Tag: empathy

NVC Integration Group This Autumn

Escape Your Chains

We’re offering a series of 4 evening sessions near Eglwyswrw to support you in embracing and integrating NVC into your day to day life.

This NVC Integration Group is helpful if you want to deepen your NVC skills and increase your confidence in using them. You will require at least Level 1, or the equivalent experience, in NVC. You will be held within the safety of a loving, supportive and empowering group facilitated by a highly skilled and experienced NVC trainer.

When? 

Sessions will be fortnightly on Thursday evenings, starting 26th October, continuing on the 9th & 23rd of November and the 7th December, from 7pm to 9.30pm. You can experience the first session to see if it is a good fit, before deciding upon the rest.

Who is this for?

This is for you if:

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I have my Feelings and Needs, what next?

Escape Your Chains

Powerful Compassionate Communication can get more people what they want by creating a win:win. We use the process of Nonviolent Communication.

I have been asked by a community organisation client what steps to take after looking at their judgements, thoughts, NVC feelings and needs. For resolution & inner freedom, it is important to complete the process, in my opinion. Read on to find out how.

In a nutshell, there are 2 more steps to NVC:
1. Dive deeply into your needs:

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Do You Know Someone Who Feels Lonely?

Escape Your Chains

Some people feel painfully lonely or “alarmed aloneness”, while others may be alone whilst in company. I want to pause and think of all the lonely people right now….

As most of us have experienced painful loneliness, or being alone and frightened, the mirror cells (in our brain) will get triggered when we think of someone else going through loneliness.

Maybe that someone is you, right now? Are you OK, or are you struggling? Below are tips for helping yourself or others with loneliness. There is also a related article with practical tips here.

In Wales, we have just started a 17 day lockdown (a Firebreak) as I write. Many people are worried about their, or others’, mental health. Mental health is something we tend to ignore when we (and others) are mentally healthy….we tend to ignore it until it affects us in some way.

Smartly dressed man sitting at the front of his house on a veranda, with his head in his hands, and a wide brimmed hat on.

If you have noticed that someone in your family or community is lonely or alone, is part of you longing to help them during the social isolation to know they are OK, so you can relax?

If you want to help someone else, firstly it helps to have a full emotional tank yourself. (That old oxygen-mask-in-an-aeroplane-crash analogy, that I find sooo true – put yours on first, and then you can help more effectively.)

So let’s start with you, some “You time”. It’s all about you, whichever way we look at it (and that is Okay!) If you want to skip the “you” part, scroll down.

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The Power of a Full YES!

Escape Your Chains

I had a session with Marianne from CupOfEmpathy.com, and she suggested that I may like to check out when my “full yes” isn’t on board, as a way to increase my energy and also my trust in myself, in relationships.

Do you want to start to trust yourself, through only saying yes when it is fully felt in your heart? If so, read on, and see the steps at the bottom. Any questions please ask in the comments so other’s can see. Or let us know how this is going for you.

Has someone suggested something to you and you think “YES!”? That yes feels great – it is a full yes. When I don’t have an enthusiastic, heart-felt yes it feels different inside me. It could be just a tiny bit of a “no” (you know the type you can ignore), and the rest of me says “yes”. That tiny bit of “no” may not get heard – in my case, quite often! It doesn’t get empathy either – I give myself the message that “it” (ie me) doesn’t matter enough.

Only going ahead with something when the yes is full hearted, is scary for me. Sooo often there is a partial “no”. I plan to make it a practice to notice when I don’t have a full yes (for some people it is about having a full no, so translate if that is you).

Choice is something that has been identified as reducing violence, and Nonviolent Communication aims at increasing our choices. This is one method.

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Got Stuck using NVC to Restore a Conversation?

Escape Your Chains
bolders piled up making art, with sea in background
Harmony can be a temporary position and my aim is to walk towards it in a way that opens doors to more needs being met.

I always hold that a shift in a conflict finds us when using Nonviolent Communication (NVC), rather than us searching for it. I find that surprising, magical and beautiful. One minute it looks like there is no solution or harmony on the horizon, the next moment “Hey Presto”: Both people (or all of the group, if it is a group mediation) are actually happier than they were with their original prefered solution. This article is for those who understand the NVC resolution process, and haven’t yet got to that shift.

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