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When Rita first learned about silent empathy she didn't know how soon she'd try it out. She was visiting her daughter and making comments about her life, analyzing her behavior, giving her unsolicited view on everything.

Trainer Tip: Silent empathy can be a powerful way of contributing to someone's life, giving them the gift of our presence.

Can you give me advice on what to do when people won't talk to me? I find it very difficult to discover what their needs are that aren't being met! Also, how can I be effective with people who don't actually want to think about why they're being the way they are?

Jim and Jori offer a tip to stay present in the face of our reactivity to witnessed conflict.

Getting "feel good" empathy can become an addiction. Even to the point of seeing people who don't offer empathy as "not being NVC". Rachelle urges us to notice how this view of NVC can be seductive, and even dangerous. In this article, she explains how we can expand our compassionate awareness when we go beyond equating NVC with harmony and empathy. She asks us to become more open to noticing others' experiences even if it challenges our personal and collective belief systems -- and especially when it upsets us to consider it.

Trainer Tip: When someone is unresponsive it can be an opportunity to bring in more presence and connection through empathy. They may be worried that if they speak they'll say something they'll regret. Or they may want to know that their needs matters as much as yours. They may also need more space to clarify their thoughts.

Listen to CNVC Certified Trainer Dian Killian guide and ease you into a more natural expression of empathy. This is a three person exercise. Listen in and then give it a try!

• Make use of felt-sense and somatic awareness to support faster and deeper shifts in yourself and others
• Master silent empathy to give more ease and flow in your empathy guessing
• "Streetify" your NVC practice by learning how to make your NVC practice more fluent, colloquial, and "natural" and match the person you're speaking with
• De-mystify empathy guessing by learning to identify key linguistic queues
• Build an "emergency empathy" tool kit---with "quick fixes" for challenging situations by using each step of the model for maximum effectiveness
• Interplay both the NVC "mindset" (consciousness/intention) and the NVC "tool kit" for greater ease, fluency and effectiveness