NVC - Feeling Without Eluding

What are feelings or emotions?
Feelings or emotions are signals that we receive from our body or our spirit alerting us to the current state of our needs, whether met or unmet.

As they derive from both the body and the spirit, they can register smiles, looks, facial expressions, headaches, stomach aches, and emotions such as anger, fear, frustration, guilt, deceit…

In the whole creation, there is only one human nature and it does not change, not over time, from generation to generation, and not over space, from culture to culture or civilization to civilization. Feelings or emotions as well as the needs behind them are universal, everyone has the same emotions or feelings because these are related to the human nature that is unchangeable.

The key to identifying and expressing feelings is to focus on the words that describe our inner experience rather than the words that describe our interpretations of our and other people’s actions. For example: “I feel lonely” describes an inner experience, while “I feel like you don’t love me” describes an interpretation of how the other person may be acting.

Feelings and thoughts
Thoughts are cognitive or intellectual processes aimed at finding the truth; they start off from one or more premises and follow a logical deductive pathway advancing dialectically until they reach a conclusion that oftentimes is a decision. Thoughts can be abstract but most of the time they are about qualifying, quantifying and verifying realities.

As for the nature of thoughts, they may include beliefs, ideals, opinions, projects etc. What is the most personal and non-transferable in human beings are our feelings, however; thoughts can be copied but feelings cannot, they are somehow protected by copyright.

Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point – As Pascal found out, feelings are more difficult to define because they do not arise from the head, but from the depths of our being; they are not caused or provoked by us, and that means they are not subject to our will. There is nothing I can do to feel a certain feeling; they arise to our consciousness automatically, unwillingly and unannounced. They are unpredictable and because of this, they have not been the topic of study in any human science, not even in psychology.

In a way, we are not responsible for our feelings since we have no power over them. We cannot produce them, nor avoid them or erase them; however, they are ours as they come from within us and are not provoked by others or by any external circumstances.

Once they arise in our conscious we have no alternative other than to take responsibility for them. They are valuable alerts or messengers of our state of being -- physical, spiritual and moral. To ignore them is to divorce us from ourselves, not knowing whether we are coming or going, it is being lost. Our feelings are like a finger pointing to a need that is either met or unmet.

Spiritually, feelings are somewhat like life itself. Just as we don’t have power over life since we don’t own it, the same holds true with our feelings. We cannot command them as we cannot stop nor start any particular feeling and like in life, all we can do is to administer them. In so doing we can choose to ignore, repress, hide or express them; for this we need to have some emotional literacy in order to identify our feelings and be able to name them. Some are able to do this easily but many, many people because of our cultural education and formation are emotionally illiterate.

Cerebral people, for instance, tend to see the world in black and white, they do not like inaccuracy. They understand that people are very uncertain and inconsistent, so they tend to focus on more tangible things that are easier to conceptualize, all the while seeking truth, quantifying and qualifying it, and applying general rules. Brain people are seen by the feeling people as cold, heartless, nitpicking and calculating robots.

The emotional or sentimental people are more concerned with social relationships and considerations; they listen to their hearts and take into account other people’s feelings. For the sentimental ones, material things are worth only as much as they can be at the service of human existence, that’s what is most important to them. At work, they are sociable and helpful, and they make decisions based more on human values than on general rules. For the cerebral people, the sentimental ones cannot be trusted because they see feelings as volatile.

Within the human person, however, thoughts and feelings are bound to mutually understand each other; because they are so interconnected, an emotional confusion is also a mental confusion. People who are sensitive to emotions tend to see and experience the world through their emotions. Others do feel, of course, but they are unable to name or identify either the emotions, or their reasons or causes. On the other hand, since emotion is their main gateway of experiencing life events, they may come to label their thoughts as emotions.

For example, when someone says “I feel stupid”, both thoughts and feelings are inadequately expressed. Understanding this expression as a thought would be “I am stupid”; as a feeling it would be connected to a sense of shame, sadness or hurt. When a person feels emotions but is unable to label them, he would have more difficulty in dealing with them. Labels or tags are critical in managing emotions.

Emotional literacy – The affective is effective
Our culture does not train us to identify feelings and often we do not know how we feel or have no words to express what we feel.

We are therefore emotionally illiterate. To be emotionally literate means to know how to distinguish between thoughts and feelings, as well as be able to name our feelings and those of others, and to evaluate their intensity, their causes and what to do with them, and to assume responsibility for how much our feelings can affect others. It is also to be able to deal with our emotions and those of others, with the intention of improving the quality of lives of both. Emotional literacy consists of making our emotions act in our favour and not against us. Improving human relationships is to create affective ties between people, to facilitate group work, and to enable cooperation between individuals thus developing a sense of community.

We all have something to learn from our emotions. Some grow up with a high level of emotional literacy, others are emotionally illiterate. Feelings exist as an essential part of human nature; when we are disconnected from them, we lose a fundamental aspect of our human potential. It is in recognizing and managing our feelings, and in responding adequately to the emotions of others, that we increase our personal power both in private and professional life.

To be emotionally literate means to be capable of identifying emotions that I and others feel, in addition to gaging their intensity, and knowing their cause and what to do with them. To be emotionally literate means to know how to deal with our emotions because we understand them. It also means to develop empathy and learn to take responsibility for how our emotions affect others.

Newspapers are full of stories of how successful and bright people end up making serious emotional mistakes that ultimately ruin their lives. Emotions such as anger, fear, shame, lust, make smart people behave stupidly.

The true fortress
Never open up to anyone / However great your ache might be / Because whoever opens his heart to others / of himself becomes a traitor

Everyone in general, but most especially us men, grew up shunning and ignoring our emotions or feelings, with the belief that it is shameful, weak and frightening to voice them out. What we do to ourselves we also do to others, so that we equally despise and ignore the emotions and feelings of others when they dare to express them.

Our culture tends to reserve the experience of feelings within the bosom of the family; outside of it, in the professional life, at work and in the public social relationships, they should not be expressed because these need to be functional, neutral, innocuous, and impersonal. In the realm of public life, our culture does not advise us to be personally involved, we are supposed to hide our feelings behind masks that make us look like robots and our relationships a farce.

Since feelings reveal more about us than thoughts, our tendency is to hide them because it would make us look weak to show our vulnerable side and leave us as an easy prey in the hands of others. We are only open with friends and even with them we are quick to pull back if they turn out to be false, “Free me God from my friends, as from my enemies I free myself”.

When you see the shadow of a giant, look at the position of the sun to see if it is not the shadow of a dwarf. Friedrich Novalis

We are more inclined to apply the logic that works among animals; it is said that a dog can sniff out our fear and when this happens it attacks us more readily. We hide our weakness by projecting an identity that is not ours. A game that may not turn out well because if the other person becomes aware of it he will want to pull the rug from under our feet and then we will have to assume our true identity with shame and disgrace.

Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:10

For Rosenberg, however, to reveal our feelings, far from being counterproductive, is a great asset and he quotes several examples to substantiate what Saint Paul had already realized two thousand years earlier. When we take on our weaknesses with courage, we are then strong because we are in the truth as there is no other more vulnerable position than getting ourselves entangled in a lie and projecting it onto others.

Rosenberg refers to a visit he made to a high school to speak about nonviolent communication. Upon entering the classroom, the students who until then were chatting happily with each other suddenly became quiet. Rosenberg greeted them with a good morning but no one responded, the silence was deadly. He felt very uncomfortable but proceeded in his most professional manner to teach the lesson as if nothing had happened. The students did not seemed at all interested in what he was saying and each did his own thing; Rosenberg felt increasingly more uncomfortable but he continued to ignore it.

Finally, a student confronted him by saying, “You just hate being with black people, don’t you?” Surprised, Rosenberg realized immediately that he had contributed to this misperception by pretending to hide his discomfort from not feeling the connection that he wanted with the class. His mistake was to pretend that he was hiding well his feeling of discomfort when his body language was revealing otherwise. The mistake of the students was to interpret his body language as a sign of racism.

Acknowledging his feelings, he responded honestly by saying, “I am feeling nervous but not because you are black. My feelings have to do with my not knowing anyone here and wanting to be accepted when I came into the room.” This expression of his vulnerability was the magic wand that turned a disinterested class into one filled with participation and interest.

There was a time when it was said that men do not cry, not even in psychology were emotions studied because it was understood and accepted that it was impossible to approach them scientifically. After we saw tears in the eyes of some public figures, especially politicians and after Daniel Goleman published his book, Emotional Intelligence, which became a bestseller, feelings are now more valued and are no longer so quickly associated with weakness as with humanity. To be human is to be capable of compassion and mercy before one’s own suffering and the suffering of others.

Psychopaths can easily operate without the constraints that restrain other mortals. They can lie, steal, extort, maim and kill without any feelings of guilt. When they gain power over other people, they can become extremely dangerous. Let us recall the Roman emperor, Gaius Caesar, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. History is full of examples that are found from all walks of life: individual, family, politics, business, in the streets etc.

List of feelings when our needs are not met
Angry – annoyed – concerned – confused – disappointed – discouraged – distressed – embarrassed – frustrated – helpless – unhappy –impatient – lonely – nervous – overwhelmed – puzzled – reluctant – sad – uncomfortable

List of feelings when our needs are met
Amazed – comfortable – confident – eager – energetic – fulfilled – inspired – glad – joyous – inspired – optimistic – proud – relieved – stimulated – surprised – thankful – touched – trustful

Identifying feelings
Expressions of feelings that contain a self-evaluation
“I feel that I wasn’t treated fairly” – Rosenberg warns that we often confuse thoughts with feelings; therefore when the expression “I feel…” is followed by any word other than an adjective, we are not expressing feelings but rather thoughts or opinions. “I feel like I am talking to a wall” is a thought disguised as a feeling. On the other hand, to express a feeling we do not even need to say “I feel…”, we can express the feeling directly. For example, instead of saying “I feel angry”, I can simply say “I am angry”.

“I feel that I’m a failure as a guitar player” – In this expression I am not expressing a feeling but a self-criticism deprecating my ability as a guitar player. The actual feeling would be, “I feel frustrated (impatient, disappointed) with myself with respect to my performance in my last show”.

Expressions of feelings that contain an evaluation of others
“I feel that I’m not important to my boss” – This is a description of how I think my boss is evaluating me, rather than a genuine expression of feeling, which could be, “I feel sad or discouraged”. When we express feelings, others are not part of the equation because as we have said earlier, feelings contain what are the most private and personal to us. Others may trigger feelings in us, but their cause always comes from within me, not from others.

“I feel misunderstood” – This is another assessment of the other person’s capacity for understanding; the feeling would be “I feel anxious” or “I feel sad” or some other emotion.

“I feel ignored” – Once again this is a negative interpretation of the actions of others. The same situation or event could have two opposing readings; if we like the person who is ignoring us we would feel hurt because we want to be involved, but if we do not like the person who is ignoring us we would then feel relieved.

In order to avoid confusion, we avoid the expression “I feel...” so that we do not fall into the temptation to express a thought or an evaluation instead of a feeling; therefore we should use our emotional vocabulary and express directly the adjective that best qualifies our state of mind: I am confused, I am worried…

How to relate observations to feelings
After having expressed to our partner what we have objectively observed, we are personally involved in this observation by not mirroring a criticism or an evaluation, but rather expressing a feeling that the observation roused in us, naming the emotion or feeling that we feel without any moral judgment, thus allowing us to connect with the person in question in a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation.

We must carry out this step with the goal of identifying accurately the sensation or emotion that we, or the other person, are experiencing at that precise moment; not in order to embarrass the other for his feeling nor to try to stop him from feeling what he feels. Since feelings are hard to put into words we should do this by tentatively checking and making sure with our partner, to see whether we are right or wrong in our expression. Let us look at some examples:

• Only one hour left before the show begins, I see that you have increased your pace (observation), are you nervous? (inquire about the other’s feeling)
• I see that your dog is running around barking without a leash (observation). I’m afraid of dogs (feeling).
• I saw that your name was not mentioned in the acknowledgment (observation). Are you upset that they don’t seem to appreciate and value your contribution as you deserve? (inquire about other’s feeling).

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

NVC - Observing Without Judging

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Luke 6:37

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Mathew 18: 3

The symbol of justice, as well as its meaning, is universally known – the blindfolded lady, denoting neutrality and impartiality, holding a balance in her left hand, to evaluate and weigh equitably the imputable acts, and a sword in her right, signifying the power to execute a sentence.

However, if we look at this figure through the innocent eyes of a child who is not weighed down by its symbolic and cultural burden, she could very well represent the way we behave. We evaluate and sentence others, guided by prejudice because we are blind to the observable reality.

Observations are what we see or hear that we identify as the stimulus to our reactions. Our aim is to describe what we are reacting to concretely, specifically and neutrally, much like how a video camera might capture the moment. This helps to create a shared reality with the other person. Observation gives context to our expression of feelings and needs, and may not even be needed if both people are clear about the context.

The key to making an observation is to separate our judgments, evaluations or interpretations from our description of what happened. For example, if we say: “You’re rude,” the other person may disagree, while if we say, “When I saw you walk in, I didn’t hear you say hello to me”, the other person is more likely to recognize the moment that is described.

When we are able to describe what we see or hear, that is, in an observation language without mixing in evaluations, we increase the likelihood that the person listening to us will hear this first step without immediately jumping to a response and be more willing to hear our feelings and needs.

The nonviolent language helps us to distinguish an observation from an evaluation and to purify our observation of any moralistic judgment, and of all negative or positive evaluations. The structure of the Nonviolent Communication rests upon making observations devoid of prejudices, evaluations, and moralistic appreciations and in giving an equally unbiased feedback to the person whose behaviour we observe.

For the feedback of a good observation to be genuine, it must act like a mirror and reflect what is really happening without interpreting, analyzing, subtracting or adding. When furtively or in a sneaky way, we let our observations contain an appreciation, analysis, interpretation or criticism, the other person becomes immediately defensive and the communication is poisoned and doomed to failure.

Our being too quick to judge makes us miss much of the observable data. It may help us to heed what Jesus says about being like children; in other words, we should regain some of the qualities we have lost when we grew up such as seeing events through the pure eyes of a child, his non-subjective and nonjudgmental view of things, untarnished by cultural backgrounds or prejudices.

Unlike children, adults frequently fill themselves with prejudices and opinions about everything and everyone. They seem to use blinders which horses use to reduce their field of vision so to look only forward. Adults tend to develop cataracts in their eyes and collect wax in their ears, so they see and hear only what they want and how they want; therefore, observation, interpretation and evaluation are all one and the same.

Observation according to NVC
For Rosenberg, an observation is a description of what is happening at the precise moment when we observe and report our observation. It is a report made by our five external senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell together with our thoughts and interior sense devoid of evaluations and prejudices.

A nonviolent observation consists, therefore, of reporting of facts as they are perceived by our sensory experience, in the context of a specific time and place, free of any kind of analysis and evaluation. 

It is difficult to observe without evaluating especially when we don’t like what we observe as when what we observe unleashes our anger or our appreciation. We tend to become personally involved in what we observe, and often rush into reckless judgments from which we later regret, but unfortunately, we regret too late, when we have already reached the point of no return; as the saying goes, “A word out of the mouth is like a stone out of the hand”.

Because of our violent formatting, it is inevitable that interpretations and evaluations come into our consciousness about everything we observe. When they do, to avoid conflicts, NVC requires that we keep them to ourselves, as if they were a bad thought; if we choose to voice them out loud, then we must make ourselves responsible for them.

The highest form of human intelligence is the ability to observe without judging... 

Jiddu Krishnamurti

To observe without judging is ‘to give the benefit of the doubt’, that is, to doubt our evaluations, our inquisitive thoughts, and their natural conclusions so that we keep our minds resting in the pure natural and naturalistic observation. To judge and to evaluate is to box, to snap a photo, to frame, to archive. As Heraclitus the Greek philosopher would say, ‘reality is not static but dynamic’.

Our minds tend to function within the mechanistic philosophy of Newtonian physics, in which nature operates with the precision of a Swiss clock. Our mental laziness prefers a world where everything works mathematically and inexorably according to the laws of nature, where the exceptions are the embarrassments to the rule, and therefore to be disdained. We prefer a world of normality, of constants without variables, perfectly predictable and controllable.

This may have been Newton’s world, but it is not our world which is best represented and explained by the magical quantum physics, the Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty and chance. The variables can now be as many as the laws leading us to confusion and bewilderment, but this is our world.

To live in harmony with this dynamic and ever-changing new world, we must change our worldview and our language. They cannot be static nor absolute, but rather dynamic and quite relative.

Nonviolent Communication removes or shifts the focus from who we are as the result of our past such as our identity, our personality, surname etc. to who we are right now; it is what Rosenberg calls what is alive in us now, that is, how we are feeling and what we are needing, or what's going on in us. The static language is set to the past, while NVC being dynamic is set to the present.

Learning to translate judgments and interpretations into the observation language moves us away from right/wrong thinking and helps us take responsibility for our actions by directing our attention to our needs as the source of our feelings rather than on the other person. In this way, observations – paving the way towards greater connection with ourselves and with others – emerge as a crucial building block towards a profound consciousness shift.

The classic example of Rosenberg
Rosenberg recounts how one day he was called to a school where the teachers were united in their constant conflict with the principal. In a meeting with the teachers, he asked them, “What is the principal doing that conflicts with your needs?” Rosenberg asked for concrete observations of the principal’s behavior, but all he got were evaluations: “He has a big mouth!” said the first teacher. “He talks too much!” said another. When they were told that these were all evaluations not observations, a third teacher tried to answer Rosenberg’s question by saying, “He thinks only he has anything worth saying.” Then another trying to be helpful added, “In meetings he always wants to be the center of attention.”

After many failed attempts, Rosenberg worked with the teachers to come up with a list of identifying concrete behaviours free of evaluation on the part of the principal that annoyed them. A meeting with the principal was then called in which Rosenberg was asked to be present. Not long after the meeting started, Rosenberg saw right away for himself what the principal did that irritated the teachers so much. No matter what subject was discussed in the meeting, the principal took the opportunity to give a long rambling account of his childhood or war experience, which took them off topic, with the result that the meetings ran much longer than expected.

This is only one example of our inability to recount what we observe without contaminating it with our evaluation. Sometimes, like in the case of these teachers, evaluation so pervades our minds that we even forget the original behaviour that started the whole discussion.

Evaluating without taking responsibility
Following Rosenberg’s book, let us see some examples where observation has an implicit evaluation to show how difficult it is to separate the two in everyday life.

You are too generous – This is an observation with an evaluation attached; the speaker of this statement claims to know the benchmark of what is less, more or even too generous; as such he makes a categorical claim, allegedly objective, without being responsible or implicated in it.

When I see you give away all your chocolates without leaving any for yourself, I think you are being too generous – This would be the way to formulate the previous statement as pure observation. We make reference to a fact without falling into the temptation to interpret it. But if we want to interpret it then we make ourselves responsible for that interpretation, that is, “I think…” or “to me that is being too generous” thus leaving reality open to other interpretations.

Use and abuse of verbs that evaluate
John is always late – This observation contains a generalization, even if we have already caught John at being late before, it does not mean that he is always late; it is the same situation of the one who had killed a dog and afterwards they all call him a dog-killer. In addition to labeling people, generalizations are always unfair, even if there is a recurring behaviour.

The most harmful of all verbs in the nonviolent language is the verb to be, because it baptizes people, tying them to a label that prevents them from growing and progressing. The abuse of this verb in the education of children leads them to be what others want them to be. The verb to be ties people to static identities; every time we label someone we put that person inside a straitjacket, giving him a life sentence that is difficult for him to escape.

We are all beings under construction, in continuous growth, in a continuous state of becoming, progressing, and evolution. The verb to be does not define us because we are not stones, not static beings but living beings. The verb to be only serves to define dead things and when it defines living things it kills them.

John only studied for the physics exam the night before – The antidote to generalization which leads to labeling is to refer to a specific situation. In this way we observe or echo something that has happened, thus being faithful to reality, and letting John himself draw whatever conclusion he may want to draw from his own behaviour in relation to this specific incident or its recurrence.

Monica is ugly – This denotes that we have in us the gauge for beauty and that in Monica’s case we are the spokesperson for 7 billion people.

Monica’s looks don’t appeal to me – In this way I make myself responsible for my viewpoint that is mine alone, therefore it does not extend to anyone else. As the Romans used to say, “de gustibus non est disputandum”, that is, “in matters of taste, there can be no disputes” because “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

Prophets of doom
Her work will not be accepted – We often reveal in our statements the claim of being prophets, and almost always prophets of doom. With some malice and pleasure in the misdeeds of others, we make negative predictions about their thoughts, ideas, feelings, intentions, desires and actions. It is true that this is not an observation, but an “a priori” evaluation whose purpose may be to humiliate the person in question, or to make him retract his attempts, or even to influence him negatively to make him fail.

I don’t think that her work will be accepted – This would be the same evaluation but made in a NVC way; whoever evaluates must take responsibility for his own evaluation thus removing any outside weight and importance of what is said.

If you don’t eat balanced meals, you will lose your health – Here is an observation that not even a medical doctor should make because it confuses prediction with certainty. Medicine is not an exact science like mathematics; there are many factors that affect health or sickness; even though this observation may contain some truth, it is not the whole truth.

If your meals are not balanced, I fear that your health may be affected – This statement is more in accordance with the truth because diet is only one of the many factors affecting both the state of health and the state of illness.

Generalizations
New immigrants are sloppy – This is an example of a generalization; it is perhaps the most common defect in our day to day speech. Words like always, never etc. are almost always followed by a generalization. A generalization is the universalization of our own experience. If we are sufficiently humble we will admit that our experience is very limited in time and space, so it cannot and should not be universalized.

It is the basis of racism, sexism and stereotyping to universalize and generalize our experiences and making comments such as: men are… women are… blacks are… gypsies are… the British are… the French are…

The family of new immigrants living in number 24 does not take care of their lawn – The antidote for generalization is to be specific in time and place thus limiting our statement or observation to a concrete time, place and behaviour as “against facts there is no argument”.

Oscar is a poor soccer player – A generalization most often heard in soccer circles and in heated discussions among fans. It denotes frustration, but it has nothing to do with the truth.

Oscar has not scored a goal in his last 5 games – Translated into a statement accepted by the canons of nonviolent language we make reference to facts and abstain from hasty conclusions. The same player when upon scoring a decisive goal in a championship game would be immediately appreciated in a very different way.

Examples of observations with or without evaluations
•    John was angry with me yesterday for no reason. (Evaluation)
•    Yesterday night Nancy chewed her nails while watching television. (Observation)
•    Sam did not ask for my opinion during the meeting. (Observation)
•    My father is a good man. (Evaluation)
•    Claire works too much. (Evaluation)
•    Henry is aggressive. (Evaluation)
•    Carlos was first every day of this week. (Observation)
•    My son often doesn’t brush his teeth. (Evaluation)
•    Luke told me that I don’t look good in yellow. (Observation)
•    My aunt complains when I talk with her. (Evaluation)

The pure in heart  shall see God
And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire. Matthew 18:9

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Matthew 6:22-23

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Matthew 5:8

As Jesus suggests, if our eyes are sick then greater will be our occasions of falling into sin. We often do not see things objectively but only what we want to see. Or, we do not see without interpreting because our eyes are not windows to the world and lamps to illuminate things as they are. Therefore we need to purify our hearts and minds for only then will we see God, and reality as it is, and in this way contribute to the harmony in human relationships and peace in the world.

Evaluation and value judgements in NVC
How is it possible to communicate without evaluating our and the other person’s behaviour? Is there really no evaluation whatsoever in NVC? Indeed there is. In NVC we abstain from the moralistic judgements that are made in a static language and are part of the game of who is right and who is wrong, who is good and who is bad. We refrain from all evaluations that criticize the behavior of other people, labeling them as good or bad, honest or dishonest, egocentric or altruistic etc.

The evaluation of what is observable in NVC is centered in the present, in the here and now. It makes reference only to concrete acts and not to some vague and generalised attitudes; it is dynamic because it relates to what is alive in us at that very moment, or what is going on with us in regards to our feelings and needs at that moment. This being said, in NVC, our observable behaviour, what we concretely do or say and what others do or say, is evaluated in terms of meeting or not meeting our needs, making us feel or not feel good at that given moment.

Violent communication is based on static and moralistic evaluations that when they are voiced out, they put people on the defensive because they classify and divided people into two categories: the good guys who deserve to be praised and rewarded, and the bad guys who deserve to be reprimanded and punished. In NVC, the assessment or evaluation, is based on what is happening at the present and how much it will or will not meet the needs and values of all involved in the interaction.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC