How to validate the emotions of others?

In short, emotional validation is nothing more than communicating to the other person that you are heard and seen: accepting the emotional experience that someone is feeling at that moment and communicating it clearly, in words or actions.

It is about letting them know that what they are feeling and expressing is accepted, regardless of whether or not we agree.

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Phrases such as“You’re exaggerating, there’s nothing to it“,“How can you get so upset about this nonsense?” or“Don’t cry anymore, you have to be strong” do not contribute anything and are not empathetic at all. They have no place in an emotional validation strategy .

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The “grace” of emotional validation is that we can also carry out emotional self-validation: accepting the validity of our own emotions, and this helps us to manage them better: we reaffirm that what we feel is important, whether it is pleasant or not.

On the other side of the scale is emotional invalidation towards oneself or others: we minimise, judge or downplay emotions . This is not to say that what we say “sounds bad”; in fact, invalidations can be warm or well-intentioned responses, even if they lead to consequences we don’t want. It is therefore common to invalidate emotions – our own or someone else’s – without being aware of it, even when we want to do good.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) proposes six levels of validation that allow progress towards validating communication :

• Paying attention: it is not enough to look, it is necessary to be interested in what he/she is saying, to look and to make it known that we are doing so.
• Reflect: it is a question of giving back what has been said by repeating or paraphrasing (like a mirror).
• Naming what has not been said: saying what has not been verbalised, but which we detect in the discourse.
• Understand the reaction: understand why he/she reacts the way he/she does.
• Acknowledge the valid: notice and communicate that your feelings are valid because they fit the context.
• Recognisethe uniqueness of the other: all responses of emotions and perspectives are valid.
  

Holding their hand or standing at their level can be a way of sending the message that what they are saying matters to us. This is basic. When we reflect on or “turn” back to them what they have said, we must be careful not to interpret, judge or add ideas or assumptions of our own: we must extract, just that, the central idea from what the other person has said.

We talk about naming what has not been said: If the person says“I have spent a lot of time studying and yet I have not passed…”, it is no use.In the end, there is no point in studying!“, we can respond:“I understand that you are frustrated by the situation, as you feel that your effort has not been worthwhile, is that so? Notice that we verbalise what “you wanted to say, but didn’t say” .

To recognise the valid one is to understand and place ourselves, too, in the context and circumstances. If our son or daughter is afraid of storms, we can validate their fear by saying:“I understand that you might be feeling afraid right now, because it is raining a lot and you don’t like it“.

If we find it difficult to validate emotions, it is probably because we were not helped in childhood to recognise emotions, were not validated, or felt judged by them. It may also be because we live in a society that glorifies some emotions, such as happiness, and tries to avoid or disqualify others, such as sadness or anger. Learning about emotions and their functions helps us to understand emotional validation and its importance.

📎 Alcaine, A. [Albert]. (2024, 25 July). How to validate the emotions of others?. PsicoPop. https://www.psicopop.top/en/validate-emotions/

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