Disagree: NVC does give one additional tools that they can use to turn their kindness into practice. I say this because originally discovering NVC was something of a mind-blowing event to me, and allowed me to resolve an interpersonal conflict that had been bothering me for a long time, but which would only have blown up if I had tried to address it without the tools from NVC.
Details: a friend of mine was acting in a way which I felt was wrong, both towards themselves and towards others. When I had been trying to bring this up, they had replied that they had no choice but to act as they did—a statement which I felt was blatantly false. I wanted to discuss this with them, but the only sensible sentence that kept coming to my mind was something like “it pisses me off that you’re not taking responsibility for your actions”, and there was no way that starting the conversation like that would have gone well. So I said nothing but still felt occasionally angry about it.
Then I read the NVC book, and realized that I could turn that sentence into a much more constructive and kind one: what I ended up using was something like “when you say that you have to act the way that you do, I get frustrated, because I feel that thinking about it like that prevents you from seeing how you could actually act differently”. This led to a very constructive and useful conversation where we resolved the thing that had been bugging me.
Previously I had felt like if I was upset with someone, my alternatives were to either lash out at them, or keep it in but keep feeling angry. And because I did want to be kind, this often led to a lot of bottled-up annoyance towards other people. NVC taught to me to look for how my needs create my emotions, and how to express that in a way that doesn’t come off as aggressive.
Highlighting that this example had details that pointed me towards the fact that I view saying that sentence as good, right and useful, but telling someone else to talk like that, or that such talk is the only valid talk seems supremely hostile and wrong. It’s the difference between “this is a tool in my box that is sometimes the right tool” and making regulations requiring the tool’s use.
Yes, this. NVC should be treated with a similar sort of parameters to Crocker’s Rules, which you can declare for yourself at any time, you can invite people to a conversation where it’s known that everyone will be using them, but you cannot hold it against anyone if you invite them to declare Crocker’s Rules and they refuse.
Sure. I’d think that in general, anyone claiming that others were only allowed to talk in some particular way would already bear a pretty heavy burden of proof they needed to meet, regardless of whether it was an NVC pattern or any other pattern.
If the intention is sound, the value it adds is minimal. Anyone can be kind as long as they are trying to be kind.
Disagree: NVC does give one additional tools that they can use to turn their kindness into practice. I say this because originally discovering NVC was something of a mind-blowing event to me, and allowed me to resolve an interpersonal conflict that had been bothering me for a long time, but which would only have blown up if I had tried to address it without the tools from NVC.
Details: a friend of mine was acting in a way which I felt was wrong, both towards themselves and towards others. When I had been trying to bring this up, they had replied that they had no choice but to act as they did—a statement which I felt was blatantly false. I wanted to discuss this with them, but the only sensible sentence that kept coming to my mind was something like “it pisses me off that you’re not taking responsibility for your actions”, and there was no way that starting the conversation like that would have gone well. So I said nothing but still felt occasionally angry about it.
Then I read the NVC book, and realized that I could turn that sentence into a much more constructive and kind one: what I ended up using was something like “when you say that you have to act the way that you do, I get frustrated, because I feel that thinking about it like that prevents you from seeing how you could actually act differently”. This led to a very constructive and useful conversation where we resolved the thing that had been bugging me.
Previously I had felt like if I was upset with someone, my alternatives were to either lash out at them, or keep it in but keep feeling angry. And because I did want to be kind, this often led to a lot of bottled-up annoyance towards other people. NVC taught to me to look for how my needs create my emotions, and how to express that in a way that doesn’t come off as aggressive.
Highlighting that this example had details that pointed me towards the fact that I view saying that sentence as good, right and useful, but telling someone else to talk like that, or that such talk is the only valid talk seems supremely hostile and wrong. It’s the difference between “this is a tool in my box that is sometimes the right tool” and making regulations requiring the tool’s use.
Yes, this. NVC should be treated with a similar sort of parameters to Crocker’s Rules, which you can declare for yourself at any time, you can invite people to a conversation where it’s known that everyone will be using them, but you cannot hold it against anyone if you invite them to declare Crocker’s Rules and they refuse.
Sure. I’d think that in general, anyone claiming that others were only allowed to talk in some particular way would already bear a pretty heavy burden of proof they needed to meet, regardless of whether it was an NVC pattern or any other pattern.
If only it were so easy. The road to hell etc.
A fictional snatch of dialogue:
“I’m only trying to help!”
“That is the problem. You are only trying to help. You are not actually helping.”