In the process of learning Compassionate Communication it is sometimes hard to make the leap from the theory and templates for practice to actually knowing how and when to use it in real life.
For the roots of any learning to take hold in the ground of your being it takes a bit of faith, trust, perseverance and willingness to experiment and be with the unknown for a while.
This is especially so in this learning. Compassionate Communication requires us to grow and change, because it is asking us to make a paradigm shift in our perspective of ourselves and our interpersonal relating.
This paradigm shift is one from the world of…
Me vs. You, either/or cutthroat competition, that views relationships in terms of polarities of friends and enemies, what I am going to get or not, right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse, winners and losers, etc., in which we are engaged in clinging to our own status qou position and proving the other wrong, through mental investigation and judgmental interpreting to …
A world view of “we”, “both/and”, co-creative understanding. One that recognizes that we are in this together and that we are all working together to mutually empower each other to meet our diverse needs for the common good of all, using compassionate understanding and relational empathy.
This is a lofty endeavor because we are so conditioned to judge, blame, make wrong, condemn, project our interpretations, and defend our positions (the stories that we cling to that help us to feel right about how we are acting), that it is not necessarily easy to make the switch in our minds, change our way of perceiving and thinking, and shift our behavior so that we are actually acting authentically from this new place of equanimity, care and mutually shared power.
The Compassionate Communication framework is designed to help facilitate this paradigm shift and give us a way to continuously nurture it in our daily lives.
It takes time to unwind conditioning. In the process of learning this new approach to relating, and in the process of unwinding your conditioning, it is equally important to consider the principles and tools from a cognitive understanding as well experiential embodiment, experimenting with how one feels when relating from these principles and tools. You might feel relief and sometimes you might feel triggered and resistant, because this approach creates a milleau of self reflection and might challenge long held beliefs and life strategies.
Mostly in life we do not think of our communication skills unless there is a breakdown of some kind between us and someone else (often called a relationship issue). This is when the “we have to talk” card comes out and it is often dreaded by at least one person in the mix, mostly because we don’t have the skills to talk about differences without getting upset.
Compassionate Communication helps us to dialogue through our differences and come to mutually fulfilling solutions.
We also feel the breakdown in communication in relation to how we are in touch with ourselves, meaning in our ability to connect with ourselves. This is often felt most intensely when we are faced with big changes and decisions that need to be made around them. When we can’t get in touch with ourselves deeply enough to find our way forward, we feel this as an internal conflict and we experience a sense of stuckness. Learning how to be with ourselves in a compassionate way helps us through this.
Although circumstances of conflict are the two easiest places to feel the beneficial impact of upgrading your communication skills – the one area of relationship issues (inter-personal) and the other area of getting in touch with your self (intra-personal)- upgrading your skills via Compassionate Communication is also tremendously beneficial in the context of any circumstance in your life because relating is the substance of your life. We are social beings and are always in relationship with something be it a person, circumstance, thought, feeling, behavior.
So whether you are navigating conflict to find resolution, working on a project team during which you need to be able to effectively dialogue, engaging in meaningful conversation with a dear one, needing to clarify an understanding with a colleague, or with someone who is working for you, wanting to make more clear connections with clients, express your feelings of affection to someone, support or get closer to friends and family, or get more deeply in touch with yourself, Compassionate Communication can help you to communicate in a way that effectively serves the connection by creating mutually shared and supportive reality.
The reason for this is that Compassionate Communication skills help you to actually listen to what the other person is expressing in terms of what their needs are and how they want to go about fulfilling their needs and, to be able to express (speak) what your needs are and how you want to meet your needs, to another without Blame, Demand, Evaluative Judging, Comparing, Interpreting, Discounting, Defending Your Position, Attacking, Making Yourself or the Other Wrong, and or Emotionally Intense Reactivity. It also helps you to get in touch with yourself without these negative “life alienating” ways of being with yourself.
These “life alienating” ways of being are replaced with compassion, empathy, understanding, and responsiveness.
This is one of the bottom lines of Compassionate Communication. Learning how to recognize life alienating behaviors and thoughts in one self and others and making the shift away from these behaviors to a compassionate way of relating is what it is all about.
This means to orient ones relating towards understanding, appreciation and curiosity as to what might serve everyone involved. It is a world of empathetically and spaciously feeling, thinking, listening and speaking, and being open to new possibilities.
So whether you remember any of the specific technology or not just orienting yourself towards this and using mindful awareness of yourself can be of great benefit.
The following is a list of values that are nurtured in the process of learning Compassionate Communication –
Honesty, Vulnerability, Transparency, Safety, Support, Loving Kindness, Understanding, Consideration, Co-operation, Co-creation, Care, Openness, Trust, Integrity, Presence, Respect.
Compassionate Communication is often called a needs based consciousness because of the importance of understanding needs in the approach.
However it is not just about knowing needs and getting them met. It is about how we interact with one another to help each other fulfill our needs.
In my opinion this is a very important key. In the world of competition we can get our needs met but it is often at the expense of someone else. In compassionate communication it is in consideration and co-creation of others.
In the vocabulary of Compassionate Communication we call what is life serving that which fosters empowerment, creativity, expansion of well being and the quality of connection. We call what is life alienating that which cases degrading contraction, disempowerment, disharmony, dissatisfaction, disease.
Compassionate Communication is unique and powerful because it not only promotes a culture of needs awareness, empathetic understanding, mutually empowered care and consideration, it also gives us the skills to express ourselves and hear others in a way that engenders all of this for the most effective connection and mutually shared support.