Self-empathy in NVC means checking in with your own feelings and needs.

Clinical training in psychoanalysis has a deficit. It teaches how to sit and think about what a person is saying and how to interpret it intellectually, but not how to be fully present to this person.

Enemy images are the main reason conflicts don't get resolved.

However impressed we may be with NVC concepts, it is only through practice and application that our lives are transformed.

I never have to worry about another person's response, only how I react to what they say.

If you are a jackal, you will try to reassure. Jackals try to fix people in pain. They can't stand pain, but make matters worse by trying to get rid of it. Put on giraffe ears. Try to hear what they are feeling and needing.

Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word 'no' without taking it as a rejection, revive lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence.