Nonviolent Communication and Somatic Experiencing

As always when one thing is conquered a new challenge emerges.  When I understand one aspect of life to my satisfaction another area opens up about which I am uninformed. Right now I am wondering what will happen when I’m asked about my current reading and interests…how long before I will be able to say the truth of what I am interested in at this present moment… ‘Tantra and male/female polarisation’ without wanting to make a joke, myself smaller and really own it?

When someone puts me down I all too quickly see their point. But I am growing in my determination to continue through simply identifying with their idea that this is silly and being quiet. I also stay really believe that they are awkwardly trying to contribute to the dialogue in the best way they know. So I recognise that internally and put what happened to the side. But it does leave me less sure about the relationship and frustrated with myself.  When I leave the situation silently stung I have repeated and reinforced a pattern that doesn’t serve me and I doubt serves them and so I want to do something else.

Graphic showing the four parts of the CRN.
The Core Response Network (CRN). The CRN organizes immediate, instinctive response to environmental challenges, prior to extensive cortical processing. It includes the autonomic nervous system (hypothalamus), the limbic emotional system (amygdala, hippocampus, septal region), the emotional motor system (portions of the basal ganglia, red nucleus, periaqueductal gray), and the reticular arousal systems. All these systems interact strongly through multiple feed-back and feed-forward connections, forming a complex dynamical system which can enter various discrete functional and dysfunctional states.

I find I can use NVC to understand at the verbal level the other person and myself very much, but I hold back and by the time I am ready to say anything to protect myself the moments over, it could easily take twenty-four hours.  This is why I am so excited to be doing Somatic Experiencing because the capacity to break the bodies ‘frozen’ state isn’t in the words, but in the Central Nervous System and only by engaging these systems is it possible to come back to life and respond nonviolently in real time.

When I unfreeze I am so excited to hear what I will say, not attacking the other person or myself or being defensive but connecting as the moment unravels in a new way of being with my truth.

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