In difficult conversations, our feelings like to interfere – and sometimes they ruin everything! Author Markus Fischer ("The New Nonviolent Communication") knows the problem – and the solution!
One wrong word, the stress level rises and before you know it, one hard word results in the other. How can we learn to express our feelings constructively, to listen better or to respond more empathically to the other?
The problem: Simple behavioral tips do not help in good communication. Today we believe we can control everything. But the Feelings that guide our reaction in conversations, arise unconsciously and can hardly be influenced by simple advice.
Feelings arise whether we like it or not
If we have not learned, for example, how to deal with our anger sensibly, we will either suppress it in conversations (which everyone notices) or otherwise leave it out in a destructive way. If the other person is not able to deal with feelings better, the conflict is inevitable. But we can too don't just pretend not to annoy us anymore. But that doesn't mean that we are helpless in our emotions. We can change our feelings, we just have to start in the right place.
Understand feelings through self-reflection
If we want to learn to communicate better, we have to learn to deal constructively with feelings – our own feelings and those of our fellow human beings. We can also change our feelings. To do this, we need to better understand their origins and work on the causes of the emotions.
These causes lie in our life story, more precisely in our childhood. The way in which feelings such as anger, shame, frustration or sadness were dealt with in our family of origin shapes the way we deal with our own feelings and those of our (conversation) partner. If we were punished as a childWhen we get angry, we don't learn to get angry less. Rather, we learn to hide or otherwise act out our anger. In this way we develop certain behavior and relationship patterns, especially to avoid the “dangerous” feelings for which we have been punished. These emotional patterns then also control our behavior and communication as adults.
Feelings change through awareness
Which feelings were welcome in the family of origin and which were ignored or even punished? What feelings could your parents not handle well? What feelings were overly present?
Children often take over unconsciously responsibility for their parents' feelings and blame themselves when their parents are not doing well. These unconscious “rules of feeling” are what we still live out as adults. They prevent us from listening better, reacting more empathically or reacting objectively to criticism. Of the Key to change this unconscious pattern is awareness. We can consciously examine which emotional patterns we developed in childhood. This is the first step in taking responsibility for these feelings. And only when we take responsibility can we change our emotional response.
Feelings are the children of needs
With this description, the psychologist Marshall Rosenberg emphasizes that close association of feelings with human needs. Feelings are the signals from our organism that it needs something in order to be able to live well – physically, emotionally or spiritually. Hunger shows that we need food and loneliness arises when we miss community.
Linking feelings and needs is essential for emotional development because it is the key to one adult self-responsibility. As children, we are almost entirely dependent on environmental supplies. When our child's needs are ignored or violated, we can only endure it and try to (survive) live with them.
Communicating better means taking responsibility
As adults, we can learn to take responsibility for our feelings and needs. Even if feelings arise unconsciously and spontaneously, we can get through conscious self-reflection learn that the cause of our feelings lies in our own needs.
If, in a conversation, we “no longer have a grip on ourselves”, feel excessively injured or powerless, it is very likely that injured needs from childhood are coming back here. But unlike in childhood, we as adults can take care of our own needs. The way there is a process of becoming aware that probably never ends – who can claim to really understand themselves completely?
Markus Fischer has been helping to clear up tense relationships for over 20 years and knows from himself that conflicts are seldom welcome. As a pioneer of nonviolent communication in Germany, he has remained a critical thinker. Today he accompanies the cultural change in companies according to the principle: Freedom only comes with responsibility. His current book is called "The new non-violent communication – empathy and personal responsibility without self-censorship" (Business Village Verlag, 24.95 euros).