Needs Based Communication (NVC)

Imagine that you are having a great evening with a bunch of friends, you are relaxed and enjoying yourselves and something happens that you may not even notice. Someone may say something that stimulates a painful memory. Or perhaps your friend takes a cellphone call right in the middle of conversation... Wham! You are immediately in a different emotional space. You feel agitated and you may not have a clue why. Or you may know exactly why you are furious. And you do not want to be furious because you want a pleasurable evening, so you resist this turn of events. You start fidgeting and your friend notices, wondering what is wrong. 
Is there a way you can rescue the evening? Can you regain your equilibrium? Would you do with having a map, a simple tool that could guide you through such challenging times? 
I trust the Needs Based Communication (NVC) can become such a tool for you too.
But what is it I am talking about?I see NVC as both:

1. a MINDSET that helps us see our common humanity, using our power in a way that honors what’s deeply important for everyone, 
2. and a concrete SET OF SKILLS which help us create life-serving families and communities. 

Almost everybody has been conditioned from birth to compete, judge, demand and define others — to think and talk in terms of what is "good, bad, right or wrong“ with us or other people. Habitually we express ourselves in terms of what another person has “done to us.”
We have hardly ever learned to understand our deep motivations in the moment and we often find it a challenge to effectively ask for what we want without using demands, threats or coercion. 

Through the practice of NVC we no longer think in terms of blame, judgment or domination. 
We find ways that work for everyone. 
NVC reminds us what we already instinctively know about how good it feels to authentically connect to another human being. 

With NVC we routinely learn to hear our own deeper human motivations (essential and universal needs) and those of others. 
Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC helps us to connect with others as well as with ourselves. 

The potency of Needs Based Communication is in pragmatic simplicity of the four step METHOD that can be used practically in any imaginable situation. 
I see it as embarrassingly simple, yet powerfully transformative when (and only when) it is firmly embedded in PRINCIPLES of NVC. 
People often recognise the principles as aligned with our intuitive knowing. 
They form a foundation for the method. 
Without embracing the principles, the method becomes hollow, mechanical or outright disconnecting.
I have identified four types of principles. To remember them easily I call them PISD:

1. PREMISES - basic assumptions about a nature of human beings (e.g. all people have the same human needs)
2. INTENTIONS - objectives of our actions (e.g. our intention to find solutions that work for others as well, not just for us)
3. SKILLS - our capacity to do what we intent to do (e.g. our ability to emphatise or be patient)
4. DISTINCTIONS - our ability to understand differences in meaning (e.g. the difference between universal needs and specific actions that help to meet them) 

While simple, NVC is often challenging to embody because we are deeply conditioned to perceive each other through judgements. Thus I see learning with others and mutual support as a crucial element for learning and practice.

I have seen NVC creating a path for healing and reconciliation in its many applications, ranging from intimate relationships, work settings, health care, social services, police, prison staff and inmates, to governments, schools and social change organizations.

May the NVC consciousness be as enriching for you as it has been for me and many others.