Transforming Shame with Nonviolent Communication

by Alan Rafael Seid, CNVC Certified Trainer

This article is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or prescribe treatment for mental illness of any kind, nor is it intended to replace evaluation or treatment by a qualified professional.

Introduction: Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and Shame

Shame is a powerful emotion.

It can leave you paralyzed or hiding parts of yourself that you are afraid others might see.

Shame blocks the learning and growing process, and prevents you from connecting to a source of life energy that is there, underneath the shame.

Nonviolent Communication, or NVC, can help you transform and transcend shame in a way that leads to learning and greater wholeness.

What is Nonviolent Communication?

NVC is a process people use to deepen their connection with others, prevent and resolve conflicts, and create mutually beneficial outcomes — even in the most unlikely circumstances.

People from all over the world and all walks of life practice NVC.

The purpose, history, and name

The purpose of NVC is to create the quality of connection out of which people enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being.

It was originated by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg starting in the 1960s and 70s.

The name Nonviolent Communication emerged from Dr. Rosenberg’s desire to align himself with Gandhi’s social movement of nonviolence, which was in fact about truth-telling and compassion.

Universal Human Needs and the Strategies we Use to Satisfy Them

NVC is premised on the idea that human beings are all motivated by the same Universal Human Needs, such as love, safety, belonging, self-expression, contribution, trust, and so on. Here is a handout with lists of universalfeelings and needs.

Needs are seen as how Life itself is showing up in this moment in any human being. This is why NVC is often referred to as a language of life!

When people can connect at the level of needs they can then connect with each others’ humanity. It is from this level of connection that conflicts often resolve themselves! The skills of NVC speed up this process and allow you to implement it consistently.

One key differentiation in NVC is the distinction between needs and strategies. Needs are universal in the sense that they apply to all people. Therefore, a need cannot refer to a specific person performing any specific action. “I have a need for connection” is quite different from “I need you to call me tomorrow.”

Strategies, on the other hand, are the ways we go about meeting needs and are therefore specific and contextual.

I, and also my neighbors, have needs for safety and protection. However, one neighbor gets some big scary dogs, another neighbor buys an expensive alarm system, and another neighbor buys a gun. I might choose to cultivate a greater sense of community with my neighbors. It’s the same need, and totally different strategies!

For any set of needs, there could be dozens, hundreds, or thousands of potential strategies!

Conflicts happen at the level of strategies rather than needs.

A basic understanding of needs and strategies will be useful when we look at shame.

A Tricky Chameleon: The Many Facets of a Shame Response

Years ago, someone I knew lashed out at me furiously. I felt shocked and confused — until I realized it was a shame response.

And then I noticed the times I did the same thing.

Shame can be so painful that a part of our mind wants to block it, bury it, or attempt in some way to not have to feel it!

Shame responses can manifest in a variety of ways.

Emotional and cognitive responses to shame include:

• Anxiety and fear, since shame can include a constant fear of judgment and rejection;
• Hopelessness and overwhelm, when the hole of negative selfworth becomes so deep;
• Self-criticism: Shame often involves intensely negative self-talk and a self-perception of worthlessness;
• Difficulty concentrating: Shame can cause foggy thinking and a loss of focus;
• Emotional numbing: At times, the pain of shame can be so intense, that a part of the mind creates a sense of detachment, disconnection, or dissociation from the present moment.

Behavioral responses to shame can include:

• Withdrawing: This includes hiding, becoming silent, or avoiding social interactions altogether;
• Attacking yourself: This involves being overly self-critical, selfsabotaging, and even thinking you deserve mistreatment from others;
• Attacking others: This can manifest as aggression, irritability, or even picking fights with others. In many cases finding fault with others is a way of not having to acknowledge or feel the shame;
• Avoiding: This includes avoiding situations that might trigger shame — or using substances, food, or compulsive behaviors to numb the feeling of shame;
• Hiding: A literal urge to hide your face or body from view;
• Difficulty speaking: Some people may stutter, speak softly, or struggle to find words. This could be a manifestation of difficulty concentrating and foggy mind, which could also include the sense of overwhelm and depressed energy that goes with a sense of worthlessness. This is similar to what is known as a freeze response.

Next time you receive a reaction that leaves you confused, ask yourself if it could possibly be a shame response.

What not to do? If you make the other person wrong for having a shame response it will only make things worse for them and fuel disconnection between you.

What to do? Check to see what needs are alive for you in that moment. Your response will emerge from your needs. One lifeserving possibility would be to engage your own empathy and compassion for the experience the other person is having, as shame can be very painful!

How NVC holds Shame

Shame can be debilitating and distressing.

NVC addresses shame in a particular way — one that I find effective at untying the knot of shame and getting at the gifts shame holds at its depths for each person who experiences it.

Let’s define shame and then get into how NVC addresses it.

What is shame?

My dictionary defines shame as “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”

This gives us some clues as to how NVC might hold and work with shame!

First, NVC distances itself from rigid conceptions of right-doing and wrong-doing. These rigid conceptions are often subjective or cultural — rather than universally applicable — and they are used to justify those who see themselves as good and right to impose violence, revenge, retribution, and punishment onto those they see as bad and wrong.

Instead, NVC tries to frame things with regard to whether or not they meet or satisfy needs. This gets us out of the right/wrong thinking that is at the root of so much dehumanization and violence in the world.

At its core, shame is a form of self-violence that is usually coming from a deeper impulse for us to learn or improve. But because it is a form of self-violence, it usually backfires and leaves us devoid of the learning and growth that that part of us was seeking.

Instead, shame keeps us locked into feeling terrible about ourselves.

The difference between shame and guilt

This can be a tricky distinction for people!

When I experience guilt, it’s usually about the impact on others, and it’s more about something I did.

When I experience shame, it’s often related to a judgment about who or what I am.

And the two can certainly go together!

In NVC, we work with them in more or less the same way, as they are two feelings that form part of a special category.

Four feelings in a special category from the others

According to NVC, feelings emerge from needs.

If my need for trust is met, I have certain feelings. If my need for trust is not met, I have other feelings. The same applies to safety, connection, and all the other needs.

Because needs are seen as how life is showing up, in this moment — in you, me, or anyone else — feelings which emerge from needs are known as life-connected feelings.

But there are four feelings that fall into a separate category: anger, shame, guilt, and depression.

NVC holds that anger, shame, guilt, and depression are there to act like an alarm to let you know that you are disconnected from your needs!

In other words, even though these four feelings have universal human needs underlying them, clarifying what those needs are takes a slightly different path.

With anger, shame, guilt, and depression we look at the thoughts themselves, what in Buddhism might be referred to as the mental content; the intrapersonal messaging of what you are telling yourself.

The thoughts themselves contain clues that can lead you back to your needs.

Example related to anger: a workshop participant

For example, a college student in one of my workshops had no idea what her underlying need was. When asked, she expressed her anger about somebody else taking up all the slots for lab time in one of her classes, “It’s absolutely not fair!” she yelled.
“So you value fairness?” I asked.
“Yes!” she replied.
As the conversation continued, we found that underneath fairness as a value, was a need to trust that her needs mattered.

The feeling then shifted from anger, to frustration and sadness.

As she continued to feel her feelings, while staying connected to the needs — what we call life-connected mourning in NVC — she had a shift.

The uncomfortable feelings had shifted enough for her to be ready to brainstorm what she might do about it. Her ideas included approaching the student who took up so many slots to talking to the professor about what to do.

Example related to shame: a coaching client

As I was working with a business-coaching client — a quite successful executive who was launching out on her own coaching and consulting career — we discovered a big block to her moving forward: shame.

There was a shame voice that was leaving her paralyzed and unable to perform the way she wanted.

So we did an NVC role-play with the shame voice: I role played my client and she embodied the voice of shame.

“Who do you think you are!?” said the shame voice, “you are pretending, and you really don’t know anything!”

In the role of my client, I gave the voice of shame some empathy:
“Are you upset because you would like me to admit how little I know?”
“Yes,” was the response.
“It sounds like you value humility… is that right?”
“Yes!”
“And you would like me to stop pretending I know when I don’t?”
“You don’t know anything!”
“It sounds like you’re feeling really upset and would like me to acknowledge my actual level of knowledge and competence… is that right?”
“Yes!”

Once the needs were contacted — humility, authenticity… then the feeling shifted. It was no longer shame. There was some sorrow and embarrassment — but even more curiosity.

In the role of my client I expressed some gratitude to the shame voice for trying to keep me safe from being inauthentic. I then asked that voice if it could be kinder and gentler when offering feedback for learning.

This was a big breakthrough for my client. She had transformed and befriended that particular voice of shame, and turned it into an ally that had valuable gifts to share.

NVC-adjacent perspectives on shame

I would like to share some non-NVC perspectives on shame that I think are worth pondering.

Before that, I want to tell you a little bit about my background with
NVC, so that you know where I’m coming from.

I took my first workshop with Marshall Rosenberg in 1995 and formed part of the team that invited him to our area twice a year. I also studied with other trainers who studied under him. For four years I attended several workshops a year and then attended an
International Intensive Training (IIT) in 1999.

Immediately after the IIT I served as Dr. Rosenberg’s Spanish interpreter in South America for an action-packed 10 days, during which I was his language conduit in a wide variety of settings. I learned more in that 10 days than I had during the previous four years of studying the process.

I completed my certification process in 2003, and with the title CNVC Certified Trainer I have worked in a diverse range of contexts.

Suffice it to say that my views on shame have been deeply influenced by Dr. Rosenberg’s views and the practice of NVC.

A Buddhist Scholar’s Perspective

So it is in this context that I felt horrified, puzzled, and deeply intrigued when I read a text by a Buddhist scholar — this was years ago at a meditation retreat, and I neither remember the book nor the scholar — that touched on the value of shame.

This particular author’s perspective was that shame had immense value as a check on somebody’s ability and/or willingness to hurt others. It was that writer’s contention that without shame someone could go about doing things that go against others’ needs and simply not care.

So shame was seen as a feeling that regulated negative behaviors, because exclusion from a community (who would shame you if you hurt others) was too much to bear for most people. So this author saw shame as a positive.

I found this deeply intriguing, and there is a part of me that is willing to entertain this as a hypothesis.

However, Dr. Rosenberg was very clear that violence is not only external actions someone says are violent. Even if I merely have violent thoughts or intentions I am still adding more violence to the world! And some words or actions may appear to be violent, but from an NVC perspective they may not be.

For example, if I use my physical strength, unilaterally, to prevent my two year-old from running into a busy street — that could go either way. (Here comes another key differentiation.) If I’m using force in a punitive way (same root as the verb to punish), then I might be thinking or saying, “Bad! Now daddy has to spank you so that you learn about cars!” However, if I’m using force only to protect life, and my consciousness is aligned with NVC, then I might think or say, “Oh my goodness! Daddy got scared and I want to keep you safe!”

The first, punitive use of force, constitutes violence.

Even when I think someone is bad and wrong and deserves to be treated with violence — that thought in itself is violent.

If I use force unilaterally to protect life, and at the same time I have no thought of harming anyone or thinking anybody is bad and deserves punishment — even if that action is very forceful — it would not fit the classical definition of violence as we think of it in NVC.

(The differentiation between punitive use of force and protective use of force is a little more specific and clear for me than another phrasing I’ve heard: force versus violence.)

Nevertheless, the thought that shame is useful because it can keep someone from hurting others is intriguing to me.

There are a few limitations to this:

1. For me to feel shame it is a pre-requisite that I have violent thoughts toward myself about my badness or wrongness. This is distinct from embarrassment or disappointment in myself. With these last two I can be connected to the underlying needs. But to experience shame, by definition I am judging myself in some lifealienated way, keeping me disconnected from my own deeper needs.
2. When I experience guilt or shame I have short-circuited or blocked my own learning. To be clear, the voice behind guilt and shame is trying to help — it’s trying to help me learn and improve. However, it does so in such a violent way that it actually blocks the learning from happening. When I beat up on myself and feel terrible, I am unable to harvest the lessons I need in order to learn and improve. The self-criticism does not allow for healthy mourning or self-forgiveness, and instead it leaves me feeling more stuck and feeling bad about myself.
3. There are two questions Marshall Rosenberg would encourage us to ask: (1) what do you want the other person to do? What do you want their reasons to be for doing it? This helps you get clear on what you might prefer: someone refraining from hurting others because they are clear about how it doesn’t meet their very own needs as opposed to someone refraining from hurting others in order to avoid feeling shame. The action is important — but so is the underlying motivation.

I’m still willing to hold the possibility that there might be some evolutionary value behind shame, namely that exclusion from the group is too perilous and that the act of shaming can keep people’s behaviors, at least, in line for the benefit of the group.

That said, I think NVC has a more effective and fulfilling option: transform the shame and harvest the gifts it has for you by contacting the underlying needs.

“Shame is where your power lies”

I heard this phrase from a shaman who conducts ceremonies in which participants learn a lot about themselves and grow as humans.

While NVC has some concrete and practical tools for helping you transform shame, the thought expressed by this shaman is intriguing.

When I think about how much mental and emotional energy it takes to suppress, deny, deflect, block out, and try to ignore shame itself, as well as that which we feel shame about… it makes sense that there is a lot of energy locked up in shame. And it follows,  for me, that if we can neutralize and transform shame, that that would free up a lot of mental and emotional energy.

This further makes sense when we consider the following:
1) If I have a self-judgment (in this case a shame voice) and then I hear a judgment from outside that aligns with that self-judgment — that can be excruciating! For example, if I have a story that I’m a loser (whatever that is) and I hear someone from outside say to me you’re such a loser! — that will hurt deeply because my judgmental voice just received confirmation regarding this thought about my wrongness.

On the other hand, to the extent that I have resolved my internal judgments — it is to that very extent that judgments from the outside will not affect me as much or at all.

If I have completely transformed the thought that I’m a loser, I no longer believe it and it holds no power over me. Then, when somebody calls me that, I can laugh, ignore it, or turn my empathic listening toward them rather than experience any pain from buying into that belief.

2) In George Orwell’s classic book 1984, “the Party” uses shame as a psychological mechanism to make people police their own thoughts, distrust themselves, suppress natural impulses, and ultimately erode any sense of personal integrity that could oppose totalitarian control. In the current political climate in the US I would contend that de-shaming yourself is a powerful political act of resistance as well as a personal stand for reclaiming your power. It is easier to speak up if the powers-that-be cannot shame you. It is in this very sense that I aspire to be shameless!

Working on shame

Here is an exercise you can put into practice for neutralizing shame.

1) Think of something around which you feel shame. (If you have a hard time thinking of something, let your mind roam the topics of sex and money for valuable gold nuggets to work with.) Example, I’m walking in the house with my coffee cup and I unintentionally spill coffee on the floor.

2) Identify the voice of shame. There is a part of you that feels ashamed. What does it say? What are its messages to you? It might have the word should and it probably has a moralistic judgment in the form of bad or wrong — whether explicitly or implied. Write down what this part of you says. Example: after I spill coffee on the floor the voice in me says, “I’m such an idiot!”

3) Take the phrase — or each one, one at a time if there are more than one — and look for clues in the language itself as to the values or needs behind or deeper than the judgments. One trick I use is to ask myself what would be the opposite of what the judgment is. Remember that the context in which the judgment came up will also give you valuable information. In the example I’ve been using, I just spilled coffee on the floor while I was walking, and a voice in my mind says, “I’m such an idiot!” What value or need would be expressed that is the opposite of “being an idiot” or that would be different from spilling coffee on the floor? Is it being mindful? Slowing down? Being present? Is it that I value cleanliness? Is it conservation of energy because now I need to take extra time to clean up after myself? Curiosity will be your friend here! What is it that is important to this voice, behind or underneath the judgment? Write down the needs or values (or yearnings, or desires) that underlie the judgments. If you are connecting with those needs more than you are identifying with the judgmental language, the feeling is likely to shift away from shame! It could then be frustration, sadness, disappointment, or something else — but no longer shame! Keep looking for and contacting the needs.

4) Re-write the statement as an expression of what that part of you actually values. You can make this very simple.
For extra NVC practice points, include:

• a clear observation of the facts without any evaluation about it (e.g.: I was walking with my coffee cup and I spilled coffee on the floor) — just the neutral facts;
• a feeling connected to the needs you discovered in #3, above,
  (e.g.: I feel frustration and disappointment);
• the needs, values, or desires that you uncovered in #3, above,
  (e.g.: I value paying attention and conservation of energy);
• any request you have of yourself or another in relation to those
  needs, if applicable.

Using the example I started above:
“When I see that I spilled coffee on the floor while I was walking, I feel frustrated and disappointed. I really value being mindful. I’m busy and stressed trying to get to work on time (integrity, ease). I also really wanted all that coffee! (enjoyment, stimulation). I also want to clean it up (integrity), but that takes extra work (conservation of energy). My requests of myself: to let myself feel the disappointment and mourn the spilled coffee, to empathize with the part of me that was rushing to get to work, and to be kind and gentle with myself; to re-fill my cup and to remind myself of the phrases, “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” and, “slow down because we’re in a hurry.”

5) Notice and celebrate! If you successfully transformed shame, take a moment to acknowledge that you just did something remarkable!

Notice, also, that you might go through two distinct experiences: mourning followed by self-forgiveness.

Here is a simple re-cap of the exercise:

1) Think of something about which you feel shame.

2) Identify the shame voice and what it says. Write it down.

3) Translate the shame message into the needs and values underlying it. The language itself will have clues for you.

4) Re-write the message, reminding that voice that it can learn to speak a language of the heart, rather than only using judgmental and recriminating language.

5) Notice and celebrate that you are learning new and valuable skills!

Conclusion

There are four feelings that tell you that you are disconnected from your needs: anger, shame, guilt, and depression.

Shame can be a paralyzing energy. It leads me to hiding parts of myself for fear that others would see my faults and agree with my judgments about myself.

Shame blocks the process of learning and growing. Shaming yourself into self-improvement is contradictory, counterproductive, self-defeating, and ineffective.

When you work with NVC to transform shame it can lead you to a healthy process of mourning and self-forgiveness, which are signs that you are transcending shame.

When you use a language of feelings and needs it re-connects you with life and can help you transform and transcend anger, shame, guilt, and depression.

Possible next steps:

You can learn more about the basics of NVC, here.

This book is a classic text for learning the concepts of Nonviolent Communication.

Besides workshops and a practice group, if you want to go deep, I highly recommend attending an International Intensive Training (IIT) put on by the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC). At an IIT you live immersed for about 9 days with a group of people sharing the intention to learn NVC — which is one of the most effective ways to deepen your understanding and skills.

Marshall Rosenberg on Shame

What’s wrong with you?

That’s how Marshall Rosenberg started the workshop. Write down the answer to the question, “what’s wrong with you?”

People started scribbling furiously. I looked down at my notebook.

The woman next to me put her pen down with a wry smile, and a soft chuckle which suggested that she was in on a joke that I wasn’t.

Was she not going to write anything?

I made my list.

Sometimes I talk too much.

Sometimes I don’t feel motivated to do things I should.

When I’m aggravated I don’t listen very well.

…and on it went.

When everyone had put their pens down, Marshall Rosenberg said, “It was a trick question. There can’t be anything wrong with you. They are all attempts to meet needs.”

And then he went on to explain the difference between static language and a language of needs.

NVC is a process language.

When we use static language, the verb to be becomes very important. We want to know who is what — especially who is bad and wrong because we then know who should feel guilty or ashamed or deserves to be punished.

By using NVC to translate self-judgments, including those that produce shame, you further untie the knots standing in the way of your own liberation.

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