In a masterful workshop teaching moment, Marshall explains how as a giraffe we learn to enjoy the pain of a person or – to say a little less provocative – to enjoy a true connection with unmet needs.
Notes
First – do not feel responsible for their pain. This maybe challenging, since we all received programming to come to the help of a person in pain – we may have a strong inner conviction, that we HAVE TO do so. That is true in the jackal world, not in the giraffe world. The impulse, the reactivity to help – even before having understood what is at stake in a given situation, even before getting a clear request from a person that they want us to help them out of their pain, even before we are aware what is alive in us!
We are not responsible for the pain of other, but we often think we are.
Others are not responsible for our pain, but we often think they are.
Second – Marshall invites to enjoy the energy that heals through us, in a miracolous way – if we do not step into its way. Here we can touch into the spritual depth of giraffe nonviolent communication. Needs are beautiful and real – and we can enjoy to be connected to them – in grieving and mourning – even when they are unfulfilled – in ourselves and in others.
Trust in the healing energy in us and around us, connect to its power.
Dialogue Transcript
Gabi, I can see that you’re hurt by some of the things that I …
Are you feeling hurt. Never sound like you’re telling the person what they’re feeling.
Are you feeling hurt – Not: I can see. Are you feeling hurt.
Are you feeling hurt right now?
And always connect the other person’s feelings to their needs.
Are you feel feeling hurt right now, because you’re not being seen?
That’s my thought, but hear the need: ‘
Because you have a need for understanding that isn’t getting met?’
Are you feeling hurt right now, because you have a need for understanding that isn’t being met?
Yes ..! Yes ..! You’re always saying cruel things to me!
[Prolongued silence]
Well, I’d like to try to …
Coaching by Marshall: Enjoy the Pain
No. Enjoy my pain.
Enjoy my pain.
Now this is a good chance to practice a key ingredient of non- violent communication: how to enjoy the other person’s pain.
To do that you must first release yourself from any responsibility for it. If you’re sitting there thinking: ‘Oh my God, look what I’ve created..!’, you’re not going to enjoy my pain at all. If you think you have to make things better or heal this, you’re not going to enjoy my pain. You’re going to be in agony until you can fix it. And everything you do to fix it, it’s going to make it worse.
You can enjoy my pain by trusting that there is a miraculous energy that works through human beings that can heal anything. If we do what is necessary for that energy to work through us. And what is it that we need to do, to have that energy work through us? To remember the Buddha’s advice: ‘Don’t do something, be there.’
So the silence that I was getting back from you for the first few seconds there, that was more precious. Just that you didn’t immediately jump in and say: ‘But, but, but …’ Just that space where you weren’t so scared of my feelings that you had to say something. Yes, that alone was helpful.
But it would also be helpful to just stay with. Stay with. That’s how that miraculous energy works through us. When we just … connect with.
And what I mean by ‘enjoy the pain’, of course, it’s not that we want the person to be in pain. What I mean is, enjoying that that energy is always there to heal anything. That we don’t have to fix it, that energy will. That’s what I mean by ‘enjoy it’. To trust that energy and do what we can, to let it work.
In addition to the silence, which was powerful, continue with: ‘Are you feeling …, because you’re needing …?’ Even if you do it silently, that would be helpful. As long as that’s where your attention is. But say it out loud now, just to get the rhythm.
Role play continues …
Yes, so you can keep saying these things and make me feel terrible! I don’t need any more of that!
(weeps)
Are you feeling hurt, because you’re needing some understanding?
Yes!! But you never give it to me! All you do is criticize!
(weeps intensely)
[Silently connecting with the pain, the unmet need for understanding.]
Okay … I got the empathy from the silence in your eyes.
Document prepared by John Gather, 2025