by Elly van Laar | Jun 26, 2014 | Acceptance, Compassionate Communication, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth
Usually, I would say that ‘undermined’ is a quasi-feeling. A feeling mixed in with a thought: someone is doing something that I interpret as undermining. If my clients tell me they feel undermined, I ask them how they feel when they have that thought. Maybe sad? Scared? Angry? And what’s the need underneath that thought? Maybe respect, support, acceptance?
Today’s situation is an exception to the rule. I don’t think I am undermined, I don’t feel I am undermined, I KNOW I am undermined. It is a fact, an observation. If you were a fly on the wall registering everything that was said and done, your summary of what you observed would be ‘yep, hum, undermining’. Everyone else in the room would confirm that too, by the way. I don’t want to be undermined, certainly not by a colleague in the class I facilitate.
So, it’s time to address this with him. I am crystal clear about it. I am right, and he is wrong. Even better yet, I am the victim, and he is the perpetrator. Well, even better than that: I am innocent and pure, he is vile and mean.
I feel so good with my level of self-righteousness. It is a great start for an open conversation, where he will acknowledge how much he wronged me and where we will both agree that our problems are his fault.
I do hear a voice in my head reminding me of my commitment to loving-speech and deep listening, of my dedication to include all needs. Well. I always listen to that voice, and today is not the time.
Today is an exception. Today is an urgent matter of proofing myself right. Today I am ready to tell the TRUTH. I am ready to receive hundreds of apologies, regrets and amendments and all the other yummy stuff life is made of.
I start off well, in my usual accusatory way. But the reminder of my commitment gets too loud. It is as if Thich Nhat Hanh stands next to me. Firm and kind: “There is no pride in love”.
I can’t help it, but all these years of Nonviolent Communication training and mindfulness practice are finally catching up with me. I have to listen and include his needs. I have to be honest and accept my failures on the path of loving-kindness.
Instead of going on a rant, I realize I only want connection based on understanding. I want to open my heart to his feelings and needs. I want to lean into this uncomfortable place of vulnerability and ask what he wants.
We talk for more than three hours. We are able to hold all needs. And we find solutions that work for everyone.
The next class was a delightful experience of collaboration, respect and support. Thank you, dear friend, for walking the path of compassionate communication with me.
You want help to stay committed to your practice, even when you’re triggered? Contact me 512-589-0482 to schedule a complimentary discovery session.
by Elly van Laar | Jun 18, 2014 | Compassion, Compassionate Communication, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth
Food is one of the most primordial ways of connection. It connected us to our moms when we were in her womb. It connected us to our caregivers when we were little babies. And throughout the rest of our lives, eating and sharing food is a simple and direct way to experience connection, community, belonging and acceptance.
No wonder it is hard to change your food pattern to a diet that seems to exclude you, set you apart, and provoke misunderstanding, criticism, and judgment.
That’s why I encourage you to be gentle on yourself when you transition to a vegan diet.
I invite you to support all needs on the table: your need to contribute, care, and expand your compassion to all living beings and your needs for acceptance, understanding, and belonging.
Some people shift to a vegan diet cold turkey (haha, forgive me the pun).
I didn’t.
I first stopped eating meat and birds, and continued eating everything else. I even made my vegetarian hamburger in the same pan in which my ex-husband made his steak. I continued eating fish, dairy, and eggs.
This was relatively easy to do. Most people knew how to make a vegetarian dish (or at least, leave the animals out) and it was simple to order something in a restaurant without raising eye brows. This phase also helped me to wean off meat and birds, and get used to my new food choices.
It’s not perfect compassionate eating, and then again, we’re not striving for perfection. We’re striving for growth, one step on the path of expanding compassion and empathy at a time.
Then another, then another. It’s okay to take a break once in a while. It’s even okay to fall back once in a while. We want to develop a habit that is enjoyable to continue, not a punishment and discipline we will finally give up on, because we’re failing our own standards of perfection.
You don’t want to decrease compassion by judging yourself that you’re not good enough. You want to increase compassion by embracing all your needs, feelings, and thoughts.
My path towards a vegan diet has cycled me through the fear of the thought that I am seen as crazy and abnormal, the loss of never using my grand mom’s cook book again or eating herring with my mother, the challenge of not eating all the stuff I ate most of my life. I stayed with all these feelings and worked on figuring out ways to nurture the underlying needs. What other strategies could I think of to support those same needs?
Vegan cook books help. Vegan communities help. Dialogue and expressing my experience help. Accepting and celebrating my choices help. What can you do to support all your needs?
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You want help to make choices that include the needs of all living beings? Contact me 512-589-0482 to schedule a complimentary discovery session.
by Elly van Laar | Jun 16, 2014 | Compassion, Compassionate Communication, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth
One of the assumptions of Nonviolent Communication -as I understand it- is that when we connect to the universal needs underlying our differences, we can find solutions that work for everyone.
I like that. It paints a world in which we all can find happiness, peace, harmony, joy, and love. It speaks of a world of acceptance, understanding, and inclusion.
Do I believe this is possible?
Yeah! Duuh!
Even in the most challenging circumstances of disconnect, distrust, and despair, I’ve always found NVC opens connection with others and support for all needs on the table.
We have a natural tendency towards compassion and comradery, and I think there is nothing more fulfilling than to contribute to the well-being of others (and ourselves!).
I have a sadness about what I perceive to be the missing link: awareness of the needs of those living beings who cannot speak for themselves, such as future generations, those with less resources, and animals. I wished we would include the needs of those not in the dialogue, yet impacted by the outcomes of our solutions. If we brought more awareness to their needs, we probably would make different food-, work-, travel-, and social choices.
I, for one, stopped eating meat and birds when I found myself turning off the shower and making an effort to rescue a spider that was frantically trying not to drown. I was perplexed when I realized that I brought so much care and compassion to this creature, and ate my bacon beef hamburger happily a few hours later. Did I not think that the pig and the cow on my plate had been equally terrified when they were slaughtered for my appetite? Did I not care about the horrendous circumstances of their life and journey to death? How could I go to bed with a clear conscience, knowing I had contributed to suffering in unique creatures, whose names I didn’t even know?
It doesn’t take a genius to understand how much harm and torture we deliver to animals for our consumption. I’m pretty sure YouTube offers vivid footage of the keeping, maiming, and killing of our food. (I watched some years ago, and don’t have the stomach to do so again).
I stopped eating fish after I watched Finding Nemo. I had cried my eyes out over the terror of the fish being hunted down. I realized the cognitive dissonance I was creating by crying over a cartoon and enjoying my raw herring as a snack.
I’m not perfect. I still act in ways that are directly or indirectly harmful to other living beings. I just want to share my passion for compassion for all beings. Please, leave a response, so we can enter into a dialogue how to support all needs.
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You want help to make choices that include the needs of all living beings? Contact me 512-589-0482 to schedule a complimentary discovery session.
by Elly van Laar | May 14, 2014 | Compassionate Communication, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth, Self-compassion
You can also have jackal ears inward that are actually trying to cover up a deep sadness, maybe even a sense of not being worthy, and a fear that you will never be good enough to get the acceptance and love you long for. The pain is buried underneath the self-judgment, self-blame, and self-criticism.
It goes something like this “You’re an idiot that you missed his performance. You’re stupid that you spent time on completely irrelevant things like doing the dishes, you should have left in time to celebrate his first performance, cherishing the deep love you feel for him. What a moron you are for ALWAYS being late!”
Somewhere deep down, hardly audible, the voice continues. “You’re not worthy of his love, you’re a terrible person, you don’t deserve to be called a friend.”
And maybe even deeper: “You should be rejected, excluded, outcast.”
Image courtesy to David Nayer
Jackal ears inward.
If you listen carefully enough, you also hear what you really want: “Please, love me, even if I make choices you don’t understand, hell, that I don’t even understand. Please, let me know that I am still welcome, that I am still okay.”
Jackal ears inward can be hard, even painful to decipher. They often echo messages you heard in your childhood, and that you’ve come to believe were a true reflection of you. They trigger the pain you felt as a child, when you heard you were not good enough, didn’t do enough, didn’t have enough. They bring up the loneliness, sadness, and pain you felt then.
Fortunately, you are an adult now, and you have a choice. You can chose to believe what the jackal ears inward tell you, and you can chose to empathize. You can offer compassion to the pain they are expressing and an open, empathic heart. I bet, you’ll hear the jackal ears inward say “See me as beautiful, embrace me with love, accept me for the precious human being I am.”
Who can say ‘no’ to that?
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You want help to translate your inner jackals into self-empathy? Contact me 512-589-0482 to schedule a complimentary, discovery session.
by Elly van Laar | May 7, 2014 | Compassionate Communication, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth
Everything always starts with connection.
Image courtesy to David Nayer
Well, maybe not always. Maybe not even so very often. Maybe, just maybe, hardly ever. Maybe, we usually start with a judgment, a counterattack, a criticism. We hear a message and something in us gets triggered. The message doesn’t even have to be a difficult one, it can be a neutral one, or even a positive one. Instead of listening, wanting to connect, trying to understand, we stand ready with our well-trained battalion of jackal thoughts.
“Michelle is offering a free intro Nonviolent Communication at church.”
Just that one sentence, and off you go. ‘She is an idiot. She has no clue what Nonviolent Communication is about, she has only be teaching it for half a year, she didn’t even study with Marshall Rosenberg himself, she just took some classes with Peter, who is an idiot too. Why didn’t they ask me? I have facilitated classes for more than three years, participated in all kinds of programs with renowned trainers X, Y, and Z, etc., etc.’
An endless stream of angry, blaming thoughts.
Oops. No connection there. Just disconnect through labels, judgments, criticisms. Doesn’t sound very NVC, does it?
And yet, these thoughts contain an immense richness, a whole world of inner experience, a wealth of feelings and needs if we would just empathize with them.
Maybe you feel hurt, you want acknowledgment and appreciation for the value you add. Maybe you feel frustrated, because you care about the integrity with which Nonviolent Communication is taught. Maybe you feel scared, because you want people to really get the support they need. Maybe you feel sad, because you were hoping for more collaboration and inclusion. Maybe you feel lonely, because you want more connection and acceptance.
Behind these jackal ears outward is world of beautiful, precious, human, universal, and timeless needs. And that is the basis for connection.
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You want help to translate your jackal ears outward into feelings and needs? Contact me for a complimentary, discovery session 512-589-0482. I would be delighted to talk with you and see if and how I can help.
by Elly van Laar | May 5, 2014 | Compassion, Compassionate Communication, Mindfulness
May 4, 8 pm. The Netherlands. Two minutes of silence. A national commemoration of everyone who died in any war around the world since WW II.
Children, elderly, veterans, peace activists, blacks, whites: we stand side by side at our local war memorial and are silent. Just two minutes. Complete silence. To pay tribute to those who died, to honor being alive.
I always cry.
There is so much suffering in the world.
I think of a dear friend. He was a child during WWII. His father was a member of an organization that helped Jews find hiding places. The Nazi’s found out, invaded their home, searched every room, and finally found the dad. They took him and mistreated him so badly, that he died within a week. A few weeks later my friend’s house was destroyed during a bombardment, and he, his mom, and his siblings were evacuated to a part of the Netherlands, where the people hardly knew of the horrors they had lived through.
So much suffering.
My friend still wakes up from nightmares. I think he will do so the rest of his life.
So much suffering.
I want to help, to heal, to relieve his pain.
I realize that’s not up to me. It’s up to me to respect his autonomy, support his path, and trust his inner resources. My friend doesn’t need my help, he needs me to be me, and show up with love, care, and presence. My friend is doing pretty well, actually. His experiences helped him to be appreciative of all the love, friendship and belonging he receives. It deepened his gratitude for being alive, because he knows how fragile and precious it is.
There is so much suffering. And so much joy for being alive. Thank you, dear friend, for being my role model of celebrating life in each and every moment.
(I changed the details of my friend’s life to protect his privacy).
I start off well, in my usual accusatory way. But the reminder of my commitment gets too loud. It is as if Thich Nhat Hanh stands next to me. Firm and kind: “There is no pride in love”.
