When everything aligns, the words flow fast and clear. There’s little chance of stemming the tide and little need to think about what comes next. Somehow, I simply know and there is a clarity and beauty within that knowing.
Other times, that muse is nowhere to be found.
Words flow like molasses, thick and heavy, where none feel quite right. Where I second guess every phrase I type and there’s a battle to understand every concept.
This blog is the place I can be most honest, most authentic. It’s the place where I write for myself and my audience, no one else. There is no client to please, no search engine optimization, and no keywords. I can even simply allow the writing to flow, without knowing the topic when I first begin.
Yet, this is also the most difficult place for me to write.
Perhaps that’s because the words here are my own. They’re my story. My voice. My honesty. They matter much more than the words written for someone else, the words crafted for very specific audiences and purposes.
And… this topic matters to me.
As the title says, we’re talking about validation.
It’s an idea that rests so heavily within me. Something I’m deeply passionate about.
Introducing Validation
You’ve probably heard some of this concept before. Validation is a powerful and almost essential idea. It’s where we support one another as we are. We hold space, listen to, and encourage another person’s emotional experience without judgment.
It’s a powerful approach, one that can strengthen relationships, build trust, and help people to regulate their own emotions. When people are validated externally, they can often learn to provide this same validation for themselves as well.
The idea is that if someone is hurting, we’re there for them.
Not with advice. Not with solutions. Not with anything but us.
Because this is something that’s so often missing.
And, true, people do often need advice (and perhaps sometimes a good kick in the pants). But, validation comes before all of that.
The idea is to recognize a person’s emotional experience, particularly emotions that are painful and overwhelming and simply be there for them.
I’ve seen this one in myself time and time again.
Sometimes I just need to talk and to be heard. There often isn’t even a problem to be solved. Or, if there is, I already have what I need to solve it. I simply want to be heard. Sometimes to be held and comforted, sometimes just listened to.
It’s been a tough one for me, as I feel so much. I always have. Some of those responses are trauma. They’re out-of-balance and turn up at weird times and places. Yet, that pain… that emotional pain is real. And, there is something about being heard within it that is so incredibly powerful.
I swear, this is something we need more of.
It’s so easy to try and fix people and situations. To sweep in and try to solve everything or rescue, when that’s not what’s needed at all. Or, we judge pain. We might think that some types of hurt are more worthy than others or perhaps that some people deserve what they get.
The truth is that we don’t know.
Much of the time, we don’t know enough about someone’s situation, their pain, or their struggles to be able to fix anything. And, when we try to help from that perspective, we often end up hurting people instead.
I want to carve out many many more spaces and places for people.
Places where we can just be who we are. Where we can rest, remain, and grow, without pressure from the outside.
Where Validation Gets Tricky
As powerful as it is, validation isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
Nothing really is.
The question that’s bugged me is where is validation appropriate and where should we take a different approach?
One idea I like is that validation is about emotions, not behaviors. So, with a friend, we might be validating their distress about a relationship, but not validating their desire to go out and get revenge.
This is a powerful distinction and a helpful one.
It also misses a big challenge – what happens when emotions are ‘off’.
I know, I know. Modern wisdom says that all emotions are valid. That’s true in many ways. After all, you feel what you feel. The emotion is being experienced and lived, so from that perspective it can’t possibly be wrong.
Yet, there’s also a danger in treating every emotion as completely okay – because some patterns of emotional response are a big red flag.
I know this distinction so well from my own life.
Now…my emotions tend to be intense – good ones and bad ones. That much may be normal for how I’m wired. But, sometimes, there’s a really strong emotional reaction that really doesn’t make sense.
External validation or self validation still helps me get out of that moment. It helps me recognize that I’m not bad or wrong or broken for feeling as I do. Validation is crucial really, as the emotion hits can be so intense.
I just can’t stop there.
If I stopped at validation, the same patterns would keep recurring. I would keep being reactive and spending hours upon hours recovering from emotional overload. That’s not how I want to live.
It seems that there are two answers.
In the moment of intense emotion, validation still matters. When someone is broken, hurting, overwhelmed – being seen is the part that matters most.
There’s little point to anything else anyway, as it’s incredibly difficult to evaluate emotions when you’re stuck smack bang in the middle of them.
The time for evaluation is after, when the emotions have calmed and it’s possible to think clearly. That’s when there’s enough space to consider the emotions and what drives them.
This type of evaluation is important, as our emotions can be driven by underlying stories, trauma, projections, assumptions, hormones, overwhelm, burnout, and countless other things.
If we only stick with validation, we risk reinforcing stories about our lives that were never true.
Emotional Drivers
Part of my day job currently involves digging into therapeutic models and self-help books, which I find incredibly fascinating.
The process reveals many interesting ideas about emotions.
Some suggest that emotions are often completely irrational. Others suggest that emotions are driven by a complex variety of factors, many of which we don’t recognize at the time. Some of our apparent emotional responses might even be more driven by how we slept or what we ate than what’s happening right now.
There are three big drivers that stand out to me.
The External Context
The external aspect starts with the actual triggers. You know, the moment that seems to define what you feel.
That might be someone who doesn’t meet your eyes, a frown, a fight, or something else.
But, it’s not just that. The external context extends to your situation too.
Like, for a period of six months or so, my partner and I were homeless. Not homeless homeless. We were basically jumping between housesits and favors from friends, while figuring out next steps. Stability is a huge thing for me, so that type of instability hit hard and my emotions were all over the place.
There are many things like that. Stresses at work, relationship challenges, or friendship losses, for example, can all be challenging – in ways that sometimes impact emotional responses.
The Internal Context
Then there’s the internal side of things. This includes factors like whether you’re hungry and tired, whether you’re dealing with PMS or menopause, and whether you’re completely wiped out.
Personally, I know that the more exhausted I am with work and social challenges, the more extreme my emotions get. That is occasionally a very frustrating challenge, particularly if I’m around people who get frustrated by emotions they don’t understand.
Below The Surface
Finally, if the emotional reaction doesn’t make sense for the immediate external and internal context, there’s likely an underlying driver.
Personally, I often find that my reactions make some sense for the external and internal context, but they’re also bigger than I’d expect. Some of that might be that my emotions are generally large. The rest comes back to trauma.
Through personal work and therapy, I’ve started to understand why I react to some things. There are triggers that relate to security and to personal dreams that are incredibly painful, even these days. Such triggers are much more difficult if there are also external and internal factors at play.
Coming Back to Validation
One of the reasons validation matters so much to me is that we don’t often fully understand another person’s external and internal context, much less their underlying triggers and traumas.
That means we’re not in a place to judge or give advice about their emotional responses.
The most helpful thing we can do is simply connect. Perhaps we can give gentle advice or guidance when they’re feeling better or perhaps we wait until they ask for that.
And, if validation is too much – it’s certainly not an obligation. It’s so very important to set boundaries for our own energy and give to people only when we have the capacity to do so well.
