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Comment by sangnoir | Hacker News Reader

You're going to get an emotional response whether you acknowledge it or not, and often times, such miscomunication results in anger/escalation of the misunderstanding. "You're rude" vs "I feel like what you said to me was rude" will elicit different responses; the former is likely to trigger self-defense or the listener taking offense, whereas the latter is a statement of opinion that does not escalate.

Non-violent communication is how diplomacy gets done, as the stakes are often very high.

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I disagree. Prefacing statements with "I feel" only acts to highlight the subjectivity of the statement which makes it much easier for the offending party to dismiss in practice.

"That statement was rude" makes the speaker consider their statement from their own perspective vs "I feel like that statement was rude" which causes the speaker consider whether the other party rationally feels that way. If the speaker doesn't see the offended party as a rational individual, then any statement like that will automatically be dismissed.

IMO this underscores the biggest failing of NVC - it requires both parties to abide by it. If the speaker does and has an adequate level of EQ to actually successfully use it, then they would most likely take you feelings into account even if you aren't using NVC so there's no benefit. Conversely, if they don't use it or see the benefits of EQ, explicitly adding "I feel" before every statement isn't going to achieve anything except annoying the speaker while they dismiss your feedback just as quickly as they would have anyways. Ironically, NVC strikes me as a way to _feel_ like you're communicating more effectively without much or any net positive impact on the receiving end, which doesn't seem worth it to me.

I appreciate how you highlighted two things: 1) about how it can lead to disagreement and 2) how NVC seems to require both sides to participate.

For the first one, I agree with you in that if someone says to me "I feel like (or believe or worse, know) that statement was rude," I can quickly jump into a defensive mode, "Well I believe it wasn't," and reach a stalemate. I, however, also can jump into that mode when someone says to me "that statement was rude" because I 1) may not believe it or 2) find an example of someone who doesn't believe it and then am likely to start to argue. This is why I try to avoid labeling things with these adjectives and try to dig more deeply into how I'm feeling internally.

About two, with the two-way participation of NVC I strongly agree and have found it be one of the things that frustrates me the most about it, both on the receiving and giving side of it. On receiving, I feel forced, stuck, nudged, coerced, whatever, into playing the games even if I don't want to. On the giving side, I feel stuck if the other person won't play and then can feel frustrated and passively try to trick them into playing.

This is why I really like adding another step, whereas step 1 is to say how I feel, step 2 is to tell them how I imagine they might be feeling and then step 3 is to say one thing to connect with love. I've found that even if the other person isn't playing, I can consider how I'm feeling, consider how they're feeling, and feel closer to them.

Saying something like "I feel that statement is rude" goes against the entire point of "I" statements. You are supposed to connect a specific action of theirs with the emotional reaction it caused in you. "Feeling a statement is rude" isn't you expressing an emotion or feeling, its you expressing an opinion.

A more valid way phrase it would "When you say $statement, it makes me feel $emotion/feeling", where x is an actual emotion or feeling, like angry/upset/disappointed/disrespected/worthless/don't care about me/etc.

I agree that those two statements can elicit different responses. I try to take the latter statement even closer to expressing myself. Instead of saying "I believe what you did is rude" I'll try to say "When you did that thing, I felt angry or if I'm more honest, sad."

I wrote a post on this back in the day calling it the subjective adjective, basically that when we use adjectives, often it carries an objective nature to it, aka "everyone believes this is the description" and even if you were to say to me "I believe what you did was rude" I may lock in on "rude" and forget it was your perspective. I may even ignore your emphasis on what I did and put it who I am. "This person is calling me rude!" Even though you weren't.

So I try as much as I can, especially in conflict scenarios, to avoid using adjectives about them or their actions and more so to use adverbs (I think?) about how I'm feeling.

"You're rude" to "I believe what you did is rude" to "I felt hurt when you did that."

> "I feel like what you said to me was rude" will elicit different responses

People responded negatively to you for good reason. Your statement above violates a fundamental NVC principle: Namely that you pretended to describe a feeling when you intended a judgement. It is precisely this that makes people think you're being manipulative.

> "You're rude" vs "I feel like what you said to me was rude" will elicit different responses

No it won't. They both mean exactly the same thing.

If anything, the second one will elicit a more hostile response, as the person being addressed will believe you are trying to manipulate them by obfuscating your language.

While I agree with your overall point, there is a middle third option that doesn't involve labeling someone as rude. Drop the "I feel" and just say "what you said was rude".

Being labeled often requires a defensive response as it has a sense of permanence associated with it. Temporally, it is different from describing an action as rude.

“I am X” vs “I am feeling X” are very different statements.

The first leans more toward describing to attribute as permanent, while the second is more explicit that it is a temporary state.

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