Rengganis Rizka Prasanti When we are going through hard times, sometimes we only need to be heard. We go to our friends or family to speak and vent out our emotions. After all, we’re the ones who are going through said problem. We already know the scope of it, and we may already figure out the solution as well.
Yet why is it that when others talk to us about their problems, sometimes our first instinct is to fix their problem, even when they don’t ask for it? Instead of listening to their story, we ask them to go out and see the movies instead so they don’t feel sad. Or maybe we try to tell them that what they’re going through is not so bad and others have had it worse, in hopes that they’ll see the brighter side of it.
As a Reyo, our role is to help others by making them feel heard. To be a better listener, we need to understand the concept of emotional validation and why it’s so important to practice.
What is Emotional Validation?
As quoted from an article by Hall (2012) on Psychology Today, validation is the recognition and acceptance of another person’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors as understandable. It involves the process of learning about, understanding, and expression of your acceptance towards other people’s experience.
In short, the concept of emotional validation is very closely tied to empathy. Like empathy, you don’t have to fully agree with the other person’s thoughts or behavior. Emotional validation helps them by showing that you understand where they’re coming from.
Why is Emotional Validation Important?
Emotional validation has benefits both for you, as the listener, and the other person who is talking about their problems.
As the listener, validating someone else’s emotions helps strengthen your relationship with them. Accepting their thoughts, emotions, and behavior as valid will make them feel seen and heard, and help build a better connection between both of you.
For the person speaking, emotional validation helps them feel cared for and accepted, and may even help them regulate their emotions better. A study by Herr, Jones, Cohn and Weber (2015) shows that for people who have trouble regulating their emotions, emotional validation helps them regulate their emotions better. In turn, they are less likely to show aggressive behavior towards others.
Effects of Emotional Invalidation
As the opposite of emotional validation, invalidation is when your thoughts and feelings are rejected, ignored, or judged. Having your feelings pushed aside feels troubling, but it will have bigger consequences for those already experiencing emotional disorders, such as depression, anxiety, or with personality disorders such as BPD (borderline personality disorder).
Some of the known negative effects of emotional invalidation are:
- Emotional disorders – Both self-invalidation and invalidation from others can lead to a number of mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. It also makes recovery harder for those already struggling with these conditions.
- Relationship issues – Invalidation creates an emotional distance and puts strain on a relationship. Oftentimes, those who invalidate others’ emotions may not realize it and feel like they’re helping out.
- Emotion regulation difficulties – As emotional validation helps with emotion regulation, invalidation may undermine it. Being judged or having your emotions pushed aside can make you question your own experience, thus having a harder time to trust yourself.
Emotional Validation and Active Listening
Eventually, we’ll come to the question – “So what should we do to make sure we’re not invalidating others?”
It takes conscious effort and lots of practice to learn how to use validation when listening to others, since oftentimes, invalidation comes from ignorance or misplaced good intentions rather than an intention to cause harm.
In practice, emotional validation is very closely tied to active listening. In addition to encouraging others to speak, we also learn to see where they’re coming from and understand their thoughts and feelings.
Some tips you can try out to practice emotional validation in active listening are:
1. Being present
Paying full attention to the speaker and what they have to say is the first step of being present. We often feel the urge to multitask, like replying to a message from our phone, or doing the laundry, or checking emails from our laptop, when listening to others speak.
While we feel like we can still understand what the other person is saying while doing other things, you can miss small details such as the emotions the other person is feeling, their body language, and their expression. You’re not paying complete attention and may make the other person feel like what they’re talking about doesn’t matter as much to you.
2. Reflect and summarize
Another step you can do is to summarize what the other person has told you about. Remember to summarize in your own words to show that you have tried to understand what they were telling you.
You can also try to identify their emotions if you feel like they haven’t told you explicitly. Maybe the other person seemed angry or upset when they were talking to you and you can hear their tone rising up. In which case, you can ask them if they were feeling angry and if that’s the case, ask them what made them feel that way.
3. Use validating statements
Unless they explicitly asked for advice or your opinion on their situation, sometimes people talk about their issues only to vent out their feelings. In which case, you don’t need to respond or talk much. Your role is to encourage them to go on and make sure they are feeling heard.
To use validating statements, try to:
- Relate to their past experiences – See if they have gone through a similar situation that makes them act the way they do. For example, if they don’t want to go swimming with their friends because they’ve witnessed their sibling almost drowning and they feel they’re being ridiculous, try to explain to them that you can see why they feel that way given their trauma.
- Relate to your own experiences – If you’ve gone through a similar situation, try to show radical genuineness, or understanding the situation on a very deep and personal level. Using “I understand, I would have done the same thing” or “I feel the same way” shows that you empathize and share the same emotions they have felt.
- Normalize their experience – Sometimes, you may hear someone question their own reaction to a situation, or feeling like they have acted unreasonably, while others may see it as something normal. Instead of dismissing their feelings, acknowledge their emotions and then explain that others may feel the same way or that it’s a normal reaction to that situation.
References
Hall, K. (2012, April 26). Understanding Validation: A Way to Communicate Acceptance. Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pieces-mind/201204/understanding-validation-way-communicate-acceptance
Herr, N. R., Jones, A. C., Cohn, D. M., & Weber, D. M. (2015). The impact of validation and invalidation on aggression in individuals with emotion regulation difficulties. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 6(4), 310.
Salters-Pedneault, K. (2021, April 26). What Is Emotional Validation? Retrieved from Verywell Mind: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-emotional-validation-425336
