No, feelings don't need to be validated

How to stop encouraging narcissism in a Cluster B society.

This piece focuses on the misuse and overuse of the practice of emotional validation in adult relationships and how it enables narcissistic victimhood. This piece is NOT referring to the process of validating facts and evidence, despite its importance in discerning credible information from lies and deception.

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Terminology and techniques used exclusively in therapy sessions have infiltrated every day conversations, thanks to the mainstreaming of therapy language and psychotherapy concepts. It’s not really an issue until these terms start to inform and influence our practice of relating to each other in unintended ways.

I was reading through a great piece by

Andrew M. Weisse

discussing whether psychedelics could be an antidote to therapy culture where he presented a list of terms that qualify as therapy speak. He says:

Therapy speak includes a variety of terms and phrases designed to facilitate understanding, emotional expression, and healing. However, these terms have increasingly become markers of a narcissistic culture. This language, originally intended to promote mental well-being, is often misused or overused, reflecting self-centeredness rather than genuine emotional growth.

You can find the full list of terms here.

One of the terms and practices that can be misguided and overused is VALIDATION.

To validate requires a person to make something, such as another person’s feelings, valid.

Validation is used in response to someone’s disclosure of their opinion, feelings, behaviour, or experience. The person validating the other affirms the speaker’s position without judgement or requirement for agreement so that the speaker can feel affirmed, approved of, accepted, or understood.

For example, I describe an annoying experience with a colleague at work to my friend. She responds with one or two of these emotional validating statements:

“What an upsetting/annoying situation!”

“This must be so annoying for you!”

“I’m sorry you’re annoyed. It’s ok to be annoyed when something like that happened to you.”

“I’m sorry you’re feeling annoyed.”

“I can understand why you feel that way.”

“I can tell this is really important to you.”

I can see she’s trying to comfort me using statements that attempt to convey empathy, except it sounds like she’s repeating a memorised script. In that moment, it seems that my friend unintentionally sees me as a victim requiring comfort, whereas I’m seeking a peer who allows me to talk about my experience as her equal. While my friend believes she’s being helpful using a prescribed technique for conveying understanding, my experience is that she missed the mark and I don’t feel understood at all.

The reason I don’t need my friend to validate my experience is because I have a strong sense of self and can self-validate, which makes external validation unnecessary and infantilising. My friend is unaware of this effect on me because she believes she is being helpful. I continue to see my friend as helpful and caring.

If I feel insecure in our friendship, I would interpret her actions as condescending and disrespectful. If I am my insecure past self, I might want her to placate me so I feel better. I might also look to her for guidance or advice of how to manage my situation and follow through with it, even if it contradicts my own intuition.

If I was a narcissistic person, my empathetic friend would validate my feelings to placate me and avoid upsetting me further. She wouldn’t ask me follow up questions to understand my perspective or to get me thinking about why I feel the way I do. When she tried to inquire about my feelings in the past or even prompt me to uncover different interpretations, I would shut her down because I thought she was fishing for her preferred explanation for my feelings. When she validates me now, I interpret her validation as endorsement of my perspectives and behaviours in the situation I described to her. Her endorsement is enough for me to believe my perspectives and behaviours are justified and that I don’t need to change anything.

Validation is intended to be used as a gateway to exploring a feeling that is causing confusion or distress more deeply with a view of facilitating a shift in perception, feelings, or behaviour. Validation is an entry point to a deeper process, not the final destination.

There are many adults who don’t have a strong sense of self and require other people’s approval or advice to guide and influence their perceptions of a situation. In these cases, validation is used therapeutically to offset the long term effects of having their experiences and feelings frequently invalidated (ie. rejected, ignored, denied) by their parents and other authorities during childhood. This could be useful in some, but not most therapeutic relationships.

The introduction of validation as a method to convey empathy has become a practice of endorsing a feeling as truth and a range of dysfunctional behaviours as acceptable.

Validation can undermine respectful relationships

The first challenge I pose here is that if you value qualities such as reciprocity, mutual respect, and levelled power in your relationships, validation is a practice that can undermine them.

If you’re in a relationship where both parties value each other’s knowledge, expertise, experiences, beliefs without necessarily agreeing with all of them, mutual respect is going to be evident.

In a hierarchical relationship that is perceived as a mutual relationship by one or both parties, one person plays the authority figure in the relationship while the subordinate person (who believes they are equals) will be a recipient of behaviours that diminish them, such as emotional validation.

The authority who is perceived as wiser, smarter, or stronger (either by the authority or the one with the feelings) who needs to validate the other’s feelings, reinforces the authority-subordinate dynamic rather than equalise it.

In this relationship dynamic, the subordinate needs the authority to validate their feelings to make them matter. Except, this is not the route to self-validation as an adult, and only perpetuates a cycle of external validation dependence and infantilisation.

This is similar to what a parent or adult does with a child since the child does not yet have the cognitive development to make sense of their feelings. A child requires an adult to attune to the child’s feelings and respond appropriately. If a baby cries, an attuned mother would be able to distinguish a hunger from a tired cry. She would say “You’re crying because you’re hungry. I’m going to feed you now.” The mother is validating the baby’s feelings and responding appropriately to soothe the baby, strengthening their bond. When that baby is school aged, the cause of the child’s distress is not as obvious so the mother has to work out the cause of distress so she knows how to respond. She will likely validate her child’s feelings by saying “You look really upset/sad/angry! Something must have happened to upset you.” This tells the child that his mother is paying attention and accepts his feelings as valid and important. The child knows that he’s safe to express himself with his mother and will feel encouraged to do so as long as his mother is consistent.

As the child emotionally matures and is able to articulate his feelings, the need for the parent to describe his feelings decreases, and the parent can help the child explore his feelings to discover the underlying reasons for them. The discussion can become an exploratory conversation between a curious parent and a reflective child that can help them both discover something new about the child’s experience. Validation becomes one technique among a suite of techniques to help the child’s sensemaking so that the child eventually develops the ability to reflect on his experience after validating it for himself.

When adults use validation as a technique to demonstrate empathy with another adult, it can come across as if they’re being parented and infantilised, and experienced as disrespectful.

No one can actually validate your feelings because it’s not for anyone to validate. If you feel or think something, it’s valid. But being valid doesn’t mean it’s accurate or true. It only means that it exists; and if you’re compos mentis, you don’t need anyone to tell you that.

Acknowledgement vs. Validation

If validation is what a parent uses to show acceptance to a child about their feelings, acknowledgement is a way to neutrally reflect back your understanding of that person’s experience.

If we use the scenario I presented above, my friend would respond by acknowledging what she just heard from me. “It sounds like this situation is annoying because it didn’t go the way you expected. Is that right?”

I would respond with agreement or a modification of what I already shared because her response helped me clarify my thinking about my experience. She didn’t tell me she’s trying to understand me by labelling or repeating back my feeling. She showed me by tentatively giving my feeling meaning.

She would then start to help me explore my experience by asking: “What’s annoying about the situation/the other person.” “What were you expecting to happen?” This gets me thinking about why I feel this way and what is informing my experience. As she helps me make sense of my feelings, I discover new things that I hadn’t considered before.

This process helps me feel understood and respected because she treated me as an adult having an experience rather than a child who needs an adult to make my feelings valid. I emerge from that conversation feeling clearer, respected, and empowered to make change.

If I was seeking her approval, I might have felt the same way if she only validated my feelings but I would need to go back to her the next time I felt unsure about what to do about the same situation. My positive feelings would be dependent on her affirming their validity, not their accuracy.

When validation is useful

The example above involves two people who are capable of critical thinking, attentive listening, and self-regulation. There are many other scenarios in which validation is required as a standalone skill to help the other person regulate their emotional state so they can listen, think, and pay attention. Validation is useful for:

Children. Validation is helpful with children to give them language to identify and build their emotional literacy. This approach is necessary for children to feel accepted and loved regardless of their feelings and what the parent/adult thinks about the feelings. It becomes a problem when validation is the ONLY nurturing technique used and the child never learns about consequences of actions or how to regulate their behaviour as they get older. Validation is also ineffective when the child is throwing a tantrum. The parent will need other techniques to help the child return to a calm state or wait until they are calm without giving into their demands.

De-escalating a situation. You cannot have a rational discussion when the other person is riled up. You need to help them cool off by validating their feelings and affirming their position, matching their tone and intensity. This works whether someone is in narcissistic rage, angry or agitated.

Adults with Cluster B personality disorders. These adults are essentially emotionally stunted children. They never developed necessary emotional regulation skills for healthy relating beyond toddlerhood and are therefore challenged to consider anything or anyone beyond their immediate feelings and desires. You can try all the reflective skills you want, but validation of their feelings (without challenging their perspectives) is a faster path to gaining trust in a therapeutic setting. Personal and professional relationships require more than validating (and sometimes not using validation) to manage tricky interactions.

Adults with dementia. People who are often disoriented need constant validation to reassure them of their current experiences and versions of reality. In these cases, you have to enter their reality (ie. a memory that they are inhabiting in the present) and navigate it with them, regardless of whether you can relate to that experience. The purpose is to help them find meaning or resolution in the experience.

Energy Vampires. People who expect you to hold space for their feelings as long as they need it yet are unable and unavailable to do that with you in your time of need are Energy Vampires. You leave the encounter feeling drained and used, especially when they vaguely asked about you and didn’t show interest in your response. Validating can be a useful strategy to limit the interaction time you have with them by placating them without inviting further elaboration.

I might have missed other examples. Feel free to suggest others in the comments.

Validation endorses narcissism

Another challenge is that we don’t live a in world dominated by healthy interactions. We live in emotionally volatile, irrational times when Cluster B behaviours feature in social activism and our exchanges online, enabled by influencer modelling and social media algorithms. Validating the feelings that drive these behaviours because someone has big feelings, and those feelings are rooted in childhood trauma and adversity or present fauxppression, is a poor strategy for building healthy relationships and a functional society. While behaviours can be understood as adaptations in response earlier life experiences, validating the feelings justifying those behaviours without challenging the person to consider consequences can be interpreted as endorsement.

If I feel it, it must be true. Your role is to validate those feelings no matter what.

-Validation principle in a Cluster B world

People high on the narcissism spectrum are dependent on external validation. Affirming their feelings can give them relief for having those feelings. The effect of this as a practice is that the person is discouraged from accepting their own feelings until an authority validates them. If enough authorities, such as teachers, professors, therapists, parents, friends, The Science™ and, institutional policies validate the feelings a narcissistic individual has, they start to believe that their actions are acceptable and valid. For example, a person can feel upset for not getting a promotion due to racism, rather than less competence and skill than their competitor. Their feelings are validated by their colleagues who see themselves as allies. The person feels more justified in their belief that they were unfairly treated due to racism, despite specific feedback related to their readiness and skillset. They lodge a grievance with HR and start to rally support among their colleagues to combat racism in the workplace.

It didn’t matter if any of this person’s colleagues attempted to challenge this person’s perception. This person’s feelings overpowered reasoning, and they felt a greater sense of control as a victim whose feelings were validated. As long as their victimhood is affirmed, it’s on the perpetrator to change their ways to accommodate the victim. Validating feelings of self-anointed victims promotes their accountability aversion and motivates their narcissistic behaviours.

Affirming through validating feelings of an already self-absorbed person provides their narcissistic supply. Applying techniques to help that person examine the interpretation of their feelings will be met with suspicion and accusations of invalidation. They are not interested in seeing things differently. They are interested in everyone seeing their version of reality as real, even if it means rejecting your own version of reality to comfort them.

Furthermore, since validation has become THE mode for affirming one’s reality, authorities are expected to validate feelings to avoid upsetting the already distressed/uncomfortable/triggered person further. The ones being validated become the authorities of best practice. This has contributed to a growing population of bullies and dictators whose fragile egos cannot tolerate versions of reality that are not of their own creation, and throw tantrums until they get their way.

I’m not suggesting we ignore other people’s feelings. I am suggesting that we don’t give feelings centre stage in an adult person’s experience. We can help people feel seen and understood while supporting them to see their situation more clearly and accurately. This opens the door to enabling others to take personal responsibility for their behaviour driven by their feelings and consider improvements.

What’s your experience of validation? Do you love it or loathe it, and why?

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