Communication Matters: What is the purpose of feelings?

By Jeyanthy Siva
(Column on NVC published on “The Nation”, an English newspaper in Sri Lanka)

This is a column on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), also known as compassionate communication. NVC shows a path, a step by step process, of how to go from disconnection and violence to connection, compassionate understanding and cooperation – with ourselves, the people around us and the world we live in. It is a language of mutual respect, empathy and honesty, and is often described as ‘the language of the heart.’ The goal is to create a quality of connection which will lead to everyone’s needs being met.

According to Nonviolent Communication (NVC) feelings are valuable because they guide us to discover what is important to us – what we need to make our lives whole. In previous columns, I talked about the concept of Needs in NVC as the life energy that motivates human behavior. Another way of saying this is that Needs are what is alive in us, what makes us most human. But how do we know when our needs are met or not met? Feelings tell us. For instance, feelings like anger, frustration, sadness often arise when one or more of our needs are not being met. Similarly when we feel happy feelings (glad, joyful, satisfied. etc), it’s a signal that some need(s) is/are being met. The point here is that each person’s feelings are caused by his/her needs, not the other person’s behavior or an event out in the world.

A story to illustrate the point being made here:

Gaya is waiting for the bus on a Friday morning to go to the office. She’s going for an important meeting with the boss and she has been preparing all week for this. She is ready for the meeting but still a bit anxious. Even though she was at the bus stop early, the bus is late. As the time for the meeting approaches, Gaya gets more and more anxious. When the bus finally arrives half an hour late, she scolds the driver. Then in her mind, she scolds the transport department, as well as the traffic and the all the drivers in the city. Fortunately for her, when she gets to the office, the boss has left on an urgent trip and the meeting is postponed till next week. Gaya tells her co-workers about the frustrating experience of waiting for the bus and how that made her feel.

Two days later, on Sunday, Gaya comes to the road again to take the bus to go to a fair. Today, while she is waiting for the bus, she happens to meet an old friend walking by whom she hasn’t seen in many years. They start talking and catching up on all the events from each others’ lives. The bus is late again. Gaya is relaxed since she has not seen the friend for so long and they have much to talk about. The fair will go all day and there is plenty of time. So they walk over to the coffee stand next to the bus stop, get a coffee and have a long chat. When the bus arrives, half an hour late, they wave a friendly good bye and Gaya gets into the bus. This time, she is calm and even glad that the bus is late and is blessing the driver for his delay which gave her some time to talk to an old friend.

The question I want to pose to you here is – were Gaya’s feelings caused by the bus being half an hour behind schedule? If so, how can the same event (bus being half an hour late) cause one set of feelings on Friday (anxiety, frustration, anger) and a completely different set of feelings (relive, satisfaction, and gladness) on Sunday?

So if other people don’t cause our feelings, how do they affect us? Am I saying that each of us are an Island onto ourselves and on one can affect us? You can probably guess what I am going to say but I will say it anyhow: Of course not. We are social beings and we can very much affect and influence each other. The point is that we do that at the level of needs, not feelings. We have enormous power – to contribute to each others needs being met or not met. But we don’t have the power to make anyone feel anything. And here comes the good news, no one has the power to make us feel anything either.

What is your reaction to this statement I wonder? Do you feel relief, dismay or some other feeling? Whatever you are feeling, can you identify the need met or unmet which is giving rise to that feeling?

This idea of connecting my feelings to my own needs and not to the other person(s) behavior took me a long time to come to terms with. Because I was taught (by modeling of adults around me) to take responsibility for other people’s feelings and conversely to give other people responsibility for my own feelings. From my work in different parts of the world, I have discovered this is true for people from many different cultures as well.

Given this, its understandable that for many years, when things were going on in my life that were making me unhappy, I would think that my unhappiness was caused by the other person or persons in my life. So I spent my time and energy trying to get them to change so I could be happy. And of course, this was a rather fruitless expenditure of my energy and gave me more things to be unhappy about! When the other person(s) didn’t change, I would than think they didn’t care enough about me to want to make me happy, etc., and create more misery for myself by such thinking.

Do you recognize from your own life – perhaps you are the one trying to change others or you are the one that someone has been trying to change? Or perhaps you have played both roles in different situations or relationships?

It took me a long time to realize that I cannot change anybody except myself. I can inspire others to change by modeling a different way of being or behaving differently myself but I can not change others. Only they can change themselves. I only have “control” over where I put my attention and my own volition – and even this control is difficult to maintain since I am so likely to fall into habit patterns and conditioned behavior and do or say things that aren’t really what I want to do or say. Still, my intention is to choose consciously as much as I can how I relate to myself as well as others. And most of all, be compassionate with myself and others when I or they don’t live up to my expectations. Fortunately, NVC is been a helpful tool for me with both these goals – how to learn from mistakes while remaining compassionate with myself and to stay connected with myself and others when things don’t go as well as I would like.

(For information on NVC trainings in Sri Lanka, visit www.sandhi.org. If you want to post comments or questions about this column or previous ones, go to the blog set up for this purpose: http://sandhisl.wordpress.com/)