What Is Emotional Validation and How to Be Better at it

Emotional validation is the basis on which we all use to feel secure in being ourselves and expressing our feelings. It can form us into confident people or drive us towards codependent tendencies. It determines whether relationships of all kinds thrive or fail. The lack of it forms the basis for gaslighting and the effects contribute the crime rate of society. So, what is it, and how can we become better at it? 

What is Emotional Validation?

Emotional validation is attempting to understand others’ emotions and accept them as valid. It is the basic concept of ‘letting people be themselves.’ When a person is emotionally validated, they are generally confident and not concerned about what everyone thinks of them. Meanwhile, emotional invalidation can lead to the complete opposite; a lack of confidence, and approval-seeking behavior (Emotional Validation, n.d). The seeds of emotional health are planted in our childhood and affect the rest of our lives. However, emotional invalidation at any part of our lives can also have detrimental effects on a person’s mental health.

Emotional invalidation can be something as simple as a parent’s tendency to tell their child to stop crying. The parent is being dismissive (invalidating) of the child’s feelings by showing disapproval of their display of emotions and shaming them that they are overreacting. While these sorts of experiences impact us throughout our lives, they do not always develop into serious mental health conditions such as PTSD, BPD, Depression, Anxiety, etc (Susman, 2022). Regardless of the presence of mental illness, emotional invalidation still hurts. In my experience, I have noticed that sometimes people display toxic habits such as emotional invalidation without knowing it. We learn from our parents and often that does include their bad traits too.

Regardless of the cause or severity, it is never too late to improve your emotional validating tendencies. First, what behavior do we need to avoid?

Signs of Emotional Invalidation

There are many different ways that a person can be emotionally invalidated, but it does seem that the invalidating behavior generally falls into one of three broad categories.

1. They make you feel like your emotions are too strong for the situation or you shouldn’t have them at all. This can be accusing you of overreacting, being too emotional, or implying that you shouldn’t be bothered at all. Over time the person can experience issues with emotional regulation as they have been repeatedly been made to feel that their emotional displays are always inappropriate and the emotional needs, they were attempting to have fulfilled went unacknowledged.

2. You are made to feel ashamed of your emotions. No matter what the situation was if you responded with any sort of displeasure, you were being too sensitive. People will often say they feel like they are “walking on eggshells” and find themselves constantly apologizing for any sort of emotional display. Gaslighting can also come into play in some situations if someone pretends the situation that caused the emotions never happened or happened in a way that makes you look as if you are overreacting.

3. When you attempt to talk about your emotional need or feelings, they are conveniently distracted. This can be a convenient change in the subject after they pretend to be distracted, or just obviously ignore you to watch TV. If you feel like you need to hold them hostage to talk about your needs then you have a big emotionally invalidating problem on your hands (Davies, 2021)(Sharma, 2021).  

How do you emotionally validate someone?

Maybe we are usually good at validating emotions, but it could use a little polishing. Whatever the case, the first step is, to be honest with yourself. Next, let’s look at what good emotionally validating behavior is.

1.Acknowledge that the other person is experiencing feelings. Maybe they are upset about something you did or maybe they are upset about a situation you have no control over. Either way, do not steamroll their emotions by trying to leave the room or change the subject.

2. Let the other person know that you are aware of the cause of their feelings. This would also be where one can practice “active listening” and restate their concerns as they understand them. Let the person know you have been listening in some way.

3. Be supportive and let them know that it is okay to have feelings. This does not mean that they are right and automatically win the argument. You are not giving in to their demands or losing your authority. When we let someone know that it’s okay to feel how they feel we are also accepting them for who they are and making them feel appreciated and worthy of respect (Salters,2022). 

What do we do about emotional invalidation?  

As I said before, every situation is different. It is also very possible that someone may be emotionally invalidating yet they are unaware of their toxic behavior or the negative effects that it can have long term. We never want to assume that the person who is invalidating us is doing it to hurt us. We also should evaluate our behavior and ask ourselves if we are creating a safe and nurturing emotional environment for our loved ones? If we are lacking a bit in emotional validation, it is important to be compassionate with ourselves and first take a look at what healthy validation looks like.

The next step is always to consider what our boundaries are, which is especially hard for those who struggle with a lack of validation from childhood. It could be helpful to seek a sort of therapy or support group to help us through this as there will be a large amount of second-guessing yourself as well as difficulty evaluating how much emotion you should be experiencing. If the person invalidating you is someone that you are close with then you want to work on the relationship. The practice may be the best policy here in some instances and the person may catch on by watching you.

In conclusion, emotional validation is a very important component in developing and maintaining self-esteem as well as feeling comfortable with self-expression. It is important never to assume that you know why a person is acting the way they do as we tend to inherit our behaviors without knowing the cause sometimes. Knowing the signs of emotional invalidation and how to emotionally validate healthily can be the first step in combating toxicity in your environment. If someone is invalidating your feelings it’s important to talk with them and attempt to transform the way you interact with each other. However, remember that you cannot control their thoughts, feelings, or actions either.  

References

Emotional Validation. (n.d.). Emotional Validation. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-validation

Salters, Krystalyn. (2022, March 24). What is Emotional Validation? Verywell Mind https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-emotional-validation-425336

Davies, Janey B.A. (2021, November 16). 20 Signs of Emotional Invalidation & Why It’s More Damaging Than It Seems. Learning Mind. https://www.learning-mind.com/emotional-invalidation-signs/

Sharma, Swarnakshi. (2021, July 29). What Are The Signs Of Emotional Invalidation & How to Deal With Invalidation? Calm Sage. https://www.calmsage.com/how-to-deal-with-emotional-invalidation/ 

#depression #selfhelp #mentalhealth #trauma #boundaries #emotionalvalidation #ptsd #cptsd