CHAPTER 2
Becoming Aware of What
We Are Truly Experiencing
I do not at all like those who claim that there is merit in having worked painfully. Were it painful, better had they done something else. The joy that one finds in one’s work is the sign of owning it. The sincerity of my pleasure, Nathanaël, is my most precious guide.
ANDRÉ GIDE
French author, Nobel Prize winner
Wearing Oneself Out Doing Good
A man came up to me in a workshop and said: “I’m not one for feelings, and even less for needs. Now my wife, she has feelings and needs. So do my children and my boss—but not me, not a thing. Duty, yes. Obligations, yes. I’m familiar with them.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“It so saddens me …”
“So you see you can recognize one feeling: sadness.”
“Oh, yes!”
“And why does it sadden you?”
“Because I would love to live like that too. It seems to be a more ‘alive’ way of life.”
“Can you see? You too can identify basic needs: the need for sharing and the need for being more alive.”
“You’re right,” he said, tears suddenly welling up in his eyes. “I have so often heard that a man doesn’t cry, that a man represses his feelings, that a man does his duty. I couldn’t so much as dare think that I might want something, have a personal craving.”
Although we often are not aware, we cannot be feeling-free. Even if we were to believe that we only listen to the needs of others, we cannot be need-free. And more than that, we devote the greater part, if not the whole, of our time attempting to meet needs we know so little about.
If we think we can listen only to the needs of others and not our own, we are simply unaware that we are acting in the service of one of the strongest and most pervasive needs among human beings: to take care of others, to contribute to their well-being.
The old and unfortunate habit of binary thinking has made us believe that taking care of ourselves means ceasing to take care of others and then, in order to take care of others properly, one has to “forget oneself”!
Why should there be this mutual exclusion between care for others and care for ourselves?
When I think of the human beings—so many of them—who have forgotten themselves and either pay the price for that themselves or make others pay for it, my own sadness is boundless. My sadness tells me how much I would like human beings to understand that their own joy and well-being are first and foremost as they care for others. If this isn’t the case, it would be better for them and others if they did something else.
How many people—particularly in welfare and education (teachers, social workers, doctors, nurses, therapists)—have not overextended themselves and worked themselves to the bone, even going so far as a nervous breakdown, helping others while disregarding themselves? They often do themselves so much damage doing good that they’re no longer capable of doing much of anything. They have so cut themselves off from themselves to such an extent that their energy and vitality have run out; a spring has broken. Sometimes it’s only through a jolt (depression, an accident, grieving, loss of job) that life itself brings them back to themselves. Those parts of ourselves that we fail to listen to ultimately have ways of giving us vigorous reminders that they exist. Thus, violence, often unconsciously directed toward ourselves, causes life to react violently. If we live in violence toward ourselves and toward life (demanding, controlling, overworking, feeling guilty), we run the risk of producing a violent reaction from life itself (an accident, disease, depression, mourning).
Those parts of ourselves that we fail to listen to ultimately have ways of giving us vigorous reminders that they exist.
As noted above, some people unconsciously make others pay for this failure to have regard for themselves. How many people in social work are so overloaded that they lose their receptiveness, their humor, their humanity? Despite their concern to “do good,” they often wind up doing more harm than good. Thus, in the medical world exhaustion can too often bring about negligence in care or attention—and in the educational world saturation in the wake of too many demands can bring about rejection or closure toward a pupil requiring special attention.
Having been a committed volunteer for some ten years in an association looking after young people with various addictions, delinquency, anorexia, depression, prostitution, and so on, I can state two things:
In order to survive, it is a matter of urgency to clearly distinguish between taking care of and taking responsibility for. I will come back to this.
The only sustainable way of taking proper care of anything, in my view, is by deriving deep pleasure from it, feeling great satisfaction for the other person at the accomplishments and steps taken. If even a part of us is acting out of duty, out of sacrifice, because “I must”—and feels such things as obligation, constraint, and guilt—this part eats up our energy and vitality and sooner or later turns on itself by coming through in the form of anger, rebellion, or depression.
On this subject, I remember what someone said about a hike we were organizing for some thirty troubled young people in the Sahara Desert, “Basically you have a good time during these trips, so what’s the merit in going on them?”
A dialogue ensued, starting with my reply, “Do you feel concerned because you would like to be reassured that we take proper care of the young people who go with us?”
“Yes, because if you do go, it’s because you have a good time.”
“Is it difficult for you to imagine that one can both have a good time and please others, take care of your own well-being and the well-being of others at the same time?”
“Right. I’ve always seen those two things as mutually exclusive. Either I take care of myself, or I take care of others and disregard myself.”
“And how do you feel when I tell you that what I enjoy about organizing this trip is that I’m nurturing both my need for discovery, space, and exploration and my need to share what I love, contributing to the well-being of others by bringing them along for this adventure?”
“I hadn’t seen things like that before. That’s new for me. In fact, it’s a relief for me to get out of the middle of the opposition between the two.”
“For me, not only is it a relief, it mobilizes my energies at the same time. My whole being is invested in this adventure, all my vitality. There’s not a single part of me that says, ‘Whoa, I’d just as soon stay at home and read a book by the fireplace, or I’d rather go skiing with friends.’ No. Aware that my needs are not mutually exclusive, I am fully into whatever I’m doing, and the young people are aware of my availability to them and the joy this inner unity brings about. It awakens in them their own need for unity, vitality, commitment, a taste for life.”
But let’s come back to needs. We can often cut ourselves off from our feelings and our needs, that is, prohibit ourselves from feeling them and listening to them, then “bury them in concrete.” However, we’re unable to be feeling-free and need-free, even though we’re often quite unconscious of the fact. Our consciousness is invaluable because to an ever-greater extent I believe that the fact of feeling and sharing is what nurtures human nature at the deepest level. Thus, our most intimate and most essential well-being is born of the quality of the relationship we maintain with ourselves, with others, and with the environment in which we live.
Do we not feel the greatest joys when we are communicating clearly with ourselves and those close to us? … when we are connected to ourselves and those we love? … when relationships are based on esteem and trust, what I call “together-well-being”? Conversely, do we not feel the greatest pain when we fail to see clearly within ourselves? … when we feel alienated from ourselves? … when we no longer have clarity regarding a relationship and feel cut off from a person we love? Thus, our happiness, our well-being, does not come from what we possess, nor from what we do, but from how we live our relationship with others, our activities, and the world around us.
Since I have been seeking to understand and give meaning to the difficulty of being, I note that the people who radiate deep well-being, a joy of living in this world, are those who give precedence not to the number of things they do, nor their possessions, but to the quality of the relationships they have with others, with their environment, and with what they do—beginning with the quality of the relationship they have with themselves. These people don’t seek to fill their lives with things to do or people to pass time with, but to fill life with the relationships they nourish and the things they care about doing.
So it seems to me that our truest wealth, our heritage, the source of our deepest and most sustainable joys lies in our ability to establish nurturing and meaningful relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the universe around us. And doubtless that is both the most obvious and the most difficult thing! And small wonder …
We are seldom connected to reality, as it actually is. Most of the time we relate to reality as we believe it to be or, more to the point, as we fear it to be. So we will see how to relate as objectively as possible to reality as it actually is and not just as we see it (compare “Observing Without Judging or Interpreting,” p. 54).
Our reactions tend to be based on our impressions, beliefs, and prejudices rather than on what we truly and personally feel. This means frequently we aren’t listening to ourselves properly. We will therefore see how to listen to our own feelings, the ones that lead us where we go, differentiating them from those that involve blame or criticism toward another (compare “Feeling Without Judging or Interpreting,” p. 69).
We act as a function of outside criteria: habit, tradition, duty, imposed or presupposed (“I believe I have to …”); and fear of the judgments of others (social pressure) where the others may be parents, spouse, children, social and professional environment, or, more simply, parts of ourselves we aren’t well-acquainted with, which we fear will judge us and make us feel guilty. We will see how to listen to our fundamental needs, how to identify them, differentiate among them, establish priorities (compare “Identifying Our Needs Without Projecting Them onto Others,” p. 80).
Finally, because we’re unable to understand and process our own needs easily and flexibly … and correspondingly unable to understand and process the needs of others easily and flexibly, we often sacrifice our own needs to please others, to “be nice.” Exasperated at having been nice for so long or anxious at not having our needs recognized, we impose our needs on others, or we expect others to guess the needs we have neither expressed nor even identified. And if they do not do so, we criticize them for this and judge them. Sometimes this dynamic is termed the “martyr complex.”
We often sacrifice our own needs to please others, to “be nice.”
We will see how to make clear and precise requests that make it possible for our needs to be met day by day, also taking into account the needs of others (compare “Formulating a Concrete, Realistic, Positive, Negotiable Request,” p. 98).
In this chapter, we will endeavor to develop as much as possible our awareness of what we are experiencing at each of the following stages:
OBSERVATION. We are reacting to something we observe, we hear, or we’re saying to ourselves.
FEELING. The above observation generates within us one or more feelings.
NEED. The feelings guide us to our needs.
REQUEST. Aware now of our needs, we can make a request or implement concrete action.
These four stages can easily be remembered by using the acronym OFNR.
You can see that the idea is not to lose one’s head but to put it back in the right place! We need to say to our head, to our mental processes: “Thank you for the good services rendered. I often need you (to check the restaurant bill, to file my tax return, to draw up a contract, to analyze a situation, to manage my budget), but not all the time. I do not want you to be in charge of every part of my life, to make choices for me as if you were in a control tower. I also need to trust my intuition, listen to my feelings, deal with my needs at my own pace and with respect. Basically, I need to feel whole and reunited; I don’t want to be divided anymore, split between my head and my heart. Stating it a bit crassly, I don’t want to be little more than a brain on legs!”
Observing Without Judging or Interpreting
To paraphrase the words of the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti, distinguishing between the observation of a fact and the interpretation thereof constitutes one of the highest levels of human intelligence. It is certainly one of the most difficult and least “natural” things to do: differentiating between the fact, such as it is, and the emotion it generates in us. We often completely distort the facts. The way we decipher facts means that they take on the color of fear, hope, projections, and so on. We are therefore no longer in contact with reality, the factual truth, but rather with our own preoccupations and interpretations, with the more or less fictional film of this reality that we’re showing—and we can even build our entire lives on that basis: all of our attitudes and thoughts on a subjective reading of reality. We do so without understanding the misery of misunderstandings and cross-purposes that such an attitude can drag us into.
On the contrary, I am seeking to invite people to get out of the interpretation/projection trap by verifying the facts.
Ping-Pong escalation
I may believe that I’m making an objective observation when I say, “My friend has been giving me the cold shoulder for days now.” I’m running a strong risk of feeling blame, railing against him, or perhaps being peevish with him in turn. In any event, I’m feeling as ill-tempered as hell, probably with no good grounds. Therefore, on the basis of a highly subjective interpretation, I trigger a process of verbal violence.
In fact, how do I really know he’s ignoring me? Perhaps he’s sad or preoccupied for completely different reasons. Possibly he has a migraine. But I, because this observation worries me, decide that he’s giving me the cold shoulder without checking that out with him. The scenario I invent is totally disconnected from reality.
My little drama involves two risks:
I get into a state to no avail, and it burns up most of my energy.
I might well aggress my friend and generate violence myself. I might, for example, approach him, saying something like “I’m fed up with you being in a huff.”
To which he might well retort: “Don’t be silly. I’m not in a huff.”
“Of course you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
Or, quite common too: “Of course I’m giving you the cold shoulder and naturally it’s your fault,” and we might get into another game of argumentative Ping-Pong: “You are wrong, I am right.”
The cornerstone of the method being recommended here is making observations that are as neutral as possible: State facts (quotes, body positions, facial expressions, tone of voice) just like a camera would. We have to be so attentive to how we “enter” into conversation with another person.
Remarks
To make the process easier to understand, here’s an abridged version of it:
I observe that my friend has not spoken to me since the beginning of the meal and has left the room without speaking (O).
This observation generates a feeling in me: I feel concerned, irritable, helpless (F).
This complex of feelings shows I have a need: I need to know if something is wrong, need to understand, and perhaps need to be ready to offer my help (N).
In practical terms, my request, my action, will be to check how he feels—to see if he has concerns and if I can do something to lighten his load (R).
I approach him, saying, “When I saw that you left the room during the meal without speaking (O), I began to feel concerned (F), and I would like to know if something is on your mind and if I can help (N + R).”
This is a formulation that may appear naïve and somewhat impractical in ordinary life! It could be made more plausible and less academic by saying: “It seems to me that you are more quiet than usual. Is something wrong?” What I observe is that this way of “opening” a conversation, approaching an issue without judgment or interpretation, not only makes us better disposed to listen to the other person, it also extends an invitation to the other individual to talk to us from the heart about what they are feeling, without any sense of being criticized.
“You are so sloppy!”
Here’s another example I often test out on schoolchildren.
Let’s imagine you’re a twelve-year-old child. You come home from school about four in the afternoon. It’s raining. The bus was late, and your mother welcomes you in the first thirty seconds with: “You always leave your shoes on the stairs. You’ve thrown your jacket on the sofa and your backpack into the middle of the living room. Anyone would think you’re the only person living in this house! Go and clean it all up, and be quick about it! And while you’re at it, your room is like a war zone. You can clean that up too, right now!”
Ask yourself how you feel now, and see what state of mind you’re in.
With children, I often receive one of the following two reactions:
“Well, if she screams like that, I’m certainly not going to clean up anything. I’m going to get mad. And it won’t be any fun. Both of us are going to sulk the whole evening.”
“Well, I won’t have any choice. I’ll put my stuff away. But I’ll make sure I slam all the doors, bang my feet on every stair up to my room, and turn my boom box all the way up (with the music she hates most) to get back at her.” (The latter would be an illustration of the classic passive-aggressive response.)
I then suggest to the schoolchildren the substitute formulation below. The circumstances are the same. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. It’s raining. The bus was late. Your mother welcomes you, saying: “When I see your shoes on the stairs, your jacket on the sofa, and your backpack on the living room carpet (O), I feel sad and disheartened (F) because I took so much time and energy cleaning up the house, and I need respect for the work I do and would like others to cooperate in keeping the house clean (N). I would like to know if you would agree to clean up your things now (concrete, negotiable R)?”
I usually get one of two reactions:
“Well, if my mother always asked me to do things like that, I would do them right away.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate being told to do things without any reason. But if I’m told why and am given the choice, often I do with pleasure what I’m asked to do. I like the house to be clean and neat when I come home.”
“Well, it’s more pleasant to hear that than the first version. It’s great to have a clean house, and I like to help. But when I come back from school, what I want most of all is to be left in peace for a while to unwind.”
So we do a role-play. I play the mother.
“So you’re saying you’re willing to clean up, but you’ve had a tiring day (F), and you’d like a bit of a breather first (N)?”
“That’s right. I want to have a can of pop, then I’ll clean up afterward.”
“Basically, I want to be reassured more than anything else (F) that you will think about it later so that I’m not the only one who sees to it that the house is cleaned up (N). Can you understand that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“When you say, ‘Yes, of course,’ and start heading to the kitchen, I’m not sure (F) that you have understood my needs (N) and the things I’m saying. I would therefore like to know if you would be willing to repeat them (R).”
“OK. You want to be sure I don’t forget to clean up everything—and you’re not the only one to keep the house neat.
Is that it?”
“That’s right. Thank you.”
Remarks
Children are often hypersensitive about how a conversation starts. They haven’t yet acquired protective armor against the brusqueness of adults’ usual manner of conversation. So, in the first version, when the mother uses such phrases as “You always leave your shoes lying around” and “You’ve thrown your jacket on the sofa again,” children feel like answering: “That’s not true. Two days ago I put my shoes away and my jacket too, and I had never left it there before!” Once again, we’re up against “Yes, but” and “No, not at all.” And once again we run the risk of Ping-Pong escalation (“It’s always the same way with you … You’re always picking on me … You let my sister do anything … You only see what I do wrong!”).
The neutral observation of the second version (“When I see your shoes on the staircase and your jacket on the sofa …”)—with no judgment, no interpretation, no criticism, neither in tone of voice nor in facial expression (beware, this is difficult; nonverbal expression is powerful)—makes it possible to open the dialogue in a way that makes the following outcomes possible:
Expressing our feelings and needs in a clear way such that they can be heard by the other party.
The other person being able to open up and listen to us in order to understand. This empowers us to move forward together toward a satisfying solution for each party, not just for the mother, as would have been the case had she made her need for order into a requirement without listening to her child’s need for respite—and not just for the child, as would have been the case had the mother repressed her need for order and collaboration so as to be “nice” to her child.
Stating the observation in a neutral way doesn’t mean we’re repressing our feelings. It means we start the conversation in a way that respects reality and the vision that the other person has of it (which may be quite different from our own), and that enables us to communicate to the other person the full force of our feeling without judging or aggressing.
Stating an observation in a neutral way doesn’t mean we’re repressing our feelings.
When I do this exercise with children, the reply regarding coercion is almost always the same. In the final analysis, whether adult or child, we generally hate doing things out of obligation. We need to (1) understand the meaning and (2) act freely. Meaning was provided in this particular situation by mentioning the needs: “I took care to clean up the house, and I need respect for the work I do.”
As for freedom, it is ensured by the way the request is formulated. It is expressed in negotiable terms (otherwise it ceases to be a request and becomes a demand; we then fail to establish the quality of connection we wish to have): “I would like to know if you would agree to putting your things away now.” This stage is the most difficult: accepting that the other person may not agree to what we want! It’s worth remembering that often, as long as our needs are not recognized, we make them into requirements: “Go clean up your room immediately!” This is not a negotiable request but a demand that doesn’t leave the other person free. So either the other person will submit, or they will rebel. What is often the case is that others will not act willingly and joyfully to contribute to our well-being! You may say: “But sometimes there are things that have to be done, boundaries to be imposed. You can’t give free rein all the time.” Indeed, I hear your need for structure, to have solid reference points. We’ll be expanding on that issue later.
I can state that I have not yet met anyone, whether adult or child, who fundamentally does not enjoy contributing to the well-being of others, even if such willingness is well-hidden, buried in a corner of the heart or transformed into aggression through bitterness. I, for example, have met young people with aggressive tendencies, particularly toward elderly people, speaking tearfully about their own parents or grandparents who are sick or in difficulty. So I am confident that we’re fully able to join them in that common need: contributing to the welfare of others.
Experience also has shown me that this need can be hampered or stifled if other needs, perhaps ones more vital for the person concerned, are not met: recognition, being welcomed, having one’s place, being loved for who one is rather than for what one does, being respected, considered to be a whole human being, and so on. Many refusals are an expression of the fact that one or another of these needs is not being met. For example, children don’t want to clean up their things because sloppiness is practically the only way they have come up with to express themselves, to express their differences or their identities, to draw attention to themselves, to get more consideration than the little sister or the big brother. As Guy Corneau says in The Tragedy of Good Boys and Good Girls, “If I haven’t learned how to get it right or have failed to be recognized for getting it right, then I prefer to get it wrong.”4
When I do the exercise with mothers, I notice they are practically always willing to listen and respect the child’s need for a breather and to have a snack before putting things away so long as their own needs for order and support in the organization of the household are recognized, shared, and taken into consideration in concrete ways. In fact, it’s not that they really want thetidying up to be done at once, it is rather that they are tired of being the only one in the family to put things away—the shoes, the books, everyone’s toys—and moms are the only ones who feel concerned about order. And most of the time they have come up with no way of getting what they want and need other than by demanding it.
I have seen radical changes take place in family or marital systems once the individuals concerned are careful to clarify their respective needs with compassion for the other party and with confidence in themselves—and by ensuring that they have been understood by the other person.
In the expression “You always leave all your things lying around,” which many believe is an objective observation, there is perhaps just one objective word—and that might be you! And worse, the sentence is spoken in a tone easily interpreted as accusing.
The word always allows the same tiredness to show. Obviously, what just occurred does not occur always, and the other person, of course, will not miss the opportunity to retort: “That’s not true! Yesterday, I put everything away.” And he would be furious that I had judged him unjustly and not recognized his efforts of the previous day, even if his toys, shoes, and sports gear are embellishing various parts of the house.
The word leave judges an attitude more than it observes a behavior: I’m tired of seeing others’ things in places where I would like to see something else, so I deem that the items have been thrown down, whereas the other person is perhaps happy with where the things have ended up.
The word all is used inaccurately here. Obviously, it is not a question of all, and the other person, of course, will not fail to point that out to me: “That’s not true! Yesterday, I cleaned up all my mess.” He will be furious that I failed to appreciate this gesture, even if his toys, shoes, and sports gear are embellishing various parts of the house.
The expression lying around is too strong. He will instantly think, then say: “I live, I play, I create, and I’m alive, right? And all you can say is that I leave things lying around. You’re not in touch with reality, are you, you grown-ups?!”
As you can see, virtually every word in this sentence generated resistance, opposition, and defiance in the other person. By starting a dialogue in this way, we can count on the noncollaboration of other people who feel themselves judged and criticized as a matter of course. They will then be putting their energy into justifying themselves, attempting to save face rather than listening to our need. Indeed, in our often almost desperate quest for another’s approval, we tend, when there is conflict, to strive to re-establish unanimity as soon as possible by argument, control, or even submission.
By contrast, if we start dialogue with a neutral reference to something that is preoccupying us (neutral observation: “I see your stuff lying on the carpet in the drawing room, your shoes on the hall carpet, and your toys on the staircase”), we take advantage of the opportunity to inform the other person of our need. And, so that it will not be heard as criticism or an obligation that will exclude freedom of action, we take care to formulate an open and negotiable request. For example: “I feel sad and upset because I need order and help when it comes to keeping the house clean (F, N). I would like to know if you would agree to putting your things away in your bedroom (R).”
Using this approach, our thinking head, with its intelligence, has been of great value to us in making an assessment of the facts.
Exercise
Try the following exercise: observing without judging, then listening to what is happening to you in terms of feelings and needs.
To conclude this section on the importance of observing without judging, I would like to share three thoughts with you:
Differentiating the telling of facts from an interpretation of them is common practice in police inquiries and court procedures. Before looking at the facts in the light of societal values as expressed through laws, all of the parties concerned (police authorities, courts, perpetrators and victims, plaintiff and defendant, third parties, et al.) need first of all to agree on the facts. The same applies to the armed forces. When I did my military service, I took a radio course called “Observe and Report,” which teaches that to be sure the facts are described such as they really are—subjective feelings not allowed!
Imagine an observer reporting in wartime: “We’ve been surrounded; the enemy is advancing over us in a most powerful way. We have been invaded.” It will not be easy to come up with an appropriate military response. By contrast, if the observer describes what he is truly seeing (“A column of fifteen tanks is moving from the south toward the north, six miles from the front. Some one hundred men are moving up the left bank of the river and three XY-type aircraft have flown over the coast, flying east”), doubtless there would be somewhat more of a chance that the chosen response would be appropriate! I am certainly not making a plug for the armed forces. I am simply stating a principle of basic security and clarity for effective action: establishing the facts and agreeing on their sequence in order to ascertain more precisely what we’re talking about before interpreting or reacting.
Out of respect for the same values of security and effectiveness, it will prove most useful to work on the way we observe, not to cut ourselves off from our feelings and needs, but rather to give them their full weight.
Judgments place others in boxes. In fact, they place those who judge in boxes. Judgments cut us off from the other person, from reality, and from ourselves, wrapping the object in cellophane like a bubble-wrapped commodity, making of it a small, closed, isolated parcel ready to be put into the deep freeze of preconceived ideas, beliefs, and prejudices. When I judge, I question neither myself nor the other person. On the contrary, I cut myself off from my deepest self and from the depth of the other person by remaining in my mind-space. Judgments are static; they deep-freeze reality. Judgments enclose reality in a single aspect of its nature and stop it dead in its tracks.
Judgments place others in boxes. In fact, they place those who judge in boxes.
Life is movement. From the infinitely large movements of the planets and the cosmos to the infinitely minute movements of atoms and electrons, everything is moving all the time. The only immovable thing on this planet was devised by man, who came up with the notion of fixed ideas! In the realm of nature, there is nothing fixed. Man is the one who conceived the idea of final judgments. In nature, nothing is final. Nature is all about seasons, transitions, and transformations. Even mountains are on the move.
As conscious beings, we have a deep-seated need to place ourselves in relation to things and beings and to exercise our discernment. What I mean by “placing ourselves in relation to things” is knowing:
Where we are.
If we’re enjoying it or not.
If what we’re experiencing or seeing is in keeping with our values, our vision of the world.
If we wish to stay put or change.
What we can do to change.
We also have a deep-seated need to share values, mainly the value of meaning. We need life to be meaningful.
Yet in our attempts to meet these two needs, we tend to fall into the old, unfortunate habit of judging mentally rather than welcoming things into our hearts.
In this book, my desire is to show how we might place ourselves in relation to things without judging; see the challenges at stake, the values and the priorities without criticism, without aggression, without imposing; and find and share meaning with neither constraint nor rejection. The first stage of this process therefore will be to verify what is happening: What are the facts? What, indeed, is reality?
A Chinese tale
To illustrate how easy it is for us to be completely wrong when we judge, let me suggest that you read the following Chinese tale. This story sheds light on the first stage of the process, the observation. That is, taking in and perceiving reality such as it is (ever-evolving) and not such as we fear it might be or think it is.
NOTE: This tale does not go into the feelings, needs, and requests that show us how to position ourselves in relation to things and events without judging them. The old Chinaman may look cold and emotionless. Nonetheless, I like to quote this tale because he does not allow himself to be locked into a rigid and unyielding vision of reality. He never stops evolving, welcoming whatever comes his way. His attitude, when you compare it with the panicked noisy villagers, is one of great silent and trusting peace.
Here is the story that Lao-Tseu, Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism, was fond of telling.5
A poor Chinaman inspired jealousy among some of the richest people in the land because he owned an extraordinary white horse. Whenever he was offered a fortune for the animal, the old man replied: “That horse is much more than an animal for me. He’s a friend. I cannot sell him.”
One day, the horse disappeared. The neighbors gathering around the empty stable gave voice: “Poor fool. It was obvious that someone would steal that beast from you. Why did you not sell him? Oh, what a calamity!”
The owner of the horse was more circumspect: “Let us not exaggerate. Let us say that the horse is no longer in the stable. That’s a fact. The rest is only conjecture on your part. How can we know what is fortune or what is misfortune? We only know a fragment of the story. Who knows how it will turn out?”
The people laughed at the old peasant, for long since had they considered him to be simple-minded. Two weeks later, the white horse came back. He had not been stolen. He had simply gone out to graze, and he had brought back a (dozen wild horses from his escapade.
Once again, the villagers gathered ‘round: “You were right. It was not a misfortune but a blessing.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said the peasant. “Let us only say that the white horse has come back. How can we know whether this is good fortune or bad? It is but an episode. How can one get to know the content of a book by reading just one sentence?”
The villagers went their way, convinced that the old man had lost his mind. Receiving twelve fine horses was indubitably a gift from heaven. Who could deny that? The peasant’s son began to break in the wild horses. One of them threw him to the ground and trampled on him.
The villagers came once again and gave their views: “Poor friend! You were right. These wild horses did not bring you luck. Look at your only son, disabled for life. Who will give you succor in your old days? You really are to be pitied.”
“Hold it!” retorted the peasant. “Not so fast. My son has lost the use of his legs. That’s all. Who can know what that will bring? Life is presented to us in small segments. No one can predict the future.”
Sometime later, war broke out, and all the young men in the village were enrolled in the army, except for the invalid.
“Old man,” the villagers lamented, “you were right, your son may no longer be able to walk, but he has stayed with you while our sons have gone off to get killed.”
“Please,” answered the peasant, “do no judge hastily. Your young people have enrolled in the army; my son has remained at home. That is all we can say. God alone knows if that is good or bad.”
Feeling Without Judging or Interpreting
“I feel that” vs. “I feel”
Generally when you ask someone “How do you feel?” in relation to a preoccupying situation, the person will reply: “I feel that this absolutely must be done … I feel that it’s time for our leaders to do this or that … I feel that it’s hopeless …”
People answer, therefore, with a thought, a concept, or a comment, not a feeling, whereas in fact the question was an invitation for them to position themselves in relation to their feelings. Doubtless, such individuals would be convinced that they have informed you of their feeling since they began by saying, “I feel that …”
Once again, it is the old habit of thinking rather than feeling that holds sway. It is an ancient reflex. It is not, however, unchangeable.
So if we want to get more information about ourselves, to ascertain what we are truly experiencing in relation to a situation, it is in our interest to listen to our feelings by wording the sentence like this: “I feel worried, sad, disappointed, etc.” As noted previously, our feelings will lead us to our needs and help us identify them. If we can do that, we will be able to position ourselves in relation to situations or persons without judging them, without criticizing them, and without off-loading onto them the responsibility for what we are experiencing. As long as we ascribe to another the responsibility for what we are experiencing, we are acting irresponsibly. As long as we give them the keys to our well-being (and our ill-being), we are caught in a trap we have set for ourselves. It is, therefore, quite useful in our feelings vocabulary to distinguish between the words that constitute an interpretation or a judgment of what another has said, done, or is—and those that do not.
Indeed, very often, in the belief that we are using “I” statements, assuming responsibility for our feelings, we use such words (commonly considered as feelings) as: “I feel betrayed, abandoned, manipulated, rejected.” True, these words do express feelings. At the same time, however, they convey an image of another person, an interpretation, a judgment. Between the lines we read: “You are a traitor, a manipulator; you have abandoned me; you reject me.” Stated differently, people sometimes confess to others that they have bad or negative feelings toward them because they have done such and such and such. The “confessor” then uses this as an opportunity to convince the other person that they are to blame for how the “confessor” feels. Thus, the “confession” becomes a thinly veiled excuse for establishing the other person’s guilt.
At the end of this book, you will find a list containing the words often used as feelings but that also include an assessment or judgment of a third party. Why is it useful to make this distinction? It seems to me to constitute a key differentiation that this process highlights. There are two benefits from distinguishing true feelings from feelings that constitute an interpretation.
There are two benefits from distinguishing true feelings from feelings that constitute an interpretation.
The first benefit relates to our desire to set off on a path toward ourselves as securely as possible, by giving up scenarios where we are victims and plaintiffs. The freer our language is of any dependency on what another does or doesn’t do—and the more, therefore, our awareness is free of it too—the more we’ll be able to become aware of our needs and values, then take initiatives to make sure that they’re honored.
Here is an example.
Thirty-six years old, Peter comes for consultations and regularly complains about his relationship with his partner:
“I always feel manipulated by my companion.”
“Could you tell me what you observe when you have this impression of being manipulated?”
“She says to me: ‘You don’t ever understand me. We’re just not made to get along.’”
“If you now listen for the feeling that is alive in you behind this impression of manipulation, what are you feeling?”
“Anger. Fatigue. I get the impression that it’s always me who has to do the understanding—always me who has to understand her—otherwise, I’m worthless. In fact, I’m only worth something in her eyes if I always understand her.”
“And if you listen to the needs that the anger and fatigue point to, what comes to mind?”
“A need for respect. Respect for myself, a need to be accepted just as I am and not for what she wants me to be.”
“Is that a well-known impression for you, one you’ve already experienced? Not being fully accepted for what you are?”
“Naturally, I’m back in front of my mother, in front of my judge, being accused unjustly, both indignant that my identity should not be recognized and powerless to get it recognized.”
“When you say that, how do you feel?”
“Tired and disappointed.”
“Do these feelings of fatigue and disappointment show that you have a need to accept yourself more, to make more space for yourself, to allow yourself to live your own identity more fully?”
(Moved.) “Yes, precisely.”
“If these needs indeed sound accurate to you, I suggest you say them again aloud to give yourself an opportunity to take them on board, to experience them from within.”
(After a silence …) “OK. I need to accept myself more, to give myself more space, and to allow myself to live my own identity more fully.”
Remarks
To people who are working with me, I often suggest they say their needs aloud. Experience has shown me that people who hear themselves say a need that fits with what they are experiencing will have a tendency to say:
“That’s right. My need. I must come back to that after the consultation. I’ve noted it.”
And the need remains virtual, like a therapeutic method read in a book or in an article, which one never actually experiences.
(Then, as if continuing the sentence immediately …)
“But in any case, that’s the way it has always been. I don’t see how things could change. There’s no solution. So what’s the good of identifying my needs?”
By so doing, they bury under negative thoughts the need that was trying to emerge in their consciousness. They don’t even allow it the luxury of existing and being identified before repressing it.
So I’m aware of these two risks and often urge the individual, very gently, to take time to reformulate the need aloud after having checked that it rings true with them.
For some people, this is an easy and joyful exercise that they engage in willingly, grateful at last to be able to identify and express their needs clearly. The feelings they most often come up with are relief and well-being, while the need met is one of clarity, understanding, and openness to exploration. For others, this step proves very difficult. The taboo against having needs and, even more, expressing them in front of someone else weighs on many people to such an extent that they’re unable to repeat the simplest of sentences, such as, “I need respect for my identity.” It’s almost impossible; the words just do not come out. So then what is needed is gentle coaxing, which can take several sessions until the person feels at ease expressing the needs, talking about them, making comments on them, refining them, therefore, understanding them and owning them.
Whether such instances are easy or difficult, I experience their sacred nature. The individual involved takes ownership of their own life—and gets grounded and collected. And can it be anything else than sacred for them to come back to life, to the zest for life, to observe the vitality in themselves that they can listen to and allow themselves to be guided by?
We will see later, after identifying needs, how concrete action, the request, is triggered. However, let us come back to Peter and the key differentiation made between a true feeling and a feeling tainted with interpretations. As long as Peter’s consciousness takes the form of “I feel manipulated,” he remains dependent on the behavior he ascribes to another. It is the other person who bears the responsibility for his ill-being. The word manipulated suggests the interpretation that another is doing the manipulating. And perhaps indeed the behavior of his companion may give him the impression of being manipulated. However, that is not the question.
What is of interest is to observe that Peter begins to get beyond complaining (“She’s manipulating me. I am her victim.”) when he gets to his true feelings (“I am sad and angry.”) and his own need (“I need respect for my identity.”). It is when he begins to refer truly to himself that the work begins. As long as he is commenting directly or indirectly on what his companion is or is not doing, he makes little headway. But as soon as he starts speaking truly of himself, he forges ahead. That is what French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan said to a patient: “Once you have said to me a word that truly speaks of yourself, you will be healed.” This approach is echoed in the work of Swiss psychoanalyst and writer Carl Jung who noted that the best gift one can give a significant other is genuine self-understanding.
In doing support work, which one can consider to be an attempt at conflict resolution between the conscious and the subconscious, it is this word that we seek together, not for the word itself, of course, but for the awareness it releases. Thus, Peter was able to gain greater awareness of what he was experiencing, what would enable him to start the true work necessary to break free from his negative maternal complex, and finally open up to accepting and respecting himself. During two years of therapy, I saw him evolve from being a victim and an alcoholic to having success with women and success in his career, moving to autonomy and responsibility.
The second benefit that comes from distinguishing true feelings from feelings tainted with interpretations is that this allows us to be better understood by others, using words that generate the least possible discomfort, fear, resistance, opposition, objection, argument, or flight. It’s worth recalling that our intention is to establish a quality connection with others. We want them not only to hear our words, we want them to listen to and see what is alive in us. Just as we in turn listen to them, we’ll want to hear not only the words they say, but also what is alive in them.
We will be alert to purging our language and our consciousness of anything that generates opposition, division, or separation.
We therefore will be alert to working on our language and our consciousness to purge them of anything that may generate opposition, division, or separation and to cleanse them of anything that is—or could be heard as—a judgment, interpretation, rebuke, criticism, prejudice, cliché, test of strength, or comparison. We do this because we know from experience that if others hear what we say as a judgment, criticism, reproach, or fixed idea about them, they are no longer listening. They block their ears—sometimes oh, so politely—and generally are preparing an answer, a retort. They do not connect with us, with what is alive in us. They are devising a counterattack or self-defense.
The example of Peter
In a usual conversation, Peter says to his partner, “When you say that to me, I feel manipulated.” His partner might well answer: “Not at all. I’m not manipulating you. You always think you’re being manipulated. What a bore that is!” What has she done? She has justified herself, she is arguing, she is contradicting. Therefore, she isn’t listening to Peter and is not listening to herself either. She is stuck in her head.
She also might react like this: “But you are the one who is manipulating. Have you seen the way you react?” What did she do? Since she interpreted Peter’s behavior as an attack, she counterattacked, she retaliated. Consequently, she listened neither to Peter nor herself.
If we apply the method described earlier, Peter might say to his partner: “When you tell me that you never understand me and that we aren’t made to get along (O), I feel tired and angry (F) because I need to be accepted as I am and not as what you’d like me to be. I also need recognition for the understanding I regularly display. And finally, I need security in our relationship and to be reassured that, even though I don’t always understand you (at least not as well or as quickly as you would like), we still matter to each other and love each other (N). I’d like to know how you feel when I say that to you (concrete, negotiable R).
For his partner, hearing Peter say he feels tired and angry because he has three unmet needs that he clearly names—and regarding which he asks her to take a stance with neither judgment nor constraint—will prove less threatening than seeing herself described as a manipulator, as was the case in the first scenario. Besides, this brought no clarity to what was truly at stake in this relationship. More than in the first scenario involving Peter, his behavior is more inviting to an in-depth conversation about what is basic to the relationship:
Respect for the identity of each partner.
Recognition and mutual esteem for the pace at which each one manifests their attention, as well as the way in which that happens.
Deep inner emotional security being made less dependent on outward signs of approval.
Exercise
Try to decipher for yourself your true feelings underlying your “labeled” feelings. Here are a few proposals:
“I feel abandoned” (in other words, “You have abandoned me”).
Would it not be more accurate and true to say: “I feel lonely and unhappy. I need to be reassured that I matter to you, that I have a place in your heart, even if for the moment you’re choosing to do something else rather than be with me or show that you care.”
“I feel betrayed” (in other words, “You have betrayed me”).
Would it not be more accurate and true to say: “I’m afraid. I’m truly worried. I have such a need to be able to rely on the mutual trust and frankness there is between us. I need to know that the things we agree on and the commitments we undertake are respected and, if they cannot be honored, that we will talk about it openly.”
“I feel rejected” (in other words, “You have rejected me”).
Is it not more enlightening, more informative for oneself and for the other person, to hear this? “I feel unhappy, disappointed, and tired (F). I need somehow to take my place (in my relationship, my family, in a group, in society, at work) and to give myself permission to take my place in the world. I also need others to understand that it’s difficult for me and that it’s important for me to get their help and encouragement (N). What can I say or do in concrete terms that will nurture these needs (seeking the R)? What can I put in place myself to operate the change I want?”
As we shall see later in the chapter on the request, this type of consciousness makes it possible for us to get out of the rejected-victim scenario, for it clarifies what we can do in practical terms to obtain the support of others. It also clarifies the way forward (R and action) in concrete strategies that we can implement in order to bring about change.
“I feel excluded” (in other words, “You have excluded me”).
Does it not enhance our sense of responsibility and stimulate us when we become aware of the following feelings and needs? “I feel alone, helpless, and sad. I have a deep need for integration, exchange, and belonging. Concretely, what can I put in place that will contribute to meeting these needs? What can I change by myself that will make it possible for me to begin to nurture these needs?”
You see, when we use a true feeling, one that truly informs us about what is occurring in us, we give ourselves more of an opportunity to ground ourselves and to take ourselves in hand—and we give the other person a greater opportunity to remain centered on what we are saying about ourselves, to take into consideration what we are experiencing. Our ability to “talk true” stimulates the ability in the other person to “listen true.” We’ll look at this in greater depth at the outset of Chapter 3 in the communication section.
Aggressing, fleeing, or connecting with one another
In a play I saw in Montréal in 1999 (sorry to say I’ve forgotten both the title of the play and the name of the author), I heard this: “When you hear that the neighboring tribe has taken arms against yours, you have three possibilities and only these three: Take flight as quickly as possible; take up arms yourselves to be able to attack as quickly as possible; or walk toward the opposing army with no weapons and hope you will embrace each other.”
In our marital, family, or school squabbles, as in our ethnic, religious, political, or economic wars, we have the same choice: flight, fight, or connect with the other side.
In all such situations, we can see how the resulting conflicts are examples of an epiphenomenon, a symptom of a larger reality. Underlying their complaints are genuine needs. To tackle the symptom without going back to the cause means that at best you get nothing—or merely an external change of attitude (one will say that all is well, or one will start working like crazy to compensate). This doesn’t resolve the basic issues. At worst, the symptom could intensify: “I’m not understood. My needs are not considered. What must happen for them to really understand me? Stop cooperating? Then stop communicating altogether? And then perhaps have a proper nervous breakdown, or go to war?!” And that is how the mechanics of violence are triggered around noncommunication …
“I don’t let you know what I’m truly experiencing. You don’t seem interested in listening to what I really feel. I moan. You get scared. I rebel. You control. I rebel even more. You reinforce the control. I explode. You repress … Tell me, aren’t you tired of this game, so perfectly orchestrated for centuries? And what if we were to genuinely listen to each other?”
Naturally, listening to another and connecting is no easy matter. It is something that arises from a deep desire within to connect with another human being. Then, finally, it is a question of constant practice, like when you learn a new language or a new art form.
Concerning our feelings
At the end of this book you’ll find a list of feelings (page 254). There is nothing magical, exhaustive, or comprehensive about it. The list has resulted from observing feelings commonly identified during dozens of NVC workshops. The conventional distinction between positive feelings and negative feelings does not exist in conscious and nonviolent communication because such a distinction is irrelevant. Both sadness and joy inform us about ourselves. Anger is an invaluable signal for us since it shows vitality in ourselves or another. It is the consequences of feelings that may be perceived as positive or negative, not the feelings themselves. We, therefore, suggest making the following type of distinction among feelings:
Feelings that are pleasant to experience and that let us know that needs are met.
Feelings that are unpleasant to experience and that let us know that needs are not being met.
You also will see a list of feelings tinged with evaluations, which are important to see as impressions, images, and sensations rather than feelings, so that we can listen to the genuine feeling that is alive in us (behind the impression), a feeling not distorted by the intentions we ascribe to the other person.
There isn’t always an absolutely clear distinction between the words designating true feelings and those designating feelings with a hint of interpretation. Once again, what is important is to clarify our intention, which will tell us whether we’re making a comment on what someone has done or not done or on our attempts to understand ourselves.
Identifying Our Needs Without Projecting Them Onto Others
Are fear, guilt, and shame tools for getting what we want?
Remember that as a good boy or a good girl, what we learned first was to listen to Daddy’s, Mommy’s, Granny’s, little brother’s, neighbor’s, teacher’s … needs, listening to everyone’s needs except our own. We therefore got into the habit of believing that we were almost always and almost totally responsible for the well-being of others. So doing, we got the confused and almost constant impression of guilt in respect to others rather than any enlightened sense of individual responsibility.
At the same time, we got into the habit of believing that others were almost always and almost totally responsible for our well-being. Thus we got the confused and almost constant impression of others’ guilt and debt toward us rather than any enlightened sense of individual responsibility.
Growing up, we got the confused and almost constant impression of others’ guilt and debt toward us rather than any enlightened sense of individual responsibility.
So we often expect another person to take care of our needs while we ourselves have not even identified them, or we make requests of the individual that sound like demands without saying what our need is, or we have needs that encompass someone else. For example, I need:
You to do this or that.
You to change.
You to be like this or like that.
If the other person doesn’t react as we wish, we try to manipulate the situation by using criticism, rebuke, or judgment: “You might at least try to … When I think of all I do for you … You really are a selfish monster when you … If you go on the way you are, I’m leaving you, or I’m going to punish you.”
These formulations don’t say much about ourselves and provide little information for the other person. They keep us dependent on what the other does or does not do. That is, if the other person does what we say, we’re satisfied; if they don’t, we aren’t satisfied, and that’s it!
In short, failing to be acquainted with our needs and expressing them in some negotiable way, we often use fear, guilt, or shame in an effort to get what we want.
Becoming aware of our needs helps us understand that they exist, whatever the situation or whomever we may be with. Situations serve to activate an awareness of our needs and give us opportunities to meet them. Indeed, our needs exist ahead of any situation. Thus, we always have needed recognition or understanding, even when we were walking alone along a mountainside or on the seashore. The need is not necessarily activated at that time, although such a moment of solitude might be an opportunity, in consciousness or not, to give ourselves the recognition or the understanding we need. However, needs are part and parcel of ourselves and become more tangible when we join a group, are with our family, or are in society.
When I was a child, my need for affection was doubtless met chiefly by my mother’s and father’s attentions. As I grew up, I was able to meet this need for affection in my relationships with my brothers and sisters too, then with classmates, and later with my first girlfriend and other friends. During several years of emotional solitude, I was able to verify the fact that a need for affection exists for me, even if it isn’t met. Today, I’m aware that the selfsame need is doubtless met especially and primarily in my relationship with my wife and children. However, at the same time, I’m aware that the need also is met in other relationships: family, friends, co-workers, people I support. Further, I’m aware that I can nurture this need by listening to music I love, by walking through a forest with rustling leaves, gazing at the evening sky, or marveling at the arrival of spring.
Neither do I expect my wife and children to meet my full need for affection.
There are two advantages to such an attitude. On the one hand, I open up to the extraordinary potential for love offered by the world, what German poet Rainer Maria Rilke describes no doubt with this verse, “A goodness ready to wing off watches over everything.”6 I deeply believe that if we were ready to taste of all the love that is continuously offered us in the thousand facets of the world, we would be so much more at peace. Unfortunately, as French writer Michèle Delaunay states, our “pessimism leads us to seeing only what we see and our distraction to not seeing much.”7
On the other hand, I allow another, in this instance my wife, the liberty to give me what she wishes freely to give me. She is not the agent of my need for affection; she is not the half that consoles me for only being half myself; she is not the projection of the unconditional motherly love I missed out on. She is fully herself—human being, woman, spouse, and mother. Together, we do not want a role-play, albeit perfectly conducted. Rather, we want a genuine relationship with people who are both free and responsible.
This, therefore, is what I observe: Expressing our needs as distinct from expectations that are not so clear and that we have one toward another opens up for us, on the one hand, a whole range of solutions where the other person may find their place, but not only the other person. On the other hand, expression of needs practically guarantees the other individual their own free space. That is, the chance to say to us: “I hear your need, and at the same time I have a need of my own. What shall we do to take care of both in such a way that meeting yours is not at the expense of mine nor meeting mine is at the expense of yours?”
This is the freedom that makes for connection.
It is the freedom we give each other that connects us
In order to illustrate the fact that others are not present in our lives to meet our needs (even though they may contribute in that regard), I referred to the relationship with my wife for two reasons. The first is that for a long time I was a bachelor, panicking at the idea of emotional commitment and particularly fearing having to meet all the needs of my partner while ignoring my own. In my amorous relationships, as soon as the notion of “couple” threatened to materialize, I managed to sabotage the relationship, “courageously” relinquishing the decision to the woman I was seeing. Systematically, I would take neither the decision to go on and commit nor the decision to end the relationship and disengage. I now know that my fear was a sign of the following needs:
The need to be reassured that I could be myself while being with another: not one or the other, but one and the other.
The need to be able to continue my journey toward myself while going toward another: not only one or the other, but one and the other.
The need to be able to exchange affection, understanding, and support, without having to assume responsibility for another or risk being taken charge of (“mothered”) by another.
In a word, the need to be in a relationship with a person with sufficient inner strength and self-esteem to be autonomous and responsible, who would love me for who I am and not for what she might wish me to be and whom I would love for who she is and not for who I might dream she would be.
I did not want to spend the rest of my life responsible for meeting another’s needs for affection, security, or recognition, nor having another to be there to make good my deficiencies. I therefore had a deep need for both of us to identify and experience those needs (affection, security, recognition) in order to be sure that if the other person could naturally contribute to meeting them (doubtless more than any other person), she was not the only one able to do so. This space for freedom, breathing, and trust was indispensable in order for me to be able to commit. Today, I deeply enjoy the blessing of sharing this mutual understanding with my wife. I now know that it is this freedom that we mutually offer that brings us so close to each other.
The second reason I wanted to talk about my relationship with my wife is that I have observed during my individual consultations so many people, both alone or together, who experience difficulties relating to such issues:
“I stopped myself from existing so that they could exist, so they wouldn’t be afraid, feel abandoned.”
“I haven’t allowed myself to be myself (and besides, I didn’t even know that one could be oneself) so as not to upset and worry them.”
“I’ve forced myself to do the housework and keep my job because I was so fearful of their reaction, insecurity, need for recognition, or social and family integration.”
“I did everything for them; I was stifling myself for them.”8
“I dare not be myself when I’m in a relationship; I become what the other person expects of me (or what I think the other person expects of me), or I stay apart, alone.”
These difficulties in our relationships could be summed up in one question, which to a greater and greater extent seems to account for a fundamental challenge of our human reality: How can I stay myself while being with another; how can I be with another without ceasing to be myself?
How can I stay myself while being with others?
This is an issue that is often settled through violence, either externalized violence (I force the other person to do or be what I want) or internalized violence (I compel myself to do or be what the other person wants). And why? Because I get trapped in binary thinking. Do you remember the four mechanisms quoted in Chapter 1 that I see as generating violence?
Judgments, labels, categories
Prejudices, a prioris, rote beliefs, automatic reflexes
Binary system or duality (either/or thinking)
Language of diminished responsibility
ASIDE: As if we could take care of others properly while we ourselves are incapable of taking proper care of ourselves … as if we could listen properly to the needs of others while we never for a moment listen and understand our own … as if we could bring our respect and compassion to others in all their diversity, including their contradictions, while we don’t give ourselves respect and compassion and are unable to tolerate our own contradictions …
In my view, this is the most widespread illustration of the violence of binary thinking: the sad, even tragic, belief that in order to take care of another, one has to be alienated from oneself. Consequences of this outlook include the following:
If we take care of ourselves, that means we are alienated from others. This results in the contamination of hearts with guilt because we feel that we never do enough for others, even though we may be exhausted; and as soon as we take a moment’s respite (a few minutes of lying down for a nap, a few hours for ourselves in the week, a few days of holiday to do nothing), our guilty conscience begins gnawing away at us.
If, despite our guilt, we wish to succeed in taking care of ourselves, we believe that it has to be by alienating others. Many a breakup, separation, divorce, flight, and withdrawal result from this because we think, “I don’t manage to stay with myself when I’m with another person, and therefore I split.”
Again, as I travel the path toward another, I cannot afford not to travel the path toward myself.
Leaving binary thinking behind
The invitation to us, therefore, is to leave binary thinking behind, represented as it is by the use of either/or so as to move toward complementary thinking expressed by both/and: I need to be both connected to another and connected to myself. Not a relationship with either the one or the other, but a relationship with both the one and the other.
As I travel the path toward another, I cannot afford not to travel the path toward myself.
Thus, to avoid the violence of binary thinking that keeps us in alienation, separation, and division, it is truly in our interest to become aware of our needs, identify them in relation to others, and prioritize them so as to become increasingly able to understand others’ needs, accept their priorities, and little by little acquire greater ease in flexibly processing the issues with them. As long as we aren’t conscious of our own needs, we find it difficult to talk about them and even trickier to negotiate them with another person. We very quickly start imposing our solutions, surrendering to the solutions of others—or again adopting all manner of compromise between the two extremes of domination and submission.
For example, we can maintain the following relationships:
A relationship of seduction—half power over the other person, half dependency on their appreciation.
A relationship of argument—who is wrong, who is right … being a “right” addict.
A relationship of comparison or competitiveness—who is or does better, who is or does less well. I delegate to another the power to determine what is good and what is bad. I decide and subject the other person to my way of being or doing, or I submit to the way of being or doing of the other person.
A calculating relationship—they have more or less than I have. I obtain. I earn more or less. I or you do more or less than you or I, and so forth.
In all of these types of relationships, we are not yet free and responsible. We are still dependent. We do not act out of a taste for giving, contributing, or sharing, but out of a fear of lacking, losing, or being lost.
I believe ever more strongly that freedom and responsibility in human relations, beginning with the relationship to ourselves, presuppose a proper understanding of our mutual needs.
A need is not a wish
Here a further key differentiation comes into play. A need is not a desire or a momentary impulse. We can fall into the trap of mistaking a wish or a desire for a fundamental need. The differentiation is important for two reasons, which the Andrea and Terry couple illustrates (see Chapter 1).
First reason: to get out of the trap. As long as Terry mistakes his wish to go out to dinner for a basic need, he (not Andrea) is placing himself in a trap. Similarly, as long as Andrea mistakes her wish to stay at home and watch a movie for one of her basic needs, she is placing herself (not Terry) in a trap. As long as Terry says to Andrea, “You don’t understand my needs at all,” it is in fact a reproach that he is making to himself. As long as Andrea is saying to Terry, “But you are the one who doesn’t understand a thing about my needs,” it is to herself that she addresses this rebuke.
Only if both of them decide to go half the distance they expect the other to go, might the evening in question and the overall functioning of this couple improve. At that point the following exchange might ensue:
Terry expresses his need to Andrea without requiring her to meet it (negotiable request).
Andrea listens to Terry’s need without feeling obligated to go along with it.
Andrea expresses her need to Terry without requiring him to meet it (negotiable request).
Terry listens to Andrea’s need without feeling obligated to go along with it.
It is the collaboration, the consultation, that makes it possible to come up with all kinds of solutions.
It is this freedom in expressing the message and in receiving it that allows both individuals to move forward freely and without resistance toward a satisfactory solution for each.
Second reason: to be more creative. As long as Andrea and Terry stubbornly stick to their guns without checking the need that lies upstream, the solution found (dinner out or home video) is neither as creative nor as fully satisfying as the one the couple came up with after having had a dialogue in Nonviolent Communication. The solution by consensus to have a picnic at the end of the lake proves more novel and more pleasing than the other two proposals.
It is the collaboration, the consultation, that makes it possible to come up with all kinds of solutions.
No utopianism though! Let’s be realistic: Often the solution obviously does not fulfill the needs of both persons 100 percent. Sensitivities, characters, expectations, priorities, and senses of humor (especially being able to laugh at oneself), as well as a desire for things to have meaning, vary each day. So I truly don’t think we should dream of coming up with solutions that always and completely meet the needs of both parties. Experience tells me, however, that the quality of listening and respect that comes from seeking such a solution in a climate of compassion is such that the actual solution becomes secondary to the relationship itself!
First the relationship: logistics will follow!
So often in our relationships, the quality of the relationship appears to play second fiddle to actual problems. In other words, we first deal with the logistics or physical organization, and then we worry about getting along—if there’s enough time.
Without knowing it, I suffered like many children from the importance given by adults to logistics, on the pretext that my parents (in particular) were overloaded with responsibilities: “Yes, dear, in a moment; I still have to put the wash away … No, not now. I’m cleaning up … You can see how busy I am, can’t you? … I really have a lot of work to do … We’ll talk about it later … Come on, quickly, quickly. I’m in a hurry … We don’t have time.”
I have no memories of having seen my mother sitting in an armchair for more than three minutes a week. That was on Sundays, before lunch. She would sit on a corner of the armchair (no time to sit comfortably in it), swallow a tiny cocktail, saying: “Oh, what a great thing it is to sit down for a little while.” Then whoosh! Less than five minutes later, she was back in the kitchen to get the meal ready. Immediately after the meal, everything had to be tidied up quickly so she could get on with a thousand other things. If I wanted to have a few moments with her on my own, I had to use cunning: help her fold the linen, clean up the kitchen, put things in their place in a room, or take advantage of a trip in the car. Then, on a secondary basis, the relationship was allowed to exist.
When I think back, I realize how much more effectively I learned to do than to be, to do things rather than to be in a relationship. And, very naturally, I reproduced the hyperactivity. Diaries bursting at the seams is something I know all about!
The degree to which I gave precedence to organizational busyness rather than relationships blew up in my face when Valérie and I were getting ready for our wedding day in Holland. I was in Belgium a few days before the event. She called me from Holland to settle a few urgent matters, questions of logistics to be precise, and she reached me in my car as I was driving between two appointments. I got a bit upset because I was not there with her. I got the impression that we had not understood each other, and I feared that one part of the festivities that I was very keen on would not be possible. I answered her more curtly than I would have wished and, with considerable anxiety and stress in my voice, brought the conversation to a close. I instantly realized that I was reproducing my old pattern: I was allowing logistics to take precedence over the relationship. Suddenly the priority had become organizing the wedding rather than the quality of my relationship with the bride!
I called Valérie back immediately to say I was feeling both surprised and sorry at my reaction (F); that I really did wish, on the one hand, to be more receptive to her concerns (first N); and, on the other hand, to give precedence to the quality of our mutual understanding rather than to logistics (second N). In practical terms, I suggested taking more time that evening to sort out with her the items still pending (concrete R). She told me later the second phone call was an important one to her.
Let’s come back to the situation I was referring to when, as a boy, I wanted my mother to listen to me. If my mother and I had known some of the rudiments of conscious and nonviolent communication, we could, for example, have had the following exchange9:
“Mother, I’d like someone to listen to me and give me some attention (N). Would you be willing to sit down with me for five minutes (R)?”
“I’m touched that you want to talk to me (F) because I need to listen to each of my children (N), and at the same time I’m concerned (F) because there are so many things I’d like to finish before the end of the day (N). Would you like to talk to me while helping me?”
“I’m really glad (F) to hear you say that you need to listen to each of your children. That reassures me (N, for emotional security). At the same time, when I hear your proposal (O), I’m not so sure (F) that you will really be able to listen to me if you’re working at something else at the same time (need for availability). Would you like to be sure that if I’m asking for five minutes, it will really be only five or ten minutes and not half an hour? And then you would still have the time you need to do what you want to do?”
“Yes, I need to have a good sense how I use my time in order to make sure I finish what I have to finish (N). I feel grateful (F) when I see that my time matters to you, and now I suggest we take five minutes together as soon as I finish what I’m doing here. Is that OK with you?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Remarks
It was the trap of the binary system that made my mother say, “I don’t have time” or, to be more precise, “There are five of you children, and I don’t have time (i.e., to listen to all of you).” I am convinced that she would have loved to have said, as in the example: “I have both a need to listen to each of my five children and a need for the household to function properly, and I don’t know how to go about taking account of both of those needs.” However, as it is difficult to identify our various needs when several of them are concerned—and particularly the ones we don’t see how to meet or even see—she referred only to the need that appeared to her to be the most urgent or the most obvious, without naming the others.
Taking care to identify and name the various needs is enlightening even if no solution appears possible in the immediate future. Why?
First, because this brings us back to the helm consciously rather than allowing ourselves to be remote-controlled by our subconscious mind. It makes it possible for us to redefine our priorities in order to be open to any changes that may become necessary. As long as I’m not clear as to the status of my various needs, I might well plunge ahead into a behavior that could meet one of them but disregards all the others. The danger is a kind of rigidity that, in the end, isn’t all that far from rigor mortis!
Second, it is clarifying to identify our needs because this process opens up our mind to the possibility of envisioning solutions. There was practically no chance of seeing solutions appear as long as a need had not been identified. This is the invitation to creativity I referred to earlier.
In the example, my mother fails to identify her needs—let us say in the logistics area (order, efficacy, harmonious operating of the household)—without mentioning her need to offer fair listening time to each of her children. As long as this remains her pattern, the chances of finding time to listen to each of them are lower than if she is aware that she is caught between two needs: logistics and listening. In the latter case, even if she cannot see any wholly satisfying solution immediately, she gives the need a chance. She and the child might at least speak about it and, for example, realize that it isn’t particularly hours of listening that are necessary but a few minutes of personal time, granted specifically to one child at a time, reassuring each in turn about their identity. Another creative solution could be for the children to offer to help the mother for a while in a task, then have quality time together after that.
Third, it is important to clarify our needs because, even if there is no possible immediate solution, the awareness of the dilemma at least makes it possible for the need to exist, for part of ourselves to come alive, even though this may remain in the background for a time.
This brings back to life a part of us that is in the background and helps us mourn it so that we may move on freely.
I notice, for example, how many parents repress their artistic or creative side: “I don’t have time for that; the children, the spouse, the family come first.” And naturally, priorities like that can lead us to postpone the exercise of a talent until later. What is urgent is to allow this need to exist in and of itself, to welcome it and, at the same time, recognize the impossibility of meeting it just now.
Thus, rather than allow the need to be stifled by the behavior referred to above (“I don’t have time”), it is of value to welcome it, both to give it life and to grieve it: “I would have so loved to find time to develop my artistic talent or follow my bent to be creative. Yet, for now, I truly want to give my time and energy first and foremost to my children, my spouse, my family.” This brings back to life a part of us that is in the background and helps us mourn it so that we may move on freely.
Allowing all the parts of our self to exist rather than repressing any one of them is to bring oneself to life. If we suppress one part of our self, failing to welcome it, we drag along within us a part of our self left for dead, which we necessarily haven’t mourned since we haven’t even allowed it to live. The part of ourselves left for dead then falls with its full weight on the living parts and compromises our life momentum as a whole.
Two key expressions
“For now …”
In the above sentence (“Yet, for now, I truly want to give my time and energy first and foremost to my children, my spouse, my family”) it is the notion of time that provides the space to breathe. We keep alive an awareness that everything is evolving all the time. We maintain an open door to our talent, for which, later, we’ll be able to provide space.
Think, for example, of something that, at the present time, you can’t do, then say to yourself something like this: “I don’t understand a thing about data processing, I can’t sing, and I’m not very good at speaking in public.” Then ask yourself how things are inside. Now, simply add, for now: “For now, I don’t understand a thing about data processing. For now, I can’t sing. For now, I’m not very good at speaking in public.” What has become alive in you now?
You see, we can choose between language and consciousness that either enclose us or open us up to new possibilities.
“And at the same time …” rather than “But …”
There is no opposition; there are just two parallel needs—the one that can be met now and the other that cannot. Any use of but causes us to split in our awareness by canceling out or diminishing the first proposition. Using and at the same time puts both propositions into perspective. Take any sentence you might tend to say, for example, “I agree with you because … but …” Replace the word but with and at the same time and then look inside to see if you just might get a different picture.
Our needs require recognition more than satisfaction
A banker friend who had taken part in a training course I led told me a few weeks later how difficult it was for him to make himself available for his children when he came back from the office around eight o’clock in the evening. “I just feel like doing nothing, opening a paper, or watching television. I don’t have the energy to be ‘assaulted’ by my three children. Yet I also want to see them a little each day, so I force myself to play with them. But I frequently feel that I’m not truly available, and I quickly get annoyed.”
I reformulated the scene to check that I had understood properly and to enable us to identify the needs concerned: “Do you feel frustrated because you’d like to be more available in support of your children when you get home?”
“Maybe in a perfect world, but mostly I just feel exhausted and can’t cope with their level of energy.”
This is important feedback in my quest to make sure I’ve understood properly. It helps me refine and reformulate my guess: “Do you feel divided between a part of you that is exhausted and that has a need for relaxation and calm at that time of the day—and another part of you that feels touched by the enthusiasm of your children? And you would like to find the energy to respond to it?”
“Yes, I need time for myself, but I usually don’t manage to get it. And every evening when I get out of the car in front of the house, I feel the same tension, and that exhausts me.”
“If you’re open to it, I would like to suggest that even before you get home, you pull over and simply take a few minutes for yourself to listen to your needs and get connected to the various parts of yourself. On the one hand, you have a need for peace, relaxation, and time for yourself and, on the other hand, you need and want to be available and welcoming to your children. Simply take the time to say to yourself inside, or even aloud, so things will be clearer in your heart: ‘I really feel a need now to put my feet up, sit on the sofa with my paper, and watch TV and nothing else. After this stressful day, I need to land. I need to settle and rest.’ Take the time to taste the simple well-being that goes with this way of seeing things. Let it come alive in you so you are more open to the other part of you that is saying inside: ‘And at the same time I also need and want to be available to my children and devote time and attention to them.’ Only then take the last leg of your journey, pull into the driveway, and go into your house. When you walk in, stay present to these different needs and allow yourself to negotiate them openly with your children.”
A few days later, this man phoned to thank me: “I had found it difficult to believe that your proposal would help me. So I’m surprised to observe how peaceful I have been feeling, becoming aware of what’s alive in me without forcing one part of me or repressing another part. Previously, it was as if I was leaving a part of myself in the car. These last few evenings, I’ve felt that I’ve gone back home whole and able to express all my needs.”
In the course of a workshop, taking place over a few spread-out days, a child-care worker in a center for children said how tired he was of always being the “sucker” or “flunky” who would stand in at a moment’s notice when colleagues were not able to come to work. “I’m always the one to get called in at the last minute, especially when it comes to taking groups to the swimming pool in the evening, because they know I never say no. I go along, of course, because someone has to be with these youngsters, and if I don’t go, the outing they are so excited about may be canceled. But what happens is that I’m not very available to the children. I fume the whole evening and quickly lose my cool with them. As a matter of fact, they’re the ones who pay the price for my bad humor.”
“Do you feel upset because there’s a part of you that is fed up (F) with regularly getting called in to substitute for others’ absences? And that part of you would like to be able to say no? You’d like to spend an evening on your own, and you’d like other colleagues to make themselves available (N)? But another part of you is really concerned (F) at the idea of these young people not getting the outing they are so looking forward to (N)?”
“Yes, I feel divided, and that keeps me from really being present with the children.”
“If you listen to these various needs—the need to share tasks among colleagues, the need to respect your free time and your private life, and the need to contribute as much as possible to the well-being of the young people you take care of—how do you feel?”
“Touched, because I’m aware that by accepting to stand in for others, I’m choosing a priority need: helping the young people. One day, I might well make a different choice.”
“I suggest that the next time you receive such a request, you take time to listen to your various needs, so that you’re really available for what you choose to do.”
A week later, he told me he had once again accepted to serve as a replacement for an evening at the swimming pool with the young people. “I took time to listen to myself as you had suggested,” he began. “The need around the young people was clearly the top priority in my mind, and I went along joyfully. Although I was counting on doing several things at home that evening, I was able to accept postponing them, and I felt fully available to the youngsters.”
I have on so many occasions worked on understanding what is at stake here. Most of the time, what appears is that we have not really taken stock of our needs. We do things out of habit or duty “because it has to be done; I have no choice” or because the other person or the thing we are attending to is quickly perceived as the factor preventing us from being ourselves or from living our life. We end up making other people pay openly or more subtly, or we pay for it ourselves. Violence is triggered openly or subtly. If we take the time to take stock of the situation on our own, we give ourselves the opportunity of being fully available and present to what we’re doing and those we’re doing it with.
We wish to become aware so we don’t deny or disown what is alive in us.
Identifying our need for rest, to have some time for ourselves, to do what we want with our evening, etc., doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll meet the need. We simply wish to become aware of it so we don’t deny or disown anything that is alive in us. Through awareness, living choices can be made that involve us in all of our aliveness and not just 10 or 15 percent of ourselves.
Regarding our needs
At the end of this book, you will find a list of needs. This list, like the list of feelings, makes no claims to be exhaustive. It is the result of observing the needs commonly worked on in NVC seminars or during consultations. The way it is presented is merely a proposal. We refer to:
Physiological needs (eating, drinking, sleeping)
Individual or personal needs (space, identity, autonomy, evolution)
Social or interpersonal needs (sharing, recognition, giving, welcoming)
Spiritual needs (love, confidence, meaning, kindness, joy)
Needs to celebrate life (gratitude, communion, mourning)
Formulating a Concrete, Realistic, Positive, Negotiable Request
Even though, as we have seen, some of our needs have a greater impetus to be recognized than to be met, nonetheless we would like to meet a fair number of them. Contenting ourselves with awareness of our needs without knowing what to do in practical terms might well leave us in an unsatisfactory virtual world, a sort of insatiable quest: “I need love, I need recognition, understanding; but I never take action myself to meet them. I wait for ‘someone’ to take care of me.”
Bringing the need into the here and now
Here are the benefits that result from making a request or a concrete, realistic, positive, negotiable proposal for action:
A concrete request
We can float through life amid ideas, ideals, and magnificent concepts. If we do so, we might never encounter reality, never bring ourselves fully into the here and now. I personally was quite stuck in the Peter Pan complex, summarized as follows: “Reality through a windowpane is all right, but I’m afraid of really getting into reality, fear of failure, fear of imperfection, fear of shadows and incompleteness. I will make choices later.” Immersed in an apparently conventional legal career, I pursued my dream that all was possible. For a long time, I tried to keep all doors open in front of me without going through any of them. Eventually, though, I became aware that while in one life many extremely varied things are indeed possible one after the other, there is only “a single possible” at a time.
It is the request that provides the need with “a possible” and prevents it from being stuck behind the windowpane. It gives it an opportunity to take on reality. In my support work, I observe that the difficulty of moving into the request or concrete action is strongly linked to the difficulty of entitling oneself to exist and deciding on true practical action independent of others’ expectations and values.
My thoughts turn to a man, some sixty years old, who came to a consultation, preoccupied by the sharing of his inheritance with his two sisters, who had made a proposal that didn’t suit him. Fairly quickly, he clarified his need for fairness, but when I asked him how, in concrete terms, he envisioned meeting his need for fairness in the breakdown of the inheritance, he was unable to propose any practical division of the estate. He constantly came back to his strategy and his need: “It’s got to be just. What’s being proposed is not right.” But he was making no proposal his sisters could respond to, such that finally they had acquired an aversion to him, and that did nothing to facilitate understanding!
It was truly difficult for him to define his request in concrete terms because defining means finishing, and finishing means accepting finiteness. This notion was a blow to his heart. The idea of providing a concrete boundary, a precise measure of his quest for equity, repelled him. For various reasons, his need for justice was never met. Regarding any proposal, he went into comparisons and saw only a limitation unacceptable in the light of his insatiable quest. In fact, underlying his need for fairness were unmet needs for recognition, identity, and esteem. By working on the concrete and highly pragmatic nature of a request, we are working on getting into reality and accepting our finiteness.
A realistic request
A realistic request takes reality into account—such as it is and not such as I fear it may be or such as I dream it may be. People who have, for example, a need for change, are often imagining a change objective so radical that in it they have the best reason never to change: “It’s too hard … It’s too great a burden … It involves too many things … It concerns too many people or aspects of my life … So I’m changing nothing!”
Seek first the smallest thing we might do, and change will follow.
That is why it is so invaluable to invite another or to invite oneself to say: “What is the littlest thing or the most pleasant thing, however small, I could say or do in the direction of the change I wish for, in the direction of the change I’ve identified?” In short, seek first the smallest thing we might do, and change will follow.
We’re talking here about not the biggest thing, but the smallest—not the most painful, but the most pleasant. This often comes as a surprise to people because our mind, accustomed to performance and bent on results, seeks a trial of force, a significant challenge, as if reality were not made up of many little things woven with other little things … and yet more little things that together make up very big things.
This modest and realistic side of the request often gives rise to misgivings at a time governed by automatic trigger mechanisms: telephones, TVs, electrical household equipment, cars, computers. One click and we zap from show to show, program to program, one person to the next. Serenely accepting the slowness of a living process is so uncommon that many have trouble trusting nature’s slow but steady way. But there are exceptions. Case in point …
A woman much afflicted by the death of her husband came to me for support. After several consultations, she identified the principal feeling alive in her—fear. It indicated her need to trust herself. She was surprised to learn this because, she said, “I never thought about trusting myself. Such words didn’t even exist in my head. I always trusted first my parents, then my husband and my family. Now I believe that I really do have a need for self-confidence, but at my age I’ll never make it.”
I urged her to take practical action: to put the self-sabotage producing the negative beliefs and cloudy mental pictures to one side (“At my age, I’ll never make it”) and simply state her need aloud to give herself the right to exist.
She repeated it hesitatingly: “I need to trust myself. I need to believe that I can trust myself.”
I stayed silent for a while and then said to her: “I suggest you simply stay aware of this need in the days to come, without being concerned about any result. Simply bring your attention to this need, and don’t look for a solution. Let the need resonate in your heart.”
At the next session, a week later, she began by saying: “I’m grateful you urged me simply to allow myself to be aware of the need to trust myself. It’s amazing how I had the impression of not having to ‘do’ anything or look for anything, but simply to allow what was alive in me to well up, allowing myself to feel the confidence taking root. It’s still very fragile, but something is already different, and it’s reassuring for me to rely more on myself.”
A few weeks later, she truly began to reorganize her life in very practical terms. In this case, the principle of reality was elementary: First of all, simply accept the notion of need itself. The solutions will come later.
A positive request
Imagine you are listening to music while your husband is working in his office. He says to you: “I’m working. Will you please turn off the music?” How do you feel?
Now imagine he has just said to you: “I need some quiet to do my work for another hour. Would you agree to listen to your music in an hour or to go on listening to it in another room in the house?” How do you feel now?
When I do this exercise in a group, I often hear:
“I prefer the second version.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like being prevented from doing what I’m doing. In the second version, I hear a proposal to continue what I’m doing later or elsewhere. It’s more pleasant than having to stop.”
Indeed, we do not like having to stop. Certainly, we have heard more than often enough, “Will you stop moving around, making so much noise, playing, etc.?” We do not like being prevented from doing. We much prefer being invited to do.
It is subtle, you might say. Doubtless. And that is precisely it, as far as I’m concerned, the subtle essence of the form of communication I am proposing: avoiding both in our language and in our consciousness whatever divides, compares, separates, hampers, encloses, resists, sticks, embarrasses—and preferring language that opens, conjugates, connects, allows, invites, stimulates, facilitates. Worthy of note are my own old reflexes. The title of this book gives food for thought: “Being genuine,” not just nice!
A negotiable request
It would have served no purpose to carefully make factual observations such that another person will not perceive any judgment or criticism (compare the mother/child example quoted above: “When I see your shoes on the staircase and your backpack on the sofa …”), or to express feelings to avoid any interpretations or judgments (“I feel sad and disheartened …”), or to check having properly identified a need that does not involve the other person (“I have a need for order and respect for the work I do …”), if at the request stage one gets caught up in totally nonnegotiable requirements: “And now go clean up your things immediately!”
It is the negotiable nature of the request that creates the space for connection. This is more or less how it happens: If we don’t make a request, it’s as if we weren’t allowing ourselves the right to exist. We remain with a virtual, disembodied need. We aren’t truly taking our place in the relationship. Furthermore, if we issue orders or make requirements, it’s as if the other person doesn’t have the right to exist either.
The ability to formulate a negotiable request—and thus to truly create the space for a connection—is a direct function of our own security and inner strength: in short, our confidence in ourselves.