This week’s Newsy Bits is the 5th installment in a 10-part series focusing on core skills to strengthen your parenting and partnership practices. The last post in the series focused on perspective-taking as a key capacity for developing strong family bonds. This week we are exploring a closely related skill called validating.
Most of us in life want to be seen, heard and understood by our friends, family and partners. When we experience these things, we feel more connected to others and feel good inside in whatever way that happens for us. Some of us may feel warm, others proud, or perhaps even a little shy when someone “gets” something about us in a supportive way. All of us generally respond positively to experiences like these.
Validation is a key way that people feel seen, heard and understood by others, and it is a key way that we can help other people to feel seen, heard and understood. It doesn’t always come naturally though, as many of us are often so preoccupied with our own thoughts that we are not very good at recognizing what is going on with someone else in a supportive way.
Yet, learning to validate other people’s perspectives is salve for getting through life’s difficulties. Learning this skill also strengthens and improves our relationships, especially with our partners and our kids.
So what is validation then and how do we do it?
Harville Hendrix teaches the skill of validation in Getting the Love You Want as a core component of the Couple’s Dialogue.
In the Couples Dialogue validation comes into play in Step 4, like this:
(1) first listen to your partner’s complaint or issue;
(2) then mirror what your partner is saying by either repeating their words back to them verbatim or by mirroring the gist of what they are saying (depending on the preference of your partner and on the complexity of the issue at hand) and confirm with them your understanding;
(3) then ask clarifying questions so that you can get to the point where you can understand what your partner is experiencing from their perspective ~ it doesn’t mean you have to agree with them, you just need to be able to “get” their experience from their perspective ~ not easy work for many of us;
(4) once you get to this point where you can see the issue from your partner’s perspective, then validate your partner’s experience and/or complaint by saying something like “that makes sense to me” – this is validation, essentially affirming for your partner that their experience makes sense to you and that it is real for them, i.e., that it is valid;
(5) the last step in the Couple’s Dialogue is to empathize with your partner, by adding “and I imagine you must be feeling ____” (insert an adjective that captures your estimation of your partner’s emotion using a word that goes a little beyond what they used to describe their feelings around the issue).
The Couples Dialogue takes work, but it can be a great resource for couples, especially those who need to learn to better understand each other ~ that’s a lot of us. A fantastic spoof on this kind of exchange is It’s Not About the Nail, and you should watch it, if you haven’t already.
Simply, validation then is the ability to authenticate another person’s expressed experience without judgment or attempts to fix them. It is far harder to do than it seems for several reasons, including:
(1) because we are often so busy reacting and responding in our own heads that we are unable to get to the place where we can actually see something from our partner’s perspective;
(2) we often want to jump in to fix the other person’s problem;
(3) we are defensive and try to minimize or dismiss what the other person is saying because it is hard for us to hear.
Learning to validate another person’s experience is not for the faint at heart. Yet, we must. This is especially true for our children.
While we all need validation in our lives, children especially need it. Validating our kids’ experiences reinforces a sense of trust in their own perceptions. It can also help normalize their experiences for them as well as their reactions to them. Our kids need hear and feel that their experiences make sense to us on a regular basis throughout their formative years.
Mind you, validating does not mean that you necessarily fully agree with what your children are saying. You may, in fact and often do, have the bigger picture with lots more information or experience on the matter. Nonetheless, validating them means that you can see how it makes sense to them from their more limited perspective (you don’t need to mention their more limited perspective as this will likely not land well!). Validating is closely related to the ability to listen to others as discussed in a previous post Learning to Listen for Love as well as the ability to perspective-take as discussed in Getting It from Their Perspective ~ For a Change.
The opposite of being able to validate your kids’ experiences is framed as chronic invalidation by psychologists. Kids who experience chronic invalidation in their formative years will have bumpier experiences down the road with issues like not trusting their own perceptions, poorer emotional regulation, and/or greater power struggles with others. So use validation as a tool to help your children come to understand themselves more fully, regulate their own emotions better, and to be receptive to your influence and that of others.
The interesting thing about validating is that often after someone feels heard and understood, they are more able to either receive additional feedback or solve their own problems. Test it out for yourself.
Next time your teen starts talking about how funny their classmate was in the cafeteria despite the fact that they got in trouble, take a moment to see it from you kid’s perspective. “I bet that was funny,” you might say. You can even ask clarifying questions like “so what did he do that was so funny? Or “what ended up happening?” Just listen in a nonjudgmental way, and either verbalize or show that you can see how that was funny. Then wait. There is a good chance your kid will recognize in themselves that it wasn’t really all okay, and if you get their experience first, they are likely to self-correct the rest for themselves. That’s the power of validation.
Try it and let me know how it goes.
Explore More
Tuesdays@Noon, Ongoing Drop-In Parenting Chat Group - Start gaining parenting tools and support in this informal 25 minute chat group ~ $10
Thursdays@Noon, Ongoing Drop-In Couples Chat Group - Learn skills to start strengthening your partnership in this informal 25 minute chat group ~ $10
Further Learning
It’s Not About the Nail, Jason Headley
How Childhood Invalidation Affects Adult Well-Being, Psychology Today
Hendrix, Harville, Getting the Love You Want (2005),
What Is Imago Dialogue (aka The Couples Dialogue), Harville Hendrix on You Tube:
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