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Posted December 1, 2025 Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
At a weeklong retreat I once attended on “Non-Violent Communication”—a modality devoted to compassionate connection and conflict-resolution—the lead facilitator opened with this question: “How many of you have had NVC used against you?”
A majority of the participants raised their hands, including me.
What the facilitator was getting at is that any communication, conflict resolution, or therapeutic tool or technique can be weaponized, twisted into a power play, used not to connect but to control and outmaneuver. It’s easy to start off on the right foot and end up on the wrong foot, or as the saying goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
For example, the rapport-building technique called mirroring (repeating or paraphrasing what someone has said, so they know you’ve understood them) can go off the rails quickly if you feed back to them not what they said but what you thought they said, or your opinion or interpretation of it, or with a tone of voice they didn’t use.
Taking time-outs during conflict—in order to bring the temperature down—can also be abused if you just storm out of the room without a word, without agreeing on when time-out is over, or if you say “I think you need some time out.”
Apologies, too, can be undermined by saying things like “I’m sorry you’re hurt, but….” (insert excuse for why you did/said something hurtful) or “Sorry I’m not the perfect partner.”
The technique of taking turns talking and being heard can also run aground if it turns into an interminable back-and-forth gripe session. In fact, as laudable as communication and conflict-resolution skills are in general, sometimes the better part of wisdom is to stop using them, stop talking and just sit quietly with someone, look in their eyes, calm your nervous system, and give yourself half a chance to climb down out of your head and into your heart.
Especially if you’re using newly-learned therapy-speak with someone for whom such language is foreign, you risk it coming across as psychobabble or superiority—an attempt to sound self-aware at the other’s expense, to tilt the playing field in your favor, or even to hide your own vulnerability—and it will become an obstacle to connection rather than a bridge. So avoid tossing out terms like inner child, attachment style, or setting boundaries. And restrain yourself from diagnosing the other person with clinical labels like co-dependent, narcissistic, or passive-aggressive. They may be accurate, and useful in clinical settings, and you may even use them with the best of intentions, but they’ll likely land with a booming thud.
But let’s say you and your partner are both familiar with NVC, which encourages people to speak about feelings, needs, and requests, not judgments, blame, and coercion. And let’s say you’re using it because your partner has failed to abide by an agreement to not leave clothes lying around. While hashing it out, though, you tell him/her that you feel “betrayed,” which sounds like a legitimate feeling, but is actually blame disguised as a feeling. It’s a “you-statement” (you betrayed me) disguised as an “I-statement.”
A true I-statement begins with “I feel,” but is undermined if you follow it up with the word “you,” as in “I feel like you’re a slob.” This is just adding “I feel” onto an accusation, and you’re more likely to trigger a defensive reaction than an affirmative response. Accusations can be argued. Feelings can’t.
And let’s say your partner, equally versed in NVC, calls you out on this, saying “Betrayed isn’t a feeling.” This may technically be true, and a bid to honor the ground-rules of NVC, but it can also be a way to dismiss your complaint, along with your genuine disappointment and anger. Again, best intentions gone awry.
And they can go awry in spectacular fashion. “My ex would force me to talk in the NVC script,” one woman wrote on an NVC thread. “Like I literally had to hold a paper as I spoke. If I deterred from the script, he’d scold me or refuse to communicate with me. He’d police my tone and all of my word usage to the point that he came up with a list of words he pre-approved.”
Techniques like NVC work well with relatively healthy people in relatively good-faith relationships, but they tend to bomb with narcissists, whose fragile egos can’t tolerate faults or mistakes, or not being right. And they work best if you’re not too triggered. Emotional tools (and your ability to use them properly) are really put to the test under fire, when emotions are running hot and you’re in full theatrical throttle with the whole histrionic childhood-tantrum drama of it all. This is when tools and best intentions are likely to be cast aside in the compulsion to make your case and defend your castle.
For this reason, whatever tools and tactics you use to strengthen your relationships and communication skills, you’re going to need to overlearn them, because under fire your brain is going to default to its most familiar tactics, the ones it learned under stress and over the course of decades.
And know that trying out new and unfamiliar communication techniques is likely to come across sounding clunky and awkward at first, forced and phony, and this needs to be factored into your nascent initiatives. What are called authentic-relating techniques encourage people to say things like “Let me see if I’ve understood you…” or “When you say X, I feel…..” or “How does what I just said land for you?” But who talks like that? Who was taught to talk like that?
The sheer unfamiliarity of it can be jarring and uncomfortable for people, who may even belittle you for the effort. A friend of mine recently tried out a few new communication tools with her adult daughter—inquiring about her feelings, attempting to mirror what she’d heard, sharing impacts—to which her daughter replied “Mom, don’t use your workshop language on me.”
Not that this should stop you from trying, especially if your genuine intention is to connect. Consider this possible script, from NVC trainer Miki Kashtan: “I’m aware how many times we’ve had this same conversation with painful results. I’d like to try something different. I’m pretty new to this, so it may sound clunky or stilted, but I believe it may give us new avenues for resolving this sticky situation. Are you open to me trying it out?”
The main reason you’re probably trying something new is that the tactics you’ve been using in trying to communicate or resolve conflicts with someone haven’t worked all that well. But it’s important to examine your motivation for using these techniques. If it’s primarily to be right rather than close, to gain the upper hand and “win” arguments, even to teach and role-model better behavior, then any tool or technique you use is likely to turn into a battering ram.
And unless you have explicit agreement from another person to be open to your fledgling efforts to try new ways to connect and communicate, you’ll effectively end up practicing on another person rather than with them.
People tend to fall in love with what communication techniques can bring to their lives (and to the world), Kashtan says, but they attribute that miracle to the language used rather than the shift in consciousness that precedes the words.
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Gregg Levoy is the author of Vital Signs: The Nature and Nurture of Passion (Penguin) and Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (Random House).
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The best way to begin something new—in love, work, and life.
Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.