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Transformative Communication Workbook
leona dawson
with the support of family, friends, & teachers & the gifts of the wisdom masters who have contributed to all our learning over time
communicating to connect
Table of Contents
Transformative Communication Process Diagram Starting with perception & empathy Feelings Table: When Your Needs Are Met Feelings Table: When Your Needs Are Not Being Met Transformative Communication Practice Sheets Appendix 1: Needs& Values Descriptions Appendix 2: Exercises on beginning by giving whole (OFNR) messages Appendix 3: Exercises on making postive responses
How we were taught to communicate:
The basic premise underlying Transformative Communication is that people are trying to connect when they communicate. Unfortunately sometimes the way we connect such as our words, behaviour or strategies do just the opposite...they lead to a communication breakdown. Furthermore, our culture has developed a language structure that contributes to this breakdown; either in our inner talk or the way we talk with and to others. Marshall Rosenberg identifies four types of communication leading to disconnection:
1. Diagnosis: judgements, analysis, criticism & comparison 2. Denial of responsibility 3. Demand 4. Deserve-oriented language
Examples: 1. Diagnosis Judgement = She is lazy. Those people are greedy. Analysis = They are just attention- seeking. She is so needy. Criticism = That is the wrong way. When will you grow up? Comparison = Your sister always tries harder at school. She is prettier than me.
2. Denial of responsibility: You made me angry/sad/punish you. I have to..x, y, z They made me I have to follow the rules
3. Demand: Direct: You have to do the dishes/clean up your room/go to bed. Indirect: Can you swap shifts with me? Remember I swapped with you for your wedding.
4. Deserve-oriented language: He broke the law so he deserves to be punished. What goes around comes around. They are poor because they don’t work hard enough and save their money.
These forms of communication have developed over thousands of years and many are embedded in the way our language, English, is structured. For example the verb to be enables us to label ourselves or others and makes something that is just in this moment sound like a statement of fact or permanent:
'I am depressed', implies that I always feel sad, will always feel sad, and I can do nothing about it. Is and are, like all present tense verbs, imply no time, no space and absolute truth. I am depressed abbreviates what has happened in the past. So perhaps it means: I felt sad on many occasions in the past, and I feel sad now.
Starting with perception & empathy
Communicating to connect involves becoming more conscious of our intentions & language choices when we communicate, being curious, keeping an open mind & trusting that somehow, no matter how tragic the expression, we are all trying to meet life-serving needs.
Perception means to become directly aware of any given situation through our body-senses, such as sight, hearing, feeling and so on. It also means to recognise or understand. This we do through our mind. Our mind filters the information we are receiving comparing it to past experiences, concepts and ideas we hold. In Transformative Communication we use mindfulness to become self-reflectively aware of our perceptions. Through self-reflective awareness we learn to try and perceive freshly, being aware if we are judging or holding pre-conceived ideas. We pause and take a moment to become aware of what we are adding to the situation at hand by doing this. Then we reframe our old patterns of thinking by translating our old language choices into new life-serving language choices. In Transformative Communication we learn to be with ourselves and others in an atmosphere of empathic curiosity.
!A simple exercise in the power of perception
Recollect a situation you have negative feelings about and write a sentence in life-alienating language, eg. He’s always late.
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Say the statement over and over in your head just like we do when we are ruminate on something and notice how it feels in your body.
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Take the same statement and translate it into your feelings and needs. Write it from the point of view of your need being met; that is vision it, eg. I feel steady and secure when my need for certainty is met.
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Now read that statement over and over in your head and notice what happens in your body when you do this.
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When you connect to your need (& not your thinking) what happens? If you connect with empathy to another person’s need what will happen for them and in your relationship with them?
Empathy is the respectful understanding of what others may be feeling. It is hearing from the heart. Empathy can be described as the capacity for staying with the feelings, thoughts or motives of another in an attitude of acceptance. Empathy can also be silent; it is in the intention not the words. It is both our source of energy and when we communicate empathy supports our intentions, words & actions. Our body registers when we are lacking empathy in tightness, tension, dullness or edginess, tiredness or a sense of disconnection from ourselves, others and the flow of life. Empathic listening reconnects us to the flow of life and healing. |
