Is there any place for punishment in NVC?

Question: Wanted also ask about Krsna's statement in BG 10.38, where he says daṇḍo damayatām asmi:"Among all means of suppressing lawlessness I am punishment". Is there any place for danda in NVC, I am guessing not.

My Reflections:

For a comprehensive perspective on punishment and NVC, refer to this article by Alan Rafael Seid, (CNVC Certified Trainer,and someone I am taking training from) titled, "NVC and Corporeal Punishment".

In the purport to the verse you have quoted, Srila Prabhupada explains, "When miscreants are punished, the agency of chastisement represents Krsna." Krsna and His representatives are authorized agents of dharma, Who know how to use Their discrimination to use violence in service. 

However, when we bring this principle of danda or punishment down to our level, we often observe that our punitive intentions arise from a desperate attempt to step into our power or to gain control of the situation. When we are overwhelmed, we resort to punishing those who are in a down-power role in comparison to us.

Punishment erodes goodwill and trust. If we punish our children, they may feel scared of us. Fear chips away the desire to contribute out of wanting to care for the needs of the parent. 

By using danda, we are teaching our children that those in an up-power role can use punitive means to get their needs met. This makes it more likely that when they step into roles with greater access to power, as parents, leaders, or managers, they will punish those who are in down-power roles. Hurt people hurt people. 

Marshall Rosenberg invited parents to ask two questions:

1. What is it that we want our children to do?

If this is the only question we consider, then danda is a great way to motive children's behavior because it usually gets them to submit. 

But, the second question that Marshall Rosenberg invited parents to ask is:

2. What do we want our children's reasons to be for doing as we ask?

When we ponder over this question then danda is never a good way to motivate behavior, because it not linked to an intrinsic motivation to care for the other person's needs, and that's the paradigm we are trying to create in our families with NVC.

In short, there is no place in NVC for danda. And from my own childhood experience of receiving plenty of danda, I am relieved that there is another way to parent!

The Exhaustion of Endless Needs!

Question: Hare Krishna. I have a question based on what we discussed today. We are trying to meet our needs and that of our children. I feel that sometime the needs are endless. No matter what one does for the child, there is endless expectations to meet their needs. There need to be something more that just meeting the needs. Any thoughts on this? 

Response:

Here's a needs chart that I like:

Needs are under the ground in this tree to depict the fact that needs cannot be seen, but are the root cause of all human behavior and feelings.

    A larger version of this chart can be found here.    

    As you can see from this chart, the list of needs is large, but finite. 

    What is infinite are the strategies we can use to meet needs. This key distinction between needs and strategies is very helpful in discerning how to empathize with our children. For example, one day, our child might demand to have a pet. Another day, they want a playdate with a friend. On another day, they express their disappointment at how busy we are all day with work meetings. What is important to note is that these are all strategies, because they are attached to a specific person, object, location, thing, etc. To find the need underneath the strategy, NVC trains us to ask the question internally, “If my child had that, then what would they have?”

    The need underlying all these strategies - a pet, playdate, parent's attention - is the same; connection! One could also name the need as love or to matter. When we can identify the needs behind their strategies, it enhances our ability to empathize with our children, hence the possibility that they experience understanding and relief in their bodies. We don't so much get caught up in the complexity of their strategies.

Here are two key premises of NVC:

“Our world offers abundant (not infinite) resources for meeting needs. When human beings are committed to valuing everyone’s needs and have regained their skills for fostering connection and their creativity about sharing resources, we can overcome our current crisis of imagination and find ways to attend to everyone’s basic needs.” 

And,

    

    "Our capacity for peace is not dependent on having our needs met."

    So when we talk of “meet” needs in NVC, we refer to acknowledging and getting in touch with them. Imagine shaking hands with our children's needs, “Hello beautiful need, I see you, I acknowledge you, and sometimes, I mourn that you are not met.” 

    NVC empowers us to sit in empathy with the pain of unmet needs. I have found time and time again that even when it is not possible to meet everyone’s needs in the family, acknowledging and mourning unmet needs allows us to hold the sweet pain of the unmet need together. It is this experience of togetherness that is critical in family connection. Not being able to empathize with our children's needs creates separateness.

    My experience repeatedly, over a prolonged period of time, is that my children, at the deepest level, can live with unmet needs, but not with the experience that their needs don't matter. If I can sit with my children’s pain, in empathy, not to “fix it”, or “cheer them up”, or show them how privileged they already are, my children can come to a feeling of being held with care, knowing that their needs matter, even when they are not met.

   Srila Prabhupada explains that this material world is a hospital, not a hotel. So, by default, it is not a place where all our children's needs are meant to be met.What is important is that we "meet" needs with compassion, i.e., we acknowledge the beauty of our children's needs. We express care for their needs, through dialogue and discussion. Then, even if some of their needs are unmet, we have togetherness in mourning.

     One powerful tool is to imagine, with our children, the experience of that need being met. "Wouldn't it be so nice to have a fuzzy pet that you could cuddle with all the time. Would it mean a lot to you to know that you matter dearly to this being, when you come home and they wag their tail and get excited?" I am giving this example because my children, in the past have wanted a pet. And while we tried to have a puppy, it didn't meet other needs, so we gave him to a friend. By imagining the needs that would be met if we still had our puppy, it validates the child's needs. 

    NVC is not a process of focusing our energy on trying to satisfy all the needs of our child. It's a process that gives us tools to help our children find internal peace, through being empathized with, even in the midst of many unmet needs. 

    Please share how this is landing for you, by commenting below.    

My Child’s Behavior ≠ My Self-Worth

"A tree is known by its fruit" is a phrase that appears in the Bible.

Srila Prabhupada also spoke this phrase to appreciate the parents of his disciples. 

Naturally, we, as parents, internalize this saying to evaluate the results of our parenting efforts.

We invest more than our 100% in raising our children. Parenting is probably the most demanding service that we will ever undertake. So it's easy to equate the results of our parenting to our self worth. 

However, I found that the more I equated my children's behavior and speech to my worthiness, the more I acted out of shame in interacting with my children. The consideration of "what will people think" took up a disproportionate amount of my brain and heart space, while the ability to care for the needs behind my children's actions and speech was getting obscured. 

One day, we invited guests to our home. Our older son was sitting next to the Prabhu, eating dinner. After having served everyone, my husband wanted to sit down on the table, and requested my son to move, so that he could sit next to the Prabhu. Our son flatly refused. No matter how much my husband requested, the answer was a firm "no".

I noticed myself starting to feel a blush in my face, queasiness in my stomach, and heat in the body. I know these are bodily sensations I feel when shame starts to rise. I was equating my son's refusal to my worthiness as a human being. If my child is being uncooperative, that is obviously a measure of how poorly I'm parenting, I thought. How embarrassing that this is happening in front of outsiders! 

I have done enough work with my shame to know that when I speak or act out of shame, I regret it later. My ability to be curious about my children's needs declines and my self-absorption sends me into "fight" mode. When my self-worth is on the line, I am not grounded enough to parent with love. So I simply paused, told myself, "Ah, I am feeling shame. How human of me! Sri Radhika, you are always worthy of love and belonging." Poof, shame loses its power when it's named. It's that simple! 

I have sometimes noticed that parents push their children to "perform" out of this drive for their own self-worth. Whether it is leading kirtan or playing the mrdanga or harmonium, or being "obedient" in public, when our worthiness gets enmeshed with the child's performance, we lose the essence of bhakti - which is to please Krishna, not to satisfy my need for self worth and belonging. Similarly, I have found disproportionate disciplining of children sometimes arises out of the parent getting flustered from a shaken sense of self worth. The consideration of everyone's needs that comes out of being grounded is hard to tap into when we are hustling for our own self-worth.

Awareness of this dynamic is the first and perhaps, biggest, step towards liberation. The more I work on finding creative ways to meet my needs for inclusion and belonging, the freer my children are to choose to do a mrdanga performance or participate in dramas, without the burden of proving my self-worth as a parent, but simply to meet their own needs for contribution, belonging, and recreation. 

Fulfilling our needs is our responsibility. Getting attached to the strategy that my children must meet my need for worthiness creates a lot of strife. When we stop making veiled or unveiled demands from others to satisfy our needs, both we, and those we love, breathe more freely!

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NVC provides us three options to mindfully navigate our human experience - 

1. Self-Connection,

2. Empathy (which can be of two types - verbal and non verbal), and 

3. Self-Expression. 

The NVC Tree of Life is a pictorial representation of the three options for connection 

What I shared so far was my exercise in self-connection. As you can see in the root of the tree above, self connection has two parts - self empathy and humanizing the other person. 

• Self-empathy - Getting in touch with my bodily sensations (heat, blushing, queasiness) and my feeling of shame were part of giving myself empathy. The needs that were unmet in the situation were peace and harmony.
• Humanizing - Then, I moved on to humanizing my son. Having prevented myself from going down the shame spiral, I was in a position to start guessing the needs my son was saying "yes" to behind his "no". Perhaps, as a teen, he had a strong need for autonomy. He probably wanted to be able to make the choice of where to sit. He might have needed some ease and comfort, i.e., being tired at dinner time, he might not have wanted to make the effort to move. He might have wanted respect by being allowed to have a prominent seat at the table. He might have wanted his needs to be understood and considered. He might have been enjoying the connection by being engaged in the conversation with the Prabhu. Ultimately, the need for mattering exists in us all, i.e., he might have wanted to know that his seating preference matters to us. I have all these needs too, so surely, I can extend understanding to him for these needs!

Using NVC, I felt empowered to parent in ways that aligned with my value of seeing the beauty in his "no". Since this was an interaction between my husband and my son, I consciously chose not to go up into the empathy or self-expression branches of the NVC Tree of Life. But just let the situation pass! 

"Gosh! I don't have time for all this", you say! I get it! Life is busy, and demands come at us one after another, as parents, without the time to pause, it seems. As our practice of NVC deepens, the depth of our internal connection shortens the length of time it takes to achieve congruence with our values. We're going to spend the time one way or another - either cleaning up the messes we create in relationships, or proactively, at the forefront, taking our time to pause before responding to stimuli! 

How does this land for you? Please share your experiences and comments below. 

A Mother's Ode

My Mom's Day Gift

Dear Sons,

It's so easy to be power-over in my relationship with you

To pretend that your needs do not exist,

To attribute the actions I do not like to your being irresponsible, lazy, or "teenager",

or that your needs do not matter as much as mine.

You want autonomy?

Well, that's not as important as my need for acceptance.

When you wear crumpled clothes, I feel shame, "What will others think of me?"

Fold your clothes after they come out of the dryer RIGHT AWAY!

You want recreation?

Well, that's not as important as my need for organization.

Clear the dishwasher NOW!

Or else... 

Rewards and consequences,

And even praise with the veiled intention of manipulating your behavior,

"Such good kids"!

Sometimes I use NVC in ways that gives you the NVC allergy!

Pretending I'm requesting when I'm really demanding,

Or using NVC language, without NVC consciousness, so I can get my way!

What am I teaching you through these means?

That when you are older, you too can manipulate your power,

To have your needs prioritized,

Is this the world I want us to co-create?

To partner with you so that both our needs matter,

Whether they are met or unmet, 

They are brought to the table,

They are acknowledged,

And sometimes they are mourned.

Power-with!

It is my honor and privilege to be your mother, your teacher, your driver, your nurse, your cook, and your playmate,

Thank you for witnessing my journey of self-growth,

You see you were not born with an instruction manual!

Even thirteen years after I started on this journey, I don't have any of this figured out yet!

Thank you for your grace as I grow, with you, my dear sons.

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Mothering, the Ability to Orient to the Needs of Another, in the Spirit of Unilateral Giving

    Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is based on the principle that humans are a mothering species. This applies as much to males and children, as it does to those of us in the female body, whether we have been blessed with children or not. 

    Of all the species on this planet, humans have the longest period of complete dependency. Without a human's ability to orient to the needs of a baby in the spirit of unilateral giving, our species would not continue to survive. 

   So, on this Mother's Day, we can celebrate our innate tendency to want to care for the needs of others, if we just know what they are, and if there is no demand, guilt, veiled or unveiled coercion placed upon us to meet them. Similarly, those around us enjoy making our lives wonderful. They want to meet our needs, if we can express them without attachment to specific strategies, i.e., expecting a particular person, place, or thing to meet them.

Uncoupling Giving from Receiving

    A baby has complete comfort with unilateral receiving. But somehow, at some point, along life's journey, we become socialized to experience discomfort with receiving. We fear that someone is keeping a tab, and whether we will be able to meet their expectations in the relationship. We fear the intentions behind someone's giving to us. We wonder if they are giving freely, with joy. Given that we sometimes (or often) say "yes" when we mean "no" (to manage our image, hustle for our self-worth, or simply because we are not even aware of our needs), we wonder if the "yes" we are receiving is truly a yes, or perhaps a "mixed yes". Especially when there is a power differential and we are in an up-power role, we know that it can be hard for others to exercise their choice to say "no" to our needs.

    NVC gives us the fundament ability to uncouple giving from receiving and to exercise choice in unilateral giving and in unilateral receiving. Transactional exchange empties relationships. 

    Through the ability to distinguish needs from strategies, and through taking sole responsibility for meeting our needs, NVC provides us the tools to make requests for receiving unilaterally, in a spirit of interdependence.  NVC also helps us connect with our needs in giving to others, which allows us to give joyfully, unilaterally, without strings attached.

Looking at Ourselves with Compassion

    It is hard to be “always on”, which mothering has become, given our isolated, nuclear family situations. Even if we live in joint families, we truly don’t have the Vedic support, internally and interpersonally that is a true “village” bringing up a child. Anthropologists recognize that the ideal ratio of adults to children in traditional societies was 4:1. A child always had other resources to turn to for care, besides their biological parents. A mother who was getting triggered or overwhelmed could take a time out, in this support structure. What to speak of 4, in today’s world, we are sometimes raising children alone. This is sometimes true even for those who live with a partner, due to work travel demands or simply due to one partner not having the training or emotional bandwidth to be present for their children. 

    What makes mothering so hard is that we learn on the job. Most of us spend our entire lives before giving birth in the acquisition of very technical skills that leave us ill-equipped with the home science skills involved in mothering. Our competitive, STEM-centered education consciously discourages the softer human qualities such as empathy and perspective-taking, while encouraging very left-brain development.

    Given the pace of life we live in, is it any wonder that most of us mothers feel totally exhausted and under-resourced? While Krishna Consciousness is the greatest benediction that we could ever beg for our in our lives, improper application of principles can further place demands on us as mothers. We are unsure how to manage chanting 16 rounds, cooking everything at home, from scratch, keeping our children away from devices, and giving some semblance of a Bhagavatam-centric life to our children, while also managing our professional lives, services in the community as Vaishnavis, and other passion pursuits. We equate how our children behave in public to our worth as mothers. If our children are singing bhajans and playing mrdanga, we sense we are respected and belong in the devotee community. But if our children spend time on their devices during Maharaja’s class, we take that as our personal failure. “What will devotees think of me!” If all this is not enough to cause a short circuit, I don’t know what is! 

    If I cannot have compassion for myself as a mother for all this I am contending against, how can I be compassionate with my children? When I yell at my sons, if I retreat into shame, and guilt, judging myself as “useless in spite of trying to learn NVC for so many years”, how can I treat my children with any semblance of empathy?

    So first, I start with a lot of tenderness for the hard, hard, labor of love and service I am giving to this world by being a mother who is on her journey of self-improvement. At one point, the austerity of staying awake at night with my infant made me feel like a zombie. And now, it is the hard, hard work of trying to stay, moment by moment in an intention of power-with, with my teenager, that is taxing, for even though it is natural, the power-over paradigm has become habitual. 

    Seeing our children as living embodiments of beautiful needs is as if dust and soot are being cleared from our eyes, and we are seeing our children from a fresh, new set of eyes. It is neither permissiveness, where I allow my children to run amuck, nor authoritarianism, where their needs do not matter. I was afraid of coming to partnership, for I believed that everyone in my home would just goof off, while I would work as a slave. If the home is based on choice and an internal drive to meet others' needs, I would end up doing all the work, I thought!

    But I am finding that even the intention to partner or collaborate shifts my internal experience of mothering. I am often unable to access the internal resources to manifest this intention in my practical interactions with my children. Then, I give myself lots of empathy for the needs I was trying to meet by, for example, yelling at my son for not clearing his laundry basket. Without justifying and without “wronging” myself, I can sit with the beauty of my needs for order, cleanliness, organization, and responsibility, which led me to choose that strategy. I can also sit with the needs that were not met by my yelling, such as respect, partnership, collaboration, peace, and harmony. Then, I can go to my son with an NVC “broom and dustpan” to clean up my messes, by mourning that my actions and words were out of alignment with my values. 

    All of this is aspirational for me. I live and learn. I make messes and depend on the generosity of my family.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World

    It is hard to imagine a greater source of influence in a child’s life than their mother. Nor a more purifying service than motherhood. To those unsung heroines who are on this mothering journey with me, I offer my humble obeisances. 

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Happy Mother's Day to those that are mothers or have mothers. This includes all of us! 

Please share your thoughts on mothering and NVC by commenting below! 

Emotional Liberation

Question: Although we shouldn't be impolite to others, we also aren't required to own their feelings or bear any responsibility for their feelings. Could you give further clarification of how not to own other's feelings? What does it mean to own others' feelings?

My Thoughts:

When we carry the feelings of others, we see them as burdens!

    My understanding of taking responsibility for others' feelings means that we are in the false ego of thinking that we control our environment - positively or negatively. We blame ourselves for others' disappointment and take credit for when they are content, when in reality, Krishna is the only controller! When I carry your feelings, I am not clear about where I end and you begin, emotionally. 

    Here's a hypothetical and humorous example.

   Let's say that my husband tells me, "You did not make laccha paranthas, shahi paneer, and hot jamuns with cold rabri today, and that makes me very upset." If I take responsibility for his feelings, then I blame myself for being a terrible wife who does not serve her pati parmeshwar to his satisfaction :-) I worry about the security of our relationship. In this emotional slavery stage, I think that I am responsible for others' feelings and strive to keep everyone happy. My self-worth is hinging on how satisfied people are with me, and I hustle to be loved by always pleasing others, even at the cost of not being in touch with my needs. I will feel compelled to remedy the situation by making laccha paranthas, shahi paneer, and hot jamuns with cold rabri for his next meal, albeit with a lot of resentment! People around me become a burden on me, since I am carrying what is not mine to carry. 

    However, with some NVC help in the area of emotional liberation, I realize that everyone (except children) is responsible for meeting their own needs. I might choose to respond to people's needs with compassion, but not out of fear, guilt, shame, insecurity, or hustling to be liked by them. My self-worth or my relationship with you is not on the table. I am not negotiating to be in your good books. But, out of a loving desire to contribute to your well-being, I may make certain choices to meet your needs. 

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    So what's the NVC path to navigate this journey from emotional slavery to emotional liberation? NVC gives us three options for connection, which we will explore in session 7:

    1. Self-Connection (which includes self-empathy and humanizing the other)

    2. Empathy

    3. Self-Expression

    Here's how I would dance between these three options:

 1. Self-Connection:  I will first connect with myself. Self-empathy includes getting in touch with my observations, feelings, and needs.  My internal dialogue is one of compassion, "When I hear Prabhu say that he's upset because I did not make certain foods today, I feel disheartened because I have a need for appreciation and understanding. I wish to be understood for the intensity of services I juggle. I long for harmony in our relationship."

The other aspect of self-connection is getting in touch with the humanity in my husband. I make guesses.  Perhaps he has a desire for comfort. I attribute his feeling "upset" to his need for comfort and nourishment. He is probably longing for some fun in his life after a long day at work. He wants to know that his preferences matter, and thus that he matters to me. 

    Once I have self-connected, I can choose to move to either empathy or self-expression. 

 2. Empathy:  If I choose empathy first, I can ask Prabhu,  "Sounds like you are upset because you were hoping for some fun and comfort during dinner tonight? You really want to know that your preferences matter?" Notice how in this dialogue, I am not carrying his upset feelings, but connecting his feelings to his needs. He can correct any incorrect guesses I might have made in empathizing with his feelings and needs. Even if I am wrong in guessing his feelings and needs, he can tell that I am interested and present with his pain, and that's enough for him to know that I care. 

   Depending on whether I perceive that he has received enough empathy, then I can access if he might be ready to hear what's alive in me, by going next to self-expression. 

3. Self-Expression: "You know Prabhu, when I heard you express that you are upset, I felt pain because I long for understanding of the services I do render to our family." 

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    Not taking responsibility for other's feelings does not mean we are callous to them. We care deeply, out of love. We do not get flustered and discombobulated in our response. We want to enrich others' lives out of compassion for another human being in pain, part and parcel of our beloved Lord Krishna. We are very grounded since we are not carrying that which is not ours to carry. 

    Children are helpless and dependent upon parents to meet their needs. But adults are responsible for meeting their own needs, and thus owning their feelings if the needs are met or unmet. 

    The two of us together might choose to come up with strategies to meet his needs/preferences. He might cook for himself! He might order from Govinda's. I might choose to cook for him, or he might request a Godbrother to do so. He might realize that his deeper need for comfort, nourishment, mattering can be met with multiple other strategies too! 

Taking Full Responsibility for Meeting our Needs

Question: In a previous session, referring to an example of coming late to a class, Prabhu was making a point that- if the need is punctuality, one would be angry and if the need is peace, there will be no anger/disturbance. 

I am not very clear about it yet, but if I change my need with my relationship with my mother in law. Instead of me wanting to be included, if I try to meet my unmet need, or shift my need to peace instead of expecting something else...Maybe it would be easier.

My Thoughts:

    The realization that Prabhu was sharing was that we take full responsibility that our feelings are connected to our needs, and not to the actions/words of others. If I am waiting for a friend, who arrives 15 minutes after the agreed-upon time, and if I value punctuality and respect for our agreement, I will feel angry. However, if I need some rest, and in those 15 minutes, I take a power nap, I will feel glad and rejuvenated! If I had a really rough parenting day, and I needed 15 minutes to just decompress and read, I would feel ease and relaxation to have that time. So we can see that in the same situation, different feelings can arise, based on our needs, and release others from the shackles of thinking they are "causing" our feelings. I used to carry a lot of resentment towards a lot of people for not meeting my needs. Taking responsibility for my feelings has been liberating from the cage I had built for myself!

    Part of taking full responsibility for our needs includes releasing particular people from the expectation of meeting particular needs. I need belonging and inclusion. I want to know that I matter. I want to feel love and connection. I can find creative strategies for meeting my needs. Sometimes, my mother-in-law may be able to meet some of these needs. And at other times, she may not have the capacity to meet any/some of them. I am an adult and it is my responsibility, not hers, to meet my needs. 

    There have been some points in my life when I've had some health challenges. In those times, I have been attached to expectations for her to reach out to me in particular ways. Now, however, with some NVC training, I've come to understand that my need during those times was for support and care. If I can release her from the expectation that she has to meet these needs, then I can reach out to others for support and care. I have plenty of family and friends, who have been willing to meet those needs.

    Inclusion and belonging are other needs that come alive for me in my relationship with my in-laws. NVC encourages us to sit with the beauty of our needs, independent of the attachment of particular people needing to meet them. So, I can journal or speak with a friend about my needs to be included, to belong, and to have connection. I can acknowledge and accept these needs. Then, I can find ways to belong and be included in other settings. For example, my need for belonging, inclusion, and connection are being met by our NVC support group. Devotees are finding benefit from what I am sharing, and there is a sense of community and camaraderie. We find shared reality in our marital struggles and the husband-wife jokes make light of the challenges of grhastha life! So, I do not have to force my in-laws or anyone else to meet my needs, but can find many wonderful, creative ways to meet my needs.

    It's not so much as changing the needs within my relationship with my mother-in-law, but releasing her from the shackles of meeting my needs. Then, there is flow in our relationship. She gives joyfully and with choice, to whichever needs she has the willingness and capacity to meet. I receive so much from my in-laws, who love me dearly, when I shift my perspective. I am able to move from "entitlement" to "gratitude" by taking responsibility for meeting my needs. This freedom to give and receive to meet needs, is what I believe, Srila Rupa Goswami talks about, in the six loving exchanges.  

   

Walking the Bridge from Fairness to Willingness and Capacity

Question: The only thing I also notice about myself is when I am kind to others, or do something, there’s no problem. But the problem occurs when I start subtly to expect some reciprocation, whether in terms of appreciation, respecting my doing or lending me a hand with chores. And that is not always the need of others. The need for me is there, connection and respect and love. But others needs of same thing can be in different ways (different strategy). But now since my needs didn’t get met, I am somehow unable to meet those needs of others. How to overcome this problem? Krsna consciousness teaches us not to expect and understand the peace formula from BG but as normal humans as I’m not at the level of that consciousness yet, despite trying, it’s an automatic response to expect especially from loved ones.

My Thoughts:

    I encourage you to not confuse that which is natural with that which has become habitual. I would say that expecting reciprocation from others has become habitual, but is not the natural state of the jiva. 

    NVC is based on the understanding that humans are a "mothering species". This term does not refer to the female gender, but instead of a human's innate tendency to orient to other people's needs in the spirit of unilateral giving. Of all species, the human baby is the most dependent for the longest amount of time. Without unilateral giving on part of the care takers and unilateral receiving on the part of the baby, our species will not survive. The principle of unilaterally giving and receiving is in our DNA. 

    When we are oriented to the needs of the other, giving is natural. Human beings, no matter what age or gender, have this "mothering" instinct. This implies that what to speak of my spouse, even my 13 and 10 year old sons have the inherent capacity to contribute to my needs, if I just orient them to what I need, instead of to a "should", "have to", guilt trip, or obligation. Even if I do not say it out loud, if I carry an expectation energy, it interferes with this natural flow because flow depends on experiencing choice in giving. 

    This "gift economy" is our natural currency. However, we are socialized into a "market economy". I keep track of how much I am giving and if your giving falls short of my account, I feel some caustic energy towards you. 

    NVC invites us to walk the bridge from "fairness" to "willingness and capacity". There is no fairness in the world of natural giving! 

    I can share an example of expectations from my own life. My husband and I have an agreement that I take take care of our Deities by doing Mangal Arati and cooking from Mondays through Fridays, and my husband does Mangal Arati on Saturdays and Sundays. Once a week, on Sundays, we decided that he would cook. I used to keep close track of whether my husband was doing his "services".  I was fearful that my needs for ease and space on the weekends will not be met if I did not assert that things be fair. If he happened to have a meeting on a Saturday morning, for example, then I would want to "trade" for another day. However, the more I am cultivating my muscle to orient towards our needs, I am shifting from fairness to willingness and capacity. On a day that he might have a Karuna Care meeting in the early morning hours, for example, I have more capacity to serve Their Lordships. I want to contribute to his need to grow in his counseling skills by being present at such meetings. I am no longer keeping a tab on which day he will "trade" with me for, because I am tapping into my need for contribution to his life, and his need for self growth. 

    Exchange interferes with the natural flow of giving to needs. If someone gives to us out of obligation, that giving is like sweet rice mixed with sand. There is no rasa or taste in it because it is transactional, rather than loving. Transactional exchange empties relationships. If we want flow, we need to fundamentally uncouple giving from receiving. We need to strengthen our muscle of unilateral giving, but even more difficult, we need to strengthen our muscle of unilateral receiving. 

    Because of my orientation to fairness, and my discomfort with unilateral receiving, when I returned from DC last Friday, I considered telling my husband that I would serve the Deities on Saturday and Sunday, since he had covered up for Thursday and Friday, which are typically "my days" for serving the Deities. But I checked myself because such a transaction would have diminished his giving to me. My understanding is that he joyfully took care of the Deities for two days because of his need to see me enlivened by sharing NVC in DC. If I reduced it to a transaction, I would have diminished his loving gift to me, and his joy in having had the good fortune of serving our Lordships on days that he typically is working instead. 

    Another example is that I have a need for mutuality in our home. We all eat in the home, we live there, and so I would like for all of us to participate in cleaning and serving in ways that are mutually reciprocal. Previously, I was fearful that if I am "nice", I will end up being everyone's slave. I will end up doing all the work while everyone else just goofs off. However, now I feel empowered with tools to express my needs and hold other's needs with care at the same time. Because I am no longer fearful of my needs not getting met, I can come to the table with tenderness in my heart and be vulnerable with my children. Here's a hypothetical, sample dialogue:

    "I really value mutuality (NEED) in our home. I often feel overwhelmed (FEELING) with work, homeschooling, tending to your needs, and the courses I am taking and teaching. I want to experience ease and time to rest (NEED). I am wondering if you can also share your needs, and together, we can come up with a list of services that you will be willing to take responsibility for (REQUEST).

    Notice in this dialogue that I did not place expectations of reciprocation on my children. I did not tell them that they need to clean in order to live and eat here. I did not have a predefined strategy of what I want my children to do. I did not place the problem as a conflict between us, but as a dilemma in front of us. We are on the same side of the table and I am seeking partnership and collaboration in solving the dilemma. I am also vulnerable and invoked their inherent need to make my life wonderful by contributing to my needs, which I oriented them towards. My request for my children to share their needs may open up the door to my understanding their need for recreation, play, or relaxation after a day at school. 

    The curious paradox is that when we let go of expectations, people might just actually behave in ways we want them! But we cannot cheat the system! Krishna is in our hearts and He knows all that lies within, even if we try to veil it pretty well! When people are free to give to us, without fear of consequences or guilt trips, then out of that freedom, choice, and autonomy, they give joyfully. 

    This does mean that we are willing to let voids happen instead of someone overcommitting and then feeling resentful. So, I may choose to live in peace with cleaning my home once every two weeks, because no one is joyfully willing nor has the capacity for a weekly cadence. The choice is ours - do we want to live in resentment, or do we want to live in peace with some unmet needs? 

    It has to begin somewhere. It's a choice that we are being invited to! Are we willing to choose to release others from the shackles of our expectations? We can choose to create the world we want to live in, starting from our home. Are we willing to partake in an alternative way of relating, rooted in flow? Are we willing to release our conceptions of fairness and replace them with what is really possible?

    This might mean that because I am further along on this journey than most of the people I am in relationship with, within my capacity, I may extend more care for navigating things. Why? Because I have the capacity. If I were committed to fairness, I would say, "Why should I do more than you? I shouldn't." But I choose to. As I gain more and more capacity, I want to bring in more care for the whole, not just for me. 

    I invite you to think about how you can break your deeply ingrained scripts of fairness and expectations in small interactions throughout the day. What can you do differently to start to spin threads of connection, instead of disconnection with our loved ones?

Living in Peace with Unmet Needs

    Srila Prabhupada writes in his Purport to Sri Isopanishad's Invocation Mantra:

All forms of incompleteness are experienced due to incomplete knowledge of the complete whole. 

    So, our feeling of incompleteness due to unmet needs can be fully satisfied with the strength of our relationship with Krishna. There is no alternative to cultivating strong sadhna! In His loving embrace, we can rest in peace with all our unmet needs. 

    Srila Prabhupada explains that this material world is a hospital, not a hotel. So, by default, it is not a place where all our needs are meant to be met. This world has been created to reform our tendency to have desires independent of a relationship with Krishna. We can change our expectation to one of being unsatisfied here! By recalibrating our expectations, we might find some peace with unmet needs. 

    I can give an example from today! My husband and I live busy lives, yet we made the choice today to go biking. I was so excited about the possibility of spending some connecting time with the whole family! When my children were young, I spent much time with them. However, as they've grown, and I've chosen to dive into some other interests besides mothering, I am longing for a deeper connection and more time with them. They prefer to hang out with friends on weekends, rather than their parents. Our older son declined to go biking, for he wanted to finish his homework due tomorrow for his homeschool coop, and our younger son was not interested in biking. He preferred to go to play soccer with friends, and when all his friends declined, he preferred to play soccer alone in our yard, rather than go biking with his parents. There went my dream for family time! 

    I chose to shift internally to get in touch with the unmet need. Then, I imagined what it would be like to have more connection. That helped me come to terms with the unmet need. 

    Some options NVC offers for shifting our relationship to unmet needs:

• Stay present with the experience of the need.
• Mourning that it is unmet via writing in a journal about it. 
• Sharing our mourning by talking to a friend, who can provide a safe space and give us empathy, not advice. We can share our feelings, perhaps of disappointment or being disheartened.
• Imagine the need being met or connect with the memory of that experience in the past.

    NVC is not a process of focusing our energy on trying to meet our needs to experience peace. It is a process that gives us choice to live in peace internally whether or not our needs are met. 

    Please share how this is landing for you, by commenting below.

Codependence, Independence, Interdependence

 

Between the extremes of codependence and independence, lies interdependence

Codependence/Dependence:

• We rely solely on other people or systems (for example, our spouse or ISKCON) to meet our needs.
• We have the expectation that our needs "should" be fulfilled by others. For example, a husband might think that it is the wife's "duty" to cook for him, clean his clothes, a.k.a, be his slave! A wife may have the expectation that her need for love, belonging, security, and financial stability "should" be met by her husband.
• We blame others for unmet needs. For example, I blame ISKCON management for not caring for me during a rough time, although I gave so much service to the movement.
• In codependency, a mentor may derive their sense of identity from being the "rescuer" of their mentee. In such a case, the relationship becomes thwarting for the mentee, for their growth threatens the sense of identity of their mentor. The mentor will prefer for them to be in a helpless, victim mode, so that their need for contribution and mattering continues to be met. The mentor is hustling for their own self-worth, in a codependent relationship.
• We get stuck that a particular person has to meet our needs. We refuse to think creatively of options to meet our needs through other strategies. We fail to take responsibility for our own needs and blame others for not meeting them. For example, I went through 2 miscarriages about 14-15 years ago. When my mentor did not call me after my 2nd miscarriage, I harbored a lot of negativity towards them. Later, with NVC, I saw how my need for care and support were primed at the time, and as an adult, I can find many creative strategies by reaching out to friends and family, rather than demand that a particular person meet my need. 
• We disconnect from our personal power when we depend on others to meet our needs. We experience no sense of agency, we believe we are unable to affect change, and that our needs can be met by external forces alone. We see ourselves as being incapable of meeting our needs.
• We may "give in" or "give up" on many of our own needs, in hopes that some of our foundational needs, such as love and belonging will be met. We might seek approval to ensure belonging. We are more likely to submit. 
• Eastern cultures where communal needs are prioritized can sometimes go to this unhealthy extreme.
• Women are socialized to be dependent. 

Independence:

• Prabhupada explains that mayavada and sunyavada philosophies arise out of frustration. These philosophies are essentially based on independence. 
• Sometimes, we get so frustrated by unmet expectations in relationships that we go to the extreme of thinking we can rely only on ourselves, perceiving ourselves as completely self-sufficient. We sacrifice connection with others. 
• Western cultures have a strong ethic that self-sufficiency leads to better chances of survival. Dependence is associated with weakness and powerlessness. 
• Men are socialized to be independent, which often frustrates the women seeking partnership with them!

Dependence and Independence are really flip sides of the same coin. Both arise from a fear-driven, often shame-based approach. Whether we see ourselves as utterly dependent or independent we likely feel alienated from ourselves and others.

Interdependence:

The Butterfly Effect: the flutter of a butterfly's wings can touch patterns of weather across the planet.

• Humans are social beings. Our needs are met through interdependent relationships.
• A healthy mentor-mentee relationship is that of interdependence. The mentor serves as a "coach" rather than a "rescuer". Their need for contribution and for extending compassionate care is met by sharing Krishna Consciousness with their mentee. The mentee's need for growth, community, love, and belonging is also met in such an exchange. But neither is dependent on the other exclusively for meeting their need. A mentor can find many creative strategies for meeting their need for contribution, and hence their self-worth or mattering is not on the table if the mentee makes choices that are out of alignment with the mentor's suggestions. 
• We take responsibility for our own needs and this empowers us to move into action. 
• We recognize that we need others to meet our needs. Our lives are inextricably intertwined with the lives of others. Life is sustained through interdependent relationships. 
• We recognize that the same Paramatma lives within all of us, and we are connecting on the soul-to-soul level. We recognize that the All Potent Krishna has also bestowed us with personal power to meet our needs. 
• We trust that Krishna is a very loving Lord and that He makes all arrangements for His children. We trust that our needs will be met one way or another. Then we are free to let the other person be exactly how they are. And there is so much power in that freedom to give and receive. There is so much potential for connection.  
• We make requests of others to enrich our lives, and are not attached to them agreeing to meet our needs. In other words, our requests are not hidden demands!
• When we are conscious of interdependence, then everyone's needs matter. We don't try to get our needs met at the cost of others' needs. We acknowledge our intrinsic interconnectedness, so we are moved to sharing resources.
• Leaning into interconnectedness, we are less likely to objectify others by seeing them as strategies to meet our needs or as obstacles to satisfying them. We consider how our choices impact others. 
• It is both an opportunity and a responsibility to serve and enrich one another. 
• In interdependent marital relationships, the wife may still be doing many of the traditional roles ascribed to women, and likewise for the husband, but there is no "should", "have to", or "must", but instead one chooses to cook or work joyfully, out of connection with needs of self and others.

Even trees connect with neighboring trees and share information through underground network of fungi. In that way, trees share information and nutrients supporting the health of the entire forest. They pass on nutrients to weaker trees to sustain them!

Watch this video of HH Radhanatha Maharaja on Interdependence!

 

Dadati-pratigrhnati: the mutuality of giving and receiving

With the awareness of interconnectedness, we ask ourselves, "How can I authentically be in touch with what I value while maintaining connection with what's important to the other person?" Integrating authenticity and care, we cultivate our capacity to care for the needs of the self and others. We maintain dialogue when challenges arise, which makes it more likely that we will come up with strategies that attend to the needs of everyone.

Reference - Chapter 3, "Interdependence and Dependence/Independence" from "The Heart of Nonviolent Communication: 25 Keys to Shift from Separation to Connection" by Stephanie Bachmann Mattei and Kristin K. Collier.

Please share your comments below!

Interdependence in Relationships

Question: Request to elaborate premise 7 - human beings meet needs through interdependent relationships -- even though we can use different strategies or reach out to different people to meet needs, there are some times or situations that may be specific and narrowed down to one relationship. 

How do we balance Krishna Conscious principles and meet both party's needs? I realize the goal is to eventually rise above, but in our current situation, how do we acknowledge/ become non-judgmental about our or our partners' needs and figure out strategies to meet the needs?

Response:

If a spouse has a craving for idlis and sambhar, and in their home, primarily a North Indian menu is cooked, they can find many strategies to meet their desire. They could go to a restaurant, they could choose to request a friend to cook for them, they could learn recipes from Google Guru and cook these items themselves. However, intimacy doesn’t work like that! A spouse cannot approach a neighbor as a strategy to find intimacy!

Fortunately, intimacy is not a "need".

The Flower of Needs

            Behind the need for intimacy is usually a need for closeness and connection. A partner wants to belong within the relationship. They want to feel love and affection, attunement, pleasure, and touch. The point is to find other strategies within a relationship to meet these needs that align with the values of both partners. Perhaps the partners go on bi-annual vacations or take daily, connecting walks. Perhaps hugs and physical closeness bring them together. Learning NVC together greatly enhances connection and attunement, as I have found within my marriage of 20 years. 

In NVC, we consider that demands or requests are like icebergs. What we can see on top is the demand or the request that is being made of us. Some requests are made with sensitivity to our needs and some demands might come at us while the other person is screaming obscenities.  However, the major part of the iceberg is what's underwater, what is not visible to the eyes. And that is an appeal, "Do I matter?", "Are my needs important to you?", "Do you see my humanity?"

Behind every demand or request is the beautiful plea of a human wondering, "Do I matter?"

NVC teaches us to shift our intention to connection, not to get what we want out of the exchange or relationship. If my partner has a strategy to meet their need that is in conflict with my Krishna Conscious values, NVC empowers us to cultivate the tools to separate their strategy from their need. Can we turn the conflict of our strategies into a dilemma that we solve together? Instead of the issue being a conflict between us, can we be on the same side of the table?

In this diagram, "P" refers to a "problem" we may have in a relationship. Notice the difference between having the problem between the two people vs. having the two people connected and looking together at the problem.

Using NVC, can I express to my partner what my needs are? For example, we are well aware that within ISKCON, different Gurus have different standards on the hot potato topic of "no illicit sex". Can I see my partner's demand or request for intimacy within our marriage as a beautiful call to matter? Can I soften by this awareness? With that intention that everyone's needs matter, can I also express my need for spiritual connection by staying in alignment with my Guru's standards?

Poem by Marshall Rosenberg

I am eager to hear your thoughts. Please share your comments and contribute to the discussion!