Communication Matters: Being your own best friend

by Jeyanthy Siva

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.

In my last column couple of weeks back, I talked about the power of empathic listening and how being listened to can be healing as well as release the creative force within us. I also talked about how listening is mostly about presence. And about how listening to others with compassion & being present with others first requires an ability to listen and be present to ourselves with compassion. Today, I will talk more about the art of listening, starting with importance of listening to ourselves and being our own best friend.

Until I came across the teachings of Nonviolent Communication, I thought of the concept of empathy in general and vague terms such as  – feeling with someone else’s feelings or putting myself in the other person’s shoes, etc., I thought that the way to have empathy is to be the “kind of person” who was kind and empathetic. I thought empathy was somehow innate to a person or there was a special kind of personality that allowed it.

What a relief for me when I realized that its something I can LEARN. The effect of being listened to can be magical but the process of listening or learning how to listen doesn’t have to be. Though its not easy, it is a skill which can be understood and practiced and mastered.

In my experience, being listened to fully gives me a sense of spaciousness in my heart. Especially if what I am talking about is something painful or difficult which makes me tense up or tighten up, being able to talk about it and being heard by someone whom I trust to hear me without judging me helps me to relax again and to feel an expansion in my heart. For me, true listening is a kind of love. Not the personal attachment and dependence experience that we often associate with the word love, but a kind of spiritual and expansive definition of love. The space to express myself and the non judgmental presence while I speak is the greatest gift someone can give to me. And on the other side, when I am able to still my thoughts and busy-ness in my mind and be fully present for someone else, to really take in what they are saying and what makes them come alive, it is the deepest sense of connection I feel. And I believe this is the greatest gift I can give to another.

And as I have said already, I can only give this gift to anther if I can give this to myself so lets begin there.

How to be my own best friend

In order to be present with another person, first I need to be able to be present with myself. In order to have compassion for another person, I need to have compassion for myself. In order to not run away from another persons suffering or pain, I need to learn not to run away from my own. Here is where the practice of learning how to listen begins.

Listening not only at the surface level, to the thoughts, labels and judgments and other life alienated thinking that goes on at the surface of the mind, but also to the deeper needs, longings and motivations that are in the heart mind.

There are meditation practices that teach mindfulness by asking us to notice the thoughts and images that arise in the mind. To notice them without engaging with them or believing them to be true. Watch them arise and watch them fall away as other thoughts arise and take their place. I find this practice to be very powerful – especially to support me to not get caught up and carried away by the thoughts but instead to stay grounded and present to the deeper truth, the deeper presence beyond the thoughts.

For me, the practice of NVC is both an addition to this practice and a slightly different approach to the same goal. The goal being to connect to the deeper truth of ourselves and to be mindful (in our heart minds and in speech). To connect with the deeper truth of being human and in the idea that we call the “self” through the thoughts and images, rather than around them.

First we practice noticing our thoughts. Noticing how much we live within stories which we believe to be “truth”, stories which are based on what the external world (parents, teachers, society, etc.,) told us we were and who we have come to be believe we are. This story made of external cultural conditioning which now has become part of us – largely invisible and taken for granted as reality. So the process of waking up, of becoming conscious is to notice that we are living within a story. In practice, this starts by paying attention to the thoughts as they occur. By recognizing that I am having a thought, by naming it as “this is a thought”, I am already stepping away from identification with it.  The second step (practice of NVC) is to look at the thought with clear and compassionate eyes. To look at the thought in my mind as containing valuable information about myself, about whats in my heart mind. And identify the feelings and needs contained in the thought and clarify the observation separate from my evaluations.

For example, I have a painful story (series of thoughts) that I carry which causes much discomfort and disgust both. This is about the prevalence of theft in Lanka and the seeming acceptance of this as “normal” part of life. My story about this goes thus: the people who steal don’t see me as a human being but only as a resource to be taken advantage of. As an object, a thing to exploit for their own benefit. They don’t care about me or the impact of their actions on me. Oye, thats a painful story. So, let me look for the need(s) hidden in this story, rather than to believe the story. In this story, I see a need to be seen as a human being, and to be respected for my humanity. Another need I see is that I want the simple consideration and care implicit in seeing me as a human being (as opposed to something thats ok to exploit).

Ah, how sweet it is – the needs – to be seen as human, to be respected, to be considered and to be cared for… how beautiful is that. This is getting to know myself at a deeper level. This is connecting with myself at my core. This is one small example of what I mean when I say that we listen to our deeper needs behind our thoughts and stories and thereby get to know ourselves – first step to becoming our own best friend. Second step is to see the beauty of these needs and have compassion for ourselves. After all, who will be with us all the time, every minute of the day and throughout life. Only ourselves… so wouldn’t it be more fun to like ourselves and to know ourselves than to flounder along in confusion and loneliness.

(For information on NVC trainings in Sri Lanka, visit www.sandhi.org. To read or common on these columns, go to the blog set up for this purpose: http://sandhisl.wordpress.com/)