Keep your NVC fit - Self Empathy 2 dates

About this session's practice - self empathy

We will use the 4 steps of empathy practice, which you can recap here. Here is also a walk through of the practice if you want to witness me moving through it.

Please come with a situation of trigger which is around 1-5 on the scale from 1-10 that you want to focus on in breakout spaces.  It can be very helpful to practice this with a low intensity trigger. There is often huge amounts of learning there.  You will not need to describe the trigger beyond a one sentence description, you will instead explore your judgements of the other, of yourself, your body sensations and guess feelings and needs. It's actually a useful skill to step out of the narratives about the situation and into embodied processing of it.

The purpose of the one sentence description is to signal to yourself what you are talking about without getting flooded in your interpretations around it. Here are some examples of one sentence descriptions

• When (person) spoke to me in that tone of voice,
• When I received the email criticising my work
• When (person) blamed me for not speaking up to defend her

From this one sentence description, you move onto unpack your responses to the whole situation. If you get stuck in the process, it can be helpful to come back to the one sentence description.

About Keep your NVC fit

Keep your NVC fit is a monthly series to practice 3 core NVC practices

• 4 steps of Self-Empathy
• Empathic Listening
• Role Plays of Difficult Conversations

Here is a short about Keep Your NVC Fit

Practical and Logistics

This is a low-cost drop in, you can come once or every month.

There is a no cost option, please use that if it would prevent you from coming. 

This is open to people who have done a Foundation training or Intro to NVC. This is not a complete beginners class, although relative beginners (post foundation) are welcome.

Disclaimer / Self Check

Nonviolent Communication is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. This practice session may not be for you:

• If you have a sense that what you want to explore might be challenging for others,
• if it would be triggering to listen to others speaking about difficult events,
• if other people’s beginner-intermediate level learning of NVC might land awkwardly for you.

If you have any questions, please ask.

About the other sessions

About  - Roleplay 

We will use do a roleplay of a difficult conversation in a supportive way. You can recap the purpose of roleplay here Roleplay

About Empathic Listening

This is the skill of holding space for someone when they are trying to process and understand something that has happened. It’s the skill of reflecting back and guessing feelings and needs in supportive ways. It’s also a helpful skill for meetings that are getting derailed or stuck.

Before you come, you can watch this short video about Reflecting back with Effectiveness and Ease