Search the NVC Library

Falling in love is quite an experience, especially when it comes to that moment of saying 'I love you'. So what happens once you're in a relationship but still need to express the way you feel? Sometimes people feel like just saying 'I love you' is too impersonal or unspecific. So in this Life Hack, we give you some tips on how Nonviolent Communication can help set the mood with your loved ones.

Untethering from dominant culture and internalized oppression takes releasing attachments and persistence inspite upheavals -- all with insufficient support. Even in community building we can bring oppression into our efforts to untether. The more we walk towards vision, the more tethers of patriarchy we undo, the more the cost. By exacting such high cost, patriarchal societies reproduce and sustain themselves. To untether we need fortitude.

Even those who practice NVC can repeat old patterns of thinking, believing, feeling, and behaving. If they do, but still use ‘NVC language’ others may think the issue is NVC rather than the person’s capacity. This week, notice even a small instance where someone is against something you suggest. To build trust and connection, experiment with offering empathy or asking them to share what they think, feel, or need.

Create your own new personal practice using the Pathways to Liberation: Matrix of Self-Assessment and increase your capacity to access skills when you need them the most.

When we have privilege, we can have access to resources resulting from legal or social norms related to membership in a group -- independent of any (in)action, awareness of the disparity, the potential benefits to us, or the costs to others. Unhelpful ways of engaging with privilege are: denial/invisibility, guilt/shame, defensiveness, and entitlement. Helpful ways of engaging are: owning privilege, learning about privilege, opening to feedback, and stewarding privilege for benefit of all. To be helpful we need to engage with necessary (rather than unnecessary) discomfort.

There is more to the NVC skill of Observation than the external level of what a video camera sees or hears. In this video, Roxy demonstrates that to fully understand what is happening, we need to know all three layers of observation: External, Internal, and Systemic. 

So often we're habituated to associate a “why” question with being reproached, blamed or shamed – and so defensiveness arises. However, in order to maintain a flow of understanding and collaboration, we need to hear and say the “why” while finding other ways to ask for it. Here we look at how to ask questions that bring each of us vital information that can open up discovery and learning, for our mutual benefit.

The word "privilege" signifies the benefit to the person having it, and the relationship between that person’s benefit and others' lack of benefit. When privileged, there are incentives to not see this interdependent link. For instance, it's easier for the wealthy to think of the poverty of many and the wealth of some are unrelated. If the wealthy want to keep wealth they would need to continue with approaches rooted in this separation.