So the fundamental principle—which Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Communication, didn’t invent; he learned it from his teachers, from people like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow—this underlying perspective that comes out of humanistic psychology, as you’re well aware of, is that part of what makes us human is that we are motivated in life to fulfill or satisfy certain fundamental underlying needs.
I’ll say more about what’s meant by that word “need” in a moment, but what this does is, one, it empowers us in our own life to identify what’s actually driving us. What’s really important to me? If I don’t know that, I am bound to habitually and perhaps even compulsively repeat the same behaviors, not actually knowing why I’m even doing it.
On a relational level, it allows me to see something more fundamental to another person’s humanity than their actions or views. This is at the heart of compassion and nonviolence. This is what enables us to actually fulfill the vision that Dr. King had, based on the teachings of Jesus, of how do you love your enemies? How do you love your neighbor when they’re doing things that are actively harming your family or community?
We have to learn to see one another in a different way. So focusing on what matters means, one, I am able to identify what I need, what I value, what’s important to me and my community. And two, to see beyond the surface of another human being to something deeper in their heart, what actually matters to them that I can get behind, that I can support, because it’s so deep that it’s shared. It reveals the common ground.
So what’s meant by a “need” is not the usual cultural associations we might have with that word. I’m being needy, self-centered, demanding—or the opposite, in our individualistic culture, if I have needs, I’m somehow weak and dependent. What we mean by that are these fundamental, underlying motivating factors, these qualities in our heart that we care about.
So I like to talk about three different layers of needs that we all have as human beings, and the first—and please feel free to jump in here and interrupt me at any point, if I’m going on too long here. The first is what we all recognize as our basic human needs, physiological needs for food, air, water, shelter, clothing, medicine, et cetera. And no one would argue that we as human beings need those to survive.
But the reality is that we are more than our bodies. And part of what makes us human is that we don’t just stop there. We have what we might call “relational” needs. We have a whole limbic part of our brain that is about relationship and connection. So we need love. We need understanding. We need connection, community, belonging, touch, play, all of these things that we experience in relationship.
And we know that babies and infants will actually not—their neurology will not develop properly without empathy and love and touch. And the same holds true for us as adults that there’s only so long we can go as an adult without love and acknowledgment and understanding before there’s some real damage, before we start to lose it and do something hurtful and crazy as we so sadly see all around us in the world.
So we have relational needs, and then we also have what we might call “spiritual” needs or “higher” needs, which, again, is this understanding that there is a part of human consciousness, the human psyche, that is beyond the material plane. We have needs that we cannot fulfill or satisfy just through the physical world. We have needs for meaning, for purpose, for peace, for a sense of transcendence or communion.
And so the more we are aware of and in touch with these qualities and aspects of our life as human beings, the more vitality we experience, the more choice and agency we have, and the more creative we can be about how to transform our world and work together to craft a different future for our children.
TS: So let’s say, Oren, someone’s listening and they’re like, “I can pretty much articulate what my basic human needs are. I know what those are. And I’m even somewhat in touch with what my relational needs are, but I’m not sure I understand or know and can easily articulate what these spiritual or higher needs are in myself and also how I can see them in someone else.” How I can say, “Oh, I get it. I get where this person’s coming from. I get what their need is.” How can you help us? I mean, you talk about how this is a training, it’s learnable. How do I really learn about how to identify my own needs at all three levels and see what someone else is needing?
OJS: Sure. Yes. Thanks. Great question. So yes, it is a training and it’s a graduated training. So it starts by just developing our vocabulary. There’s all kinds of fascinating research about how you can’t experience something if you don’t have a word for it, kind of like how language mediates our experience of reality and all that.
So if we don’t have a concept or a word to describe our needs, it’s very difficult to be aware of them. So that’s why in Nonviolent Communication, we provide these, really, I think, powerful and radical lists called a “needs list” where you can actually look at this list of words and reflect on it and be like, “Oh, wow. Yes, I need encouragement. I could use some reassurance. Wow, I really value belonging and community and peace.”
So just familiarizing ourself with the concepts is a starting point. That’s the foundation. And then beginning to actually practice during the day, asking ourself, as often as we like or can remember, like, “What matters to me here? What do I need?” And this could be when we’re actually doing something. So we’re here working, working, and get up. Next thing you know, you’re standing in front of the refrigerator or the snack cupboard and reaching for something. You just pause, “Wait, oh, what do I need? Am I hungry? Or do I need some pleasure? Do I need some relaxation? Do I need a break? What deeper need am I trying to fulfill?”
So we can just ask ourself that question throughout the day as a way of learning how to shift the focus of our attention, from what we call in Nonviolent Communication “our strategies,” which are the specific behaviors and actions we undertake as human beings, to the underlying need. “What’s driving this? What am I really reaching for in my heart here?” The more we do that, the more familiar we get with some of these factors.
Now, the tricky part is that, by the time we’re probably eight or nine years old and then from there on, we’ve all internalized a whole bunch of messages about whether or not we’re even allowed to have needs and which needs are OK for us to have based on the gender we’ve been socialized into, our class, our education background, our culture or religious background.
So for me, being identified as a man, it was OK for me to feel angry and to have certain needs, but it wasn’t OK for me to feel scared or vulnerable or to want reassurance or connection. Those were things that our culture and society shamed me for as a young boy. As we learn to identify our needs, we encounter barriers that are about how we’ve been socialized, which often come with very painful emotions and past experiences that take time and energy and effort to heal, to recognize the pain and the loss and the sadness of being told that you don’t matter. “You’re not entitled to this. You’re being selfish. What about other people?”
And to actually start to reexamine and reclaim what it means to be fully human and that to have needs doesn’t mean that other people’s needs don’t matter or become invisible. In fact, the more we are able to identify and acknowledge our own needs, the more aware and sensitive we become of others’ needs. It’s when we don’t allow ourselves to have our own needs that we tend to shame and blame and guilt others for asking for things.
Because if I don’t allow myself, say for example, to ask for support, to get help when I need it, and then you come to me and ask for help, there’s a part of my heart that’s going to be like, “Well, why do you get to have it? I don’t get to have that. Suck it up.” Or we start to believe the opposite, that my sense of self-worth is determined by how much I can help others.
So we internalize all these messages, and all of this comes to the surface as we start to explore what our needs actually are and can be very challenging. So that’s also a very important part of the journey.
And then finally, where some of the real transformation happens is about the energy of contraction, or what we would say in Buddhism, we would call grasping or attachment around our needs. We start to learn the difference between feeling completely defined by or oppressed by a certain need that “I have to have this. And if I don’t have it, it’s not going to be OK.” Or the reverse, “I’ve never had this, and I never will.” For some of that contraction in the heart to start to loosen and to begin to have a different relationship with our needs, one that’s based on awareness and compassion, where we can start to recognize, “This is part of what it is to be human. I value this. I long for it. It feels vulnerable, and it’s OK. It’s OK if it’s not totally fulfilled the way I want it to be, because I have a relationship with it, because I am honoring its presence and existence in my heart as a beautiful aspect of being human and being alive.”
When we can start to develop that kind of mature and wise relationship with our needs, we have a lot more space and flexibility in our life, in our relationships. Because I can come to somebody else and say, “Hey, I really value this connection, spending time together, and it would be so lovely for me to share that with you.” And the pressure, the anxiety, the demanding nature of “I have to have this from you, or else” can start to quiet because we have our own inner foundation of understanding and well-being around those needs, recognizing that if this person can’t fulfill or satisfy this for me, number one, there are a lot of other people in the world and I have other strategies and ways of fulfilling it. And number two, ultimately if life can’t provide this for me, it’s not going to break me. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me, that I can still have a relationship with it and appreciate it and live from a place that honors those needs and qualities, regardless of whether or not life offers the circumstances to fulfill them in the way I would like.
TS: Beautifully said. And in a way you answered the question that was coming up for me, but I’ll state it just to make sure, which is, if I’m in a mindful communication with someone and we both identify really what our genuine needs are and they’re in opposition, we’re still going to be OK. Is that true?
OJS: Right. Yes. Well, it depends on a lot of conditions, of course, but, yes. So there’s some interesting things that can happen there. And I like to use this classic dynamic that happens in most romantic or intimate relationships that many of us can relate to of one person wanting more space and the other person wanting more connection. This classic pursuer and pursued dynamic.
There are a few things that can happen when we’re able to really talk about what it is that’s driving us and what matters to us. And we discover, as you so clearly put, like, “Wow, our needs seem to be in opposition with each other.” So what we find with this practice is the deeper we go, the less needs are actually in conflict.
What we usually say is that most conflicts happen at the level of our strategies, our ideas about how to meet our needs, and the deeper we go, the less conflict there is at the level of needs. So one thing that can happen is we start to get more curious and go even deeper and say, “Well, tell me more about what it means to you to have space, about why that’s so important for you,” because even a need like space ultimately can be a strategy to meet some deeper need, like is it about feeling connected to yourself? Is it about having choice and agency? Is it about loving yourself? What is it about for you?
So I can inquire in that way and really try to understand what it is at the heart for you, and vice versa. I can dig deeper in myself and say, “Well, what is it about having that connection that’s so important to me? Why do I value that and long for it so much? What does it do for me? Does it give me a sense of belonging? Is it reassurance and I feel safe inside? Is it love? I know that I’m loved?”
So what happens there is the deeper we go, something miraculous can occur. And Marshall used to talk about this in a very spiritual way—he would call it divine energy, was how he experienced it. In Buddhism, we talk about compassion—is that when we get to this very core fundamental level of one another’s heart and really understand what’s going on, compassion tends to arise and move toward the place of pain.
So there can be a shift that occurs where when I really understand what it’s about for you, the whole constellation of needs in my world begins to shift, where say, my need for connection is now no longer in the foreground and the most important, because I also have a need for, say, compassion or for contributing. And I say, “Wow, I’m really getting what that is for you and why it’s important for you. And now that I understand, I want you to have that.”
Doesn’t mean I don’t also want connection, but I want both. So there can be this shift in that way where there’s more flexibility and willingness to work together. And sometimes that can happen in both directions, or we can start to be creative. And now that we understand, it’s like, “Well, how do we work together to have your needs and my needs met? How do we find some sort of balance where we’re both choosing to support each other in this?”
TS: Now, let’s move out of the sphere of intimate partnership and talk about family relationships for a moment and how seeing needs could be a doorway to compassion.
OJS: Yes.
TS: During the pandemic and during this time of so much political divisiveness, I’ve heard more and more from people about how “I just can’t be with my family. I just can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t be with Uncle Whatever for Thanksgiving. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t listen to this going on.You know, mindful communication. No, I’m out. I’m out. I’m out.” How can we see the needs of someone who has such clearly different views on things that we—are really important to us?
OJS: Yes, absolutely. Well, yes. I mean, there’s so much in what you’re saying there. Again, I think the first step is to be more clear about our own needs, just to start by translating our views. If we’re talking politically, “OK, well, what are your views on immigration? What are your views on abortion? What are your views on taxation?” Or whatever it is—gun control—and say, “OK, well, what needs are you trying to meet? What are the values that you’re holding underneath so that we are clear about what it is that matters to us?” That’s the first step.
And then to stretch the heart to say, “OK, what if I gave this person the benefit of the doubt and assumed that there’s some shred of goodness in their heart,” which is essentially the perspective of both nonviolence and Buddhist philosophy and practice is that all beings want to be happy. It’s just that we go about that in ways that are often confused based on ignorance and delusion and greed and hate.
So if I were to temporarily entertain the notion that this person has some shred of goodness in their heart and that they’re reaching toward something, what could they be reaching toward? And then to really listen and look and say, “Well, if they had that, if they got what they wanted, what would it do for them?” What would it give them? Is it about a sense of safety in their community? Is it about a sense of belonging? Is it about honoring the past and having a sense of tradition?
So we can look for the deeper values underneath it and say, “I can disagree with what you want to have happen and still acknowledge underneath what it is that you would have or experience or get that matters to you if that were to come to pass.” And then there’s this whole other question. And I’ll just say one more thing there. What that does is it can help to free our hearts from some of the animosity and hostility that we feel, which is so painful and tearing our world apart that we demonize one another and reduce each other to our positions. It’s so painful and detrimental to our own heart, let alone to public discourse and the sense of the fabric of society. But then the next question of, “Do I have a relationship with you at all? And if so, how?” That’s its own question in terms of like, “Do we get together for the holidays? If we do, what kind of agreements do I ask for about the conversation? What’s the purpose of our getting together?”
And I’ve written about this a bunch on my blog. Usually every year at the holidays, I publish something saying, “OK, here are some reminders,” when you’re getting together with family for how to deal with these situations because it is so common. And if we don’t take time to plan and strategize, it often does devolve into useless argument. So it’s necessary not just to identify what’s important to one another, but to actually be clear ahead of time about what’s our purpose, what’s the line where we feel like when something gets crossed. It’s one thing to say, “Let’s not talk about X. I thought we had an agreement. We’re not going to talk about that.” And then it’s another thing to feel like it’s outside of our integrity to not speak up and challenge a certain view that we feel is very harmful to others and to walk that line and, say, make a statement or speak up without opening up a whole discussion. So to speak out against homophobia or racism or transphobia or all these different forces that are prevalent in our world and society.
And those are decisions that we each make for ourself, but that it’s important to take time before getting together with people in our family and reflect on how do I want to show up? What am I going to say if or when? What do I want to ask for?
And sometimes, there are cases where we might choose not to engage in terms of not to be around others. And that doesn’t mean that we have to hate them, but we can still have a place in our heart for them and make choices to not get together, if we determine that it’s so painful or costly emotionally or energetically, or that we don’t have a sense that it will actually be onward leading or forward leading in our lives.
TS: So as I mentioned, the level of polarization that many of us are experiencing at the societal level, it’s so painful. Some people are predicting that here in the United States, we could be headed toward something like a civil war, right here in the United States, in our lifetime. How do you envision that people who are trained, they’re willing, they’re making this commitment to mindfulness training and conscious communication and working with our own activation. What’s your vision of how we can be a force for loving unification?
OJS: Thanks, Tami. A beautiful question. I think we need leadership and venues to do that and to have those conversations. It’s not so much my vision, but there are those out there doing that work—people like the late Paula Green and the Karuna Center or the organization Braver Angels. And I think one of the insights that any of these groups having dialogue across differences, red–blue conversations, one of the key factors there is the understanding that there are a lot of conditions that need to be in place to have those conversations and that individual personal skill is not enough.
So when we have these kinds of conversations, some of the things that are helpful to support transformation and understanding are things like having structures. So it’s not just a free-for-all, but there’s actually a process and a structure with certain agreements that we all commit to following that can hold us in the conversation. And these are very, very basic things but that have a huge impact, things like speaking from your experience rather than from ideologies, things like assuming good intent, listening for what matters to others, offering back your understanding is kind of active listening skills.
This is one aspect of it. Another aspect that’s central and that we so often forget and overlook, even in our personal relationships, is getting to know each other and building relationship. And I think this is where the media and social media really fails us is because we get reduced to sound bites and we fail to see the whole human being.
And most of the successful projects that I’m aware of that are working with building dialogue across differences, whether we’re talking about political differences or repairing relationships after war, include a component of building human relationships, spending time together, working together, getting to know each other’s families, cooking together, eating together.
We need to learn to see and remember that we have more in common as human beings than we do that separates us. The only way I know to do that is to spend time together, to actually be together, laugh together, to play together, and to share intimately from the heart, to share about who we are and where we come from and what we’ve lived through.
And that’s where we really start to see one another as whole and to say, “I disagree with you. I still disagree with you, but I see that you’re a human being. I see your goodness. I see your pain, and I have respect for you.” And that’s what can protect us against the kind of trajectory of devolving into violence that is so precariously present right now.
TS: Beautiful answer. I just have one final question for you, Oren. I notice I feel curious, I can see you there at the Insight Meditation Society, chopping carrots and thinking like, “Could we just chop the carrots the right way, please? What’s wrong with these people?” And then being a forest renunciate and realizing that you were called to be in the world.
But my question for you is, what gave you the clarity? What in your own motivation made you want to focus on mindful communication as the centerpiece of your work in the world, what you would write your book about and teach about in the audio series with Sounds True, Speak Your Truth with Love and Listen Deeply. What is the inner motivation for that to be the focus of your teaching work?
OJS: What a beautiful question. Thank you. OK, I’m just going to take a moment to listen inside and see. Well, it’s mysterious, isn’t it, what calls us in life and where we find ourselves? I’m aware of certain things I can point to. I was very fortunate to grow up in a family where there was a lot of love between my parents and between them and myself and my brother, but my folks also fought a lot and ended up eventually getting divorced when I was in my early 20s. And I think that had a big impact on me.
I think that seeing how much my parents really truly loved each other and how they were unable to find each other again later in life broke my heart. And it wasn’t just about communication. There was more there internally for each of them, but I think that was a key condition inside. It was wanting Mommy and Daddy to make it work sort of thing in the heart. And I say that with total lightness and seriousness at the same time, because it’s a beautiful thing that children long for, for their parents. So there’s that.
And then I talk about this in my book, there was one of the retreats I sat with the late Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. As I trust you know, in his tradition, the five precepts—or as they call them, the Five Mindfulness Trainings—are a really big deal. And when you commit to them, it’s a whole ceremony and you receive a dharma name and a certificate.
And so I was in my 20s, and I did this retreat with Thay in Vermont. So they went through the precepts, and they have in the Order of Interbeing in Thay’s community, lay community, they have a very deep and nuanced understanding of each of these trainings. It’s not just don’t kill, but it’s really looking at your relationship with other living beings. It’s not just don’t steal; it’s looking at your relationship with resources and future generations.
And so I went through each training and precept, and I was like, “Yes, that one’s going to be hard. I still eat meat.” Like, “Well, I guess I do have some investments in the stock market, and that’s tricky terrain and resource.” So I felt like there wasn’t any of them I could fully wholly commit myself to with integrity at that point. I was still using drugs a little bit. So the intoxicants one was—but when I heard the training about speech, when I heard his vision for using our communication to bring joy and peace into the world and our relationships, the commitment to healing all conflicts, however small, I felt so inspired.
Something in my heart kind of leaped up, and I said, “That, I want that. That’s something I can commit to. I really want to be able to do that.” And so I took just that one training, and that I think really was a key factor that set me on this path and sparked something inside to devote myself to understanding it more and embodying it and sharing it.
TS: I’m so glad I asked. Wonderful. Beautiful.
OJS: Yes. Yes.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Oren Jay Sofer. He’s the author of the book Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication. And with Sounds True, he’s created an original audio series, a training program. It’s called Speak Your Truth with Love and Listen Deeply: A Training in Mindfulness-Based Nonviolent Communication. Oren, thank you so much for being with us on Insights at the Edge.
OJS: Thanks for having me, Tami.
TS: Thanks for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at resources.soundstrue.com/podcast. That’s resources.soundstrue.com/podcast. If you’re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app, and if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I absolutely love getting your feedback and being connected. Sounds True: waking up the world.
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