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> Emotions and feelings are always "valid", in the sense that they are a natural consequence of events and prior conditioning. If “validating” someone’s emotio

by Aurornis 10mo ago

> Emotions and feelings are always "valid", in the sense that they are a natural consequence of events and prior conditioning. If “validating” someone’s emotions comes down to simply saying that, yes, I agree you felt that way, then I suppose that’s true. But when people talk about validating other people’s emotions it implies that they’re saying the emotional response was valid for the circumstances. I have someone in my extended family who has a strong tendency to catastrophize and assume the worst. When she was in a relationship with someone who constantly validated her emotions and reactions it was disastrous. It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior. There’s a hand wavey, feel good idea where we’re supposed to believe everyone’s lived experience and emotions are valid, but some people have problems with incorrect emotional reactions. Validating these can become reinforcing for that behavior. I’m not saying we should start doubting every emotional reaction or white knighting everything, but it’s unhealthy to take a stance that validating other people’s emotions is de facto good.

n4r9 10mo ago
I quite like the definition on Wikipedia: > Emotional validation is a process which involves acknowledging and accepting another individual's inner emotional experience, without necessarily agreeing with or justifying it, and possibly also communicating that acceptance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_validation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_validation It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the emotions, and trying to justify or prove them right. But this is quibbling over semantics; I think we both agree that challenging someone is sometimes the kindest thing to do.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  I understand the academic concept, but the word "necessarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that definition. In real human conversation, when someone is expressing an emotion they aren't looking for other people to confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion. That's not even a question up for debate. They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a valid response to the situation. The overly academic definition doesn't reflect how people communicate in the real world. There's also a factor of consistency over time: It's no big deal to go along with someone venting from time to time, but when someone you're close to is overreacting to everything and having unreasonable emotional reactions all the time, validating those emotions consistently is going to be viewed as an implicit endorsement. > It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the emotions, and trying to justify or prove them right. Not in this case. Just going along with it.
  - relaxer 10mo ago
    The emotional world is vast. From what I hear here, there is a collapsing of a couple things all under 'validation'. Emotional processing, in my experience, is completely separate from action. I hear that your family member had her actions validated - what she decided to do. An emotion itself can be complex, scary and counter-intuitive. In my experience, always valid - but that doesn't mean you have the right reasons. It's often very difficult to get the right environment to actively explore where an emotion is coming from - purely because of the reactions in other people - which try to suppress, deflect, minimize, etc. Strangely, simply agreeing or validating someone's outcome is actually a way of minimizing or deflecting the scary expression. Let's not go deeper, let's not figure out where this is coming from - you just go with your gut and act. Getting to the root of an emotion can come in waves and many iterations. It can be incredibly useful to try and completely unhook action from it. I've had very strong emotions from events that were almost always "right emotion, wrong reason/story" and I've slowly corrected the 'why' multiple times over. A lot of those corrections took removing people from my life that made it hard to feel or have access to those difficult emotions. I wonder if you value that family member or just the idea of them. Value them only when they're 'stable'? Want to get in the muck with them to find where instability comes from? It's okay to not. It's less okay IMO to stay connected to someone you require change from. If you don't like behavior, say it and leave/create much space. Give them agency to choose, agency to fail, agency to be someone you don't like, agency to not be okay.
    - Aurornis 10mo ago
      > I hear that your family member had her actions validated - what she decided to do. A lot of people in this comment thread are trying to rewrite this situation. That's not what happened. The problem was that she would have a strong emotional reaction to something and her partner would go along with it: Validate her emotions, offer comfort, not question the validity of responding that way. This is the problem with the overly abstract notion of validating emotions without endorsing them. If you consistently "validate" the way someone is feeling even when it's obviously harming them, you're not actually helping. You're implicitly agreeing and condoning.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 10mo ago
> It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior. I guess at the risk of splitting hairs, I think it's more likely they stopped misappropriating more than they started invalidating. I see a difference between "you shouldn't feel that way" and "I disagree with that conclusion" such that one can logically say both (well, the former being "it's okay to feel that way") in the same breath.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote or substitute their own reality. The reality is simpler: It was basically "Yeah it sucks that <minor annoyance> happened at work, but sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that" Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight Feeling a little upset over minor annoyances is valid. Having your emotional state crumble at the slightest breeze is not. Having someone around who basically validates the latter is not good.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 10mo ago
    > So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote For what it's worth, I imagined a scenario very similar to the one you described in this comment. > Yeah it sucks that <minor annoyance> happened at work This is emotional validation. > sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that This has nothing to do with emotional validation. It can be said before, after, or without said validation. > Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight It sounds like the "validating emotions" person was validating the sulking behaviors (whether in addition to validating the related emotions or not) and saying that they were only validating the emotions. Anyway, the purpose for my replies is not to get you to agree with that person or to change your mind about the anecdote, but to offer a more meaningful distinction of what's being discussed.
dapperdrake 10mo ago
Valid feelings and validation are unrelated. The good kind of "valid" is about whether (a) your process of measuring reality might be broken to your detriment. And by extension (b) whether your communications channel with the person you are talking to is working. Chris Voss's mirroring is basically TCP ACKs. Then there are the people who say that they lack validation and are just narcissists looking for yes-men. Big difference on how much of your time is being wasted.
perfmode 10mo ago
You’re making a reasonable point, but I think you’re arguing against a somewhat strawmanned version of emotional validation. You’re treating “validation” as synonymous with “agreeing the emotional response was proportionate and correct.” But that’s not really what validation means in a therapeutic or even colloquial sense. Validating someone’s emotions typically means acknowledging that the emotion is real and understandable given how that person perceived the situation. It doesn’t require you to endorse their perception as accurate. You can say “I get why you’d feel terrified if you believed X was happening” while also gently probing whether X is actually happening. That’s still validation. What you’re describing as helpful for your family member isn’t really “invalidation” so much as reality-testing, which is a different thing and can coexist with emotional validation. Your anecdote is doing a lot of work here. We don’t know what “constantly validated” actually looked like in practice, or what the “level headed” person was doing differently. It’s possible the first partner was just conflict-avoidant and agreeing with distorted interpretations of events, which isn’t validation so much as enabling. And the second partner may have been effective not because they said “your reaction isn’t valid” but because they offered a stable outside perspective while still being emotionally supportive. Your broader point about reinforcement is worth taking seriously though. There are absolutely cases where excessive reassurance-seeking gets reinforced by certain responses. But the solution isn’t to tell people their feelings are wrong. It’s to validate the feeling while not automatically validating the catastrophic interpretation driving it.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  I disagree. I think the overly academic isolation of "validating emotions" into something that happens without endorsing the response isn't how real people communicate. Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid. The idea of "validating emotions" being synonymous with saying "I agree that you feel that way" is rather infantile. Nobody needs someone to agree that the emotion they experienced is the emotion they experienced.
  - maroonblazer 10mo ago
    My partner and I have been through this cycle. Something happens, she interprets it a certain, very specific, way and then has an adverse emotional reaction. In the early days of our relationship I would try to explain to her why her emotion doesn't 'make sense'. That just made things worse. Much worse. When she helped me understand that she needed me to validate that what she was feeling was legitimate - based on her interpretation of the events - she was able to let go and consider other interpretations. Note that this "letting go" almost never happened in the moment, but only after the emotions abated and she had time to process the entire situation. We're talking hours, not minutes.

n4r9 10mo ago

I quite like the definition on Wikipedia: > Emotional validation is a process which involves acknowledging and accepting another individual's inner emotional experience, without necessarily agreeing with or justifying it, and possibly also communicating that acceptance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_validation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_validation It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the emotions, and trying to justify or prove them right. But this is quibbling over semantics; I think we both agree that challenging someone is sometimes the kindest thing to do.

Aurornis 10mo ago
I understand the academic concept, but the word "necessarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that definition. In real human conversation, when someone is expressing an emotion they aren't looking for other people to confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion. That's not even a question up for debate. They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a valid response to the situation. The overly academic definition doesn't reflect how people communicate in the real world. There's also a factor of consistency over time: It's no big deal to go along with someone venting from time to time, but when someone you're close to is overreacting to everything and having unreasonable emotional reactions all the time, validating those emotions consistently is going to be viewed as an implicit endorsement. > It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the emotions, and trying to justify or prove them right. Not in this case. Just going along with it.
- relaxer 10mo ago
  The emotional world is vast. From what I hear here, there is a collapsing of a couple things all under 'validation'. Emotional processing, in my experience, is completely separate from action. I hear that your family member had her actions validated - what she decided to do. An emotion itself can be complex, scary and counter-intuitive. In my experience, always valid - but that doesn't mean you have the right reasons. It's often very difficult to get the right environment to actively explore where an emotion is coming from - purely because of the reactions in other people - which try to suppress, deflect, minimize, etc. Strangely, simply agreeing or validating someone's outcome is actually a way of minimizing or deflecting the scary expression. Let's not go deeper, let's not figure out where this is coming from - you just go with your gut and act. Getting to the root of an emotion can come in waves and many iterations. It can be incredibly useful to try and completely unhook action from it. I've had very strong emotions from events that were almost always "right emotion, wrong reason/story" and I've slowly corrected the 'why' multiple times over. A lot of those corrections took removing people from my life that made it hard to feel or have access to those difficult emotions. I wonder if you value that family member or just the idea of them. Value them only when they're 'stable'? Want to get in the muck with them to find where instability comes from? It's okay to not. It's less okay IMO to stay connected to someone you require change from. If you don't like behavior, say it and leave/create much space. Give them agency to choose, agency to fail, agency to be someone you don't like, agency to not be okay.
  - Aurornis 10mo ago
    > I hear that your family member had her actions validated - what she decided to do. A lot of people in this comment thread are trying to rewrite this situation. That's not what happened. The problem was that she would have a strong emotional reaction to something and her partner would go along with it: Validate her emotions, offer comfort, not question the validity of responding that way. This is the problem with the overly abstract notion of validating emotions without endorsing them. If you consistently "validate" the way someone is feeling even when it's obviously harming them, you're not actually helping. You're implicitly agreeing and condoning.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 10mo ago

> It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior. I guess at the risk of splitting hairs, I think it's more likely they stopped misappropriating more than they started invalidating. I see a difference between "you shouldn't feel that way" and "I disagree with that conclusion" such that one can logically say both (well, the former being "it's okay to feel that way") in the same breath.

Aurornis 10mo ago
So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote or substitute their own reality. The reality is simpler: It was basically "Yeah it sucks that <minor annoyance> happened at work, but sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that" Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight Feeling a little upset over minor annoyances is valid. Having your emotional state crumble at the slightest breeze is not. Having someone around who basically validates the latter is not good.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 10mo ago
  > So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote For what it's worth, I imagined a scenario very similar to the one you described in this comment. > Yeah it sucks that <minor annoyance> happened at work This is emotional validation. > sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that This has nothing to do with emotional validation. It can be said before, after, or without said validation. > Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight It sounds like the "validating emotions" person was validating the sulking behaviors (whether in addition to validating the related emotions or not) and saying that they were only validating the emotions. Anyway, the purpose for my replies is not to get you to agree with that person or to change your mind about the anecdote, but to offer a more meaningful distinction of what's being discussed.

dapperdrake 10mo ago

Valid feelings and validation are unrelated. The good kind of "valid" is about whether (a) your process of measuring reality might be broken to your detriment. And by extension (b) whether your communications channel with the person you are talking to is working. Chris Voss's mirroring is basically TCP ACKs. Then there are the people who say that they lack validation and are just narcissists looking for yes-men. Big difference on how much of your time is being wasted.

perfmode 10mo ago

You’re making a reasonable point, but I think you’re arguing against a somewhat strawmanned version of emotional validation. You’re treating “validation” as synonymous with “agreeing the emotional response was proportionate and correct.” But that’s not really what validation means in a therapeutic or even colloquial sense. Validating someone’s emotions typically means acknowledging that the emotion is real and understandable given how that person perceived the situation. It doesn’t require you to endorse their perception as accurate. You can say “I get why you’d feel terrified if you believed X was happening” while also gently probing whether X is actually happening. That’s still validation. What you’re describing as helpful for your family member isn’t really “invalidation” so much as reality-testing, which is a different thing and can coexist with emotional validation. Your anecdote is doing a lot of work here. We don’t know what “constantly validated” actually looked like in practice, or what the “level headed” person was doing differently. It’s possible the first partner was just conflict-avoidant and agreeing with distorted interpretations of events, which isn’t validation so much as enabling. And the second partner may have been effective not because they said “your reaction isn’t valid” but because they offered a stable outside perspective while still being emotionally supportive. Your broader point about reinforcement is worth taking seriously though. There are absolutely cases where excessive reassurance-seeking gets reinforced by certain responses. But the solution isn’t to tell people their feelings are wrong. It’s to validate the feeling while not automatically validating the catastrophic interpretation driving it.

Aurornis 10mo ago
I disagree. I think the overly academic isolation of "validating emotions" into something that happens without endorsing the response isn't how real people communicate. Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid. The idea of "validating emotions" being synonymous with saying "I agree that you feel that way" is rather infantile. Nobody needs someone to agree that the emotion they experienced is the emotion they experienced.
- maroonblazer 10mo ago
  My partner and I have been through this cycle. Something happens, she interprets it a certain, very specific, way and then has an adverse emotional reaction. In the early days of our relationship I would try to explain to her why her emotion doesn't 'make sense'. That just made things worse. Much worse. When she helped me understand that she needed me to validate that what she was feeling was legitimate - based on her interpretation of the events - she was able to let go and consider other interpretations. Note that this "letting go" almost never happened in the moment, but only after the emotions abated and she had time to process the entire situation. We're talking hours, not minutes.