Treat myself
Treat my child (7 year old)
as if a reasonable person
If I don't treat him like he's going to respond like a reasonable person, then that's what I'm going to get.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Drop the storyline
In my nonviolent communication practice group, we've been working with this nonverbal exercise that we learned about from this video by NVC trainer Miki Kashtan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Miki mentions that this exercise helps you to drop the storyline. When I get more time I'd like to come back and update this post with thoughts on other ideas I had about using an exercise like this and how they relate to the snippets I've pasted in below about dropping the storyline.
From http://byakurenzen.blogspot.com/2014/07/right-thought-ii.html
My favorite practice is Pema Chodron’s instructions:
· Drop the storyline
· Stay with the underlying energy of the moment.
This is the ability to return to right here, right now, and not let your thoughts carry you away. In order to do this we have to cultivate our ability to hold the underlying energy of the moment. This is very hard to do. Mostly, we want to do anything but feel what’s happening energetically and our usually escape mechanism is to go up into our heads.
From http://www.auraglaser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/September2012CWJournal.Aura_.Glaser.pdf
... What happens when we drop the storyline, the conceptual narrative, and enter directly into the underlying energy of experience? What happens when we stop trying to figure it out, explain it to ourselves, or find someone to blame, and just feel it? However painful the emotion, be it grief or rage, loneliness or shame, the underlying energy is one shared by all humans since the beginning of time. Touching it directly, staying with it, opens our awareness and our heart. It opens our world. ...
From the book The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness by Pema Chodron:
... recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather*—the quality and the energy of the weather itself. Maybe you still have that quaky feeling or that churning feeling or that exploding feeling or that calm feeling or that dull feeling, as if you’d just been buried in the earth. You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that.
Miki mentions that this exercise helps you to drop the storyline. When I get more time I'd like to come back and update this post with thoughts on other ideas I had about using an exercise like this and how they relate to the snippets I've pasted in below about dropping the storyline.
From http://byakurenzen.blogspot.com/2014/07/right-thought-ii.html
My favorite practice is Pema Chodron’s instructions:
· Drop the storyline
· Stay with the underlying energy of the moment.
From http://www.auraglaser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/September2012CWJournal.Aura_.Glaser.pdf
... What happens when we drop the storyline, the conceptual narrative, and enter directly into the underlying energy of experience? What happens when we stop trying to figure it out, explain it to ourselves, or find someone to blame, and just feel it? However painful the emotion, be it grief or rage, loneliness or shame, the underlying energy is one shared by all humans since the beginning of time. Touching it directly, staying with it, opens our awareness and our heart. It opens our world. ...
From the book The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness by Pema Chodron:
... recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather*—the quality and the energy of the weather itself. Maybe you still have that quaky feeling or that churning feeling or that exploding feeling or that calm feeling or that dull feeling, as if you’d just been buried in the earth. You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Blame framed as "You need to be punished for my pain."
I was trying to take Nonviolent Communication Jackal language and translate it into Giraffe language.
I was having a real hard time with reframing blame....which reminded me of being struck by the idea of blame as "You need to be punished for my pain."...
With blame, you don't need to throw out causality altogether if you disengage from blame. You just need to throw out causality in terms of X made me feel Y.
For example, here's a quote from Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication book:
“If someone arrives late for an appointment and we need reassurance that she cares about us, we may feel hurt. if instead, our need is to spend time purposively and constructively, we mightt fee; frustrated. but if our need is for 30 minutes of quiet solitude, we may be grateful for her tardiness and feel pleased. thus it is not the behaviour of the other person but our own need that causes our feeling.”
I was having a real hard time with reframing blame....which reminded me of being struck by the idea of blame as "You need to be punished for my pain."...
With blame, you don't need to throw out causality altogether if you disengage from blame. You just need to throw out causality in terms of X made me feel Y.
For example, here's a quote from Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication book:
“If someone arrives late for an appointment and we need reassurance that she cares about us, we may feel hurt. if instead, our need is to spend time purposively and constructively, we mightt fee; frustrated. but if our need is for 30 minutes of quiet solitude, we may be grateful for her tardiness and feel pleased. thus it is not the behaviour of the other person but our own need that causes our feeling.”
Thursday, September 15, 2016
You matter
These are parenting notes that I wrote to myself:
What you want matters - genuinely matters!
Not "one of us has to die" way of conflict resolution, i.e., either totally your way, or totally my way
Willing to try to come up with "third ways"
Not Person A is critical, resulting in Person B is defensive (and often then Person B is counter-critical, leading Person A to be defensive...and then everyone is triggered...etc.)
Curiosity about what's going on for the other person, what are they trying to achieve, etc.
Genuinely asking
Working with
Not "You can't" - instead "I don't want ... because"
e.g., "I don't want to see you hurt yourself, that would be sad"
I-statements instead of you-statements
I'm trying to give you information
and you can make up your own mind
vs. I'm trying to control you
Saying "Please don't do that" in a calm unruffled way
in a trusting you way
in a seeing your foot in the space on the other side of the board that you are breaking (in a martial arts context)
What you want matters - genuinely matters!
Not "one of us has to die" way of conflict resolution, i.e., either totally your way, or totally my way
Willing to try to come up with "third ways"
Not Person A is critical, resulting in Person B is defensive (and often then Person B is counter-critical, leading Person A to be defensive...and then everyone is triggered...etc.)
Curiosity about what's going on for the other person, what are they trying to achieve, etc.
Genuinely asking
Working with
Not "You can't" - instead "I don't want ... because"
e.g., "I don't want to see you hurt yourself, that would be sad"
I-statements instead of you-statements
I'm trying to give you information
and you can make up your own mind
vs. I'm trying to control you
Saying "Please don't do that" in a calm unruffled way
in a trusting you way
in a seeing your foot in the space on the other side of the board that you are breaking (in a martial arts context)
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