NVC supports us to get very clear about what matters
Understanding yourself and communicating your feelings and needs is essential to well being and growth. This gives us clarity about what is important to us and where we want to focus our attention and action. Were you encouraged to repress your feelings from an early age or express them?
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) gives us the awareness and the tools to awaken to what we are feeling, as well as understanding why we feel the way we do. With that in place, we can then communicate in a more constructive and clear way, even when the interactions are challenging!
Emotional literacy helps us understand the emotional landscape and manage this more effectively
In the article published by Psychology Spot, Jennifer Delgado says:
Emotional illiteracy is the inability to understand, catalog and manage our emotions and feelings. Therefore, to understand and accept the emotions of the others. It is a disconnection with emotions and feelings, which not only prevents us from specifying what we are feeling, but also limits our scope of action, turning us into reactive and impulsive people who remain imprisoned in their emotions.
This term is inextricably linked to emotional literacy, a concept proposed by the psychotherapist Claude Steiner in the 1970s that refers to the ability to understand emotions, listen to others and empathise with their emotional states, as well as express emotions in a productive way.
Research indicates that if we repress our emotions it can lead to a decreased immune system and if your immune system doesn’t work well you may get sick often and find it difficult to recover easily. It may also mean that your experience of relationships is less enriching that it could be.
When we repress and can not express painful emotions we may look for ways to cope by numbing ourselves. This could be in the form of food, drugs (prescribed and unprescribed), addictions and so on.
Anti-depressant use has almost doubled
Whilst prescribed drugs such as antidepressants are often times useful and healing to the taker, there is a concern about the level of prescriptions issued. In 2018 there were around 70.9 million prescriptions handed out for antidepressants in England, according to NHS Digital. This figure is almost double the 36 million dispensed in 2008. The 2016 and 2017 figures were 64.7m and 67.5m respectively. The figures include all items dispensed by the NHS in England, except those given out in hospitals or private prescriptions.
Dr. Gabor Maté is a respected expert in childhood trauma, addiction, and mind-body health. He believes that most mental health conditions originate from unresolved childhood trauma. He describes current Western culture as ‘insane’ because of its failure to meet basic human needs.
In this article Maté went into detail about what he sees as the root causes of conditions such as anxiety, panic attacks and fibromyalgia. He also spoke about the process and importance of reconnecting with our authentic self.
Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.
Whilst dumbing ourselves works to alleviate painful feelings. The consequences of continual numbing can be devastating to health and well being. If we are numb we aren’t fully connected ourselves or others. This can make relationships difficult to navigate. Therefore impede living a full-life where one feels they have accomplished their dreams and goals.
NVC helps us to make sense of our emotions and feelings but what are they?
Emotions and feelings are different. Emotions are literally energy in motion. They are energetic responses to what we see, hear, touch, sense and perceive. They are the raw unprocessed responses we have to the world around us.
Feelings are the awareness and labelling we subscribe to an emotion. When we pass emotion through the filter of the mind we make judgements about the energy moving through us and put a label on it.
As children, we have a limited ability to do this. We don’t have the capacity or experience to analyse. Nor do we have the verbal language to communicate to others. Without high standards of emotional literacy at the forefront of education, it is little wonder our children are left to ‘deal’ with difficult emotions.
In NVC we develop the emotional voice
In NVC we develop the emotional voice. We begin to expand our vocabulary around how we are perceiving our experiences. This gives us an increased chance of understanding and connecting with ourselves and others. As well as getting out needs met. Not just with words, but also felt experiences within the body.
During NVC Foundation training sessions, it can be difficult initially, to connect to how you feel and you may discover that you don’t have the vocabulary to express it.
This process can sometimes be painful. It can bring up repressed emotions. Therefore, it is hugely important that NVC and other emotionally connective facilitators offer safe containers for those attending. It is imperative that participants have lots of choice and freedom to move in and out of exercises as they choose.
Learning NVC provides the opportunity for all of us to come alive little by little. When we truly feel the full spectrum of our experiences, we become alive and have the opportunity to live fully.
Taking responsibility for how we feel
When we shift from blaming ourselves or others for how we feel, to being responsible for how we feel.
Rather than saying: “These are my emotions. I need to deal with them or it’s because of you that I feel this way!” Telling your self: “These are my emotions let’s look at them. Let’s hear them, feel them, move with them and integrate them.”
From this place, we have an empowered choice about how to express.
Feelings are the key that liberate us. They bring us into full aliveness and responsibility. Of course, we are NOT to ‘blame’ for everything that happens to us. However, in NVC we recognise that we benefit when we own our responses to what we have experienced.
The joy of NVC
The joy of practicing Nonviolent Communication together, is that learn to witness our thinking without evaluation or moralistic judgment and to experience our feelings without repressing them. NVC groups can offer space for people to share their stories, a place for us to mourn and celebrate life together.
We slow the whole process down enough to come out of the mental judgement into our emotions. Therefore we become aware of the emotional body. From this place, we can connect to our longing and needs, which is the real reason for the emotion in the first place.
As I said earlier, emotions are flags. These flags indicate if we are aligned with our needs-when we are expanded, relaxed, loved, safe etc we are aligned and connected with ourselves in a life affirming way. When we feel yucky, uncomfortable, closed off, contracted, then this is a signal that our needs are not getting met in that moment and then there is an invitation to bring consciousness to that. To take responsibility and begin to enquire deeper within about what it is that we are feeling and needing for us to regain a relaxed state.
When we improve our emotional literacy we gain a freedom within us to:
- Increase emotional self-awareness – knowing that within anger there are the added labels of frustration, anxiety, rage, irritation, etc It’s about knowing our feelings, their origin, and triggers.
- Have emotional self-control – have choices around how we express our feelings so that we do no harm to self and others
- Increase empathy – Empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.
- Gain emotional resilience-Resilience is the ability weather the storm. To have the strength to deal and be with difficult situations without falling apart. The ability to face past trauma with love and compassion so that healing can take place and moving on is possible.
- Improve self-motivation – Work towards our dreams and goals and fulfill our potential, without getting overwhelmed or demoralised.
I am grateful to Dr. Marshall Rosenberg (who I trained directly with) for this body of work. It can truly empower people by providing them with the tools they need to create emotional literacy and freedom. It helps you to understand yourself and communicate your feelings and needs in a way that is clear and empathic and provides an opportunity to met needs.
Being able to have those difficult conversations that connect us is incredibly important.
In this podcast I discuss the emotional world of feelings with Emma Buggy at Heart to Heart Communication
For those interested in learning more about NVC then check out my events page.
I was really absorbed nd felt fulfilled eading this article about NVC and how it helps us to understand our selves as well learning how to communicate through feelings and needs
This article taught many new concepts and new terms such as emotional resilience, emotional literacy , emotional illiteracy and etc. It taught me the difference between emotion and feeling. As Dr Marshal said Anger (an emotional state) is tragic result of unmet needs., I believe that becoming an emotional literate will increase our ability to express our feelings (such as anger) in a peacefull way as it can helps us to connect our feelings to our (unmet) needs. Thanks Tracy for this resourceful article . Your article met my needs of ‘ inspiration ‘ ‘learning’ ‘consciousness ‘ and ‘understanding ‘. I felt happy, excited and inspired by your article. Many thanks Tracy.