NVC: Nonviolent Communication:

Transcript of 2-day Advanced Intensive

—Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D.

October 21, 2000
Bainbridge Commons
Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA

The following is a slightly edited transcript of a training Marshall Rosenberg led on Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA, October 20-21, 2000. We are grateful to Lin Rose for transcribing this training. Please note that Marshall sometimes uses Giraffe and Jackal as metaphors for Nonviolent Communication and life-alienated thinking and speaking, respectively. Note: CNVC’s use of the image and term “Giraffe” is in no way connected to The Giraffe Project, a completely separate organization producing its own training and educational materials.

go to day one Day Two

Marshall’s basic agenda:

• Practicing Empathy
• Healing & Reconciliation
• Gratitude — how to express and receive
• Structures/Institutions — how to stay with the Giraffe process within them

QUESTIONS:

Practice group brought Marshall their issue: Needs v. request, not speaking up with our needs because we want others to have their needs met.

Remember, others can get their needs met even if we speak up with a request to meet our personal need; e.g., "I’d like to see a show of hands of those who were in the practice group with me yesterday who would be willing to continue that today." For the person forming a splinter group, she asked for a show of hands of those who did not want to do X.

Be careful of the tyranny of the majority. Someone spoke up with his need for inclusion, then got stuck on his present request. A woman requested him to identify his feelings, and Marshall pointed out that he answered with a thought. Two others clarified and asked if that was what he meant, and he said yes.

Person asked Marshall if she could ask a question. Marshall said, Never ask a person in a position of authority to tell you what’s right or OK, it perpetuates domination.

 

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

Three ways to know you’re in empathy (i.e., making the connection):

1. Intention.

Be aware of the intention behind offering empathy to another person. It’s important that you be conscious you’re not giving empathy for the other person’s benefit.

Don’t listen unless it meets your need to connect with the divine energy.
By that, I mean that to know God, we have to know people. It’s a deep need, our need to connect with the beauty, the divine energy in this person, to be in harmony, to flow with that divine energy.

We give empathy to others for our own benefit. With this intention, you can’t tell which is the giver and which is the receiver. We don’t do it for the other person, because that puts them in the one-down position of being helped. There is life coming through this other person, and we meet our need by connecting with it.

2. Presence.

This means we can’t bring anything from the past chattering in our heads, such as theories about humans. The more you know the person in front of you, the harder it will be to empathize. That’s why Martin Buber says our presence is such a precious gift to give another. It’s approaching this moment like a newborn infant. That infant has never been before and will never be again. I learned this when I worked in mental hospitals and found that the best way to connect with the patient was not to read any of the reports.

3. Focus.

The focus is on what’s alive in the person now in this moment. The best way to do that is staying connected to feelings and needs, especially the past feelings that are the root of the present feelings. The person may be wandering around with reference to past, memories, etc., but you don’t go there with them. Just stay connected to the needs and feelings behind what they’re expressing.

All of this can be done silently. The most important parts of empathy are done silently.

 

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

WHEN TO VERBALLY REFLECT BACK. There are two times that we might want to say out loud "I heard you say," but the most important part is done silently. Here are the two conditions that are present when we put our empathy into words:

• When it meets our need for confirmation. This means we’re not sure we’re connected. So we say it out loud not as a technique, but as a need of ours. I really want to be connected to the beauty in the person. This is a strategy for checking on whether I’m really with the person. If it’s done as a technique with everything the person says, it’s a Giraffe parrot.

• When we sense the other person would appreciate (needs) a confirmation. Sometimes the other person makes it easy and asks for you to tell them back... is that clear? you know? So you say, Well, let me see, and then reflect. This is better than just saying Yes, I understand. Sometimes reflection is disruptive, so it’s a guess.

Stay with the person until the person has received ALL the empathy they would like. The first message may be only the tip of the iceberg, and there is a whole lot of other stuff going on.

How will we know we’ve reached the bottom is that "it feels good." The problem may not be solved yet, but it feels good just to have that presence. Everyone in the room can usually just feel the ahh in the body. Often that feeling is accompanied by silence.

If the person has an urgency to talk and says and and and and, has an urgency to talk, then he’s not finished. There may be other levels they want to get to. So be conservative about moving away from the focus on the other person’s needs.

You might check and say is there more you want to say?

You may need to bring the person back to life by saying, excuse me, are you feeling and needing,? They may be saying things from the past, but you don’t go there with them.

Be very slow to go into looking for solutions.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

POST-EMPATHIC REQUEST — (you’re looking for their implied request)

Now we move to the post-empathic request. What do they want after the empathy? Most of the time they have been very vulnerable by having what’s alive in them heard by another. They’re usually hungry for honesty and it will come out as, You must be tired listening to all this; You must think I’m stupid to feel this way, i.e., it’s a request for the feelings of the listener, what’s going on inside of the listener.

Sometimes the person wants some advice about how to meet their needs. Sometimes the person might want some specific need-related thing (like would you be willing to spend time with me), some need-related action.

So we need to check out what is this person’s post-empathic response. It’s best to guess rather than ask. We’re giving the answer to the implied question, How do you feel about what I said?

Self-disclosing mode — sharing your similar personal experience. This is where you might say you’ve had a similar experience. But the other, the empathy, has to be clear and out first before getting into your personal experience.

I might say, Would you like to hear how I’m feeling about what you’ve just said? If you have your own stuff, then I’d come out and say what feelings I have inside about what I heard. If you have Giraffe ears on, the person is a perfect Giraffe speaker at all times.

HOME STUDY. Use the intellectualization exercise to list all your most frequent intellectualizations about people and translate them into needs. If you have consciousness of needs, if you can guess and sense, you can be living in the world of feelings and needs, not the world of thoughts. You just have to train yourself to live in this world.

If your guesses aren’t met with a yes when you’re giving empathy, then say, "I’m confused. Would you please tell me what your feelings and needs are." They may be twitchy, so say, "Are you feeling annoyed because you need...?" Yes. "I’m trying to understand so I can feel connected with you and what you’re saying."

For example, a man says, "I judge myself as being unskilled with meeting people." All such judgments are expressions of unmet needs. His belonging and connection need is not met. The more you practice hearing this need, the more you live in the world referred to by the poet Rumi, "There is a world beyond rightness and wrongness. I’ll meet you there."

Use as few words as possible to reflect. And don't try to be right.

Its better to guess than ask because questions will often be heard as aggression.

Start with your own feelings, "I’m lost. Would you be willing to tell me what you’re meaning, feeling,?"

Giraffes live in the world of life, which changes every moment. But we’ve been educated in a static language that implies static labels of who people are.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

SYMPATHY V. EMPATHY.

Giving empathy is very hard when you mix up your feelings with theirs, that tells you that you’re sympathizing instead of empathizing. If our own pain is so great we can’t stay with the other, that’s OK — be conscious of it. But just don’t mix up the two. If we’re feeling something, we’re not with the other person.

To give empathy, we don’t have to experience what the other person is feeling. In fact, if we do feel it, we’re not empathizing. Look at it this way, When we are involved fully in a good book, we don’t feel our toothache. That’s empathy. Our attention is entirely on the book. Of course, we can’t keep that all the time. So just be conscious that when you have those feelings, then you can’t say anything empathetically in a truthful way.

That’s what is so hard for the person in pain, they’re telling you their feelings and needing empathy, and in the middle you say, Oh I feel so sad for you; or, Let me tell you about when that happened to me, etc. Sympathy would feel good to the other person later when you’re in the self-disclosing mode. But when it’s mixed up with what you say in empathy, it’s extremely painful. The listener thinks they’re understanding when they say, That must be horrible, I feel so sad that you feel that way. It’s later that would be helpful, not during the empathy.

A good book about this is "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." It was written by a rabbi after his devastation at the well-meaning but painful things people said to him in regard to his family tragedy. Worse, he realized that these were the very things he’d been saying to his congregation for years.

GIVING EMPATHY.

SMALL GROUP EXERCISE (yesterday we practiced an exercise to ask for empathy).

Give coaching after person A has tried to give empathy to Person B. Offer feedback to the person. The person receiving the empathy will also be a coach, giving feedback about what met their need for empathy and what didn’t work.

Coaches, be watching. Evaluate the quality of the presence. You can see this in the eyes of the person if they are really connecting. How was the reflection, too much, too little? Was feedback connected to people/things outside the person (when your brother did X, you felt,)? Remember that the other person’s words or actions can be a stimulus, but not a cause.

Also remember — a need is not something that requires being met by a specific behavior or by a specific person (those are strategies). It doesn’t meet your need for X when person A does Y.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

MAKING REQUESTS. We need to look at two different kinds of present requests —

Marshall draws a picture — here’s us, and here’s the other person. When each sees the other’s needs, then we can resolve the situation. So first, we make sure the connection is established,

• REQUEST FOR CONNECTION (the first kind of request):

Example #1: You ask for empathy for yourself.

You say: Here’s what I feel about X.

REQUEST: Would you please tell me what you heard me say?

How you felt when you heard me say that?

We may not be sure what’s going on in the other person. To find out or confirm our guess, we say, I’d like you to tell me what you’re feeling and needing, or how you felt about what I said. This way everybody’s needs get met, not just our own.

Make sure neither person heard criticism or demand in the feeling statements and/or empathic reflections that get exchanged. This shows each person values the other’s needs equally with his own.

Example #2: You might establish connection by focusing on them by offering empathy. (Be sure to reveal yourself first before asking them a question.)

You might say,

As you know, I’m upset about X and I’m trying to understand your side.

REQUEST: Would you please tell me, are you feeling X because you need Y?

Would you please tell me what you heard me ask?

How you felt when you heard me say that?

• PROBLEM-SOLVING REQUEST (the second kind of request):
  Once connection is established, we proceed to resolution/problem solving.

REQUEST: State our clear, do-able, present request for change.

I have a need for X, and I would feel so grateful (or whatever) if you would be willing to do Y. Would you be willing to do that?

Would you please tell me how you feel when you hear me say that?

Were you feeling X because you heard a demand/criticism?

Question: Someone said information (pictures and words in their heads) often appear psychically in relation to the person they’re talking to, and the speaker didn’t know whether it fit into the Giraffe approach to tell them to the person as a form of education or whatever.

Marshall: If that’s so, then it’s a gift. Still, use your intuitive gift second, after the empathy. If you offer it first, it’s likely to be heard as assumptions or going somewhere else, because you’re inside on your psychic journey instead of being with the other person, it’s a form of analysis. After they feel that connection, then the psychic insights may be valuable for the person. It can be an impression that goes off in you, whatever, but the timing is important when you put it out. You don’t want to switch the focus away from them until they’re ready. Then you can ask the person if they’re willing to hear what is going on inside me that might be helpful to them.

INTERRUPTING IN GIRAFFE.

If the conversation isn’t filled with beauty and awe, if we’re not enjoying the speaker, there’s a high probability that the speaker isn’t enjoying it either. The moment the conversation loses life for me, its likely that the speaker isn’t getting life out of their own words either. In fact, they may have heard themselves voicing the words for 39 years, and its only the 10^th time for me.

So immediately stop the conversation and re-establish the connection, "Is this meeting your needs? Can you tell me what you need? Feel?"

Try stopping people when they have said only one word more than you’ve wanted to hear because their words aren’t full of life. Say, "Excuse me, are you feeling X because you are needing Y,?" Connect with what’s alive in them that’s leading them to say the words. It will be a gift to the other person because it brings them back to life.

I don’t think anyone really wants to keep talking when they’re not enriching the life of the listener. The reason they go on and on is that they’re not getting their needs met. If you empathize for what’s alive in the person, then the usual family aunt or whomever won’t have to keep re-telling the story over and over hoping someone will understand what’s behind the words. If they get upset, even if they feel hurt, people want you to stop them.

You’re doing it to protect yourself, not for the other person. Find the point they’re trying to make. Where is their heart? If you feel bored, i.e., if you are having to wait longer than you want for the story to unfold so you can hear what the person is saying, then at that moment stop the person.

Remember that most of the empathy doesn’t come from the words themselves. Parroting doesn’t help. Silence and showing the feeling in your face and eyes can be a better communication.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

HEALING.

We need healing when things have happened in the past and we’re still carrying the pain, which is getting in the way of how we want to go forward and live life.

ROLE PLAY #1. Marshall does a role play as the person who was the stimulus of the pain. He’s the older sister. He’s playing the sister, wearing Giraffe ears. He starts the dialogue by asking, "What pain are you still carrying within you from the past?"

Her: Pain because I would like to connect with you, and I feel afraid to even feel anything about what you’re facing in your own life. And I know that I want to connect with you, but I’m afraid to open a conversation or offer anything helpful to you in your situation.

M: You’re feeling a lot of sadness that your need for connection with me isn’t being met. And now you’re aware of pain that I’m going through, this might be an opportunity to make this connection. And you want to protect yourself from what you expect might happen if you were to offer this. So I’d like to know what else you’d like me to hear now that I have these ears on.

Her: I would enjoy connecting with you, going for a walk. Spending time in nature with you is something I really want to do.

M: This is a deep loss for you, a source of sadness for you that we can’t enjoy having a walk, a conversation.

Her: I’d enjoy just being there and sensing you connecting with life.

M: Its scary to say you’d like to see me enjoying life more. Is there anything more you want me to hear besides your sadness and your fear. It would help me to understand what the need is behind your fear.

Her: I’m afraid that if I try and offer anything to you, that you’ll reject it out of needing to feel you can handle your own life and your own problems. I would enjoy being able to talk with you and offer any information I have, just as an offering.

M: So you’re afraid I would have needs that would not be met by talking, and that you would take it as a rejection.

Her: I have a fear of being scolded by you.

M: You’re fearful that instead of being able to hear my needs, you would take it as a scolding, which you would believe, and then hate yourself. So your need is to protect yourself from it?

Her: Um hm.

M: Is there anything more you want me to hear before I react to what you said?

Her: No.

M: First, I feel some sadness that I would like to contribute to this need you have of closeness and connectedness. I would like to be able to meet that need. I have similar needs that would also be met, so I’m sad that I haven’t been able to see what has kept us from this connection. When I’ve expressed my pain in the past and seen in your eyes the pain of rejection, then I don’t feel the safety to be myself and know that you will just receive what’s alive in me. Would you tell me back what you heard me say.

Her: I’m hearing you say that it’s painful to you to express yourself and be received by me as if it were scolding or rejecting me, and that you would like me to hear what your needs are.

M: Thank you. Yes. I see how painful it is to see how much is resting on my reaction. And that doesn’t give me the ease that I would like in close connection. Can you tell me that please.

Her: That because I’m feeling these fears, when you hear me or sense the fear that I have about your reaction, then you also feel some fear, and there’s a burden..

M: There’s a frustration because I want to protect myself when I’m not certain what you’re going to do with what I say. And there’s guilt when I tell myself that I’d like to be a different kind of sister. I just have a need to protect myself, so I withdraw from any kind of closeness with you. So thank you for hearing that, and Id like to hear how you feel when I say that.

Her: I feel a lot of empathy and caring for you when you tell me that. I’m sad that we haven’t connected in the past, but I actually feel more connected when you tell me that.

Marshall: So I’m out of the role of the sister now, how was that for you?

Her: It put me back and forth in two different places. It got me into the new avenues of communicating. The points where those came together is where there is hope to be connected with her.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

The three phases of healing. I wanted to use this little situation to outline the three phases of healing and then to show you different ways that this can happen.

1. I see healing going on when the person in pain (PERSON A) gets empathy for what’s alive in them now in relationship to what’s happened in the past. I didn’t have to go into what had been going on before. I just asked what’s alive in you now. We can guess that this pain has been the same in the past.
2. I engaged in Giraffe mourning by the offending person in the role of the sister (PERSON B). Essentially this takes the form of

• Telling how I feel now that I’ve seen the other person’s pain, and
• What needs of mine are connected to the other person’s feeling.

I also have a need to connect, and I’m sad that what was going on in me was such that I was not able to meet your need.

Notice that this was not an apology. Apologies are violent things to do to people, because at that moment the person is mostly needing empathy. And if the apology comes out of my thinking that what I did was wrong, then it’s associated with guilt and shame, and the other person will pay for that.

I talk about needs of mine which were not met. It would have been my own need to contribute to her well being, as well as my own need for closeness, so I’m sad and sincerely regret whatever kept me from doing that. It’s a loss of what could have been, not a blame of what should have been.

If anyone has experienced empathy and sincere mourning, they will not expect or need an apology. Its saying I would like to have met my own needs differently, not that I "should" have done something, i.e. that I was wrong or bad.

1. Empathy for the offending person (PERSON B) by the person in pain (PERSON A). That is, empathy for what was alive in the other person (the sister) that led them to behave as they behaved. The person in pain is asked if they are willing to hear from the offender what was going on inside them, the feelings and needs that were behind their hurtful behavior.

For instance, working with a woman who had been raped, I played the rapist and first gave her empathy for what she was feeling now (suffering during 9 years). After hearing that, then I got in touch with how horrible it felt to me (the rapist) to get in touch with my way of meeting my needs, of how I’d created such pain for someone by my behavior, and how I now realize that my way didn’t even meet my own real needs.

Then the "victim" screamed, "How could you have done it?" I kept saying, "Is there more you want to say?" Once this person gets understood, there is usually a hunger to know, why. What was going on in this person that would lead them to behave in this destructive way? When you empathize, there is nothing left to forgive, so forgiveness and empathy in Giraffe are essentially the same thing.

I warn you of the danger of going too quickly to get to closure. (Count to a million before going to step 3.) My experience is that one hour in this is worth 4 hours (or more) of talking about what happened (i.e., going into all the details of the story).

ROLE PLAY #2. Marshall plays a woman’s brother.

Her: I’ve stayed away from you because I don’t feel safe. I have to put myself down and be willing to take any garbage you want to give me if I want to be in relationship with you. A number of years a go you invited me and my family to your home. I said sure but needed to resolve some unresolved things first.

M: So the pain you’re feeling and sadness is, if I understand you, that you need a caring relationship and what hurts is that the only way you know to keep the thing going is to let me say anything I want and you put up with that, and still there’s no connection. Your example was to show me how hurtful it is to you when you do all you can and it’s not responded to in a way that meets your need. You can probably recall lots of past events where you’ve reached out and not had that connection.

Her: You’ve twisted and turned what I’ve said to make yourself feel better.

M: Instead of giving empathy to you

Her: Yes. I feel at risk to share anything about myself because you will use it.

M: You’re afraid and need to protect yourself from the pain you’ve felt in the past. And yet you still have hope that your need for closeness and connection can be met.

Her: Yes. I’ve almost given up.

M: You’re feeling kind of hopeless.

Her: The whole thing keeps starting over and you make it into my fault that we cant connect.

M: You’d love not to have to deal with this, to protect yourself from it. It’s annoying. You’d like some understand and be able to get the family together with real connection. Instead of understanding, you’re hearing blame.

Her: yes.

M.: Anything else you’d like to hear before I react?

Her: I would also like some understanding from you for how your behavior has affected me throughout my entire life, how your choices have affected me.

M: How my choices have been painful to you, the enormity of it, not just some things, but how much of your life has been caught up in the decisions I’ve made.

Her: Like sexually abusing me and my daughter.

M: ,how much that has stayed with you right to now.

Her: Right

M: Wow. Its pretty scary to deal with all that’s going on in me right now and open up to what you’re saying and to see how your life has been affected by my behavior. I’m irritated at how I would have liked to handle my pain in a way that had not contributed to that for you. I wish I could express all the stuff that’s going on inside me without blaming you. Oh, how I wish that I had known this.

Her: I wish you had shared your pain with me instead of hurting me all the time.

M: I feel sick inside when I realize that that would have been a gift to you instead of creating so much pain. I feel sick inside that I didn’t know how to do that., how to handle all that was going on inside of me. And for me, the suffering that I have gone through, and didn’t know how to handle my pain differently.

Her: I’m truly sorry for your suffering. I didn’t want you to be in pain either. But when you didn’t share it in any constructive way, there was no way for me to be there with you.

M: I need a moment to try to empathize with myself about what you just said. I’m dealing with all this irritation, frustration, sadness, and then to hear that you still have this caring for me and are still concerned for me. I have to stretch to put on my Giraffe ears and not let my Jackals block it off and say I don’t deserve it. I do trust that you feel that caring, but its hard for me to take it in because I’m so irritated with myself. But Id like to tell you what was going on in me without continuing to blame you when I sexually abused you. It’s scary for me to say. Real scary. As you know, I have an enormous amount of pain inside. Rage. Not toward you. I think you can guess , enormous rage and hurt and need for closeness. I haven’t known how to express my pain in a way the enabled you and others to reach out. So I just get into more range and just want to hurt others because I don’t know how to get that understanding except to blame others. Then I don’t get the understanding and the rage builds up worse. Would you tell me what you’re hearing. I don’t know if I’m making sense.

Her: ,reflect back.

M: It’s so scary to look at why I would have treated you so badly, the one person with whom I’ve always sensed your caring. How do you feel when I tell you about all this pain?

Her: All I need to hear from you is that you care about the pain you caused and that you don’t want to hurt me in the future.

M: I’ll say it again. It was the very fact that I care for you, the one sense of warmth in my life, you gave me so much, and I tried to meet my needs in a way that was so painful for you.

Her: I appreciate hearing that. I don’t know if I can make it all go away.

M: I don’t want it to go away. I’m just deeply grateful that you can hear the pain for what I did.

Her: I just want to feel safe and cared about. And I don’t want to be blamed for something I didn’t do. I don’t want to be called names and be put down, and I don’t want you telling everyone else that I’m a sick person, because I’m not the one who did it.

M: When I don’t have these Giraffe ears on, its very scary for me to look at how I feel about what I did. Its such a dark place, I’m afraid to go there, so what comes to me is "if you hadn’t done.. if you weren’t.." I was feeling so desperate. This combination of hurt, longing, rage was overwhelming. It’s scary for me to go there. It’s so much easier to blame.

Her: How can you profess to be such a good Christian and a believer in the church at the same time that you’re doing all this?

M: It helps me to hide from my feelings, to keep from looking at what I’m doing. It’s scarier for me to look inside and see what I was feeling when I did this. I’m afraid I’ll get into such a dark place that I’ll never come out.

Her: I wouldn’t let you get stuck there. I’d be there and help you get through it if you’d just face it.

M.: I trust that. I trust you in this. But my fear is keeping me from that.

Marshall: May I ask for reactions from the group about what you felt as you heard this?

Woof!! The Black Lab in the room barked, and we all laughed.

Question: I wasn’t clear that you weren’t connecting what he did with her pain.

Marshall: I was using idiomatic Giraffe, speaking of his behavior as a stimulus for her pain, not the cause. He was not saying he was responsible for her pain.

Question: This exchange felt healing, but the brother is still out there. With this insight, do you still need to make connection with the brother?

Marshall: Even though she won’t hear from the brother in this way, the hope is that she will remember this exchange when she’s dealing with the brother. When she walks in the door, I’ll guess that she’ll see him different already and will be shocked at the change in his behavior from now on. This happens so often that I wouldn’t be surprised. But of course I’m not promising this. There’s still a lot more work that could be done.

Question: What gave you the clue to go into the 3^rd phase of healing? You have said to count to a million before going there.

Marshall: I counted by thousands. And I asked if there was more she wanted to say, and if she was ready to hear me.

Question/Comment from Group Participant: I got in touch with the depth of the darkness inside, what a dark, lonely place that was. I wanted to know that I had it in me to reflect back the beauty of that person. I’m in that place often working with individuals in prison. I’d like to have it within myself to reflect back that beauty behind the darkness, the scariness of going into the combination of the rage and hurt, how dark and frightening that is, to be able to go there with that person and see the life energy and connect with the person’s life energy.

Marshall: I’d like to go back to the question about playing the other person’s role and whether or not I was playing it.

Very often the person opposite me will be astonished that I’ve said exactly what the opposing person had said in real life. What gives me that ability is that I’m just being myself. We’re all created out of the same energy. Each of us is the same. There is no one who doesn't have these things going on that we don't have experience of at some level. So I'm just being myself.

Question: In other words, you know from being a human being what she must have experienced in response to how the brother treated her, that what must be going on in her is some pain and rage and anger that would be just like yours in a similar situation. And you know what you’ve experienced when your actions have been the stimulus for pain in others, so you know the pain and remorse and self judgment the brother was feeling.

Marshall: Yes. I experience that.

A male in this culture wouldn’t even imagine that he could openly say and express these kinds of things safely. The inner belief is that everyone will have contempt. It’s a shock to see love and respect instead, so then the inner messages and feelings get even more confusing. Men come out in blame and abuse because they haven’t been trained that expressing their feelings is a gift.

Question: Marshall, how do you take care of yourself?

Marshall: Well, what’s not wonderful about being in touch with whatever is alive? For those who have pain about what they’ve stimulated in another, then mourn in Giraffe, either within or with the other person, they’ll come out of it with something beautiful.

Question: Where is the point where you let it go, just drop the issue?

Marshall: You never know what’s right until after you’ve done it. If the behavior mucks up your life, then you’ll know it wasn’t useful. There is no right thing. You made a choice and met a need. So the forgiveness is in admitting that I just made a choice — I wanted to protect myself, and so I chose that behavior. There wasn’t a wrong or right choice.

SPIRITUALITY AND NVC.

Question: [I couldn’t hear the woman in the back of the room very well. I think she acknowledged hearing the spiritual underpinnings of NVC and asked Marshall why he doesn’t mention them very much.]

Marshall: People have not had good experience with white men preaching spirituality. So I’m hearing your gratefulness at a very great depth.

Some years ago, a woman with a strange accent, who was older than most in the group, came to my training in San Diego. She stared at me the whole time. Afterward, she came up to me and said, "The next time you come to my town, would you stay at my house because there are some questions I want to ask you." At that time I was traveling a lot and needed a place to stay. So I did. I couldn’t imagine what she had on her mind. So I’m eating at her house, and she says, "May I ask you the questions now? Why do you hide the spirituality in the process?"

I said, I’m glad you see that. I hadn’t really thought that I hide that. I trust that people come to see it. I’m reluctant to talk to people about it because the results have been that I find myself with experiences of people who feel very sensitive about the subject and my talking about it — Native Americans, Blacks. So I said that I don’t see that I hide it. It’s more that people come to it.

She said, "Well doesn’t it drive you crazy when people use it mechanically as a technique?"

So it started a dialogue of how to get the spiritual part of the message integrated and heard without falling into stimulating a feeling of boredom, because historically people have taken the beauty out of these messages and turned it into something ugly.

ROLE PLAY #3. Marshall is again a brother.

M: You want to protect yourself because it’s been so painful in the past, you feel kind of hopeless to create the quality of connection you want with me.

Her: Whenever I’ve seen you in the past years, you were drinking, making jokes about sex, you would forget about anything that was said.

M: So you’re worried about not being able to connect.

Her: I’m confused. I’m wanting connection and at the same time giving up. When I look at you I feel very sad about what I see. You’ve become very different from what I knew when I was a small girl. You’re some kind of ghost-- constantly smoking and drinking, agitated.

M: Its painful for you. You hope that I could enjoy life more. Your need for my well-being and happiness is not being met. You’re in pain because your need for my well-being isn’t being met to your satisfaction.

Her: Yes, and one of the ways I could connect with you is if we could both admit that inside you’re not feeling the way you are showing me.

M: So if your assessment is accurate, then you hope we could talk about it. That would give you some hope that maybe something could change. It’s doubly painful when you don’t see an openness to talk about it. I’m wondering what need of yours is being met when you’re so concerned about my well-being.

Her: I enjoyed your beauty so much when you were a child. Now there is the pain I still have about the one incident where there was sexual abuse, which is still affecting me.

M: So you still recall with longing the beauty of what you saw in me, how much you enjoyed aspects of me. And its painful for you now when you see such a contrast. You still have very painful feelings about the experience that we had.

Her: Yes. And when my mother, our mother, died of August last year, there was a family reunion. I had tried one or two times to mention this, not to blame you,

M: So you’re frustrated when your need for honesty between us cant be gotten. Its very painful for you.

Her: I have such embarrassment to have been involved with sexual abuse and having the family members know about it. What’s worse is that my sister who’s a physician said, "So what? I see small children even who have bruises. So now I’m resenting my sister as well. I just want you to know that I haven’t healed from that.

M: You want some understanding that the pain is still with you. My reaction and your sister’s and others’ left you feeling very alone with your pain. You have sadness that you couldn’t have had the connection. Can you imagine getting this empathy from us?

Her: Takes a lot of imagination!

M: I sense you have enormous sadness about the hopelessness of your position. You just want some understanding of the pain that was created. You just want some understanding of the suffering that was stimulated in you by that experience. I’d like to hear what’s still alive in you right now. I want to hear about what you felt at that time that makes you want to talk about what happened.

Her: I don’t know what kind of pain it is. Sadness maybe. I want to protect myself.

M: Deep sadness. You’re aware of how frightened you are, how much fear is left in you, especially of men, what can happen between you and men.

Her: I have fear that if I open up that sense of invasion will come back.

M: So you need to protect your space. If you open up, things will get past where you’re comfortable.

Her: I’m afraid of losing connection with myself if I get too close. I’m confused about what I need. It’s not just you, brother. It’s all the men in my family, the violence, physical and in other ways. It’s a strange combination of unpredictable sweetness and then suddenly violence. I never know when it will switch. Now I’m back in how much I was enjoying your beauty before and how much I lose by protecting myself. It affects how I am with men I meet now,

M: You’re afraid to move in that direction because of what you said, that things can happen that you don’t want to happen, you’ll maybe lose connection with yourself. You’re afraid of what might happen trying to get connection and warmth. It’s the same ambivalence with men you meet, you’re afraid things might get out of hand and you’ll lose connection with your needs.

Her: I don’t trust myself anymore. I wish you had taken care of your distress in our family in some way other than at my cost. I remember the fear I had then ,.

M: What is your feeling now when you remember that fear?

Her: I just have tension.

M: You feel tense right now as you recall that fear.

Her: And I remember a third person, my mother. I’m having compassion for the difficult situation of the little girl I was, the disgust and confusion. It was a fear of death if my mother had come at that moment, the door was open,

M: So you’re telling me that now because of what need? You’re getting further from the present the more you focus on the past. Is there anything else alive in you right now that you want me to hear?

Her: What’s still alive is the compassion I feel for that little girl and how she handled her loneliness at that time. And I’m losing connection with myself and not enjoying it.

M: Perhaps you don’t have any more feelings right now.

Her: Well, I’m in some kind of limbo right now. I get scared when I go blank like this that you’ll leave me in the middle of this. I need some kind of completion with this. I need reassurance that you won’t leave right away, that you’ll stay awhile until then. I’m interpreting this silence as you preparing to leave, even though I know you get very empathetic in silence.

3^rd Person: Are you afraid that you’ll never get healed from this pain?

Her: It’s that there are so many other things, too.

M: So you’re overwhelmed with how many things you have over so many years, how you’ll ever get it sorted out.

Her: And when I join a community like this, I get in more trouble with pain coming up from the past.

M: So instead of being able to connect with the present community in a healing way, you are afraid of replicating the past and never getting your needs met. So you want me, your brother, to understand how what has happened in the past continues to affect your relationships with others. Are there any feelings you want to talk to me about that are alive in you right now?

Her: I’m aware of the comfort of 3^rd Person’s hand on my back.

M: As your brother, I’m wanting to know of the feelings that are alive in you right now in relationship to me.

Her: Well it’s a relief to be talking to you when you’re not smoking or drinking.

M: Is there anything else you want me to hear, or do you want to hear anything from me?

Her: I’d like to know how you feel right now. Would you make a connection with me?

M: I feel very sad that I haven’t been able to meet your need for understanding and closeness, and I would like to have been in a position to have provided that and contributed to your well being. I would like to have been more present and not caught up in alcohol and smoking. I’m sad at how much that affects me and the people around me, and how it cuts me off from life. You’re helping me understand some of the confusion that I felt in our sexual experience. Your fear of getting close, I was confused, because there was an attachment. I got confused as to how all of the different needs within me could be sorted out and how to be clear about them. I was very frightened about what happened between us. Is there anything else you want to hear from me right now?

3^rd Person: (whispering to her, are you feeling angry?)

Her: When I hear that you were frightened, I get angry. I don’t believe it. You just got your rocks off at my expense. Now there is no trace of fear in you. You were just taking advantage of me.

M: I’m hearing a lot of anger, lack of trust in me. You’re still very angry about not having your needs considered.

Her: No they weren’t. Damn right.

M: Would you like me to hear more about your pain or whatever? I have more to say, but if you’re in too much pain to hear that, then I can hear more from you first.

Her: (says more angry statements)

M: I’d like to hear more of what you want, to make sure your need is understood. I need to have you be able to trust what I say. So I’m willing to hear the pain in you that keeps you from that.

Her: I want you to know it’s not OK to take advantage of someone to get your needs met. And I wish you had done that some other way then. You have plenty of imagination.

M: You want your needs to be met and to have consideration without someone taking care of their needs at your expense.

Her: I’m holding back this anger. I don’t want to be a Jackal and say a lot of judgments.

M: You’re full of judgments about yourself, which makes it hard to get it out.

Her: Yes, I’d like to smash your face bloody. And shake you awake.

M: You want me to understand the pain you have. And you think I’d understand that if you made me feel pain.

Her: It’s that you go on talking about sex all the time. And that’s something I want to leave behind. And I’m confused. On one hand sex is no big deal, on the other it triggers this pain. And whatever I say I have a fear I won’t be heard. And I’m getting nervous about taking time here. I blank out and feel scared about losing connection.

M: So you feel hopeless. And what’s most alive is the fear of going blank.

And I’m getting fatigued listening to you, and I would like to be able to take care of my need to do something else without stimulating a feeling of rejection. So how could I let you know my needs without you getting it mixed up with rejection? Would you let me know how I could phrase my need so you won’t hear rejection. That leaves me with the choice that I can’t express my needs or if I do, then you’ll see it as rejection, which will make things worse next time.

Her: What makes you fatigued?

M: I’m fatigued from the time and energy it takes for me to stay with you when you’re not in your feelings and needs. My fear is that you’ll want me to listen beyond my endurance, and then next time there will be another round of pain, only deeper because it will be one more time where it’s no use talking, etc. Would you tell me what I said?

Her: Would stopping now and continuing later work?

M: Well, that depends. I want to protect myself from getting into this place again.

Her: I am willing to stop now. I hear the danger that I could take it personally. I’m going to think about that.

M: I’m satisfied with that much reassurance. And I’d be willing to talk again.

Every time she started to talk about the past, I brought her back to her present feeling that was being stimulated by the past feeling. As soon as she started to go into the past, my energy started to drop, and that’s my cue to look for the person’s feeling and need and bring them back to the present.

Her present pain was too great for her to give me empathy for what I was trying to say. She wasn’t able to hear me right now , not because of the past, but because of what’s alive in her right now.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

FINDING THE FEELING BEHIND THE BLANKNESS.

Question: How to get past the hump of going blank?

M: First, be quiet for however long it takes. A week, a month. Don’t talk. And don’t try to figure it out. The more you think, the more you look, the more the feeling will hide. Just listen. Then the feeling will come. The only time it hides is when you look and when you think.

BEING A THERAPIST V. AUTHENTIC PRESENCE.

Question: Do you have concern about leaving someone in an unfinished place? I ask because I’m a therapist.

M: I try never to be a therapist when I’m in the role of counselor, when I’m in a healing role. I hope that we can reach a point where both of our needs get met.

I didn’t want to lead her to her anger because she wasn’t angry at that moment (when 3^rd Person asked her if she was angry).

I didn’t get into the second phase of mourning because she wasn’t finished with feelings that were alive in her now. When she’s in too much pain she can’t hear.

INTERRUPTING IN GIRAFFE.

Question: I’d like to hear a way to interrupt in a way that communicates my intentions. Often this triggers pain in the other person about my not being willing to be there with them.

M: The person picks up the irritation if we don’t interrupt soon enough, after that first word that was more than I wanted to hear.

Say: It would really help me listen to you if you could tell me what you want from me when you say these things.

You don’t want anything? Then can I read while you tell me?

I’ll kill you if you do! [laughter]

When I expressed my fatigue, she realized that by the time she got through 99% of what was bothering her, my brain was burned out.

EYE CONTACT DURING EMPATHY.

Question: I noticed there wasn’t much looking at or even facing each other during the exercise.

M: Eye contact and looking at people is a cultural thing. In my case, I listen much better to what’s alive in someone when I’m not looking at them. I do that if they tell me they need that, but I actually do better when I look elsewhere. And the other person can be so fearful of their feelings that they may lose contact with themselves if they look at me.

I hope that every relationship we have with another is good psychotherapy. Martin Buber said he didn’t think you could do psychotherapy as a therapist. Carl Rogers asked what he meant. Buber said, You know from my writings that people heal when they have an authentic connection with an authentic human being. And that doesn’t happen when one has the label as a therapist and the other is a patient.

Rogers said he thought therapists could heal themselves of that. Buber said it’s the process of the patient having to make an appointment and pay a fee that destroys the authenticity that’s necessary for healing to take place.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

GETTING OUT OF BEING STUCK IN PAST TRAUMA.

Question: How can someone who has experienced something traumatic and has a need to be heard not get stuck in the past?

M: If we’re into healing, we don’t have to have them tell the story. It will get in the way with healing. We don’t need intellectual understanding. We need empathy, which is probably what we’re needing most of the time.

When we need to be understood, we have this misguided idea that we have to tell what happened. But it’s what is alive in us right now in relationship to what happened that is the key.

As I think about a past trauma right now, here’s what happens — I lose touch with my present feelings because I get lost in telling the story. I need to be conscious of what is alive in me now, not to go back and re-experience and re-tell the story. There’s always a need behind telling the story, if the need is for empathy, then often the story is a destructive strategy for getting that need met.

All you have to do is remember that experience, but you don’t have to talk about what happened in the past. Stay with the present feelings and needs that are stimulated by being there. [Review the three phases of healing on page 28.]

DOMINATION STRUCTURES.

How to stay human under difficult conditions when someone has power over you:

Bring attention to needs rather than to requests. Keep our consciousness on our feelings, but with other people search for language that will connect us at the need level, because otherwise it’s too weird for people who aren’t used to it.

Avoid thinking in terms of labels. The #1 thing in this kind of structure is never to see a "boss," someone in charge of us. Don’t get caught in the labels. That’s hard when you have to go through 3 secretaries to get to the big guy. And then he seats you on a little potty seat by the door while he’s on the big throne.

I would leave my house in the morning determined to be a human being at the university, and after the 3^rd student that morning had come cringing with some question or other, then I’d get caught in it and say, Can’t you see I haven’t had my coffee this morning?

When I’m training people how to stay human in that setting and they’re nervous about an appointment with the big boss, I say, Do the exercise of taking 10 minutes to see them on the toilet.

Someone suggested the book "Your Money or Your Life" as being potentially helpful. The co-author is in the group (Monica, who does the bookstore with Jim).

Avoid self-Jackaling. Don’t give them the power to get you thinking that you did anything wrong. Don’t give them the power to make you rebel or submit. You may need to do your empathy silently. In the Jackal world, the only way to be safe is to be a nice, dead person.

GRATITUDE.

We’ll look at several aspects,

• that which we would have liked to receive and didn’t,
• how to be sure we don’t mix up reward with the intention in gratitude,
• how to express gratitude in a way that is rich for people and not mixed up with compliments or praise,
• and how to receive gratitude.

Let me make clear once again that we don’t want to get gratitude mixed up with reward. Never use it as a reward. Reward is dehumanizing. Many parents and teachers have been taught to give children compliments to build up their self esteem and to get them to do what they want.

Gratitude is too beautiful to use as a manipulation to get people to produce. What if I just want the person to like themselves? If it works, you’ve conditioned them to like you or anyone who tells them they’re a good boy. We do this so that when people get into industry they will work for smiles, pats on the back, do what their bosses tell them.

Positive judgments are just as dehumanizing as negative. In either, we’re putting ourselves in the role of God and telling the other person what they are.

We want to communicate a celebration of life. Life has been made more wonderful for me by something someone has done. I’m not doing it to buy something from them or so they’ll like themselves more.

• ESSENTIAL NVC PRINCIPLE

HOW TO GIVE GRATITUDE.

We need to make three things clear when we give gratitude:

1. What specific action I want to celebrate that made life more wonderful.
2. How I feel now as I recall this action.
3. What needs of mine were fulfilled.

When the person hears just these 3 things and sees there is no other game or manipulation, when they receive that, they have a jolt of Giraffe energy. It’s like fuel. It’s a natural reaction when they see how their actions enrich life. It’s a natural joy.

And the more we experience that joy, the more energy we have, which is what we need in order to keep living a Giraffe life in a world that makes it a challenge to do so. So that’s why it’s so important that this is the center of the work setting, of a relationship. We need to keep telling employees how their actions are making life more wonderful.

EXERCISE:

Part 1 — Think of a gratitude you would love to have heard from someone but didn’t, because they didn’t say it. What would it have sounded like if they had said gratitude in this way?

Thank you for staying up 91til midnight just listening to me pour out my hurts, sorrows and frustrations. I’ve been needing to have someone listen quietly without advice, etc., just hearing me. I feel more connected with you now, which I especially like since you’re my sister.

Part 2 — The second part is to use your imagination and go to this person and say, I was just in a workshop and we did an exercise on gratitude. And we were asked to describe a gratitude we would have loved to hear from someone. I picked you, and I’d like to read out loud to you what I would have loved to hear. Id like you to tell me what kept you from telling me this. Write down their answer (use Jackal if that is what they would say).

Samples from class participants:

1^st person: I thought you knew that.

2^st person: I did tell you thank you. I said it’s time consuming planning workshops.

3^nd person: You call that support? What about what I really do? I could have stayed home with the kids and you could be out working.

Marshall: OK, so give 3^rd Person some empathy. When Jackals need empathy the most, they’re communicating in a way that makes it the hardest to give it to them. Look at how the poor Jackal communicates,

J: Yeah, some gratitude would be OK once in awhile.

You: "Oh I can see we both need some gratitude. I feel sad that we’re both under such pressure that we don’t take time to celebrate each other. How about if we take 10 minutes a day to celebrate our relationship?

Person: Well, we’ve been through that stuff.

Marshall: OK, then we can use the 10 minutes to express whatever we want to say.

Marshall’s example: A mental ward patient returned 2 days early from her home visit furlough and had been crying ever since. Marshall called the husband. He said, "you haven’t fixed Her, Doc. She came home and cooked and cleaned and asked me to say something positive about the meal. I said, 91well I’m eating it, ain’t I?’"

I’ve learned that people would still have liked to have heard gratitude, even if they understood it was in my heart or attitude.

Marshall’s next example: A man picks his wife to work on,

Marshall: Tell her what she did.

Man: When we started to have kids some 20 years ago, you had your own way of doing it and, well, it wasn’t how I woulda done it, you know. And now I see how it turned out, and I like it. And if I’d done it my way, it would have been terrible.

Marshall: Good start. Now tell her how you feel.

Man: I feel you were right.

Marshall: No, no. That’s not a feeling. Tell her how you feel.

Man: Well, you know when I think of, well, I feel grateful, boo hoo hoo,

,and he starts to cry. I look around the room and nearly all the other men are crying, too. The German translator and I look at each other. Is this the same group? (This was a bunch of gruff, poker-faced German business men). The rest of the time, this man never said another word. But when the workshop was over and it was announced that I was moving on to another city to give a presentation, he rushed up and wanted to register. I knew it was already full, but sensing his urgency, I said, "of course."

Part 3 — Now, think of something that enriched your life, and you express gratitude in Giraffe either classically or idiomatically to make these 3 points clear.

When you stayed up 91til midnight telling me your sorrows and hopes about your girls, I was very touched. I’ve been wanting to get to know you and see what’s behind the brother I like and admire so much.

We get more out of the transaction when we include these 3 things.

Likewise, people would rather hear this as a way to say I love you. They really like the classical thing when it really comes from the heart and includes these three things.

How would the person receive this? Even if it embarrasses people, they still want to hear it. Think what might be going on in him that would make him have trouble hearing you, make it hard to receive your gratitude, e.g., I don’t deserve it, you don’t mean it, I’m supposed to be humble. There’s a vulnerability that comes up when we see the power we have to meet other people’s needs.

"The Secret of Staying in Love" by Powell mourns that he never expressed gratitude to his father because he didn’t know how to deal with his feelings of hatred. He said that behind all that anger was such gratitude as well, but by then his father was no longer alive.

After reading that book, I made a list of the gratitude I hadn’t expressed yet. I thought of my father. It was so important that I do this. I was on the road traveling, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. He answered the phone and I started to cry because the gratitude was so strong. And then he didn’t know if I was being held for ransom or what. I scared the poor man half to death.

They may take it wrong, etc., but it’s too important not to get it out. Later, he said "I want to go over this again." I told him, "I really want you to hear how much it’s meant to me, many of the things you have done." It was torture for the poor man to repeat back to me. "Wait, wait, Dad! Could you just tell me..." The poor guy would rather have been beaten. But I’ll tell you, he thanked me for that repeatedly. He told me for years afterward how meaningful that was. He could never recall any gratitude that was told to him by his parents.

I believe in tormenting people sometimes. If they’re going to be tormented by gratitude, then let’s get them used to it. I say, "Excuse me, excuse me, Id like you to know how painful it is to me to express gratitude and not be really sure that you got it. Just tell me these three things. I’d like to make that feeling just a little clearer. My need was really met for X." Just keep pounding. It’s important to them that we keep it up until they hear, because we all need gratitude.

A class participant spoke up and said it took him awhile to get used to realizing he liked being appreciated.

"Thank you" is idiomatic Giraffe for gratitude. If you know the person will receive these 3 things, that they can see it in your eyes, then "thank you" is enough.

HOW TO RECEIVE GRATITUDE EMPATHICALLY.

I had to tame those Jackals in my head to allow me to take it in. A friend wrote me a song to show me how painful it was not to have gratitude received. Then later she had trouble receiving my gratitude.

Marshall sings his friend’s song: "To stand before a gift of self unable to receive, why is it so hard to believe that love could come to me? Your trust affirms my love for you and lets my loving live. To give is domination if I’m not also willing to receive."

EXERCISE: Keep a journal and start by thinking what you did that made life wonderful for yourself or another. Write down exactly what you did, how you feel as you’re writing, what needs were met. Take time to savor and really take this in, to see the power you have to enrich life and how good that feels. Think of what someone else did in the previous 24 hours and do the same thing, savor how they enriched life. Sometimes you might find out you didn’t say your gratitude to the other person, and now you can get another shot at it and go back and do that.

IDIOMATIC GIRAFFE.

"Stop, you’re an idiot" is idiomatic Giraffe when it’s an agreed code because it’s shorter than the full-blown "it’s not in harmony with my needs" classical Giraffe statement. "Stop, you’re an idiot!" was the code set up in one instance at the request of a violin student to his teacher.

Then there’s the common Jackal line, "[whining voice] You never listen to me..." Reply: "that’s why." Their surprise and "huh?" will give you the opening to point out the tone of voice and why it doesn’t meet your need.

A young man who had been traveling and going with me into prisons as a student saw me riding a group hard and afterward looked up toward me and said, "dictator." He knew that I’d know in that context what he was referring to. He was giving me gratitude. And I knew he was communicating admiration and excitement.

"Classical Giraffe" is a learning tool. The idea is to get us connected in a certain way. It doesn’t matter how — we don’t have to use certain words.

Here’s a dialog:

Person: I hate it when you talk NVC to me. You talk like I’m a 3-year old.

Giraffe: (making attempt at "classical Giraffe" empathic feedback)

Are you feeling annoyed because you need,. ?

Person: There you go again.

Giraffe: You just want us to speak more naturally?

Person: See what I mean?

Marshall: Hear the need for authenticity.

(Marshall Role plays the Giraffe): You hate games being played on you.

Person: Yeah.

Marshall: This is more idiomatic than, "are you annoyed and needing to trust that, etc.?"
Or you can do it silently.

Hear the need for respect, acceptance, equality. Idiomatic Giraffe might be to say nothing.

Hear from "there you go again" that she wants me to learn from what she’s saying, and doesn’t want to hear unless she can trust the message is coming from a place of equality, etc.

Also, think about your intentionality — are you getting lost in the method? or coming from the intentionality, the purpose? You don’t want to do the mechanics without the consciousness.

Prepare people that we’re practicing something new. We can prevent a lot of these common problems if we go home and have a session with the family that will communicate to them why we’ll be sounding weird for awhile.

You might use a dialog something like:

I’m going to be asking for something pretty funny. I hope you can remember what it is not — it’s not because I think you’re stupid and I’m a teacher. I’ve been coming from a safe place where I haven’t been showing much of my heart. This takes more courage to come from my heart. So like now, Id like someone here to ask me if you heard what I said. It wasn’t easy and I want to know how it came across.

This probably isn’t necessary if we’re living with someone like a flight control operator or a surgeon — they never assume that message sent is message received. But other than that, we need to educate people, because most of us live in a Jackal world where we take turns using the other person as a waste basket for our words. Who cares whether anyone hears you or not? So that’s one thing we need to educate people about.

Say to them,

The thing is that I’m going to reflect back, and I’m doing this to make sure I’m hearing correctly.

This preparatory about why we’ll be sounding weird can prevent a lot of trouble.

OPEN SESSION ON QUESTIONS.

Question: Do you use the puppets when you talk to these executives you tell us about?

Marshall: [laughter] I never anticipated what settings I’d wind up using them in. The woman organizing my workshop at Standard Oil one time called to remind me to bring the puppets. I said I wasn’t sure the executives would exactly appreciate them. And she replied, "how do you think I got them to agree to have you come?"

And prisons, it looked to me like this was not a puppet crowd. Whatever gave me the craziness to bring one out of my bag, I don’t know. I’ll never forget the big guy who pushed someone out of the way to get to the front... "Lemme talk to that Jackal!"

Then the Israeli police... I worked with them a full year before I thought I could risk it. When I took these puppets out of the bag with that group, the assistant police administrator wanted to run out of the room.