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A few days ago I encountered Focusing, first by looking at an acquaintance's website (bigempathy.com) where he mentions that he also uses that in addition to NVC, then by hearing Carl Rogers mention it in this video: Carl Rogers on empathy (part 1) So I looked at Eugene Gendlin's Focusing, here is an introduction to that: What I found interesting is how Rogers explains that empathy is not best achieved by reflecting a person's words, but by guessing the feelings going on in them of which they may not even be fully aware themselves, and checking with them to find out if these guesses are accurate. This made new sense to me after hearing Gendlin explain that when we ask someone if they're sad, there is something they go inside to check this against, and then they may reply "no, not really sad…". Then to the question "are you angry then?" they may say "that's not it either, I'm not angry…", and then to "are you disappointed perhaps?" they may reply "Yes, yes that's it! I'm disappointed because" and then go on to explain. So this internal flow is what I understand Gendlin is talking about getting more in touch with, both in ourselves and others, and I find this idea very interesting. I think it is very valuable to guess needs as well, but I'm just so excited about this idea of listening for feelings behinds words, feelings that are not fully expressed because maybe the other person isn't fully aware of the feelings, versus listening for them in the words as if the person is actually experiencing the feelings now, which is how I understood it before, that for the moment I'm not thinking of guessing needs at all and people still tell me that they benefit from my feedback. I was having so much difficulty identifying people's feelings and I thought it was because I wasn't sensing them well enough, whereas now it seems that at least part of the difficulty in what I was trying to do was that sometimes the person themselves wasn't fully aware of the feelings (in the moment) and so they weren't fully expressed in the words for me to hear!

I hope this will be useful to you, it’s an example of applying the principles I'm learning from Nathaniel Branden and Alice Miller and Marshall Rosenberg: I bought a used phone last week and after fixing some parts I realized it was locked and I didn't know how to get past that. The next day while preparing lunch and thinking about this problem I felt like a flushing inside my whole body, intense fear, I almost fainted, I guess from blood getting sucked into the spleen in anticipation for a life-threatening blow. Facing the thought that I had made “a mistake" in not thinking ahead enough when making this purchase was overwhelming. Using Alice Miller's idea that this exaggerated fear is likely a reaction to events in my childhood, I thought of how I grew up being very careful not to get caught doing anything I might get in trouble for, and the link became clear. If as a child I had spent money on a useless locked phone my dad would have been very angry with me because I wouldn’t have been a son he could have been proud of, which I guess unconsciously triggered in him the fear he felt from his childhood when he needed to be a perfect son otherwise his dad would be angry, etc. in a repetition going back from parent to child possibly many generations. As a child I wasn't aware of being afraid, probably because allowing myself to feel this intense fear would have hampered me in doing whatever I needed to do to not get caught. As a result I learned to repress this fear along with most of the events associated with it. Until I read Alice Miller's books and articles (alice-miller.com) and until I tried to imagine myself as a child whenever I experienced one of these strong and puzzling reactions, I was surprised to not be able to remember how afraid I felt in the few instances I did remember being threathened or hit. Now the repression is lifting and the fear is gradually coming back. The next step was to do something about the fear. Realizing that the adult I am now wasn’t in immediate danger standing there in the kitchen brought some relief, but not enough. The fear had been replaced by feeling helpless and lonely, I still didn’t know how to get the phone to work and stop the thoughts of “I am no good”. I longed for comforting arms, someone to understand what I was feeling, who would support me through it. Again this brought me back to my first years, how I didn’t get this comfort and support, and how my reaction had been to put all of it out of my mind because these experiences of abandonment had been too painful (mostly my father getting angry at me and yelling and hitting, whereas I looked up to him for protection and guidance, and my mother who could barely protect us children from him and found it difficult to comfort me when I needed it). This next realization, that once more it was unmet needs from the past that were affecting the present and causing these feelings, brought some more relief and I was able to go through the rest of the day without being so hard on myself when thinking of what to do with this telephone. Looking online for information on the effects of abandonment and how to recover from them, I found http://abandonment.net/articles where I read that fear of abandonment is really the primal fear and it is part of being human, and so the problem isn’t so much having this fear, as how we handle it (although people who live through extreme abandonment such as losing a parent during early childhood can be affected much more than most and it can be much more difficult for them to train to reassure themselves). Laying sleepless at 5am the next night thinking through all this, things then fell into place (most of these past 3 years I've spent doing self-work, this didn't come to me easily). Here was the idea I had been missing in order to better understand Nathaniel Branden’s statement “Nobody is coming to save you” and Marshall Rosenberg’s “It’s our responsibility to meet our own needs”. I had been thinking that I needed someone else to get reassurance from, as a child I had expected this from my mother and because she hadn’t been able to give me this past my first year I think, from around 7 I turned to looking for reassurance from girlfriends. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be able to comfort and reassure myself. I am now training to give myself the security I need and so far it seems to be working, I am feeling more energy and more calm, less worrying and less confusion. So this is an example of how this process has been progressing for me, making sense of my past and understanding my needs and beginning to take steps to meet them. If you have any suggestions or comments I’m interested in hearing them. I want to express my gratitude to Nathaniel Branden and Alice Miller and Carl Rogers and Marshall Rosenberg, whose work helped me understand the importance of feelings and emotions (otherwise I wouldn’t have recognized it was fear and helpessness and loneliness that I felt, as I couldn’t recognize or admit to these feelings in myself, before), and how to think in terms of meeting universal human needs instead of thinking in terms of morally right and morally wrong, and to learn what self-esteem is and how to develop it. I am also grateful to Wes Bertrand for introducing me to this body of knowledge and for helping me make sense of it. And I also have immense gratitude for the friend who showed interest in helping me explore my childhood and reconnect with my feelings, instead of only having an intellectual understanding of them, and thus to unlock my empathy. (That’s why I had and I think most people today have very little empathy, because of this unconscious repression defense and not because we are “sociopaths” who have no capacity for empathy). Other friends have helped me as well, such as LovePrevails and Lens here on FDR. And recently I’ve been lucky to be able to trade with a student therapist who trains on me as a test client while I get an hour of support each week for free, which I’m very happy for because I would have trouble paying for that much therapy right now. A big Thank You to all! To give you an idea of how big a change this has been for me: before having children I spent a decade reading psychology and self-help books, and the best I could find were Virgina Satir’s books, which helped me some but didn’t help me understand the mechanisms at play. I did go to therapy as well, but the 2 therapists I saw apparently didn’t understand this either. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to come across all these important ideas and these high-empathy people in recent years, which in pre-internet times were even more difficult to chance upon, I would have kept on repressing all these feelings and memories, and upon seeing that the phone was blocked I would likely have found someone else to blame and got angry at them, such as my ex-wife, thinking it was her fault for having burdened me with trivialities that had thrown off my concentration and brought about this “mistake”. Or I would have gotten angry at my children. I used to go to any length to escape recognizing my part in any mishap, because I had this overwhelming fear that I was trying hard to not become aware of.

Soon after my daughter was born, and then more after her brother came along, I started becoming very concerned with keeping everything they could possibly touch, very clean. Especially after 9/11 and all the news stories about weaponized viruses escaping from military labs, I was scared that maybe someone arriving on a plane from the other side of the planet would transfer a new illness to someone who would then travel to the nearby town and then when we went to the store the children would touch something this person had coughed on and they'd put their hands in their mouth and become ill and die. I knew this was extremely unlikely but my reasoning was, hey it could happen, and better make sure to keep their hands clean, it was a small cost relative to having them die. The problem was that this small relative cost vs death grew into a large one relative to having ease in everyday life. I would wash every last thing which was brought into the house from someplace where there was people (nature was fine, i.e. the garden, the beach and the forest, because there was nobody there so no killer man-made disease), and either I'd insist that people change clothes when coming in (family) or I would meticulously clean afterwards and during this time the children were forbidden from touching anything in the room where the visitors had been. This eventually became the second thing that got my ex-wife very frustrated, because it became very difficult to have her friends or the children's friends over (the main disagreement we had was about sending them to school, and I wasn't easy to discuss with because at the time I was full-on FDR righteous). This went on for years, and no matter how hard I tried to relax and stop myself from cleaning everything, I couldn't do it. It's only recently, as I'm getting more proficient with NVC and as something that a friend helped me understand has been sinking in, that this compulsion has been going away. I understood that it was my need for safety that was driving me to act that way, because if anything happened to my children that I could possibly have prevented by being more careful, then others would disapprove of me, and for me not having the approval of people around me meant my safety was at risk. I guess that's a strategy I came to depend on in childhood, growing up in a family where I could get attacked for doing things that my dad interpreted as attacks, from his own childhood. Also if I failed my children that way, I wouldn't be able to respect myself at all, because I would be such a failure as a parent. So understanding that it was my need for safety and for self-respect that was at risk here, because of the reasoning I was using without having consciously thought about it, helped me realize that what I was doing made perfect sense, given the premises I had. Also, learning the NVC perspective has allowed me no longer see people as enemies but instead understand that just like me they're trying to get similar needs met, often with as convoluted strategies as my own, and the result is that I no longer fear that crazy military scientists will create killer diseases, and even if they do I can now think more clearly about this without getting overwhelmed by fear and I recognize that I can't possibly protect my children from every disaster I can imagine. So the result of learning all this is that now I don't get so stressed about cleaning everything, for example I feel fine now when my son takes his headphones out of his school backpack and plugs them in the computer, I don't jump in and wipe them with alcohol anymore. I'm still careful about washing hands before preparing food and eating, I didn't go completely the opposite way, and even though it's a gradual process for me I'm confident that soon I won't be bothered by this problem anymore. Thanks for your time, I hope this story may have some value to others.

"Human action is necessarily always rational. The term 'rational action' is therefore pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented. The critic either tells us what he believes he would aim at if he were in the place of his fellow; or, in dictatorial arrogance blithely disposing of his fellow's will and aspirations, declares what condition of this other man would better suit himself, the critic."~ Ludwig von Mises

I now think that sociopaths do exist and they are maybe 5% of the population, they do want to harm others, they indeed have no empathy. I have argued the opposite before*, but I can see now how I had missed something, that it's possible to "be" a sociopath. And then change to no longer be one. So I think a lot of people do the things that sociopaths do, and whereas before I considered them not sociopaths because the way I see it they can change, I now accept that it is valid (if you like putting labels on people, which I find brings me nothing useful) to think of them as sociopaths. I think the people labelled sociopaths can develop their empathy, the reason they haven't done so and the reason they don't care for others is because of the life they've had, that got them to disconnect from their feelings. I was like that. A few years ago I thought that 99.99% of people were so dumbed down by society and school and by childhood trauma that they just couldn't help doing stupid things like destroy the environment through senseless over-comsumption and irrational behavior, and that unfortunately it was so difficult and so time consuming to get them to heal, that it made more sense to let them die. I wished for a mass catastrophe that would kill most people. For the past 3 years I've been slowly reconnecting with my feelings and developing my empathy. With the latest progress I've made over the past month, I think I'm now connected to my feelings enough that I can empathize with people most of the time. So, I recognize now that it can be true that somebody has been acting like a sociopath, is acting like a sociopath now. But to me this does not mean that they cannot change, I am convinced that giving them the empathy they need can get them to calm down and to begin to reconnect with their feelings, and learn to make sense of the world in a way that won't lead them to cutting off again. * FDR 2221 Stef's mother's table, Rehabilitating Very Violent People (not always a lost cause), To Judge or Not to Judge?" A conversation on Mor... , dry-chicken-incident

Today I remembered an incident from when I was 16 and in sailing camp on the river Thames for a month. Maybe 30 of the other children/young adults had already left and only 5 of us remained the last week. The counselor, Philip, was around 25 as far as I could tell, and I liked him, we got along fine. His girlfriend was visiting and she had prepared dinner for all 7 in the house. As we were eating Philip asked what we thought of the chicken, and I was feeling safe there, I wasn't on guard and watching myself like usual, so I didn't think and simply replied "A bit dry". At that he got really mad at me, saying how I was ungrateful and insensitive, that (I don't recall her name) had taken trouble to prepare dinner for us and all I could do was complain. I was taken aback, quite ashamed of myself for being so self-absorbed. After that I was tense the last few days and I didn't have much fun. If I had known how to talk to myself and others without always shaming or blaming, which would have allowed me to be more connected to myself, and in turn more connected to others (in other words if I had learned how to communicate more effectively*), I might have recognized that Philip's question wasn't about the food, that maybe he was a bit uncomfortable because his girlfriend was new in the group and what he really wanted was for everyone to feel at ease, and he was trying to get a conversation going. Instead of taking his question litterally I might have replied "I rather like it**, and I appreciate that (Cynthia?) prepared it for us. Are you a bit concerned perhaps that everybody's silent, and you would like us all to feel at ease and talk and have a good time together?". I believe this would have made for a much more pleasant dinner for all of us, and a more enjoyable last few days of camp after that. Of course if Philip had learned to express himself more authentically and to take more responsibility for his interpretations, that could have worked too, to make our time together more enjoyable for all. *especially NonViolent Communication, which is where I'm learning about observation vs interpretation/evaluation, and what each person is feeling, and what's important to each person right now, etc. **which was true: the slight dryness was the only problem I could find with it and it was minor for me, I liked everything else, maybe I was just trying to be helpful by giving feedback since that's how I had understood the question to be about.

Last week as I was walking back from the beach to the parking lot there was the sound of babies crying behind me. It was coming from two twins in a pram that their mother was pushing in the hot summer sun. I had passed them earlier as the parents were fastening towels to the top of the seats (one behind the other) to make some shade for the little ones. After a couple minutes of this I turned around and walked back, thinking I'd try to do something to help them feel better. The dad had stayed behind with the 3 year old who I guess wanted to walk, while the mom was hurrying to get back to the car and probably the A/C. The twins were making it known very loudly that they were unhappy, and their mother looked quite unhappy too, apparently not knowing how to provide them with relief other than by rushing to get back. She looked surprised and a bit apprehensive that I accosted her, even though I was smiling I guess I did look a bit weird, bald guy shirtless with jeans and heavy boots, a large backpack and a surfboard, but she relaxed as she understood my concern for her family and we started chatting about babies and how difficult it is sometimes to figure out exactly what it is that they need, especially when they're 6 months old and there's two of them and it's so hot out here, and maybe it was a mistake to bring them to the beach but their brother really wanted to see the ocean and he had enjoyed it very much, and it looked like they were teething maybe, and how I remember I was stressed out when my children were that age and they cried like that, especially in the evening, etc. The chit-chat turned out win-win: the babies, probably intrigued by my voice that they hadn't heard before and maybe also indirectly soothed by their mother's more relaxed voice, were now merely sobbing softly, their mom was less stressed out, and I was happy to see that I was being helpful. Not wanting to impose my presence on them too long and maybe also provoke the father into worrying about what was happening in front, I said goodbye and walked off after maybe 3 minutes, and unfortunately the crying picked up almost immediately. Both parts of the family passed me by as I was gearing up to leave and we exchanged smiles and nods, then a bit later I passed them by their car and they recognized me with the motorcycle and waved and smiled How differently this would have gone 2 or 3 years ago, before I had learned some NVC, when I might have approached the mom with a scowl and an aggressive tone and questionned her disapprovingly for how she was mistreating these two helpless babies, with thoughts like "you heartless, irresponsible idiot!" in my head...

A friend pointed me to this article: http://www.noogenesis.com/nvc/ePrime_NVC.html Here are excerpts below. I think the ideas discussed in this article make a strong case for replacing moralistic judgment with more accurate statements. Please comment if you find any mistakes in this (I am particularly interested in comments about the main point). The movie was good. He is weird. I am ugly. You are a genius! John is depressed. John is happy Each sentence appears to contain a judgment and uses a form of the verb "to be" to connect a noun subject with a noun or adjective predicate. Can the presence of the verb form "to be" in a sentence serve as a cue for judgmental statements? If so, then we may have a simple way of detecting evaluative statements in our speech and writing enabling us to take corrective action to convert them to observations. Alfred Korzybski, the founder of the field of general semantics, asserted that these particular uses of the verb "to be," promoted "demonological thinking," inaccurate perceptions of the world ultimately leading to more conflict. In 1933, in his book "Science and Sanity, he suggested we could reduce this kind of thinking if we could speak or write without using any form of the verb "to be." In 1949, his graduate student D. David Bourland, Jr., took on the challenge and successfully trained himself to speak and write without using any form of the verb "to be." In 1965, he named this subset of the English language "E-Prime," short for English Prime. ... Bourland, in his 1989 article, "To Be Or Not To Be: E-Prime as a Tool for Critical Thinking," explains E-Prime: "(1) Noun Phrase-1 + TO BE + Noun Phrase-2 (Identity) (2) Noun Phrase-1 + TO BE + Adjective Phrase-1 (Predication) where TO BE represents an appropriately inflected form of the verb "to be." Critical thinkers have argued against using statements having the structure of (1) because they immediately produce high order abstractions that lead the user to premature judgments. Consider the following example: (3) John is a farmer. The immediate consequence of such an identification at the very least brings about unjustified abbreviation. For example, consider the following three sentences about "John": (4) John farms three acres. (5) John owns and operates a 2,000-acre farm. (6) John receives $20,000 a year from the government for not growing anything on his farm. We could even carry this illustration into a different dimension: (7) John, after living in the city all his life, has just bought a farm. (8) John grew up on a farm and has farmed there for 61 years. Despite the fact that (4) through (8) make extremely different statements about "John," most English-speaking people feel comfortable making the jump from any one of (4) through (8) to (3). Critical thinkers trained in general semantics hold that (3) does not represent a valid higher order abstraction which could come from such observations as (4) through (8), but rather a possibly incorrect and certainly inadequate abbreviation of the larger picture." ...