Language of Life

from Marshall Rosenberg

***Classifying and judging people promotes violence.

***We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.

***When we combine observation with evaluation, people are apt to hear criticism.

***While the effects of negative labels such as "lazy" or "stupid" may be more obvious, even a positive or an apparently neutral label such as "cook" limits our perception of the totality of another person's being.

***Expressing our vulnerability can help resolve conflicts.

***It's important to distinguish between what we feel and what we think.
Words like "ignored" express how we interpret others, rather than how we feel. "Hurt" is probably what we felt. More examples of such words:

abandoned, distrusted, put down
abused, interrupted, rejected
attacked, intimidated, taken for granted
betrayed, let down, threatened
boxed-in, manipulated, unappreciated
bullied, misunderstood, unheard
cheated, neglected, unseen
coerced, overworked, unsupported
co-opted, patronized, unwanted
cornered, pressured, used
diminished, provoked

All such innocent words, we think. And, yet when we hear them applied to ourselves, we sense a little lurch in the stomach, perhaps followed by confusion.