278: Nonviolent Communication w/ Bob Yamtich

* Rough Transcript *

Ep. 278: Nonviolent Communication w/ Bob Yamtich

Introduction to Empathy Purists

Bob: Some certified trainers are what I call empathy purists. They believe that the healing power of empathy can transform any situation. I’m not an empathy purist.

Bob: I also like analytical insights and diagnosis saved my life.

Imagine if you didn’t have an understanding of your neurodivergence, I’m guessing has connected you to needs and develop strategies to meet those needs and helps you have more connection and understanding.

Bob: I just want to use both insight and empathy. I welcome insights. I welcome empathy. And I think that our neurodivergence matters.

Welcome to Embracing Intensity

Aurora: Welcome to the Embracing Intensity podcast. I’ll be sharing interviews and tips for gifted, creative, twice exceptional, and outside the box thinkers who use their fire in a positive way.

Aurora: My name is Aurora Remember Holtzman. After years of feeling too much, I finally realized that intensity is the source of my greatest power.

Now, instead of beating myself up about not measuring up to my own self imposed standards.

Aurora: I’m on a mission to help people embrace their own intensity and befriend their brains so they can share their gifts with the world through the Embracing Intensity community, coaching, educational assessment, and other tools to help you use your fire without getting burned.

You can join us at embracingintensity. com.

Aurora: Hello.

Special Episode on Nonviolent Communication

Aurora: I am so thrilled to get to share this long awaited episode on nonviolent communication with Bobby Yamtich. For my birthday. I meant to get it out before the ADHD conference earlier in the month, but it was thrown off by the election and decided to wait until I was back.

Birthday Promotion Announcement

Aurora: The timing worked out anyway, because now I can share my birthday promotion for all of my digital products and memberships. Get 25 percent off for life with the code birthday 24. Until Monday, December 2nd. I’ll be working on adding a few more of my planners and tools to the shop this week as well. At embracing intensity.com/shop.

Aurora: I’ve also updated my monthly planner club to include more principal tools, activities, fidgets, et cetera, so now it’s called the neurodivergent toolbox.

Aurora: You can find the full discussion from this recording in my guests call library for just two forty nine to start and then 4 99 a month to access 50 plus rich discussion recordings on related topics such as perfectionism, imposter syndrome, burnout, and more.

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Enjoy.

Welcome. So glad to have you all here. Lots of familiar faces, some new, some people I haven’t seen in a while. I think this is going to be a great conversation.

Introduction to Bob Yamtich

Aurora: So glad to have Bob Yamtich here talking about nonviolent communication. We’ve been in touch for, I don’t know, 10 plus years since you spoke at the SANG conference and I kept meaning to have them on the podcast and I finally did.

And so, I’m just really excited to have this conversation because it’s something that’s really both of us really love using it as a tool for self connection as well as communication with others. So, that’s one of the reasons why I think Bob’s work resonates with me so much. First I’m going to let people go ahead and introduce themselves just so that, Bob, you know who you’re talking to and then I’ll let Bob introduce himself.

Bob, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Bob: Hi. I use he, him pronouns. I don’t actually use them. I ask other people to use them.

Bob’s Journey with NVC

Bob: And I’ve been doing NVC for over 20 years and I want to start with a tale of a mistake, something that was not NVC.

It was in my first marriage and we were, it was just the two of us driving in a car and I wanted to adjust the situation somehow. I wanted some kind of change. Things just, things weren’t flowing in a way I trusted, things weren’t flowing in a way I felt comfortable. So what I did is I stuck my tongue out at my wife.

And she said, I’m going to learn this nonviolent communication because I have a feeling that that’s not it. And she was right. Sticking your tongue out is not part of the process. And she was right about a lot of things, but this work suits me because I found Marshall’s work at a conference on sustainable development.

Before I was trained as a therapist, I was trained as an engineer, an environmental engineer, and I wanted to do drinking water work everywhere. And there was no real good reason for me to be an engineer. I was never good with Legos, I was just good at algebra and a lot of engineering. Once you do the calculus wants to derive the formula, you just use algebra from then on.

But I found NVC and it just resonated with me for, for very grandiose reasons. And I need to be cautious about grandiosity because I am bipolar. I had a years long manic psychosis where I believed very special things about myself and I wasn’t in the shared reality and I did not have stability.

So when you’re talking about communication that affects parenting, that affects education, that affects therapy, communication is everywhere. So it’s almost inherently grandiose. If you want to make a change in society, starting with communication is a pretty solid spot.

So. I want to cover some of the basics today, but I’m happy to hear a lot of people have experience.

I’m going to also discuss where I diverge from the teachings, because there are three components to nonviolent communication, self connection, which is the foundation of everything.

The Importance of Self Connection

Bob: It all starts with self connection, knowing what you care about, knowing what matters to you in the moments and feeling the energy of that flow through you, feeling the beautiful longing and when you do this work long enough, you can have a longing and you could really want something without being attached to it because you trust yourself that you’re going to take care of those needs.

You’re going to honor those needs. You’re going to hold those needs with care. The distinction between a need and a strategy to meet a need is huge. Right now I’m going to take a moment for self connection just because I want to be sure I’m grounded for this talk. So I know my needs are contribution.

I’m hoping to contribute. My needs include community. I’m hoping to meet some new people and just hear about other people’s work in the world. And so contribution, community, and Aurora, could you give me an empathy guess of another need that might be alive for me right now?

Aurora: Oh contribution, community maybe some connection.

Bob: Connection. Yeah. I’d love connection and seeing you laugh reminds me of fun and play. I hope this whole thing has a sense of fun and play. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. I feel grounded. I feel ready to go on. So self connection is the first component.

Empathy and Honesty in NVC

Bob: And then you choose between empathy and honesty.

There are four parts. To frame the empathy and the honesty, but basically it all centers on needs awareness. I hope that most of you have that list of needs that was sent in the email because when we do the question and answer, I’m going to ask you to look at those needs and come up with three needs that are alive for you in this moment.

Actually, I guess I’m doing it now.

Exercise: Identifying Your Needs

Bob: What are three needs that are alive for you? Just like I just did. That’s called taking a moment for self connection because that’s the foundation of everything that gives me hope that people come from a more self connected place.

Aurora: Put that in the chat as well.

So you guys can refer to that. And if you want, you guys can go ahead and put three needs in the chat. That could be kind of fun. So Bob has that to work with, and then we can explore it a little bit more.

Bob: Yeah, that would be awesome. NVC is my favorite modality.

I’ve been doing it for 20 years. And I plan to do it until I die. But I’m only 90 percent aligned with the work. And here’s why. There is a section in the book called replacing diagnosis with empathy. And we could think that there was a pendulum swinging a pendulum swinging between analytical insights.

And Presence, accepting empathy and NVC swung the pendulum away from analytical insight and towards accepting empathy. And I think in the seventies that needed to happen, we needed to move away from everything, having a label, but there is a role for insight.

Integrating Insights and Empathy

Bob: And you can integrate insights and empathy.

So some certified trainers are what I call empathy purists because They believe that the healing power of empathy can transform any situation. I’m not an empathy purist. I also like analytical insights and diagnosis saved my life. My realizing that I’m bipolar led me to get the most helpful treatment.

Understanding Neurodivergence in NVC

Bob: Imagine if you didn’t have an understanding of your neurodivergence, your understanding of your neurodivergence, I’m guessing has connected you to needs and develop strategies to meet those needs and helps you have more power in the world helped you have more choice helps you have more connection and understanding pure NVC would kind of look sideways at the diagnosis because they would say that diagnosis gets in the way of connection because You’re moving away from the beautiful universal human needs.

I just want to use both insight and empathy. And that’s what I do in my professional work. I welcome insights. I welcome empathy. And I think that our neurodivergence matters. I don’t want to say just because I’m bipolar, I have to have two scrambled eggs at 9. 30 every morning. That’s not true.

That’s just made up. There’s nothing connecting bipolar and two scrambled eggs at 9. 30. So some people take diagnosis too far, and They lose the sense of choice. They lose the sense of self responsibility. So part of this work, and we could do this as a community, is finding the sweet spot about how much to care about our neurodivergence, how much to care about other aspects of diversity that impact our lives.

And this has happened for almost every aspect of neurodiversity has come back to the nonviolent communication training and said, Well, you really have to consider this because it really has an impact on our life. And more is being considered. And I’m really happy to see that pretty much all of the diversities have been melded with NVC.

So some of that, I think if Marshall was here, he would write that chapter differently.

Teaching NVC to Children

Bob: I wrote a soft connection coloring book, which started as letters to my son. He was eight at the time. He’s nine now. And when he turned eight, I just went full speed teaching him NVC. And one thing that I do, that’s a little bit different than other trainers.

NVC is taught one need at a time. So you connect to. the need and you develop a request or a strategy to meet that need.

Balancing Multiple Needs

Bob: I asked to look at three needs that are alive for people, three needs at a time, because a hyper focus on one need be really similar as a hyper focus on a strategy or an attachment to strategy.

 And you could imagine your mind clenching and your fists clenching. And like, I need friendship right now. Friendship, friendship, friendship. If friendship is the only need I’m caring about, I’m missing out on beauty. I’m missing out on contribution. I want to pay attention to many needs at the same time.

So what I encourage people to do for their self connection is come up with three needs. I’m glad to see some of you are doing this exercise. And then so that we’re not attached to a strategy so that you have resilience. We have. three strategies to fulfill every need. And by fulfill, I mean to partially fulfill needs are very seldom 100 percent or 0 percent fulfilled.

They’re somewhere in that middle space. It’s a story we tell ourselves and needs awareness. It’s just another story, but it’s my favorite story. And I found it to be the most effective story. So, I’m so glad to see these. Three needs for many people. And yeah, for each need develop three strategies to meet that need.

And then that means at any given moments, there are nine action steps you could take. You could choose between nine different activities that are going to enrich your life, to make your life more wonderful, or the life of those in your world, more wonderful. That gives you so much choice that gives you so much.

Freedom and autonomy and participation and when I say power, I’m talking about shared power in NVC. Power is a beautiful world work. Power is a universal human need. And I know sociologists can discuss some of the tragic uses of power. When I stuck my tongue out at my wife, in NVC terms, that could have either been described as a tragic expression of unmet needs.

So that’s how we understand violence. We understand violence is a tragic expression of an unmet need. So you’re still looking for the beauty of the need, Even if it’s a very unpleasant, even if it’s a very tragic way of bringing it forward, every human action is an attempt to meet a need.

Another way we could understand the sticking my tongue out is a non doable request or a vague request, because in NVC we want doable requests. We want specific action language. Would you please pick the socks up off the floor and put them in the hamper? That’s very specific. The person knows what you’re talking about.

It’s going to be really clear whether it happens or not. So it’s verifiable and yeah. So I’ve talked, let me just, I’m checking my work. We’ve talked about soft connection, empathy, honesty needs, and then three strategies for every need.

Connection Before Solution

Bob: This work is founded on connection before solution. So I’ve trained kids to do their own mediations and my favorite tool,

Bob: I don’t know if you guys use them, is decks of feelings and needs cards, because there’s something about holding the need in your awareness, holding the card in your hand. It feels like you’re actually holding the need in your awareness and just flipping through the cards.

Distinguishing Needs from Strategies

Bob: It helps with acquiring vocabulary because there’s a lot of new vocabulary, a lot of challenging vocabulary, the distinction between what’s a need and what’s a strategy that that’s often where I start.

Because anytime you have a specific person, place, thing, time, temperature, you’re talking about a strategy and not a need, there is no such thing as a need for room to be 71. 2 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a preference. That’s a strategy. The need might be comfort. The need might even be health. There might be a health condition, which is impacted by that.

So the need could be health, but you will actually before solution, you want to bring the needs forward. And ideally we’re all looking at all of the relevant needs and we hold them in the space between us. So we’re looking at the needs, and once you’re holding the needs in your awareness, creativity and cooperation flow more easily, because I like to say, I don’t teach problem solving.

I teach connection. But of course, once you have that connection, problem solving comes more quickly. So in a sense, I do teach problem solving or mediation or I do couples work. I do a lot of different kinds of work, all based on this communication. I want to be a little rigorous about the four steps just to be sure I include that in the step.

So.

Four Steps of NVC

Bob: The four steps are observations, needs, feelings, and requests. And NVC was first developed with feelings before needs. And that’s useful if you have intense feelings and you don’t really know what you care about. It’s useful for, and not to put people into different types, but it’s more useful for the poet, who is connected to their feelings with ease.

And then goes to the needs to ground them in the bigger picture and in what they care about. The requests will flow from the needs I found. And this was for my work in the autism community. I found a lot of engineer types could more easily connect to the needs than the feelings. So I put needs before feelings and basically.

Needs and feelings, however you get there. But I was taught that needs have 85 percent of the life energy and feelings add flavor. So your body gives you clues about your feelings and your feelings give you clues about your needs. And there’s another distinction between feelings and thoughts.

Feelings vs. Thoughts

Bob: Anytime you say, I feel like, or I feel that I feel as, as if I feel that Tommy, what’s following is a thought, it’s an assessment, it’s an interpretation, and I welcome.

Assessments and interpretations and thoughts. I’m not trying to move away from them. I’m just trying to be clear what’s a true feeling and what’s a thought because they deserve different responses and instead of focusing on teaching people that I would take whatever they give me and get to the need because my goal is to get to the need anyhow.

So even if it is a story, even if it is an assessment and not a feeling, it could still guide us to the need. So basically whatever in your soft connection gets you to the needs, I want to welcome that even if it’s not rigorous NVC. I do encourage rigor wherever possible though because I work a lot with kids and.

 For my son, this is my son’s first language. For everybody in this room, and for me included, you started NVC as an adult, but my son is not the first one to be raised like this. I’ve been friends with a guy, He’s 24 now, but I’ve been friends with him since he was eight and he had two moms who were NVC trainers and they were my mentors and they’re like, Hey, why don’t you play catch with my boy?

And we just hit it off and we got along great. And this guy has so much self connection and he’s just so, so poised in the world and has a sense of fun, has a sense of lightness, has a sense of community. And ease, the need for ease could be met by this work. So there’s some really heavy needs that are involved because this work could lead to peace in your heart and peace in the world.

And only within the past seven months, have I made progress in peace in my heart. I talk about build mode, not battle mode. I was in battle mode. I was teaching in prison and using all the skills and teaching effectively, but I was still battling violence. I wasn’t building community.

I wasn’t building safety. Our team was called the safer communities team. So I could have taken a hint from that, but that’s how, you know, you’ve integrated the work when you’re focused on what you’re building. And that could be a needs language that could be in specific requests or offers or action steps, the strategies to meet the needs.

But to move from battle mode to build mode. And I am just so happy in the past seven months, I’ve become much more happy being in build mode. Something shifted for me and yeah, it was a side quest. I wasn’t trying to do this in my therapy. I was working on other things, but this therapeutic side quest came up

it actually might be one of the most important quests and it helps me feel more capable as a professional. And I’m feeling right now that the heaviness of this work and again, returning to my self connection, wanting to contribute, wanting connection, wanting community, wanting fun and play.

And I just hope that Your self connection can be a source of joy for you and can be a source of comfort and a source of, self connection. Self connection is a need in itself. It’s also a strategy to meet other needs. You don’t automatically have your needs fulfilled just because you’re self connected, but there’s something about honoring your needs.

I was taught once, You know, we use the expression to meet a need. Well, that doesn’t have to mean to fulfill a need. To meet a need could be like, nice to meet you, to somebody you just met on a train. Like to encounter that need, to spend time with that need, to hold it with care. And after time you trust yourself.

You trust you’re going to hold your needs with care. And that means every circumstance becomes a little bit lighter because you don’t have to be in battle mode because you’re in build mode and you trust yourself to respond with kindness to yourself and kindness to others to honor all the needs.

You trust that you’re looking at the important information when you have the needs. I haven’t found more important information. So again, I do think needs awareness is better than diagnosis. I think I’d rather have self connection than my bipolar diagnosis. Of course, I’d rather have them both.

But yeah, soft connections, the way forward. So we’ve done the four steps. I’ve talked about connection before solution. I want to turn to you. I’m feeling a sense of completion and ready for some live action, but I want to see if there’s anything that you want me to bring to this before we shift.

Aurora: Yeah, I agree. I was just thinking that would be a good time to move towards opening the discussion. A couple things I just wanted to add, I really appreciate it. It’s funny because when you mentioned the difference between thoughts and feelings, that was the one question I was going to ask.

And you got to it before I had a chance really clarifying between thoughts and feelings. But I agree. I think it’s a good point that both of them can inform our needs. So while it is helpful to differentiate them, they’re also both helpful information I think one other thing when it comes to thoughts versus feelings is the false feelings.

Do you have any thoughts on that to share? Because I think a lot of people use words for feelings that aren’t actually feelings.

Bob: Yeah, yeah. And they get rewarded for that. They get told how vulnerable and powerful they are. And I’m like, no, ouch, ouch, ouch. That’s not vulnerable.

That’s not powerful. Like, betrayed. I feel betrayed. Betrayed is not a feeling, but a feeling takes 90 seconds to flow through your body and a feeling gives you clues about your needs. So. Betrayed sticks around a lot more than 90 seconds because it’s perpetuated by your thinking. You’re telling yourself a story, first of all, that there is a right and wrong, and NVC is moving away from right wrong thinking, but you’re telling yourself that you’ve received harm, and this is dangerous, and I haven’t found the best way to share this yet, because even A lot of people find their power when they say I feel betrayed and then, and their power is right around their corner.

And I don’t want to get in the way of their power, but I want their power to be grounded on needs awareness and grounded on observation language. So observation is the first step of NVC and it’s the first step of the scientific method. I was at a school that was integrating curriculum. I’m like, perfect, I’m going to work with a science teacher and we’re going to teach observation to all the kids.

And. I think the problem with faux feelings is they’re so centered on blame thinking. Like you could easily point to the person who’s wrong and blame thinking could help you harness your energy and get ready to join a fight and blame.

New Power vs. Mature Power

Bob: But these are all what I call new power. I am so sorry if, I might step on some toes here.

I’m coming from a position of wanting old power, wanting mature power, wanting power that has been to the rodeo before new power is desperate and new power is grasping and new power is not rigorous with language and you could just tell at a retreat who’s working with new power.

Because I mean, they’re going to make a lot of requests about temperature and lighting, because they’re like, Oh, my needs matter. My needs finally matter. Could we have a little more light on the plant, but a little less light on my notebook. And nobody cares about the light on your notebook. Like we’re not at that level of functioning as a group.

We don’t have time for that, but it’s new power. And I’ve written about this a little bit I know it’s not as inviting as the other work, but I want power to turn into mature power and rigorous power.

Aurora: Awesome. I have one more question in the chat and then we’ll open up for discussion.

It was about a little bit more definition on the term empathy, especially in light of the concept of double empathy.

Empathy in NVC

Bob: So empathy and NVC is accepting presence. So no matter what your neurotype, I think your preferred strategy for empathy would include accepting presence. I think that’s pretty universal. Across neurotypes, the specific strategies to show empathy in NVC. We have the feelings and needs guests, the empathy guess.

Like I asked from you at the beginning of the call and you could, here’s, what’s nice about having a format for empathy. You can make a simple request to get your need for empathy met. You don’t need to have that special friend or that special professional. You can get your need for empathy met by anybody.

By asking, could you tell me what you heard is important to me? So again, we’re not reflecting the content. I don’t want them to parrot what I just said. I want them to get the essence of what I care about. So the connection request then is, could you tell me what you heard is important to me? And as far as double empathy, I think there’s no neurotypes that has claimed NVC.

I think there are different ways that different neurotypes could have more ease with some of the rigor. And I, I would just be speculating, but you could imagine some people being really rigorous about the difference between needs and strategies and some people being really comfortable with nuanced feeling language and just having the felt experience really described.

And some people are. More easily going to go towards the needs and inventorying their needs. So NVC requires a certain amount of stretch for everybody. So that’s why no matter the neurotype, I invite people to work on NVC acknowledging it’s going to be new. It’s going to take some stretch, but if more and more people do this stretch and do this work, then connection will flow more easily.

Aurora: Awesome. Thanks.

Double Empathy Problem

Aurora: And I realized that some people might not be aware of what the term double empathy is used for, but it’s usually used to describe the way that, that people have a similar neurotype have an easier time with empathy with each other than maybe someone with, of a different neurotype.

So like autistic people can really empathize with each other. And it’s not that they have a lack of empathy. It’s that cross neurotypes can be difficult to guess what someone else might be thinking or feeling. So, at least that’s my understanding of it.

So I’m going to go ahead and open up for discussion now.

We have about four minutes left. So I would love to have Bob reflect on final thoughts. One thing I do want to add for those of you who want to explore more on this now, Bob, did you have your self

connection coloring book available yet or is there a way they can sign up for it?

Bob: I can email a pdf the print version is about a month out but if anybody Emails me or messages me on facebook. I could get you The version three is about a month away.

Aurora: Okay, great. Well, maybe we can plan to air the actual podcast recording for when it’s out.

And one thing I do have in my work, I have a workbook called, from mental chaos to clarity and connection. So it’s the second one of my workbooks. And that kind of goes, gives a good overview of the nonviolent communication process and has some cool worksheets that you can use as well.

So, wanted to share those resources before we wrap up, but Bob, I’d love to hear your final thoughts.

Bob: Yeah.

Final Thoughts and Gratitude

Bob: Well, I’m experiencing gratitude, which is that a feeling or is that a thought? I mean, it’s based on an analysis that needs where met there, there’s a feeling component to grateful.

Grateful is a feeling. I can use that. I’m feeling grateful for the depth of connection that we’ve shared. And for the amount of participation, I was afraid that There were going to be messages typed to Aurora and she was going to read me the messages and I was gonna have to go through like three layers of privacy protection to be able to talk to people.

And this was a lot more alive. So grateful about that. And I mean, I set out wanting contribution. It sounds like some of these concepts are really enriching people’s lives and just more to think about. I’m definitely available if anybody wants to do any further work.

This is my number one love. I have a day job bagging groceries for balance in my life and it keeps me humble, and thank you, Aurora, because this really meets the need for balance and community and hope and, I’m left with more clarity, more inner clarity about what I think about the work.

And yeah, just to reiterate the connection before solution, and observation language, what would the video camera capture? So the four steps of NVC can kind of be simplified to two habits of thought, to observation language and to needs awareness, so feelings kind of add color to needs.

So feelings, awareness. Is kind of the sister of needs awareness. And so are making requests because strategies and needs awareness go together, but yeah, when I’m working with people, I don’t use four steps. I use two steps. I use need and request. We already know what we’re talking about, so we don’t need to get on the same page.

The point of observation. I used to think wrongly the point of observation was to win the arguments in one sentence. So that next sentence is kabam. And as I said, I was in battle mode. I wasn’t in build mode. I was looking for these kabam sentences and I just, I’m 43 now. And. I’ve finished up two marriages and I’m really ready for my third wife.

So I’ll accept any blessings or well wishes for that. But I’ve learned so much and both wives used NVC and it helped us. I mean, sure the marriage didn’t last, but it did help us. But yeah, my third wife is going to be a lot more lucky than my first two.

Aurora: Well, thank you so much. This was really a fabulous discussion.

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