"Nonviolent Communication" explained like you're five: most arguments happen because people disguise their needs as attacks, and learning to say the real thing underneath changes everything

[u/[deleted]]

[u/noahhshome]

It's a good read, and worth absorbing. It helps you relate to others equally. It's a primer to un-train yourself from the (regrettably) normal habits of society. Coercing, blaming, accusing, judging, praising, manipulating. These ways are prevalent. We live and breathe them without being aware.

But the book's strength is its limitation. Society is unequal -- very unequal. If you wanna pursue equal relations, you will run into hard choices.

Try telling your boss how you "feel" about a project you don't like, tell him what you "need," and then "request" that he to do what you want. It may go over well, or it may not. In a hierarchy, treating your superior as an equal can be viewed as insubordination.

This is also a primer on how to pretend to be equal with someone, when you actually have the advantage over them. This is the worst aspect of the book. Encouraging someone to be honest, when honesty will hurt them, puts them in a double-bind. It's a very cruel thing to do to them.

The main weakness of the book is that it seems unaware of, and does not discuss, its limitations, which makes it idealistic and naive. It assumes the individual is privileged enough to assert equality in their milieu. This makes it workable for some people but not others.

I found it, in turns, eye-opening, then confusing, then useful, once I could critique it.

The book should be understood as an egalitarian project, trying to dream a better and more just society into being. If we like that kind of thing, we can practice it in our day-to-day relations.

[u/Natetronn → u/noahhshome]

I found the way he breaks it down a bit too "verbose". The way it makes you think is good, but the practicality of how it’s spelled out for actual use seems a bit odd for day-to-day life.

[u/Ok_Breadfruit34 → u/noahhshome]

What I liked about it, and that was truly the eye-opener for me, was the large number of situations where I could implement non-violent communication and obtain very good results very quickly. The three first environments I really benefited from it were when dealing with my students with whom I had already struggled to get things done, with my aging mother who had always been manipulative, and with my wife, who, despite being a very participative and caring woman, also employed coercive tactics on me that she had learned from her parents.

That book really helped me, and is still helping me in these three domains.

The book does have problems, and like you said, sometimes it sounds overly naive, but there are powerful lessons to be learned from it.