Navigating difficult conversations without damaging important relationships is one of the most essential skills we can build. In this insightful discussion, author and teacher Micah Salaberrios shares how applying nonviolent communication can transform heated moments into opportunities for meaningful connection. Salaberrios breaks down the core principles behind his books, The Art of Nonviolent Communication and From Conflict to Connection: Nonviolent Communication for Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret), shedding light on why so many people struggle right before reaching a relational breakthrough. He explains the power of emergency empathy, the nuances of authentic self-expression, and how staying open allows us to resolve conflict with clarity and grace. Tune in to discover practical tools for turning uncomfortable interactions into deep understanding.
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Micah Salaberrios, Author Of The Book, From Conflict To Connection: Nonviolent Communication For Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret)
Transforming Conflict Into Connection Through Nonviolent Communication
Micah Salaberrios is an author, teacher, and practitioner of nonviolent communication. His book, The Art of Nonviolent Communication, exists to help people turn their hardest conversations into their deepest connections. Through nonviolent communication, a practice of honest self-expression and empathic listening, anyone can learn to speak with complete authenticity without judging, blaming, or condemning.
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Micah, thanks for joining me. It’s delightful to see you again.
Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.
We had an interview that got posted at the end of last May in 2025 about your book, The Art of Nonviolent Communication. I thoroughly enjoyed working with that book and working with it with my patients. Now, you’re about to publish the book, From Conflict to Connection: Nonviolent Communication for Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret). I’m hoping you can tell us why you felt the need for another book and what you want us to take from this one.
I wrote that first book when I first learned NVC. I was overjoyed. A lot of people don’t know about nonviolent communication, but then some people, when they come across it, it hits them deep. They’re like, “I need this,” and I was one of those. I studied so hard just because I wanted it. I had no intention of doing anything but learning and using it. I was so happy sharing with other people and repeating myself and stuff. I wrote a little handbook and it was successful. I was like early on, like the first year or maybe first year, year and a half.
From Conflict To Connection: Nonviolent Communication For Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret)
Over time, as I was doing podcasts and I was teaching people, my knowledge came deeper and I noticed a couple other additions that I never mentioned in the first book, like the threshold moment. Working with clients, it was so frequent that right before the breakthrough, they would want to give up. I realized, that’s like a principle in life. In the book, I talk about that story of me waiting for the bus. It all happens to all of us.
You’re waiting so long, you give up, then literally in the next minute, the thing you’re waiting for happens and you miss it. You’re like, “What in the?” It’s almost like I’m getting into chess, too. Sometimes you’re playing chess and you’re trying to make the best move then you literally make the worst move on the board. You’re like, “How is this possible?” That was one thing. I wanted to share the threshold moment. It had this more nuance and I had more to say about emergency empathy because that is so powerful.
It’s so effective and it’s so challenging to do when you need to do it. There’s so much resistance to do it when you need to do it. If you’re triggered at all, and you’re trying to do emergency empathy. There is a mountain of resistance that you must get through to do it, I’ve noticed, and in my clients. It’s doable. I just wanted to elaborate on those things.
You mentioned that at the end of the book, The Art of Nonviolent Communication, in reference to your mother and an intense interaction you were having. It came to you at a conscious level to say, “You should do this emergency empathy.” Your emotional life said, “Forget that.”
This is dumb. It doesn’t work. Move on.
One of the ways we can be tempted to shut the process down is the thing you talked about with your mom, “I don’t want to listen to her. She’s yelling at me. I’ve had enough of this.” The old stuff is coming in. Another way that we can be tempted to shut it down is if we project negative consequences right down the road, like, “This isn’t going to work. They never listen to me.”
I’m going to make things worse, which is possible. Let’s be real, it’s possible.
I’m afraid of making it worse. I’ve said to a lot of people over the years that you can let people know what you think is acceptable or not acceptable. As you do it with your words and your actions, it’s a very powerful thing. However, in order for it to be truly effective, you have to be willing to put up with whatever the consequences the other person offers you in response.
If you say to somebody, “I don’t want to talk with all of the yelling or swearing or the attacking.” You need to be willing to accept that they might say, “I’m never talking to you again.” If you’re not willing to have what they can do as a response, then you’ll shut yourself down or you’ll say what’s not acceptable to you and then you’ll end up accepting it. You undermine your own credibility.
This is why I love emergency empathy too, because it is literally so powerful that someone might say, “I’m never talking to you again.” They don’t mean that. You just do another round of emergency empathy. However, if they do mean that, then that was probably a blessing. If you’re going to say one thing and they say, “I never want to talk to you,” and they mean it and they walk off. Great, because that was probably a very toxic person you’re dealing with. The vast majority of people, they’re just saying things because they’re feeling hurt. You do another round of emergency and they’ll get caught. The process works. It’s amazing.
The vast majority of people are just saying things because they're feeling hurt. Share on XIt’s the idea of giving the other person the gift of feeling heard and understood. Even if you don’t agree with them, you can validate that if what they’re experiencing strikes them this way and has this meaning, that it makes sense that they have whatever emotion they have.
It’s very rare. Many of us are used to or conditioned to the pattern that happens once we’re triggered, which is I get triggered and either the other person gets triggered too. You have a fight or the other person gets submissive and gets dominated and then just agrees and there’s no connection. Once that feeling comes in, we’re used to this pattern. All of a sudden, we’re triggered and then someone goes, “Are you feeling this because of this”? It’s startling. It’s a bit shocking until you get used to that.
It’s like judo. You learn to work with the energy the person gives you and you don’t resist it. You go with the flow. The person who’s defensive is already expecting a pushback or an attack. When they don’t get it, they’re off balance in a good way because you’re not attacking. It’s okay for them to be off balance. You’re there holding the space saying, “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on for you.”
The physical representation would be like if they throw a punch, you dodge it and then give them a hug. They have no idea. How did you get here to give me a hug? What’s going on?
The Four Core Steps Of Nonviolent Communication
I thought we were fighting. It strikes me that it would be useful to have you give us a quick overview of the first four steps. If we do that quickly enough, it will leave us time to explore some things like this threshold moment, other things you’re talking about later in the book. There are key points I want to make sure we hit. With this approach like many other good approaches, I take full responsibility for what I’m experiencing over here. Whatever emotions I’m generating or whatever I make are important to me. I take responsibility for it rather than blame it on the other. There’s a thing you talk about, the genuine emotion versus pseudo emotions. Give us a little rundown if you would before we launch into emergency empathy.
The first four steps, we’re doing NVC because there’s an issue. Your first step is to bring up the issue without any judgment, any blame, every step of the way. You bring it up, if you can, using observable facts. If it’s an observable thing like, the dishes are there. You said you’re going to do this. The goal of step one is to approach the subject that you’re talking about in a way that is totally nonjudgmental. We call that first step observable fact.
There’s more nuance to it because sometimes it’s a bit more subtle. It’s not something you can see but there’s ways around that. The gist is, bring up what you’re about to talk about with no judgment or blame or implications. The second step is how you feel authentically, which will be one word in general, and not a fake feeling, which implies disrespected, which implies the other person is bad and wrong and being disrespectful. They should change. I don’t need to change.
None of that. Only a real feeling that builds connection, builds trust, because most of us don’t want to admit how we feel if it’s painful. We want to all be happy all the time, which is fair, but we’re not happy all the time. Sometimes we feel uncomfortable and you got to express it. Step one, bring up the observable fact. Step two, express how you truly feel. Step three is why you feel that way, which is never going to be, “I feel this way because you.” No blame. It’s always, “I feel that way because I have a preference that is different from what has happened.”
Basically, that’s the gist of it. It’s always because how we feel is always dependent on what we think and how we’re framing the situation. I always love the perfect example of, if you have an appointment with somebody and they cancel on you, then you might be irritated. You might be upset, angry, or furious. If you didn’t want to have that meeting and you were dreading to cancel, you’re relieved. You’re happy. You’re doing a little dance. What changed? The only thing that was different was the way you were thinking about it. That’s a clear principle that it’s always about how you think so we can never blame anybody.
How we feel is always dependent on what we think and how we're framing the situation. Share on XWe always don’t ever need to take responsibility for somebody else’s pain. Step three, why you feel the way you do. Step four is a specific request. It needs to be specific, not vague. If it’s vague, like could you clean up a little more? Could you be a little more respectful? Could you help out a little more? Nobody knows what that means. Literally, it means just 1% more would fulfill it, but that’s not what they’re asking. You want specifics, then there’s three types of requests because communication is very nuanced. Every situation is different.
The easiest to understand is the clear action. Would you be willing to go to an anger management class? Would you be willing to read this book? Would you be willing to do the dishes within an hour of you eating them? Those are specific. Also, it can’t be a demand. If you ask somebody something and then they say no, and then you get angry and say, “See you,” then it was a demand. People can say no, and the discussion continues.
The second type of specific request is clarity. Sometimes, you just want to know like, “I see that this thing happened. I feel upset because I prefer something different. I just want to know why that happen?” That’s a clarity-based request. The third one is a little more subtle, but it’s so powerful. It’s so useful. All these three work together, especially if it’s a big issue. It’s a connection-based request. The connection-based request lets them become aware of what’s true for you or what’s happening to you.
You’re saying, “This thing happened. I’m upset about it because I have a different preference. I just want you to know about that. Does that make sense to you? How do you feel about what I just said?” Sometimes, there’s a problem and we don’t know the answer. Sometimes, we do know, like, “We do the dishes within an hour. Always take your shoes off before you come into the house.”
Sometimes it’s simple. Other times it’s more complicated. We don’t know. The first step is just to make the other person aware of what you’re going through. Maybe they’ll instantly be like, “That’s not a problem. I can instantly solve it.” Done, but maybe it’s not. You do other rounds. Maybe the next round will be clarity. Those are basically the four steps.
I would be so audacious as to modify that slightly and say in the first step, I would want to put in that the reason I’m initiating a conversation is to connect with you. Not to prove who’s right or wrong. Not to get the facts clear. My primary reason for having a conversation with you is to create that connection. Here’s what happened, and then your other steps. That’s one of the things that I love about the overlap between all the best things I’ve ever heard. They’re not based on competition and conflict.
They’re based on the desire to connect and understanding that my life gets better when I use communication for that effect primarily. Instead of like, “I want to prove who’s right and who’s wrong,” because you’re in there with the judgment. It needs to be ancient truths or I don’t know what’s right or wrong. I know what I can think about what’s right or wrong. If I’m willing to explore this with you for the purpose of us feeling more connected as a result of the communication. That’s very different than, I’m willing to explore this so either I can see the wrong of my ways or you can see the wrong of your ways.
Nonviolent Communication: Only a real feeling builds connection and trust, because most of us don’t want to admit how we feel if it’s painful.
I agree with that mostly, but sometimes it’s pretty new. You can use NVC in many situations. I would say sometimes it’s to create a connection. Sometimes it’s to maintain the connection. Someone you love and there’s a problem. You’re like, “I want to maintain this high-level connection.” Sometimes you have to use it because you’re in a dangerous situation, and you want to get away and survive.
It’s not to build a connection with this person. It’s just to calmly move through it in a safe way. It’s about connection. It depends on how you want to frame it. It is the connection that we want and we crave. That is maintained or built through solving issues that occur because the issue will build disconnection, pain and problems if it’s not resolved.
De-Escalating Intense Moments With Emergency Empathy
The other thing that’s in your book is the recognition that if I keep pushing for my nonviolent communication or for connection at a time when the other person is triggered to be upset for whatever they’re making it mean, it doesn’t go. Along comes the fifth step.
Which emergency empathy, which is so crucial. Without emergency empathy, this whole thing wouldn’t work because most of the time people are going to get triggered at some point when you’re doing this.
Let me finish that sentence for you. When someone is triggered, nonviolent communication is not the tool to use.
It is not a tool to use at all. It will make things worse. As you do it more, you’ll become more sensitive to when it’s appropriate to do NVC and when to do emergency empathy. Emergency empathy is guessing how someone feels and why they feel that way. It’s very simple, but so many things happen when you do that. As we were saying before, what will occur is they are going to know that they have been heard and understood.
They’re going to realize, “Wow.” Many arguments are just people talking over each other. How many times? Billions and trillions of arguments are just, “I say this. You say it louder. More intense and louder.” No one was listening to the other person. As soon as one person goes louder and they go, “Is this what you’re saying?” Especially if you go a little deeper than what they say. They say some surface level attack and you go, “Is this what you’re saying? Are you feeling this because of this?” They go, “What? Sure.” They understand that they were heard. Now they don’t know you repeat themselves. They don’t need to yell.
It’s like instantly calming. Most of the time, they’ll either be quiet and let you speak or they’ll give you some more useful information. It’s very powerful. A lot of resistance, like we were saying earlier. A lot of resistance to doing emergency empathy because it’s a challenge. Your ego hates it. One of the least favorite things of our egos to do. It’s scary. It’s scary when someone’s attacking you and then you come at them with love.
As we said, if someone does a punch at you, you dodge it and you go in to give them a hug. That’s scary, too. This is basically what we’re doing on an emotional level. You’re going into a danger zone with your heart open and you’re hugging them. A little scary, but it’s not that dangerous. It just feels dangerous to our ego at the moment.
That’s the point I try to highlight for people. Over the years, how I’ve learned that I don’t use the word vulnerable nearly as much as I used to. I prefer using the word open because the word vulnerable implies I can be hurt, and the word open doesn’t. It just means I’m going to be as open and honest as I can. The understanding is that my true essence doesn’t get hurt. It’s the old schoolyard rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The essence of it is I can generate hurt and upset but I don’t have to, just like you were talking about earlier. What am I making the situation mean because what I decide it means, that’s what’s going to generate my emotional content.
I agree with that. Basically, it’s being open, and you’re open to more attacks. It’s still up to you what you do with that attack. You can just dodge it again and give another hug.
The bottom line is staying open doesn’t leave you getting hurt. It leaves you realizing the truth of the strength that your essence doesn’t get hurt. It doesn’t have to go on that emotional roller coaster that it’s been trained into.
You’re basically invincible. Without being open or vulnerable, then you might think you’ll get hurt. When you do it, you don’t get hurt. You’re like, “I can just live.” That’s where it becomes like a spiritual practice, where you realize you can always speak the truth. You can always stand up for what you believe and you don’t ever have to walk on eggshells. You also don’t ever need to judge anybody at all. Not even in your head or your thoughts. You’re like, “I can walk non-judgmentally. Be completely open and loving and vulnerable.” Open loving and authentic with how you’re feeling and be perfectly happy. It’s a beautiful, amazing realization.
You end up with this process in emergency empathy where it’s just these two steps repeated over and over again. You guess what their emotion is and you guess why they might be having it.
You don’t need to be correct. You just need to be sincere. You want to go deeper and not repeat back. If someone’s like, “I’m upset because you’re always such a slob.” You don’t want to be like, “Are you upset because I’m a slob?” Many things are wrong with that. First of all, you repeat it back to what they said. It’s not going deeper. It’s not opening anything up. They don’t have to think. That doesn’t trigger them thinking. What you want with emergency empathy is for their attention to go within. If you repeat it, they don’t have to do it all over again and be like, “That’s what I said.”
You don't need to be correct. You just need to be sincere. Share on XThe other thing is, you’re not to blame for how they feel. If they’re like, “I’m upset with you because you’re such a slob,” it’s a very violent, and very rude way to speak. You would reframe that. If you were just going to repeat it back to them in a correct frame like, “You’re feeling upset because you would like me to be more clean, or you would like a clean house or a clean room?” You always have to frame it in such a way that it is because of their thought, their preference, and their like. It’s important because things get confusing fast if you frame things as if you are to blame. We don’t want to do that at all.
Which means, as you were saying, you have to understand that you are not causing their emotions. It’s so hard to understand that when you’ve been raised in a culture full of, “You made me angry. You scared me. You hurt my feelings. You’re offending me.”
There’s the difference between a cause and a catalyst. You might be the catalyst. That’s okay. That’s unavoidable.
I would correct that. Allow me to say. What I tell people is you’re not even the catalyst, because sometimes you say that and people choose not to get upset. Other times, you say or do the same thing with the same people around and they’re in a different mood. They interpret it differently and then there’s an upset. It’s not the outside thing that causes the upset. It’s what the individual chooses to make it mean. When they pour their mind energy into that thought pattern, here comes the emotions.
To me, a catalyst is the object that they choose to use as the cause. You’re not to blame. To me, a catalyst is just, that was the item. It could be anything. Anything could be a catalyst, and no catalyst is to blame or the cause. It happens to be the thing that they’re choosing to get upset about, but it’s blameless.
One of my favorite lines about that is, “An excuse doesn’t have to be valid for me to use it.”
That’s good.
Navigating Resistance And Reframing Emotional Triggers
Here we are. We’re trying to do emergency empathy. They come back and say, “I’m upset because you’re such a slob.” How would you respond to that in good form?
First of all, I would change the emotion. I don’t like to ever use the same emotion twice in a row. It feels weird. It just doesn’t work as well. I would go, “Are you frustrated?” In my repertoire, I probably have 13 to 15 feelings that I use. I’ve never been like, “I ran out of feelings.” I would probably use, are you frustrated because you find it hard to concentrate when the house is not as clean as you’d like it and you have a big appointment tomorrow morning? I would be specific and sincere with zero judgment. I’d listen to what they say and I wouldn’t repeat back.
You’re making guesses about what you already know about them and the current situation.
I understand that’s probably not about the clean house. It’s probably something deeper. There’s a deeper root fear underneath there of safety or appreciation or connection or something. If they said something else, then I would change the pattern for that third time. It’s very important to have long-term good results. It never sounds like you’re doing NVC.
Never use this language that instantly lets them know you’re doing nonviolent communication. Not never, but in general, it works better when it just sounds natural. If you start saying this pattern, are you feeling this because of this? It’s like, “Why are you asking me this?” The third time I like to change the pattern to, is the main thing bothering you or is the core thing that has you upset, the fact that you are afraid of germs or bothered by messiness because you got sick as a kid? I would just change the pattern.
What you’re saying is it doesn’t matter how right or wrong you are because when you’re doing this in a genuine sense, the other person will tell you.
Every time you do it, they’ll go, “Huh?” Look in, come back out a little calmer, and give you some information. You have to listen and go deeper. It does work. A lot of times, you’ll just get to a place where you haven’t figured it out, but things are calm, then you need to stop though. You need to stop doing emergency empathy once things are calm. You need to switch back or else you get lost.
They’re like, “Are this and this? Are you this because of this or this?” You’re like, “What are you doing? Why are you asking me this? I’m not even upset anymore, but now I’m getting upset again because you’re doing something weird.” NVC is relatively simple, but it is nuanced. It does take some time to learn, then you switch to NVC. We start talking about practical solutions. You’re upset. I’m feeling anxious because I don’t want to clean. I have a bunch of other stuff I got to do. How about this? How about we establish some win-win situation? That would be the process that you would go to.
This raises another question for me. Do you use NVC all day, every day with everybody?
I use certain principles of NVC, which I don’t speak about in judgments. Very rarely. I probably do and I don’t notice it, but probably 80% or 90% less than before I learned NVC. I don’t speak in judgments. I don’t allow myself to think in judgments. If I do, I frame it as a judgment. I don’t say things like, “That person is this way or that movie was bad.” I’ll say, “I think that movie was bad.”
That’s a more impeccable way to speak because it’s just honest. That’s my thought. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s my opinion. Take it or leave it. It’s not that valid. I don’t say that in my life. That’s one thing. I try to refrain from using the tricks of, I feel as if or I feel like or I feel that, because those are little tricks of the thing that whatever comes back. It’s not a feeling. It’s a judgment.
That’s the way to describe a thought as a feeling.
Disguising a thought as a feeling. The more you do NVC, the more you recognize it has an energy to it. It’s clean energy. There’s no tricks. There’s no stickiness. There’s no traps. I don’t use traps. There’s a lot of different traps you could do. You could come off like, “Hey.” I talked about this in one of my episodes of my show with a client. They were having struggles with their father. They were like, “Did you change your phone number?” Even though they knew he didn’t change his phone number. He got instantly annoyed. He was like, “I didn’t change it. I didn’t know why you were asking me.”
He said, “You haven’t responded to my text.” There was a little trap. I don’t do that because it feels weird and it doesn’t work. Other than that, though, I’m not going around thinking of I’m going to speak in an observation, a feeling, and this, until I’m triggered or something else is triggered, or there’s an issue.
The reason I asked if you do it all day, every day with everybody is because I don’t. I am more selective. This takes another level of energy from me, care and concern for me. I have to craft things. If I am doing this with somebody at the checkout stand or somebody in an aisle at the grocery store, I don’t go to all this trouble. There’s a whole bunch of people I interact with where I am still trying to be respectful of the fact that I am the one that creates whatever emotion I have in here and I want to communicate in a way that communicates effectively respect for the other person and respect for myself.
That doesn’t necessarily mean I want to go this extra mile for this connection. This openness. Since I have a lot of people who want to push the idea away because I can’t do that all day every day. I said, “Do it with the important people in your life and watch it.” If you work with it a little bit in that arena where it’s important to you and you start to see the value of it, then you might start extending it to more.
There’s a couple of cheat codes, too. Depending if everything’s nuanced or everything is contextual. Revealing how you feel is very powerful. It’s like, if you were going to say one thing in NVC, like, “I’m upset without blame.” That generally calm situations too like, “I’m feeling annoyed.” You said it. You didn’t blame us. That’s like, if you’re just going to do one thing, you don’t want to do the whole NVC. You don’t want to think about it. Express it authentically how you feel without any blame. That will generally take the temperature down.
They might be like, “Why do you feel that way?” You’re like, “I feel this way because of this.” Don’t blame them. As long as you don’t blame me. It’s almost like a natural process that unfolds. They’d be like, “What do you want to do about it?” This is a specific request. If you start with just the, I feel. The other thing is doing emergency empathy is quick too. You got to check out a long line and then the cashier’s being rude or abrupt.
You’ll just be like, “Are you feeling frustrated because you don’t like your job, or are you feeling frustrated because you want to spend your time doing a job that’s closer to your life’s journey?” It doesn’t matter, but that was just one little quick guess. Even if you’re way off, most likely, it’s going to alter the interaction in a way.
You’re not doing the defense or the attack. You’re just offering an inquiry into them.
If you were like, “I’m going to do NVC. I got to thinking about it.” I get in the moment. Sometimes, it’s a bit much to do it also. I recommend this. Bust out how you feel, like, “I feel frustrated,” or doing emergency empathy. “Are you frustrated?” Remember, you got to do both. You can’t be like, “Are you frustrated?” That’s not going to work. You need to add the other thing for it to be truly effective most of the time.
Overcoming The Threshold Moment To Reach Relational Breakthroughs
You talk about this threshold moment where so many people break off or stop using the system or back away from it. What led you to that realization?
I started seeing it so often with my clients. When I’m working with a client and they have a complex issue, with their spouse or with a family member. They’ll tell me about when they tried it or when we’re going through one of the scenarios that I’m working with. I also notice it in myself. First, I noticed it in myself. I’ll be doing NBC or emergency empathy round after round. I’m following all the rules. I get to the point where it’s like, “This is tough. It’s just not working. What am I going to do?”
I’m sitting there, but I’m like, “I’m the NVC teacher, so I can’t give up. I guess I’ll do another round,” and I’ll do like one more round, then everything opens up, tears, laughter, and total insight. After maybe the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time that happened, I was like, “This is like a phenomenon.” Whenever I want to give up, if I just go a little longer. Once I realized it, in myself, then I started to see it in my students as well. They’d just be like, “I’m out. I’m out of ideas.” I’m like, “We’ll just do one more,” and then, it’d be all this resistance, then it was like, “What about this?” Then the breakthrough.
It’s a very powerful phenomenon that’s been known for years when people are trying to do targeted journaling or sentence completion work, and they’ll write a sentence at the top of a page that they might have some negativity for. They’ll start writing out, “That can’t be true,” and they’ll write 5 or 10 lines, and then they go blank. We say, “Keep writing the sentence STEM.” They’re like, “I wrote it five more times and I went blank.” We say, “Do five more.” This blankness, this writer’s block is an internal process. The gold you’re looking for is right on the other side of it.
It’s like where you hit a ceiling and then you think it’s the end. That’s just the floor. Once you break through, now you have the whole other room to work with. It’s a powerful concept to remember. When you’re feeling frustrated, when you’re feeling there’s no thing, just know that this is doable. It’s all doable. I’ve never come across a scenario that wasn’t fixable through NVC. I haven’t. Not even once. Not even once in all these years of doing this.
I would put the caveat on that if you’re dealing with somebody who also wants to resolve it or to have a connection with you. There are people who are not interested. They’ll just shut it down or walk away.
That’s the beauty of it.
You said earlier, you have to let them go if that’s the case.
Yes, because that’s the issue. If they’re a violent person, like if they’re physically violent or psychopath, like which occurs. There’s psychopaths out there. They will be revealed through this process because they can’t handle the love you’re giving them. You’ll be like, “I’m just giving love and they’ll move away.” They’ll move away or attack. If you’re about to get attacked, you should move away. You should know that, “This is not a person that’s safe to even interact with.” That’s something that you should know.
Which you might not know if you refuse to bring things up. If you’re walking on eggshells around this person and never bringing it up. Every time they’re acting away, you just avoid it and shrink down. You’re putting yourself deeper into a dangerous situation, maybe without even knowing it. If you’re like, “I have a preference,” and they’re like, “You should die for that preference.”
Agree to disagree at a distance.
I’m out of here.
Building Trust And Patience In Difficult Conversations
Exactly. Is there another like a vignette or a testimonial that you want to offer for another example of how something has worked out? Maybe one from the book.
There’s a couple of ones that I like in the book. One is about the threshold moment with the guy in the car with his wife. They’re about to take a trip together. The days before they’re excited. They can’t wait. On the day they’ll take a trip, she’s all upset and totally silent. He’s in the car driving for an hour and she doesn’t say one word. He was waiting for her to bring it up, so he tried to use NVC. He’s like, “It’s been an hour. I’m feeling anxious because I haven’t heard you say anything in the past hour. I’m wondering. Is there anything you want to talk about?” She’s like, “No.”
More time passes, and so he tries again. He’s like, “That was weird,” so he just jumped into maybe emergency empathy. He’s like, “Are you upset about something that I said to you this morning?” She said, “No.” Basically, it goes like that for a while. He’s genuinely using skillful NVC programming, and emergency empathy. Switching back and forth. At one point, he’s like, “Are you stressed out because you think maybe we’re overspending on this vacation?” She’s like, “Not everything is about money. Can I just sit here quietly?”
It was a hard thing to do and his ego wants to show her who the boss is, like, “She’s going to act like this? We should just turn around and go home.” He’s like, “No.” He tries again, “Are you nervous because we left the kids home for four days and you think something might go wrong?” She’s like, “I don’t want to talk. Can you just stop talking to me?” He’s just like, “This doesn’t work. I’m going to give up. This is not working at all.” He remembers the threshold moment. What’s happened up to this point, though, is he has kept making these genuine efforts. He never judged her. Even though on the surface, it looked like nothing was happening.
That she was banning it all away.
Something was happening. He was building a little bit more trust and a little bit more connection because he never judged her. He never got upset and lashed out. Finally, he goes, “Babe, are you upset about something that I have no idea about?” That was the one that opened the floodgates because what was upsetting her was something that she was embarrassed about.
She was feeling very emotional, but she was also embarrassed. She judged herself as being silly. However, she was still feeling very upset. She didn’t want to bring it up because she thought it was silly. She was feeling so emotional that she didn’t want to hear anything from her husband for fear that he would judge her and she would feel even worse. She did not want to talk about it. She wanted to process it on her own, but it wasn’t the right time.
She reveals that she thought she was pregnant. She took a pregnancy test too and she realized she wasn’t pregnant. She knew it wasn’t in the plans. They have no plans. It was probably a terrible idea for their whole life. However, she was very excited about it. When she realized that she wasn’t pregnant, she was very sad about it and didn’t want to talk about it. That was the breakthrough. Once he realized that, he understood everything completely. They pulled over. They hugged and she cried, then they went on to have an amazing vacation.
It does a good job of highlighting the threshold moment because most of us have had those threshold moments. We let our logic tell us it’s time to stop and walk away. We’re walking away and leaving this pot of gold, so to speak, right on the other side of it.
For a pot of burning coal, messy tar. It’s sticky and now we’re both dirty. How painful is that when you leave a fight unfinished? Now you take that with you all day, especially if it’s your wife or your spouse. You get into a fight and you don’t resolve it and you say harsh things. That’s a terrible feeling. It could last days or weeks. If you just kept going using these principles, most likely you would have had a breakthrough. One other thing I’d like to talk about too is you don’t need to come up with a solution when you’re doing these things.
Nonviolent Communication: You don’t need to come up with a solution when you’re doing these things. What you need is a potential solution. That is the minimum requirement to clear the energy.
You literally don’t. What you need is a potential solution. That’s it. That is the minimum requirement to clear the energy. Some things are very complex, like alcoholism. You’re not going to solve alcoholism in one conversation. The potential solution might be, they say, “I will think about reading that book.” We still think about that. Now we can move on as opposed to, “You’re an alcoholic. You should change.” “You’re judgmental and you have problems too.” Nothing was solved there.
If they’re like, “I’m very worried about you. I care about you. I love you. I see this. Can you at least just promise me that you will think about reading this book on alcohol or going to see the doctor and then we’ll talk about it next week?” “I can promise that. I’ll think about it and I’ll talk to you next week about it.” That’s all you need, a potential solution, which is a very small bar. If you remember that, then it makes everything calmer. You don’t have to be intense like, “We got to figure this out now.” You don’t. You just need to figure out one possible solution.
Uncovering Core Needs For Faster Conflict Resolution
This reminds me of how you talk in the first book quite a bit about Marshall Rosenberg, the creator of nonviolent communication. He talked a lot about people’s needs, and I used the word goals because for him needs are also wants and desires. It just works better for me to say goals. Tell us about what he said about how long it takes to find a solution once you’ve found the real goal or the real need.
Until you find that, until you find out what the person needs, wants, or desires, then it’s endless. You can just run around in circles endlessly. This is not going to work. You need to uncover what truly is the problem, because sometimes things work out easy. It’s not a big deal. When you’re struggling, it’s like, “This is not working.”
That’s like the example you just gave. He’s guessing all these things about an interaction between the two of them, and until he discovers or she’s willing to give up the idea that it’s all about me and judging myself. No resolution can happen. Once those goals or he calls them needs, are identified, it takes, would you say, twenty minutes?
I think he was talking about mediation, which is cool. In this case, as soon as he realized what was bothering her, it was instant. It was like, “Got it.” Process that however you want. It’s good. I’ll drive. I’ll be happy. He just needed to know what was bothering her, and once he did, it was fine. In the example, he was talking about two African tribes that were killing each other in a marketplace. That’s some intense negotiation. It was beautiful, though, because they started fighting right away. He instantly goes like, “I’m feeling scared that this is not going to work. This is important for me to figure it out. How about we do this?” They’re like, “What? That was weird.”
He understood what one group needed. For negotiation, which I haven’t done that much of, but I understand the concept. One time I did it though with a friend of mine whose wife tried to stab him and it worked. I mediated between them and it worked. It was amazing. What you do is, you go to the person who’s more triggered first. Who’s an irritated person? Let’s find out what their actual need is. Why are they having this behavior? What is truly underneath it? Nothing else is going to work until you uncover that.
Once you get that, you’re like, “Ah.” In that situation, she needed to know that he was not just going to abandon her completely because they were separated but they still had a kid together. He needed the freedom to live his life without constant harassment. She needed to know that he was not going to completely abandon her. The solution was, he checks in with her every two days. He’s like, “I can do that.” She’s like, “If you would just call me every two days and just check in, then I wouldn’t be so panicked when I don’t hear from you for a week.” That worked for a while. That wasn’t the magical thing, but it helped them have peace in their relationship for a couple months that one solution worked.
The point is that until you find out what that underlying thing is, nothing truly gets resolved. Once it does get revealed, the solution is either instantaneous or you’re going to find it in 10 to 15 minutes.
You’re going to be able to find it. The dangerous thing is, too, if you try to solve the problem before that, you’re solving a problem that is not the issue. You’re solving a false problem. You’re spending all this time and you go, “Here’s the solution.” Both of you are like, “That’s not it.” They’re not going to tell you right away. You have to uncover it.
Einstein famously said that if he was given a life-or-death problem and an hour to solve it, he’d spend 50 or 55 minutes determining what question to ask. When you’re asking the right question, the answer is slow. If you’re asking the wrong question, you’re just wasting time. I wonder if you’d get centered and think about everything that we’ve already talked about and decide if you want to go back and highlight one of those things or mention something else.
Mastering The Nuances Of Everyday Nonviolent Communication
Another scenario that I like in the book is when the wife comes home and she sees her husband in the backyard smoking a cigarette, eating candy. I like this situation because it highlights a lot of different nuances when you get more advanced at NBC. She knows that in her experience with her husband, this means something’s bothering her. It’s like it’s clear as day to her.
I like that. First, she goes out there and she just checks and she starts off very vague. I call it the Art of NVC because it is an art form. There are very few rigid rules in this. Except don’t lie, don’t judge, and be authentic. You should always be doing those three. There’s no reason to ever lie, judge, or be inauthentic. However, all the other little rules, and maybe I’m forgetting something, but most of the rules can be massaged, like be specific.
You should be specific. She comes out there and she’s not very specific. She’s like, “Babe, did something happen at work?” It’s like a general, or something like that. He brushes her off, then I like her response. She goes into NVC, but it doesn’t sound like NVC. I can’t remember exactly how she phrased it, but she just says, “I love being here for you. Would you mind if I just sit out here next to you?” I can’t exactly how I worded it, but basically, she said NVC but in this way that was almost unnoticeable that it was NVC.
Her request was, “Do you mind if I sit out here next to you?” How do you say no to that? He could say no. She’s talking to him. Again, she goes to pass like a threshold moment. She can’t figure out what’s going on with him. He’s talking about the tree and he’s talking about these tools. He’s talking about all this stuff, but it’s not all about that. The breakthrough happens when she realizes that it’s about his father dying.
I don’t think I got the details out of this, but there’s something about that one where it’s very skillful. If you read that thing, you’ll see it’s a very high-level, skillful NVC. That doesn’t sound like it all. It changes the pattern, switches between NVC and emergency empathy skillfully. It’s not about the wood chipper. It’s not about the tree. He was thinking about the wood chipper that he wanted to buy, and there were a bunch of different ones. He doesn’t know and then she realizes, “Are you upset because this is something you would talk about with your dad?” He’s instantly crying.
He didn’t even know. He didn’t realize. He didn’t put it all together. That was what was bothering him. As soon as she verbalized it, which is an amazing thing. Sometimes when people verbalize something, it opens it up. I don’t know how or why the emotional mechanics of that. I just know that it’s true. He cries. She understands and it was great.
Sometimes when people verbalize something, it opens it up. Share on XI love that example as well. The idea that so often when people are upset, their mind is telling them they’re upset about this, this or this, which is out there. It’s never that. It’s never upset for the reason I am, because if I was upset about something at a conscious, logical level, I’m a smart enough person. I would find the answer. If I’m stuck and can’t find the answer, what it means is it’s not at the conscious logical level. It’s somewhere in my past, in the heart center.
I greatly appreciate your taking time to talk with us. It’s an exciting time for me to have you release the second book. Again, it’s From Conflict to Connection: Nonviolent Communication for Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret) by Micah Salaberrios. Thank you so much for the book. Which is coming out available October 6th, 2026, and for taking the time to talk to us.
Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. It’s great to hear that you’ve used my book and your practice and with other people. That’s amazing. I want to say the book is available for pre-order. You guys can pre-order it now, and that would be awesome.
Shipping on the 6th or somewhere?
Shipping on the 6th.
Excellent. Thank you so much. I look forward to our next conversation.
I appreciate it.
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Micah Salaberrios is an author, teacher, and practitioner of nonviolent communication. His book, The Art of Nonviolent Communication, exists to help people turn their hardest conversations into their deepest connections. Through nonviolent communication, a practice of honest self-expression and empathic listening, anyone can learn to speak with complete authenticity without judging, blaming, or condemning.
What started as teaching workshops and writing a handbook has grown into a video course, a podcast, a practice community, a board game, and a second book titled From Conflict to Connection: Nonviolent Communication for Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret), available October 6th, 2026. The thread through all of it, nonviolent communication, is a skill, and skills are built through practice. You can learn more at ArtOfNVC.com.
Important Links
- Micah Salaberrios
- Micah Salaberrios on LinkedIn
- Micah Salaberrios on Instagram
- Micah Salaberrios on YouTube
- The Art of Nonviolent Communication: Turning Conflict Into Connection
- From Conflict to Connection: Nonviolent Communication for Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret)
- Art of NVC
- Art of NVC – Podcast
- Micah Salaberrios – Author Of The Art Of Nonviolent Communication – Previous Episode
About Micah Salaberrios
Micah Salaberrios, is an author, teacher, and practitioner of Nonviolent Communication.
His book, The Art of Nonviolent Communication, exists to help people turn their hardest conversations into their deepest connections.
Through NVC, a practice of honest self-expression and empathic listening, anyone can learn to speak with complete authenticity without judging, blaming, or condemning.
What started as teaching workshops and writing a handbook has grown into a video course, a podcast, a practice community, a board game, and a second book titled, From Conflict to Connection: Nonviolent Communication for Saying What You Feel (Not What You’ll Regret) available October 6th 2026. The thread through all of it: NVC is a skill, and skills are built through practice.
