Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We teach people, how to hear the needs
on two parts of ourselves.
One part of ourself is that part,
that evaluates what we do. Every action we take,
we need to evaluate it
about whether it meets our needs or not.
If I cook a meal for myself, I need to evaluate
did it meet my need for nurturance, taste, etc.
And if it did'nt, then I want to change that.
So whether it's something I did for myself,
or if I say something to another person,
sometimes it doesn't meet the needs of mine.
So I need to evaluate it. How do I evaluate?
If I evaluate it by attacking myself,
I say: "that was a stupid thing to do!",
we instead suggest the people,
that you evaluate what you do by whether it met
your needs or not. You'll find that you can
learn better, without loosing self-respect,
if we can learn from our mistakes by being conscious
of what need wasn't met, to begin with,
and then to understand another part of ourselves:
what need were we trying to meet by doing what we did?
So that's the same process I was saying
using between 2 groups, but I'm using it within myself
between 2 different functions within myself:
the function that evaluates what I do,
the function that choses to do what I do.
And when I evaluate them in a way
I was educated to evaluate, I'd say to myself:
"That was a stupid thing to do! How can you do
something so dumb?" And then if I look at the other side
of myself about why I do it: "I had to do it, I had no choice!"
it denies responsibility, and I can have that
going on within myself forever!
And if I do, I will have a lot of depression, guilt,
and shame, and it would be very hard to learn
from my human limitations! But if I can see the truth,
the truth is: I didn't meet this need of mine by what I did.
What need was I trying to meet?
Oh, yeah, I was trying to meet this thing.
Or it met that need, but the way I did it,
didn't meet this other need.
OK, how do I get both needs met? If I can think
in term of needs, I am far more likely to learn from my limitations,
without loosing self-respect.
In our training we suggest the people
that we look at what causes things like depression.
We look at it in a way other
than to think: "because there's something wrong with us,
that we get depressed, that that's some mental illness".
We have reasons for worrying about
the whole concept of mental illness.
We think that some people, who we call mentally ill,
they have some physical problems that affect their thinking
and their chemistry, so that they think that they're something
they're not, or they think that people are
trying to attack them that aren't.
So this can be caused by some physical disfunction
and I wouldn't wanna call them mental illnesses, I would wanna say
this person has neurological or chemical
imbalance or something.
These are the smallest percentage of people get labelled
mentally ill have those kind of problems.
The other's I think it's a very unscientific
term to use mental illness,
but worse than unscientific, by making it seem,
like people have something wrong within them.
We don't look at what really contributes
to things, like depression, and to the kind of violence
we have on the planet.
Our understanding in Nonviolent Communication is
that people get dpressed, very depressed,
because of how they are trained to think,
how they are educated to think!
And they get stuck in this thinking and depression is the result of it.
So we don't see it as an illness,
we with people who have that, we try to help them
become conscious of what you are telling yourself that's making you
so depressed and then we show them how
what you are telling yourself, the judgement
you make of yourself, simply are
resulting because a need of yours hasn't been met.
And unfortunately we haven't been educated to
get connected to the need,
so when that need isn't being met,
you go up to your head and start blaming yourself, shaming yourself,
attacking yourself. And that depression is
an inevitable result of how you think about yourself.
So we show people how to transform
that thinking about themself into
a language of love. If you say: "I shouldn't be depressed,
there's something wrong with me for being depressed,
which is what we give, the idea to people, that: "you are mentally ill,
if you are depressed, or you have bypolared illness."
They now not only have
the results of this thinking that makes them depressed,
now they think there's something wrong with them for being depressed,
so they 're doubly depressed,
because they're judging themselves for judging themselves.
So we say: "No, there's nothing wrong with you, to do that,
you think that way, 'cause you're trained to think that way."
That brings some beauty into that,
if you can see the need of yours that wasn't met behind that, you came
learn here from something, you can better meet your needs.
But if you don't get connected to the need of yours that isn't being met
you just stay up in your head, saying: " I'm a failure,
I will never amount to anything!" Or you ask yourself
unanswerable questions, such as: "Why did I do that?"
When you really know the answer, you're already
telling yourself: "I did it, 'cause I am a failure, I am a looser."
So if you just communicate that way
internally, you gonna spend a good deal of your life being depressed!
It doesn't mean that there's something wrong
with you; it means, you've been educated
to think that way.