Nonviolent Communication; Psychological and Relational Health

Nonviolent communication is a concept that points to an internal and relational attitude that is free from the facts related to violence in the psychological and social sense. With a very broad definition, nonviolent communication is an attitude that allows the "good" in one's self to emerge and includes love, respect, understanding, appreciation, compassion and consideration of others. This refers to an internal state that involves keeping one's own mind free of selfish, hateful, prejudiced, suspicious and aggressive attitudes, not just during relationships with other people, but also within the realm of relationship with the person’s self. It involves restructuring the way we express ourselves to include an awareness of our feelings and needs, and it implies effective listening, respect, and empathy.
 
Barriers to Nonviolent Communication
 
Moral Judgment

The most important factor hindering nonviolent communication is an internal and communicative attitude that is morally judgmental towards those we see as incompatible with our own values. Judgmental sentences such as "Your problem is being selfish!", "What you are doing is not appropriate", "You always think about yourself" and which do not have awareness of the inner state of the other person can be given as an example of a morally judgmental attitude.

It's Easy to Judge

It should not be forgotten that people's judgment of others on the basis of their own value judgments is an almost automatic and, in fact, a spontaneous tendency that does not require effort. In many cases, the examples in which one judges others are based on inconsistency with one's own expectations and values. For example, if the person finds their partner too "demanding and dependent", it is actually about the other person demanding more affection than, for example, they want to give him/her. However, if the same person cannot find a response to his own demand for compassion, he may describe the other person as "insensitive" based on his own expectations. In many cases, such judgmental attitudes arising from our own expectations and value judgments trigger the defense mechanisms of the other party and encounter resistance.
 
Making Comparisons

When people start to criticize each other for what they do and cannot do, they often refer to unrealistic and unrepresentative peers. For example, the partner who accuses his/her spouse of failure may compare him with the most successful person in his/her field, regardless of the spouse's personality traits and value judgments. Beyond being inherently judgmental, this attitude also ignores the fact that being the best in every field is something only a few people can achieve. In other words, there are "very successful" examples in the world we live in that can make us regard the majority of people working in almost every field as "failures". For this reason, comparisons are often far from realistic and in many cases serve nothing more than to make the other party feel inadequate and again push them into a defensive position.
 
Denying Responsibility

Individuals can experience the events they live as things that they are condemned to, not under their own control. It is one of the important features of nonviolent communication that people experience and present their experiences both with themselves and with others as their own choices. For example, if the person says, "I prefer to use alcohol instead of other methods to cope with my problems," instead of saying "I drink alcohol because I am an alcoholic", he will not be denying his own responsibility for the unhealthy situation he is experiencing. Or, if s/he can say, "I need to develop skills to deal with my child's behaviors that I don't like without hurting him," instead of saying, "I yelled at my child because he was driving me crazy", s/he not only reminds himself of his responsibility for the situations that bother him, but also chooses a healthier way to repair his relationship with his child.
 
Other Principles of Nonviolent Communication
 
Observing Without Evaluation

It is an important element of nonviolent communication to share your direct observations of others’ specific behaviors rather than making an assessment of their personality or general tendencies regarding their behavior. For example, instead of saying, "You are a very angry person," saying, "Sometimes you raise your voice in anger," includes an observation of the person without a general judgment, and encourages the person to evaluate their specific behavior rather than show resistance to defending one's personality or identity.
 
Expressing Emotions

People in many cultures receive messages specifically to suppress their negative emotions. In fact, both communication strategies and psychology in general tell us that suppressing emotions has both relational and psychological costs.
What is healthy is encouraging the right expression of emotions. By adhering to the basic principles of nonviolent communication mentioned above, individuals have the chance to both experience themselves as being at peace with their inner world, unhindered, and to put their relations with others on a more realistic basis, to the extent that they express their feelings to the other party.
In general, Nonviolent Communication, as an approach that aims an empathetic perspective, a realistic self-evaluation skill, a pure effort to understand others in their relationships, and a healthy resolution of relational conflicts, helps individuals to increase their psychological health and improve their social skills in many social, emotional and relational areas. It is an important communication pattern that can benefit individuals in their self development.
 
Compiled from “Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, 2015