We can see the value in using a narrower defintion in some cases. For example, sometimes being less specific and including less evaluation when stating how you feel might produce less devensiveness from another person.

For insance, if you were having a conversation with someone and you started to have a bad, negative, painful or uncomfortable feeling.

Your thought might be "This person is starting to judge me rather than understand me." You might want to give them some feedback on how you feel, or more bluntly, you might want them to change how they were feeling and what they were saying.

There would be several ways to approach the problem. One non-NVC way would be that you could give them an order or a command, for example by saying something like,"Stop judging me." Obviously, (or I hope it is obvious!) this would be very likely to put them on the defensive.

Another non-NVC way might be to say "I feel judged," but this might also put them on the defensive, though probably less than with the first approach.

The second way would not be used in the NVC system because because "judged" is not be considered a feeling. Instead, it is considered an evaluation.

So with the NVC system as I understand it, you might say "I feel sad" or "I feel hurt" or "I feel angry".

You might also make an observation by saying something like,

I noticed that you said 'You are always late'.

Then you might say something like "Would you be willing to stop using words like always and just talk about specific instances?" Note

Comparing this to the EQI system one difference in our approaches is that we consider "judged" a valid feeling word. We might not recommend you say "I feel judged, however. It would depend, for example, on who the other person is and how open and secure they are.

We probably would recommend though, that you at least make a mental note to yourself that you feel judged. We might even recommend you keep a journal of feelings and write down that you felt judged by this person in this situation. We believe it is very helpful to keep such a feelings journal or log, by the way.

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to be continued...?

(later I want to write about - not feeling understood, about giving information vs pressuring the other person. - about being less assertive/aggressive - about asking the other how they would feel if you said "I feel a little judged" - about using zero to ten scale, and using open ended questions vs yes no questions

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Benefit to using more feeling words - ones which include an evaluation/thought or assessment

Helps you get to need faster. Examples = I feel unprepared for the next heavy rain.

Tells you what you need to feel and do.

You could say "I feel scared. Then you would have to get more specific and say what you you feel scared about. You would probably reach the same conclusion, ie that you need to be more prepared so therefore you need to take action to get more prepared. But by using "unprepared" as a feeeling word, you save a little time in figuring out what you need to do to meet the unmet need.

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Other examples, things to write about later.....

Disorganized. - if you feel disorganized you know what how you need to feel and what you need to do. You need to feel more organized, so you need to start organizing. Yhis is the most effiecient way we have come up with to help us get quickly to solving the problem.

This system doesnt always work this easily though. For example if you feel alone, you can't use the same root word to help you koow what you need or need to do, like you can with unprepared or disorganized.

Angry. - Saying you feel antgry doesn't tell you what you need... see section on anger

Invalidated. - i won't go into ths now, but we believe this is a very important concept - and it is very impoportant to realize when you are being invalidated. here is our page on invalidation

Anger - Secondary emotion.

In the NVC system it seems you keep trying to get them to change their behavior by asking them more questions to try to identify what they are feeling and what they are needing until they voluntarily agree to make some change. I am not sure, though, if this is a fair statement of the NVC system so I invite those who are more familiar with it to help me out here.

judgmental

If we reealize we are feeling these before we say something it might help us avoid hurting or judging someone.