Trainer Tip: With empathy, ponder one area of your life that you are unhappy with today. Consider whether you can take action to change the experience and meet your needs.

In healing reactivity try identifying your most common complaints, wishes, or requests. Or when you tend to defend, justify, get angry, or protect. Find the tender needs. You can recall when you experienced deep nourishment of that need. Several times a week nourish your tender needs. Be clear about the strategy to address needs by answering key questions. Read on for more.

Trainer Tip: One of the basic philosophies of Nonviolent Communication is valuing everyone’s needs equally. That means that you consider your needs to be equal to another person’s needs. If someone asks you for empathy, and you choose to empathize at you own expense, you're not living in a Nonviolent Communication consciousness. Be aware of your own needs today when someone asks you to be their...

How can we live up to our true potential, a life filled with relationships and experiences that truly meet our needs? In this article, Mary offers us a way to bring about inner transformation that can lead to seeing ourselves, others and life differently -- for greater agency, empowerment and choice.

When you or anyone is upset, what could underneath the trigger? There may be more than is immediately visible. This article invites us to explore what it looks like to inquire deeper, take self-responsibility, examine our assumptions, attachments, interpretations, and "certainties" that could be hidden behind the needs that are aching to be attended to...

In the face of needs that are still hungry to be satisfied, we can expand our view, plus generate ideas and creativity that can find new paths forward. Try these tips to transform our complaint into commitment for a change in strategy that works with needs...

How we relate to life parallels how we relate to others! Learn how to have a more healthy way of relating to situations and people when your needs are not being met. Bob Wentworth offers some wisdom on moving from suffering to aliveness through not fighting what is.

Ask the Trainer: "I am wondering what to do with a judgment that is expressed by someone about me. In these situations I can't find the unmet need they are expressing (other than perhaps significance)."

Ask the Trainer: "I'm practicing with 'transforming the pain of unmet needs into the beauty of the need.' In identifying my unmet needs, I come up with 'fairness.' However, fairness isn't on the needs list! I'm wondering what needs might be underneath 'fairness.'"

In this NVC Life Hack, we look at those circumstances when we're saying yes... but only kinda! Because we're still actually saying no. Shantigarbha and Gesine look at the needs that aren't being met.

Trainer Tip: We often find ourselves slipping into old behaviors that we would rather change. This is because we don’t have a new plan for responding to the same old situations. In that case, notice whether you are slipping into old behaviors today. Connect to your unmet needs and then identify a new strategy for the situation.

Trainer tip: Notice how the exact same actions can stimulate different feelings depending on if your needs are met or unmet. So while what people say or do is the stimulus, the actual cause of our feelings comes from our met or unmet needs. Read on for more on this.

Trainer Tip: Taking time to mourn our regrets and unmet needs can lead to a deeper self-connection and feelings of peace.

Trainer Tip: Violence results from thinking that others caused our pain and deserve to be punished. The cause of our feelings is related to our own needs in the moment. What happened is the stimulus. Notice this when you are tempted to blame other people for your feelings, and try to discover your unmet needs.

Mismanaged emotional pain can compound and hurt ourselves and others. Four ways we can mismanage pain are: denial, blame, depression, and escape/numbing. This can result in hatred, resentment, discrimination, revenge, anger, and more problems. The fifth way we can deal with pain is to confront the pain acknowledging it and dealing with our unmet needs. This is a more direct path. Read on for...

Judging or criticizing others indicates pain, unmet needs and a coping strategy. It distracts you from yourself and can give you the illusion of control. You may think you see more than they do, imagining criticism will bring change. But even a correct analysis won’t inspire change if they hear criticism. Instead, the moment you notice judgments or criticism turn towards yourself with...

When a relationship has both differentiation and bonding you can express differences and unmet needs, and responsibly do your own thing without it being a threat to the bond with another. You honor each others choices. There's trust rather than a sense of resentful obligation. Needs-based negotiation is easier. See if you tend to emphasize only differentiation or bonding in your relationships....

In general, criticism is a reactive response discomfort. When someone criticizes, they are not yet able or willing take responsibility for their needs. All criticism is a tragic expression of feelings and unmet needs. When you meet that criticism skillfully you not only care for yourself, you can facilitate clarity, and constructive communication, about what the other person is truly asking for.

Trainer Tip: Many of us are afraid of our anger because we haven’t learned how to express it in a way that brings relief or that helps us meet our needs in the situation. Consider a different approach to anger, one that helps you fully express your anger and is more likely to help you meet your needs for relief, to be heard, or to be understood.

"Falling out of love" is a misleading concept that can lead to feelings of helplessness in relationships. The initial intense phase of love gradually gives way to the need for intentional effort and communication. Unrealistic relationship expectations can erode connection, causing the perception of falling out of love. To address this, we can ask key questions and seek clarity to attend to...