Maintaining Connection During Highly Charged Conversations

Grounding Myself in Humanity

Connection to humans.

How hard can that be?

Maintaining connection during an election? Hmmm.

It seems best to insert a warning, here, similar to the one at the beginning of Dr. Seuss’ Fox in Socks.

PLEASE READ SLOWLY. THIS PIECE IS DANGEROUS.

This is my practice. I hope it serves you in some way.

Children and Community

For me, part of raising children and growing connection-based hearths in my home and community is the practice of seeing and loving all the humans.

On this election year, when my children not only understand that there is an election but have opinions (!!) I want to model for them groundedness, clarity, honesty and integrity using a needs-based lens as we navigate these conversations.

To that end, here is a three second clip of Donald Trump.

I’m going show you how I might use it to get self-connected and grounded in needs. A needs lens gives me the ability to translate human behaviour for my kiddos in a way that holds everyone’s dignity. And it is the first step towards self-responsible, open-hearted, human-to-human discourse.

Grounding Myself In My Humanity

If I am going to have a practice in my home (and modeling for my children) of seeing and understanding all the humans, while also being able to say what’s true for me I want:

• to be able to speak without judgment, blame, criticism and analyses, but with my own needs - the clearer I see myself and the clearer I see others.

• to be able to see the values and longings you have behind the meme that I judge to be misleading! Lies! Out of context! Deliberate misinformation! Dangerous! Wrong! Biased! One sided!
  

THE MORE GROUNDED WE ARE IN THE TRUTH OF OUR OWN NEEDS, THE MORE OPEN WE ARE TO SEEING THE HUMANITY OF OTHERS BECAUSE WE’RE NOT TRIGGERED.

So, while I am going to use the oh-so-present election to write about how to stay in a needs consciousness, this will be applicable to any highly charged situation.

As an anchor, I will be using basic NVC in the form of observations, feelings, needs and requests.

Here is the assumption that I’m working with:

All human beings share the same needs.

This is the place that I can understand you and you can understand me.

What Happened?

When I want to express myself in a responsible, authentic way, I start with an observation and move to feelings and needs.

Finding the observation lifts me out of the disconnection of self-righteousness, indignance, outrage, disgust or contempt. The observation gives me the space to begin to reflect on what’s true and provides the pause that allows me to connect to the the values of life.

To get to an observation I break it down into the minutae of the moment. Which bit of the debate am talking about in this second? Which microcosm, which sentence, which facial expression?

The observation is something that someone who doesn’t hold my beliefs will also say, yes, I saw that too. Yes, that’s what the candidate said. It’s a place where we agree. Free of further interpretation, it is the place where we find pause and space between what happened and the meaning we make about what happened.

Here is that same clip.

The observation is: Donald Trump said, “They have abortions in the ninth month.”

That’s it. For this example, that’s the entire observation that we can all agree on. Donald Trump said, “They have abortions in the ninth month.”

NOTE: I am NOT discussing whether anyone is having an abortion in the ninth month. I am not fact checking. I am agreeing that Donald Trump said this.

This is the pause. The observation is free of meaning-making, context, pretext, post-text, the last 8 years, the next 4 years. It is absent your history, my history.

It is simply seven words.

The charge that any of us may feel is related to our meaning-making, our stories, our needs that are met or unmet by these seven words.

Now we have something to work with.

Navigating All The Feels

Do you feel stimulated by these seven words? Great, what’s the feeling? Here’s a feelings list. You may find the some “feelings” are not on the list. Try finding one that is.

Our feelings point towards needs met or unmet.

Angry? Relief? Frustrated? Awe? Annoyed? Amused? Ashamed? Dread? Foreboding?

Why? What needs, met or unmet, are those feelings pointing to?

Honesty? Integrity? Safety? Dignity? Self-responsibility? Care? Kindness? Warmth?

In its basic, formulaic verbiage, it might then sound like this:

When I hear Donald Trump say, “They have abortions in the ninth month,” I feel a sense of relief because it meets my need for honesty. I want people to know what’s happening!

Or: When I hear Donald Trump say, “They have abortions in the ninth month,” I feel angry because it leaves my need for integrity unmet. I want people with influence to spread accurate information.

Or: When I hear Donald Trump say, “They have abortions in the ninth month,” I feel so scared because my need for safety for these babies is not met.

Can you see the beginnings of this pattern: as many people as there are in the world are as many combinations of needs met or unmet in response to the same stimulus? We can see the same thing, agree on the same observation, but we all make different meanings. What is important are the needs because the needs are where we find our self-connection and also our common ground.

When I am self-connected I am more open to seeing you.

When we have common ground, we can see each other.

Connected Speaking and Listening

What do we do with this common ground? Watch.

The health and wellbeing and safety and nurturing of babies is so, so deeply embedded in my bones, that when I hear Donald Trump say, “They have abortions in the ninth month,” I find myself deeply triggered, scared, sad, confused because I want children, all children everywhere to be safe.

This is a self-responsible, needs-based expression that is without judgment, analyses, labels and contempt and simply communicates the deepest truth of inner needs.

Can you hear how vulnerable yet true this is? Even though someone else may have a completely different set of needs met or unmet, this is still true, with or without the fact-checking.

To this I can orient myself to the reality of this person and say, of course! Of course, of course, of course! I hear you. I get it. I understand being triggered. I understand how these seven words can be so very difficult to hear, because the safety, care, wellbeing and nurturing of tiny defenseless babies is so very important to you. Of course the idea of innocent babies being murdered is so scary and confusing. You want these babies safe and nurtured!

The health, wellbeing and nurturing of all humans as well as honest communication is so important to me, that when I hear DT say, “They have abortions in the ninth month,” I find myself deeply angry and frustrated because my needs for honesty, integrity, truth and safety are unmet by these words.

Yes! You have needs for honesty, integrity, truth and safety, and I understand that because I have those needs too. I get it. I get why you’re triggered when those needs are unmet. When my need for safety is unmet, I also feel triggered.

Can you see how, in my reactions to these thoughts, I am placing myself in the perspective of the other person to the degree that I understand what it is like to have needs unmet? I am not questioning why those needs are met or unmet for this other person. Nor am I agreeing or disagreeing. I simply understand what it is like to have those needs met or unmet. I meet this person right where they’re at, in the present moment.

Have you ever experienced being gotten in this way? When we can see and understand another person in the truth of their needs it can be settling to their nervous system. When our nervous systems are settled, new avenues of thought are available.

Household Discussions

So that’s it - the first step towards maintaining a needs-based lens as we launch, nonviolently, into the choppy, shark-infested waters of election discourse:

We find the observation and use that to get clear on our feelings and needs. Then we use our needs to express ourselves truthfully. From there it’s possible (not easy!) to hear the humanity behind any expression of unmet needs, no matter how unskillfully expressed.

It allows me to catch myself when kiddos hear me mutter something that rhymes with the duck’s lake in response to a headline, or a story or a meme.

When they loudly, breathlessly, dramatically come running and yell (always yelling!), “What, Mummy? What happened? Did that make you angry? Are they lying? Who are they talking about?”, I can breathe and say something to the effect of:

“I just read a headline that says xyz. I don’t yet have any more information than that, but my need for honesty is not met right now and I feel frustrated.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So were they lying?”

“I want to check on some things before I can say that they were lying. I’m just so hooked on honesty and authenticity, I want those things to be obvious immediately, and they’re not. So that’s why I’m frustrated.”

“Well why did this person say it if it’s not honest?”

“They might believe it’s honest. We don’t know. They might be trying to meet their needs for effective communication and hoping that other people understand them when they say this. Everybody wants to be understood. Or it may be that they are trying to hold on to some sense of power in their world. We don’t know. And it still didn’t meet my need for honesty.”

“Oh.”

And off they go.

Drama balloon deflated. Needs on the table. Very boring. Truthful, human to human attempts to understand.

Now What?

How are you doing so far?

What are you going to do with this new ability to take yourself out of the story and into the needs? Who will you choose to stay in connection with?

I can imagine questions firing, like, okay fine to be all non-judgementally in front of my kids but how will this help me convince my neighbors that they’re wrong? And if I can’t, what use is this?

How Is This Even Useful?

When I use the self-responsible language of observations, feelings, needs and requests, I can hold the humanity of everyone. Even the people I don’t agree with.

With this wedge-in-the-door first step, the next step happens in the same way, until we have created a whole conversation out of these micromoments of observation, feelings and needs. When it becomes a conversation, we also get to throw in a request (did I understand you right?). When it becomes a longer heart-to-heart, it opens up the option of me seeing you and you seeing me. What would the world be like if we could all see each other - if we were all really, really seen? What’s possible with all this nervous system settling, inside and outside of our homes?

Want to practice? Here’s a clip of Harris.

What is the observation? What are your feelings, and your needs? What self-responsible expression can you share that tells your truth, grounded in your needs?

Tell me in the comments.

This is just the very beginning; this work isn’t done, but it already feels long and overwhelming. I want this to be tangible and doable.

Questions? What abouts? How do I apply this to [insert highly charged topic]? Is this enough for now? Do you want more examples?

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Resources

Needs List

Feelings List

Key Assumptions and Intentions of NVC

Core Commitments of Nonviolence

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Want More Connection-Based Discourse?

COMING SOON

Self-responsible discourse.

Where disconnection can come in and what it can look like to stay connected.

Needs-based conversations with kiddos around the election.

What that looks like.

Self-regulate, co-regulate, mediate and repair.

When it’s not within my capacity to change the circumstances, all I can do is self-regulate, co-regulate, mediate and repair. On repeat. What that’s looking like and how it’s going.