Kirstin Heidler

Impact needs Differentiation

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Impact sharing without differentiation risks becoming a subtle form of emotional outsourcing that erodes the very intimacy it seeks to create.

Those of us who have practiced NVC for some time are familiar with two core teachings: we are not responsible for other people’s feelings — and at the same time, what we do has an impact. Our words and actions affect others, and relational life inevitably involves mutual influence.

There is a structural tension here. If my actions affect you, what exactly am I responsible for?

Classical NVC draws a careful distinction: I am responsible for my intention, my choices, and how I respond. Your feelings may be stimulated by what I do, but they arise from your needs, history, and meaning-making. Nonetheless, sharing how we are affected can deepen intimacy and support learning.

Miki Kashtan describes impact sharing as telling someone how what they did or said affected us, including all the layers of meaning, interpretation, and response that were activated in us, taking full responsibility for them[1].

I care deeply about the impact I have. I genuinely want to know how I affect others. And yet, when I began hearing the idea of “impact sharing,” spoken about as something to do, something in me tightened. It took me some time to understand why.

Impact sharing does not always look the same. Sometimes it is courageous, vulnerable intimacy. Sometimes it becomes a refined way of holding onto the idea that you are responsible for how I feel.
The difference comes down to one capacity: differentiation.

What Differentiation Actually Is

Differentiation is the ability to stay connected to another person without losing connection to oneself. In family systems theory, Murray Bowen described it as the capacity to remain rooted in oneself while in relationship — to experience intense emotion without collapsing into fusion (“You are the cause of my state”) or cut-off (“I withdraw to survive”)[2].

Differentiation means that when something lands strongly in me, I can pause long enough to notice what is happening internally before assigning meaning externally.

Applied to impact sharing, differentiation means that when something lands strongly in me, I can pause long enough to notice what is happening internally before assigning meaning externally. I can feel the surge of shame, hurt, or fear without immediately translating it into a conclusion about you. I can remain curious about what is happening in me before deciding what it means or what it requires.

Without this capacity, impact sharing can easily shift from vulnerable connection to a subtle form of emotional outsourcing, where my internal state becomes your implicit responsibility.

NVC Does Teach Differentiation

Importantly, differentiation is not foreign to NVC. It is woven into its structure.

Marshall Rosenberg often said, “What others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but never the cause” [3]. That distinction is the essence of differentiation. The observation/evaluation separation trains the same muscle. “You raised your voice” is not the same as “You attacked me.” Hearing every “No” as a “Yes” to something else protects us from collapsing into rejection.

Conceptually, NVC teaches differentiation. Practically, we often don’t consider what this asks of our nervous systems and what support we may need in order to embody this.

When Differentiation Is Low

Most impact sharing begins when someone is upset. Hurt, shame, fear, helplessness — the nervous system activated into fight, flight, or collapse [4]. In those states, our capacity for nuance shrinks. The world simplifies into binaries.

Either you agree with my interpretation, or you are against me.
Either you are unsafe, or my experience is being denied.

Once that logic takes hold, both people are caught. One person attempts to regulate their internal state through the other’s behaviour. The other feels pressure — to comply, defend, or withdraw. What began as a desire for transparency turns into subtle blame, even when the language remains careful.

The Difference in Practice

Someone once said to me:

“When you used the word ‘apology,’ you returned to a narrative of victim and perpetrator and left me completely alone. Now I don’t feel safe talking to you. You need to look at what happens in you in those moments, because I’ve decided I don’t want to experience this anymore.”

Their experience was real. The intensity was unmistakable — in them and in me.
And yet, embedded in the message was an implicit pressure: adjust how you think and speak so that my internal state changes.

There was little room for curiosity about meaning. No space for questions like, “What did you intend when you said ‘apology’?” or, “I notice how strongly this word lands in me, and I’m trying to understand why.”
The impact was shared — but it arrived unprocessed. Interpretation and feeling were fused, making clarification feel like invalidation.

Had it sounded more like:

“When you used the word ‘apology,’ something in me felt crushed. In that moment it sounded as if you were assigning me the role of perpetrator. I know that may not have been your meaning, but that is how it landed in me. I want you to know the impact.”

the structure would have been different. The internal experience would have been named without binding the other person into responsibility for regulating it.
That is the quiet but profound difference differentiation makes.

Accountability Without Emotional Outsourcing

None of this denies harm. Words and actions do affect people. Repair matters. Protective action has its place.

But accountability functions best when both people are differentiated. Without differentiation, the longing for accountability can quietly mutate into emotional outsourcing — an attempt to regulate my internal state by shaping your behaviour, rather than first allowing my internal experience to be and be metabolised.

That rarely creates safety. More often, it creates vigilance.

With differentiation, something more complex becomes possible. I can explore my reaction and discern whether genuine harm occurred or an older pattern was activated.

Without differentiation, the longing for accountability can quietly mutate into emotional outsourcing — an attempt to regulate my internal state by shaping your behaviour.

Why This Can Be Challenging in NVC Spaces

NVC rightly values emotional expression. And because empathy is central, there is often a deep trust that staying present with someone’s pain will lead to transformation.

In communities where empathy is highly valued, it can become the automatic response to distress. The moment activation appears, attention shifts toward soothing it. Boundaries or clarification may begin to feel secondary — even suspect.

Intensity can subtly become equated with relational truth. The more charged the expression, the more quickly collective attention organizes around it.

When empathy mirrors interpretation instead of helping separate sensation from meaning, it stabilizes the interpretation rather than deepening self-connection. Empathy to the exclusion of containment through relational boundaries can unintentionally reinforce fusion.

The paradox is subtle: empathy can create the safety needed for differentiation to grow. But without differentiation, empathy alone can reinforce collapse.

When Subjective Experience Becomes Relational Truth

Impact sharing becomes vulnerable to distortion when it assumes a one-sided structure: one person was impacted, the other caused the impact. Even where real power differences exist, human interaction is rarely that simple. Two nervous systems are always affecting each other in real time. This does not deny structural harm; it simply acknowledges that psychologically, influence flows both ways.

The distortion begins when an internal experience is spoken as if it fully defines what happened between us. It often starts subtly. Something happens. I feel hurt, anxious, or ashamed. I make sense of it. Without noticing the shift, my interpretation moves from “this is what happened in me” to “this is what happened between us,” and from there to “this is what you did.”

When that shift occurs, my inner experience is no longer being shared as subjective. It is presented as relational fact.
The difference may appear small in language, but it is large in effect:

“When you said that, I felt small.”

“When you said that, you made me small.”

“When you said that, you treated me as small.”

Each step moves further away from describing experience and closer to defining the other person’s behavior or character. What began as impact sharing becomes an implicit statement about who the other person is in the dynamic.

When subjective experience hardens into relational truth, dialogue narrows. If the other person questions the interpretation, it can feel like they are denying the experience itself, because the feeling and the meaning have fused. At that point, disagreement becomes dangerous. Clarification feels like invalidation. And intimacy begins to erode.

Differentiation does not erase power asymmetry; it shapes how we engage it.

Why This Shift Matters

Impact sharing is not just emotional expression; it is an attempt to build shared meaning. The moment I speak about impact, I am making a statement about reality between us. Differentiation determines whether that statement sounds like:

“This is how it landed in me — can we explore it?”

“This is what happened — and this is who you were in that moment.”

The moment I speak about impact, I am making a statement about reality between us.

When interpretation hardens into relational truth, subjective experience gains moral weight. The speaker is no longer only sharing impact; they are defining the interaction. And when we begin defining each other, intimacy shrinks.

The Hard Truth

Understanding differentiation is not the same as embodying it. Under stress, our oldest relational patterns come online. Fusion and withdrawal are not moral failings; they are deeply practiced survival strategies, often learned long before we encountered NVC or any language for conscious relationship.

For many people — especially those shaped by trauma or ongoing systemic threat — differentiation is not simply a choice. It is a capacity that may not yet feel safe to access. When the nervous system is organized around protection, staying separate while remaining connected can feel intolerable. Explanation alone does not shift this. Regulation, reflection, and repeated relational experience do.

There is grief in that.

No matter how carefully I speak, your reaction is ultimately yours. And no matter how intensely you feel, my “correct” behaviour cannot regulate you. Staying differentiated may mean being criticised, misunderstood, or experienced as distant. It may strain relationships built on fusion, and harmony may not immediately return.

Not everyone will be able — or willing — to meet us there.

We cannot demand differentiation from others. We can only cultivate it in ourselves.

This is not a reason for judgment. It is a reminder of developmental reality. When we stop fusing, rescuing, or over-functioning, relational patterns shift — and some connections may destabilize.

Differentiation does not make relationships easier. It makes them honest — protecting integrity and allowing two realities to stand side by side without either person disappearing.

Resources

[1] Kashtan, M. (2021). Sharing Impacts for Increasing Intimacy. Association for Humanistics Psychology in Britain. No.6 - Winter 2021. URL: https://thefearlessheart.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/nl-2021-t6-16-miki-kashtan-column-sharing-impacts.pdf
[2] Strauss Cohen, I. (2023). Understanding Bowen Family Systems Theory. Psychology Today URL: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/your-emotional-meter/202311/understanding-bowen-family-systems-theory
[3] nonviolentcommunication.com (unclear). Marshall Rosenberg Quotes. URL: https://nonviolentcommunication.com/resources/mbr-quotes/
[4] Polyvagal Institute (unclear). What is Polyvagal Theory? URL: https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory

The World we Choose

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are here for such a precious short time only. And what we long for most is to be connected with other people and experience and give love. Yet, what we keep doing and experiencing is very different from this. And we believe that this is outside of our chioce that “this is just how the world is”. But it’s not. It’s just what fear makes it look like.

Marshall Rosenberg did not just teach about the 4 steps and the key distinctions when he was teaching Nonviolent Communication. At the beginning of his book and at the beginning of his workshops on NVC he also spoke about “denial of responsibility”. We usually don’t take responsibility for the thoughts we have about other people and the world - but they matter a lot. We don’t take responsbility for the meaning we give to what we perceive, because we do not perceive that there is a choice we are making. What’s beautiful about NVC is that it offers a way of transforming our thoughts and judgements in a way that presumes the world beyond this world we see is true and thereby allows us to glimpse it. Herein also lies the reason why NVC is not merely a “communication tool”. It can offer us glimpses of the other world, but unless we choose to give up the investment we have in the “world we see” transformation is partial and shaky. It’s beautiful and powerful to glimpse this other world and anyone who sees and experiences it even breifly would want to be in it - it is lovely and wonderful and true. But we don’t realise how invested we are in this world we see and how difficult it seems to give up the things that promise to “keep us safe” but actually do the opposite and bring us misery.

I believe only now am I beginning to grasp the full extent of what this means “to deny responsibility”. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard people explain their feelings with a story about something that “happened to them”. Or label themselves as “co-dependent” or having a “lack of boundaries” as an explanation for why they are doing certain things. These ways of making sense of our experience are supposed to help, but they usually keep us stuck by denying the responsibility we have for how we choose to perceive the world.

We have the choice and the responsbility is ours - but then we could not blame others anymore for how we feel and that might seem like too much to bear when we are in a lot of pain.
And I don’t mean that people don’t behave in careless and cruel ways at times - they do and all of us have at some point in time.
We have a choice about whether this and all flaws we can find are what we want to look at… or at the beauty and care that are always there…
We have a choice about whether we see our wellbeing as connected and mutually interlinked… or believing that one person’s wellbeing is more important or could be viewed in isolation.

In truth it is not possible to give up this responsibility - but we can believe that the world we see is the only one that’s possible and that our interpretations are the only way of making meaning. In this way there would be nothing we could take responsibility for. But whenever we give meaning, we make a choice about which world we want to see and strengthen. This responsibility never leaves us and we are always free to take it up consciously. No pain or cruelty we have experienced can absolve us of this burden and blessing.
All of this is held. It would only be a burden, if we were truly alone. We are not alone.
If we want love and care, we need to give it. And the love is there always. All we need to do is to remove the blocks to love.
Then the choice will be our’s and everyone’s blessing and care and compassion infinite.

It's Not About the Method

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For years Dominic Barter was teaching about the method for engaging conflicts in groups that he developed. He called it “Restorative Circles” and - although in a fairly small bubble - he became famous with it and his method one that even became mandatory in Brazilian youth criminal justice processes. To my surprise at the time, I heard that Dominic had stopped teaching about Restorative Circles and was even against people using this name. When I met him for a training in January of 2020 he was talking about creating systems together and that this was the important part - to find agreement amongst each other about “how we will deal with conflict”. To do this he proposed three simple questions:

What do you like about what is happening?
What do you not like about what is happening?
What do you wish for?

For a number of years I was a firm believer in the idea that creating systems and agreements was what could resolve much of our troubles. I was also following Miki Kashtan’s teachings and was looking for a way to “fix things”. Now I see things in many shades of gray. It’s not that making an agreement about something is not helpful at times, but recognising that in many ways “creating agreements and systems” is also just another method we try to throw at the problem of disconnection and tensions.
And it’s not that Restorative Circles never help rebuild connection or that agreements and systems don’t have the power to make things run more smoothly - they seemingly have these results at least some of the time. The important point is: why. Why do they help rebuild connection or help things run more smoothly?

What any method offers us is some structure to engage with whatever is playing out. On the most basic level what is playing out (when things are not peaceful and joyful) is always some idea of “being on our own”, “disconnected”. Most of us only spend our time more and less aware of this fundamental belief and pain. In other words most of us do not leave this belief behind. When there is a conflict or a person’s mental health is affected, this fundamental belief is playing out - even though it takes on such different shapes and forms that it can be hard to believe sometimes that they have the same root. Healing is always a lessening of this belief and an integration of something that before was believed to be separate and irreconcilable.

I believe Dominic saw that people were “applying his method” but in a bare bones way that seemed to leave out the core component of truly tuning in. I have always loved about Restorative Circles that the emphasis is on changing how people listen - not how people speak. I believe that this is key to hearing people only ever say “please” and “thank you” which is what Marshall Rosenberg, the father of Nonviolent Communication, talked about. And I believe that in oder to get a little closer to this place it is essential to examine one’s own judgements and reactions. Restorative Circles include an extra pre-circle process for the facilitator.

Some people who are (and need to be) part of the process we try to engage in may not be as open and trusting and might use strategies with which they think they protect themselves, but usually wreak a lot of havoc and leave everyone scrambling and helpless - this is the actual point where healing and integration are needed. The discovering of the “point of disconnection” is an important part of the process and no healing can ever be achieved through exclusion - although it seemingly removes the pressure.
In this point (dealing with those who are seemingly “in opposition” or “obstructive”) whatever method we chose does not really matter. It comes down to: are there people who are able and willing to hold a stance of true openness and love for this person? Are they willing to meet the person where they are without any idea of this person being “wrong”? Are they able to seek out within themselves all the subtle ways in which they might be holding on to some judgement or any fixed outcome? There is no “set method” to do this, although there is an inner path that we can walk that increases our personal capacity to do this. I believe in every group attempting to find more harmony and cohesion at least one person is needed who is able to hold a resilient stance of nonviolence and love. Someone who is willing to seek out within themselves all the subtle ways in which they might be bringing out anything but love and acceptance. This is what can bring healing and only this. It does not mean being soft, but it means being gentle. Healing cannot come from harshness and rigidity. It means knowing one’s invulnerability and innocence on another level that is beyond anything that can be shaken and from this being able to be vulnerable and open in ways that most people find so scary they would do anything just to avoid it.

It is the same in every place and whatever we are attempting. Whether it is within ourself, in a group or an individual seeking help through counselling. The method does not matter much. What matters most is the way in which the “Healer” can meet the situation. See through the seeming mess and through their seeing and peace help everyone see their big fears and upsets as mere nightmares that vanish when they open their eyes.

Tapping Into Your Inner Wisdom

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Many of us feel a certain aimlessness or purposelessness as we go through life. With this, making any kind of decision can be challenging. Even knowing what we might need to decide about can seem murky. Trying to sort things through in our head seems to offer the solution, but while there is a need for thinking things through at times, we often get lost, go down useless rabbit holes or are stuck in some overwhelm.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Now this sounds to good to be true. And if this is your response, I agree with you because it’s not that easy. We have educated ourselves well in seeking for peace of mind, purpose and direction in places where we cannot find it and letting these stratgies go turns out to be more challenging than might be initially expected.

I will offer a workshop with the same title as this post on the 16th of October locally in Hiraeth Gallery, Llandovery at 18:30.
The core principles of this workshop are about listening within, letting go of our ideas about how things should be or what they mean and attuning to our needs.

Needs are the qualities of life that life needs to thrive. As we are all taking part in this miracle called life, we share the same needs. These include physical needs such as air, water and shelter but also needs like community, attunement, touch, closeness, intimacy, meaning, harmony …
Whatever a human being does - it is an attempt to meet a need. The attempt may be unsucessful, fundamentally flawed or based on false premises and still it is an attempt to meet a need. This is a radically different perspective than is most common in society where it seems to be accepted that some people are just “bad” and they do “bad things” because of that.
This different perspective comes from Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and offers a compassionate view on why people do what they do. This offers ways of seeing other people, ourselves and the world that lead to care and compassion instead of impatience and anger (and many other emotions).

In my workshop I propose that attuning to our needs in an embodied way can offer us a different way of finding direction, purpose and meaning. It includes letting go of ideas of what it means to be “successful in life” or “how we ought to be”. At first it can seem as if this invitation to get in touch with our needs is an invitation to become hyper individualistic, ego-centrically carrying the expectation that “our needs should be met”. Many people go through such a phase as they begin to explore what it means that they have needs and that they can be met. When they explore that sacrificing and stretching in the attempt to be accepted or liked isn’t serving anyone, they might at first become rigid and protective about their needs. Some people go as far as believing (and using it that way) that NVC is just a way of expressing that makes it more likely that other people will do what we want - in other words manipulation only looking at personal interests. However, this disregards the fundamental purpose of Nonviolent Communication which is about connection. And this means true connection without any further purpose apart from itself. And in this space it becomes clear that the separation of “my needs” and “your needs” does not make any sense. Instead, there are needs. What life needs to thrive. And this is what we look at and work for together and meeting needs together is the most joyful thing, where giving and receiving become indsitinguishable, because receiving fully the gift of my care is a gift, and so I receive as I give. And your asking is a gift, because it gives me the opportunity to express my care of life and for you.
All we need to learn is how to remove the things that get in the way of this wonderful flow. My workshop on the 16th of October is one step of many and while it may seem small at first it is a giant leap indeed.

About Kirstin

I have been learning and teaching Nonviolent Communication since 10 years. As of yet I am not certified in any way, but with shifts in my life both my ability and longing to share with people what I have learned have grown. Things seem to begin to bear fruit and I am grateful for what I have learned and the ways in which I have educated myself so that now I can be a resource to others for learning and to transform their life.
I love working with the body and incorporating fine-tuned awareness of sensations where this is accessible to people. I have learned many things also about our nervous system including polyvagal theory, somatic healing, trauma and much much more. To my list of important resources I have learned from I have recently added “A Course in Miracles”. I have learned a lot from this book and it is continuing to help me bring out only love, because this is what I want to do. Apart from this, important figures of inspiration have been: Marshall Rosenberg, Dominic Barter, Miki Kashtan, Carl Rogers, Robert Gonzales, Sue Marriott & Ann Kelly, Eckhart Tolle, Sarah Peyton and many more.

Feedback from other people is that they experience me as very stable and safe. They appreciate my presence and attuned and precise listening skills. They enjoy my authenticity, transparency and realness, making me approachable and fun. They are touched by my gentleness and considered wisdom.

I have two children, am currently studying Counselling and once upon a time I completed a Master’s degree in Software Engineering.

Getting out of Conflict

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have noticed that my perspective on conflict has changed slightly in recent months. I used to say to people and be convinced of it that “conflict is an inevitable part of life”. And I still believe that everyone will experience conflict in the from of strong unpleasant emotions in their relationships in their lifetime. And I believe that it is something that we need to face and come through. At the same time I no longer believe that it always has to be a potential component of a person’s experience in life. I now believe that it is possible to change one’s perception so much that conflict is no longer the experience we have or at least we move through it much quicker, because we now know that our thinking must be a bit distorted when we are portraying ourselves as somehow unjustly treated or taken advantage of in other ways. It’s not that we could not find lots of evidence why this perspective is “true”, but it’s knowing that it’s pointless to think this way because it leads us away from the connection we want.

NVC beautifully contains this perspective by bringing the focus to our needs and putting our intention on connection. Needs being not what I want from the situation, the other person or for myself, but the qualities that life needs to thrive. And not just the life in me, but also the life between us and in the other person and all around us. In this perspective the needs that express themselves in me are not separate from others or my surroundings. And with our focus on connection the idea of “being right” loses its appeal and meaning. Often our beautiful needs get distorted by fear and turn into pain. So for example instead of being in touch with our beautiful longing for connection, if we are not certain that we are actually unconditionally loved, this can turn to the worry that the person I would like connection with maybe wouldn’t want to talk to me. And depending on how wild we let our mind go and how creative it feels for horror scenarios in that moment, this can go all the way to the grief and pain of loss, disconnection, loneliness and shame.

There is a crucial point in what I said which is not just our beautiful longing for connection, but also the trust that we are loved unconditionally. Many - if not almost all people in our westernized world - do not feel they are or even can be unconditionally loved. Without this it is difficult to trust that our needs are a gift and that we will be met eventually albeit in unexpected ways.

Most commonly we try to fill this lack of love with a romantic relationship. If the love is genuine and close enough to unconditional this can be amazing for healing. But all too often it’s a bit more complicated because the other person probably also doesn’t trust they are unconditionally loved and if both people’s pain about being loved and wanted and seen gets involved, chaos is guaranteed. There is nothing bad about this as it is also part of the process of healing and building a truly robust relationship. However, many times we only double down in our defensive strategies and so what we had hoped to fill our lack of love seemingly becomes full of pain and further proof either that we are unlovable or that other people are too complicated/not worth it. But our desire for true connection and healing is strong…so usually we’ll try again.

For many and in particular if there have been events that were experienced as traumatic, it is very difficult to trust and let in that they are loved. And this is not just about the love that is there from other people, but also the trust that they are loved and wanted by life and the universe. That there is an experience of inner peace and joy that is beyond all the thoughts and concerns itself with the beauty and wonder of life.

When we inherently trust that we are loved and wanted, our needs cannot be distorted by fear. Then conflict is not stressful, but an opportunity to show and express love and to find deeper connection.

So my current question is: how can I support people to reconnect with their knowing that they are unconditionally loved - regardless of what “unavailable” parents they were brought up by or what traumatic experiences they have had. The answer is not in making sense of the past - although it is important to be able to be with the pain of the thoughts and emotions connected with the past.
The answer is not in understanding and describing the dysfunctional patterns we exhibit - although it is important to see that what we have been doing is not working and instead giving us what we do not want.
The answer is not in being hard or critical with ourselves - although we need discipline in particular for our mind.
The answer is in showing love and care - but doing this is a creative and adaptive process that requires us to be present and meet anything in ourselves that is not love with love. This way we meet ourselves with gentleness and acceptance. Our desire to meet others lovingly then becomes the leverage for meeting ourselves in this way.

This is how far I’ve got. The rest is work in progress…

Obsessive Relationships

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Obsessive relationships

Symptoms

constantly thinking about the relationship
all thoughts directed at analysing the past, fantasizing, making plans about improving the relationship,
thinking about what is good and what is bad about the relationship
all creativity is bound up with the relationship, leading to lack of movement and direction in the rest of life
rumination about the relationship
fears about the relationship ending or the other person not loving me anymore
fears about not being seen and understood
fears about not being seen with the care and commitment
fear about being misinterpreted
everything that doesn’t have to do with the relationship feels almost pointless
thoughts directed at analyzing the other person and oneself
ruminating about past traumas
anxiety
intense emotional reaction to “rejection”

Origins

painful and trumatic relationship in which the person wasn’t seen
thinking: I need to change myself for the relationship to work
keeping relationship is seen as vital for survival
broken trust in the past about the continuation of relationships
pattern of losing sight of own needs and prioritizing the needs of others
pattern of seeking fault with oneself
pattern of taking anger/frustration of the other in the relationship personally, as a sign that I did something wrong
early primary relationship with an anxious person, early relationship with a suddenly angry and punitive person
pattern where my “looking somewhere else” was seen as sign that I didn’t care abou the other person (my mother)

Pattern

The other person gives messages that get interpreted as: I don’t know whether you love me truly more attention goes into thinking about the relationship all thoughts are focussed around the relationship happiness becomes defined as: when the relationship is well unhappiness becomes defined as: when the relationship is not well when the other person doesn’t give as much attention it gets easily identified as withdrawal giving attention is seen as something the other person asked for and invited sole purpose of life becomes the relationship and maintaining it

Consequences

other person feels “stuck”
other relationships suffer, don’t get attention

What’s needed to heal

honesty with self
clear observation
space and time
grieving

What to do to overcome

Recognize that it’s happening
notice negative effects it’s having on life and other relationships
Recognize afterwards that it has happened
Recognize when i’s happening
Find alternative things to intentionally focus on
do things that resource self, are fun and ejoyable
grieve the effect it has had (many times)
grieve for how you have benn hurt/not had what you need leading to this pattern

Conflict And You

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On the first weekend of August I needed all my skills for staying present and listening with my heart, even as I may find some bits painful. My girlfriend had told me she wanted to break up and I needed all my skills in reflecting about myself and admitting to painful truths about myself and how I show up. Vulnerability is the birthplace of intimacy. Since I was longing for intimacy, I knew I needed to go to the places I felt unsure and insecure about, show my heart and let go of protecting my ego.
Relationships are tough, because we are all vulnerable, easily hurt and reminded of painful experiences from the past. And who will hold us when we both find ourselves in the place of hurt? I’m happy that even though it’s far from perfect, I am able to hold myself and the other person. I can hold myself well enough so that I can be fully present with the other - until I’m not able to do that. An exhaustion of my capacity that I am not very good at spotting yet. Luckily we were able to come through together over time.

Learning NVC and learning about myself in conflicts has contributed massively to my ability to not completely lose my head and mostly keep my focus on connection in difficult conversations. Jo McHale and I will be offering a 10 week in-depth course that is designed to accompany you on your journey to leading more satisfying conversations and having more fulfilling relationships whether they are romantic, family or work related. And I know I will continue learning alongside you.

If this sounds appealing, we would love you to join us. Together, we can spread connection and understanding, one conversation at a time.

Ready to book your place? Jump right in

Format

Ten weekly two hour sessions, on Zoom

Time

13.00 – 15.00 UK time

(NB In the UK, BST ends on 29th October and clocks go back one hour, to GMT)

Dates

10 Tuesdays starting 12th September and finishing 14th November

Register here

Content

Your experience of conflict

What it means to you
How you feel about it
How you habitually handle it
What you would like to do differently, and how you would like to be when conflict arises

Managing yourself in conflicts

Understanding the physiological aspects of being in a state of conflict
Recognising historical attachment wounds and how they play out in your current life
Managing intense emotions in yourself such as anger, guilt and shame
Staying present and grounded, even when others are expressing their strong feelings
Looking for the grain of truth in whatever is coming at you that you experience as hurtful
How to use self-empathy and empathy for others as ways to increase connection
Using dialogue skills (reflecting back what you’ve heard; expressing your own feelings and needs; separating needs from strategies for meeting needs; checking for understanding; making requests, not demands) to build connection and understanding

After conflict

Learning from the experience
Repairing the ruptures
Giving and receiving apologies

Outcomes

The programme offers you:

A deeper understanding of what conflict is and how it features in your life
Insights into your own fears about conflict and your habitual ways of dealing with it
An opportunity to practise skills that are essential for managing conflict
Support in planning how to continue developing a mindset that sees conflict as contributing to your growth and learning

How the programme will run

The sessions will be as experiential as possible – no long periods in which you just sit and listen.

We will offer short inputs and invite you to work in small groups to:

Discuss concepts
Share your experiences
Practice skills

We will provide you with a Workbook as a companion to the course. This will give you a record of our inputs and activities as well as space for your own journalling and note-taking from the experiences you have in the sessions.

This workshop series is run by the Conflict Transformation Weave (CTW). CTW is a part of the community interest company NVC Matters UK CIC.

Register here

Mapping the Conflict Landscape

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This process was written by Jo McHale and Kirstin Heidler.

Step 1: What happened?

Think of a recent situation in which you found yourself in conflict with someone you are in direct contact with.
What happened? Be specific about what you said and did and what the other person said and did.

Step 2: Reflect on what was going on in you

What were you thinking - about yourself and about the other person?
What were you feeling?

Step 3: How did your feelings affect what you said or did?

Are there ways in which you defended or justified yourself? Or attacked the other? Attacked yourself?
What are your reactions trying to protect you from?
Meet the vulnerable parts that come with warmth and acceptance. They are trying to serve you.
Are there ways in which these protections are inhibiting you in fully receiving or expressing love?

Step 4: What do your reactions tell you about yourself and how you view conflict?

What core beliefs do you hold about conflict?
Where do you feel most vulnerable?
What do you fear in relation to conflict?
What needs are you meeting in your ways of handling conflict - and what needs are you not meeting?

Step 5: What effects did your feelings and reactions have on how things unfolded?

What was the effect on the other person? Where were the places you got hard or rigid in?
Think in terms of ‘the more I…., the more they…..

Step 6: Your dream

How would you like to have handled the conflict? Think specifically about what you would like to have said and/or done (rather than concentrating on what you would have avoided doing).

Step 7: There’s so much more….

Working through these steps will illuminate your own attitudes and behaviour around conflict.
A further step would be to explore the same questions in relation to the other person in the conflictual situation.
If possible, the other person would do this with you - perhaps with the support of a third party.
If this isn’t possible, you could use what you’ve seen about how they handle conflict and in your imagination, work through the same steps from their perspective. Whether or not you’re accurate doesn’t really matter. It’s the attempt to see things from their perspective that has the potential to transform the rift and to heal the relationship.

If you want to learn more, take a look at our course coming up in September.

Conquering Vulnerability with Grandiosity?

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
But vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our most accurate measure of courage.
When the barrier is our belief about vulnerability, the question becomes: ‘Are we willing to show up and be seen when we can’t control the outcome?’
When the barrier to vulnerability is about safety, the question becomes: ‘Are we willing to create courageous spaces so we can be fully seen?
Brené Brown

When do self-confidence and self-esteem, which are agreed to be qualities that are part of health, become unhealthy and begin to go into grandiosity?

Grandiosity is defined as feeling superior to others, as if one was better or more special than others.
While I don’t think grandiosity is part of my personality, I can recognize that I sometimes show up in ways that may seem to others as if I was thinking I am better in some way.

Learning about vulnerability

I started my journey to learn about feelings, recover my full authenticity and reconnect with my vulnerability when I was 15. Years later - when I was 23 - Nonviolent Communication¹ began to give me the tools to do this in a more deliberate way and it connected me with others on the same journey. This journey has included learning about my insecurities and showing up in ways that are transparent, warm and approachable.

Still, from time to time I get the feedback that I come across as if “I know it all”. Or people feel as if the only way to be in conversation with me, is to agree with me. Or people are confused or even shocked by the seeming confidence I bring to things, sometimes even when it turns out that I don’t know exactly.

I feel discomfort and pain about the ways in which I show up, that hide and conceal my soft-belly parts, making me unapproachable and aloof.

At the same time, there is a painful conundrum for me in this. On the one hand I long for connection and I want others to feel the respect and care I have for them. It also pains me to hear that they are feeling as if I was putting them down, as if they don’t know or aren’t smart enough. On the other hand I want to trust that there is space for me and what I have can be a valuable maybe even unique contribution. It’s a mixture of on the one hand authentic expression and sometimes even meaning or mattering. And I struggle to make sense in every moment of whether my way of showing up with something I know, is simply a celebration, or as other people sometimes feel it, a way of “asserting myself, conquering the space and looking down on others”.

It comes back to the age-old struggle every human being faces in some way:
How do I find connection and live authenticity at the same time?

In many ways it would be too easy to put all of the reaction I receive down to “the projections of the other person, who is having an issue with feeling worthless and inferior, finding in me someone to blame for their pain of not finding their voice”. While some of what is happening may be explained by what the other person is bringing to the situation, I also want to look at: what is it that I am doing that might be contributing to this?

My context: Where does my vulnerability come from?

As a child and teenager vulnerability was not safe. I was judged for many things and there was nobody I felt safe enough with to share anything about what was going on in me. The loneliness goes deep, and hence my defenses hardened to almost impenetrable thickness. I learned to hide my vulnerability by “pretending” to not feel, and seeming confident. My intellect and ability to talk was one of the few things I was regularly appreciated for by the adults in my life. I honed this skill and made it my strongest defence.

It is very tragic that longing to be held and met with gentleness, I learned to show up with a hardness and confidence that unsettles others and contributes to them feeling inferior. An experience that might lead them to feeling dejected, low, in shame, frustrated, angry, resentful and many other feelings - all leading to disconnection. While I long for connection and tenderness.
It is heartbreaking and the grief about seeing this goes deep in me.

Over the years I have discovered and worked a lot on the patterns of shame that I have developed. And yet, I can see how my shame still plays out and can become prominent in particular in intimate relationships. Instead of being vulnerable and humble I can seem as if I portray myself as superior and others can feel intimidated and small. In many ways this strategy is working very well for protecting me from feeling the vulnerability. However, it also alienates and separates me from the people I love most.

Because of the loneliness I feel, I struggle to feel the company of others, in particular in these matters of shame. I am willing to unfold them - in many ways I long to unfold them - but I feel so vulnerable and fragile, that I struggle to trust the other will hold me with gentleness and care. I am prone to hear almost anything as judgement, giving moralistic value to anything I say or do. And deep down I worry about losing the relationship, because the other evaluates me as deficient or lacking, irredeemably broken.

The grandiosity I sometimes go to only covers up the pain and shame.

Where I see myself

Looking at myself and hearing the feedback from others, I am also reminded of encounters and experiences with a famous NVC trainer. I remember being frustrated and furious with her for “turning things around to focus on her pain” when someone was trying to share something about a pain that they had encountered with this NVC trainer.

Recently, I received the feedback that something similar was happening with me. As someone was trying to talk about a topic to me that was very painful and important for them, I got worried about not being seen and being put into a box. From the perspective of the other the topic of the conversation seemingly diverted to something completely different, somewhere where they hadn’t intended to go.

I guess our vulnerability can go deep and be intense. More intense than may be easily understood by others. It can be difficult to understand that the seeming diversion of topic may be the way. It may be the way to connect more deeply. Insecurity and vulnerability come up, because they want to be met. Maybe the pain that comes up in response to the imagined suggestion that “one might have done something morally wrong”, is just too overwhelming.
This perspective is bringing new empathy and tenderness for the NVC trainer. And it is also bringing more understanding and care for the person who got frustrated with me.

So can I conquer my vulnerability with gradiosity?

- No, not really. It stays, just others might get fooled and hence I might even propagate some of the shame I feel. Very far from what I long for. I protect my vulnerability - but the only thing I gain is disconnection and resentment.

What is the alternative? The patterns that show up in me go back far and go deep. It is not easy to change them, in particular because the pain they attach to is not easy to heal. I may be 32, but sometimes I act as if I was 7 years old. Change will come almost imperceptibly slowly and in small changes sustained over time.

Things I want to try:

journal about situations in which I see or get the feedback that the way I showed up was dismissive or overly-confident
do roleplays of situations in which I am prone to or have in the past shown up with invulnerable or otherwise dismissive ways
regularly check in and ask for feedback about how my close relationships receive me
get plenty of appreciation and care and be cerished for the ways that are contributing to others

May we all feel the gentle holding of mother earth
embracing us with nurturance and love
so that we may know, that we are not alone
and we are held
and we are loved
Even as pain swallows us
there is meaning in this
the untold story of how excruciating and lonely the past was
drenched to the bone with grief
that longs to be witnessed
too immense to contain alone
clawing greedily, relentless
and yet feeling like a baby
scared and in panic
for life that is too overwhelming
where did the lightness go?
why is it so painful?
it just doesn’t make sense
all has space

Nonviolent Communication is a framework for communication developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg that describes principles, attitudes and practical methods for communicating in a way that is more likely to lead to hearful connection between people. You can find out more here. ↩