7 ms·

I think this and the parent post are quite a cynical read on the situation. And some of the sibling comments I've now read seem equally cynical: turning experie

by ljm 5y ago

I think this and the parent post are quite a cynical read on the situation. And some of the sibling comments I've now read seem equally cynical: turning experience into a competition of who had it worse. I think it's sad that this is the first thread you read for this article. Personally, I group empathy, resilience and mindfulness under the umbrella of compassion, as I do recognition and acknowledgment. You can take all of those things and use them in an unhealthy way, but I don't think you can call them the same thing anymore if you do that. I really do appreciate people being more authentic with their feelings and their vulnerability. It might not resonate with me when they do, but I'm not supposed to be a vessel for their shit, I can just recognise they have it and it's there. Same as I've got my own. And we're all dealing with something. I can also set a boundary and say I'm not in a place to go deep, but I hear ya; I don't have to open up to this all the time. This has little to do with a privileged elite, I'm sure the privileged elite would rather you continue to suppress these things because it stops you talking about what makes you unhappy, and if you stop talking about that then maybe you don't start organising to change things. Meanwhile, there are plenty of societies outside of our Western bubble that happily engage at this deeper level instead of balking at it, or bottling up.

tolbish 5y ago
You can be compassionate and kind-hearted while also acknowledging that not every problem should be validated. Sometimes navel-gazing can trick yourself into thinking your molehill of a problem is actually a mountain.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  A new tool in my cognitive-emotional toolkit is conceptualizing the difference between emotional validity and correctness. Far too often are the two concepts are left undifferentiated. Disentangling them leaves room for the empathy of understanding how people's emotional states evolve from their perspective, while also accounting for how their perception differs from reality. Why is this useful? By not immediately dismissing emotional states, we can analyze them, dissect them, and ultimately change them without unhelpful knee-jerk reactions which engage defense mechanisms. Don't fall for the trick of people asking for their perfectly valid emotional states to also be seen as correct.
  - NortySpock 5y ago
    "correct" meaning "your emotion reflect an accurate understanding of the situation" or "correct" meaning "you are behaving as society expects you to behave in this situation" ?
    - aaron-santos 5y ago
      I was considering the former, but I don't want to discount the latter. We identify incorrect emotions through incorrect behavior.
  - darioush 5y ago
    True. If you (or lots of other people) validate someone's emotional states that are not rooted in correctness (or reality), then they may believe them to be correct. This may be harmful to that individual in the long run, so we should be careful about how often and how much we validate such feelings.
    - ljm 5y ago
      In a nutshell, some people want to be seen, and some people want to be right. All too often do we conflate validation with the latter.
  - dTal 5y ago
    In this framework, does "validity" signify anything? Is there such a thing as an invalid emotional state?
    - NortySpock 5y ago
      I think "validating emotion" is currently a counter to jerks who state "You shouldn't feel that (your current emotion). There's no reason to feel that. You should instead feel X emotion." This reaction is generally unhelpful for the listener, as it basically asserts that (a) the listeners feelings don't exist / are not important or (b) that the listener is feeling the wrong emotions. Validating emotion is "Yes, I understand why you feel that, having <thing> happen to <you/me> would certainly make someone feel <emotion> " e.g. "Yeah, when your friend criticized your cooking I bet that made you feel bad." After validating the emotion (to create empathy, to create a safe space for conversation, and emphasize that you care about the person), you can then (optionally) suggest a different (more positive) thought e.g. "Perhaps your friend only meant to say that they love using melted butter on their own pasta, and was not trying to say that the pasta was dry." or supply context e.g. "Alice has been having a rough time at work the last few weeks, that might have been why she was short with you." So validation of emotion is used to create acceptance ("we accept that emotion currently exists and is a reasonable feeling to have in that context") and to create a safe space for talking about emotions in general and the situation in which they arose. (It is especially useful when teaching children about emotions and teaching them to look at a situation objectively.) Invalid emotions could exist, but usually an over-the-top emotion (and the actions that you take because of that) normally seem to occur because either (a) some sort of miscommunication occurred ("I thought we were talking about X") or that some sort of important context was missing ("You know, Bob lost his job last week, there's a reason he didn't come to the party, and it wasn't to slight you.")
- ljm 5y ago
  I think `validation` here is carrying a lot of weight. Like anything, it can be acknowledged, or recognised, or seen...and then you act accordingly from there. Don't decide the priority for someone, just notice that they're dealing with something and say that you see it, and let them continue. Don't get pulled into the involvement or start colluding though, just keep it to what you see from the outside. I feel like you can swap 'validation' with 'confirmation' and these responses will make more sense. "I see you're struggling with something," vs. "I agree, this is the problem." edit: In fact, aaron-santos in a sibling post has a more succinct explanation, in terms of correctness.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- retzkek 5y ago
  it's not the large things that send a man to a madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of _small_ tragedies that send a man to the madhouse... not the death of his love but a shoelace that snaps with no time left... the dread of life is that huge swarm of trivial shit that can kill quicker than cancer and which is always there-- [list of trivial shit] with each broken shoelace one of one hundred broken shoelaces, one man, one woman, one thing enters a madhouse. - Charles Bukowski, "the shoelace"
reedjosh 5y ago
I don't understand how resilience could be grouped under compassion. Resilience it's about an individual's ability to get back up. Compassion is typically about understanding between two people.
- ljm 5y ago
  Under my own understanding, a compassionate person is acting in the interest of your resilience and isn't merely providing a well-disguised form of sympathy, or enablement, that stops you from growing. Compassion in that form may not feel like it until sometime later on. I think it's largely a subjective concept and we all take different meaning from it, but I developed some of this thinking after reading The Compassionate Mind.[1] [1] https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-compassionate-mind https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-compassionate-mind
ryandrake 5y ago
I think there is a big difference between being vulnerable/opening up about those things we are all dealing with, and the "frailty performance art" that OP is talking about. Exemplified by that cringe-worthy viral video of celebrities singing "Imagine" from their multi-million dollar homes early on in the pandemic. It's OK to have troubles in your life and to express and address those troubles without shame. It's another thing entirely to humble-brag about your first world problems on Social Media purely for likes and validation. One is healthy and productive, the other is narcissistic.
tayo42 5y ago
Your really not kidding, what a dissaponting comment section. There could be interesting thoughts about social interaction changing and people are yet again arguing about covid restrictions.
- 2trill2spill 5y ago
  > There could be interesting thoughts about social interaction changing and people are yet again arguing about covid restrictions. Why would or should social interactions change? I temporarily changed my behavior to help limit the spread of covid. But now that vaccines are doing there thing, I'm going back to my old activities.
  - tayo42 5y ago
    Did you read the article? Not everyone wants to go back to how things were before? Simple things like not having people stand on top of me in line. There was a year of no social pressure to do anything and it was nice. No need to feel like you needed to socialize because everyone else is. That's what this article was about. Some people did some introspection and realized they were caught up in societies bull shit. They should be able to discuss that, instead we have internet tough guys talking about how they think we're babying mental illness or think people who are just expressing them selves are mentally weak and we need to just get back to work, that's how the world is. Except we just has a year and a half where that wasn't the case. In some ways the world was actually easier to deal with.
    - 2trill2spill 5y ago
      > Did you read the article? Not everyone wants to go back to how things were before? Simple things like not having people stand on top of me in line. There was a year of no social pressure to do anything and it was nice. No need to feel like you needed to socialize because everyone else is. That's what this article was about. I read the article, but I will admit it doesn't really "make sense" to me. If I don't like something I don't do it or I try and change it, so it becomes something that doesn't bother me. If you don't want to be involved in certain social settings then don't go. I don't get why "Society" needs to change because some people prefer not to be around people. Its perfectly fine that you prefer less social interaction but many people are the complete opposite and that's also okay.

by ljm 5y ago

tolbish 5y ago

You can be compassionate and kind-hearted while also acknowledging that not every problem should be validated. Sometimes navel-gazing can trick yourself into thinking your molehill of a problem is actually a mountain.

aaron-santos 5y ago
A new tool in my cognitive-emotional toolkit is conceptualizing the difference between emotional validity and correctness. Far too often are the two concepts are left undifferentiated. Disentangling them leaves room for the empathy of understanding how people's emotional states evolve from their perspective, while also accounting for how their perception differs from reality. Why is this useful? By not immediately dismissing emotional states, we can analyze them, dissect them, and ultimately change them without unhelpful knee-jerk reactions which engage defense mechanisms. Don't fall for the trick of people asking for their perfectly valid emotional states to also be seen as correct.
- NortySpock 5y ago
  "correct" meaning "your emotion reflect an accurate understanding of the situation" or "correct" meaning "you are behaving as society expects you to behave in this situation" ?
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    I was considering the former, but I don't want to discount the latter. We identify incorrect emotions through incorrect behavior.
- darioush 5y ago
  True. If you (or lots of other people) validate someone's emotional states that are not rooted in correctness (or reality), then they may believe them to be correct. This may be harmful to that individual in the long run, so we should be careful about how often and how much we validate such feelings.
  - ljm 5y ago
    In a nutshell, some people want to be seen, and some people want to be right. All too often do we conflate validation with the latter.
- dTal 5y ago
  In this framework, does "validity" signify anything? Is there such a thing as an invalid emotional state?
  - NortySpock 5y ago
    I think "validating emotion" is currently a counter to jerks who state "You shouldn't feel that (your current emotion). There's no reason to feel that. You should instead feel X emotion." This reaction is generally unhelpful for the listener, as it basically asserts that (a) the listeners feelings don't exist / are not important or (b) that the listener is feeling the wrong emotions. Validating emotion is "Yes, I understand why you feel that, having <thing> happen to <you/me> would certainly make someone feel <emotion> " e.g. "Yeah, when your friend criticized your cooking I bet that made you feel bad." After validating the emotion (to create empathy, to create a safe space for conversation, and emphasize that you care about the person), you can then (optionally) suggest a different (more positive) thought e.g. "Perhaps your friend only meant to say that they love using melted butter on their own pasta, and was not trying to say that the pasta was dry." or supply context e.g. "Alice has been having a rough time at work the last few weeks, that might have been why she was short with you." So validation of emotion is used to create acceptance ("we accept that emotion currently exists and is a reasonable feeling to have in that context") and to create a safe space for talking about emotions in general and the situation in which they arose. (It is especially useful when teaching children about emotions and teaching them to look at a situation objectively.) Invalid emotions could exist, but usually an over-the-top emotion (and the actions that you take because of that) normally seem to occur because either (a) some sort of miscommunication occurred ("I thought we were talking about X") or that some sort of important context was missing ("You know, Bob lost his job last week, there's a reason he didn't come to the party, and it wasn't to slight you.")
ljm 5y ago
I think `validation` here is carrying a lot of weight. Like anything, it can be acknowledged, or recognised, or seen...and then you act accordingly from there. Don't decide the priority for someone, just notice that they're dealing with something and say that you see it, and let them continue. Don't get pulled into the involvement or start colluding though, just keep it to what you see from the outside. I feel like you can swap 'validation' with 'confirmation' and these responses will make more sense. "I see you're struggling with something," vs. "I agree, this is the problem." edit: In fact, aaron-santos in a sibling post has a more succinct explanation, in terms of correctness.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
retzkek 5y ago
it's not the large things that send a man to a madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of _small_ tragedies that send a man to the madhouse... not the death of his love but a shoelace that snaps with no time left... the dread of life is that huge swarm of trivial shit that can kill quicker than cancer and which is always there-- [list of trivial shit] with each broken shoelace one of one hundred broken shoelaces, one man, one woman, one thing enters a madhouse. - Charles Bukowski, "the shoelace"

reedjosh 5y ago

I don't understand how resilience could be grouped under compassion. Resilience it's about an individual's ability to get back up. Compassion is typically about understanding between two people.

ljm 5y ago
Under my own understanding, a compassionate person is acting in the interest of your resilience and isn't merely providing a well-disguised form of sympathy, or enablement, that stops you from growing. Compassion in that form may not feel like it until sometime later on. I think it's largely a subjective concept and we all take different meaning from it, but I developed some of this thinking after reading The Compassionate Mind.[1] [1] https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-compassionate-mind https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-compassionate-mind

ryandrake 5y ago

I think there is a big difference between being vulnerable/opening up about those things we are all dealing with, and the "frailty performance art" that OP is talking about. Exemplified by that cringe-worthy viral video of celebrities singing "Imagine" from their multi-million dollar homes early on in the pandemic. It's OK to have troubles in your life and to express and address those troubles without shame. It's another thing entirely to humble-brag about your first world problems on Social Media purely for likes and validation. One is healthy and productive, the other is narcissistic.

tayo42 5y ago

Your really not kidding, what a dissaponting comment section. There could be interesting thoughts about social interaction changing and people are yet again arguing about covid restrictions.

2trill2spill 5y ago
> There could be interesting thoughts about social interaction changing and people are yet again arguing about covid restrictions. Why would or should social interactions change? I temporarily changed my behavior to help limit the spread of covid. But now that vaccines are doing there thing, I'm going back to my old activities.
- tayo42 5y ago
  Did you read the article? Not everyone wants to go back to how things were before? Simple things like not having people stand on top of me in line. There was a year of no social pressure to do anything and it was nice. No need to feel like you needed to socialize because everyone else is. That's what this article was about. Some people did some introspection and realized they were caught up in societies bull shit. They should be able to discuss that, instead we have internet tough guys talking about how they think we're babying mental illness or think people who are just expressing them selves are mentally weak and we need to just get back to work, that's how the world is. Except we just has a year and a half where that wasn't the case. In some ways the world was actually easier to deal with.
  - 2trill2spill 5y ago
    > Did you read the article? Not everyone wants to go back to how things were before? Simple things like not having people stand on top of me in line. There was a year of no social pressure to do anything and it was nice. No need to feel like you needed to socialize because everyone else is. That's what this article was about. I read the article, but I will admit it doesn't really "make sense" to me. If I don't like something I don't do it or I try and change it, so it becomes something that doesn't bother me. If you don't want to be involved in certain social settings then don't go. I don't get why "Society" needs to change because some people prefer not to be around people. Its perfectly fine that you prefer less social interaction but many people are the complete opposite and that's also okay.