Empathizing with someone's 'no' protects us from taking it personally.

Anger, depression, guilt, and shame are the product of the thinking that is at the base of violence on our planet.

If you have an image of someone cutting off a relationship, it's the cutting off that will lead to your suffering. If you see the action as their need being expressed, then the message is within them, not you. Any interpretation you put onto another person's message (such as passive-aggressive, withholding, etc.), you will pay for because of how you took it.

Interpretations, criticisms, diagnoses, and judgments of others are actually alienated expressions of our unmet needs.

Anger tells us we've disconnected from life. The purpose in anger is to use it to come back to life.

Nonviolent Communication shows us a way of being very honest, but without any criticism, without any insults, without any put-downs, without any intellectual diagnosis implying wrongness.

When I am angry I have a judgment and an unmet need.