I have my doubts about the honesty of these interpretations: > I feel angry because you forgot about our coffee date -> I want people to value the feelings of their friends Are you not angry because you want the person to value YOU and your time? What are these generic "people" and "the feeling of their friends" to you? > You make me feel guilty when you text me all the time -> I want there to be less pressure on my…
These feel ill formed NVC. If you lead with feeling the entire exchange becomes confrontational. First state unambiguous facts.
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Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#232>Felix, you always leave your dirty socks on the floor! It’s disgusting! Clean this up before you do anything else. >Felix, when I see two balls of soiled socks under the coffee table, I feel irritated because I want more order in the rooms that we share in common - would you be willing to put your socks in the washing machine? These two sentences convey the same information. The speaker finds the sock to be out of o…
>The only explicit difference is the demand to do it immediately. No. The first speaker exaggerates the issue to make a point ("you always"), makes a roundabout reference to societal norms ("it's disgusting") instead of describing what actually annoys them (socks lying on the floor right now) and why (I don't want to see them because I personally find them disgusting, not because Felix failed to meet some outside sta…
The only reason the second speaker would say "When I see xyz on the floor" is because she has seen it before and that feeling happens every time. It's not as explicit as "you always", but it still implies a recurring and reliable event. Disgust is a societal trend at the moment that has started at 2015-2016 and will end in 2028. There is a deeper trend in the culture that will pass. But more importantly than that some people are genuinely more likely to have higher disgust sensitivity. It's a measurable trait. I am curious that the social trend comes to you as a priority in "it's disgusting", that's not a perspective I would see.
>making arguments from omniscience, like "you always", or "you are a ___ person" etc) is more likely to provoke an aggressive reaction
I agree "you always" is bad. You are burying the point by saying observations about feelings are facts. It could very well be true from the first speaker's observations Felix always does leave his socks out. I don't think 'always' and 'never' are useful categories because it gives the listener no place to go. They are totalitarian and nihilistic categories.
> it's generally pointless to expect others to behave in a certain "right" way that you can reasonably suspect they might not, and then get annoyed when they indeed don't.
I mean that's all well in good in a normal social atmosphere, but you certainly demand people to behave well when you are in a rough neighbourhood and get upset when they do not. You lock your door every night and get pissed off when thugs and criminals to break in, despite the fact it's reasonable to expect that was going to happen in a rough neighborhood.
>* It is percieved as an objective standard against which to judge all communication, rather than a guide for one's own actions.
I think the name is riffing off a political idea (unfortunately) that sought to make small infractions in social exchange and language a political tool for change. For better or worse one could draw the parallel between that political idea and this book.
Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the reason it seems to work more than it actually does is because it's worst-case reaction is covert rather than overt. Someone who patronizes me or tells me sweet sounding bullshit will probably get me to hate them in silence rather than fire back immediately, since I couldn't easily prove their intent. It doesn't mean it's any better of a situation, and may result in delayed retaliation rather than just get…
Actually that sounds like bad NVC. The point of NVC isn’t to obscure what you need from the other person. It’s to frame it in a way that’s objective about what you need and indicating what having what you need will allow you to do/be/feel/etc. The objective description is to remove your own emotionally loaded or offensive language. I’m sure the HR departments of the world are misusing it though as means to an end and…
Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
These feel ill formed NVC. If you lead with feeling the entire exchange becomes confrontational. First state unambiguous facts.
Yeah for sure. One fundamental rule of NVC is to never state a feeling as being caused by anyone. Instead you state that something happened and what you felt when that happened. So the template is "this and this happened and I felt this and this emotion". Not "you did this and this and you made me feel this and this". This way you take responsibility for your own emotions, and don't make anyone else defensive or conf…
More verbose for sure but clearer and more likely to de-escalate.
Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#235If you're in software development, especially on a development team, these ideas about nonviolent communication (NVC) may be able to help you and your team. The approach is: observe facts -> note feelings -> uncover desires -> make requests. For software development, I recommend a NVC approach called "Crucial Conversations". I summarize it on my repo. https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/crucial_conversations
Conversations between good actors don't need to be engineered. These techniques are probably great if you're a police officer, lawyer, executive, or salesperson, but let's not turn our workplaces into that internally.
I'm also in software development, and especially in this field, just talk directly to people. If you find that you can't connect with your team and you need various pre-planned tactics to work with others, you're probably doing something else wrong.
We're social creatures. Don't engineer away the last of our humanity from our workplaces in pursuit of optimal request fulfillment.
Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#236Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah for sure. One fundamental rule of NVC is to never state a feeling as being caused by anyone. Instead you state that something happened and what you felt when that happened. So the template is "this and this happened and I felt this and this emotion". Not "you did this and this and you made me feel this and this". This way you take responsibility for your own emotions, and don't make anyone else defensive or conf…
"When you didn't show up for our coffee date, I felt hurt. I need my time to be respected. Would you please show up on time or send me text letting me know you can't come?" More verbose for sure but clearer and more likely to de-escalate.
Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
"When you didn't show up for our coffee date, I felt hurt. I need my time to be respected. Would you please show up on time or send me text letting me know you can't come?" More verbose for sure but clearer and more likely to de-escalate.
If someone spoke like that to me it would feel very forced and unnatural, I would assume it is fake
Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
"When you didn't show up for our coffee date, I felt hurt. I need my time to be respected. Would you please show up on time or send me text letting me know you can't come?" More verbose for sure but clearer and more likely to de-escalate.
If someone spoke like that to me it would feel very forced and unnatural, I would assume it is fake
Re: Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heuristics in action. I can‘t possibly number all the different BS methodologies and frameworks that were supposed to do something, every time. Applicable and actually highly successful ones like NVC are few and far between. Can‘t blame anyone who smells a fad on hearing it the first time, but I‘m also using NVC by now whenever I need to untangle difficult conversations.
Violent communication is hitting someone to make a point. The name of this is insulting.