It's All About Connection! NVC With Dr. B!

Giraffes are tall, so they have far vision, and when you're using the Non-Violent Communication process, you have to have a long vision. It's not about being right or wrong, good or bad, it's like this longer view of what you're wanting in life. This might seem corny to some, but it's the truth, it's very much based in love.

Key Points Discussed:

•   So with jackal out, somebody says something you don't like, somebody blames you and you blame them back. That's what you do when you have jackal out. And if you're the type of person that when someone says something that you don't enjoy, you blame them back, what emotion do you get to live from? Anger, right? (3:02)

•    Sadness and fear. Maybe sadness, fear, depression. So before most of us knew NVC, that's all we had, we have the jacket in and jackal out. So we either were living from anger or depression, or Marshall Rosenberg, the guy that developed in NVC, he used to say, we're ambidextrous, which means that, oftentimes, somebody says something that you don't like and you blame the other person and then you get down on yourself. (4:22)

•    First, I gave myself empathy, which was, I feel scared and I have a need for safety. I didn't say that out loud, but I remember very clearly telling myself that like, Wow, in this moment, I really need safety, and then I just launched into really listening to what her needs were. (10:19)

•   Ease and connection. I mean, it was really sweet, we all walked out of that room really connected as opposed to upset and disconnected. And man, It would have just sucked so bad, had it not gone that way. And I want to say it's not an easy thing. What we're talking about here. It's not like, Oh yeah, I get it. But my giraffe ears on. No, no, we have lifetimes of undoing the habit of blaming one another, and I usually like to tell people to carry around a needs and feelings list. (12:43)

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The definition of connection that I like to use is that connection is the flow and ease that occurs within you and between people when they experience being seen, heard and valued without judgment.

Key Points Discussed:

•  When we say things like, I feel manipulated, the person that is on the other side of that message is probably not going to see it very well because it's actually a judgment that's being couched by, and I feel on the front end of it, instead, if you were to say, I feel scared because I have a need for clarity and safety. That's a lot different than saying, I feel manipulated. (3:02)

•  So now that we've gone over why it's important, kind of keeping you in connection with other people, how do you practice it? You just have to watch yourself, I guess, you have to be very mindful. Now that I've been doing this a long time, I just notice, I feel and what follows, so often, not a feeling, pay attention, people say, I feel like, or I feel that I can't say I feel like uncomfortable. (5:53)

•  Well, and here's the thing, just like with the observation versus evaluation, I am really exaggerating the point here, you can't catch that in everything, it's very unlikely unless you've been doing it a long time and it matters that much to you, it's going to be a part of how you speak more than likely, the whole point here is that when you are in an argument, to be very mindful of the distinction, to be mindful of not saying things like, I feel like you don't care at all about me, or I feel disrespected. (9:13)

•  If I were to say this to someone or someone were to say it to me, would I take offence if you're going to take offense, it's probably because it's really more of a judgment, you can come up with another feeling that will work, that's a true inner feeling sensation that's going to be received and easier way from the person. (12:17)

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The definition of connection that I like to use is that connection is the flow and ease that occurs within you and between people when they experience being seen, heard and valued without judgment.

Key Points Discussed:

• When I'm teaching NVC, I like to bring up this difference between observations and evaluations and let people become very clear on them, and it's not necessary to make that distinction, and every time you open up your mouth and when you're in a casual conversation with someone (2:42)
• What happens is we see something and often we have another layer of thought that happens over the thing that we say, so for instance, a dog crosses the road and we have an idea of that dog went really fast across the road, or that's such a cute dog crossing the road. So the fast part and the cute part are all this layer of evaluation, and it happens throughout our conversations, throughout our thinking over and over again, and again, it's not that big of a deal when... It's just a neutral conversation, but when you are in the midst of a conflict, it's really helpful just to stick to observation. (4:13)
• Absolute terms, any time you say things like, you never listen to anything that I say, never is an absolute term, more than likely, something isn't always... never or always. When you use those absolute terms, especially when you're in conflict, more than likely that it's going to cause more disconnection. (6:28). 
• When you were in the midst of a conflict with somebody, it's probably going to cause more disconnection in the connection. Now that we know all of this, why is it so important when you want connection. I think there's one obvious reason why it's important, which is when you say something evaluative to somebody, it's going to be off-putting to them, they're not going to hear you, especially if somebody has had trauma. (9:02)

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I'd say about 50% of our population is going to be really, really upset. There's something about that that does not sit right for me at all, I want the disconnection to go away, I'm mourning connection hugely. And I just think no matter what happens, we must figure out a way to move towards connection in our society. I think the root of a lot of our issues has to do with language.

Key Points Discussed:

•  Much of the way that we're talking to one another today, especially on the political level, we could say all of it and still hold our truth without having all the judgment, and there just seems to be that on steroids right now. (2:12)
• That's the person's feelings, so that's a real thing. It is what it is, and the need there is wanting people to see things similarly as you. (4:50)
• You put a group of people together in a room, inevitably they're not going to see eye to eye on things. But when that would happen, what we would do is, we would slow everyone down and make sure that everyone would reflect on the other person's needs before they comment. (6:22)
• When you can do that, then miraculously strategies, ideas that maybe never surfaced before, can actually rise up. I've seen it happen many times, it all starts though, with hearing one another. (8:23)

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People tend to have a typical way that they respond in circumstances, we call this in NVC, other conversational responses. Here are a list of them; there's giving advice, consoling, relating one-upping, if you're in the fight, you might use other conversational responses like blaming, judging, correcting, explaining. We also do things in general, claiming playing devil's advocate, sarcastic humor, all of which are the more subtle ones.

Key Points Discussed:

• You have ways that you respond when you're just having a conversation with someone or friends coming and you're sharing to some time together, and what's going on in my life? What's going on in your life? We have ways of talking in those moments, kind of like we're doing right now, there are also certain ways that we respond habitually when we're in conflict, and some of these what I call other conversation responses. (1:41)
• As you grow in your NVC process, you start to have more of an awareness of what you do in conversation and what other people do in conversation, and then you start to pay more attention to what works, like what do you like, what's annoying for you. Before you might have felt annoyed but weren't able to pinpoint it, now that you have this contrast of all the different ways that a person can respond and then the empathy, saying that we tend to practice a lot while you're really learning in NVC, practicing it and noticing, trying it on and seeing what that is like to have that as a response.  (4:23)
• It feels like you're yet learning a whole new language and you're like pausing, it feels almost robotic. You know what, the empathy process, it becomes smoother and maybe you're not repeating verbatim what the other person has said, you can put it into your own words and it has more flow and ease. (5:50)
• What happens is you're relating, so now the conversation has turned back on you, not on the other person that was just talking. So this idea of being seen, heard and valued, and you might have just taken away from that person experience and being seen heard and valued when you relate... no right or wrong with relating, but again, you might want to ask, or if you give advice to somebody, we all want to help. When we see somebody in a situation, we want to help, and so we tend to give advice unsolicited, and there's nothing wrong with giving advice, but let's put it in the context of that definition of connection, which is being seen, heard and valued without judgment. (12:23)

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Key Points Discussed:

• Empathy process is the backbone of NVC, and I hesitate to even use the term empathy because most people, when they hear empathy, they think they know what empathy is, and empathy in non-violent communication is different than how people think of empathy. (2:38)
• And truth be told, most of us are not present with one another, our minds are often lost and never, never land, especially when we're in a conflict. When we're in conflict with someone, it's extremely hard to just stay fully with that person because we're typically caught up in our minds, what we're going to say next, or how we're thinking about how that person is a sense of blame or judgment.(3:57)
• I might lose my presence for a second and I'm not hearing fully what they say, so one way of kind of getting myself back on track again is reflecting what I'm hearing somebody say. That can be extremely helpful to know... Okay, yeah, I am hearing you and the way you want to be heard. (6:25)
• Are you feeling complete enough in the moment? I feel very heard. Thank you. That was the little example of what NVC empathy is. Why is this better than how we usually talk... It's not so much about it being better, but it's about it being connecting. So if you remember the definition of connection that we started this episode with, the ease and the flow that occurs within you and between people when they experience being seen, heard and valued. (11:14)

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The ACE Study is from the early 1990s, where they sampled about 17,000 people, having them take a survey that asked them, "From the ages of 0 to 17, how many of these things happened to you?" And they listed out 10 indicators things like sexual abuse, physical abuse, did you grow up in a household where there was mental illness, did you grow up in a household where there was drug abuse, did you grow up in a household where your parents were separated or divorced, where you saw a mom being treated violently? 

There were 10 of these, and they would have folks say yes or no to that, and then they would walk away with a score from 0 to 10, 0 meaning no trauma. 10 meaning the most. And what they found, after giving that survey to 17,000-plus people is two-thirds of the people said that they had had at least one of those things, and many of them said many of those things happen to them when they were between the ages of 0 and 17.

Key Points Discussed:

• People that have had trauma tend to respond in a very particular way because they need to create safety for themselves. (2:30)
• In the program that I ran,  my friend looked at me and she said, Well, that's great, but how are you going to transfer that behavior? And I was stopped in my tracks by that statement, in fact, it kept me awake for two weeks. I was waking up in the middle of the night trying to think to myself, she's right, what if we can't transfer that behavior, what good is the work that we're doing. After two weeks of thinking about that question, the answer came to mind, and I think I literally woke up, sat up in bed with the answer, and that's my cliffhanger right there. (3:28)
• When people have had trauma, they need safety, their brains are actually wired to be on this heightened alert for safety because they haven't had safety. And we see a lot of these behaviors where people fight by yelling or raising their voice or saying obscenities. Or flight, running away. Or freezing. And this is all in service to get people safe. There's a part of the brain called the amygdala. And that's what it does. It's on this alert. Keep me safe. Keep me safe. Keep me safe. (4:06)
• I ran this program for eight years with kids from the juvenile justice system, and talk about trauma, you're talking about some of the deepest trauma. Lots of people dying, lots of situations where folks are starving, seeing their parents be very physically abused over and over again, I mean all kinds of stuff. And yet, we had this amazing level of cooperation and connection with the youth. (8:50)

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Key Points Discussed:

• Some people when they hear non-violent communication, they're turned off right from the get-go because they're thinking, well, I'm not violent with my communication, and non-violent communication came out of Gandhi's understanding of non-violence., and this idea that anything that disconnects us from another human being is a form of violence. (0:58)
• It's an extreme form, obviously of judgment and how it can play out and be disconnecting between people, for sure. And I think most of us can relate to it. Most of us have been in a situation where you're in conflict, and so then you go and you talk crap about a person either directly to them or away from them, and it's usually not very helpful. (5:54)
• So beware of these absolute terms. There's also just so many people who get confused between feelings and thoughts. This is a big thing in NVC, that we start to get really clear about feelings or internal sensations, thoughts or what goes on in your mind, but we say things like, I feel abandoned, I feel disrespected. Those are not internal sensations, those are actually judgments of something you think somebody is doing to you. (8:41)
• We are so habituated to judgments and they are very, very dangerous. That's a judgment too. But they are, they do not typically lead towards connection. Remember, connection is the ease and flow that occurs within you and between people when they experience being seen, heard and valued without judgment, it's this concrete thing that we could start being very mindful of, especially when we are in conflict. (11:51)

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Key Points Discussed:

• The folks in Washington that were running the whole thing, they wanted those of us on the forefront to do peace differently, because they had said back in the 60s, when people were trying to make peace come about, they were kind of often out of integrity with the piece that they wanted to bring. (1:43)
• And a note, mind you, this had not even been 24 hours to receive that said, this is a high price to pay, you've seen nothing yet. (6:40)
• My daughter was a senior in high school and I had been trying to think about what I could do to give her a special gift, and all of her friends a special gift for their graduation, and it dawned on me, what I could do would be to teach them in NVC, if I could give them that before they got out into the world,  it could be the greatest gift that I ever gave to them. (10:25)
• I think that's when I gained more interest in it and have slowly, I guess, over the last eight years, started implementing it more and more into my life, deeply listening, giving empathy and it's really strengthened my own sensibilities and skills, communication and how to communicate. (15:10)

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Key Points Discussed:

•  I've been training youth and community volunteers in the NVC process, and I'm getting ready to launch my business called The Bigbie Method to operationalize peace in America schools by using NVC as the backbone.(1:20)
• There's a lot of people that hear the term Non-Violent Communication and they think this isn't for me,  I'm not violent. When in fact, the term Non-Violent Communication comes from Gandhi's term of non-violence, and it's kind of based in this idea that anything that disconnects you from another human being is actually a form of violence. (2:01)
• Over the evolution of this podcast that we're going to go over the key NVC concepts, we're going to talk with people who are struggling with NVC. Because that's a real thing, people, whether you have a lot of experience or a little experience, people really struggle with this. It's like learning a whole new language because it's hard, we are so habituated when we're in conflict. (4:11)
• Most people come in and have a mental model of empathy and think, Oh, I know empathy, but empathy and NVC is a very specific process that can be taught and learned and replicated. Yeah, so our objective with this podcast is to inform, inspire and support.  (4:56)

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