Where am I with NVC? Reading Speak Peace in a World of Conflict

Today I read the book Speak Peace in a World of Conflict for the second time. This is Rosenberg's illustration of NVC and how it relates to living peacefully within ourselves and with others, and creating a peaceful world with new kinds of social structures. I didn't remember how radical Rosenberg is in the sense that he wants to deeply change the way the world works nowadays; he sees coercive structures as gangs (be they corporations or schools, anything), and recognizes that education as it usually works is geared towards producing docile workers who will do as they are told. 

As I read I'm pondering whether I'm really ready to apply NVC in my life. Making genuine connections with people really scares me. I'm wondering if I really want to do it; maybe that is why listening in NVC is so difficult. Or is it just that I don't trust the NVC process yet? I feel vulnerable sharing my feelings and needs, and listening to others' needs and feelings doesn't come easily to me.  I feel that I have a lot to learn. 

I'm also noticing that knowing what I'm feeling any moment is really difficult. My family didn't support any kind of emotional expression or consciousness of emotions or needs, and for a long time I didn't know at all what I was feeling aside from constant depression and anxiety. Now when I think of situations in the NVC sense, and try to identify how I feel in them, it feels like I'm just looking at the list of feelings and thinking in my head, "what could I be feeling now?". Maybe that's how it starts really, after you've grown up hiding your emotions and trying to please everyone around you. 

My use of NVC so far has probably been mostly formulaic, and P has picked up on it. I'm really not sure if I'm looking for the empathetic connection that is, Rosenberg writes, the goal of NVC. Maybe I'm trying to force myself to "do NVC", maybe what I really now want is to connect with relatively few people? (With P, and with my friends?) At the same time I want to "practise NVC" because I enrolled on a course of NVC at Oulu next month! I asked the teacher whether it is okay for me to attend, since I haven't taken the basic course and this is an advanced version, and I got permission. 

It takes me increasing amounts of time to respond to anything P says, but I think that that is part of learning NVC. I have kind of switched off the old intellectualising and complaining voice, but haven't really found a way to connect to others' and my own needs yet. I'm sure that I will learn in time to be more present and open to hearing what I am and what others are experiencing. Exciting times.