Laydees and Gentilmen and all those of other persuasions or in between or none… Welcome welcome its your

NVC Role Play Club!

• Currently on Season 6!
• Lots of fun!
• Sometimes streamed live!

Role Up Role Up!

This, is not about using NVC role play as a healing modality, well not primarily. In NVC Role Play Club we are primarily, at least for now, focused on supporting Certification Candidates prepare for the role play aspect of their assessment. And you are welcome to come along today if you are not a candidate and are curious.

We seek to explore “Does NVC ‘work’?” when the situation is stressful?

In support of this we curate a space for messing up and playing.

We call it Serious Fun (see what I did there?)

So, if you fancy a taster of what this is like, come along.

Role plays are usually about 10 minutes and we give lots of time to practicing giving needs based feedback.

Adverts and more information:

https://nvc-uk.com/events/nvc-role-play-club-series-6/

and a similar advert is here:

https://www.cnvc.org/learn/events/nvc-role-play-club-series-6-2025-10-01-12-00-00

For me the point is one of liberation. Are you willing to be told what to use? Are you wanting to be more in choice? Are you wanting other people to be making decisions about what software and services you use in your life? Do you have assurance that the people who own WhatsApp have your best interests in mind?

If, like me, you realise that you wish to have more choice, control and agency. If like me you find that you no longer trust the authorities to hold your best interests in mind over their own, then you are more likely to be motivated to do something about it.

There are so many ethical issues with Facebook that it has its own wiki page! This exploration led me to decide to minimise my contributing to Facebook products as much as I can.

So whilst I really like to live my NVC practice at the same time I yearn for belonging in NVC community without having to compromise on my yearning for a different digital landscape. I yearn for a digital life that is more life serving. I wonder if you might be willing to join me in alternative digital place?

I have made an alternative place for connection using an app called Signal. I have found that it is at least as easy for people to use as WhatsApp.

https://signal.org/

It is an app that I have been using since its early days. It was started in 2018 by one of the WhatsApp founders. Of course it is by no means perfect (it isn’t completely open source), however I particularly enjoy the leadership and innovation that Meredith is bringing.

Some of folk have been exploring what nonviolence in tech might mean: https://www.nonviolenttech.org/ We use Signal too.

Please email me for tech support.

with warmth,

~em~

Today a copy of this book was offered to UK NVC practioners. The sharer offers, ‘Published in A4 format by CNVC in 1992. An early (the first) NVC book for children.’

This is a piece of our history!

What a wonderful gift! I can see that there are 7 copies available to the public in American libraries:

I haven't found any electronic version of it nor second hand copy on the market.

Curious about whether Rita Herzog and Kathy Smith and the publishers CNVC, would enjoy releasing under a copyleft licence, perhaps for digital archival and sharing?

And noting some distance in NVC industry between the ideas of copyleft and strategies for meeting needs through earning money.

And noticing a tiredness and confusion in me around this. So curious what I can do, (beyond my personal and extensive mourning and trauma work!), to nurture a culture of free(dom) software, sharing and gift economy within the digital lives of our beautiful community.

with love

~em~

On the wall of the two UK NVC Assessment weekends there has been a flipchart with the words, 'What is your relationship with authority here?' or something. If I get the time I will try to hunt out a photo.

I have been so curious about this. Why is it on the wall? Is it something to do with Paolo Freire's work? It took me years to find a clip of Marshall Rosenberg citing Freire, and enumerating the ideas that contributed to the formulation of NVC. When I first read Pedagogy of the Oppressed I was highly impacted, and enjoyed how it supported me to examine my relationship with authority, and gave me some idea of how I have internalised this relationship, perhaps largely as a result of my western education. Furthermore Freire offers a method of education that can support us to examine this question. A couple of months ago I was delighted to hear from Dominic Barter who confirmed and expanded my curiosity around how Freire had influenced Rosenberg.

Now what I am curious about is, ‘How is Freire's work alive in NVC Training today?’ I am not sure how much of it there is or is not. Sometimes I see glimpses of it, sometimes I see it infused into the practise and sometimes I see NVC trainers ‘teaching’ NVC as if teachers in school. My understanding is that without exploring this question directly or using problem posing pedagogies it is hard to deconstruct the authority within us. Unfortunately whilst this question is on the walls of the two assessments I have been to, there has been little time to be in discourse around it. Assessments are busy times.

So I am curious as to how and when I might get to hear something of what contributes to this question being on the wall? Is it simply something to do with the power dynamic between an assessor and a candidate or is there something deeper? How much of Friere's ideas are still embedded into our NVC training practices?

I enjoyed, I loved, I rejoiced at how the world went online. For many years requests to meet online have been met by ‘we dont do that’! Often these requests were made by people who could really benefit from a change in imagination and culture. Disabled people, people who live remotely, people who want to drive less, people who want to be more available to their families.

What celebration that within a few weeks all the cultural and social and imagination barriers to meeting these requests evaporated!

We experimented as an NVC community, and many of us ppushed past our judgements around the quality of connection would be sufficient to hold group spaces. We learnt how to use the available tools to continue our NVC practices, sharing and working. This has let me meet, learn from, and share NVC with people living around the world! What a gift!

This change has let me control my environment, save carbon, save time, and save money. Oh what a joy it was for me to witness this pause in pollution, this window of potential change!

And, most of us will have really missed the qualities of being in proximity to those that we are meeting and connecting with. Most of us will be overwhelmed with screen time.

Now as lockdown is ending, I have delighted in hugs and seeing 3d people, and rediscovering that people have bodies beneath their shoulders! Now I am curious, how can I carry with me the joy of online meeting, with the lengthening days, and my need to be away from screens.

During the lockdown to meet all the needs, I often went for a walk, went down the beach, cleaned the house, laid in bed or even had a bath during meetings. There are technical challenges, that I have yet to fully meet. For instance because my bluetooth headset doesnt have a ‘mute’ button, when I go off camera to make tea, I mute on the laptop so that the kettle boiliing noise doesn’t disturb the meeting. I really enjoy the weirdness of still being in the meeting, as I make my tea. But many times, it has resulted in a short sprint to the laptop, to unmute and breathlessly respond to the question I have been asked !

Here is my experiment, I offer it here and request feedback.

Mixed movement Online Meetings.

Requires a phone and a bluetooth headset. Acknowledging that wind is a problem so I will both be experimenting with a wind sock and choosing more sheltered walks for windy days.

Have the check-in whilst sitting down.

Then switch cameras off and go for a walk.

In my previous experiments, many people delighted in my sharing of sunsets, rainbows, campfire and seaside views during the meeting. Of course, the meetings that I would do this were often social, event organising or party planning. Sometimes, I would even take a blue tooth speaker and dance on the empty beach…

Background

A member of the English Speaking European Assessment Team (ESEAT) team posted to the UK-NVC Rise-Up email list expressing concern about viability for an upcoming event, especially within the post COVID, post Brexit situation and requesting UK community support. One respondent responding in way that I resonated with, empathising with the need for sustainability for ESEAT and finding the cost ’very high’. A wish for a ’longer conversation around how to manage all this’, was named.

Two actions were taken, the community was invited to contribute to a fund in support of a community member attending, and a meeting was called to explore the issues. At the meeting the ESEAT member ex- pressed uncertainty around whether the event would be viable and they observed different cultures in other European countries where the NVC communities were more active in supporting the assessment team. It was agreed that it would be more likely that the event would go ahead if one person signed up within the next couple of hours and others signed up after that. I was then asked if I would be able to go if the community fund was offered to me, and I decided in that moment to accept.

I would like to name the feelings that came up for me at that time but it would be hard, I was excited and overwhelmed, grateful. Many needs were met, not least ’to matter’ and ’to contribute’.

Attending this event is a very worthwhile thing, if you are considering certification. It is also worthwhile as part of the NVC community, because your learning will be accelerated by the immersion. It is also worthwhile, if you wish to contribute to the UK’s NVC community, because you will be supporting the ESEAT team at a time when community support is welcome to ensure the expertise and resource that it brings continues to be as readily available as it is.

This is a snippet, the full document is here.

Silo technology vs Connection.

Siloing is the practise of making a digital platform not connectable with others. It is about having control rather than sharing control. It is about containment. These needs serve corporation and not individuals. It is a practise that leads to separation. This is because each platform tries to make its silo more appealing. It leads to the development of multiple competing clients or 'apps'.

update In the previous version of this post I wrote that Silo's lead to competition. Feedback from a helpful matrix developer helped me see that my explanation was too simple...

Silo's hinder helpful aspects of competition. By example, a user enters all their contacts into Some Silo. Then say Another Silo develops a new feature or improvement. Unfortunately the user cannot benefit from that improvement unless they move all of their contacts to Another Silo.

In human terms this means that when I invite people to use a platform that meets my needs and that is mature enough for public use I often hear a moan of 'not another app'!

People like the familiar. They like to use what everyone else is using. People like ease.

Corporations are well aware of this and that is why they make it hard for people to change or to have choice around what app they use to access the platform.

They may claim 'security' but we know that this is a false arguement for numerous reasons, that I will not go into here as it is technical and is well written about. However despite that, the corporations get away with being trusted even though their behaviour is anything other than trustworthy.

Our experience is that we are told by authority figures what program to use, and this is why it can be confusing to have choice! And still choice is a foundstone of free(dom) software.

So, if I am to judge software with which to develop community then it must meet my need for connection. That is to say, the members of my community must have choice about which app they use to access to the platform. This would put the members of the community in control rather than the platform owners.

Do you want to know what it is?

There is only one modern platform that can provide this freedom. It is called Matrix. I find it is really exciting to see it get to this stage. I have been following Matrix for years but I have only recently fully committed to participating in its community and vision. My testing suggests that it is indeed ready for wider use. I really love the vibrant communities that I have found in the Matrix, people who share my needs to use and contribute to a culture of free(dom) software. It is awesome.

As their website says: Imagine a world... ...where it is as simple to message or call anyone as it is to send them an email. ...where you can communicate without being forced to install the same app. ...where you can choose who hosts your communication. ...where your conversations are secured by E2E encryption.

In other words, lets use one platform to access many places. One 'address' to communicate in ways which we choose.

At the moment the platform is easy to use for text chatting and it is easy to embed jitsi video conferencing. It is in development and it is possible to use it as an interface to other platforms or communication modalities – but it is early days for that (at least for me)!

This means that I will be asking people to install yet another client. I expect there to be groans. However I am hopeful that I will be able to make the case for this. I will be posting video's about this soon.

I am grateful for the conversations with a shiny Matrix developer for her clarity in explaining this to me as I struggled to choose which platform to use.

She offered “On Matrix, there are many competing clients that are trying to offer a user experience catering for their target audience. Element's aim seems to be to provide as feature rich client as possible. Fluffychat is for people who enjoy a more simple UX like Whatsapp. Nheko offers a feature rich native desktop client. Mirage offers multi-user support. Fractal and Neochat offer good integration to their target desktop environments (GNOME and KDE).”

In support of helping you make that choice if you want to try Matrix, use Element! (My next post will begin with revisiting the paragraph above and will be titled Where To Start with Matrix). It will help explain what you need to know about the platform to begin to use it. Join us!

with love,

~em~

Background

Have you noticed how the autism logo and the NVC logo are similar? As it happens the happy happenstance echoes a deep and multifaceted connection between NVC and neurodiversity. Perhaps you also see a higher proportion of neurodiverse people participating in NVC courses than might be expected in a random population sample. Perhaps like me you are curious.
I was also curious around how my experience of NVC 'cured' my autism! No – of course it didn't 'cure' me! Yet I realised that when in NVC community I found that I was no longer self advocating, which is a considered decision to 'out' oneself by sharing an autistic identity in service of requesting accommodations. Since I had learnt that self advocacy was usually helpful I was in the habit of stopping conversations in neurotypical situations at the point at which I had become overwhelmed and waving the metaphorical 'autism' flag or showing a not so metaphorical autism card.

Furthermore, as my NVC practise developed, I found I was more and more in choice around the kinds of 'autistic behaviours' that are normatively pathologised (e.g. frustration and anger). These are the kinds of topics that I will be writing about on this blog, and I would welcome discourse, of course.

The Invitation

For now, I want to invite people who identify as Neurodiverse to join me in creating, in formenting(!) an NDNVC community. I would love it if this community met these needs:

• a place to practise NVC
• a place to be in community
• a place to explore diagnosis, identity and NVC
• a place where we can contribute.

In explanation of the last point, there are a few ways in which NDNVC might contribute to NVC community at large.

Over the years I have been asked by several Certified Trainers to support them to make their course more accessible to autistic people. Whilst I am happy to alert them as to how the courses might be organised to better support me, and I might also be able to guess at what might support others, I am not confident that I can speak for others. A team with multiple views can better support such requests. Through this, perhaps we might offer some kind of supportive expertise to those NVC trainers who wish their work to become (even) more autistic friendly.

NDNVC might also offer itself as an interface between ND and NVC communities. For various reasons NVC is a contested and emotive subject in some ND communities. I would like to offer space to support difficult experiences many ND people have had, especially when those experiences are to do with NVC. I am curious around the how the work of Sarah Peyton might relate to peoples experience of alexithymia, or how NVC in general might sit with those of us who sense things differently.

I would love it if this space was shared with all participants of all foundations so that those who may identify as ND but not be 'out' might access it in safety.

NDNVC as widening inclusion within NVC

At this time of cultural reflection and a widening of inclusion, in listening to the stories from BIPOC NVC practioners, I had a sense that there were some similarities to my own challenges accessing NVC Certification. Whilst I am active in seeking to deconstruct my colonised self in order to offer my allyship to the global majority, my experience as an autie gives some insight into 'othering', exclusion from cultural structures and internalised oppressive or limiting given identities. I am curious around whether ideas around intersectionality will support this widening of inclusion and therefore when oour BIPOC peers have a sufficient sense of being heard and welcome, then perhaps an invite might be extended to non normative neurologies (and genders) too.

Why create something new?

Q. Why not just set up a group on the usual social media?
A. I try to avoid things like Facebook, I find it addictive, as it was indeed designed to be (see Nir Eyal's book Hooked).

Q. Why not join one of the plethora of available autism groups?
A. See above and I have explored and really loved many of those communities and spaces, I do not think that there are any spaces that are just for those NVC practitioners who identify as ND. I want to practise NVC in ND community! Furthermore, my IT needs are not well met by the available communities or the common social media platforms. These needs are:

• mutuality
• privacy
• (software) freedom and autonomy

Join me!

with warmth and love

~em~