Compassionate communication (also called Non-Violent Communication – NVC) means communicating in a gentle, respectful, and loving manner, in a way that makes people closer to each other rather than alienate them. This includes:
- Learning how to play the most wonderful game there is in life, which is making life more wonderful for ourselves and for others.
- Connecting to our heart, to our natural desire to give, and communicate from this place.
- Increasing the chances that our needs and other people’s needs will be met.
We can achieve this when we learn to discern between compassionate communication on the one hand, which comes from the heart and is effective in advancing everyone’s well-being, and destructive communication on the other hand, which arises from our harmful judgmental habits which we learned from our environment and which are in contrast to our own interests.
The material presented in this section is based on this workshop given by the psychologist Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, who developed this topic. We include a few minor additions of our own. See also this channel for demonstrations of compassionate communication.