Giving With Your Heart (non-violent Or Empathetic Communication)

Words are a double-edged sword that can build deep relationships, but which can also have the power to destroy them or hurt others. Learning to speak with your heart, measuring the importance of your language, ultimately our communication, is essential to maintain healthy relationships. This is where the importance of nonviolent or empathetic communication comes from.

Marshall Rosenberg, an American psychologist, developed this new type of communication in the early 1960s, when he was studying the factors affecting our ability to be complacent. His intention was to find an answer to two questions that had gone unanswered since his childhood. What disconnects us from our supportive nature and pushes us to behave in a violent and abusive manner? And why some people are consistent with this attitude of solidarity even in the most critical circumstances? The result was the development of non-violent communication. Let’s see what it is.

Nonviolent or empathetic communication

Much of our relationships deteriorate because we do not know how to communicate and this causes the emergence of many conflicts. We are sure that communicating is like speaking and we forget the fundamental part: listening.

An alternative to solve this problem is the use of nonviolent or empathic communication proposed by Rosenberg, based on giving from the heart. Through this communication, we will be able to connect with ourselves and then connect with others, allowing them to touch our natural compassion.

This type of communication is based on language skills, verbal or non-verbal, which allow us to continue to be human beings even in the most extreme situations. In fact it is about succeeding in controlling our impulses by facing this environment filled with tempting conditions. In this way, we will be able to maintain the sincere and authentic communication that is born from our hearts.

As we see, there is nothing new. The elements that make up this type of communication have been known for centuries, it is only a matter of taking them out of the memory trunk, being aware of them, and applying them daily.

The components of empathetic communication

Nonviolent communication has a profound transformative power. The fact that the label “non-violent” is stuck to our way of communicating implies going beyond our necessities, also listening to others, rather than obeying our usual and automatic reactions. But, how to do it?

According to Rosenberg, in order to learn to give from the heart, we must focus on our consciousness, so as to illuminate four areas (the four components of nonviolent communication):

• Observation. This first component consists of observing what follows a situation. Is what others say or do useful to enrich our life? The key lies in knowing how to adequately express what we like or don’t like about the actions of others, without evaluating or passing judgment. For as J. Krishnamurti said, observing without evaluating is the supreme form of human intelligence.

• Feeling. The next component is to identify how we feel. Do we find ourselves hurt, happy, or irritated? The question comes down to detecting our emotions and the feelings that we have at any given time.
• Necessities. The third component is in relation to the needs that we have and which are associated with the feelings that we have identified.
• Request. The final component of non-verbal communication is focusing on what we would like another person to do, both to enrich their own life and ours. To put this component into action, it would be necessary to have recourse to a very specific request.

Nonviolent or empathetic communication does not only refer to what we are able to express honestly and consciously, but also to knowing how to empathically receive communication from others.

So when we focus our attention on all aspects of this process and help others to do the same, two-way communication takes place. A double opening of the channel in which the two perspectives come into play: on the one hand, I look, I feel and I identify what I need to enrich my life; on the other hand, that the other observes, feels, and needs to also enrich his life.

The power of compassionate language

Nonviolent communication is the language in which compassion speaks, the connection to inner connection and the gateway to others, with an honest and genuine attitude. Because, beyond being a type of communication, it is an attitude towards the circumstances that lead us to be responsible for our internal processes.

Before letting ourselves be led by our impulses and uttering words that we will later regret, we should pause and listen to ourselves, then understand ourselves and try to understand others. Screams and slights help us, but silence and stillness can be very useful tools in our goal of illuminating dark times.

Let us not forget that the way of communicating determines our daily life. Let us make nonviolent communication predominate in our lives, in this way it will be more likely to predominate in the lives of others.