My excessive hygiene compulsion and NVC

[Marc Moini]

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.

[Duderio]

goodbye

[Lens]

I agree with Thomas. You are escaping your childhood horrors. Your OCD shows exactly the extreme fear of your childhood. Clearly each time your feelings (pain) arise you act out on them by doing your compulsive behaviour. Welcoming and understanding your pain will undoubtedly help your children to understand theirs and relieve them from their own suffering.

One question though that crosses my mind. Were you beaten as a baby to teach you how to be clean ? You may have no conscious memory of that but your body may show you the answer, you may ask your caregivers about it and how you were raised about hygiene and about their point of view around children's hygiene. Don't waste your time with NVC and concentrate your efforts in uncovering the traumas of your childhood. When you do that you'll become empathic with yourself and your children. It is a long journey so don't procrastinate, at least do it for those children that they depend on you.

 

Here I quote Alice Miller about the NVC thing

http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=56&grp=11

 

The wide range of self-help books on non-violent communication, including the valuable and wise advice given by Thomas Gordon and Marshall Rosenberg, are undoubtedly effective if they are consulted by people who, in their childhood, were able to display their feelings without fear of rebuke and grew up in the company of adults who served them as a model for being at one with themselves. But at a later stage children with serious impairments to their identity do not know what they feel and what they really need. They have to find this out in therapy, repeatedly applying what they have learned to new experiences and thus achieving the security that tells them they are not mistaken. As children of emotionally immature or confused parents they were forced to believe that their feelings and needs were wrong. If they had been right, so they believe, then their parents would not have refused to communicate with them.

 

 

 

Good luck

 

Lens 

[LovePrevails]

aw everyone is so mean to Marc no matter what he says these days "I don't feel sorry for you even though you have serious OCD"

 

c'mon guiz I thought this was FDR, hug it out

[Hannibal]

This is weird. Why are people being so aggressive?   And why is NVC bullshit?  I think some people are too keen to see themselves as born again psycho analysts. There are lots of damaged people on these boards, and one of the trends i've seen is the tendency for damaged people to find philosophy, and suddenly feel that they are the intellectual masters of the universe, even though they mostly talk bullshit.

 

Geez... this guy admits to a real problem, explains a technique that he feels has helped him, and you guys go nuts at him for hurting his kids, even though he explains that his problems are due to wanting to protect his kids. 

 

Shame on you.

 

**edit** ... I'm making these comments without any view of the guy;s previous post history. It just occurred to me that someone could talk about "this NVC bullshit" because someone has some kind of history with it. In isolation, this thread seems really horrible.

[Stephen C]

Looks like people are saying "shame on you Marc", and there's the response "shame on you for saying "shame on you Marc".Do I have it twisted like a twizzler?Hannibal, is it possible that some people have the reaction you describe because they are wounded and are blended with Intellectual Protector Parts of themselves that work very hard to keep them safe?

[Hannibal]

Hannibal, is it possible that some people have the reaction you describe because they are wounded and are blended with Intellectual Protector Parts of themselves that work very hard to keep them safe?

 

Maybe, but having an excuse doesn't legitimise the action. I've since been given a heads-up on why people may be reacting in a way I view as harsh. I haven;t looked into it deeply because i'm not interested in judging the guy. Not that other;s necessarily shouldn't be though. 

[Stephen C]

Maybe, but having an excuse doesn't legitimise the action. I've since been given a heads-up on why people may be reacting in a way I view as harsh. I haven;t looked into it deeply because i'm not interested in judging the guy. Not that other;s necessarily shouldn't be though. 

I feel irritated. 

[LovePrevails]

can you expand on irritated?

 

 

I don't mean to say "shame on you guys" I'm just saying I didn't see any need to be unkind to Marc in this thread he's not a bad sort really

 

I give it  to Marc when he deserves it, but he hasn't aggressed against anyone he was just expressing some difficulties and peple seem to be picking on him

[Stephen C]

can you expand on irritated?

 

 

I don't mean to say "shame on you guys" I'm just saying I didn't see any need to be unkind to Marc in this thread he's not a bad sort really

 

I give it  to Marc when he deserves it, but he hasn't aggressed against anyone he was just expressing some difficulties and peple seem to be picking on him

Sure.i     r     r     i     t     a     t     e     d      But seriously, next time we chat I'll do my best to lay out what my irritation says if you want.  

[Marc Moini]

I feel sorry for your kids. Not you however.

 

You're still running away and hiding in abstractions. Forget about that buddhist NVC shit, APOLOGIZE TO YOUR KIDS, seek out a therapist, confront your childhood (not just one sentence) and change your behavior to less OCD crap.

NVC is your substitute for washing/cleaning. DON'T YOU SEE THAT?

 

Thanks for your advice, Thomas K, I'm grateful that you want to help. Would you please expand on what you wrote? I don't see how NVC is my substitute for washing/cleaning, no.

 

What I see is that I don't interfere with my children's action anymore, they're free to bring whatever they want into the house and I don't freak out over it anymore. Also I have been apologizing to them for my past mistakes for over 3 years now, and I regularly ask them if there is anything they're unhappy about in my actions, anything that would make their lives easier and/or more enjoyable that they would like me to do (whether they think I can or cannot do what they would like me to do).

 

(edit) Oh and also, NVC has nothing to do with buddhism. Though some people who are into mysticism also like NVC, NVC itself as presented by Marshall Rosenberg has none of that, as far as I can tell.

[Marc Moini]

I agree with Thomas. You are escaping your childhood horrors. Your OCD shows exactly the extreme fear of your childhood. Clearly each time your feelings (pain) arise you act out on them by doing your compulsive behaviour. Welcoming and understanding your pain will undoubtedly help your children to understand theirs and relieve them from their own suffering.

One question though that crosses my mind. Were you beaten as a baby to teach you how to be clean ? You may have no conscious memory of that but your body may show you the answer, you may ask your caregivers about it and how you were raised about hygiene and about their point of view around children's hygiene. Don't waste your time with NVC and concentrate your efforts in uncovering the traumas of your childhood. When you do that you'll become empathic with yourself and your children. It is a long journey so don't procrastinate, at least do it for those children that they depend on you.

 

Here I quote Alice Miller about the NVC thing

http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=56&grp=11

 

 

Good luck

 

Lens 

 

Hi Lens, thanks for your comment and questions and advice, just like for Thomas K I am grateful for your help!

 

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, these compulsions are now mostly in the past for me. And since my original post 2 weeks ago I've made still more progress, for example right now my son is using a mouse he brought from his mom's and he's eating lunch at the same time, and I don't feel any anxiety or other unpleasant feeling whereas before I would have been compelled to clean the mouse and to ask him to wash his hands after taking it out of his backpack. Two weeks ago I was able to resist the compulsion but I felt uneasy.

 

I don't remember feeling any pain associated with these compulsions, it was anxiety. Thanks for bringing up the possibility that these compulsions have their root in my childhood, I hadn't thought about that because they only appeared after I turned 35. I did live in fear much of the time as a child, however it wasn't specifically about cleanliness, it was about doing anything that my dad would get angry over, which included making what he would consider loud noises at the wrong times, or pretty much any other action or inaction when he was already irritated. I don't recall being beaten or even feeling unusual fear in any situation involving being clean, though as you point out it may well have happened. I'm not aware of any effects of childhood traumas on my behavior today, aside from remnants of these compulsions, at least nothing that bothers me. If you (or anyone) see anything I'm missing, please let me know!

 

I understand you have a low opinion of NVC, for me however it has proved immensely helpful, along with the work of Nathaniel Branden. I am much more empathetic towards myself and others now, as a result of learning NVC over the past 3 years, and I am very satisfied with what it has brought me and is continuing to bring me. Please let me know if you would like me to explain why I think Alice Miller was mistaken on her evaluation of NVC.

 

Again, thanks!

[Rob_Ilir]

Salut MarcI am happy to hear about your improvements. Now that you know how to control your anxiety, how about that call in to the show?

 

I would call it a measurable action of improvement.  

[Marc Moini]

This is weird. Why are people being so aggressive?   And why is NVC bullshit?  I think some people are too keen to see themselves as born again psycho analysts. There are lots of damaged people on these boards, and one of the trends i've seen is the tendency for damaged people to find philosophy, and suddenly feel that they are the intellectual masters of the universe, even though they mostly talk bullshit.

 

Geez... this guy admits to a real problem, explains a technique that he feels has helped him, and you guys go nuts at him for hurting his kids, even though he explains that his problems are due to wanting to protect his kids. 

 

Shame on you.

 

**edit** ... I'm making these comments without any view of the guy;s previous post history. It just occurred to me that someone could talk about "this NVC bullshit" because someone has some kind of history with it. In isolation, this thread seems really horrible.

 

Hi Hannibal, as you've been told I think, one reason some people are wary of what I say is because they perceive me as insincere. At least that's what I've been able to piece together. And one reason they perceive me as insincere is I guess that much of what I wrote on previous threads doesn't make sense to them.

 

Thanks for your efforts towards restoring understanding and civility, I appreciate it.   

Salut MarcI am happy to hear about your improvements. Now that you know how to control your anxiety, how about that call in to the show?

 

I would call it a measurable action of improvement.  

 

Salut Rob

 

Thanks! As I wrote earlier elsewhere, I'll call in to the show if I'm left with no other alternatives to communicate with Stef, but I prefer to talk without the time pressure for Stef of being on the show. I have contacted him about having a chat, I'll ask again, I hope we can do this sometime in the next week or two.

 

(edit) And when I contacted Stef I said I'm fine with having the talk made public, and I'm fine if Stef wants to have others on the call as well. I'll be glad to talk live on a Google public hangout, for example, where our audio and video gets uploaded to YouTube live.

[Lens]

Hi Marc,

 

My answer will be long sorry for that in advance

 

I do not have a low esteem of NVC at the contrary I love NVC and I find it a good way to satisfy our needs in the present.

The problem resides with the childhood unmet needs that have not been emotionally acknowledged and recognized and also fully grieved. One of the unmet need that is important in my view is the need to be loved by our caretakers for who we really are and that didn't happen. Most of our caretakers loved the mask that we put on so we can please them and to avoid their punishment, that mask is our false self it is a way to survive childhood adversities but consumes us in the present as adults.

 

I am glad that your compulsion toward hygiene has lessened it is a relief in itself

 

In the quote of Alice Miller and from my understanding of her she wanted to say that those advice are valuable and good but they would be inefficient to uncover and heal our childhood trauma. In my view we may benefit from NVC in achieving healing but NVC itself doesn't heal but bring a certain relief (substitute for childhood pain). We need a deep investigation and deeply feeling our childhood pain and only us we can heal ourselves. Nathaniel Branden said that no one will come to save you and I can tell you that Marshall Rosenberg will not save you either or any other teacher or author only you can save yourself.

 

Personally I use whatever means and information to achieve this self knowledge including NVC which I used several months ago and tried it in real life. 

 

Marc, in my view all compulsions emanate from a childhood unmet needs (emotional pain) therapy can help you to recognize and name those unmet needs. I think the first need we have in the present is the need to feel our deepest feelings as an example is when you have a compulsive action that you want to do and you feel you cannot hold yourself from doing it like compulsive eating or gardening or anything that you feel you have to do is a sign that your inner child is calling for attention and at that moment step back and try to feel what is behind that action what is the root of that action with feelings not with thinking, meditate and ask yourself what would happen if I do not do that action and go back to check your feelings and body sensations and also check the anxiety (fear) and try to feel it and still ask yourself what is the need behind that action what is that you want to satisfy by doing the same thing over and over. The more you do this the more you will get close to the inner child and his pain and less you will have to do compulsive acting out.

 

As humans we do not like pain whether emotional pain or physical pain our nature as humans tend to dissociate ourselves from it and we did that as specie for thousands of years we passed it on from a generation to generation. We learnt to not to feel pain or express it with emotions and we've gone further by using medication and science to cement the collective denial of childhood abuse.  Healing is at the opposite of denial and dissociation, healing is welcoming the pain and expressing it with tears and anger like John Bradshaw said once "the only way out is through" through the pain.

 

 

Here I quote an anonymous person that I found his post on Internet

 

Today's conventional therapies mistakenly reinforces the anxiety/depression/neurosis in patients by using tools of concern, listening, care, guidance, and advice. The implication is that you can have good intentions and "love" depression away. If this fails, the therapist uses the more direct means of quelling pain (which is really an old unfulfilled need) by prescribing tranquilizers. A therapist who tries to build a patient's self-esteem by telling her/him, "You really are capable, you know," is actually encouraging the patient to block out her REAL feeling of "I'm bad. People don't love me because I'm worthless." By trying to "love" pain away by being "nice," the therapist is fighting reality. A reality which needs to be owned and felt by the patient, if true healing is to occur. The therapist is, very literally, functioning as the tranquilizer for the patient. We can get addicted to this kind of love - reassuring warmth by a therapist - because it is always a SUBSTITUTE fulfillment of need (the early lack of love). To receive warmth in the present is still to keep love out because the old pain of being unloved in childhood REMAINS INTACT (repressed, and physically imprinted). It is the pain of feeling NO LOVE (as it was very early on in life) which lifts repression and lets love in in the present (that's a very important sentence). Love in the present, paradoxically, reinforces the system of repression and keeps "unloved" from being felt. It is only by feeling this pain of not being loved (at age two for example) that we release ourselves from the illusion of our past, and the torment of our present lives. The aim of any therapy should only be to give the patient BACK his true self. No therapy can ever do more than that.

 

 

Je te souhaite bonne chance

 

Lens

[Marc Moini]

Hi Lens,

 

Thanks for explaining, I understand better now, and I am grateful for your help and advice. You would like me to ask myself which needs are behind the actions I feel compelled to take, not just the surface needs but the deep ones, to use feelings to get in touch with these instead of, or maybe in addition to, trying to use thinking. Because to you this is what makes it possible to reach the inner child who is still suffering from pain from not getting essential needs met in the past, and because without feeling this pain it is not possible to heal.

 

And that for many people, because of the culture we grew up in, this pain comes from not having received the love we needed in our first years, not having been seen for who we truly are because acknowledging us as real people was too difficult for our caregivers due to their own confusion and unprocessed pain from their own childhood, I guess.

 

I like the image you give of the way out being through the pain or through the fear, rather than in any kind of avoidance of it. I hadn't thought of it this way but it matches well with my own experience. For me one of the main obstacles was to recognize that I had this fear, I was so afraid of it that I wouldn't admit to myself that I felt fear. Because until discovering that there is another way of thinking about myself and my actions than me being either good or bad, either acceptable and worthy to live or unacceptable and not deserving to stay alive, I was trapped in a mental prison of right and wrong from which I saw no way to escape. That's why I am so eager to let others know what the benefits of NVC could be for them (actual NVC, not the strawman image it seems to me people have of it here), it's because I know the relief I received and I would like more people to receive similar relief, when I see them suffering as I was. I regret that I wasn't experienced enough to succeed at this over the past year here.

 

Merci, bonne chance à toi aussi!

Marc

Oh, and again I forgot to say that I don't advocate letting go of reality and falling into a mystic view of existence where any which whim is as valid as any other. On the contrary, as I see it now, looking at life using a right/wrong perspective is the main component of our culture, and I am sad that Stef and others here who are so keen on discarding illusions and getting a firm grasp of reality apparently do not realize that they are still using this perspective which to me is so much part of our culture and inaccurate and really the root of all our problems. I wish I could explain better how I see thinking in terms of right/wrong "more clearly" irrelevant, because it is still thinking in the way we've been taught to see and think. 

[Lens]

Marc,

 

Thanks for your message. It shows that you understand intellectually what I meant by looking for what is the need (or unmet need) behind a compulsive action in the present. 

 

Since you have children it is impossible for you to not to abuse them emotionally and/or physically because you still protect your parents by not feeling deeply the hurt you have gone through in your early life and having children around you while you are in this state is like turning gold (your children) into lead. There is still a chance that you can save yourself and save your children from denial and the cycle of abuse.

 

I think that what saddens people here the most is that you have children which they are dependent on you not by choice but by the nature of things. That is why I urge you to do something valuable for you and for them. You still can save them and save yourself by going into therapy that promotes deep feelings and choosing a therapist that doesn't protect your/his/her parents. 

 

Concerning your parents, I feel that you are still looking for excuses for them and trying to understand why they did what they did to you. Send your parents to theirs and look for the pain inside of you and work on that, your parents are not your responsibility by any mean and stand by  your inner child and your real children those are your responsibility.

 

You have the chance to have children that can show you what feelings of a child are and you can see what you lacked in your childhood and you can grieve your losses.

 

Stef or others may not like you, and that in my view is irrelevant because it is only your self-love and self-worth that is the most important thing to you that your children can be inspired by it. Only you can meet your unmet needs for respect and love. You may also project your unmet needs on your children to meet them. For example you want them to love you because of your unmet need of love that lacked in your childhood. So do not waste your time in looking who loves and who loves you not. It is a childish game that leads to a bigger void and the loss of the real self. If you do not heal you will raise narcissistic, psychopathic and codependent children and I am sure you do not want that stain on your hands. Because you know it is crime to destroy someone else's life. Forget the guilt and take responsibility so you and your family can move on with a happier and more fulfilling life.

 

About empathy I wanted to add something here. When you allow your true feelings to emerge whatever their intensity is, you become a feeling person and true empathy may show up. Now what I think you are doing is to learn empathy. It's like learning and reading about sadness but you will truly know it only when you feel it instead of reading about it in books. Learning and experiencing are two different things.

 

Overcome your fear of your parents and start to feel you'll see everything will change around you. It will take time and it is worth it.

 

There are books in French that you may benefit from I can give you some titles here.

 

La Féssée - Oliver Maurel

Oui, La Nature Humaine Est Bonne - Olivier Maurel

Le Drame de l'Enfant Doué - Alice Miller

Ta Vie Sauvée Enfin - Alice Miller

 

 

Good luck

 

Lens

[Marc Moini]

Antony and Stephen, thanks for your comments as well, I appreciate them!

[Marc Moini]

Lens,

 

Thanks again for explaining how you are perceiving what I wrote, and for the help you are offering.

 

I understand better why people here get so upset with me, if they believe, like you seem to be believing, that I am harming my children.

 

This is not the case anymore, I am not harming them, neither through not having made sense of my own childhood issues as I did do before 2010, nor in any other way. I repeat, I am not harming my children, not in any way that I am aware of, not in any way that they tell me, not in any way that my friends tell me. I don't know why I have so much trouble making this clear here. It's been 3 years now that I have been having the same sort of relationship with both of them that I have with my friends, with just as much mutual respect and care and understanding. I don't impose any restrictions on them, no sleep time, nothing, the thought doesn't even cross my mind just like it wouldn't occur to me to try to limit my friends' freedom in any way.

 

So I appreciate the fact that you are trying to help me, but I would also appreciate if you explained why you seem to think I need this help, why don't believe me when I say that I'm fine now because my problems are in the past. Maybe there are things I'm not seeing, but in that case please tell me on what evidence you are basing your assertions that I am harming my children, and that I fear my parents, and that I don't have empathy, and that I haven't felt deeply the pain from the hurt I went through in early life, and that I am perpetuating the cycle of abuse. I don't even have these compulsions anymore, two weeks ago they were already waning and now they're gone.

 

My Skype handle is marc_moini, if you want to talk with me on video to get a better sense of whether I still suffer from childhood wounds or whether I am now healthy.

 

Thanks,

Marc

[Duderio]

goodbye 

[Lens]

I think what it is scary to most us is when we open our eyes and see the truth because it is most of the time overwhelming we wanna close them back but then it is too late we have seen enough and we are not able to go back to the old system but yet we still have to advance and continue the journey to see more and more of these truths and feel our real self our childhood suffering then we leave the old and unsatisfying rules, habits and defenses and see the world for the first time for its beauty but sometimes as it is, raw, ugly and dysfunctional everywhere but this time we are not afraid neither alone we have ourselves and that is the best gift someone can give to oneself. It is not possible to see this without feeling the feelings of the child we once were to be able see things with no idealizations and no makeups. Could it be that some still are on the fine line between repression and awareness, in an in and out movement because of fear of seeing the unthinkable and keeping childhood feelings of pain and anger at bay? I think there is a lot to learn about ourselves when repression is lifted or partially lifted so we realize that our scariest feelings and emotions actually didn't kill us but opened our eyes.

 

I hope more people in the near future will have the necessary courage and remember their past and see it and feel it. I am committed to myself to just doing that no matter what.

 

Here I quote a passage that I love from the book "The Drama of The Gifted Child" by Alice Miller

 

Once the therapeutic process has started, it will continue if it is not interrupted by interpretations or other types of intellectual defense. The suffering person begins to be articulate and breaks with her former compliant attitudes, because of her early experience she cannot believe she is not incurring mortal danger; if she fears rejection and punishment when she defends her rights in the present. The patient is surprised by feelings she would rather not have recognized, but now it is too late: Awareness of her own impulses has been aroused, and there is no going back.

 

 

Thank you Thomas, I enjoyed reading your answers very much and good luck to you Marc.

 

Lens

[Marc Moini]

Thomas K,

 

You're quite angry with me from what I can tell, maybe because you find what I have been writing here makes no sense to you, and is an example of what you think is causing violence and unhappiness in the world.

 

I'll be glad to talk with you on video if you want, to maybe understand each other better, because I doubt anything I write here will reach you. I'm marc_moini on Skype.

 

I'll try this one thing though:

 

WHY I PERSONALLY THINK THAT NVC IS BULLCRAP

"All human beings share the same needs : NO, some people want to be rich, some want to be famous, some want to have a family, some want to travel the world for their entire life. Given the diverse set of needs, this foundational theory is completely wrong."

 

It seems to me you are not aware that "needs" here does not have the common meaning it has in English, just like when economists say "land" they give this word a different meaning than the common one. In NVC, wanting to be rich or famous or to have a family or travel the world, these are not "needs", they might be strategies for meeting needs. It's a fundamental concept which I had a lot of trouble understanding.

 

If you are interested enough to take the time to learn the meaning of "needs" in NVC, I think you'll understand what you quoted in a different manner. In addition to I hope, benefit in many other ways.

[Duderio]

goodbye

[TDB]

I'd like to help Marc, but I don't know how. I admire his tenacity.

 

I suspect Thomas K could profit by thinking about things a bit more calmly, and when something someone says/writes can be interpreted in more way than one, might prefer not to assume they intend the most nonsensical meaning. I'm pretty sure he has heard other people apply that approach to ideas that are popular on FDR. If we get so eager to refute something that we attack without understanding fully, we may miss the point. 

 

I want to understand the Alice Walker quote better. I would paraphrase it as, Gordon's and Rosenberg's books may help certain people a lot, might help everyone a bit, but some people have problems that require help from a therapist to solve. On the one hand, I doubt that studying NVC, or psych more generally, and just trying to work on your self-knowlege and self-empathy on your own is such a great idea. On the other hand, some people lack funds, others are reluctant to seek therapy for whatever reason, and others seek therapy but end up with a bad therapist, and the self-help approach beats inaction. 

[Marc Moini]

We will see about the benefit thing, but explain to me how a USMC solider and civilians in Afghanistan (his victims) have the same needs? Please give me the definition,

 

OK, I'll try. As I understand it from NVC, in order to survive both need air and water and food and rest, and in order to be healthy they also both need movement/exercise and shelter. The rest of the needs in the category of physical well-being, in order to have a satisfying life as a human being, include safety and touch (touching someone else, being touched by someone else) and sexual expression (it may be possible to do without, but we're talking about what is needed for a fully satisfying life).

 

Then both of these people have other needs that also must be met, again from my understanding of NVC, if they are to thrive rather than merely survive (I think the purpose of NVC is to help us live a life that is fully satisfying). These other needs can be classified in the following 6 categories, although other categorizations are possible. The goal of this list is not 100% correctness but to help us be aware that we have "needs" or "longings" or "motivational factors", however you prefer to call them, that give rise in us to pleasant or unpleasant feelings as a mechanism for keeping us doing the things that have brought us this far in evolution. 

 

Connection needs: acceptance, appreciation, cooperation, communication, community, companionship, compassion, consideration, consistency, empathy, intimacy, love, mutuality, nurturing, respect/self-respect, safety, security, stability, support, to see and be seen, to understand and be understood, trust, warmth (and more, I've omitted some)

 

Honesty needs: authenticity, integrity, presence

 

Play needs: joy, humor

 

Peace needs: beauty, communion, ease, equality, harmony, inspiration, order

 

Meaning needs: awareness, celebration of life, challenge, clarity, competence, consciousness, contribution, creativity, discovery, efficacy, effectiveness, growth, hope, learning, mourning, participation, purpose, self-expression, stimulation, to matter, understanding

 

Autonomy needs: choice, freedom, independence, space, spontaneity

 

 

I'm loosely quoting here from Gregg Kendrick, a Certified Trainer: 'In NVC, we try to identify the "universal human needs" that are common to all human beings. We distinguish these fundamental needs from more specific (they include one or more reference to a Person, Location, Action, Time, Object) wants and desires which reflect strategies to fulfill these needs.'

 

The distinction of "needs" vs. "strategies" is crucial in NVC, because when we realize which needs we are trying to meet by following a given strategy, it opens the possibility to still meet the same need but with another strategy that might also better meet our other needs or the needs of other people, thus making it easier to find strategies that result in everybody's needs getting met, i.e. win-win.

 

Does this help make it clearer to you how in NVC we see all human beings as having the same needs? For me it took over 2 years to understand what "needs" are, so I know it can be difficult.

[Duderio]

goodbye

[Marc Moini]

Thomas K, what I understand is that in your view what Rosenberg says is illogical and naive and in fact dangerous.

 

And you fear that if you don't protect yourself against the very real dangers you see around you, you could end up getting seriously hurt.

 

At least these are my guesses. The reason why I didn't reply to your questions is, as I wrote before, that I believe you will not hear them until you no longer see me as your enemy. That's why I offered to talk on video, because I see more a chance of showing this to you that way. But you refused, which is fine with me of course.

 

I see Rosenberg as empathizing very much with victims of wars, including WWII. Just because he also wants to be able to understand Hitler's perspective doesn't change this in any way, for me.

 

As to Rosenberg's writing on spirituality, the way I understand them is that it is an invitation to religious people, not an admission that he himself is religious. I see him as being very careful on how he expresses himself on this subject, in order to find common ground without going against his own values. I think to him spirituality means the same things that it means to Nathaniel Branden, which is very different from any religious belief, the way I understand it.

[Rob_Ilir]

Salute Marc 

Can you tell me about your relationship with your parents, your upbringing, and your feelings about the divorce?

Extra points for rtr. 

[Marc Moini]

Rob_Ilir, sure, on Skype?

[Rob_Ilir]

Here is fine, Marc.

[Marc Moini]

Well if you don't want to talk on video then ask me very specific questions please, because I've already written pages and pages (did you read what I already wrote about my parents and my upbringing and my feelings about the divorce, on the Stef's mother's table thread?) about these things and I don't want to be writing them again and still not answer your questions.

[LovePrevails]

copy and paste for freshness, it will be useful for you to have it all compiled together in one place anyway.

 

Marc is about as popular on FDR as a bigmac at vegan potluck.

[Marc Moini]

Can you tell me about your relationship with your parents, your upbringing, and your feelings about the divorce?

 

Well if you don't want to talk on video then ask me very specific questions please, because I've already written pages and pages (did you read what I already wrote about my parents and my upbringing and my feelings about the divorce, on the Stef's mother's table thread?) about these things and I don't want to be writing them again and still not answer your questions.

 

I'm annoyed that you didn't answer, because I'm not sure this is the best use of my time, but I'll still write a little about each subject, in case I learn something or it leads to something else that I value.

 

Relationship with my parents. Well my father is no longer here as far as I know, if he is alive then he is between 90 and 93 years old and unable to contact me, and I have no idea how to find him, I've tried everything I could think of short of going to Iran and looking there, which I don't think is very realistic for me to try until the wars in the area stop. Until the letters stopped arriving about 10 years ago, we were writing or talking on the phone only about twice a year, because he couldn't find a way to come here and not lose all of his life savings and end up dependent on his family, which was unacceptable to him given the culture he was raised in. So now it's just my mom. We have a video chat each week, along with my brother and sister and some of my nieces and nephews. A few weeks ago I was hesitating whether to go visit her or not, and I would have gone if I could afford to more easily and if I didn't have so many other things I also want to do with my time. I feel free to talk with her about everything, and I do, and I believe it's the same way for her. She's 22 years older than me and she was raised in a very different manner, with much less attention to her needs than what I was lucky enough to get, so we don't think alike on many things, but we are still able to understand each other, it seems to me.

 

My upbringing. I have a brother who's 1.5 years younger, and a sister who's 1.5 year younger than him. I have happy memories of roller skating with them, and doing various other activities together, like playing with building blocks, with guinea pigs, climbing trees, building furniture forts in the living room. I was afraid of my father's short temper, he would get mad when there was a sudden noise or a similar disturbance and he would yell and hit us if we stayed around when it started. My mom would interpose herself and try to get him to calm down and often she would then get yelled at (not hit though), which scared me as well. But in general my parents were quite affectionate with each other and with us, until our family life stopped when I was 13 (because of the events in Iran) they used to nap on the sofa, each on one side and with us children nestling against one or the other. I stopped doing this when I was around 8 or 9 I think, because by then I preferred to play. On weekend mornings when we were younger us 3 children would also rendez-vous in our parent's bed and climb all over them while they were waking up, with our dad catching us when we jumped from the top of his raised legs and things like that. My dad worked as an architect for the city and when I turned 11 my mom started working part-time as a secretary. They would take us to various restaurants from time to time, and in the summer we took a few trips around the country, mostly to the shore of the caspian see because my dad liked the water. Each weekend we would go to either the desert or the mountains near Tehran, or to a park, and enjoy lots of outdoor activities. Later on my dad bought a large garden 20 miles west of Tehran, and this became our playground for the last 4 years. It was full of fruit trees, and there was also an irrigation basin that we used as a swimming pool, and often many relatives on my dad's side would join us there and prepare traditional food while all the children played together. The only downside for me was the presence of scorpions and tarentulas, which I was really scared of, and I think this may have been a precursor to my OCD.

I started going to school after I turned 3, I didn't like the first 2 schools but I was happy with the 3rd one, where I started going when I was 5. It was a bilingual school, French and Farsi, and many of the children had french or belgian, swiss, canadian parents. There were also some from Lebanon and from Zaire, who had escaped the wars there. Few from Vietnam and Cambodia. So I grew up in a multicultural environment which was much more open-minded than a lot of other places, I believe. I had many friends at school, and a few close ones. I used to have top grades, not because my parents wanted me to but because I enjoyed myself at school.

There was a lot of pressure on me however from my dad for how I should behave, I was expected to be a role model for my younger siblings. He was the 5th of 7 children if I remember correctly, and my mom is an only child. I think this was a major factor in my unease growing up, I thought I wasn't acceptable as I was and I had to be someone else.

When I was 13 my mom decided to bring us children to France because the situation in Iran was becoming too worrying. I didn't like it at all, I missed the sun and the outdoors and our home and my friends and my toys and the life we had, I lost it all and instead got the dreary confined grey of Paris, my new school looked and felt like a prison and some of the children at school even spit on me because I was so far ahead of everyone in school "achievement" that it made them look so bad. I hated school in Paris. My interest turned first to pistol shooting, then to computers, this was the time of the Apple ][ and that world became my world from then on. I had no interest in girls, I was still heartbroken from having been separated from the one I loved when her family left Tehran 6 months before us, and I didn't know where she was or how to find her. That was another instance of quasi-abandonment for me, after being left alone and scared in a hospital room when I was 3, which had made me lose a lot of the trust I had in my parents.

So the years from 13 to 18 I spent mostly absorbed playing with computers, living in a 2 bedroom public housing apartment on the 13th floor with my mother and brother and sister, and my maternal grandparents. My grandmother used to be a factory worker and my grandfather worked an office job in a large (for France) nationalized conglomerate, he had lost an arm at 14 working in a printing press (he was an orphan from WWI) and he was quite proud to have managed to get this job. They were modest people quite settled in their ways and this invasion of their home was difficult for them, but they tried to accommodate us as best they could. I liked them and we got along fine, but the result was still oppressive for me. It was most difficult for my mom, who was depressed for years after also losing the life she enjoyed so much back in Iran. My brother dove into studies and coped that way, while my sister rebelled and was miserable for years as well before my mom finally managed to send her for a year in the US, where my sister then found a way to stay and live a happier life than what was awaiting her in Paris. I had just come back from a year in the US myself as an exchange student, after I turned 18, and my sister asked my mom to go too, even though she was only 16. We received no money from my dad, because everything he had was locked down by the new regime in Iran, and since my mom was depressed she had a lot of trouble getting a job, though she did in the end. We lived on very little during these years, all our clothes were second hand and food was where most of the money went. To send me to the US she sold the violin she had from her childhood, which was the only valuable she or her parents had, and to send my sister I don't know how she did it, I'll ask her.

 

My feelings about the divorce. Sadness and regrets, but also relief and calm. I didn't want it, I wanted to fix the problems we had, which I think were mainly from a breakdown in communication. I didn't love my ex-wife, not because I didn't want to but because I couldn't, I was disconnecting from my feelings (because the way I had learned to think caused unbearable pain and I didn't know it was possible to think any other way) from the breakup with that girl I was in love with since when I was 11, whom I finally found again when I was 19, but also because again the way I was thinking simply resulted in pain (as it does for most people, including Stef and you and almost everyone else here, I think). But even though I didn't know how to love my ex-wife I tried to, and if this had been an earlier epoch and I hadn't heard about anarchism or unschooling, we would probably still be together and I would be still disconnected and thus half-happy and half-unconscious (compared to now. I'm not claiming to be fully conscious or fully problem-free, part of the reason I write this is to find out if there's more I can fix in myself). I saw the divorce as a failure, my failure as a parent, and it still breaks my heart to think of how difficult it has been and still very much is, for my children. They're both dealing with it in their own way, and it hasn't been all negative, but I wish I had spared them this. I don't know how I could have though, when their mom and I have such opposite views on how to raise children and in fact how to relate to people in general, and to our own person. Aside from never learning about all the ideas I value now, or thinking that somehow I should have found them 15 years before I did, what is there? It's not like I wasn't looking to learn and understand and improve myself, I have always been very interested in this. After the breakup when I was 20, I thought I had already rebuilt my mind from scratch, but I just didn't know about all the ideas I've found since. Blaming myself for having failed my children led me to depression and to the brink of suicide, but now that I've learned more, Nathaniel Branden's ideas on self-esteem and especially NVC, I look at what happened as regrettable but also as an opportunity for everyone involved to be far happier than we could have been before.

[Stephen C]

Thank you for sharing, Marc.How do you feel after typing this all out?

[Marc Moini]

You're welcome, Stephen.

 

After typing this I felt calm, and satisfied.

 

It's only now that I feel annoyance, when you ask me this, because I interpret your question as you thinking that there's something wrong with me. I would like some recognition for how this is not the first time I've said these things, it's not even the first time I've written them on FDR, as far as I remember, and I've reflected on all this many times and with help from others too. So asking me how I feel, as if I hadn't thought before about how I feel about all this, seems to me either purposefully demeaning, or naive. Just like Rob_Ilir's question.

 

Remembering your previous questions to me however, I wonder if maybe I'm misinterpreting. Perhaps that's not what you're thinking. In that case I'm curious to know what you are thinking, what your purpose was in asking me this, if you don't mind saying.

 

I want to say also that regardless of everything else, I appreciate this discussion.