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The following list of words are used to express a combination of emotional states and physical sensations. This list is neither exhaustive nor definitive. It is meant as a starting place to help you develop your emotional vocabulary and further support your communication with others.

In a Nonviolent Communication model, we believe that everything someone does or says is an attempt to meet a need. That means that all actions or words are in service to a deep internal need. The following list of needs is neither exhaustive nor definitive.

Sylvia Haskvitz uses 20+ years of experience to introduce the core concepts of Nonviolent Communication, leaving you grounded in the basics and ready to make transformative improvements to the quality of your communication.

Start here to discover how Nonviolent Communication (NVC) will enrich and deepen all your relationships. You'll love this practical and enlightening approach to empathic listening and effective self-expression. Learn on your schedule with self-paced learning modules in this 30-day program. Our 30-day NVC introductory course is conveniently available within the Library to all NVC Library subscribers.

Start here to discover how Nonviolent Communication (NVC) will enrich and deepen all your relationships. You'll love this practical and enlightening approach to empathic listening and effective self-expression. Learn on your schedule with self-paced learning modules in this 30-day program. 

This chart is intended as an aid to translating words that are often confused with feelings. These words imply that someone is doing something to you and generally connote wrongness or blame. To use this list, when somebody says “I’m feeling rejected,” you might translate this as: “Are you feeling scared because you have a need for inclusion?”

When you experience an emotion, your body send a message to your brain that lights up the amygdala. Then what?  Listen as Sarah Peyton demonstrates of the NVC practice Naming the Feeling and Need, which calms the amygdala and enables you to move into relational space.

This ten question exercise will help build your feelings vocabulary. It is helpful to differentiate between words that describe what we think others are doing around us, and words that describe actual feelings. These "faux feelings" often reveal more about how we think others are behaving than what we are actually feeling ourselves. Feeling words are always about us, not the other person.

Nonviolent Communication at its core is about the quality of connection that will lead to everybody's needs being met. In this months 'Purpose of NVC' episode, we ask ourselves five questions that help us gain an awareness of where Nonviolent Communication is being used.

John introduces his Self-Connection Exercise as a mindful way of coming to awareness via OFNR. Breath: immediately observable, a reminder to observe. Body: feeling the body, awareness of sensations. Needs: an experience of wholeness that expands awareness of the totality of experience. Listen.