Tag: love

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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NVC Tasters

Escape Your Chains

A few weekends ago we had lots of laughs and people left fired up and fascinated by NVC. We were at Cardigan’s Community Forest Garden (a community project to provide wildlife, community and food) where Escape Your Chains ran an NVC taster session attended by around 16 people.

Paricipants getting involved in NVC tweaking a conversation that a “Judith” wanted a different outcome around.

We looked at how a tricky conversation (provided by a participant) could have gone differently with a few tweeks. NVC expands our natural compassion and everyone’s needs mattering. It is a tool kit that more and more organisations are bringing in to support differences.

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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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Newly Single: Building Interdependency

Escape Your Chains

A client recently lost her partner rather suddenly. She was fairly dependent on him for most things.

An old wall in Exeter, made of old worn red bricks.
What happens when you hit a wall?

She (let’s call her Silkie) had begun to be less dependent over the previous few weeks, knowing something wasn’t right, however, once she lost him she not only had grief to cope with, but much more. She would like to share how she created the support she needed, in an interdependant way, in case it helps others.

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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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Would You Deepen Your Conversation if it Gets Sticky at a Social?

Escape Your Chains

Having just had a very socialable time, at Christmas and New Year get togethers and parties, I wish I had re-connected with Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s prose beforehand. There are several paragraphs that really resonate with me, and I would like to say a bit about them and why. For those who don’t know me, this may help. The full prose is in the previous post. Let me know if you would inquire, of your temporary companion, about any of these!

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.”

Well, if they are passionate about their work, it does interest me. Otherwise, I’m happy to skip paid work as a topic.

“I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.”

Yum, I really love to know this stuff, Continue reading →