When supporting someone with less privilege, first check with them how you can support. If you're reacting more strongly to their undesirable experience than they are, this then shifts the dynamic so that they're setting aside what they want to attend to your feelings and needs - this may become work that they didn't sign up for. Read on for what to do instead to support more equity.

Trainer Tip: Ready to start a fight because you're right? Consider another strategy.

Sylvia Haskvitz offers a practical and effective approach to making requests. Learn the two questions that can clarify your motivation for making a request, three ways to discern a request from a demand, and five possible reasons for meeting requests.

Join Eric, as he reveals a clear path from heartbreaking intimate relationships to joyful, thriving intimate relationships. Eric uses his passion for helping singles heal from their past relationships, to help you to experience more ease, joy and mutuality in future relationships.

When avoidance coping or positive thinking sidesteps challenges, internal and external injustice and unrest also rises as we sidestep our values and integrity. It leaves us in sadness and distress. What's unacknowledged impacts ourselves and others undesirably. To live nonviolently we need to be in touch with what's real. With resonance we can more likely be with what's true, and trust our...

Our everyday personal experiences of diminishment, and the destruction of our planet has a through-line. Societal traumas lead to us shutting down to avoid pain, and this limits us. The avoidance shifts our brains so we don’t see other beings, species and our planet as wondrous, precious and irreplaceable. Thus, we meet others with diminishment, oblivion, or abuse; trauma keeps passing on. This...

It's tempting to shut down a heated conversation when it’s painful and overwhelming. What can give us strength to stay open to hearing and being moved, to being open to new possibility, is recalling the “triad of conversation.” The triad is self and other and then awareness on the third side of the conversation. Here we can return to connection, to what we share and need in common, to a...

Avoiding conflict is an even greater issue than having conflict. Not being as competent at conflict we avoid it. And in many cases that creates more conflict. Conflict is inevitable because we have different perspectives. Conflict is not bad. It is an opportunity for increased connection, intimacy, joy, and creative win-win solutions. Instead of avoiding conflict, we can work on increasing our...

Learn how unconscious impulses can lead to depleting patterns. Here, we look at two forms of reactive attempts we may use to avoid future pain, and how to make conscious decisions instead. Read on for questions that can help us see if we're making decisions from a grounded place, such as taking time to reflect on values, receive support from others, and getting curious about others' views.

Trainer tip: NVC focuses on shared human values and needs, and encourages the use of language that increases good will -- plus avoidance of language that contributes to resentment or lowered self-esteem. It emphasizes taking personal responsibility for choices and improving the quality of relationships as a primary goal. For today, focus on making observations without moralistic judgment in at...

Underlying much of our communication is a request: when we say something, we're usually expecting something else — perhaps something subtle — in return. Let's look at how to make requests clearer and more do-able, avoiding the pitfall of demands.

Trainer Tip: If you are motivated by fear, guilt, blame or shame, your actions will usually be motivated by avoiding pain. The best way to experience permanent, lifelong change is to focus on how your life will improve when you make a change. Notice when you attempt to motivate yourself and others with guilt, blame, or shame today, and then look for motivations that enrich life instead.

Conflict is a normal and natural part of life. To varying degrees, it happens whenever two or more people consistently spend time together. Resolving conflict effectively and peacefully, in a way in which all parties feel respected and valued, does not feel natural for those of us who grew up with punitive, adversarial, or avoidant approaches to conflict. Eric offers some tips for approaching...

It's normal for us to keep something inside, avoiding sharing it with someone else as the risk may feel too high. Maybe they will reject me, or be offended and not speak to me again? It can be difficult to know when to share your truth and when to keep it inside. In this episode we layout some useful strategies that will help you speak your truth, while still keeping the connection.

Telling yourself to be a certain way or have more of a certain quality (like courage), is a set-up for self-criticism and possibly freezing or avoiding. Instead, access effective action by asking yourself questions like: "If I could be or have that, what actions would be different inside or out?" "If I could be or have that, what needs would be met and knowing those are the needs, what could I...

In June, 1996, I had an epiphany. In a motel room in Indiana, the night before returning home from a solo camping trip in Michigan and Canada, I discovered how much I had lost in my life because of so fiercely protecting myself. Up until that day, bringing forth my vulnerable self was to be avoided at all costs, which kept me numb much of the time, disconnected from myself and from much of...

Could our "need for autonomy" be getting in the way of "partnership consciousness" (as NVC is sometimes called). Could "autonomy" also block healthy relationships with not only ourselves and with others, but also with the planet? This article invites us to consider how "autonomy" may colour our NVC practice at the peril of our critical values. Values such as our care for impact, shared...

When we don't like what someone is saying to us, sometimes people encourage us to hear their needs, and "not take it personally" -- and we're inclined to agree. Could "not taking it personally" close our hearts and awareness to others, life and ourselves? Rachelle Lamb invites us to take a closer look at what it's like when we attend to the situation from our hearts, and skillfully reflect upon...

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...

When someone doesn't want to talk some options include releasing your attachment to the strategy you want, asking about and affirming with empathy their reasons for not talking, looking for what support could be helpful to shift to more openness, letting go, and grieving. Read on for more on this, including possible reasons for why they might not want to engage on it.