NVC Question #2

Question:

“We accept responsibility rather than blame other people for our feelings by acknowledging our own needs, desires, expectations, values, or thoughts.”

I’m unclear on how this works with the NVC formula, or if it is something separate. Needs are the only thing mentioned in the formula, but I’ve seen the examples use values and other things. How do you see the accepting responsibility as fitting into the model?

Answer:

The sentence in question is saying that we need to acknowledge that our feelings come from all those things, and I think the list is helpful for remembering why other people don’t cause our emotions. If we expected something else, or wanted something else, or had different thoughts, our emotions could be different. My best understanding is while it can be particularly nice to mention needs (of the sort listed in the list of needs in the book), as long as you say “because I …” then it’ll pretty much be okay, since you’ve made it clear to ourselves and to others that you’re the one responsible for your feelings. Here are some example sentences referencing each of the above things:

• needs: I felt hurt when you didn’t call on my birthday because I need appreciation and recognition. 
• desires: I felt hurt when you didn’t call on my birthday because I really wanted to hear from you and to know you cared. 
• expectations: I felt disappointed when you didn’t call on my birthday because I was expecting to hear from you. 
• values: I felt disappointed when you didn’t call on my birthday because it matters to me that you remember the details of my life. 
• thoughts: I felt disappointed when you didn’t call on my birthday because I was thinking that it meant you didn’t care about me. 

When I imagine how an easily triggered third-party would react to the different ways of saying it, I think he’d be a lot less defensive with any of those ones above than with “I feel hurt because you didn’t call me on my birthday”. That being said, I think he’d be the least crazy about the expectation one and he might not be so into the thought one either. There is a part in the book about how expression thoughts is intermediate—way more helpful than not owning the feeling, but not as useful as recognizing the underlying need.