Have you ever felt disturbed, sad, unhappy, disconnected, and lost?
Every one does. This is how life is designed. Nonviolent Communication gives a wonderful perspective to understand this. When our needs are met, we feel a certain kind of feelings. Lets call it Positive Feelings. Happy, thrill, warm, wonder, contain, calm, glad are some of the examples of these feelings.
When our needs are not met, we feel another kind of feelings. Lets call it Negative Feeling. We all have an experience of these kinds of feelings everyday. Tense, pain, annoyed, restless, overwhelmed, angry, irritated etc etc. And of course in this rat-raced, globalized, and modern lifestyle negative feelings arrives much faster then positive feelings.
The question is...what do you do when you feel low?
In my experience of creating and living with communities, I can assure you that the only remedy to this is having a platform where you can express out yourself with being judged. English literature has an specific word for this...Empathy. And there are only two possible platforms for this. One is within you (called self-empathy) and another is empathy from another person.
Self empathy is difficult because you are in pain. So Nonviolent Communication focus on creating group of people who can come together in the difficult time to empathize with each other. They call it empathy circles or empathy buddies.
This is very important to note here that empathy is different from sympathy.
I am expressing my anger about my family and other person starts advising me what to do then its not empathy. Empathy is an act performed without judgement, interpretation, advise, blame. It is the purest form of human intelligence to connect with another human being.
The area I wan to focus today is how communities can help in difficult times.
Lets try to understand in mathematical terms. Life is a sinusoidal graph. There are time in the life when you are above the axis means everything is working fine, your boss is happy with you, you are happy with your boss, your wife loves you and you have enough time to spend with your wife. And then there comes the time when you are below the axis, means the deadline is near and project is not finished yet, you had a fight with your daughter, you had a car accident, you had a disconnect with your wife. etc etc.
And then again graph goes upward and happy moments in your life appears again.
But when your graph is below the axis, this is the time when you need empathy. A chat with friend who don't judge you, or just a compassionate hug. This can be done by someone who's graph is above the axis.
So if your graph is below the axis, you can go to your friend's house whose graph is above the axis. If your friends graph is also below the axis you can go to third or fourth house.
I have a high degree of confidence that if you have minimum 5 people in your life, who are your empathy buddies, you can definitely go and find those who are in position of give empathy. And there might be time when you will give empathy to them. This is life.
If you don't have empathy buddy, you can count on me. Feel free to call me or msg me. I will be happy to be present to you without judgement. Also I will teach you how to do self empathy without guilt and shame.
-Inspired by the work of Marshall B Rosenberg and NVC trainers around the world who are creating NVC Communities.
Click to Read my previous blogs...
- How moralistic judgment promote violence !!!
- रिश्ते बनाने की कला - अहिंसक संवाद
- Differentiating "idealized true gift" and "gift"
- Gift Economy: A system of social ties and obligation
- What is Gift Culture?
This is a space for discussing tough subjects: both personal experiences and the massive challenges in the wider world. The culture of this blog is one of looking for the possibility of forward movement through loving engagement, even, and especially, in times of disagreement. Please practice nonviolence in your comments by combining truth and courage with care for me and others you’re in dialogue with.