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This Sunday, Skullcrusher Household is presenting a three-hour class on beating procrastination by cultivating positive motivation.

When: 2:00-5:00pm

Where:
850 Williams Way, Apt 4.
Mountain View, CA 94040

When you get here, you’ll see a blue garage door with a turtle on it. Go up the stairs to the left, pass the monkey-pony monster by the door, and come right in!

Last week at our IFS practice group we had a full-house of attendees, and there was one issue that was especially popular. Quite a few of the people who came independently picked it to address. It’s the same problem that has come up the most often with the clients I’ve worked with individually. Want to guess what it is?

Procrastination.

You know how it goes. You know what you’re supposed to do. What you should do. What you’d be the happiest if you did. Maybe you can imagine yourself doing it, making forward progress, and moving towards the outcomes you care about in your life. Or maybe you have an idea of the result you want, but you find yourself getting stuck when you try to sit down to start. It all still seems murky, and you can’t quite see how it would go.

Practicing regular procrastination is like having your very own choose-your-own-least-favorite-emotion adventure:

Frustration: You don’t understand why you can’t just do it. You know you want to do the thing—it’s important. You can hear yourself making excuses, feel yourself getting tired and bored, and none of it is helping!

Fear: It’s scary not to get work done. Maybe you’re worried about the consequences at your job (or school), or maybe you see that opportunities are passing you by. You’re starting to worry that it’ll be this way forever—that you’ll never be able to apply yourself to anything again.

Guilt: You feel like you’re letting other people down, and maybe you are. As the time passes you wish that you could go back and make it so you’d been working, but you haven’t been. You feel a painful pull when you realize that you’ve been breaking promises to yourself again and again.

Shame: “What’s wrong with me for acting like this?” You get a sick sense of dread when you think about someone finding out what you’ve actually been spending your time on. What would they think? What sort of person would act like that?

Maybe you’re feeling all of them. I know I have.

Because procrastination is widespread, the internet and bookstores are littered with advice about what to do. Make lists and don’t bother prioritizing, prioritize ruthlessly, set a timer, formalize the problem as this thing called akrasia, model it, and understand its nature, procrastinate more strategically, or just do it. There’s good material out there. And I would be willing to bet that diving headfirst into the literature about procrastination is usually just another way to procrastinate.

Overcoming procrastination is a big topic, and we can’t cover it all in one class, so we’re tackling one foundational chunk that you absolutely need to achieve your goal and have fun while doing it.

Cultivating Positive Motivation

Once you know that doing something is important, it’s tempting to frame the problem of getting yourself to do it in terms of self-discipline. But knowing that something is important is one thing. Being excited about it, drawn to it, thinking about how you can’t wait to work on it… that’s a different beast. You’re not looking to crank up your self-discipline, you’re looking to actually want, on a gut level—not in some abstract sense—to work on your project.

One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it’s only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee.
–Paul Graham

You want intrinsic motivation. That’s what works and lasts.

So, this Sunday, we’re going to lead you through a series of three exercises that will identify and multiply your own positive intrinsic motivation.

1. Future Self Guided Visualization

A cool hack for communicating with our best guess about how we’ll be when we’re older and wiser. And once you’re there, talking to your image of future self, you can get clearer on what it is you really care about having and why it’s important to you. I think of it as learning to talk to my CEV. This exercise will be led by Shannon Friedman.

2. Subgoal Creation

Once you’ve clarified your values, it’s time to retackle the project you’ve picked and break it down into actionable steps with realistic deadlines. Defining the right subgoals and choosing the right deadlines is somewhat of an art, so we’ll guide you through the process. This exercise will be led by Will Ryan.

3. Concretizing the Outcome

To get started and build momentum, use specific small steps and short-term deadlines. To keep your brain churning away at a project over time, you need a clear mental representation of your goal state backed by emotional power. We’ll show you how to ensure that your focus is in the right place. This exercise will be led by Divia Melwani.

Suggested donation is $20-30.

RSVP to divia.melwani@positivevector.com.

P.S. Since our last class, we have added a new instructor (roommate and collaborator), Adam Widmer, to our team. Until this past Monday, he was leading a weekly meetup in New York about rational self-improvement. He is a professional IFS practicioner. He’ll be there on Sunday, so you’ll get to meet him when you come!

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A while back, when I was making Anki decks of the life concepts that I found most important, I wrote these two sentences:

“Communication is authentic when what we express externally corresponds to what’s going on internally.”

“Humans crave authentic communication.”

If you’re anything like me, you spend a big chunk of your waking hours talking to people. It’s important the time I spend communicating be fun, not unsatisfying. I don’t like it when I:

• find myself planning what I’m going to say next instead of listening to the other person (Note: There is a level of listening beyond just being able to remember the words the other person said. That’s the type I’m referring to here.)
• wonder whether the other person is really listening to me, or just being polite
• discover that I’m completely off in my head somewhere else entirely, maybe thinking about what I’m going to eat for dinner
• get the sense that the conversation is kind of dead, even if I couldn’t say why

Everything I listed above is a symptom of people not talking about what’s actually going on in their heads.

When what you’re saying is strongly connected to the pictures in your head, the feelings in your body, or the thoughts popping into your mind, you can bet I’m making eye contact, relaxing out of my own narrative to focus on you, letting my own emotions respond to your reality. It’s a lot like getting drawn into a good movie.

When what I’m talking about lines up with what I’m thinking about, and you’re listening, it feels like I’m the center of your universe. As I say things and see you respond in real-time, it helps me think. My default state is looking out at reality through my own distorted map, so having another human reacting to my thoughts and feelings is an excellent way to get perspective on the stories I’m constantly telling myself.

As Kenneth Folk, a meditation teacher who recommends dyad noting (where you note out loud with a partner) as a more reliable way to meditate, says, “Feedback is God”.

With that, I give you my best questions to steer your conversations towards authenticity.

1. What’s actually on your mind?

Sometimes, simple and direct is best. If you want to know what someone is really thinking about, you can just ask. I’m including it here because sometime last year, when Anna Salamon asked me this question, it caught me off guard in the best possible way. I remember I was sitting in the hot tub with her, feeling somewhat self-conscious because I didn’t know her very well. I asked her what she wanted to talk about and she asked me this question. I could tell she was sincere, and it was very disarming. There was a release of tension as the conflict between following my own train of thought and trying to make her happy dissolved.

2. As far as you can tell, am I getting what you’re saying?

When we say stuff out loud and we’re looking to have other people understand us, we look for clues to see if it’s working. Is the other person asking questions that show they understand? Does the other person seem to be feeling the same way I do about what I’m saying? Are they using metaphors that suggest that they have the same pictures in their head as I do? Usually, this checking to see if the other person is on the same page happens indirectly. We try to figure it out, but it’s not quite a shared effort. Give the other person a break by joining in this process. Ask if you seem to be getting it, and mean it. If the other person says ‘no’ or doesn’t seem sure, ask what it is that you’re not getting or what you’re doing that makes them suspect that you’re not getting it.

3. What’s your best guess about why I’m saying this?

This is another one that whoever it is that you’re talking to is probably already trying to figure out. We all have our own angles, biases, misconceptions, expertise, and values. And whenever we talk to anyone else, we need to know how much we can trust their information, so we ask ourselves why they’re telling it to us (sometimes consciously, sometimes not). If someone doesn’t believe you about something, chances are they already have a story about why you’d be saying it even though it isn’t true. Be curious. Ask what that story is.

4. How would you be able to tell whether…?

The first three questions were about getting the person you’re talking to share stuff that was already going on their head. This one is about helping the other person think. Say you’re talking to someone who just started learning how to paint, and they say, “I don’t think I could ever paint something truly awesome.” You could ask, “How would you be able to tell whether your painting were truly awesome?” For this to work, you have to ask in a curious way. Show that you’re genuinely interested in what goes on in their head to decide whether a painting they had made would be “truly awesome”. Often the person won’t know the answer right off the bat, so this question can get the wheels spinning.

5. What is your response to that?

This one comes from my friend, roommate, and life coach, Shannon Friedman. Sometimes what you want isn’t to follow someone’s train of thought about whatever happens to be on their mind, but to hear what’s going on inside in the other person in response to something you said. In which case, ask! Of course, be prepared for the other person’s response to be something that more about them and less about whatever it was you said. Be curious anyway, and you’ll go deeper.

If you have experience with any of these questions or ones you think should be added to the list, leave a comment!

(Note: When I went over this list with Will, he suggested taking out the qualifier for #2 and change it to “Do I understand you correctly?”. I went back and forth, but decided to leave the qualifier in because it can make people more comfortable answering honestly. I’d recommend experimenting with the wording on all of these and going with what flows. Tone will matter more than the exact words you use anyway.)

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It’s been a while since I’ve hosted an official gathering, but I’ve been practicing hard, and I keep getting inquiries, so it must be about time.

The exact time is this Saturday, November 5th from 3:00pm-6:00pm.

And, even better, Shannon has been doing intensive (averaging multiple hours a day!) IFS training with me, so the facilitator to newbie ratio just went up. More individualized attention for you!

Our practice group will meet at our very own secret lair, Skullcrusher Household, complete with painted monkey-pony monster. (What’s with all the screaming???) We’re at Tortuga in Mountain View, CA. Email me for the exact address.

When you get here, you’ll see a blue garage door with a turtle on it. Go up the stairs to the left, admire Shannon’s monkey-pony monster by the door, and come right in!

You should join us if:

• You find yourself thinking, “Part of me wants X, but part of me wants Y”
• You feel stuck because it seems as though you’re being pulled in multiple directions at the same time
• You’re sure about what you should do, but you “just can’t” get yourself to act
• You see yourself acting out the same destructive pattern over and over again (i.e. lying awake at night worrying intsead of going to sleep)
• You want to overcome emotional blocks to becoming the sort of person you want to be (see item #4 from Alicorn’s polyhacking post)

Suffering happens when you you’re fighting with yourself. For a more detailed description, I’d recommend Kaj’s Less Wrong post, Suffering as attentional allocation conflict. And that means that by turning your attention to each voice in turn and hearing it out, so that it’s fully and clearly communicated what it needs you to know, you can reliably resolve suffering.

I can’t fix all your internal conflicts in one afternoon—though I keep reading, learning, and practicing to get better and faster because I have A Sense That More is Possible—but I can promise some movement for you on an area where you currently feel stuck. You may not have it all worked out, but you will have a sense that something inside you has relaxed or loosened, and that you have increased clarity.

I know most everyone on this list, and I know you’re all excellent at intellectual understanding and analysis, but research has shown that the greastest change comes when people are in a high experiencing level state. Read this excerpt to see what I mean:

It’s almost like … it kind of feels like … sitting here looking through a photo album. And, like each picture of me in there is one of my achievements. And, I think [inaud] because I wasn’t achieving for me. I was always achieving for … someone else so they’d think I was good enough. It’s like it feels right to me to say … that … I don’t know quite how to say it … It’s like the feeling is there, but l can’t quite put words on it. It feels right somehow to say it’s like I’ve chosen this man as my challenge … knowing that I’d be defeated. That this person wouldn’t respond to me in the same way. So that I could kind of buy right back into the photo album being flipped through. I didn’t have what it took (T: Uhhum) to get what I wanted. Which is kind of…

Anyone who has meditated knows how mind-altering observing yourself (thoughts, feelings, sense of self) can be, and with my own personal growth work I have come to trust Bill Harris’s assertion that:

You can do something destructive to yourself (feelings, beliefs, values, behaviors, etc.) over and over as long as you do it unconsciously (without continuous conscious awareness). But once you begin to do the non-resourceful feeling, behavior, belief, value, etc. consciously, it will begin to fall away. You just cannot do something that is not good for you and also do it consciously.

Give me three hours of your time, and I’ll get you into a high experiencing level state, exactly where you need to be to introspect in a way that produces immediate behavioral change in yourself.

On Saturday, I will give everyone walkthrough handouts about how to lead an IFS process, and I’ll circulate, stepping in whenever anyone gets stuck. Aside from me, we’ll also have:

Will Ryan:

former leader of the fabled New York Less Wrong Meetup Group, an experienced facilitator who has staffed multiple weekends for The Mankind Project and completed Shadow Work Seminars training

and

Shannon Friedman:

an accredited Coactive Coach from The Coaches Training Institute (CTI). She has completed the CTI fundamental training, gotten certificatied, and assisted training workshops, and is currently participating in their leadership training program.

Qualifications aside, we’re all personal-growth junkies who have spent many hours and weeks trying out out tons of stuff and sifting through it, so you can get the good stuff pre-filtered, without having to search and research yourself.

(Incidentally, I learned about IFS from Steve Omohundro, an even more experienced personal-growth junkie, who recommended it as one of the most effective methods he had come across.)

If you want more details about IFS works so you can make see how it will work for you and, check out this description from Jay Earley, author of Self Therapy.

It matters to me to give everyone who attends the best experience, so once you know that you’re coming, please email me and let me know whether you’re coming to mostly work on your own issues and get movement there, or whether you want to learn how to use IFS skills on your own too. Knowing what your motivations are will help me meet your needs.

Suggested donation is $15-40, but don’t let price be the reason you shy away from coming. Come, try it, see what value you get out of it, and then decide how much to pay. Where else can you get get hours of one-on-one work supervised by experienced facilitators for this price?

RSVP to divia@meaningandmagic.com.

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Recently I’ve been using the phrase “identify with” a bunch. As in, “I’m learning not to identify with my past self”, or “I try not to identify with my beliefs”, or “the ego is what, when accurately perceived, we stop identifying with”. When a friend of mine asked me what I meant by “identifying with”, I wasn’t immediately sure how to unpack how I was using the words. I said, “Well, when I identify with something it feels like me. It feels like part of my, uh, identity”. He was unsatisfied with this explanation, as was I.

(Prioritizing explaining myself is a heuristic that has served me well. I want meaning.)

Here’s my best one sentence version: When I identify with something, doing an original seeing on it is aversive. I don’t want to take a fresh look at the evidence and see if it really exists in the way I’m thinking of it. In other words, things I identify with seem like part of the territory, not just part of my map. I’ll expand a bit on what this means in terms of identifying with beliefs, emotions, and parts of myself.

Identifying with My Beliefs

I’ve covered almost exactly what I mean by identifying with beliefs in Sticky Claims and Surprise Meters. When I identify with my beliefs, they act as “sticky claims”, and when I don’t, they become “surprise meters”.

Experiences I’ve had with IFS have also helped me understand what it means to identify with my beliefs in a visceral, not just intellectual way. Last August, I was working with my IFS therapist at the time and we were examining a belief of mine that we had discovered that “when I’m upset, I can’t be there for other people”. She asked me how I felt about the belief, and I responded by saying “Well, I think it’s true”. No counter-evidence came to mind; it seemed obvious that the statement was well-supported by my experience. It seemed like a “direction perception of the way things really are”. She said that meant I was “blended with” the belief, which is the IFS way of saying that I was identifying with it.

While blended with the belief, I couldn’t do an original seeing on it and examine whether the belief was truth-tracking and whether holding onto it served me. The belief seemed like a part of me, so much so that I didn’t even realize that I was failing to question it. My IFS therapist had me do an exercise where I visualized the belief and then imagined stepping back from it physically, which is one common strategy for unblending.

Sure enough, immediately upon stepping back from the belief in my mental imagery, I saw that I had evidence for and against it, and that failing to question it wasn’t helping me achieve what I cared about. Just a moment ago, it had seemed “true”. Now it was clear that I had been harvesting evidence for it.

And that’s how the importance of not identifying with my beliefs clicked for me.

Identifying with My Emotions

When I identify with my beliefs, I think of them as “just true” or “intuitively obvious to the most casual observer”. When I identify with my emotions, they are “reasonable”, “justified”, and “exactly the way I should feel”.

Here’s a recent example. On a recent trip to New York I’d made plans to meet a friend around 6:00. I was running about an hour late, which I had informed her of. On the subway, on my way to meet her, I noticed I was feeling a lot of guilt. I kept having thoughts about how I was a bad person, and I should have known better, and replaying the mistakes I had made that got me into the current situation. I tried to tell myself that the friend I was meeting was late fairly often herself, that she wouldn’t want me to beat myself up about it, and that what I was doing wasn’t helping. I resisted all thoughts that threatened my identity as a guilty person, including thoughts about how I could change my behavior in the future! (I ended up doing some work on myself in the moment, which I’ll blog about too.)

Identifying with My Parts

One of the claims of the IFS model is that our psyche is made up of sub-personalities, each with its own set of emotions and beliefs. I can identify a “part” because my degree of identification with all of its emotions and beliefs will change at the same time.

For example, I had a protective part whose role was to stop me from talking when I was upset with other people. Some of its feelings were: anxiety because it believed I was incapable of expressing myself effectively and resentment that other people wouldn’t just read my mind, and some of its beliefs were: that unexpressed anger kept me safe, and that expressing anger would lead to more chaos than I could handle. As I visualized stepping back from this part, my level of identification with each emotion and belief in that cluster lessened in lockstep.

Strategies for Decreasing Identification With Emotions and Beliefs

One straightforward hack I use for not identifying with my emotions is rather than saying “I am angry”, saying “I am feeling anger”, or “I am experiencing anger”. This simple verbal transformation helps remind me that my emotions are temporary and dependent on how I am responding to my circumstances.

Physically stepping backwards and visualizing stepping backwards will both help disidentify with parts and beliefs. Conceptualizing the emotion or belief visually, and then interacting with that imagery is often effective. Asking the emotion or belief to unblend sometimes works. Meditation trains the ability to disidentify. In future posts I will further unpack these techniques and more.

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Question:

Explain to me why "intimidated" is not a proper feeling-word.

Answer:

"Intimidated" isn't an emotion—the word includes an interpretation of the situation. The emotion on its own would probably be fear, maybe anxiety, maybe some other mix. When you say "intimidated", you're also bringing up a story about the other person's behavior, and I'd say there are also implications about intent. "I feel intimidated when you say that" seems much more likely to provoke defensiveness than "I feel scared when you say that". Does that make sense?

Followup:

Cool, thanks! Someone I am trying to get to know told me he feels intimidated by me and that never sat well with me, thus why I wanted to figure this out.

(Thanks to Dave Jackson for this particular question.)

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Question:

I'm still kind of confused about the NVC general sense of the term 'need'.

I'd before been thinking that NVC talks about 'needs' rather than 'values' or 'wants' because by thinking of them as needs, people would respect the desire once noticing and taking account of it, in themselves and/or others. So this was kind of my own way of interpreting the NVC term in a way that didn't state necessity, such as "I need understanding".

I put together the facts that NVC talks about needs, you're an experienced user of NVC, and you mentioned you don't like "need" based thinking, and wondered what was your own way of treating the NVC terminology of needs. (Perhaps you oppose the use of 'need' to mean obligations specifically rather than necessity generally?)

Answer:

I think I understand your question better now.

I guess I was being somewhat imprecise when talking about "need-based thinking". The needs that NVC lists are all very general. Respect, fun, connection, stuff like that. The most specific ones are stuff like air and water. So sure, you "need" respect, but you don't "need" it from any one person. You "need" fun, but you don't "need" to have fun playing this video game right now. Those are strategies.

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Question:

How does "I need to..." relate to NVC needs, such as judgments being alienated expressions of unmet needs?

Answer:

"I need to" is classified as an internal demand, which is related to a judgment, but a bit different. "Demand" means that fear, guilt, or shame are part of the enforcement system.

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Not quite a question, more of a prompt for discussion: 

I find it very interesting to say "We don't talk except to meet our needs." At one level it's trivially true because you don't do anything without a reason. At another, it's not as true. Often the need in question is 'fill dead air' or 'satisfy appropriate social convention' or other things that suggest there might not be a 'point' to saying what we are saying, so it's kind of half right. Or of course, as he points out, we might be mad and want to express that without actually needing a remedy as such. As a response one might say that this isn't a productive thing to do and one would benefit if they only had this conversation with a concrete end in mind, which opens up the question of enforcing incentive patterns or other such less tangible goals. It also raises a point that I missed while reading, which is that the word need here seems to be overloaded in the sense that he's using it to mean something distinct from its ordinary English meaning, although it includes ordinary needs. He doesn't say so outright, but he implies that what he calls needs includes what I would usually call wants. It's a vague distinction in English along a gradient, but certainly when he refers to needs he's talking about something far less strong than most people do when they say they need something. I've been told that "need is a strong word" could be considered one of my catch phrases. (Reminds me of George Carlin: " 'My needs aren't being met.' Drop some of your needs!) 

Response:

I am in general interested in better understanding what is meant by NVC needs. I think what distinguishes needs from strategies (which are more like wants) is that with strategies you can ask "why do you want that" and get something more fundamental as an answer, but with needs you can't. Well, maybe not exactly, since you can certainly answer "why do you need food?" with "so I don't die". But I think it's a decent heuristic. And something is a need instead of a strategy if you are going to keep experiencing a negative emotion until you get it met one way or the other. I agree with you completely that "need is a strong word", and I'm still okay with using it for NVC-type needs since they're so general, and they never depend on a specific other person doing anything. So if I need to "be heard" and you don't feel like listening I can always listen to myself for find someone else to listen to me, filling the need that way. And I think it's fair to say that if I'm never "heard" about anything I'll probably keep being unhappy about it.

When I think about what needs people are (subconsciously) trying to meet with dead-air conversations, I'd guess connection, community, acceptance, appreciation, emotional safety, empathy, reassurance, respect, understanding, fun, inspiration etc. probably do play into motivation, but that this type of conversation typically doesn't end up meeting anyone's needs. NVC says that we're much more likely to actually get these needs met if we're aware of them in the moment. So part of what I got from NVC is that regardless of what other people typically do, it's in my interest to be aware of what needs I'm trying to meet whenever I do anything, certainly including communicating with other people. So the "we only talk to get our needs met" point I was making is trivially true for people in general, but is perhaps better read as a recommendation—make it more than trivially true for yourself and some of the questions about "how do I say X with NVC" will resolve themselves, since the answer is that saying X won't actually meet your needs. I get the impression that you understand this point.

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Question:

It seems to me from reading the book that what he calls "observation" can only include direct observations of physical actions and all frequency statements must be strictly numeric. In fact, any non-exact statements seem to be outside the definition, whether they include estimates of frequency or not. The examples were telling because they were so extreme, in the sense that I would predict most people would assume that the word 'observation' applies to them. If this is where it starts, where does it stop? Thus, we have:

"My aunt complains when I talk to her."

This is not ok, it seems, because "complain" is not sufficiently low-level to be an observation, and because this makes a non-exact statement of frequency: "When I talk to her" is not ok, because it doesn't include the information on when, in fact, I have talked to her, even if this has occured every single time such an interaction has occurred. Thus, I cannot convey the sentiment "The correlation between my aunt saying 'hello' to me and her having a smile on her face is 1" without also saying the frequency of her saying "hello" which of course also must be exact. So if I don't have that information, it seems this is an observation I have a lot of trouble making!

His suggested alternative:

"My aunt called me three times this week, and each time talked about people who treated her in ways she didn't like."

Two notes:

1. This statement is missing information that was in the first statement, some of which was not judgment, which I assume is a feature and not a bug.
2. This assumes that your aunt is truthful, which the first statement didn't. Is this not a judgment? All I can say, at most, is that she claimed to have been treated in a way that she claims to not have liked. I haven't seen this type of thing addressed: "My aunt called me three times that I know of this week, and each time talked about people who she claims treated her in ways she claims she didn't like."

I'm hoping you can help clarify this.

Answer:

I think you're right about the second one assuming the aunt is truthful. I don't see it as much of a leap, but I take your point. I bet when coming up with examples no one really noticed that or thought much about it. I would say that the missing information is intended as a feature. I'll quote this part from the intro:

NVC is a process language that discourages static generalizations; instead, evaluations are to be based on observations specific to time and context. Semanticist Wendell Johnson pointed out that we create many problems for ourselves by using static language to express or capture a reality that is ever changing: "Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of process, change, differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths, interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the mismatch of our ever-changing world and our relatively static language forms is part of our problem."

The way I see it, there are two different motivations for being very particular about separating observation from evaluation. One is so that other people don't hear it as criticism or judgement. The second is so that our own judgments don't prevent us from perceiving new information. They're related, and I'm going to address each one separately. Finally, I'll try to touch on this distinction as it fits into the process as a whole.

How other people hear it:

Granted, we don't know who the person who says "my aunt complains when I talk to her" is talking about, so maybe it's kind of silly to consider this part of it without making some assumption there. I do think telling your aunt "you complain when I talk to you" is likely going to provoke defensiveness is the way that the transformed statement doesn't. I think the same applies if you're talking to someone who's likely to feel protective of the aunt as well. Even if it might seem pretty objective, I think whenever you make a generalization like that, people who don't like its implications for whatever reason find it pretty easy to come up with objections and challenges to it—which isn't the case if you just give facts.

How it affects the person saying it:

Some of my thoughts on this issue come from another book I really liked about communication, Crucial Conversations. Our brain responds to facts and stories in different ways. Maybe the distinction would be that facts don't create emotions, and stories do. And stories tend to be "sticky" in a way that facts don't. As in, once we've told ourselves a story it tends to become self-fulfilling prophecies and by default we act in a way that provides confirming evidence. I think it's similar to what Eliezer's getting out when he talks about the blood type theory of personality and how as soon as we make a mental category we start harvesting similarities. The effect of saying the words to yourself "my aunt complains when I talk to her" leads your mind in the direction of thinking of other times she has complained and fitting her into a mental image of a complainer. Saying it the other way doesn't have this effect so much, since you've contained the statement, after a fashion. Aggressively trying to harvest confirming evidence in the second case doesn't do much harm, since it's pretty specific.

To make another reference to the sequences, Eliezer also talks about we are "running on corrupted hardware", and I'd say that's the reason statements like "my aunt complains when I talk to her" are problematic. I would believe some people (like you, maybe) have safeguards in place in your mind to mitigate or eliminate the side-effects of statements like this. I've seen stranger things. But phrasing it as an observation way both provides a safeguard and tends to (subconsciously) communicate to people that you're not letting your brain run wild harvesting evidence, so I think that's a big part of why it makes them feel less defensive when you just present facts. Even if you don't mean your generalization as a judgment, generally people end up turning their generalizations into judgements whether they mean to or not.

That being said, I think there are potential problems with focusing on a single instance (or two) when what's bothering you is an overall pattern. Your emotions might seem out of proportion to the other person, and (like you said), you're throwing out information that does in fact bear on the situation at hand. However, I think there are NVC-approved ways to incorporate the additional information about the pattern you've noticed.

But I think to figure out how to tackle this, we need a bit more information about the situation. Part of the point of NVC is that we don't talk at all except to try to meet our needs. So, what's the point of having the conversation about the aunt in the first place? Once we know that, it'll suggest ways to talk about it.

Let's assume that you're actually talking to the aunt, and you're annoyed about her complaining all the time. You could say something like, "Last week, both times I talked you you talked about people who treated you in ways that you said you didn't like. I'm feeling frustrated because it's important to me that the time I spend talking to you is enjoyable for both of us, and I have difficulty enjoying conversation with that sort of focus." Something along those lines. At some other point if you think she's not getting that it's a pattern, maybe something like, "When you say that I'm 'making a big deal out of just a few times' I get concerned, because I'm seeing a pattern here and I really want you to understand what I'm getting at. Can you tell me how you see the pattern I'm describing?".

Once again, I think the point about why you're even talking about your aunt in the first place is relevant. Because I think it's not so much that statements like "my aunt complains when I talk to her" are so awful, but more that they fall into the category of things that are likely provoke defensiveness in certain contexts. Also, by no means is the book saying that such statements are useless. If nothing else, one of its main claims is that if ONE person in the conversation is using NVC, it's all good. So if you said this to someone who was very good at translating generalizations then it wouldn't much matter how you said it and it would just be information. And maybe the people you choose to associate with are pretty good at this sort of translation, so in practice it's not such a big deal for you.

Something else I just thought of about talking about patterns: NVC would tell you to speak up about it the first time it happens if it bothers you, so if you're really doing the NVC then you won't have too many patterns to talk about. NVC is not about talking about the past.

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Question:

I'm wondering how one would actually make one the requests outlined in the book as un-NVC: "I'd like you to respect my privacy." Yes, in one particular instance this could mean knocking on the door, but how would I make the more general need known? There are many times when it is not reasonable to expect an exact expression of what action is required to be possible.

Answer:

Often we do want to make more general requests and we don't know how to outline the exact actions. And in my experience it's likely that when we're in that boat, the other person usual is too and wouldn't know quite what to do either. Maybe in the case of privacy you could try:

"When you came in without knocking I felt frustrated because I'm needing some peace and space for myself. I would like you knock on the door when you come in, and I'm also concerned because I'm thinking that the issue is bigger than that. Would you be willing to hear me out about what I want until it seems like we're both on the same page about this?"

or maybe

"I'd like to talk to you about privacy, and what it would take for me to feel resolved about this issue and then have you tell me what you understood from what I said."

Followup Question:

On the privacy issue, that second one confuses me even though I know what you're trying to say. I'd expect a head to be scratched. The first one sounds more promising; it seems like a good beginning, but the question is where to go from there. The central problem remains.

Answer to Followup Question:

Agreed.  I think figuring out what to do when something's important to us and we don't really know the actions that would lead to us getting it is a bit of a conundrum that NVC doesn't have a magic solution for.  

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Question:

"I want you to stop drinking."

This, it seems, is not a clear request that a specific action be taken.

We are, as he says, not in agreement.

He says, the speaker might have said: "I want you to tell me what needs of yours are met by drinking, and to discuss with me other ways of meeting those needs." 

Um, no. That's not what the speaker wants. The speaker wants the subject to stop drinking. Period. I can see the argument that technically this is a negative request, and that you don't do negative requests. and perhaps he could say "I want you to reduce your alcohol intake to zero" or "I want you to stay sober" or some other way of wording the same thing, but not only does this strongly seem to be a request it seems to me like the alternative is a very different request. 

Answer:

Okay, I'd definitely agree with you that the translation is a pretty different request. And sure, the asker probably really does want the other person to just stop drinking. Here's a relevant excerpt: 

"Expressing genuine requests also requires an awareness of our objective. If our objective is only to change people and their behavior or to get our way, then NVC is not an appropriate tool. The process is designed for those of us who would like others to change and respond, but only if they choose to do so willingly and compassionately. The objective of NVC is to establish a relationship based on honesty and empathy. When others trust that our primary commitment is to the quality of the relationship, and that we expect this process to fulfill everyone's needs, then they can trust that our requests are true requests and not camouflaged demands." 

So I think the issue here is just that asking someone with a drinking problem to stop drinking is quite unlikely to work, and if it does work just like that it'll probably be because it's implied somehow that the asker will punish the other person for not doing it. I'm reminded of GTD and I think it's definitely true that really small requests are more doable for all sorts of reasons. Also, here's a relevant excerpt from one of the example dialogues in the book: 

Al: Burt I know we've talked about this a dozen times, but listen. I'm scared your damned cigarettes are going to kill you! You're my best friend, and I want you around for as long as I can have you. Please don't think I'm judging you. I'm not--I'm just really worried. (In the past, when Al had tried to get him to quit, Burt had often accused Al of judging him.) 

Burt: No, I hear your concern. We've been friends for a long time… 

Al: (making a request) Would you be willing to quit? 

Given that these conversations are given as examples of proper NVC, it seems that rephrasing it in roughly the way you proposed is kosher.

As a minor point, in the conversation with Al and Burt he doesn't ever agree to quit smoking. So this is in line with what we seem to agree on. Phrasing it in a positive way is better and trivial to do, and something so big and general is unlikely to work.

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Question:

"When others trust that our primary commitment is to the quality of the relationship, and that we expect this process to fulfill everyone's needs, then they can trust that our requests are true requests and not camouflaged demands."

I'm not sure exactly what he means by this. Would you mind elaborating?

Answer:

With NVC, we want to sincerely communicate that we care more about having an honest, empathetic relationship with the person, and about not having anyone feel bad or guilty after the interaction, than about getting whatever it is that we're asking for. This sentence is about making it clear that we're not interested in guilting people into doing something in a way that they'll regret or feel bad about in some other way later.

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A few months ago a conversation I had with someone at one of the NYC Rationality meetups prompted me to write an email on the subject of rationalist conversational norms. I kept telling myself I’d distill my points from the email into a more coherent summary, and I’ve haven’t, so instead I’m posting it pretty much without editing:

My take on some conversational patterns (no particular order):

• Eliezer has listed “God”, “Hitler”, “absolutely certain”, “can’t prove that”, and “by definition” as red flags of irrational thinking.
• One big positive signal that the person is thinking rationally is visibly pausing and stopping to think—looking inside and figuring out what we actually think/feel takes time, so too quick responses are suspect, though obviously this one can be faked. It’s not just pausing, but pausing and exhibiting the facial expressions and body language that indicate that you’re trying to figure something out.
• The rationalist way is to strongly prefer positive statements to normative ones (observations not evaluations).
• Speaking as though a counterexample refutes a correlation is not considered rational.
• Saying that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is also not considered rational—there’s a post on exactly this.
• Complaining, being bitter, blaming people, and labeling people are all outside of rational discourse as I see it.
• On a related note, there are three types of “clever” stories from Crucial Conversations that are bad signs: Villain, Victim, and Helpless stories. The theme of Victim Stories is that “I am noble and pure and doing everything right, and I’m getting bad results because of outside circumstances. It’s not my fault”. The theme of Villain Stories is “not only do other people do things to make my life worse, they do it on purpose because they’re evil, and they deserve retribution”. Villain and Victim stories are about justifying past behavior. Helpless stories are about justifying future inaction. “I can’t do anything to change or improve my situation because…” All of those are big red flags in my book.
• Also, saying “I feel x because he/she/they/it” or “I do x because he/she/they/it” or, “This other person made me do x” or “This other person made me feel x”. I think language that takes ownership of our actions, feelings, and choices, is very important.
• Similarly, I’d say the words “can’t”, “must”, “ought”, “should”, “have to”, “unacceptable” etc. are all at least yellow flags of irrational thinking, though I can think of exceptions. My friend Molly and I used to talk about how “shoulds” are okay if there’s a corresponding “if” statement, like: “If you want to get a cheap Burning Man ticket, you should do it today, because they might sell out.”
• Getting offended or defensive is not conducive to rational discourse, and the easiest way to mitigate the effect of those reactions is to admit them and examine them.
• Actually, that’s a more general point. Emotions aren’t opposed to rationality—they’re data, and so the preferred way of dealing with them in rationalist discourse is to own them, admit them, put them on the table, try to explain them and question them. So “When you said that thing about red-headed people being less intelligent overall I got sad because I was imagining that maybe such a view would lead to them being treated unfairly, and it’s an important part of my value system to treat all human beings fairly”, or something like that. In my experience, this one is hard because people feel more vulnerable doing it that way.
• Rationalist conversation is more likely to have an explicit goal than normal conversation. Keeping the conversation on track and not letting the goal drift is valued, and changing the subject to avoid things you have unpleasant reactions to or think might make you look bad without explicitly acknowledging that you’re doing so is frowned upon.

Short list of things that are positive signals of rationality:

• Asking questions that help clarify the other person’s understanding of the situation. Like, “Wait, so are you saying that X is evidence for Y? If you believe that, does that mean you also believe this other thing?” Basically, assuming there’s a consistent model in the other person’s head and trying to figure it out.
• Asking people for the evidence that led them to arrive at their beliefs is a good sign too. “What experience did you have that led you to this conclusion?”
• Just generally seeming curious is a very good sign, and can be obvious.
• Acknowledging when you have a bias that’s interfering with your ability to think clearly about something, or a motive that’s different from “seeking truth”.
• Giving probability estimates and confidence intervals.
• Being aware that what we’ve just heard other people say affects what we think, so requesting that each person form an opinion before either person shares it.
• Showing surprise when presented with information that doesn’t fit your worldview is a very good sign that you’re trying to keep a consistent model.
• Coming up with thought experiments to narrow down the source of differences in belief.
• Prohibiting the use of certain words when we’re getting distracted by them.
• Always asking “why?” and “how do I anticipate the world behaving because I believe this?”.
• Using the vocabulary of rationality. This could be a much longer point, but naming cognitive biases, talking about heuristics, talking about what you anticipate happening, saying that you “intuit” something when it’s that, instead of saying that you “know” something. Referring to “motivated cognition”, “belief as attire”, asking whether particular feelings are “truth-tracking”, talking about clusters.

This is what I can think of right now, though I’d love to encourage a collaborative effort to refine it. Feel free to share it.

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Question:

"We stay with empathy, allowing others the opportunity to fully express themselves before we turn our attention to solutions or requests for relief."

Do you know what he means by "request for relief?" Is that asking them to do something so that we feel better?

Answer:

I'm not completely sure. I think it means that before trying to figure out what people are requesting of you, you want to hear what they're feeling and needing.

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I'm a firm believer that physical sensations on their own do not create suffering—that suffering arises when there's some sort of internal conflict. The book Nonviolent Communication includes a story of a woman resolving a migraine by connecting with her underlying needs, which, to me, was one of the less believable parts of the book the first time I read it. Experiences I've had since then have made me considerably less skeptical.  

I was experiencing a lot of nausea (presumably from eating lots of food not long after a long water fast) the other night, so, after sitting around being upset about it for a while, I decided to try to turn my attention to my experience and be curious about the internal conflict producing my suffering. Sure enough, there were two pretty distinct voices.  

Voice 1: You really shouldn't have eaten that second bowl of food. You were already feeling crappy, so you decided to eat more? That's transparently stupid, you didn't really even expect it to work, and you need to remember not to ever do that again.

Voice 2: You were feeling crappy, and you wanted to do something to help. That's not so bad.  What you were doing wasn't working, so you wanted to try an experiment, and do something to make yourself feel better.  

My plan was to recognize the positive intent behind each one and feel gratitude. So Voice 1's concern mostly seemed to be with truth. Even while feeling crappy, it wanted me to remember to keep my beliefs truth-tracking, and recognize that I had been engaging in motivated reasoning when I decided to eat more, thinking that it might help me feel better. Voice 2 was concerned about self-care, and wanted me to keeping working to alleviate my discomfort. Both noble motives, it was easy to feel appreciation for them, and, once heard out, they were no longer in conflict.  

And sure enough, the nausea pretty much went away. It seemed like there was some chance I might still vomit (I didn't), so I made sure I was in prepared for that eventuality, but the above exercise nearly eliminated the relevant suffering. Powerful and practical stuff.

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I often practice my NVC skills during conflicts with Tovar (my favorite five-year old :-)). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. One night last week, it worked amusingly well, so I thought I'd share.

Tovar got upset when I trapped him under a blanket for a few seconds while we were roughhousing. He did his usual "I'm sad" response, where he gets into child's pose, cries a little, and announces that he is sad. My instincts in this sort of situation are to apologize and tell him I won't do it again, even though by now that listening to what he's saying usually works better. First, I was concentrating on identifying his feelings, "you're sad", "it seems you were scared when the blanket was on top of you". (I think he responded to that by saying, "I wasn't scared! I was a LITTLE scared!")

I was starting to feel a bit hopeless, but I kept going, trying to identify his needs: "were you scared when I put the blanket over your head because you like to be able to see and move around?", and it was like I'd flipped a switch. He said that yes, he was scared because he wanted to be able to see and move around, and then he was immediately on to the next thing, as though nothing had happened.

I know usually ease out of being upset a bit, maybe partially because I'm afraid it'll make my original issue seem trivial if I move on so quickly, but Tovar had no such concern, at least in this case, so good for him!

He's been leveling emotionally recently, which might be why my NVC attempts with him have been going better. Whatever the reason, I like it :-).

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Question:

"When we sense ourselves being defensive or unable to empathize, we need to (a) stop, breathe, give ourselves empathy (b) scream nonviolently, or (c) take time out."

Could you refresh me on what "scream non-violently" is?

Answer:

That's where you express your pain "nakedly and without blame". An example from the book: "Hey, I'm in a lot of pain! Right now I really do not want to deal with your fighting! I just want some peace and quiet!"

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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.

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