Training-Life Gap

Von Eva Ebenhöh | July 30, 2017

I realized something a few days ago, and maybe this is interesting for others, too.

For a year-and-a-half now I’ve been pretty active in a local NVC non-profit, organizing events and community building. We have beginnings of conflict and talking about and reflecting about this I realized the following:

Here in Germany it is safe to assume that most NVC practitioners learn mainly in workshops. As trainers in workshops we usually do not show up with everything that is alive in us, because our focus is on creating an NVC learning experience for participants. Sure, we want to be as congruent, transparent, and authentic as serves that learning experience. But we deal with annoyance, impatience, and frustration outside of the workshop setting, at least that is what I mostly do and how I experienced it when I was a participant.

Now, since we all learn not only consciously, but also subconsciously by imitation, what we learn in trainings is less than full authenticity.

Actually, when I started teaching, I loved the trainer role precisely because it was and is so easy for me to stay connected to empathy and focus on needs, when I hold a training.

Now, that is all very well and might explain, why lots of us are drawn to hold trainings. And I don’t suggest to blurt out your judgements about participants and process them right in front of NVC newbies. However, it might also explain that slight gap between our skills as trainers and our skills in private settings.

Back to my non-profit organization.

A bunch of us trainers and beginning trainers sit together and show up with less than full authenticity, somehow with expectations on how to behave NVC-like that were formed in NVC workshops. No one ever taught us how to be Giraffes in real life.

So we screw up, trying to muddle through. Which would be quite fine, if it were not for those expectations - we are certified trainers, are we not?

I believe one of the most important things to learn and teach is to welcome - truly love - reactivity. Not in order to deal with it or solve it, but just for what it is - life manifesting.

We are experienced dealing with reactivity when it shows up as sadness or grief. Yes, when someone cries tears in sweet pain, I know healing is happening.

But what if someone shouts?

Healing is happening, if that very hurt part in us is heard and received with love.

So how do we do that? We learn to love our own reactivity and show up with it, demonstrating how much we love it.