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A new tool in my cognitive-emotional toolkit is conceptualizing the difference between emotional validity and correctness. Far too often are the two concepts ar

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.")
  - dTal 5y ago
    My concern is that are two distinct concepts at play. One is "validation", a verb, which seems to be simply the basic application of empathy. The other is "valid", an adjective, which is applied to feelings and emotional states but (as far as I can tell) serves no descriptive purpose beyond "worthy of empathy". But aren't all feelings worthy of empathy? What is gained by such a label?

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.")
- dTal 5y ago
  My concern is that are two distinct concepts at play. One is "validation", a verb, which seems to be simply the basic application of empathy. The other is "valid", an adjective, which is applied to feelings and emotional states but (as far as I can tell) serves no descriptive purpose beyond "worthy of empathy". But aren't all feelings worthy of empathy? What is gained by such a label?