People who struggle interpersonally, who seem unhappy, or who get into a lot of conflicts are often advised to adopt the approach of Nonviolent Communication. <\/a><\/em><\/p>
This is often not a good idea. Nonviolent Communication is an approach based on refraining from seeming to judge others, and instead expressing everything in terms of your own feelings. For instance, instead of \u201cDon\u2019t be such an inconsiderate jerk about leaving your clothes around\u201d, you\u2019d say \u201cWhen you leave your clothing around, I feel disrespected.\u201d. That approach is useful in situations in which people basically want to treat each other well but have trouble doing so because they don\u2019t understand one another\u2019s needs and feelings. In every other type of situation, the ideology and methodology of Nonviolent Communication can make things much worse.<\/em><\/p>
Nonviolent Communication can be particularly harmful to marginalized people or abuse survivors. It can also teach powerful people to abuse their power more than they had previously, and to feel good about doing so. Non-Violent Communication has strategies that can be helpful in some situations, but it also teaches a lot of anti-skills that can undermine the ability to survive and fight injustice and abuse.<\/em><\/p>
For marginalized or abused people, being judgmental is a necessary survival skill. Sometimes it\u2019s not enough to say \u201cwhen you call me slurs, I feel humiliated\u201d \u2013 particularly if the other person doesn\u2019t care about hurting you or actually wants to hurt you. Sometimes you have to say \u201cThe word you called me is a slur. It\u2019s not ok to call me slurs. Stop.\u201d Or \u201cIf you call me that again, I\u2019m leaving.\u201d Sometimes you have to say to yourself \u201cI\u2019m ok, they\u2019re mean.\u201d All of those things are judgments, and it\u2019s important to be judgmental in those ways.<\/em><\/p>
You can\u2019t protect yourself from people who mean you harm without judging them. Nonviolent Communication works when people are hurting each other by accident; it only works when everyone means well. It doesn\u2019t have responses that work when people are hurting others on purpose or without caring about damage they do. Which, if you\u2019re marginalized or abused, happens several times a day.<\/em> [full article here<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
photo by R. Basil<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I teach my students that, by and large, the purpose of social and workplace communications is to \u201cfoster and maintain relationships\u201d (and \u201cto not screw up\u201d). A few years back blogger @rsocialskills noted that this rule does *not* carry the day … Continue reading
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