Effective diplomacy comes to mind, as do a number of other creative initiatives. NVC can be a helpful tool for individuals, but to think that it is the solution to an effective Middle East peace process, as Rosenberg has stated, just boggles the mind.

What you have convieniently left out is that the key to NVC is the intention of respecting and valuing the needs of others. If you don’t think better forms of dialogue and communication will bring peace to the middle east and other areas of the world than what do you think will work? More American missels for Israel to bomb Palestinian civilians? You can’t bomb your way to peace and most of us are not willing to sit around and do nothing.

Glad to help with the checklist and all. I wish I’d had it 25 years ago, but then what would I satirize today?

I find what I often get in return when I criticize or question an HCC-type belief is “Well, you just aren’t ready to hear it yet”, as if there were some spiritual rung I wasn’t capable of reaching, poor thing. Or some nebulous comments about how I’m being so negative, and if I would just think more positively, utopia would appear, and I’m really holding back everyone’s emotional evolution (malarkey, of course). Or in asking for common sense and logic as validation, I’m somehow playing into The Man’s hands.

What I dislike the most about HCC communities is the lip service paid to inclusiveness of all humanity, and the actual, pragmatic exclusivity of groupthink that keeps them alive.

My kids all learned how to use “I” statements by the time they were five. By age eight, they could mock them expertly. The point is, it’s a technique that comes in handy but is in no way the apex of human communication, nor is it the key to world peace and harmony between nations.

Language is such a beautiful, complex, expressive gift. Why would we ever limit our ability to use it fully?

When an idea, structure, or dynamic is called into question, is it framed and named as a personal attack by those invested in the idea, structure, or dynamic?

If so, you are in HCC territory. The best thing to do is to immediately name what is happening. Then, prepare to be told that although the words weren’t technically a personal attack….they caused a “feeling of being attacked” and in HCC territory there is no differentiation for those in the most power…if they Feel something, it is True. I have countless examples of this, but my favorite is being told that something I wrote on an e-mail list, although the words were beautiful and loving, and on the surface no one could find fault in them, the reader KNEW because of how she felt that they were in fact a personal attack.

As a therapist, I work helping people understand that feelings are simply that….feelings. They can act as alerts and give information, but all too often our feelings can be like misfiring car alarms….not truly reflecting what is happening outside our own operating system.

I’ve used NVC as a tool and taught it to clients, but it is a tool that does not work correctly when accompanied with the above dynamic. If that dynamic is operating, NVC not only becomes completely insipid, but downright manipulative. Feelings are used as weapons, but of course, in the most nonviolent way. But then HCC culture is indeed a house of mirrors.

The most tragic thing to me is that if these dynamics are operating, the most idealistic ideas/values of a community lose depth and the community is doomed it to operate on the spiritual level of a young child.

Weird, huh?

“If your goal is to find yourself again after going through a life-changing transformation, this is the time when you need to bow out and forge your own path. But some people take the opposite tack. While others are working to individuate from the group, these folks decide that what the group needs is to become more enmeshed with each other.”

Brilliant as you so often are! It is what I love about peer community – people go off and forge a vital path and then can share the fruits of that labor! Hear hear!

At the risk of you feeling ill, however, NVC doesn’t have to be used badly. It is like any other tool and yes, is oft abused. I for one have found some of it’s ideas to be helpful, though in actuality I seem to have come to them from my own work rather than any direct link to Herr Rosenberg. In trying to own my own life force and power, I have, for example, switched to phrases like “I am so happy to be with you” rather than “you make me so happy.” Besides which, the former is just more accurate language and therefore communicates more rather than less.

And we can also say things like: “I’m pissed off that you didn’t follow through on your promise so I’m unlikely to trust you with a task next time, and frankly, this may jeopardize our working relationship.” And in that case, some of us do indeed move on.

Love to you.

I know the intention at base is a good one, but in practice it too often seems to lead to Orwellian extremes…

Robert

It seems like so many people need to have every little thing in their life be profound. When I discovered this I realized that it has changed every aspect of my life – and I’ll never be the same again :-)