The more we empathize with the other party, the safer we feel.
When we have our consciousness on needs, images come to us, naturally, of how to meet those needs.
Also, think about your intentionality – are you getting lost in the method? or coming from the intentionality, the purpose? You don’t want to do the mechanics without the consciousness.
By maintaining our attention on what’s going on within others, we offer them a chance to fully explore and express their interior selves. We would stem this flow if we were to shift attention too quickly either to their request or to our own desire to express ourselves.
Every moment each human being is doing the best we know at that moment to meet our needs. We never do anything that is not in the service of a need, there is no conflict on our planet at the level of needs. We all have the same needs. The problem is in strategies for meeting the needs.
It may be most difficult to empathize with those we are closest to.
Any time you throw pain at a Jackal without a clear present request, within a millisecond he’ll jump in.
We need to receive empathy to give empathy.
When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.
My anger tells me firstly that there’s a need of mine that’s not getting met.
Anger tells us we’ve disconnected from life. The purpose in anger is to use it to come back to life.
Self-empathy in NVC means checking in with your own feelings and needs.
Tragically, one of the rarest commodities in our culture is empathy. People are hungry for empathy, They don’t know how to ask for it.
Let’s shine the light of consciousness on places where we can hope to find what we are seeking.
Translate all self-judgments into self-empathy.
A second even more obvious sign is that the person will stop talking. If we are uncertain as to whether we have stayed long enough in the process, we can always ask, “Is there more that you wanted to say”?
Everything we do is in service of our needs. When this one concept is applied to our view of others, we’ll see that we have no real enemies, that what others do to us is the best possible thing they know to do to get their needs met.
We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves.
All that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries about consciousness, language, communication skills, and use of power that enable us to maintain a perspective of empathy for ourselves and others, even under trying conditions.
When people hear needs, it provokes compassion.