Truth, Care, and Words

by Miki Kashtan

The Hebrew Bible tells us that "death and life come through the power of the tongue." My father, who was a (mostly) lay linguist, raised all three of his daughters to be in awe of the power of words to create effects. It’s no wonder that I have dedicated my life to a methodology and a practice that put so much emphasis on choice of words to convey meaning and to create inner and outer transformation.

Ever since I started teaching Nonviolent Communication (NVC) I have been exposed to a dual stream of responses. Most people who come in contact with the training report a growing sense of freedom, finding ways of living more in harmony with how they want to be, more connection in their life, and a host of other benefits.

I also hear from people a deep concern about the sense of a forced way of speaking, and concern about manipulation and inauthenticity. Many people tell me that others don’t seem to be happy when they use NVC in communicating with them.

How to make sense of this apparent contradiction?

Having reflected on this for some years now, I have reached a lot of clarity about what is at play here. I see several issues that intertwine to create this challenge for many people who want to learn NVC.

Practice and Life

I like to look at the particular set of words that are used in NVC settings as an incredibly powerful practice to prepare us for life. Just as much as we are unlikely to meditate in the midst of a conversation unless we both agree that we want to take some time to meditate, I want us to be in the habit of using the NVC phrases when we are in a practice setting, or when another person explicitly agrees to us experimenting with our newly acquired capacities, and for the rest of the time let life happen.

Consciousness and Language

What I am fundamentally aiming for is to live the values that speak to me about the NVC consciousness. The words used in practice are in support of this consciousness, not a substitute for it. I want my words to arise from the truth that lives in me. I aim for more and more fluidity in my holding of NVC consciousness, to stay grounded in principles of NVC and adapt the language to the circumstances.

Full Authenticity

I am aware of a lot of conditioning in the culture to not be authentic about our inner experience. I can totally see that unless we consciously work on this conditioning to be “nice”, we can easily fold the tool of NVC into the conditioning. With enough practice, unfortunately, it’s possible even to use NVC to mask the truth of our experience. A Naturalizing the NVC language comes from aligning ourselves with the truth and expressing from that place. I want to learn more and more how to express myself in ways that are completely authentic and require the least amount of effort for the other person to hear me.

Combining Truth and Care

One of the reasons why the conditioning to be inauthentic is in place is because of the widespread perception that truth and care are incompatible. I challenge that assumption deeply, and have come to believe that any truth can be combined with sufficient care to maintain connection while delivering it. Even a painful truth can be connected. We cannot protect ourselves or each other from pain. We can speak in ways that provide care even during pain. Before speaking I reflect on the truth, I look for and find the care inside, even when that’s an effort. I take an extra breath, if necessary, to ensure that they are united inside me, and I let the words emerge from that.

A Teenager Story – Finding the Truth in the Moment

Parents who attempt to use NVC with their children are especially challenged. For example, someone told me that every time she tries to use NVC with her teenage son he tells her to shut up. She was at a loss about how to communicate with her son. I was not surprised. One of the nice things about teenagers is that they have extremely well-honed bullshit detectors.  What they are detecting is authenticity.  Is it for real? If her son doesn’t want to hear her speech, that means he knows there’s something going on and she is not saying it. That’s when we discovered that she was nervous about using NVC, and never told him. She could immediately see that the nervous would leak. As Marshall Rosenberg, originator of NVC, has said, unacknowledged fear looks like aggression. We can’t use NVC language as a substitute for real connection.

Sadly, often enough we think that there is some kind of big truth that we have to express and if we can’t express it then we don’t know what to do. In my experience, more often than not there is a small truth that we can express. In this example, it’s not the nervousness that disconnects this person from her son. It’s having the nervousness and trying to pretend its not there. The simplicity of telling her son that she is nervous simply didn’t occur to her.

More…

Ah, there is so much more to say about this topic. I feel very passionate about wanting the practice of NVC to nourish life and connection; wanting people who learn NVC to treat each other and everyone else with love instead of correcting each other’s speech; and wanting the consciousness of nonviolence at its purest form to permeate life so we can turn the tide of destruction we have been on for so long.

Because of this passion, I am dedicating six days to working with people who want to strengthen their ability to plant themselves deeply in the consciousness of love, courage, and truth-telling that nonviolence is for me, and to live, communicate, and work toward inner and outer transformation from within that consciousness while making their language use more and more natural and flowing. It’s called In Your Own Words, and it’s on August 5-10. For once, it’s on the East Coast, so all those who live there who don’t want to travel to California can find me closer to home. Maybe I will see you there.

Redefining Independence

by Miki Kashtan

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, a national holiday of independence in the USA. I am drawn to reflecting on the topic, and especially how it plays out in the North American culture within which I live and work. Independence is one of the highest values in this culture. Its two interweaving strands of meaning appear as a rejection of dependence, of being in need of others, at their mercy. Both interfere with conscious interdependence, the practice of collaborating with others to create outcomes that work for more and more people.

Moving toward Inner Freedom
One strand of meaning is about the freedom to make choices without having to consult with others. I often see this showing up as a somewhat rebellious stance: “You can’t tell me what to do.” I have had this particular experience enough to recognize that it comes with some kind of satisfaction, some sense that I am standing up for myself. I can so understand the appeal of this response.

This widespread experience has far-reaching consequences for our ability to create a livable future. For a prime example, our material possessions are a sacrosanct institution. We are given the right to dispose of the resources we own as we see fit. This idea is part of the core allure of the modern commodity-based economy, despite all the hardships so many of us experience. We have the carrot of believing that if we accumulate enough resources than no one can tell us what to do. This is the consolation prize for the separation, scarcity, and powerlessness that we experience so often.

This makes it exceedingly difficult to engage with others and make collaborative decisions. When we have few resources, we struggle to imagine that we have a say. We either give up without even trying and feel defeated, or we stand up defiant and forget about the humanity of others and lose our capacity to engage with them productively. When we do have access to resources, we hold on to the option of making all the decisions about our own actions, and struggle to maintain a sense of care for and interest in others who may not have as many resources.

Most of us were mostly told what to do when we were growing up. It’s still an exceptionally rare family in which children are seen as partners. As adults we still lack models for how we can engage with others in ways that completely honor our autonomy. Including others in our decisions appears more like asking for permission than anything that could possibly benefit us. Our sense of freedom is guarded tightly against infringement.

True inner freedom is closer to the original meaning of autonomy – living by one’s own laws. There is nothing reactive, defiant, resistant, or defensive about it. Instead, it comes calmly and softly from within, giving us more resilience when engaging with others. The word for independence in Hebrew, my first and beloved language, speaks to this kind of freedom. Its root is the same as the root for self.

Questioning Self-Sufficiency

Independence is also understood as the idea of living without being in need of others. So many people go to great lengths, even to harming themselves (e.g. by carrying weight that’s too heavy for their bodies) just to ensure they don’t ask for help. Countless times I have been in situations where I offered help to people, especially parents of small children who were struggling to get their shopping done, and have invariably been politely declined. This message is internalized deeply and passed on even when questioned. Its persistence interferes with opening up to receiving support, to reaching out, to knowing that we matter enough to get our needs met.

Ironically, our way of living has actually made us less and less self-reliant, less able to create the resources we need to survive and thrive, as individuals and communities, even as we strive for more and more self-sufficiency. Fewer and fewer of us know how to grow the food we eat, make the clothes we wear, build the houses we live in, or find water anywhere other than in the pipe.

On the material plane we render our dependence invisible through the medium of money. Collectively, we uphold the illusion that if we have enough money we don’t depend on anyone, when in fact we use money to pay for what we don’t do on our own, and irreducibly relying on others, not just ourselves, for surviving. We also pretend that we don’t have an effect on others, with the collective result of operating, in the US, without any sense that we matter, and living reckless lives without much concern for the cost to others and nature.

On the emotional plane we pretend to be OK even when we are not, and maintain a stiff upper lip. The result is living in profound isolation which results in stress, illness, and high rates of depression.

When we can recognize and acknowledge our dependence we can become truly self-responsible. On the material plane this would mean finding self-reliance by recognizing the cost to others and the planet and finding ways to live within our local means. On the emotional plane this would mean learning to understand and accept our needs and asking for what we want while being in dialogue with others to get our needs met in ways that work for them, too.

Cultivating Interdependence
It is no wonder, given these persistent versions of independence, that cultivating awareness of our interdependence is one of the biggest challenges that we could present to the modern sensibility of industrialized countries.

For as long as our sense of freedom and choice depends on rejecting what comes from the outside, the delicate negotiations necessary for making things work for more and more people remain beyond reach. For as long as dependence on others is seen as weakness and failure, the necessary learning about sharing resources appears as taking something away from us rather than providing us access to more.

What is needed is nothing short of embracing our individual and collective capacity to make choice in tandem with others and the willingness to own our fundamental dependence on others. We need enormous strength and perseverance as we work to transcend the insidious message of separation we have inherited. Then we can finally band together, reach out for support, form communities, and create the conditions for all of our thriving.

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Invisible Power and Privilege Part 2

by Miki Kashtan

In my previous piece I talked about what privilege is, and how its invisibility makes group dynamics so challenging when diversity is present.

Walking toward Togetherness
How do we address these historical and present challenges? What can we do, especially if we are people with privilege, to transform these conditions? Guilt and shame, though prevalent, too, are not likely to contribute, because they maintain separation. What I believe is needed is a way to face the excruciating pain and grief together, and forge ways together. The issues are structural and societal, not individual. Ultimately, the solutions will be, also. In the meantime, however, whoever is in the room, that particular collection of individuals, can learn to face the intensity using every tool available and more, so that they can learn to work together, and in the process put a drop in the bucket of showing that diverse groups can, indeed, work together.

However challenging these kinds of situations are, and whatever our position, we can move towards more inclusivity by learning and doing significant inner and outer work. To begin with, we can develop our understanding of the dynamics of power even when there are no explicit power-over or structural power experiences. If we are in a position of privilege, we can learn to trust what we hear from others, so we can learn to discern what happens which was previously opaque to us.

In addition, rather than waiting for people of color and/or working class people to join white- and/or middle-class-led organizations, those of us with privilege can join people-of-color-led or working-class-led organizations and learn to follow the lead of others. One of the ways that privilege works is that we are accustomed to knowing the answers and leading the way, and we continue to act in those ways. Without intending harm, just following our habit and what’s familiar, we create conditions that reinforce the power dynamics which are invisible to us and intolerable to others. By learning to follow others’ lead we change the dynamics and learn to work together.

Such capacity to work together is a necessity, not just a nice addition to our work. I am confident that the hard work of coming together and the collective actions that might arise from it are an essential ingredient for creating the level of togetherness and active interdependence necessary to bring about a social order that transcends separation while making room for differences and where people matter regardless of how their humanity manifests.

If you are drawn to learning more about this rich and charged area, and especially if you want to engage with others across race and class differences, one powerful opportunity for you is to join the 5th annual NVC and Diversity Retreat taking place July 23-30 in Northern California.

If you want to learn more on your own about privilege and its invisibility, you could get started by reading “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” By Peggy McIntosh, which is posted widely on the internet, and by watching “The Color of Fear” directed by Lee Mun Wah.

Invisible Power and Privilege

by Miki Kashtan

Some months ago I wrote a piece about privilege and needs (part 1 and part 2) where I explored what I see as the root causes of attachment to privilege. Here I want to look again at privilege with a different aim. I want to shed some light on the way privilege operates on a societal level, and how it comes to be so invisible. I also want to speak about the challenges of invisible power relations as they play out within groups.

Understanding Privilege
Privilege is a form of invisible power. Sometimes privilege also provides us with structural power in direct relationship with another. In the past, this form of privilege was legalized and prevalent. For example, until not that long ago, men had the legal right to have sex with their wives, and consent was not necessary. Such forms of formal privilege have largely been removed, because the official sanctioning of privilege is no longer socially acceptable.

As a result, in recent decades the structural nature of privilege is much more invisible and indirect. As a person with fairly light skin, for example, I have access to untold number of privileges that are mine to enjoy and which are not available to people with darker skin. I can, as a very simple example, go in and out of stores without having security officers look at my movements. If I stand in the street and wave a taxi, it’s likely to stop for me. If I break the law, I am likely to get a lighter sentence than a person who belongs to other groups.

Those of us with privilege are often unaware of the legal or social norms that give us access to such resources simply by virtue of being members of a certain group, without any particular action or even awareness on our part. It’s easy to assume that everyone would have the same access, or to not even think about it at all. Even when our privilege provides us direct individual advantage at the direct expense of another individual, the direct relationship may be hidden under socially sanctioned norms such as individual merit which replace the more explicit forms of the past. A particularly acute example of such relationships occurs both in the educational system and in the workplace.

And so it is that these forms of privilege are largely invisible to those of us who have them unless we take proactive action to learn about them. Those without such access, on the other hand, are usually acutely aware of their lack of access. This creates a gap in experience which is usually excruciating for members of both groups.

Privilege and Group Dynamics
Considering how invisible privilege can be to those who have it, and yet how apparent to those who don’t, it is no surprise that creating truly diverse groups and organizations is the exception rather than the norm.

Here’s one classic form this struggle takes. Whenever I am in any group in which the question of diversity arises there will almost invariably be a well-meaning white person who will express some version of “Why can’t we all just get along and forget our differences. We’re all human, after all, aren’t we?” The gap between this experience and the pervasive, acute, and unending barrage of discrimination, lack of access to material resources, and encounters with the authorities takes more effort to bridge than most people have energy for, especially those who are already worn out by such ongoing challenge of just making it through the day every day. Even if nothing gets said, the gap in experience remains enormous, all the while being known to one group and not to the other.

In addition to the gap in experience in terms of understanding what happens, the different training that different groups receive, itself part of the gap in access to resources, recreates societal dynamics within the group. White people, men, and people with class privilege are more likely to speak in groups and to have their opinions taken seriously than people of color, women, or lower class people, respectively. As one particularly painful example, when a jury is selected, the likeliest person to be chosen as foreman, and I use that word in this way deliberately, is the white male with the highest education in the room. We clearly don’t mean to dominate or take away from others’ access to power, to choice, to participation in decisions, to shaping the vision and direction of a group. And yet we do, without knowing we do it.

Different access to resources makes for different life experiences, which makes for different perspectives, sometimes even about reality or the nature of life. This is part of why the conversation can get so hard. In many situations the differences in perspective are so deep that we see and hear completely different realities, even before the inevitable process of interpretation and assigning meaning to what we observe begins. When the gap is so large, both people want to be heard at the same time while simultaneously having trouble hearing others.

Stay tuned for the 2nd part of this post in the coming days.

No Pushing, No Giving Up

by Miki Kashtan

One of the common misconceptions about the practice of Nonviolent Communication is that it’s about being “nice.” It’s probably a similar misconception to that of thinking of nonviolence as passivity. I believe both misconceptions derive from our habit of either/or thinking. Most of us don’t have models for a path that’s neither aggressive nor passive. Within this either/or thinking, if the only two models are imposing on others or giving up on our own needs, many of us will interpret nonviolence as the latter.

What does this look like? In our relationship to authority, I already wrote about how we can move beyond submission and rebellion. When parenting, as my sister Inbal described in Compassionate Connection: Nonviolent Communication with Children, we can find a path that’s neither coercive nor permissive. And in our relationships, we can find that sweet spot between pushing for what we want and giving up on what we want.

The either/or paradigm as it applies to human relationships rests on two assumptions. One is that we are separate form each other. The other is that there isn’t enough to go around. It is the combination of these two assumptions that pits us against each other fighting for our needs. It is this legacy that prevents us from having satisfying relationships of authenticity and care. As soon as any difference arises between what we want and what someone else wants, our habits direct us to push or give up. How can we transform this legacy?

From Demands to Requests
If we are habituated to pushing for what we want, the message we convey to everyone around us is that their needs don’t matter. If we are the boss or the parent, our employee or child, as the case may be, is put in a position of doing what we want or suffering consequences. While we may get what we want on some superficial level, the cost is high. Every time someone does something just because we have the power to deliver unpleasant consequences, we lose respect, or love, or both. 

In a relationship of fundamental equality, pushing for what we want looks like a fight. When we don’t have the power to deliver consequences, we can’t officially punish or fire the other person. We can, and do, call them names, or judge them, or get angry, or give them the silent treatment, or take revenge at a later time. That’s what “punishment” looks like between equals. The result is the same. We are watering resentment and fear in the other person, and our own well-being is likely to be held with less and less care by them.

Shifting from making demands and pushing for what we want into an interdependent relationship of mutual care invites us to change our orientation to life as well as how we interact. Making requests is premised on integrating the radical understanding that if something works for us and not for another we pay a price that’s too dear. It also rests on choosing, wholeheartedly, to transcend the fear of scarcity so we can commit to the other person’s needs mattering alongside ours. 

From Agreement to Empathy 
If we are habituated to giving up on what we want, the message we convey to others is that our needs don’t matter, and they can do whatever they want without concern for the effect their actions have on us. Transforming this habit takes two steps. The first is learning to differentiate between agreement and understanding, so that we can offer our empathic presence and interest to another without thereby feeling compelled to do what they want. For many of us this shift requires an inner transformation so that we can take our own needs seriously enough to be willing to offer our hearts to another without necessarily agreeing to do what they want. 

Once we are able to set our own internal limits and trust our capacity to stand up for our needs, we can develop the flexibility and discernment to know when we are caving in and when we are acting out of true generosity of heart.

Asking for What We Want

The second step of shifting our habits and letting others know that our needs matter is learning to ask for what we want. Often enough we don’t ask because of being afraid that we will be seen as making demands. This is where both ends of the either/or split come together. For those of us who find it hard to let go of having what we want, learning to ask is about letting go of outcome. For those of us who have a hard time asking at all, learning to ask is about embracing our power, our significance as human beings, and the preciousness of our needs.

Ultimately, what we need to learn is to shift from pushing or giving up to full engaging with both of our needs.

I will be doing a 2-session phone summer course on this topic and I invite those of you who are intrigued to get more information and consider if this might just be the nudge for you. If you are local to the Bay Area or are open to travelling for a weekend of more in-depth learning, I look forward to meeting you.

Power and Humility – Part 2

By Miki Kashtan


This is part 2 of a post I wrote last week. This is my continuing exploration. If anyone is looking for answers, I don’t have them. All I know is to keep asking the questions, to keep opening my eyes and ears and heart to more and more input, and to keep taking the next step, whatever it is, knowing full well I don’t know how.

Finitude

Perhaps the most pressing question for me remains the question of the limits of my resources. What does it really mean to care for everyone's needs, to really care, and also hold clarity about finitude of my resources? When I fully let myself feel the weight of this, I could scream, because I care not only about the people with whom I happen to come in contact. Although in some ways impersonal, my care for all people living on this planet, and for the unspeakable horrors so many experience on a daily basis is large and the level of pain I am in about it often beyond my capacity to tolerate. How do I match that up with my limits?

I derive some solace from a poem written by a friend, Ted Sexauer, who is a Vietnam vet:

I am not responsible
for the movement of the earth
only what I can handle
what I can take in
is the right amount

I find it easier to know my limits with regards to people I don’t know than with regard to those I do. When someone is in front of me, on my path, someone I interact with, whose life is affected directly by my choices, I struggle mightily with knowing when and how to extricate myself. I do it. I am just never sure whether I am truly holding the other person’s needs as I do it, or essentially succumbing to my lack of imagination and closing off, however slightly.

This is a complex issue for anyone with anyone. It gets even more entangled for me when I am the one in a position of power. Honoring my limitations then borders too closely for my comfort with an assertion of my power over others. I don’t know what it means to use my power with others when I am reaching the limits, when there are more people with whom to be in communication about more things and more often than I can possibly handle.

Feedback

One of the lesser known aspects of Communist parties is the practice known as “criticism/self-criticism.” What I like about it based on my readings is the intention to provide feedback, including to self, to keep learning, and to support learning for others. I am particularly delighted to see that the process was intended to be applied to people in leadership positions alongside others within the party.

From what I read, I have quite a bit of trust in the intention that led to set up this process. In particular I was relieved to see an instruction put out to stay away from personal attack, and to criticize political and organizational mistakes rather than character. I still find the prospect of this process horrifying. I want people in power to receive feedback, not criticism. The two are dramatically different, even if some of what gets looked at can be incorporated into both. Feedback supports learning, while criticism tends to stir up shame.

For myself, I am still learning through feedback more than any other way, and I am not done. I don’t expect to ever be done for as long as I live. I so much want to know how to train or encourage people to stand up to me and tell me of their experience of me when I am in a position of power. For example, I know I need to learn something about why it is that with all of my profound commitment to power-sharing, learning, transparency, and vulnerability, I still hear regularly that people feel disempowered in relation to me. Is there something for me to change, or is it part and parcel of living in our culture that some people will not find their voice and power even when I am open to sharing it? What can I do to minimize the risk? Is there a different invitation I can issue?

Embracing Power

The more I look at power, the more I find fascinating and endless challenges to explore, grapple with, and continue. As soon as we drop the two positions of authoritarian power and abdication of power, we are on our own, figuring it out, without clear role models. The way through, as so often, is not by returning to previous models of authority but by finding new forms of authority that engage differently with power.

For example, I know that I, and others, can get caught in what I sometimes affectionately call the tyranny of inclusion. I believe it's another of the issues that stops those of us working for change from being effective. I see it as based in fear of making decisive moves and offending others. I am learning. Balancing unabashed power with complete humility is such a new territory for us to explore. I feel myself on a learning edge, sometimes alone, sometimes discouraged, and mostly curious and excited.