How to Stay Grounded When Emotions Run High: Practical NVC Skills

Essential insights on applying Nonviolent Communication principles in challenging moments

In Nonviolent Communication practice, one of the most common questions I hear is: “How can I stay grounded and connected when I or the other person is triggered?” This question gets to the heart of what it actually takes to live these principles when emotions run high.

I often use a martial arts metaphor to address this challenge. It’s one thing to practice martial arts in a controlled dojo environment and entirely another to be prepared for real-world situations. An Aikido master named George Leonard once described how his teacher had him practice the same move repeatedly. By the time he wrote his book on mastery, he estimated he’d performed that single move 50,000 times. This repetition developed the muscle memory and unconscious competence required for mastery.

The same principle applies to communication. We must first understand what skillful communication looks like, then train deliberately until these skills become second nature. With practice, we develop access to these skills across increasingly challenging situations, rather than defaulting to reactive patterns.

Fundamental Skills

The Throwing and Catching Dynamic

One foundational skill in nonviolent communication is what I call “throwing and catching” – maintaining conscious clarity about where the focus of conversation is directed.

When “catching,” our focus is on hearing what’s truly important to the other person – not to prove them wrong, but to understand what’s alive for them. When “throwing,” our focus shifts to expressing ourselves and being received.

The key is ensuring these roles align. When emotions intensify, this alignment often breaks down. The person who should be catching instead starts throwing their own perspective. This creates a situation where both people are “throwing” with nobody “catching.” As tensions escalate, people try to “throw harder,” leading to the classic anatomy of an argument: escalation followed by withdrawal or resentful capitulation.

True “catching” is fundamentally different from reluctant agreement. When someone merely gives in to end an argument, the emotional distance remains. The connection is lost.

Finding Connection Beyond Agreement

Most of us have been conditioned to connect through agreement – we feel connected when sharing the same opinions but polarized when we don’t. This creates a scarcity mindset where someone must concede for the interaction to continue.

NVC offers an alternative: focusing on a more fundamental level of experience – what we call “needs” or “life needs.” My brother Jack calls them “the cares at the core.” These universal human needs are where we can always find resonance, even when surface positions differ.

By training ourselves to recognize these core needs, we develop the capacity to respond skillfully rather than reactively. Like an Aikido master redirecting an attack with minimal harm, we can join the emotional movement and guide it toward connection.

Managing Your Triggers: A Three-Step Process

When triggered, most of us default to either expressing our reactivity (often making a mess) or suppressing it (creating internal pressure and resentment). Neither approach works well. Here’s a more effective three-step process:

1. Practice Internal Disinhibition

The first step is what I call “internal disinhibition” – allowing your raw reactivity to surface inside without expressing it outwardly.

If your unfiltered reactions would manifest as cursing or harsh judgments, allow that internally without vocalizing it out loud. This doesn’t mean you believe those thoughts – it just means you let their life force be free in the safe space of your inner world.

Rather than expending energy suppressing these thoughts, create space for them internally. This typically takes just seconds. The activation increases briefly, reaches a threshold, crests like a wave, and naturally subsides – often with a spontaneous deep breath that serves as an “off-ramp” from the triggered state.

2. Connect With Your Body

While allowing reactive thoughts to surface, maintain awareness of your physical sensations. You might internally voice harsh judgments while simultaneously feeling your body’s response. When you notice the physical shift after the emotional wave crests, release the internal narrative and focus on the somatic feeling of settling.

This redirection of attention helps you return to presence and groundedness, creating space for more thoughtful engagement.

3. Identify Feelings and Needs

With more internal space created, you can connect more deeply with your authentic feelings. Instead of “I feel like you’re disrespecting me” (which mixes feeling with interpretation), identify the actual emotion: “I feel disappointed” or “I feel hurt.”

Feeling these emotions in your body helps transition from reactivity to presence. From this more grounded state, you can discover what’s truly important to you – your needs.

Rather than intellectually analyzing, allow yourself to be led to the need. Perhaps reliability emerges as the core value at stake. When you connect feeling to need with clarity, something shifts physiologically. The connection between bottom-up feeling and top-down naming resolves tension and has a regulating impact.

From this self-connected place – “I’m frustrated because I really want more reliability” – you’re positioned to communicate effectively.

Practical Application

Default to Catching

When conversations become heated, I recommend defaulting to “catching” – focusing on understanding the other person. This approach not only helps the other person feel safer and less defensive but often helps you connect with what’s important to them on a deeper level, even amid disagreement.

Practical Empathy Sentences

For immediate application, practice these two sentences:

1. Reflect what you hear the person wanting: “You wish that I would X, Y, Z?”
2. Imagine and check what life need that would fulfill for them: “Is it that you really want consideration/collaboration/understanding?”

Always offer these as guesses rather than declarations. This approach implies their experience makes sense and shows genuine interest in understanding.

Requesting a Timeout

Sometimes neither person has enough internal space for productive engagement. In these cases, skillfully requesting a timeout can be valuable:

“I feel triggered right now, and I’m doubting that continuing this conversation will lead to something helpful. I suggest we take some time to breathe and process, then reconvene when we can connect more effectively.”

The Power of Practice

With consistent practice – even 50 repetitions rather than 50,000 – these skills become more accessible. Like learning a phrase in a foreign language, you don’t need mastery of the entire communication system to effectively use specific tools.

My own competence developed through teaching these foundations repeatedly, allowing the principles to become integrated at a deeper level. What emerges is a sense of congruence – in body and relationship – that opens new possibilities for connection.

For more information on developing these communication practices, consider joining one of our NVC foundation courses.