear Miki Kashton, a well known NVC Trainer from the Bay area in SanFrancisco, talk recently about the principles of NVC and the value in teaching them as opposed to a formula. It's always nice to be confirmed that I am on the right track! 


I thought I'd go over those principles on the blog and the first one on Miki's list is above and I'll repeat it: All human beings share the same needs. No matter how different someone may seem, they absolutely need the same things you do. We all share a need for food, water, and shelter. We all need community, safety, and a sense of meaning and purpose. 

It always amazes me when I hear someone on a television show getting upset with people who are stealing or poaching because they are starving. Talk about not empathizing! Sure, I want all the beautiful animals in Africa to run free, just like the next reasonably well off American, but how can I not acknowledge the shared need for sustenance? Somehow I get the sense that we, the critics, have forgotten that food is a need. We are so stuffed ourselves, it slips our mind that food is a requirement. The only compassionate response is a commitment to finding an alternative way for the people to feed themselves. But I digress....

When we understand that all of us share the same needs, then we are much more likely to be compassionate in response to human suffering, even if the way the suffering manifests upsets us.

Rank

Arny Mindell is the founder of the Process Work Institute in Portland, Oregon. He's an amazing teacher. He has many really valuable insights. This past Friday he talked a bit more about rank in a group. Everyone has a certain rank in a group; some of which is conscious, such as the person with the title president or manager, and some of which is unconscious, such as the person with more degrees or more money. The most dangerous aspect of rank is the unconscious part. Most people, he says, have more rank than they think they have. As a culture we like to identify with the underdog; we do not like to admit our own power. People with unconscious rank can be unconsciously hurtful to others. One student talked about a person at work with a lot of rank who was a bully. The student said that the person thought they didn't have any power, when in fact they did.

I remember getting together with a woman who was quite poor to plan a church event. Her truck needed a brick behind the tires to park because she didn't have any money for new parking brakes. As we scoured my yard for a suitable brick, I remember feeling really uncomfortable. I felt powerful next to her and it made me feel embarrassed. If I knew then what I know now, I would have talked about it with her. I would want to make this disparity of power really conscious both to me and to her. As it was, we got together that one time and then she dropped out of the project. I felt bad, but I didn't know why.
I suspect she had felt shame looking for that brick. She couldn't talk about it either. Instead she just avoided feeling shame again by dropping out. I had a lot of rank in that relationship and simply by not being able to talk about it and acknowledge her feelings, I hurt her.

In any group, even a volunteer group made up of equals, rank shows up in terms of the more powerful gender, the number of degrees, how long the person has been in the group, race, style of clothes, profession, car driven, number of family members in the area and their status in the larger community, beauty, health, age, ability to articulate ideas, intelligence, and so on. We can easily see rank in others, but it's not so easy to see it in ourselves.