Video Transcript:

Welcome to Understanding Feelings and Needs. In this video, I’m going to be discussing NVC or Nonviolent Communication. My end goal is to discuss how NVC can be used with astrology to improve one’s understanding of one’s emotional health and well-being.

1. What Is Nonviolent Communication?

But before we can integrate the two, we have to understand what exactly NVC or Nonviolent Communication is. So we will be discussing what it is, how it is helpful, and how to use it. And in the future, we’re going to integrate it with astrology, particularly the moon in astrology, because the moon rules emotions and feelings.

So here is the psychologist who developed Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg. This is his Wikipedia page. And over here is the Wikipedia page for Nonviolent Communication. So I just wanted to show those if you are interested in reading more about them.

Next is the, this is the book on the right hand side, Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg. Here you can see that the goals of Nonviolent Communication are empathy, collaboration, authenticity, and freedom.

What is NVC? NVC offers a compassionate language to name our feelings and needs without blame, shame, or judgment. It helps us move from emotional confusion to emotional clarity.

Why Feelings and Needs Matter

The core idea of NVC. Every human action is an attempt to meet a need, such as safety, belonging, respect, or freedom. On the right-hand side, you can see Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You may have seen this when you were in school. I know that I did.

The context that I had learned it in was media literacy, so understanding how marketing and ads use our needs in order to sell products to us. Both Rosenberg and Maslow were psychologists. When we identify and name those needs clearly, communication becomes more compassionate and effective.

Understanding one’s needs also can help us understand ourselves, and then we will not be manipulated by marketing and advertising to buy things that we don’t actually need. But that is a separate topic.

The main focus here is we need to understand our needs, because then we can communicate more clearly and be more compassionate to ourselves and others. That’s kind of what we’re talking about here in the next slide.

How is NVC helpful? It reframes emotions, not as problems, but as signals pointing toward unmet needs. This shift allows us to meet ourselves and others with greater empathy and less defensiveness.

How to get started with NVC? This is what I did when I was in therapy. All you need are two lists: one list of human feelings and one list of universal needs. So I’ve given those to you in the pdf.

And here they are here as well on the left are feelings when needs are met these are generally positive feelings because when your needs are met you feel good feelings when needs are unmet. Tense, sad, angry, tired, confused, ashamed. So, and then on the right we have more specific words related to that.

Universal human needs. This is very similar to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from before, but it’s another list. Connection, autonomy, meaning, safety, play, physical well-being, and respect. These are never good or bad. They simply describe what keeps us balanced. So those are the lists that I have provided.

However, you can also go on to Google. If you type in NVC feelings list or NVC needs list, there are plenty of results and you can get even more words to more accurately and precisely define what your needs and feelings are.

The Four Steps of NVC

So now we’re going to go into the four steps of NVC. This is primarily what I did for weeks when I was in therapy. The first step is to observe. In therapy or self-reflection, choose a real moment that triggered a strong emotion. Write it down as neutrally as possible, like a camera recording. I was speaking and they started looking at their phone, for example. What it means. Describe what happened without judgment, exaggeration, or blame. Focus on what you saw, heard, or experienced. This keeps you grounded in facts instead of spiraling into assumptions. Reduces shame, defensiveness and emotional overwhelm.

Number two: feeling. In therapy or self-reflection, ask how did I feel in that moment? Be specific, let yourself feel it without needing to justify or suppress it. Example, I felt hurt, ignored, and a little embarrassed. Name the emotion that came up, not a thought or evaluation. Just use a feeling, sad, anxious, angry, excited. Naming emotions builds emotional literacy and makes your inner experience more visible and valid. It invites self-empathy. With feeling, this is when you use your list of feelings.

Step three: need. Ask, what did I need that I wasn’t getting? What was being protected or awakened? I needed to feel heard and respected. Connect the feeling to a deeper human need such as respect, belonging, safety, freedom, rest, or acknowledgement. Needs are universal and non-blaming. Recognizing them helps you understand yourself and builds a bridge toward healing. With step number three, need, that’s when you use your list of needs in order to look for that.

The last one is request. In journaling, this can be a wish, a future boundary, or a script to try next time. Next time, I want to say, could you please pause and really listen to me for a moment? Imagine a clear, doable next step, a request, boundary, or supportive action that could meet that need. Turns insight into empowerment. It builds self-trust and gives you tools to protect your emotional truth in the future.

Why NVC Can Be So Healing

What kind of situations might NVC be useful in? When you feel too sensitive or not enough. When you love your friends or family but struggle to speak your truth. When you want to understand your emotional reactions instead of silencing them. When your inner world feels overwhelming, disconnected, or dismissed.

Now this next part, what happens if you had a happy childhood? The reason I bring this up is because I wanted to explain what is so revolutionary about NVC.

We are conditioned to believe that we should stuff down our feelings because they’re inconvenient. So for example, when you are a child and your parent is trying to run the household and drive you around and trying to get you to soccer practice.

Life is very busy and a parent is thinking about other things, logistical things that are not related to whatever has happened to the child at school, anything that’s going on in the child’s life, the parent is very busy with work and their own problems.

And so a child learns that their needs are maybe not important. And even if a parent is very empathetic, usually, but because they’re busy, they don’t really notice because they’re just trying to get things done.

So even if you had a happy childhood, certain feelings may have been discouraged, ignored, misunderstood, not out of malice, but from generational habits or cultural norms. Can emotional suppression happen unintentionally? Absolutely.

Many families unintentionally pass down beliefs that some emotions like anger, grief, or even enthusiasm are too much or not appropriate. Children adapt to feel safe and accepted, but may lose touch with their authentic emotional responses.

What is the promise of NVC? That you can express yourself fully without being rejected. That your feelings make sense. That behind every emotion is a valid universal human need. That peace comes not from silence but from understanding.

How NVC Connects to Astrology

How does this connect to astrology? The moon in your birth chart describes how you experience and express emotion. NVC provides a practical healing tool to honor the emotional landscape of your moon sign without judgment. NVC gives each moon sign permission to feel in its own.

Coming up next, we will be discussing your particular moon sign and how to use the NVC framework in order to understand your feelings and needs for your emotional and mental health. So hopefully you now understand what NVC is and are thinking about how it might be useful for you.