Language of Compassion

“Why can’t you just admit it! You were too projecting your judgments onto Jane! Weren’t you John!” said the head of Fred with bulging eyes and forehead veins.  At this John walks out of the room to never come back to this newly forming New Culture Community group again.  “No wait, he didn’t mean to hurt your feelings…” cried Jane down the hallway after him. Here we have a small but complete example of what Clinton Callahan calls “Low Drama” from his Next Culture trainings work. (See http://nextculturetrainings.org)  We have the victim John, the perpetrator Fred and the rescuer Jane unconsciously playing out their painful and destructive roles in what is called the Karpman Drama Triangle.

Fortunately this group had invited a New Culture Community trainer to help them grow their skills and consciousness for an upcoming weekend workshop.  These three people were not new to personal growth, in fact all three were what you might call workshop junkies.  I have known them all for many years and witnessed their struggles with people and power.  Unfortunately the way they communicated and reacted in these kinds of situations had not evolved much in my opinion.

Fred received a lot of priceless feedback thru the community building process called The Zegg Forum. (See http://languageofcompassion.com/about/zegg-forum/)  Fred got into the middle of the psychodramatic Zegg Forum process and did his best to express what was alive, authentic and true, but kept saying he felt stuck, and distant from the group and the only feeling word he  came up with was feeling “separate”.  After his “performance” others were invited to give him reflective mirrors (expressions, comments) about his piece.  I went into the middle of the circle and expressed my sadness that the only words Fred used to express himself were spatial images like “separate” or “distant”.  I spoke of my own frustration at not getting the sense of personal connection I wanted to feel with Fred at the being/emotional level.  (The facilitator and others expressed similar discomfort at not being able to feel Fred’s heart in his words, as he seemed to speak only from his head.)  I also expressed in words, sounds and movement what I thought was the elephant in the room, Fred’s sadness, loneliness, longing for connection to himself and the community.  Fred later thanked me for “not being nice” in my mirror to him as the honesty impacted him in a way that allowed him to access and deeply feel his sadness and thereby bridge a connection to himself and thereby to others.  (For a good book on this subject I recommend “Don’t be Nice, be Real” by Kelly Bryson MFT)

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Chip August: Welcome to “Sex, Love & Intimacy”, I am your host Chip August. Today’s show I’m talking to Kelly Bryson. Kelly’s quite an interesting guy, he’s a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in marriage family therapies. He’s a certified trainer for the Center for Nonviolent Communication. He’s the author a great book called “Don’t Be Nice, Be Real” and the subtitle is “Balancing Passion for Self With Compassion For Others” and he’s a contributor to a recent anthology I saw called “A Marriage of Sex and Spirit”. He’s really…all of that and a really interesting fellow and a nice guy. Hopefully, we’re going to be talking today about non-violent communication, sometimes called NVC, sometimes called Compassionate Communication. It’s a style of communication that I think…I’ve done some studies in and that a lot of people I know have done some work on and I think is sort of…in my mind is the technology for the 21st century on how to communicate without hurting, pushing away, being aggressive, being violent. It’s an extraordinary technique, so we’re going to be talking about NVC and Compassionate Communication. We’re also going to really take a look at ineffective and sometimes really tragic ways that people communicate and see if we can come up with some alternatives, and I’d like (I hope)  we’re going to talk a little bit about how to use this kind of communication in sex, in relationships, in all kinds of things that couples face. So, I’m looking forward to an interesting conversation with an interesting friend.
*BREAK*
Kelly Bryson: I think as one of the major difficulties, major problems you can say, couples have is that when they’re in pain, instead of asking for understanding, they tell the other person what’s wrong with them. What they did, what they should have done and they usually do so in terms that are exaggerative or imply blame, or imply wrongness in some way. I say just what they did, but I do so in observational language. I don’t say “You left a mess in the bathroom”, I say “You left your clothes on the floor.” So just that is a big shift. One element that non-violent communication helps us with a lot is to train us to begin thinking in these terms, is how to have empathy, how to have not just mental reflectings, know how to have impactive sensing. How to feel into what’s going on energetically with the other person. This, I’ve been told, is what makes great lovers. And of course that never makes anybody feel safe and open… “Oh NOW I’m…I’ve been in denial! That’s where I’ve been, let me come out. Now I want to make myself vulnerable and naked and trust you now that you’ve called me those names.”
Chip August: Well behind every inhuman deed is a human need. I love that.
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Excerpt from the book: The Sacred Matrix by Dieter Duhm

If we want to overcome war, we need a concrete vision for peace. If we want to overcome the powerful global field of violence, we need a concrete vision for a powerful global field of peace. During the student revolution in the Sixties, we experienced how easily people are united to fight against something, yet at the same time find it difficult to live together. We were able to solve the problem of a police barricade, but we were unable to solve the problem of dishwashing in our communal households, the problem of hierarchy in our groups, and especially the problem of sexuality. Apart from the slogans for a life free from domination, we had no positive vision and no concrete utopia for a new lifestyle. Most struggles for liberation were fights against existing injustice and were not a fight for the realization of a clearly seen and realistic vision for peace and justice.

TAMERA’s* task is to develop a concrete utopia for a new type of human civilization and society and a new way of connecting our life with the beings of Nature and the powers of Creation. Such a concrete utopia contains a relatively precise image and a complex informational totality for a real culture of peace. The difference between utopia and illusion is that utopia is compatible with the inner blueprint and the possibilities of reality, i.e. of the universe. All beings carry a concrete utopia (a so-called “entelechy” and a sought-for inner gestalt) inside of them that guides their development. The power of concrete utopia is immense. It turns a seed into a full-size tree, a caterpillar into a butterfly, and an embryo into an adult. Individuals do not have this power on their own, but through their connection with the whole. Concrete utopia is the matrix or blueprint through which the power of the whole can flow into the individual and bring it into being. If a caterpillar wanted to become a butterfly on its own, it would have an impossible task. Concrete utopia is the power in life that takes all beings beyond their present limitations. Continue reading →