The First Act of Nonviolence Is Learning to Listen

by George Cassidy Payne

2030 words

One night on a suicide prevention chat line, a young man typed a sentence I had seen many times before.

“Everyone would be better off without me.”

He began listing his failures, one after another, as though presenting evidence in a courtroom. My instinct was to challenge his thinking, offer reassurance, or explain why his conclusion was wrong. I wanted him to understand that his life mattered and that the pain he was experiencing did not tell the whole story.

Instead, I paused and wrote:

“It sounds like you’ve been carrying an overwhelming sense of failure and loneliness.”

There was a long silence.

Then he responded: “Yeah. Exactly.”

Nothing had been resolved. His circumstances had not changed. But something important had happened. For the first time in the conversation, he seemed to stop defending his despair. He had found someone willing to acknowledge what he was experiencing without immediately trying to correct it.

I have thought about that exchange many times. It reminded me that listening is more than a communication skill. It is a way of relating to another human being that can interrupt the isolation and misunderstanding that so often contribute to conflict.

Years before that conversation, I had encountered a framework that would eventually help me understand what had happened: Nonviolent Communication, developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg.

At its heart NVC is a deceptively simple idea. Beneath much of what we say and do, including our anger, criticism, and judgment, are human needs that have not been met.

I first encountered this way of thinking in my early thirties, when I was struggling to extend much kindness to anyone, including myself. I was dealing with all kinds of ways to avoid the noise inside my head. My relationships often suffered. Anger, self-pity, arrogance, and ambition left their marks on people I cared about.

At the time, I was working as a peace and justice educator at a nonviolence institute in Rochester, New York. Through teachers and mentors, I began exploring the relationship between language and conflict. I also had opportunities to observe Dominic Barter, an internationally recognized practitioner and trainer of Nonviolent Communication, whose work offered a glimpse of what these principles could look like when practiced rather than simply discussed.

One quotation from Rosenberg stayed with me:

“Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.”

The word tragic is important. It suggests that beneath many of the ways we hurt one another is something we have not learned to express. A demand may conceal a longing for security. An accusation may carry a desire for recognition. Anger may be protecting a need for dignity, or autonomy.

This does not excuse harmful behavior or relieve anyone of responsibility; but it does invite us to look more carefully at what is happening beneath the surface.

Rosenberg developed Nonviolent Communication during the 1960s, drawing on his work in psychology and conflict resolution. The approach is organized around four interconnected practices: observation, feeling, need, and request.

We begin by describing what is happening without immediately attaching a judgment. We identify the feelings that arise. We consider the human needs connected to those feelings. Finally, we make a clear request that allows the other person the freedom to respond.

Observation. Feeling. Need. Request.

The framework is straightforward enough to memorize. Practicing it is considerably harder.

I could explain the principles, diagram the process, and facilitate a workshop. Yet I continued to struggle with compassion in my own relationships. Understanding something intellectually did not mean I knew how to live it. Eventually, I left peace education and moved through a professional landscape that included startups, domestic violence services, and suicide prevention. I spent six years working in a domestic violence shelter and later several more years supporting people experiencing emotional distress and suicidal crises.

It was in these settings, far removed from the relative safety of a classroom, that the practical significance of listening became clearer to me.

One evening at the domestic violence shelter, a resident came into the office furious about the house rules. She accused staff of treating her like a child. My first instinct was to explain the policy and correct what I believed she misunderstood.

Instead, I paused.

“It sounds like you’re feeling really controlled right now,” I said.

She stopped mid-sentence.

Her shoulders dropped. The anger did not disappear, but its intensity began to soften. What followed was a conversation about dignity and independence.

She explained how many decisions in her life had recently been made by other people. Her partner, the courts, and the shelter system had all exercised authority over her. She was trying to rebuild a sense of control over her own life, and even well-intentioned rules could remind her of everything she had lost.

What she wanted was agency. She wanted to feel that her life belonged to her again. The shelter rules did not change. We still had responsibilities to other residents and staff. But the conversation changed because I had begun to understand what was underneath her objection. I had initially heard a challenge to authority. She was trying to communicate a need for autonomy.

That distinction can be vital, particularly when working with people whose lives have been shaped by the loss of personal freedom. A person can object to a rule while still understanding why it exists. A person can be angry and still deserve to be treated with dignity. Empathy requires us to become curious about another person’s experience before deciding what that experience means.

We often approach suffering with an almost irresistible desire to fix it. We offer advice, search for silver linings, explain what someone should do, or reassure them that everything will eventually be all right. These responses can come from genuine concern. They can also communicate that we are uncomfortable remaining with another person’s pain.

Empathy asks something more difficult. Can we stay present without immediately reaching for an answer? Can we listen without preparing our defense? Can we allow someone to describe an experience without making the conversation about ourselves?

Sympathy expresses sorrow for what another person is experiencing. Empathy attempts to understand that experience from within the other person’s perspective. We do not need to have lived through the same circumstances. We need to listen closely enough to recognize that our assumptions are not the same as another person’s reality.

I returned to this lesson years later on the suicide prevention chat line.

The young man who had written that everyone would be better off without him eventually began describing the months that had brought him to that point. There was isolation, a series of disappointments, and a growing conviction that he had already ruined his life. The conversation required careful assessment and continued engagement. But that initial moment of recognition helped establish the trust necessary for the conversation to continue.

His suffering was real. His circumstances had not suddenly improved. Yet he was no longer entirely alone with what he was carrying.

Being heard does not necessarily remove suffering. It can, however, change the conditions under which someone experiences it. Shame becomes a little less isolating. A person who has been withdrawing may become willing to reach out. A conversation that once seemed impossible may become possible.

There is another dimension to Rosenberg’s work that I find equally important. Nonviolent Communication asks us to extend this same attention inward.

We are often much more fluent in judging ourselves than understanding ourselves. We call ourselves lazy, selfish, weak, or inadequate without stopping to consider what might be happening beneath those judgments. We treat our emotions as inconveniences to suppress rather than signals worth examining.

Beneath self-criticism may be an unmet need for rest, acceptance, security, or belonging. Beneath shame may be a longing for forgiveness. Beneath anger toward ourselves may be grief over the distance between the lives we imagined and the lives we are living.

Recognizing these needs gives us a more constructive place from which to take it. We can examine our intentions and learn to make requests rather than demands. We can also recognize when our desire to be right has become more important than our desire to understand.

I am not an expert in Nonviolent Communication, nor would I claim to have mastered it. I still become defensive. I misunderstand people. I sometimes find myself preparing a response when I should be listening.

The difference is that I have become more attentive to those moments. I am learning to recognize the distance between knowing what compassion requires and actually practicing it. Much of the work happens in that distance.

The implications extend well beyond our personal relationships. Families, schools, workplaces, community organizations, and political institutions all struggle with forms of conflict that become more entrenched when people feel dismissed or dehumanized.

A parent might hear the fear beneath a child’s resistance. An employer might recognize the insecurity beneath an employee’s frustration. A community leader might discover that public anger is connected to a longstanding experience of exclusion or lost dignity.

None of this means that every disagreement can be resolved through conversation. Some situations require firm boundaries and protection from harm. Empathy must never become an excuse for tolerating abuse or asking vulnerable people to accommodate those who hurt them. We can recognize someone’s humanity while remaining honest about the consequences of their choices.

In fact, I believe this is one of the more demanding forms of nonviolence.

Our political culture offers countless examples of what happens when listening gives way to contempt. We increasingly reward humiliation and the reduction of complicated human beings to political identities. Disagreement becomes an opportunity to demonstrate allegiance rather than an invitation to understand something we may have overlooked.

The same habits appear in our communities and our homes. We interrupt. We assume. We assign motives. We defend ourselves before we have understood what the other person is trying to communicate.

Nonviolent Communication asks us to look beyond the immediate expression and consider the human experience underneath. It does not promise agreement, and it does not eliminate conflict. It gives us a way to approach conflict without making the destruction of another person’s dignity the price of our own.

Rosenberg once wrote:

“What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart.”

I appreciate his use of the word flow. Compassion is not something we possess and distribute from a position of superiority. It is a relationship that requires openness in both directions, a willingness to give and receive, and an acknowledgment that each of us has needs we are still learning to express.

We spend so much of our lives trying to make ourselves understood. Yet we can spend entire conversations waiting for our turn to speak, never quite making room for the person in front of us.

I think back to that young man on the chat line. His words were filled with self-condemnation. Beneath them was a person who wanted relief and some reason to believe that his life still held possibilities. He did not need me to win an argument against his despair. He needed someone willing to hear him.

I have spent much of my adult life learning this lesson, often through mistakes I wish I had made differently. There are relationships I damaged and moments when fear or pride made it difficult to extend the compassion I now encourage others to practice. I cannot go back and change those things. I can only try to meet the next person with greater patience, less certainty, and a willingness to listen.

Peace is often discussed in terms of treaties and the resolution of armed conflicts. These are essential parts of the work. But the habits that sustain peace are also formed in ordinary encounters, in the ways we speak to one another, respond to suffering, and handle disagreement.

The first act of nonviolence may be as simple, and as difficult, as resisting the urge to judge before we understand.

Before we can build a more peaceful world together, we have to learn how to hear one another.

~~~~~

George Cassidy Payne, M.A., M.T.S., syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Rochester-based writer whose work sits at the intersection of politics, ethics, and lived experience. A poet, philosopher, and 988 crisis counselor, he covers issues of democracy, justice, and community resilience.