How would you like to feel connected, heard, seen, understood, valued, accepted for who you are?
But, when we don’t use Conscious Communication, chances are we’re going to push away the very connection we crave. It’s not enough to have the best of intentions, it needs to translate into the right words. When people perceive judgements, they often only see two options: either submit or rebel. This maintains a cycle of power struggles.
The purpose of Conscious Communication is to express yourself in the most direct, authentic, and accurate way in order to be heard clearly and understood quickly. It’s an invitation for the other to meet your needs willingly, not from pressure or guilt. Everybody wins!
But it can be very counter intuitive. Conscious Communication can be very hard to learn and to apply to real life situations. It’s truly like learning a new language. The confusing part is that we use English words, but in a very different way. It demands a true paradigm shift, and the learning curve can be hard and frustrating.
In this enlightening episode, you will learn the #1 secret to bring connection sustainably into the relationships that matter the most to you.
Our free handout is available for download as you listen in: https://relationshipalkemy.com/free-downloads/
Audio Version
Video Version
We are RelationshipAlkemy. Welcome back. My name is Jordan Bessaignet.
And this is my husband, Olivier Bessaignet. I’m French.
And today we’re here to talk to you about conscious communication and language. It.
Yeah. So this is the third episode of this miniseries on intimacy and conscious communication. And on episode number one, we’ve talked about that. We’re going on an adventure. We’re taking a boat or plane to that magical island of intimacy. So why are we doing this broadcast series? Well, we believe in the paradigm shifts from right, wrong, blame, shame, punishment, reward towards understanding each other. And that’s a paradigm shift that’s not easy to really grasp. Some people have it, by the way, and that’s great for them. But most of us, we’ve been trained otherwise, and it’s working against us to reopen to intimacy.
So on that first episode, we decided to go visit that island that we create so much intimacy. Isn’t it so sweet? So what is intimacy to you?
So I define intimacy as the ooey gooey, chocolate chip feeling that you get when you’re in connection with someone.
Yeah. When you feel connected, when you feel fully seen, heard, understood this deep sense of connection. That’s what I crave. That’s what you crave, too. And that’s we managed to create in our relationship sustainably. So that’s our communication here today. And so everybody intimacy might mean something different for each person. Right. So on the first episode, we’ve defined the territory. So we’re going to explore. We are exploring. We’re mapping the territory. And then today we’re talking about language, the language that we use in intimate relationship that’s different than at work or in politics or in media or intimacy as its own specific language and then custom and cultures.
Okay. Custom in intimate relationship is to be able to place healthy boundaries, for example. But that will be for another episode today. We’re talking about conscious communication, and that will include empathy and understanding each other and all that good thing for me. It is where the rubber meets the road. Because on the first episode, we’ve said, what is intimacy to us? Well, we made a whole list. So to us, it’s love, connection, affection, trust, transparency, cultivating, kindness. Equal power is very important to us. I think it’s kind of the best definition to intimacy, for me, is feeling reassured that we are loved and accepted for who we are.
How does that feel? Reciprocity, taking responsibility, accountability, all that good stuff. And we do not want in our intimacy Paradise Wonderland. We do not want power struggles. We do not want punishment. We don’t want enemy image codependency, defensiveness stonewalling. We do not want any of that. So that’s great intentions. But how is it going to replay out?
Right? That’s the question here is surprise. You brought your stowaway with you, and we did a whole episode on the Stowaway, which is also your shadow, the self saboteur. Sure. I want all of these things, but why do I not have them currently?
What is my blind spot that somehow I tend to sabotage that.
So we did a whole podcast on that. And if you want to go ahead and listen to that one before you listen to this one, go ahead. Also, they don’t need to be in order. And so today we are coming back to that island territory that we’re creating in our image. And what are we going to talk about? The language, language, the language that’s used on this island, and they kind of already went into it a little bit.
I think it’s going to be in two parts because it’s so much I mean, it’s going to be conscious communication, one on one broad stroke. There’s so much to talk about. So let’s start to unpack it. And if you want to download this handout, just head out to Relationshipalchemy. Com. You can click on the podcast tab. If you want to listen to the replace or find the links to all the apps and find your favorite app to listen to this podcast. You can also go to free downloads, and when you enter your email, you can download a whole bunch of stuff like we have conscious communication worksheets.
We have a journey into intimacy and conscious communication. This is this miniseries of this podcast and the list of universal needs.
Yeah, the list of universal feelings and needs.
Boom.
If you would like to download any of these things, just go ahead and head to our free download tab and you can print them off or just save them as PDF on your phone and you’re in action.
Okay, so let’s dab it was that showing my screen. I hope it was showing my screen. Okay. Right. Also at the end of this handout, at the end of this handout, the last two pages are the list of feelings and needs, because I’m going to give the secret of this away right away. The secret to conscious communication is to speak in feelings. So we used to speak in thoughts, and we tend to the English language. The way we’re taught is very confusing and not accurate. So I would say I feel like you don’t care about what I’m saying.
I need you to pay more attention. There’s no feelings and no needs in that sentence. Although I feel like you don’t care about what I’m saying. I need you, and it sounds like a need. Those are thoughts. Okay, so we’re not used to speaking feelings and actually the brain when something happens, the first thing that we register is our first thoughts. Okay. But if you want to thrive in your land of intimacy, you’re going to have to learn a new skill if you don’t have it already, which is to consciously as opposed to unconsciously speak in feelings and needs.
Real feelings and real needs. That’s why we have the worksheets. That’s why we have those lists. So that we know how to recognize them because our body recognized the feelings. But the first thing our brain or our thought process recognized is the thoughts. Okay, so I feel disrespected. I feel disregarded. Those are not feelings. Those are thoughts. Like, oh, you don’t care about me. That’s an analysis. We’re going to dive into that. But I wanted to give you the gist of the secrets.
We’re going to jump right on into it. Now, if you want to visit the magical land of intimacy, you need to learn the language of this foreign and mysterious country, but it can be very counterintuitive. Nonviolent communication and compassionate communication can be very hard to learn and to apply to real life situations.
This is where the rubber meets the road. It’s great to have intentions, but how does it come out of your mouth when you get triggered and something happens?
It’s truly like learning a new language. The confusing part is that we use English words, but in a very different way. It demands a true paradigm shift. And the learning curve can be hard and frustrating. We believe that in order to sustain intimacy, we need to focus on maintaining connection and communication is a critical tool of that. Words can connect us or disconnect us. Everything seems possible, and we maintain the sweetness of connection or disconnection. Can feel like being in hell or in jail.
Yeah.
Which is another version of hell.
Yeah. Like, oh, you’re doing something that triggers me. I don’t love you anymore. So I’m not going to talk to you, and it feels just disconnection. How does it feel for you? For us? It’s so painful. It demands of us to find tools and new skills to come back to connection as fast as we can. Right? Because we agree. Chocolate chip chocolate chip feeling, especially with our song, which is almost a year, eleven months old. Like this flow of family of bond is so nurturing and satisfying.
Delicious.
Yeah. Can we maintain it? That’s the question.
That’s the question. So why choose conscious communication? The purpose of conscious communication is to express yourself in the most direct, authentic and accurate way. And this helps you to get clearly heard and understood quickly. It’s an invitation for the other to meet your needs willingly, not from pressure or guilt, which is so crucial in intimate relationships. Like nobody should ever be feel pressured into doing something or guilted because that creates resentment.
It’s going to backfire at some point, even if the person bothers it up and go, like, okay, which is a submission. Okay. At some point, you go, I can’t do this anymore. I’m full and they explode. And everybody wonder why. Even they wonder why so submitting is not sustainable long term, and so overpowering is not sustainable, long term. So pushing or pulling to get your way or submitting because the other is pushing and pulling to get their way is not sustainable. Maybe at work, maybe in other contexts.
But in an intimate relationship, it’s not sustainable.
With this type of communication, everybody wins, and it’s the most direct and radically honest way to express yourself and to share your feelings and needs. So I’m going to give a quick example, using conscious communication or NVC. I feel lonely. I need connection. Would you give me a hug?
Wow. I melt in my heart when I hear that. Did you feel it? I did.
So what we did there was we had a feeling. I feel lonely. We had a need. I need connection. And we had an actionable request to meet those needs.
Would you give me a hug?
So it’s super honest. It’s direct.
It’s accurate.
It’s accurate.
It’s authentic. She expressed her reality, her truth directly, authentically and accurately.
So this is how we want to communicate, right? This is, like, the ideal here, however, sounds easy.
Sounds easy, right?
Sounds super easy. But the problem is, we’ve been trained to express ourselves indirectly and accurately.
So, like this.
Like this. Okay. I feel like you’re avoiding me. I need you to give me more attention. Don’t you love me anymore?
So it sounds like a feeling. I feel like you’re avoiding me. It’s not okay. It’s an analysis. I feel like you’re avoiding me. No, if I cannot argue with it, that means it was not a feeling. No, I’m not avoiding you. I feel cute, right? So I did something wrong. Okay. So sorry. Sorry. I’m not going to avoid you anymore. I didn’t think I was avoiding you, but I’m going to apologize anyways to please her. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to avoid you. Okay. You need me to give you more attention, but maybe you already have all my attention, but I need more.
How can I give more? I don’t know how to start an actionable request. I don’t know where to find it. Find the action to meet that request, right? She has a need for me to do something, right. A need for the other to do something.
Okay, so that request that has a little bit of guilt tripping, right?
I mean, don’t you love me anymore? Yeah, that’s Regal tripping.
That’s terrible. It’s demanding. Yes, it’s demanding, and it comes across as needy.
Yeah.
And we want to avoid all of those things.
So for a while. Oh, sorry, baby.
Yeah.
I’m going to give you more attention, don’t you? I’m going to try to reassure her. Yeah, I love you. I totally love you. And at some point, I go, man, I need to breathe so I can’t do that forever.
Yeah, that’s not sustainable.
So I’m getting tired of this nagging bitch, right? And so here we go. The little poison under currents. The underground river is starting to take power. I can’t do it anymore. Wow. She’s nagging. Wow. What a bitch. And then I start talking with my buddies. Well, I managed to get away from my wife for a minute, but she’s still demanding. I don’t know what to do. We’re going to talk about that.
Yeah, we’re going to get into that more. So did you guys see the difference in those two expressions?
Yeah.
Cool. I hope so.
The first one, I was just so messy. Oh, wow. That feels so good. Well, maybe in the first one, you’re like, would you give me a hug? Right. Okay. Well, that’s very open. Okay. Because, baby, I’m going to give you a hug, but give me five minutes because I just got in and I need to go to the bathroom. And after that, I’ll feel so much better. I can give you a hug. Okay. I have flexibility here. I’m my own person with my own agency doing my own things, and we’re coming together.
The second one is redemanning is, like pushing for immediate results. Don’t you love me anymore? I’m wrong. I’m guilty of being wrong. Let’s start to unpack it.
Right. So if you look at your hand out here, we have conscious communication is direct with no shortcuts. It’s accurate. Once again, authentic. It expresses honesty and clarity. You invite curiosity in flexibility, is there? And there’s no wrongness implied. I feel that’s really crucial. No wrongness.
Would you give me a hug? I feel lonely. I feel disconnected, craving for more connections. Like, there’s no wrongness in that. It’s the truth.
It invites empathy, connection and cooperation. And I think this is a very important piece of nonviolent communication. Is that it allows you to slow down.
Yeah.
It demands you to slow down and to not bypass certain parts of the process that are crucial.
Yeah. That’s why I was touching on with how the brain works, because we tend to register the thoughts first, whereas before the thoughts, a whole series of feelings that happened that we haven’t registered if we haven’t practiced this way of conscious communication. So I love this example from one of our friends. She was talking about challenging situation she had with a former roommate. At some point. They were sharing a lot. They were buying stuff together. And so they were filling up the fridge and over and over this one time, for example, she went to the fridge and opened the fridge.
Oh, I’m going to Cook dinner for us. And she opened the fridge. And they had bought veggies.
Yeah, like, veggie patties together.
And there was only one left. And she was like, oh, snap. What was her first thought? I thought, Did you feel disrespected?
Yeah. What she expressed the first time was that she felt disrespected.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
That person is so selfish, right? That’s the first thought we tend to register. But then was like, okay, but before that thought, when you opened the fridge, how did you actually feel? And she was like, Well, wait a minute. I’m not sure.
Yeah. So we passed her one of those handy dandy feeling sheets, and she actually came up with quite a list of how she felt.
Well, the first one was shocked, surprised, confused, disappointed.
Yeah. She said she felt angry.
Too angry. Okay. Makes sense. Baffled. And before accusing anybody, you can register all those feelings like that’s how I feel in this moment. Okay. So you can turn around and say, hey, I feel really shocked right now and baffled what happened instead of saying, hey, you selfish egit again, you did it again. You edit everything. And now there’s nothing left to eat. And so also they were paying the rent late. So every time at the beginning of the month, she’s like, Well, I need to pay rent, but I haven’t got the rent from my roommate yet.
So what does it mean? So either we register the thought. Well, she’s screwing me over again. That’s the thought. But before that, we have a feeling. I feel anxious. I feel really scared right now because I feel pressured to upfront the money. So that’s conscious communication is talking in feelings and needs. And the father of conscious communication, he called it nonviolent communication is Marshall Ruthenberg. He called his book A Language of Life. Okay, so the language of life, like the crooks of it, is going to save you.
212 pages of reading the secret of the language of life is to think and to communicate in feelings and needs and thoughts later.
Because when you use common language or every day not conscious communication unconscious, if you will, there are shortcuts, implied feelings or needs. But there’s also implied wrongness, confusion, suspicion going to court, which going to court is making a case, and you’re going to go to court. And then you’re going to show why you are right and why the other person is wrong. Defensiveness accusation, suspicion, enemy image, which we’re going to talk about a little bit more and bypassing your own emotions in the process.
Yeah. Which is where the example was demonstrating. So in our next workshop. So the difference between openness and enemy image and one of the parts simply said, Well, I don’t see any enemy image here. We’re not enemies. Well, listen to the language. I feel defensive. I feel suspicious. Whose side are you? Who’s right and who’s wrong? I need to prove that person that they’re wrong. Them right. All that is war language. We’re talking earlier about the small Rivers. In French, we say Leput Riviera, the viende grandflav, which means small Rivers become like very large Rivers.
And so if you start feeling poison in your relationship, where do you think it ends up? Probably excruciating, breakups, divorce. All that comes from this resettle beginning that starts with an enemy image. You don’t register maybe at first as an enemy image, but it nurtures. Your differences are wrong. You need to change to accommodate me. So we don’t need to do that. We can shift that paradigm.
Yeah. So what we would like is, once again, curiosity, empathy, flexibility, connection, and cooperation. And what we want to avoid is building resentment, defensiveness, moralistic judgments, suspicion stories and self righteousness.
Yeah. So what I’m trying to say is that your communication would reflect your inner disposition.
Right.
So if you’re focusing on your own feelings and needs, when you open the fridge and there’s only one party left, it’s like I feel all those feelings and that nurtures openness. Okay. Now you might turn to the other and go, like, what happened and say what I know. Who cares? Okay. Well, that makes me uncomfortable. Okay. I don’t like that. When I hear that I feel all those other sets of feelings, like angry. And I need fairness. My need for fairness is not met. Right now. I can have this whole process inside of me without creating enemy image.
And so then we are able to have, like, the only way to have empathy for the other is to have empathy for self first. And the only way to place a healthy boundary is to be aware of all that process. To slow down and be aware of the process.
And just to clarify, too openness does not mean you’re a doormat. No, you still have your boundaries in place. You still are meeting your needs. You still have your own feelings. It’s okay. I share everything with everyone. There isn’t a spiritual bypass going on.
Yeah, that would be putting things under the rug. Whereas this process allows to reconfront the other without making them wrong.
Right.
This is not working for me. I feel really upset. I feel angry. I’m going to block that. If that continues, I’m not making the other wrong. I’m sharing my truth and my reality. Then the other can share their truth and their reality. And then we can find a win win solution, or we can agree to disagree. But we both have our agency. We don’t need to push the other into submission.
Yeah, there’s no push and pull. Like you said. Now we’re going to switch a little bit and kind of go into talking about what going to court means and building stories and how that is another form of poison.
Well, it comes from that enemy image. If you don’t go into openness what’s going to happen, it’s going to get worse and worse. So that other path of enemy image tends to create a mindset of going to court.
So when people are attached to being right, which I know so many people like that, I myself was the former attached to being right person addicted. Nothing better than being right all the time because, of course, you’re just right. But when you’re attached to being right and proving that someone is wrong, you lawyer up one and you go to court. So you’re going to build a strong mental case as to why you’re right and why the other person is wrong, fostering that enemy image.
And again, that might be appropriate if you are a lawyer and you need to win a cat.
If you’re a lawyer, please do not use nonviolent communication. Although if you did, that would be amazing. And I want to hear about it.
Yeah. Well, it’s to make distinctions, right. So maybe you are a lawyer or you are somebody who needs to make strong cases to defend your standpoint. Politics use a lot of polarization. Okay. So we’re talking about polarization here. I mean, I can replace enemy image with polarization. It would be the same thing. So in that case, yeah. Go ahead. But then do you know the difference? Can you register what you’re doing right now? I’m Polaris. Polarizing. Awesome. Let’s go all the way.
Right.
And then when I get home and I say something that’s polarizing. Oops, I just caught myself saying something polarizing that I’m going to save for my court case for my job. But at home, that’s not what I want to do.
Yeah. Because once again, that doesn’t nurture sustainable intimacy if you want intimacy past the honey phase moon.
Yeah.
You got to pick up some tools somewhere.
Yeah. So yeah. Going to court is attached being right attached to a certain outcome. Okay. You have an agenda that you’re trying to pursue and get the other to accept or maybe have them like it was their idea or whatever. Dinosaurs in judgment. This is who they are. So if we go back to the fridge situation, she is so selfish. She is such a selfish person and immature person. Right. So that wraps up the being into one word. That is very molaristic judgment. And so it’s easy.
Like everybody will agree that person is wrong.
Yeah.
Blame and shame is right up that alley.
Blame and shame is huge in this process. You also place yourself as the judge of who deserves punishments or rewards. And I mean, the punishment reward system is huge in our culture.
Yeah.
And you have deserve language like, I deserve an apology. And you should admit you’re wrong because I deserve this.
Yeah. So the result is that when we use that type of polarization enemy image, going to court. Well, when people receive judgments or this type of communication, they often see only two options, either the submit or the rebel. So this maintains a cycle of power struggle.
Yeah. And that’s not what you want in the intimate relationship.
It’s not sustainable.
You want equality. So when you use conscious communication or MVC, you are staying open and curious about yourself and others. You’re focusing on present feelings and needs.
Stay open and curious about self and others. It’s important in our relationship that we stay curious about each other about the other. But that curiosity about self, I think, is crucial on this path of communication, of self discovery of self reflection. Self reflection is essential to this.
Yeah. Definitely staying curious about why you’re feeling the way that you feel. It just invites this beautiful process of self reflection.
Because a lot of people have self loathing.
Yeah.
And that’s enemy image and going to court with self. Why am I so stupid? Why am I saying those stupid things all the time, right? That would be a self viewing. That would be enemy image with self. So first you have to dissolve that.
Yeah. Also a process. Nothing is going to happen overnight. And if you’re in the middle of a self loathing process and stopping that self loathing, I just want to give you a quick shout out and keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing great work out there.
Focusing on feeling will really help as well. Yeah.
Focusing on your feelings and needs. For example, how do you feel right now about what happened? What’s important to this is letting go of your personal agenda and outcomes and letting go of who’s right or wrong because everyone is just trying to meet their own needs. Yeah, nobody’s right. Nobody’s wrong. Everybody is just using tools and strategies. Some of them not the best, but everyone’s just trying to get their own needs met. And once you kind of go into that paradigm shift, nobody’s right or wrong. You can just see everyone for who they are and what they’re doing, which is once again trying to meet their needs.
Yeah. And that’s a great way to empathy for yourself and for others.
So when people are connected to their feelings and needs, they willingly cooperate. Joyfully, meet other people’s needs. And that’s the real magic of this is the joyfulness, the willingness. Of course I’ll do that for you, baby. Can you give me a hug? Of course.
We assume that people get together because they have an attraction for each other. Right. We’re talking about intimacy here, right. I keep reminding it because sometimes people say, well, in my job, how can I do that? Well, maybe you don’t want to go home with that person. You just want to dissolve a tense situation in moment, and that’s all you need. And that will definitely work there, too. But especially in intimate relationships where you’re seeing that person for hours on ends. I spend a lot of time that person.
Hopefully you want to go back and see that person again and be excited about seeing that person because that feeling of connection is so soothing and so yummy ooey gooey chocolate chip feeling that we are all addicted to.
So going to court is an ego trip. It implies a winner and a loser. But it’s a short term strategy. And in the end, everybody loses because there’s loss of connection, loss of intimacy and a loss of quality of the relationship. So the style of communication reveals an underlying anxiety that others won’t meet our needs willingly. The sentence is crucial.
Yeah. This is a secret.
This is the true secret. I’m just going to say it again because I just want you guys to really pay attention to this statement here. This style of communication reveals an underlying anxiety that others won’t meet our needs willingly. And we assume that we need to use some sort of pressure, manipulation or guilt tripping in order to provoke change. And this forces the other person to submit or rebel.
The sad truth is that we are trained so much into this. This is everywhere. This is in politics, this is at work. And, of course, this makes great drama for movies and television. And we have a whole nation and a whole world addicted to drama because it gets our attention. Those businesses, Hollywoods, the news media, television. What do they need? They need our attention. And drama droves our attention. Polarization enemy image draws our attention.
And it physically has a response in our bodies. Our bodies produce more cortisol, which you can be addicted to cortisol.
Totally.
And you need that rush of cortisol. So you’re just constantly seeking out drama in whichever way it presents.
And so it’s so normalized.
Yes. So normalized. That’s what I’m trying to say with the addiction to court as well. Part is, it’s very normalized in our culture. It’s something. I mean, the movies, it’s everywhere, right.
In the movies, the hero that we spent the first half of the movie empathizing with and identifying with say that for me again, identifying with. Thank you. Identifying with the first half of the movie. We identify.
Okay with identify with. Yes. Continue.
And now we love this character, and this character has a villain that they need to kick their ass and prove them wrong. So the person we love is supposed to kick ass and prove somebody else is wrong, right? Because somebody’s right. There somebody’s wrong. There’s evil that needs to be punished. And in order to get things right in balance, the evil villain person needs to be punished, right. And the righteous one is the hero. I can tell you if you do that in intimate relationship, it’s not going to feel connected and all that.
So, like, mainstream society does not teach us about intimacy.
Yeah, definitely. And I mean, even going back further into this, a lot of us did not have our needs met as children. And we developed tools and strategies to make the people that are supposed to meet our needs for them to listen. And maybe they didn’t listen. Maybe they walked away, maybe they went and did something else, or maybe they just weren’t reliable.
Yeah.
And now we have this whole Arsenal of tools that we’ve developed.
New reality, new set of buildings.
Yeah. The whole Arsenal. And we use that because what we’re really afraid of is that nobody’s going to meet our needs. We need to force people. We need to punish them. We need to guilt trip them. We need to manipulate them some way into meeting our needs. And once you can really understand that when you see this happening, it also invites another level of empathy into a relationship you just see something one as the small child, their inner child trying to meet their needs.
Yeah, totally.
But once again, not good for intimate relationships. There’s only so much empathy that can be had until you have to make a boundary of whether you want to engage with this person or walk away. And what we want here is to invite connection.
So how can you be connected to your truth? Like most of the time, I’m not going to say it’s going to be 100% of the time we’re working towards it. Let’s start with 20% and work our way to 80%. That’ll be like already a huge paradigm shift. So the great question, the golden question is how do we shift our paradigm from polarization or enemy image to openness?
And once again, just touching on that. It is a process. And if you’re able to grasp this in, like, 30 seconds, awesome.
But don’t be deterred from wanting this because it is going to take time the way we’ve been trained throughout our childhood and adolescents with 22 or 23. If it could take less than 23 years to Unprogram this imprint, reprogrammed this imprint, that will be miracle, maybe a few months, maybe a couple of years. Let’s give us a couple of years to ship that part down. That was ingrained in us for 25 years.
Yes. So we have a little example question to help you kind of start this process on your own. So the question that we’re presenting right now is think of a recent challenging situation and describe the situation in one sentence.
So we’re going to work on our paradigm and try to shift it. So now we’re working on how do we shift this paradigm? So to get us started, start with something real for you. So it’s not just theory. Okay. So pick a situation, a recent situation that was triggering or upsetting, that’s kind of still in the air and unresolved, but not too threatening, something simple and light that you can work with easily without having to dig with life threatening. Yeah.
We’re not going into trauma here.
Right.
Let’s keep it on the easy, breezy side of this.
We’ll have other episodes on Trauma. Okay. Yeah. That’s a whole mini series, in fact.
So we’re going to use our example of the last trigger that we had in our relationship, and we’re just going to describe it. So you guys have some background information, and then we’ll paraphrase it in one sentence. So do you want to start?
Sure. We have this part time business, which is we have a food truck that we sell crepes at the farmers market because I’m French, and so we serve crepes. And so we have a family business and we work together. This food truck and the farmers market is supposed to end up at noon. And you also have something else in mind.
Yeah. This day I had a Duala meeting that I had to get to the presentation to a couple of couples, actually, who are seeking information on newborn care.
So she’s a birth worker.
Extra side Note I’m a doula. So I had to get to this meeting, and this meeting was at 200, and it was about 30 minutes away from where we live. And on top of that, I was planning on bringing our son to the meeting. And so I had this whole process in my head of I need to go home and take a shower because I’ve been in a crepe trailer for all morning, and I smell like crepes, and I need to go shower, and I need to get the baby ready.
And then I need to drive all the way across town and get to this meeting before 02:00. Ideally, because the meeting starts at 02:00. I didn’t want to be late.
It’s twelve and 1210 and 1215, and people are still trickling in. It’s like, there’s still a line and I have a smoke in my eyes, and I’m serving crepes as fast as I can. This is already like a high pressure job and station. And here she is.
And so what I do is I take the orders and he makes the crates. And as people are coming up to order, I’m pressuring him and pushing him, like, when are we going to stop? We need to stop.
This is the last client. This is the last order.
This is the last client. Meanwhile, there’s a line of, like, five people who are like, You’re going to not take our order. And I’m like.
She keeps saying that. And for me, it took me a minute to register because I was not thinking of that. I was focusing on serving people. And so I’m like, what? No, wait. This is a major part of paying our bills. Hell, no. My response at some point. What’s going on? Hell, no. I’m not going to turn any clients or any business away.
But we need to leave. We need to be packed up by 01:00. Meanwhile, it’s 1230. Yeah, it takes, like, minimum, maybe 30 minutes to clean the whole trailer and pack up.
So describe the situation. In one sense, she says, this is our last client. We need to stop serving after this client. My response is, hell, no, I’m not going to turn any client away. Okay, so this is the situation. So try to find for yourself a similar situation. It’s not life threatening. It’s not going to threaten our relationship or our business or anything, but there’s tension.
There’s a little bit of friction, for sure.
Right? Exactly. And in this moment, we forgot our feelings in each shot because we’re in the heat of the action, right? Yeah.
We’re in a high pressured situation, which is completely normal. Nvc is beautiful. And also in the moment of trigger, it’s sometimes hard to remember.
Yeah.
Feelings and needs.
For me, it’s totally okay to be messy. But the important thing is not to hang on to those thoughts. We’re arguing on our thoughts. We have different strategies to meet our needs. She hasn’t need for being on time and going through this thing. That is her life, purpose and stuff. And me. I’m like finances. It takes so much to get here already. Why not make another $600? $100? That’s ridiculous. So we both have different strategy to meet our needs. And so we are arguing. Okay, so the key thing is not to say, oh, you didn’t remember nonviolent communication.
It’s not about that. It’s how fast we can come back to it. So in previous relationships, it would take a month or it would take me, like, 3 hours to try to figure out what was the process and stuff like that. Now, in less than an hour, we get it and we come back to connect.
Oh, this is what happened.
This is what you found feeling when you need it. Now I get it now, how can we can we find a better strategy to meet those feelings and needs? We come back really quickly.
Okay, so next question is, what do you want the other person to know about you?
So write it in the messy way, the way you’ve learned it so far. And then we’re going to try to learn how to shift our paradigm and do better.
The next process of this brings us to empathy, because empathy is the way that we truly can connect and understand what’s going on inside of somebody else. And this allows us to feel connected.
So that’s the thing I’m jumping by seismic.
How would you like to feel connected? Heard, seen, understood, valued, belong.
Still.
Sense of belonging, accepted for who you are, right?
We were fighting, which means we’re not accepting each other. How do we turn this into feeling connected? Heard, seen, understood, valued, accepted for who we are.
So when we communicate with our thoughts, we can argue forever. When we express our feelings and needs, we can connect at a core level, because feelings and needs are universal for one, every single human on Earth and animals. Probably too. They all have feelings, and they all have needs. We all have feelings. We all have needs and they cannot be argued with.
Right? So if I say, hell, no, we’re not going to turn any business away. Well, she can argue with us. Everybody can have their own opinion and thought process, and they might think that they’re right now. If I say I’m feeling disappointed. I’m feeling nervous. I’m feeling scared. I’m feeling joyful. I’m feeling excited. Who can relate to that? Who can argue with that? Okay. Everybody can relate to that. Oh, yeah. I felt angry before I felt joyful before. I felt excited. Disappointed before everybody on the planet can relate to that needs the one so that everybody can follow up with us.
We can go to our needs inventory. I have a need for harmony. I have a need for honesty, for self care, for acceptance, for joy, for pleasure, for shelter. In that case, my need was for financial safety.
Yeah.
In that moment, security, stability, trust. Nobody can argue if you need for trust. Okay. So that’s the big difference. This tool of conscious communication is to practice to know the difference between our thoughts, our feelings, and our needs. If you’re listening on podcast and you’re not watching the video, I’m pointing to my head when I say thoughts, pointing to my heart. When I say feelings, I’m pointing to my guts when I say needs. Okay. Like she said, we can argue forever. When we communicate our thoughts. Now, if we communicate through our hearts and our feelings, then we can relate to each other.
And when we communicate through our needs, when we communicate, our needs really relate and understand each other, understand each other. Okay. You have a need for enlightening your purpose. I have a need for enlightening my purpose. This very podcast is very transmission. It’s feeling my needs for enlivening my purpose.
We have a little formula that you can try using the situation that you had the question that we gave you guys to answer. And so the formula, what’s important to me is insert your needs and values here, and I feel. And then this is when you would say your present feelings in that moment.
Yeah.
So if we bring this to our situation, okay.
What is important to me is needed value. I feel feeling. Okay. What is important to me? Let’s go into the niche inventory.
So what’s important for me is to I don’t see it on here, actually.
So I can save mine when I say, Hell, no. I’m not going to turn any kind of way instead of saying that I could say, hey, you know what? What is really important to me right now is financial safety. Okay. And so I feel reproductive of that financial safety. And if you need to earlier and stop serving, I’m starting to feel anxious and I’m starting to feel fear. So what is important to me is our financial safety. I feel reproductive of it. And if we have to stop, that makes me feel anxious and scared.
See, I haven’t jumped into any strategy yet. We first communicate our feelings and our needs before jumping into the strategy. So what do you got?
So what is important to me is expressing my purpose and timeliness and timeline for timeliness makes sense.
Okay. So she’s not making me wrong for her needs. So how do you feel when you tap into those needs?
What I’m tapping into right now is I feel anxious that I won’t be able to meet these needs. My need for timeliness. I feel a little bit of irritation because I again have this idea that I’m not going to be going to my meeting on time. And that makes me feel irritated.
Yeah. Okay. So you’re feeling agitated. Yeah, I get that anxious. I get that. So we haven’t jumped into any strategy yet. The first thing that she said, we need to stop serving clients. That was a strategy. And I’m going to push back for that strategy because I do not like that strategy. But if we let you remember, I know. Maybe it was theory at the time. Now it’s reconciled. Like, if we let go of an agenda or any outcome. Okay, so now we’re letting go of the agenda or the strategy of stopping to serve clients.
Okay, we’re focusing. We’re speaking in feelings and needs. Remember the secret number one I said in Vegas, we finally got to it. So instead of speaking in strategy and thoughts, we took a minute to process. Oh, okay. That was my strategy. But what is my real feeling and my real needs? What is important to me is to enlighten my purpose and timeliness. And so I’m feeling agitated and irritated. Wow. I’m not wrong about it. I felt irritated before. I know how it feels. I mean, my purpose is very important to me as well.
Yeah. And I definitely understand the need for financial security. Thank you for keeping our family’s financial security in mind. Thank you.
And who knows? Maybe you’re going to pick up some clients there, which is like, you’re also trying to. Yeah.
I also have a need for financial security. I understand that.
And she has a different strategy instead of serving fridge.
Going to a dual meeting where there’s potential clients.
Great strategy. I can only improve, but in the moment we were arguing right in the moment.
It’S stressful there’s triggers.
Yeah. So now that we’ve come down into our feelings and we can communicate our feelings, okay. Now it’s open to strategies. And so if we let go of the strategy that we thought we had, also, it’s like, well, if you start cleaning around the counter and put things away, I can still serve the four remaining crabs just with chocolate and Nutella, whatever. And that will save ten minutes. Okay. Now we are in Corporation. Remember, enemy image. You need to do what I say you to do. It’s like, I need you to stop serving clients.
And that’s not a need. That’s the strategy. Yeah.
Hopefully this is all clicking. So once again, we’re going to give you the formula here for your situation. Go back to that situation that you had previously written down. So the formula is what’s important to me is insert your needs and values, and I feel. And this is where you would insert your present feelings.
Okay. So you jump to the last two pages and what’s important to me, and you find two or three words in the needs inventory, and I feel and you go to either the feelings when needs are not satisfied, uncomfortable, or when they are satisfied comfortable. And you insert their two or three feelings. And now you have shift you paradise.
So once again, this is a process. And if you’re in a high stress situation and this goes out, just remember that you always have ability to drop back into this paradigm when you need it.
Yeah.
So if you can’t access that when you’re in the heat of the moment, things are going on, it’s wild out there. But you always have the chance to come back to it and say, hey, baby, can I express what I was trying to express earlier in a different way? And your partner is going to be so willing to hear that. And it invites so much connection into your willingness and willingness into the relationship and understanding. And once again, that’s what we’re really going for here.
Yeah. So we re invite you to go to our website and download, go to free downloads and get this whole worksheet that has the list of universal feelings and needs and the handouts that we were just describing to you, this is going to be very precious.
Yeah. Especially if you’re a visual learner, right. This is going to really help you cement that into your brain, because not all of us are audible learners.
That’s new reality. That paradigm shifts. And also on the podcast tab, you have access to all the replays and all the links to the different apps, podcast apps where you can find our podcast now.
Yes. And once again, if you are in this beautiful city of Reno, we do offer in person workshops at the studio, and you can find more information about that on our website with the classic video tab. I believe our next one is the first week of January.
Right. We have the 15th, December 15.
Sorry. I’m like, two months ahead. And then January December is over for me.
Whenever you hear this pasta, just go there and you have the latest dates.
So our next class is December 15. And if you want to come check it out, we will be there teaching.
It’s great to have a therapy with practicing. Yeah.
I mean, practice is huge. And to be in a room full of people who are all practicing the same just really puts a different kind of magic into it.
There’s always somebody to give, like, the little story that I give with the fridge. Like a golden story like that. Everybody goes, oh, yeah. So that was the first part of the communication. So this series on intimacy. We talked about the map. We talked about the saboteur, the stowway.
Yeah, the stowway.
We started to unpack communication. Conscious communication. This is the first part. And then we’re going to have the second part next time. And then we’re going to go into the.
Cultures.
All right. And be, well, be kind with each other.