Don’t worry.
It’s not that big of a deal.
You’re overreacting.
You can’t get like that because of that.
It’s not worth being sad.
We have all received communications similar to these at some point. So, as soon as we hear them, we run to open the toolbox to “change what we feel”, all excited, until we realize that we simply cannot. The little box is useless, what we feel is something that does not depend on our will. Of course, once an emotion has been triggered, we have several resources to choose how to respond to it, but that’s another story.
Emotions always have a trigger: an event that precipitates them; Just because we can’t identify it from the outside doesn’t mean that the emotion came “out of nowhere.” All human beings are prepared to experience all emotions since they are part of the evolutionary development of our species and fulfill a function. In this sense there is no such thing as “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong” emotions.
Let’s say it right away: all the emotions that a person experiences are always valid and make sense.
Needless to say, most of the time when someone tells us “don’t worry, it’s nothing” they are trying to help, to calm, to relieve. Their intentions are good but they probably have the opposite effect: making us feel wrong and leaving us alone. We call this invalidating: communicating to the other that what they feel is incorrect, that they should feel differently, that what is happening to them is not understandable.
Basically, what is behind invalidating communication is the NON-acceptance of the other’s emotional experience.
Validate: an Acceptance strategy
Probably one of the greatest contributions of Dialectical-Behavioral Therapy (DBT) has been the inclusion of Validation as one of the central strategies of the treatment – if you want to read more about DBT -. In fact, it is a therapy that stimulates the presence of a “dialectic” between validation strategies (acceptance) and change strategies, while most of the psychotherapies we know are mainly oriented towards change only.
Validation by the therapist implies, in summary, communicating to the patient that their emotional responses make sense and are understandable within their history and/or current context (Linehan, 1993). The therapist accepts the patient’s emotions and communicates this acceptance. Accepting them implies identifying those answers, taking them seriously, without neglecting or trivializing them, with a non-judgmental attitude and describing them in a non-pejorative way.
All the emotions a person experiences are always valid and make sense.
Basically, when a DBT therapist uses emotional validation strategies, what they do is one of these four things (or several at the same time):
- It offers opportunities for emotional expression: the therapist listens, clarifies and validates emotions without judging them, giving them space. This implies the opposite of trying to control the patient’s emotions – trying to calm the emotions quickly sends the message that they are something that should not be there, something that needs to be gotten rid of, exactly the opposite of what validation is trying to do.
- Teaches emotion identification and labeling skills: invites you to carefully observe what you are experiencing, identify the components of the emotion (triggers, body sensations, action impulses) and be able to name them.
- Read emotions: for this it is necessary that the therapist knows the patient well and is familiar with their culture and context. Reading emotions implies that with a few elements – such as the precipitating event or a certain body posture – the therapist can realize what emotion the patient may be feeling and communicate it to them as a hypothesis. This is almost always validating as it communicates that the patient’s emotional response is normal and understandable.
- Communicate the validity of the emotion: the therapist communicates that this emotional experience is understandable. There are two types of understanding you can communicate. The first is to communicate that most people would respond to the emotion-triggering situation in the same way. The second is to communicate that the emotion is understandable given your past learning experiences – even if others would have reacted differently, it is understandable within that context.
Validation in everyday life
We can then define validation as a practice of deep acceptance of the other’s emotions without judging, without advising, without trying to change anything at that moment. When we validate, we corroborate the importance of what the other person feels and take it as something legitimate. In short: we communicate that we care about her experience.
We don’t have to agree to validate, nor think that we would react the same. Nor is it necessary for the emotional response to seem logical to us. If we assume that all emotional responses are the product of a learning history and a particular context, we can understand that they are always valid, even if we do not fully understand that particular response.
We have very good reasons to practice validation with the people around us. Validation builds trust and increases intimacy in relationships, decreases the feeling of isolation and encourages the other to experience and accept her emotions.
The practice of validation usually also generates an increase in the capacity for emotional self-validation. We respect the emotions of others and also our own, accepting them as part of the experience of being human.
How do we practice it?
1) Paying attention, listening to the other, looking them in the eyes: listen to what they say carefully, observe their gestures, their tone of voice, their body posture; Be attentive to what the other person expresses without thinking about the response you will give.
2) Accepting with an open mind the emotional experience of the other: whatever emotion you are feeling, it is your emotion, and it may even be painful but that is part of the human condition. It is important to make room for all emotions, they all have a meaning.
When we validate, we corroborate the importance of what the other person feels and take it as something legitimate.
3) Identify the emotions of the other and give an empathetic response without advising: advising implies that something about the situation must change, it shows that it is difficult for us to tolerate the presence of the emotional experience. If the other person has not asked for advice, giving it can be invalidating since it can show that we believe that the other does not know how to solve their problems.
4) Offer companionship: offer to stay by their side during the emotional experience; If you’re not sure that’s what the other person wants, you can ask if they want to be alone, if they want to talk about it, or if there’s something specific you can do at that moment. It is important not to make judgments or evaluations in those moments and to be willing to give not what one believes is best but what is best from the other’s perspective.
One of the reasons why it is so difficult for us to validate other people’s emotions is the anxiety we feel about helping them feel better – and, in the process, making ourselves feel better. It is difficult for us to make room for emotions, especially when they are painful or unpleasant. It hurts us that the other person hurts, that they are sad, that they are angry and it is difficult for us to tolerate being there to simply accompany them. But the risk of wanting to quickly drown these emotions is high: we could unintentionally teach that painful emotions should not be there, when in reality they are an unavoidable part of life; We could be communicating that the other does not know how to live a life without pain, which is actually an unattainable goal.
To conclude: there are no “positive” emotional experiences without “negative” ones. Those who are not willing to feel and accept pain little by little lose the ability to experience happiness and joy (Luciano Soriano & Salas, 2006). In this sense, one of the best gifts we can offer is to give rise to the emotions of others – and our own – whatever they may be, because they all contain some truth and meaning and deserve to be fully experienced.
References
Linehan, M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. New York: NY: Guilford Press.
Luciano Soriano, M., & Salas, M. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): Foundations, characteristics and evidence. Psychologist Papers, 27(2), 79–91.
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