What is Compassionate or Nonviolent Communication (NVC)?
Compassionate Communication is both a personal practice that helps us see our common humanity, and a concrete set of skills which help us to live more peacefully. These skills apply to thought, language, and using our power in a way that honors everyone's needs.
Flagship book by NVC's founder, Dr. Marshall RosenbergNVC is a learnable process for creating emotional freedom, self-acceptance, inner peace, and fulfilling relationships. It involves expressing ourselves honestly, listening with empathy, and developing a more compassionate inner relationship.
People around the world are using NVC skills to transform conflict, create harmony in their relationships, and build a world where everyone's needs are honored through compassionate giving, and without the use of coercion or violence.
NVC helps people to:
- speak in a way that inspires compassion and understanding
- initiate difficult conversations with more ease and confidence
- remain centered and peaceful while hearing difficult messages
- express anger fully, safely and respectfully - yet powerfully
- shift patterns of thinking that lead to depression, guilt, shame
- enliven yourself by expressing and receiving gratitude
- translate criticism, judgments and blame into life-serving messages
- resolve long-standing conflicts and heal painful relationships
- inspire others to change their behavior willingly
Why is NVC important in our world?
Most of us are hungry for skills to that can improve the quality of our relationships, increase our contribution through our work, and deepen our sense of personal empowerment.
A scene from our August 2010 self-compassion training led by Robert Gonzales.Unfortunately, most of us have been educated from birth to compete, judge, demand and diagnose... and to think and communicate in ways that create distrust and alienation, rather than connection.
At best, these habitual ways we think and speak hinder communication and create misunderstanding and frustration. And still worse, they can cause anger and pain, and may lead to violence, either physical or emotional.
Without wanting to, even people with the best on intentions stimulate needless conflict in their lives.
Compassionate or Nonviolent Communication (NVC) helps us reach beneath the surface and discover what is alive and vital within us, and how to express what's important to us in a way that generates connection, goodwill and compassion.
NVC helps us to express our feelings and needs so that other people can more easily relate to us, and also helps us make key differentiations between observing and judging, requesting and demanding, and wants and strategies that stimulates compassion from others.
In addition, NVC helps us to contrast partnership vs. domination paradigms in our own lives and in the institutions around us, and guides us to recognize our interdependence and create a world where everyone's needs matter.
Check out our upcoming events. Learn more about NVC.
Marshall Rosenberg – Founder of NVC
Dr. Marshall Rosenberg is founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, an international, nonprofit organization. Marshall visited Columbus, Ohio for trainings in March 2006 and January 2007, and these events helped to catalyze the NVC movement in Central Ohio.
In 1961 Dr. Rosenberg received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Wisconsin and in 1966 was awarded diplomate status in clinical psychology from the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology.
Dr. Marshall Rosenberg
Nonviolent Communication training evolved from Dr. Rosenberg’s quest to find a way of rapidly disseminating much needed peacemaking skills. The Center for Nonviolent Communication emerged out of work he was doing with civil rights activists in the early 1960s.
During this period he provided mediation and communication skills training to communities working to peacefully desegregate schools and other public institutions.
Since the inception of the Center, the response to Nonviolent Communication training has been extremely positive. It is seen as a powerful tool for peacefully resolving differences at personal, professional, and political levels. Dr. Rosenberg provides Nonviolent Communication training in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Malaysia, India, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Austria, France, and Canada, as well as in the United States.
He has worked with educators, managers, mental health and health care providers, lawyers, military officers, prisoners, police and prison officials, clergy, government officials, and individual families. He has also visited war-torn areas and economically disadvantaged countries, offering Nonviolent Communication training to promote reconciliation and peaceful resolution of differences. Israel, Palestine, Ireland, Russia, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Serbia, and Croatia are examples of countries where NVC is being utilized by teams of peace activists.