Non-Violent Communication and Self Talk

It is a beautiful Spring day here in Georgia, in fact if I didn't have a calendar in front of me I'd think it were Summer. The last couple of months I have noticed a trend in my practice revolving around the issue of self-destruction and self-talk. This made me think about a workshop I went to years ago on non-violent communication. The workshop explained how to practice non-violent communication and the benefits of it to communication within the context of interacting with other people. In light of my practice trends though I wonder what about non-violent communication and self-talk?
Communication is the foundation of our relationships and successful communication is essential to any healthy relationship be it work or personal and yet it is often not properly defined. Communication encompasses much more than what we say. Communication also includes our thoughts, emotions,behaviors, attitudes, values, actions, and needs. This is true regardless of this communication being within the self or in relation to others.

We are all programmed a certain way from infancy on up regarding ourselves and all these aspects. We are taught that certain thoughts, actions, attitudes,behaviors, emotions, needs, and values are bad and others are good. We are also taught to think that if we behave a certain way we are bad and if we behave in other ways we are good. Unfortunately this programming is not put into us for our benefit it is for the benefit of a caregiver or serves some other function and when we become adults we continue to carry this negative programming.

Changing this programming takes conscious effort and forming new habits. One such habit is to follow the model laid out for non-violent communication within yourself. I teach clients to do a variation on this regularly. The model states that there are 2 parts and 4 components. The 2 parts are honest expression and empathetic listening. The 4 components are observation, feelings, needs, and requests. When doing this within the self one needs to role play both expression and empathetic listener. Really take an honest inventory when you practice this.

The way this works within the self is to do this either in writing or out loud in the mirror or to someone else. In any event it must be put outside of the mind through some form of expression. One needs to write down or state the observation, "Sarah said that my newsletter article is full of grammatical errors." Then the next step is to say, "I made that mean that I am a bad writer and this made me feel that I should stop trying" and continue to go on this way until you can't fill it out anymore. "I need people to value what I say and to appreciate my writing" and continue to list out the needs until the needs are fully expressed. The requests to the self are a little trickier but also important, "I request of myself that I find people that appreciate my writing. I request of myself that this not affect me in such a negative manner" and so on until all the requests are expressed.

The next part of this is to set up boundaries and affirmations around these issues, but not in the traditional sense. Sarah is still free to say that my newsletter article sucks but now the boundaries are set around me and the things that I will or will not take into myself. I protect myself by deciding not to take this or that into me.