- Denying someone’s experience does not have to be a part of challenging their perspective. Challenging – without invalidating – is a skill that (often) needs to be learned so we can express our disagreement while respecting our relationships.
- Too often, challenging includes invalidating (and is met with defensiveness) by the receiving party and / or is avoided (due to fears of conflict) by the observing party.
- Learning how to give and receive feedback is an essential life skill. Differences of opinion and disagreements are a natural part of any relationship, and are often a precondition for learning and growth.
- We cannot learn or broaden our perspective if we do not receive challenges to our way of thinking or being. We are more able to receive challenges when they don’t threaten our sense of self worth, or the relational safety between us and others.
- To give feedback in a manner that maximizes someone’s ability to hear you, try to find the relatable component between you and the other party, even if you fundamentally disagree with their conclusion. Often, that relatable component is a feeling.
- The key is to find and communicate some shared truth, or some element of their stance you can validate, before jumping in to tell them how you see it, or how you think what they’re seeing isn’t accurate.
- When you share your take on the situation, do so non-judgmentally (i.e. own it as your take, based on your interpretation of the facts / lived experiences, rather than as an “obvious” fact (even if that’s how it feels)).
- For example: “I know you’re angry about this, and you care, I can see that in how passionately you speak about it. I am angry and I care too. The challenge is I don’t agree with your take on what’s happening, or why it’s happening. I think…”
- It can be unintuitive to lean into connection given that disagreements are inherently disconnects between ourselves and others, and yet it is this very approach that enables both parties to listen with respect, openness, curiosity, and kindness.
- When we approach with connection and without judgment, we create safety between ourselves and others. That sense of relational safety creates an environment where a willing party can receive (and hopefully integrate) an alternate perspective.
Invalidation is important to distinguish from disagreeing. Invalidating is denying the presence and validity of another’s experience. Disagreeing is acknowledging that another perspective exists (and perhaps has the right to exist), while owning our alternate perspective (and potentially trying to influence someone else to accept it). We can disagree, challenge, and discuss without invalidating, but too often invalidation is used (at times unconsciously or unintentionally) as a tactic to try and influence the outcome of a situation by trying to cause someone to doubt themselves and what they feel or believe.
There are all kinds of problematic consequences with using invalidation as a tactic in relationships (or with ourselves), which will be discussed in another post, but in short invalidation is a harmful and ineffective tactic in the long-term, even if it gets the outcome we’re looking for in the short-term.
Instead, if we are trying to engage in healthy, kind, compassionate, thoughtful, and open dialogue where we learn from and influence others, we have to start with a stance of validity ourselves. We have to work to find what is valid in what the other party is saying, even if we disagree with their conclusions. We want to try and find areas of connection, even when we feel disconnected through our disagreement. We also need to approach without judgment, and with as much curiosity as possible, to create a safe space for differences to be discussed. Ideally, we too are open to being influenced in our manner of thinking, even it we are confident our conclusions about a topic won’t change. Working to take a curious stance about how someone got to their conclusion, even if it won’t change your conclusion, is a helpful tactic in working through differing perspectives.
On the receiving end, we want to work on welcoming differences of perspective and trying to learn from them (without getting defensive towards others, or shaming ourselves). We want to remember that more than one perspective can be drawn from the same facts, and that those differing perspectives are opportunities to learn and grow. More in today’s comments to help increase effective communication.
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Comments:
- Learning to how engage in topics without invalidating can be an incredibly valuable tool to help someone deepen (and maybe even change) their perspective about all kinds of topics, from a news event, to their interpretation of an interpersonal event. These tips work on a micro level (giving feedback to an individual in your life) and on a macro level (how we talk about political differences).
- I mention, briefly, that the importance of this stance applies to internal and external relationships. It’s true. Invalidating ourselves makes it more difficult to regulate our emotions. Try and work on taking this same stance with yourself when you don’t like how you are feeling or thinking about something. Tips for help with this can be found on my post that covers reconciling your relationship with anger , on the post that covers what validation is and why it is important, and my post about how to make use of negative (and positive) emotions.
- I talk about the need to avoid judgments for effective communication – it will hugely impact your ability to be effective in disagreements. The following links include tips on how to recognize judgments, the problems with them, and how to communicate without relying on them.
- This is an important tip for you therapists out there following along on this account. Last week I guest lectured in a graduate school class on how to incorporate DBT skills (like these) into insight oriented psychotherapy, and a very astute student asked a question about how to challenge without invalidating. These methods are a useful way to help our clients feel heard and respected, while also working on helping them broaden their perspective on a topic.
- In addition to avoiding judgments, try and use as much respectful curiosity as possible. This means trying to understand where someone is coming from (and why) rather than asking questions as a tactic to poke holes in someone’s argument or perspective.
- Invalidating is a lot like the modern day term gas-lighting. I’m not particularly wedded to differentiating the two, because they are both psychologically damaging, but it may be helpful to recognize that invalidating is denying someone’s experience (which can cause them to doubt in their ability to accurately process the world around them), whereas gas-lighting is not only denying their experience, but trying to convince them (and perhaps others) that they had a different experience from the one they expressed. This is easier to understand with examples. Invalidating: (After Mary says “I hate my sister”): “No you don’t”; Gaslighting, “No you don’t, you love her”. To challenge without relying on either tactic, “Ok Mary, I get it, you’re upset with your sister and you’re saying you hate her, though I know in other moments you feel differently, and at other times you seem to have fun with her” (and then perhaps you move on to help Mary figure out how to handle her feelings about struggling with her sister. The key is for the adult to recognize that Mary might have intense feelings of dislike (who knows, maybe even hatred) in that moment. Those feelings need to be acknowledged rather than dismissed, in a way that will help Mary broaden her understanding of her own internal world. Mary is then challenged, rather than invalidated or gaslit by the adult, and can come to learn that she has complex and nuanced feelings about her sister (after all, we all sometimes feel strong negative feelings towards others, even people we love).
- This, like all new skills, is most challenging to do when we are activated and outside our window of tolerance. You may want to brush up on the window of tolerance to gain tips on timing for difficult conversations. It may also be helpful to revisit other communication skills, like the importance of knowing our limits in communication, not relying on other harmful communication tactics, and this post on the 8 “don’ts of disagreeing” .
- I mention “A willing party”, in the post when I talk about the person who we are challenging. For us to receive a challenge, even if the party challenging us does so in the most skillful manner possible, there has to be some level of willingness and openness from us to receive. More on this in another post, but the key is to recognize it isn’t just on the giver of the feedback to frame it well (though that matters), it’s also on the receiver to tolerate and be willing to receive it.
- Some more examples of how to challenge without invalidating, dismissing, gaslighting, judging, or denying : “I understand you believe_____ , I have to say, I’m not sure I agree. From what I understand ____ is what’s happening.”; “I recognize she didn’t call you back, and you’re angry, and I get it. And I know this is not the first time this has happened, so there is significance to that. But, I’m not convinced this means she doesn’t care. I’m not sure what’s going on with her, I mean it’s possible she doesn’t care, but does that really otherwise seem consistent with how things are with her?”.