| A common complaint of people considering the suggestions of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, CNVC, is that "NVCers" do not come across as authentically empathic. In other words, we pretend to empathy we don't have. Many consider that this is inevitable -- for two reasons. First, developing an empathic ("giraffe") way of being from the starting ("jackal") way of being from which most of us begin, at least in some respects, our NVC journey is not at all easy. So of course we will be caught aspiring to more empathy than we actually feel in our hearts. And second, language can rarely convey all of what one wants to express: there is always a gap between what we want to convey that will fully express all our sentiments and what we actually do convey in the language coming out of us at any particular moment. These are major factors, to be sure. But there's also another factor involved here, in my opinion -- one that is operating at a level beyond, or at least below, the linguistic understanding of which most English speakers are actually conscious. It is that the way in which Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Center, its Director of Education, and also author of its most widely read book "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" suggests we express feelings embodies a linguistic anomaly. The anomaly lies in the ambivalence surrounding the meanings of the various tenses and conjugations of the verb "to be", specifically in the term "I am", as in "I am (blah blah)". Those familiar with Marshall's book will recall that he advocates use of the "I am" in conjunction with a list of, for the most part, passive adjectival words such as "afraid, disgusted, intense, absorbed, engrossed, moved, energetic, mirthful, disgruntled, indifferent, shaky". "I am 'X passive adjective'" statements tend to reinforce the feeling that we are stuck in those feelings, and this can, in periods when we feel stuck (obstructed internally), keep us "in the dark" as to a discovery that people who have had the opportunity to mature more than their interlocutors have already learned, namely that we all have some capacity to move ourselves into a more equanimous state. I do not object at all to the idea that we become conscious of what we are feeling at a level beneath what is conventionally accepted in conversation nor that we label the emotion we have giving rise to our feelings. Far from it. What I want to convey here is that articulation of a different linguistic form for expressing our feelings and emotions can engage more fully our own capacities to return to the equanimous (centred) states from which more rational choice-making is possible. Specifically I propose the "I have 'X emotion' now" (IHXEN) linguistic, where 'X emotion' is limited to a noun, such as anger, concern, grief, joy or any noun such as those on the list supplied at the end of this paper for this purpose. The specific reasons why I propose IHXENs are not easy to explain, but this link does so. Unfortunately, the IHXEN linguistic is not an easy one to articulate because (a) few of us have mastery of the emotion nouns required to do so and (b) it "doesn't feel normal". Few of us have mastery of the adjectives suggested in the various NVC lists now existing on the internet either, so as a matter strictly of vocabulary, newcomers to NVC have either to master the NVC list of adjectives or to master the IHXEN list of nouns below. As to the matter of "it doesn't feel normal", again both the IHXEN approach and the NVC approach require practice to work through the challenging, or at least awkward, moments when one is trying to incorporate the non-violent philosophy (ahimsa) into both one's thinking and one's speech. People who are already adept at NVC will have more trouble incorporating the IHXEN linguistic into their ways of being, so Alex Censor, the first NVC trainer certified by Marshall, has developed a way of implementing the OFNR structure (Observations, Feelings, Needs, and Requests) that obviates the "I am" problem when confronted by behaviour that triggers "jackallian" feelings. Here it is: .. |
| Easing Out the "Inauthentic" to "Really" Connect! (c) 2008-12 by Angus Cunningham Principal, Authentix Coaches .. |
| Latest revision: 120327 |
I recall once being in an NVC group meeting and feeling, in spite of every mental straining on my part not to feel disgust, contempt, and disbelief at the "I am (blah, blah)s" to which my fellow meeting participants were, in my opinion (based on a studied comparison of their words and miens), pretending. What I wanted to do was scream "Get real, you precious little childish exaggerators of your own predicaments. You are NOT what you pretend, but I do hear that you have an emotion that is quite distressing for you. Well, hear this and make sure you bloody well listen very, very closely. I HAVE ANGER NOW. I want more authenticity from you!" Well, of course, I didn't indulge in expressing that "British jackal attitude" possessing me through much of that meeting. I waited until I was at a little more distance from NVCers -- in actuality until I had the CNVC blog and Alex to cyberwrite to, and then I expressed those pent-up emotions -- but without resort to any "I am (blah, blah)s". I was able to do that only because (a) Alex is Alex, bless him, and (b) I had been practising expressing my emotions with "I have 'X emotion' now" statements to amplify and render more truthful the Fs in OFNR (no pun intended). "Now them's fighting words", may be the reactions of some of you to reading this but, if so, I request that you try your keyboards at composing as authentic an O(F-IHXEN-N)R rejoinder as you have ever done in your lives -- for I would like such connections as responses like that would, I believe, afford us. Here's a list of emotion nouns: .. |
Sorry: the notes are long! But they are in my soon-to-be-published book. If you would like a .pdf file of this list and its notes, just email me a request. Jonathan Cowan is another NVCer with whom I practise silent IHXENs in cyber conversations. He and I have come up with what we might call the Cunningham-Cowan Axiom (of Constructively Creative and Unfortunately Angry but Manfully Redacted Nonviolent Expression, aka NVC IHXEN English). This axiom appears to be settling down as: A person experiencing a sane moment AIMS TO adjust her/his emotional state to regain equanimity by expressions of observation, feeling, need, or request HOPED to be successful, whereas a person experiencing a less than sane moment automatically PUTS his/her emotional energy into RE-ENACTIONs learned from successful imitation of others perceived as wiser or more powerful. We didn't come up with this axiom on our own. We had a lot of help from Baruch Spinoza, whom Jonathan Cowan has discovered wrote a most inspiring passage for men caught more or less perpetually fuming on our 'crosses of dedication to nonviolence': 'I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions; and to this end I have looked upon passions, such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of vices of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent to it, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have fixed causes, by means of which we endeavour to understand their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them aright, as in knowing such things as flatter the senses.' Practising IHXENs turns out to have many benefits, especially if one practises with an IHXEN partner. For more on this, please explore what is coming to be called Eye-Zen English. Eye-Zen is a convenient way, of course, of pronouncing the acronym IHXEN. .. |
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