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NVC Resources with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Healing And Dissolving Chronic Anger

Healing And Dissolving Chronic Anger

Healing And Dissolving Chronic Anger

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 4 - 6 minutes •

Practice Exercise
4 - 6 minutes

It can seem like anger protects you. But it's your ability to name your needs, honor your range of feelings, and act on your needs that keeps you healthy and safe. When you remain present for an emotion and allow it to flow, it'll last just over a minute and dissolve, making room for the next layer of experience. Practice noticing any anger you have, without resistance. Set up self-empathy or...

Boundaries For Healthy Differentiation

Boundaries For Healthy Differentiation

Boundaries For Healthy Differentiation

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 6-9 minutes •

Practice Exercise
6-9 minutes

Differentiation means you can access both autonomy and intimacy in relationships. When you're unafraid to lose yourself or be controlled, you can feel deeply connected and affected, while standing strong in yourself. Differentiation also means ability to tolerate disharmony and differences, self-soothe, offer compassion, and set boundaries. Here, we'll focus on setting boundaries with...

Helping With Difficult Emotions

Helping With Difficult Emotions

Helping With Difficult Emotions

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 3 - 5 minutes •

Practice Exercise
3 - 5 minutes

If you want to support someone in distress offer a menu of ways you can contribute. Often a person in distress can’t articulate what they need but can recognize it when they hear it. Move fluidly among these 11 options to offer what’s truly helpful, rather than offering something out habit or based on what you think they should have. Remember that you can ask, “Is this helpful?” to support...

Create Choiceful Listening

Create Choiceful Listening

Create Choiceful Listening

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 2-3 minutes •

Practice Exercise
2-3 minutes

Often, honoring someone’s choice supports more connection. Thus, checking in with someone’s choice to listen or not (offering autonomy) sets the stage for being heard more fully. On the other hand, when someone has the perception that you are talking to them without considering their choice, resentful listening might result. Here are ways to mindfully check in about choiceful listening before...

The Why And How Of Accessing Grief

The Why And How Of Accessing Grief

The Why And How Of Accessing Grief

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 5-8 minutes •

Practice Exercise
5-8 minutes

Grief is often confused with anguish. Anguish is a painful feeling that comes along with deep resistance to an experience or truth. Grief that leads to healing is an expansive state. It is a willingness to be with an experience and truth. If you're not resisting grief, then it's a neutral-to-pleasant experience. Pleasant sensations can include a sense of space and relief as something is...

Healing And Repair After A Triggering Comment

Healing And Repair After A Triggering Comment

Healing And Repair After A Triggering Comment

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 6-9 minutes •

Practice Exercise
6-9 minutes

How to get past the sting of a painful comment? Get empathy from self or another. Then connect with the commenter's feelings and needs. The more you can do this the less personally you may take it. Then work together on specific, do-able, authentic agreement about doing something differently next time, the kind that will enable you both to shift out of reactivity. Three things need to be in...

Find Space Between Needs And Strategies

Find Space Between Needs And Strategies

Find Space Between Needs And Strategies

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 4-6 minutes •

Practice Exercise
4-6 minutes

Confidence, flexibility, creativity and equanimity may become more possible when you would like someone to meet a particular need, can trust that you can meet that need with someone else, and can accept a “no” to your requests. You can allow grief or disappointment to arise, and naturally turn towards a relationship in which those needs can be met. In some cases this may lead to the dissolution...

How To Make A Relationship A Priority While Maintaining Autonomy

How To Make A Relationship A Priority While Maintaining Autonomy

How To Make A Relationship A Priority While Maintaining Autonomy

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 3 - 5 minutes •

Practice Exercise
3 - 5 minutes

Part of making your relationship a priority while maintaining autonomy means you consider the impact your actions may have on your relationship and look to negotiate ways all needs can be honored. To do this while not losing yourself, practice writing down your needs and guessing their needs beforehand. Make an upfront request to create a shared understanding about what’s most important, before...

Interventions For Anger

Interventions For Anger

Interventions For Anger

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 3-5 minutes •

Practice Exercise
3-5 minutes

Anger is a sign that you're resisting what's happening because you perceive an overwhelming threat, not trusting yourself to handle what's happening directly. Vulnerable feelings under anger are usually fear, hurt, or grief. Experiencing and expressing these feelings and connecting them to your needs, gives you access to more skill, insight, compassion, and wisdom. Read on for 3 questions to...

Empathy And Strategies For Overwhelm

Empathy And Strategies For Overwhelm

Empathy And Strategies For Overwhelm

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 4-6 minutes •

Practice Exercise
4-6 minutes

Making decisions from overwhelm can be costly for you and others. Instead, to get distance name overwhelm as it comes. Apply self-compassion. Be suspicious of your impulse to withdraw. Find ways to meet your needs. Tell others about your overwhelm. This may allow more support, connection and trust-building. Plan what to do to meet your needs next time you're overwhelmed. Tweak your plan.

Little Hints For Contributing To A Secure Bond With Your Partner

Little Hints For Contributing To A Secure Bond With Your Partner

Little Hints For Contributing To A Secure Bond With Your Partner

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 3 - 5 minutes •

Practice Exercise
3 - 5 minutes

Research shows that couples with a secure bond experience arguments that are shorter, lower in intensity, and easier to recover from. Building and keeping a secure bond with your partner requires mindfulness and consistency: respond to what’s needed or supportive in a given moment; give them your full attention and affection in a spacious greeting; conveying care, consideration, and that they...

Understand And Dissolve Obstacles To Setting Life-Serving Boundaries

Understand And Dissolve Obstacles To Setting Life-Serving Boundaries

Understand And Dissolve Obstacles To Setting Life-Serving Boundaries

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 5 - 8 minutes •

Practice Exercise
5 - 8 minutes

There are ways to reduce obstacles to setting boundaries. Notice unconscious ways you sacrifice yourself in order to avoid boundary setting. List of signs that a life-serving boundary is needed, but you're denying this. Realizing you consistently abandoned your needs may require time to process and mourn before you can set boundaries consistently. With practice, you can recognize boundaries...

Create The Level Of Connection You Want: 3 Types Of Boundaries

Create The Level Of Connection You Want: 3 Types Of Boundaries

Create The Level Of Connection You Want: 3 Types Of Boundaries

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 4 - 6 minutes •

Practice Exercise
4 - 6 minutes

One way of simplifying decision-making in relationships is clarity about the level of contact and connection you want with the people you interact with. This means knowing what you want and don’t want to share, the kinds of activities you do and don’t do together, how often, etc. This can help you chose how to best support your needs in that context, and help you to remember to set life-serving...

The Basics of Life-Serving Boundaries

The Basics of Life-Serving Boundaries

The Basics of Life-Serving Boundaries

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 4 - 6 minutes •

Practice Exercise
4 - 6 minutes

Setting boundaries takes being firmly grounded in self-respect and clear about what works for you. This means making conscious choices about how you relate to another or behave in a situation. Such clarity allows you to put your attention and energy where you want it to go. Thus we can have care and compassion without taking responsibility for others, nor feeling guilty when we say “no”. This...

Breaking Free of "If Only You Were Different, They Would Change"

Breaking Free of "If Only You Were Different, They Would Change"

Breaking Free of "If Only You Were Different, They Would Change"

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 4 - 6 minutes •

Practice Exercise
4 - 6 minutes

Because we affect one another it can be hard to know where to take responsibility and where to leave it with the other person. This means we need self empathy, and presence for another's struggles without compulsion to "make them happy" or bring them healthy change. You can then attend to the needs and to your choice about if and how you want to contribute with compassion. Respect them as...

Finding Freedom In Marriage

Finding Freedom In Marriage

Finding Freedom In Marriage

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 4 - 6 minutes •

Practice Exercise
4 - 6 minutes

Marriage can be seen as a limit on freedom. Ideas of compromise collude with this view. Instead, notice when your "yes" to your partner is laden with obligation, duty, guilt, fear, or an attempt to win love or approval, and how it's not a truly free "yes". True freedom is different from compulsion, and doesn't conflict with other needs. When have you experienced true freedom? What conditions...

Boundaries - The Journey To Being Able To Say "No"

Boundaries - The Journey To Being Able To Say "No"

Boundaries - The Journey To Being Able To Say "No"

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Article • 5 - 8 minutes •

Article
5 - 8 minutes

Struggling to say "no"? Here are ways you change your adjacent mind patterns. First, note the differences between those who respect boundaries and those who often don't. Second, review situations in which you lost track of your choice. And rehearse what it would sound, look, and feel like if you kept connection to your choice. Third, seek validation of your experience - from a grounded and...

Changing A One-Way Caretaking Relationship

Changing A One-Way Caretaking Relationship

Changing A One-Way Caretaking Relationship

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 5 - 8 minutes •

Practice Exercise
5 - 8 minutes

Notice situations where you're attending to another and giving up on your needs with resentment or a sense of submitting. You can also watch for “shoulds,” obligation, and black-and-white thinking around the support you offer. Is there a sense that if you don't carry out a particular action something bad will happen? If so, identify the needs at hand and brainstorm a variety of strategies to...

How To Find Your Center Instead of Defending

How To Find Your Center Instead of Defending

How To Find Your Center Instead of Defending

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 5 - 8 minutes •

Practice Exercise
5 - 8 minutes

Notice when you start to defend. Is your body tensing up? Feeling desperate for the other to understand you or your intentions? Find yourself explaining your behavior, giving all the good reasons why you did what you did? Trying to convince the other of your good intentions? If so, ask yourself: “Is this what I want to be doing right now? Is this really helping?” then practice one of these...

Healthy Differentiation: Learning To Be Your Authentic Self

Healthy Differentiation: Learning To Be Your Authentic Self

Healthy Differentiation: Learning To Be Your Authentic Self

with LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

Practice Exercise • 6 - 9 minutes •

Practice Exercise
6 - 9 minutes

Healthy differentiation is key to personal growth, learning and thriving relationships. When healthy differentiation is present, you can discern what's true for you and what you are and aren't responsible for in an interaction, and can be fully who you are in the presence of others. There are a number of ways you can become aware of and cultivate healthy differentiation. Let’s look at two here:...

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