- When we validate another’s emotion, we validate them; we communicate that their perspective is valuable and important and as such they are valuable and important to us
- The experience of repeatedly having your emotions validated helps bolster self-esteem and self-worth. It teaches us to trust ourselves; that others trust us; and that we are knowable, relatable, and understandable.
- Validation is affirming someone’s perspective or reaction as understandable and legitimate. You can accept someone’s reaction, empathize with it, and still not agree with it.
- It’s important that we learn how to validate others while maintaining our limits, and honoring our perspective. We can validate someone’s emotions and perspective and still challenge them and hold our boundaries.
- Validation involves a degree of acceptance; acceptance of a perspective, and acceptance that feelings and reactions are what they are, whether you like them, think they’re justified, or not.
- When we ourselves don’t share the perspective of a person, when we’re confused by what they’re feeling, or it feels irrational to us we are more likely to invalidate.
- When we invalidate, we deny someone’s experience and teach them not to trust themselves or their intuition. Invalidation communicates that what they feel, or how they understand something is wrong.
- Maybe sometimes you feel someone’s reaction is wrong. Remember: A reaction can be disproportionate to a situation, and still a valid reaction, given the cumulative experience of one’s life. At any time we are reacting to more than just the moment we are in.
- Repeated invalidation can cause someone to question their capacity to hold a valid perspective on the world, can heighten anxiety and depression, and can have devastating impacts on someone’s sense of worth.
- We can further this troublesome cycle by invalidating our feelings and our perspective, which can leave us alienated from our emotional world and constantly looking for external validation and approval.
Validation is a powerful and important part of parenting, being in a relationship, and working with others. When we validate, we communicate to someone, “I understand you, and I understand your feelings in the context of your experiences”. Validating does not have to mean that we agree with or share the feelings (or perspective) being communicated, but it does mean that we treat their take on a situation as reasonable in the context of their current and prior experiences.
Sometimes, in our efforts to cope or help another cope with an overwhelming situation we can accidentally invalidate by trying to reassure another (and ourselves). Saying “you’re ok” and “It’s not that bad” are examples of how we can accidentally invalidate by expressing our desire for someone (or ourselves) not to struggle. Other times, we can overtly invalidate; we deny the expressed experience of another person for the experience we believe they “should” be having, or the experience we want them to be having.
For many of us, if we ourselves wouldn’t have the reaction a person is having it becomes tough for us to validate their perspective or emotions. This can be made easier by working to trust that feelings arise for a reason, and that at any given point in time all people are responding to both the situation they are in, and the situations that preceded it (that inform how they understand what is happening). If we can accept all emotions as valid, we can still work to challenge perspectives without alienating (and invalidating) another or ourselves.
Many of us think invalidation is necessary when we don’t agree or need to hold a boundary. We can validate AND challenge. Our emotions can be a valid response to our current read on a situation, AND we can validate someone’s emotional experience while offering a different perspective. This is often a FAR more useful way of getting through to someone, and it allows us to support someone’s sense of self while sharing a different perspective.
See notes for further information on how to accept other’s perspectives, and for examples of how to validate while challenging and holding boundaries.
Notes:
- Read more about how our difficulties facing the pain of something can lead us to react in ways that try and keep our sense of safety intact, but can alienate others and reduce connection.
- Invalidating the facts as someone sees and understands them, especially facts about the difference between what they experience and what is told to them about what is happening is called gaslighting. It causes you to undermine your ability to trust yourself, your reality, and your ability to perceive reality in manner consistent with what is happening in the external world.
- It can be helpful to think of our knowledge of why someone reacts the way they do like an iceberg – consider that what you think of as “too much” or “too big” is based only on what you know of a situation. Try and trust that there is probably much more beneath the surface of a “big reaction” that you don’t know about. This can be true of both others reactions and our own. A reaction can still be disproportionate to a situation, and a valid reaction, given the cumulative experience of one’s life.
- Do you find you often question the validity of someone else’s reactions? Or you often find yourself feeling like others around you are over’-reacting? See this post to help you think through it.
- I mention in the post we are all, in some ways, responding to both the present situation and past situations that inform how we perceive the current one. Sometimes how heavily the past “weighs in” can be disproportionate. Learn more about this here.
- If you find that you are often effected heavily by the past informing your current reactions grounding and mindfulness can help you reduce that tendency and stay more in the present.
- Ways to validate while holding a boundary, “I hear you, and I know. You’re really upset by this and I get it. We’re still not going to change our plans”; “You are really angry, this is not what you wanted to be happening right now. If it were up to you this isn’t what we would be doing, but this is what I’ve decided and I know you don’t like it”.
- Ways to validate while challenging someone (and remember that your tone matters), “it sounds like you’re not comfortable with this situation. I get that, if I weren’t comfortable with something I wouldn’t want to proceed either. Though, in all honesty I don’t share your perspective. I see it this way ___”; “Wow. Ok, so it sounds like you feel really strongly that _____ is a problem. When I think about that same situation I see it really differently”
- If you struggle with chronic low self-esteem or low self-worth, consider your prior experiences with emotional validation, there may be a history of invalidation. that has effected your ability to trust yourself.
- If you’re a parent and you’re struggling to validate your children Big Little Feelings offers online courses on this, as does Dr. Becky at Good Inside.