Connecting From the Heart

By Inbal Kashtan

Inbal Kashtan is co-founder of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication and author of Parenting from Your Heart: Sharing the Gifts of Compassion, Connection, and Choice. BayNVC offers workshops and retreats for individuals, couples and organizations. Inbal will be offering a daylong introductory workshop for couples on July 26. © 2009 by Inbal Kashtan.

"I want a life partner because I want to have a place to relax and be accepted fully," a client of mine once told me. His longing is shared by many single people, but most couples find that the relationship they longed for is not exactly what they experience. On the contrary: the couple relationship provides one of the greatest emotional and spiritual challenges! When embraced, however, this challenge becomes a tremendous and rewarding opportunity for growth, for becoming truly the person we want to be and offering our partners the quality of connection we all long for. But we cannot overestimate the challenge.

   Below is an example of how Nonviolent Communication – the process I share with couples, parents, and others – can support people to embrace the challenges that arise in their relationships and turn those challenges into opportunities for deep connection and growth. Although Brenda's (all names have been changed) only experience with Nonviolent Communication (NVC) was through reading some of my articles, I felt deeply moved when I read her story about how NVC contributed to deepening trust and connection in her family.

  Following Brenda's story, I'll highlight a few core principles of NVC that her story illustrates and that together form a path to a compassionate, peaceful life.

   Marshall Rosenberg, founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, first developed NVC over forty years ago. Over the years, NVC has also been used in war-torn countries, between police and gangs, in schools, prisons (there are several existing NVC prison projects, including at San Quentin), businesses, and so forth. But the most familiar settings for using NVC in the United States have been in intimate relationships.

   So what is NVC? Though often thought of as a communication process, what strikes me in Brenda's story is how much NVC is not about the words she spoke. When she said to her husband, James, "Are you afraid you won't get enough food if we let Sara take what she wants?" her tone of voice could have triggered defensiveness or anger. The words mattered, of course. She made a guess about his feelings and needs, a fundamental practice of NVC that we call "empathy." But what made her able to empathize with her husband? After all, she had just described how angry she herself had felt!

   What we find in using NVC is that before (or sometimes through) the words and phrases of NVC there is also an emotional or spiritual shift that happens. In Brenda's case, it may have happened when she took a deep breath; she seemed to take to heart and integrate the insight she was having: in her words, her husband "was needing something."

   Brenda's insight points to one of the core principles of NVC: that behind every action there is a human need. This is easy to grasp when people act in ways we enjoy, but when they don't, most of us have a habit of judging their actions in terms of good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate—and most of us feel angry in response to these judgments. This "right/wrong thinking," as we call it in NVC, removes us from connection to our core feelings and needs. In essence, it's a substitute for true connection with our heart, and has detrimental effects on our ability to connect with ourselves and with others authentically and open-heartedly.

   The moment we understand that behind any behavior there is a need trying to express itself, we can shift from reactive anger to willingness, a desire, and an increasing ability to open our heart to another person. James' words and tone of voice triggered a reaction in Brenda; recognizing that there must be a need behind his actions allowed Brenda to tap into her compassion for him.

   When James was received with compassion, his own needs were met. Not just his need for trust that he would have sufficient nourishment (and through that, perhaps also self-acceptance); after all, when Brenda made her guess as to his feeling and need, he didn't know that they would come up with some strategies to meet that need. There is another set of needs at stake here: the need for compassion, the needs to be seen and heard and understood with care, and to trust that his needs matter. These needs are so fundamental to human beings that having those needs met often provides us the deep relief we usually expect to experience only from getting what we want!

   Brenda articulated this herself: "While we have come up with many solutions to meeting everyone's needs at dinner time," she wrote, "the dialogue alone eliminated the tension around food." This touches on another of the principles of NVC: that in talking with one another about conflicts or challenges, what we're after is not the solution, but the quality of connection that allows everyone's needs to be met. When we are able to hear each other's human needs, our creativity soars, and we often come up with long-term solutions that work for everyone. But even on the occasions when we don't come up with easy strategies, the dialogue itself can bring us closer and heal the ongoing pain so many of us experience: the pain of daily life without fully being heard, and of not trusting that our needs truly matter. When we nurture this quality of trust with our partners, we lay the foundation for deep connection between us and for celebration of being a couple.

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