Browse the NVC Library

Trainer Tip: Asking for support may feel awkward and uncomfortable. In these moments, we may forget that everyone needs support. We may also forget that there may be many options available to us, even if what's available isn't our preferred source of support.

Trainer tip: If you have a goal, want to be a "success", or want to do "your best', define what that would look like, and how much. Identify one goal and one thing you can do today to achieve that goal and do it.

If it's a tender topic and/or you are looking for a particular level of responsiveness, you can let listeners know what you want back before you share -- or you can ask them for a particular kind of response right after you share. The more you can do this, the more it can create supportive relationships in your life. Read on for ways to ask for a particular kind of responsiveness to meet particular needs.

We're more likely to sacrifice trust, connection, and relationship quality when (1.) We use NVC to focus on being seen, understood, heard, or meeting our own needs in a way that eclipses our view and understanding of others needs; (2.) We don't clearly examine our intentions; and (3.) We use the NVC form so rigidly that it becomes difficult for others to connect with us authentically.

Join Eric Bowers in transforming past relationship pain, coming alive in community and creating thriving relationships. This 12 session Telecourse recording brings together Eric's passions for Nonviolent Communication, Attachment Theory and Interpersonal Neurobiology.

In this prerecorded telecourse, Kelly uses humor, stories and practical ideas to help spouses, lovers, friends and parents discover how freedom and autonomy are the basis for all healthy relationships.

John and Stephanie combine mediating conflict, parenting and study of brain science to this ground-breaking course recording on how to funnel your anger and your child’s anger toward mutual caring and peace.

Join Susan Skye in this hour-long audio recording to learn how to experience the NVC consciousness as an embodied, living practice of the 'Living Energy of Needs."  This recording includes a supportive learning exercise and tips for expressing needs in a non-mechanical way.

"Over the years, I have noticed that people -- including trainers and facilitators --     use the words of the NVC process without full connection to life energy, often resulting in a failure to get to a full connection with actual life energy of these qualities that we have named "needs." This results in a mechanical communication model, rather than a true empathic connection. Join me in learning how to share NVC as an embodied, living practice of the 'Living Energy of Needs."
—Susan Skye

Confidence, flexibility, creativity and equanimity may become more possible when you would like someone to meet a particular need, can trust that you can meet that need with someone else, and can accept a “no” to your requests. You can allow grief or disappointment to arise, and naturally turn towards a relationship in which those needs can be met. In some cases this may lead to the dissolution of a partnership or friendship.

We can choose our stories of interpretation, and how to respond. And while stories of self-sufficiency can (to a degree) give us more influence over our own lives, they don't erase oppression, war, nor climate change. When stories omit a lens that includes impacts of interdependence, oppression, and structural inequities, stories can also keep us disconnected and blocked from compassion for self and others -- and perpetuating an oppressive status quo. However, with this lens we can make greater compassion and collective liberation possible. Even as the outcome is unknown.