The most important use of NVC may be in developing self-compassion.

Plans to exact retribution are never going to make us safer.

An important aspect of self-compassion is to be able to empathically hold both parts of ourselves-the self that regrets a past action and the self that took the action in the first place.

Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.

Every moment each human being is doing the best we know at that moment to meet our needs. We never do anything that is not in the service of a need, there is no conflict on our planet at the level of needs. We all have the same needs. The problem is in strategies for meeting the needs.

This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately, it provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. It is a language of demands.

We're not taught to think in terms of needs. We don't make nice dead people when we're in touch with needs. Domination structures cannot maintain themselves when citizens are educated to be alive.