works if we want non-hierarchical relationships based on honesty and empathy. Be prepared to hear “no” when you make requests. NVC is not a manipulation strategy to win an argument. Of course, we’d like to hear the other person to say yes but only if it’s a genuine yes. 

Nonviolent Communication holds that most conflicts between individuals or groups arise from miscommunication about their human needs, due to coercive or manipulative language that aims to induce fear, guilt, shame, etc. These “violent” modes of communication, when they are used during a conflict, divert the attention of the participants away from clarifying their needs, their feelings, their perceptions, and their requests, thus perpetuating the conflict. The following are the four components, OFNR, to the NVC model.

 Observations

 One fundamental component of NVC is separating observation from evaluation. Evaluative language is a form of moralistic judgment that can easily alienate others by reducing them to a label rather than making a human connection. Instead, a focus on observations specific to time and context is recommended. Reference specific behaviors you observe—like “John used two racial slurs in our conversation yesterday” rather than “John is a racist.” NVC is a process language that discourages static generalizations. People often disagree about evaluations because they value things differently, but directly observable facts provide a common ground for communication. Feelings

 After making an observation, the next step of NVC is to identify and express your feelings. Feelings refer to internal physical and emotional states, not judgments or interpretations of external events. Feelings are emotions or sensations, free of thought and story. These are to be distinguished from thoughts (e.g., “I feel I didn’t get a fair deal”) and from words that are colloquially used as feelings but that convey what we think we are (e.g., “inadequate”), how we think others are evaluating us (e.g., “unimportant”), or what we think others are doing to us (e.g., “misunderstood”, “ignored”). Feelings are said to reflect whether we are experiencing our needs as met or unmet. In general, feelings are not being clearly expressed when the word feel is followed by words such as that, like, as if. As a common rule, if the words “I think” can replace the words “I feel,” then whatever is being expressed isn’t really a feeling.