Compassionate Communication

"Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field, I'll meet you there" ~ Rumi

Compassionate Communication is a quality of consciousness based on these assumptions:

• Human beings are compassionate by nature.
• Contribution is a powerful human need.
• Human beings are interconnected.
• All human beings have the same feelings and needs.
  

Goals of Compassionate Communication

• To enhance inner well being and  increase the ability to meet one’s own needs.
• To increase understanding, cooperation, and respect within relationships

The consciousness of Compassionate Communication is based on the following Life-Serving Perspectives:

• Just as leaves reach for the sun, everything that people do is reaching to meet universal, life-serving needs.
• We are always and only reaching for life.
• No matter what a person is expressing, it is their attempt to enrich their life.
• All attacks, criticism, blaming are that individual’s tragic expression of needs.
• What others do stimulates, but does not cause, our feelings.  The source of our feelings is our needs. 
  For example:

  When our needs are met/fulfilled we may feel:
          glad, peaceful, tender, rested, grateful, calm

  When our needs are not met we may feel: 
          sad,  afraid, angry, confused, tired, uneasy      

Our own natural compassion is stimulated:

• When our own needs are seen empathically-by ourselves and others
• When we feel heard, by ourselves and others
• When we are able to hear/recognize the other’s needs empathically

It is then, that our natural desire to contribute to the other’s well being becomes energized.

In empathetic connection, we enter an internal place that knows :

• The needs of the other are the same as our own. 
• We can never truly meet our own needs at the expense of another. 

Authentic expression is based on an honesty:

• that is responsive to what is alive in oneself in the moment
• that has the intention of enriching life
• that has a commitment to a certain use of power
• that sees one’s own needs as a gift to others
• that chooses not to make choices “for others” out of guilt, fear, obligation, the desire to please, or to buy love.

Compassionate Communication raises our awareness

of our desire for connection, as well as,
of our fear and our patterns of defending against it. Developing our skills in CC is a process of healing and growth in which we bump up against our willingness:

• to want to hear the needs of self and other, and
• to reveal our own needs to others
• to embrace the conviction that connecting on a needs level is vital prior to any consideration of solution or strategy

The inability to connect with self or other’s needs is usually prevented by one of four things:

• Lack of resources of time or energy
• Attached to outcome
• A reactive or defensive mode
• Not aware of own feelings/needs

THE BASIC MODEL

FOUR COMPONENTS
OF
EXPRESSING HONESTLY AND
LISTENING EMPATHTICALLY

Observation         vs         Evaluation

    Feelings             vs          Thought

      Need               vs          Strategies

   Requests            vs           Demand

Two types of requests: 

Connecting requests:
             For reflection,
                   “Would you tell me what you hear me say?”

             For response,
                   “How do you feel hearing what I say?”

Solution requests: 
                    “Would you be willing to…(strategy to meet everyone’s needs)?”

 

Observation  vs  Evaluation:

            Awareness of what is         vs        judgment, diagnosis,
                                                                Moralistic interpretation
                                                                right/wrong, good/bad

Feelings  vs  Thought:

         Emotion, body sensation    vs        beliefs, opinions, images, interpretations
                 joy                                                “I feel like/that…”,
                 excited                                          “I feel rejected”
                 fear                                               “You/I should…”

 

Need  vs  Strategy:

              Universal                           vs       Specific actions
              Living energy                                Ways of meeting needs
              Independent of external                 Things
              An inner experience                     Solutions
              Characteristic of all humans          Specific behaviors
              Sustain or enhance life 

Request vs Demand:

              Given freely/Power With     vs        Coercion/Power over
              Clear, precise,                             Vague wants
              Present action                             Guilt, obligation, duty
              Language                                    Use of fear, shame,
                                                                Denial of choice:  have to, can’t, should, must

Credits
The above comments are based on the work of
Marshall Rosenberg, PhD.
founder of Nonviolent Communication,
as well as, the work of NVC trainers:
Jeff Brown, Robert Gonzales, John Kinyon, Kelly Bryson, and Linnaea Marvel