A Need for Safety

I am more and more coming to realize how important it is for me to apply self-empathy as emotional first aid before I can even begin to think about having the spaciousness for empathy for the other person in the conflict. 

I had an argument with my stepson. We had leftovers from the day before, but only enough for one plate. We had other food available (two bags of chicken wings in the freezer), so I ate it. When he found out, he got very angry with me. I don't even remember what he said, but he had a very sarcastic tone. I told him, "You have a right to be angry about the food. But you don't have a right to speak rudely and disrespectfully to me." He continued anyway. So I said, "You can talk to me when you're done having your tantrum, but you can't speak to me now in this way." I left the room. 

Later, I saw that he had cooked an entire bag of wings. I told him that it doesn't seem fair that he will take an entire bag for himself and then leave one bag for the other two people in the house. He told me, "It sucks, doesn't it?" I started to get upset again and repeated I didn't want him speaking to me in a rude way, but he continued. At this point I started to get really upset, and went upstairs to cry. I needed to simply sit with myself and validate that it was painful to receive that treatment. 

How Relating from Trauma Disrupts the NVC Process

Looking back at the situation, there was something else at play. Sometimes his mannerisms remind me of my abusive ex husband. The speaking in Spanish with the same accent, the sarcastic and mean tone, not even waiting for me to finish my sentence before starting to speak over me, interrupting me without addressing what I said, the complete lack of care of my emotional state, ignoring my requests for respectful dialogue, etc. 

When these things happen, I notice that though rationally I know this is not the same thing, there is an emotional response that becomes greater and greater, throwing me into fight or flight mode. Emotionally it feels like I'm arguing with my ex husband again, and there are two states existing at the same time - my mental rational state, and the emotional reactive state. And generally, the mental rational state starts to recede while the emotional reactive state starts to take control and make it difficult to think clearly. 

While in NVC it would be said that I had a judgment that caused an emotional response, I don't think that's exactly what happened. I believe there was an emotional implicit memory that was activated. And in this reaction, I felt that I am not safe. Mentally, I might then make a judgment that this person is not safe to talk to or be emotionally vulnerable with (which is what happened in the conversation). But the bodily sensation of lack of safety and resultant fight or flight reaction is not a mental judgment, but a biological preservation technique. It's as conscious and deliberate as a sneeze. 

The overwhelm to the nervous system shuts down my ability to be at choice in how I want to live and respond. This is compounded by being highly sensitive to other people's emotional states, likely an ingrained response due to growing up with a highly emotionally dysregulated, volatile and manipulative mother. Because of this, safety is very, very important to me. 

After Effects: What is needed to continue the reparation process?

The next day, he asked me how I am and if I feel better. I said I did feel better, but I still don't like the way he spoke to me. He said he was sorry, and that he did that because he was angry. At that moment I noticed almost like a switch flip in me moving him from the "unsafe" to "safe" category. What my gut instinct really needed was to see that he understood his own impact on me and that it wasn't OK. 

In my past abusive and traumatic experiences, the people who were supposed to be the closest to me and most loving of me weren't capable of this, and I felt despair in situations that I couldn't escape from. This had made me want to avoid him altogether, although naturally another part of me wanted harmony in the home as well as a good relationship with him. However, my own need for safety made it harder for me to be the first one to approach him. As well, avoidance is a sign of lingering unprocessed trauma. 

From there it was a lot easier for me to open myself vulnerably to let him know I care about him and treat him as my own, and made a request asking him what can we do the next time so that we can continue to have a good relationship together. We both agreed that if we're angry we will leave the conversation and talk after we've regulated ourselves. But if he hadn't been the first to approach me, perhaps it would've taken a day or two longer for me to work up the courage to open myself, when a part of me resisted placing myself in what it believed would be a similar situation to the past.

Learning How to Say "Yes" to Myself

Being able to have empathy for others requires a level of resilience and a resourced state that is not fully addressed in the NVC training I've had up to now. (I've been practicing and doing courses for about a year) Most of the time I'm advised to leave the conversation and get empathy from another person, but it doesn't address nervous system regulation or having an understanding of how expectations for giving all of my attention might be a big ask when my trauma is around "erasure of self"; not having any consideration at all for my emotional needs and even being punished for trying to take up space. 

The result has been to learn to meet my own needs and not ask others to meet them...even giving up hope that that could be possible. It also made me fiercely protective of my own energy when demands are placed on me to provide something when I can't reasonably ask for it to also be returned to me. 

When I first learned about NVC and saw that invariably the onus was on the person who has NVC skills to hold space for the other person, I rightfully had an unagreeable sensation of contraction, and worry for my own needs not being met in the situation. I thought, "Is it really true then, that I have to always forego myself first in order to connect with someone else?"

When I first started to learn it was because I wanted more harmony in how I relate to others. I have already been doing other self-development work and coaching aside from my NVC practice, but I'm seeing more and more how important it is to make NVC something I do for myself instead of for other people. In a sense, NVC is a strategy to serve life itself. If it doesn't first address the living energy of needs in myself, and if I'm not fully grounded in that, then how can my practice with others be anything but incomplete, inauthentic and ultimately ineffective?

After this experience, I see more and more the necessity of becoming intimately connected with my own body and the ways that it speaks to me. It's important to know when I'm starting to become disregulated and not to let it take over the direction of the dialogue. There is a question I've come up with that will help me to know when I can continue, and when I need to stop: 

Am I resourced enough in this moment to have space for empathy for the other person?

If I cannot in good faith answer with a full yes to this question, that means I need empathy myself, and need to stop the dialogue. Naturally, my body is trained up until now to search for moments of lack of safety and respond by going into fight or flight. (generally fight, to be honest) But this doesn't meet my need for choice and autonomy. It means being intimately connected to my own body, allowing it to speak to me and let me know what it needs. And that when I stop the dialogue, it's not in order to come back more prepared to give empathy to another person, but to provide myself what I need because I am worthy of being cared for. 

This is an act of care and love meant to build trust in myself. It's moving from a place of coercion ("I need to answer to the other person's needs RIGHT NOW") to a place of choice ("I have a right to tend to myself, regardless of how the other person feels or thinks what I should do"). It means saying yes to myself first, when I have always been trained to say no.

I think this is the piece I was missing when I first read that I need to focus my full attention on the other person's message when giving empathy, even when it comes out in jackal. I wasn't told anywhere that I fully deserved this for myself first. Going forward, I believe that my nervous system can be more at ease and learn to trust me more as I consciously choose strategies that serve the most vulnerable parts of me. When I do this, the life energy can fully flow in myself. When I am connected to life energy within me, then I no longer rely on others to provide this connection. Instead, feeling the flow of life between myself and others becomes a gift, instead of a demand.