Fascinating piece! Really made me think about what I mean when I say validation, and I say it a lot! I also regularly lament that we’ve elevated feelings to the level of fact in our cultural discourse, because it’s making us dumber. So I’m with you on all of that.
That said, because I work at the level of couples, I would probably want to…
Fascinating piece! Really made me think about what I mean when I say validation, and I say it a lot! I also regularly lament that we’ve elevated feelings to the level of fact in our cultural discourse, because it’s making us dumber. So I’m with you on all of that.
That said, because I work at the level of couples, I would probably want to add that to your list of when validation is appropriate. Even if might better qualify as acknowledgement, validation has a unique function in couples therapy.
In couples therapy (with two healthy adults, let’s stipulate), partners regularly invalidate each other’s experience, especially when the stakes are high. It’s usually not intentional (ie, not gaslighting): most of the time I see it more as a failure of imagination, and sometimes a lack of empathy. They just don’t see how their partner could be experiencing what they say they’re experiencing. More to the point, they’re attached to a mental model of their partner’s mind that’s riddled with errors.
I could do a whole series of posts on this topic (in fact my most recent might be the kick-off), so I’ll wrap up by saying that the function of validation in couples work is a way for each person to align his or her mental model of their partner’s experience with their partner’s actual experience. It forces them to adjust, and this makes problem solving and compromise a whole lot easier, because they are now solving for the same thing.
Fascinating piece! Really made me think about what I mean when I say validation, and I say it a lot! I also regularly lament that we’ve elevated feelings to the level of fact in our cultural discourse, because it’s making us dumber. So I’m with you on all of that.
That said, because I work at the level of couples, I would probably want to add that to your list of when validation is appropriate. Even if might better qualify as acknowledgement, validation has a unique function in couples therapy.
In couples therapy (with two healthy adults, let’s stipulate), partners regularly invalidate each other’s experience, especially when the stakes are high. It’s usually not intentional (ie, not gaslighting): most of the time I see it more as a failure of imagination, and sometimes a lack of empathy. They just don’t see how their partner could be experiencing what they say they’re experiencing. More to the point, they’re attached to a mental model of their partner’s mind that’s riddled with errors.
I could do a whole series of posts on this topic (in fact my most recent might be the kick-off), so I’ll wrap up by saying that the function of validation in couples work is a way for each person to align his or her mental model of their partner’s experience with their partner’s actual experience. It forces them to adjust, and this makes problem solving and compromise a whole lot easier, because they are now solving for the same thing.
Here’s that post…
https://open.substack.com/pub/cheaperthandivorce/p/youre-arguing-all-wrong?r=4chtxi&utm_medium=ios