Experiencing wholeness: NVC mapped to Quadrant of Integral Theory
A few days ago, I shared more on the Quadrants from Integral Theory: 4 dimensions of life that exist in every circumstance and situation. If you have missed the post but would like to take a look, please, check my previous article. Using Quadrants from Integral Theory to broaden your perspective.
Today, I offer you to play with it and indeed map it to another concept that I love: Non Violent Communication (NVC) - a way to communicate with the other person and with yourself in a way that leads to connection as opposed to disconnection.
NVC consists of 4 steps:
Observations
Feelings
Needs
Requests
and they can all be mapped to the quadrants (see diagram).
This is also why, by applying NVC to your ways of communicating and of living you naturally train yourself to have an integral as opposed to partial view of your situation and your relationships.
Observations => IT: you look at the observable behaviors in a particular situation, at the facts, you are trying to look objectively at a situation.
Feelings => I: you are deliberately connecting to your feelings, to yourself, to what matters to you.
Needs => WE: you move your focus from “I” to “WE”: what is it for the other person as well. How are they feeling? What are they needing? How can we have a shared understanding of our reality and include each other`s needs in our next steps
Requests => ITS: based on the previous steps, how is everything fitting together, looking at the bigger picture and making a request. On another level, this dimension can be looked at also as the process of NVC as a whole. how it contributes to our system: e.g. country; environment: e.g. the world we live in to bring more peace. All the people involved in it, all existing literature, training, practices.
Mapping NVC to the Quadrants gave me personally the feeling of wholeness.
If you do only the “I” dimension without the “IT”, for example, you are staying in your thoughts and you miss that neutrality, objectivity in a particular situation you are in.
If you only look at the “IT” and stay objective, without truly connecting to oneself: the“I”, then you are acting without really realising what is going on for you: you are on auto-pilot.
If you do not include “WE”, you miss the opportunity to connect with the other person and only look at your own perspective.
And last but not least, if you do not connect the dots and think of everything around you in that concrete context, you would not be able to experience that wholeness and your “truth” will yet be somewhat partial.
I hope you enjoyed playing with me today and that this was helpful.
I would love to hear your thoughts.
