Validation Podcast Episode

What I see validation doing is it soothes negative emotion. It’s like taking a sigh and just letting it out, and it creates space in the relationship to take in a new reality. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. It is wonderful to have you along. 

Kaleb Beyer is with me here today. Kaleb, the topic today is validation. Maybe to set up the topic, this really comes into play relationally between spouses, between parents and children, between just community members. When we interact with people, there is a role that validation plays and specifically when those interactions maybe have an element of conflict. 

Yeah. And I would add to that, Matt, it’s not always necessarily conflict intention. It can be in that space, but where some, I was thinking of the parent child relationship where maybe one is escalated, right? There may not be conflict or a spouse who is emotionally distraught as a result of something else that happened, even external to the relationship, but there’s heightened emotion. 

There’s intense emotion and perhaps some confusion. Yeah, not necessarily conflict within the relationship, but conflict that comes to us where we are struggling with something and we’re in communion with another person. This concept of validation now has a role to play. So Matt, maybe helpful right out of the gate here just to explain why it’s important and how I found it helpful in the counseling room. 

And also, just individually and relationships is that validation reduces escalation. Think of it as invalidation increases escalation because we don’t feel heard. We don’t feel seen. We don’t feel understood. And so often what happens is we intensify in order to be seen in order to have connection. 

Validation reduces reactivity, soothes the negative emotion, and fosters connection and understanding. Okay, let’s get right into really spelling out and putting some fences around this concept of validation. What is it that we mean? Can we define validation? Because I love that setup. The niche that validation plays is the de-escalation of a tense relational moment. 

For whatever reason. It is tense. Validation is one way to help the de-escalation. What is validation? So, validation, put simply, is just a way of communicating awareness and acceptance of your spouse, coworker, child, whatever relationship it is. It is communicating, sometimes verbally, sometimes nonverbally. 

We can talk about different ways, but it is the awareness and acceptance of someone else’s reality and experience. Okay. And so, in order to do that, I am going to go out here on a limb and say, we’re going to have to be probably pretty good listeners to understand that person’s experience, because what we’re connecting with is something beneath the words that they’re using. 

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. It requires attentiveness, presence, and awareness. So, in order to do validation well, there needs to be within us an awareness and an ability to regulate emotion. To the point that we can be present to listen to be in tune. If we’re in a reactive place, Matt, it’s really hard, if not impossible to validate somebody else. 

You just read my question. My question is, what does validation not look like? And I’m guessing if we’re in a reactive place. So, I want you to fill that out a little bit and help us understand what it means to be in a reactive place and why that would be moving away from validation. Yes. So, let’s talk through an example in order to unpack maybe unhelpful responses that lead to escalation compared with responses that focus on validation. 

So, let’s say Mary and Bob are married, they have a family, and Mary, after church on Sunday when they get home, she looks over to Bob and says, you know, Bob, I’m really disappointed that we didn’t make it to church on time this morning. Okay. In that case, Mary isn’t overly escalated, right? But there is some disappointment. 

There’s some negative emotion there. And so, what does it look like for Bob to validate or to invalidate? So, let’s first look at invalidating responses. Okay. So first, an invalidating response would be Bob saying something like, you know what? We weren’t late. We view time differently. You know what? Mary likes to be there 15 minutes early, right? They view time differently. So, Bob moving into just saying, no, we weren’t late invalidates Mary’s experience. And that’s what you mean by reactive. If we respond reactively, we push against, we are responding to that pressure by equal pressure in the opposite direction. 

Yeah, that is not in the direction of validation, right? Yes. Which is going to be natural. That’s probably the natural response. Absolutely. And I think what happens here, which is really hard, is that Bob may want to explain what happened that morning, whether it was something Bob did that led to them being late, whether it was something Mary did, you know, we could build this out. 

But the point being is the further Bob goes down the path at this point in the conversation, Matt, and tries to explain things away, what it does is it communicates to Mary that really your feelings and perspectives don’t matter. That’s not Bob’s intention. Or that your feelings are inaccurate at this moment, right? 

Yes. And you’re saying that is not validation. Right. As accurate as it might be. Exactly. That’s exactly it. And that’s what I think is difficult about a validation because it can feel like I’m agreeing with the other person. And validation is not about agreement in the sense of rightness, what happened, facts. 

It’s about validating, accepting, being aware of your spouse, your coworker, your child’s experience and saying, you know, things like we want to get to a place that it does make sense. Now we need to walk through misunderstandings after the fact, but initially the way in is through validation before we try to make sense and explain how we can do this differently next time. 

Does that make sense? It does. What it really requires with this concept of validation is to connect with a person’s experience and emotional experience that whether or not she should have felt that way about this Sunday experience, she did feel this way. And you are really connecting with that. 

First we connect with the experience. Absolutely. It is joining somebody else in their experience, which again, back to your point of if we’re at a place of reactivity, we first need to calm down to be able to do that. I think you said a ton just with that Mary and Bob example. So, let’s just play another example out. 

Let’s say parent with child, teenage child, screen time or device where maybe they have some restrictions. The screen time goes off at 10 o’clock at night. The teenager pushes against that. And explains that they felt they were not able to connect with a social interaction that was going on at night and how that is negatively affecting them. 

And so, they bring this exasperation that these rules are too restrictive. Okay. So now we have this interaction. Does that make sense? Yep. So, validation, we’re looking for three key things. First, we want to communicate awareness. That is, I see you. So, the parent to the teenager wants to communicate, I see that this is frustrating to you. And perhaps there’s fear involved that she can’t be involved, or he can’t be involved in this social interaction. And what is this friend going to think of me? I see you. Right. I’m communicating awareness is part of validation. I see how that could be hard, right? That makes sense that this is hard for you. 

Number two, I accept whether or not I like it. This isn’t about liking their response in that moment, but it does mean That there is a presence that you know what? I receive you where you’re at, meaning you are pretty escalated right now and you know what? If I were to put myself in your shoes, not that it’s right that you’re escalated. 

We’re not going there yet. We’re focusing on acceptance that this is really happening right now. This is where they’re at and I receive them there. Does that make sense? Yes. And so, when we get fixated on the escalation, which may be inappropriate in a thousand ways. Yes. When we get fixated on the escalation, we’re probably going to make the escalation worse. 

Because we’re not going to validate. And so, if we want to deescalate the moment, we need to be able to accept, receive them in their escalation. Yes. Right now, you know, with this, Matt, obviously there’s certain situations that if it’s so escalated, we certainly need to take a time out or disengage. So, it’s not like validation is used in every and all situations. 

No, sometimes if it leads to escalation where there is no rational place and it is just completely, whether it turns physical or very intentionally emotionally yelling, then, of course, we would not sit there and I think we can get to that. This is one tool. Validation is one tool of many in interactions with people, and we’re not purporting that this is the end all for all situations, but to have this in our skill set is really, really helpful. 

So, what’s the third one? The third one communicates legitimacy and validity of their response, not rightness. Again, we tend to go to rightness in the way that they’re saying or the tone or, and again, we want to talk about that. But initially, validation is communicating. Oh, I could see how you would be distressed in this situation. 

Like if I think about back when I was a teenager, you know, good or bad, the influence of my peers was a big thing. Like desiring to have freedom was an important thing. And so even though we want to get to the point of having a conversation about healthy boundaries and the importance of them first, I want to engage that teenager and let them know, yeah, wow. 

Yeah, that is hard. Yeah. That’d be a hard thing to not be able to respond. It’s hard to be put on the outside of your friend group and have whatever that image is portrayed to your peers is a difficult thing. And so, this legitimacy, now here’s what I see certainly with parents and teens, but also in lots of other interactions is, or just not articulate enough to really legitimize what the experience is. Does that make sense? Our actions are louder than the meaning behind it, we’re responding to the actions. We’re responding to the escalation. So, what’s your suggestion on drawing out what this experience is? If we don’t even have the vocabulary. 

Or haven’t even thought about it ourselves and really validation requires that careful analysis. Yes. Well, what you’re pushing on there, Matt, is the reality that sometimes we aren’t in a place to validate, right? Because we are highly reactive and emotionally we are heightened already, which means the level of safety that we feel is such that it’s difficult to get to a place to let in someone else’s experience, right? 

To really allow their experience to influence me. So, the first piece, I think, with validation, you know, back to your question is there has to be within us a level of diffusion or separation from their experience that we’re not personalizing it, but rather we often use the term in the counseling room of being curious. 

Why would a rational individual be responding this way? I think curiosity is helpful, and I think that’s what I was waiting to hear, that bit of key, that’s the mindset of a person who validates well, is they’re curious, and they see the outside escalation as clues to a story that’s deeper, that is the experience that they really want to know about, which I think challenges us at the core. 

Sometimes do we even want to know it? Which, so you’re really asking almost a character quality of people, a heightened character quality that would be so curious of another person’s experience to say, oh, what is it that they are experiencing and why are they feeling that way? And can I connect with that, which I think is a challenge. 

I think it’s good. Absolutely. It’s a challenge. And I think that you’re hitting on something here, Matt. I want to highlight, and that is a person feels a particular way for a particular reason. Whether that reason is faulty information or not, in the moment, the reality is they feel that way. 

Absolutely. It’s true. It’s true to them. Yes, it’s true to them. And so, part of validation is because the reaction may be not to you as the individual, the parent, the spouse, whatever it may be. They may be escalated because of past experiences or some other situation that happened, but it’s coming out what feels like at you. 

And so, validation is how do we calm and deescalate and understand the intensity in context before we move into walking through what might have been faulty information, what might be stories. But we don’t start there. Is part of that skill set then asking good questions? What would be some of the ear markers of a curious person? 

So, we first don’t jump too quickly to conclusions or judgments. We hold with tentativeness, right, any perspectives and we check in with the person who is escalated with those perspectives. Thinking, I wonder what’s going on for them. I want to find out. I really want to understand why they would react this way. 

I really want to know, I think is another really key of a curious person that I really do want to know, because often we really don’t want to know, but I really do want to know. And I think there’s a great deal of gain when we do know. So, here’s an example. Just last night, there was a three-way argument in my house with my kids that I came in to mediate and I gave time for each one to tell me their perspective and it was all facts, right? 

This is what the said person did. This is my response. Does that make sense? And here’s what I didn’t do. But from this conversation, I think what I would like to do in the future is how do you think that other person felt? Because I think when we only operate at the level of said person, A did this, and this was the response and not getting underneath to realize that, oh, my behavior caused this emotional reality to be in them. 

Now that provides a great deal of explanation, right? To know that they felt embarrassed. Oh, when we connect with that, a lot makes sense because I hate being embarrassed. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yes. It makes a lot of sense. What I think about when you say this is that there is a mindset, the relationship trumps that my relationship with this person is of utmost importance. 

And that relationship is I need to understand to connect and that’s what drives my desire to want to know to want to understand for the purpose of deepening my relationship with this other individual and to let them know I love them. I care about them. I do want to understand them. That’s important to me because my relationship with you is important to me, which now connects the word validation. 

Yeah. We’re validating a lot of things. We’re not validating their behavior or interpretation as correct and good and right and the gold standard. We’re not validating that way. What we are doing is we are validating their personhood. We’re validating them as a person with an emotional experience. Yes, and someone who is separate from us and can have separate experiences. So, we need to be curious, but we also need to care deeply about people. There has to be that caring component. We care more about the relationship than the momentary rightness of a certain response. We’re able to set aside corrections and focus on connection. What difference has this made when you have a couple, for example, with lots of escalation and what happens when a spouse feels validated? 

When validation occurs effectively, it’s like deflating a balloon that’s about ready to pop in a healthy way. It releases pressure, it releases tension, and then we’re able to take in more positive information or more truth. Yes. More truth. As I can imagine it now, what it does, it helps both parties, doesn’t it? 

Because the one who has now been validated probably now has more bandwidth to reconsider their experience. Is that true? Yes. To listen now to the reasons why we were late for church and why maybe I overreacted. And so both parties are able to. Allow for a new reality, a new truth, the actual truth to be laid bare. 

Is that fair to say? Yeah, it is. Because like you were saying with the individual that feels validated, then there’s a feeling of, oh, you see me, I matter to you. I’m important to you. Okay. I feel safe with that. There’s a connection now. Now I’m able to take in truth and even hear it from a perspective that I matter to you. 

Okay. Yeah, we can have this conversation. We think better when things are deescalated. And I know it’s been shared in a number of different ways. If you’re in the red zone, often we’re not in a healthy state of mind to carry on any critical dialogue that needs to happen. And critical dialogue does need to happen in all of these cases. 

We’re not sweeping anything under the rug. We’re not pretending anything’s not true. All of that needs to happen. Right. But we do it much more accurately, healthily, and productively. Yeah. When we’re not in the red zone. Yes. The message is much clearer. It’s not as staticky and difficult to discern the message. 

Thanks, Kaleb, for this. I won’t have to wait very long, I don’t think, to give it a try as life goes on right now. I trust that our listeners also found this to be very applicable as we think about honoring people loving people, having the character quality of curiosity, but then allowing validation to happen to deescalate situations so then we might bring truth to the matter and have appropriate actions that make a positive difference in our relationships. 

So, thanks for helping us with that. Thanks, each one for being on. We trust that this has been a blessing.