NVC Resources on Feelings

Trainer Tip: What is motivating your (in)actions? Are you doing something in the name of supporting deeper heartfelt needs, free of judgement or blame? Or are you bringing in consequences based on viewing the other person as having "bad behaviour"?

Trainer Tip: If we're deflecting an appreciation or letting it expand our ego, we're missing a chance to truly connect to what's important. A more satisfying way to receive appreciation is to connect to how we've contributed to another person’s life, rather than our own.

Trainer Tip: When we create situations that value one person’s needs at the expense of another, we open the door for someone to lose. Instead, look to see if you can speak openly and honestly, value the other person’s needs, and create solutions that value all stakeholder needs.

Trainer Tip: What do you value the most? Take a look at your actions and notice the values that your actions demonstrate (not what you want them to show, but what they do show), and see if they are in alignment. Where there is a gap take steps to create actions that are in alignment with your values.

Even in a conflict, you can offer emotional safety without being enmeshed -- and you can do this without sliding into strategies to gain power over another. You can prioritize connection, express your intention, make space for mutuality, honestly reveal what you care about and propose a way forward. This means caring for your needs regardless of their response -- and mourning if their response...

In times of stress, some part of you may still hold the belief that you can't be present for the stressor and survive. Some part of you may believe you have to go away. There are three things you can consider when attempting to intervene with the reactive pattern of shutting down: how you relate to the shutting down, access to self-confidence, and engagement. Read on for more.

If you want to support someone in distress offer a menu of ways you can contribute. Often a person in distress can’t articulate what they need but can recognize it when they hear it. Move fluidly among these 11 options to offer what’s truly helpful, rather than offering something out habit or based on what you think they should have. Remember that you can ask, “Is this helpful?” to support...

We each hold an internal model or set of expectations about how caring and comfort could be accessed in relationship. The ability to reflect upon and challenge our own dominant model of perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors --and to experience discomfort and vulnerability-- is a key feature of "security". If not, an "attachment reactivity" arises -- where sense of insecurity, separateness, and...

One clue we have trauma is when we respond in a way we don't want (eg. being reactive, self sabotaging, etc). Even when we have high level NVC skills our trauma-related mechanisms can activate, and we can lose access to well honed NVC skills. Read on for approaches that involve healing trauma, and approaches that involve managing the effects of trauma and preventing additional trauma.

As social beings we thrive with social contact and community. Thus, with the social isolation and a loss of routine that is happening in the COVD-19 pandemic, there are three critical areas to keep in mind everyday: emotional-physiological regulation, self-empathy for fear and anxiety, and meaningful engagement.

Anger can result in violence or in a movement towards positive change. We can see this happen in the push for racial justice. When you perceive anger as a form of violence your nervous system becomes activated. Your perspective narrows and old conditioning can take over leading to overwhelm, defensiveness, hatred, or violence. Read on for four ways to to respond to our own or others' anger in a...

Here's a four step exercise applying a needs-based approach to effective goals, habits and New Year's Resolutions.

When building successful relationships, it can be very helpful to see yourself as a collection of different inner parts that developed due to various life experiences. Without empathy and acknowledgment, our inner parts tend to work against us. That's when we're called upon to build and develop our inner leadership...

Research shows that couples with a secure bond experience arguments that are shorter, lower in intensity, and easier to recover from. Building and keeping a secure bond with your partner requires mindfulness and consistency: respond to what’s needed or supportive in a given moment; give them your full attention and affection in a spacious greeting; conveying care, consideration, and that they...

Yvette Erasmus shares practices to help us develop a regulated nervous system. We all get hijacked and triggered at some point. When that happens we can travel a blame and shame road or we can greet ourselves with graciousness and self compassion.

An anchor is something you turn your attention toward in order to interrupt reactivity and access a non-reactive, expansive perspective. Though it doesn't make the reactivity go away, it allow you the internal space to choose to not behave from reactivity. In this practice exercise learn more about anchors, plus how to create and use them.

Codependency occurs when others' behavior affects us in unhealthy ways and we get obsessed with controlling their behavior. For example, we may focus on other's needs while neglect what matters to us, and resent it. Or we may depend on others to rescue us from results of our actions. Or we may fix or rescue others' neglected responsibilities. Or we may make others responsible for our needs....

Sometimes even a very skilled empathy practicitioner can go into offering a non-empathic response, even when asked for empathy. Why? One reason could be that our brains might be less receptive because of unseen forces that affect our brain and relationship with others. This article speaks to the deeper "why" and also to one thing we could do to turn it around...

Living Compassion in an Ever-Changing World is the last course that Robert Gonzales offered before his passing in November of 2021. It is an intermediate course whose purpose is to deepen our conscious connection to our own vital life force, to develop skills that support inner healing, and to grow and strengthen daily practices that allow us to truly live life to the fullest.

When you or anyone is upset, what could underneath the trigger? There may be more than is immediately visible. This article invites us to explore what it looks like to inquire deeper, take self-responsibility, examine our assumptions, attachments, interpretations, and "certainties" that could be hidden behind the needs that are aching to be attended to...