NVC Life with Rachelle Lamb

When I first encountered NVC, I believed I had finally found the answer to all life's problems. In this episode, I share three misunderstandings I held myself, and what I've come to understand about the process.

If you've ever hoped a skill could fix your relationships for good, or fix the world, this one is for you.

Referenced in this episode: Marshall Rosenberg — Living Nonviolent Communication: Practical Tools to Connect and Communicate Skillfully in Every Situation

Find Rachelle at rachellelamb.com

On October 6, Marshall Rosenberg would have celebrated his 92nd birthday. In this episode, I share a few minutes of his voice, along with some thoughts on what my time with him taught me about seeing, thinking, and the culture we live in.

I offer this as one person's experience of him, and I'd love to hear yours. What did you most appreciate about Marshall, or about what you learned from him? Leave a comment below.

Referenced in this episode:

Marshall Rosenberg — Needs and Empathy (audio recording, PuddleDancer Press, used with permission), available free at nonviolentcommunication.com

John Taylor-Gatto — Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Find Rachelle at rachellelamb.com

In this episode, I share a striking perspective on human connection from Malidoma Somé, a West African shaman: what if our speech isn't proof of our superiority, but something that actually gets in our way?

Watching David Attenborough's documentary on mountain gorillas solidifies the point. Join me as we explore presence, the limits of language, and what happens when we view NVC not as a rigid formula to perform, but as a genuine doorway to contact.

Referenced in this episode:

• Malidoma Somé — Of Water and the Spirit
• A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough (2026 Netflix)
• David Abram — The Spell of the Sensuous
• Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass
• Marshall Rosenberg — Nonviolent Communication

Find Rachelle at rachellelamb.com

Defensiveness isn't the bad guy. It's a natural human response — one that exists for good reason. The question worth asking isn't why other people get so defensive, but why do I?

In this episode I explore what defensiveness is actually protecting, why it's almost always about identity, and what it takes to let something land without immediately mounting a defense.

Referenced in this episode: Rainer Maria Rilke — Book of Hours, translated by Robert Bly

NVCLife Episode: My Partner Asks Too Many Questions (April 4, 2023)

Find Rachelle: rachellelamb.com

A question I hear often: I've been studying NVC for years and I still lose my temper. Why is that?

In this episode I address the two assumptions embedded in that question — and why both get in the way of what NVC can actually offer. Anger is not the enemy. The problem is impulsivity, unexamined expectations, and the absence of skill where language is concerned. Expressing anger fully requires getting in touch with everything underneath it first.

Referenced in this episode:Marshall Rosenberg — Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Find Rachelle: rachellelamb.com

One of the most common questions people bring to NVC: what if the other person refuses to use it? Since the word ‘refuses’ is a diagnosis, the more honest question might be: what do we do when the other person isn't meeting us where we'd hoped?

In this episode I explore that question through a story Marshall told about working with the Orang Asli, the first peoples of Peninsular Malaysia, whose language has no verb "to be." When Marshall asked how to translate the word "selfish," the translator described what you'd observe instead — and then asked: why would you want to tell someone they were selfish? The Orang Asli were, without knowing it, natural practitioners of NVC consciousness. Not the formula. The orientation.

I also look at the difference between high-intensity expression and violent communication, what Marshall meant by giraffe ears, and what it actually means for NVC to "work" when the other person walks away. This is the second installment in the yabuts series — the ongoing thread addressing real objections to Nonviolent Communication.

Referenced in this episode: Marshall Rosenberg — Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life The Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia NVCLife Episode 6 — The Notes Are Not the Music

Find Rachelle: rachellelamb.com

In this episode, I'm addressing some of the objections people have to Nonviolent Communication which make a lot of sense and are well worth exploring. 

I start with one I mentioned back in my first episode of this season: that NVC can sound fake, formulaic, and disingenuous. This is exactly what happens when someone embarks on learning any new language. They will sound stilted before they sound fluent. I walk through the four NVC steps to show why each one is closer to plain honesty than to performance. 

I also address the question: does NVC actually require two people? Marshall used to say only one person needs to know it. I expand on what he meant by that. 

This is the first episode in an ongoing series. If you have an objection or a "yabut" about NVC, comment below or send me an email via my website. I may take it up in a future episode.

Find Rachelle: rachellelamb.com

Eleven years ago, following Marshall Rosenberg's death, I wrote an essay titled Making Life Wonderful. Reading it again recently, I was reminded of just how profound my encounter with Rosenberg was, and how the encounter continues to reverberate.

This episode is an account of what drew me to Nonviolent Communication in the first place .. a powerful way of seeing that asks us to take responsibility for our lives, our impact on others, and the world at large. NVC is revolutionary work in that it asks us to reconsider existing beliefs about human behaviour and what drives us to do as we do. A rarely comfortable exercise but very worthwhile. 

The original 2015 essay is available on my blog: https://www.rachellelamb.com/blog/2015/2/12/marshall-rosenberg-making-life-wonderful

Find Rachelle: rachellelamb.com

Mourning is cited as a need on the Nonviolent Communication needs list, paired with its counterpart: joy. Along with many others, I believe that we have largely lost the capacity to mourn, and that this loss costs us more than we realize, including in our most intimate relationships.

Join me in this episode as I draw on the work of environmental anthropologist Sophie Chao, whose Aeon essay *How to Mourn a Forest* documents the mourning practices of the Marind people of West Papua, a community whose ancestral lands are being destroyed by oil palm plantation expansion. What the Marind offer is a glimpse into what I call active mourning, not the private collapse of grief, but a deliberate, communal practice of turning toward loss rather than away from it. 

I also touch on how, in my work with couples, it's not uncommon for one of the individual's parents to have recently died and how unbeknownst to them, residual feelings from childhood will quietly resurface within the relationship in surprising ways.

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**Referenced in this episode:**

Sophie Chao — *How to Mourn a Forest*, Aeon Magazine, 23 May 2023

https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-mourn-a-forest-a-lesson-from-west-papua

Marshall Rosenberg — Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Stephen Jenkinson — *Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul*

"Grief is not a feeling, it is a capacity. It is not something that disables you — we are not on the receiving end of grief, we are on the practising end of grief."

The Marind song in this episode was composed by Andreas, a Marind youth, and is quoted within Sophie Chao's essay:

**Find Rachelle:** rachellelamb.com

There is often an assumption running quietly through much of how Nonviolent Communication is practiced, including how I practiced it when I first encountered the work 27 years ago. It is the unspoken assumption that our needs are above questioning.

I have found it useful to challenge that assumption. Human beings, after all, are not simple creatures. We contain competing impulses, layered histories, and contradictory desires. We can name a need from the very part of us most committed to preventing its fulfillment. We can want change desperately while remaining, at a deeper level, committed to the status quo.

Join me as I explore the part of us that would prefer things to stay as they are and distorts our needs. I think it serves us well to seriously consider that needs are not the Holy Grail but rather a starting point. The real work begins when we're willing to look honestly at what's underneath them.

Referenced in this episode:

• John Gottman — perpetual problems in relationships (approximately 69%)

• James Hillman — Jungian depth psychology

• Marion Woodman — Jungian psychotherapy

• Clarissa Pinkola Estés — Women Who Run with the Wolves

• Rainer Maria Rilke — Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final

• Walt Whitman — Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.

Find Rachelle: rachellelamb.com