How to Communicate with Compassion

By Rev. Carol Bodeau

Dear Friends,

It is a time of great change and conflict in our world, and we are all experiencing some personal repercussions of this general situation. Many of us are having difficulty communicating with people we care about, as we try to figure out how to forge connections across differences. Last Sunday we started a new program at Westside that aims to help us do this more effectively and consistently.

Rooted in the work of the late Marshall Rosenberg, Non-Violent or Compassionate Communication is more than just a 'script' for how to 'talk right.' Instead, NVC is a whole new way of understanding the goals of communication, shifting them from 'being right,' and 'winning' or 'proving our point' to making connections and deepening understanding. Rather than trying to convince someone of our way of seeing things, the goal in compassionate communication is to foster a sense of trust, safety and openness in exchanges between people.

Rosenberg's model rests on four basic principles:

1. First, we must simply be able to observe what is happening without judging it or leaping right into correcting someone's behavior. (For example, "when you slam the door" rather than "stop being so rude and disrespectful.")

2. Second, we express how we feel without blaming, shaming or evaluating/judging the other person. (For example, "I feel startled and upset" rather than "I feel totally disrespected when you do that"—"disrespected" is a judgement or evaluation of the other person's behavior or motives, not an actual emotion.)

3. Next we state, again without judgment, what we care about or need. (For example, "It's important to me that things be calm today; I need some quiet space" rather than "You have to treat me better.")

4. Finally, we can make a request of the other person that encourages connection and understanding. (For example, "Could you try to be a little more gentle today?" or even "Is there anything going on for you that's making you feel upset that you want to share?" )

At the foundation of this method is a deep willingness on the part of at least one party to reflect on what specific acts, words, or situations trigger them; what their actual feelings are (without telling a story about the situation or assuming they know the other's motives or qualitative state); what their own deepest needs are; and how they can ask for greater understanding and connection to honor those needs, while offering openness to another person without judging them.

That's a lot!

We have all been trained by our culture to prove our point, win the argument, and be right in order to be 'safe.' In other words, we have both cultural (and to some extent biological) conditioning to be defensive. NVC or Compassionate Communication invites us to explore another way of doing things. From my own experience, I can say that it is profoundly life-changing in a good way.

So I invite you to join us as we meet every 2nd and 4th Sunday after church to learn about and practice this method of connecting with others across differences.

With hope for a more compassionate world,

Rev. Carol