Book 7: Validation
One simple concept can improve your relationships.
It’s not an understatement to say that reading even the first chapter of this book improved my marriage.
If there is one thing you could count on me doing in a conversation with my wife, it’s to try to solve her problems. Advice, ideas, suggestions. I was in mission to accomplish mode as soon as she started talking.
I was going to be her hero and rescue her from trouble. Period.
Except I didn’t. And I wasn’t.
The interruptions I blasted at her communicated several unintentional truths:
I never fully listened to what she had to say
I wasn’t actually interested in knowing what she wanted me to know
I was focused on how solving her problem would make me a good husband
She felt more lonely and alone by talking to me
Validation - Psychology’s Best-Kept Secret
When I began reading Carolyn Fleck’s book, it was God timing. I don’t say that often, but it’s true. My wife had asked me countless times in her own way to change the way I handle her and validate her feelings.
Fleck starts the book with a story of her residency as a psychologist. Her client was thinking of killing himself. She felt the sobriety of the moment and knew that if she didn’t handle the conversation right, his world would come crashing down.
The man didn’t want to use the usual skills therapists attempt to equip their patients with. He didn’t want to divulge more about his recently ended relationship. If she followed protocol, he would be hospitalized and medicated and he’d never want to speak to a therapist again.
Instead of following the script, she changed course and uttered these words:
”This sucks. You let your guard down for one second and are immediately attacked with questions from the overzealous graduate student you want to believe gives a shit but is most likely just doing what she’s told. And if that wasn’t enough, the whole thing is being broadcast to a room full of people you’ve never met.”
He softened just a little bit, and she managed to take HIS side and acknowledge HIS feelings. In other words, she validated his experience.
Where many therapists would fear enabling a troubled man, she disarmed him with validation. She didn’t attempt to talk him out of suicide or reduce his risk in any way. Instead, she focused on trying to connect with the experience of this guy who desperately needed help but had learned not to trust anyone who offered it.
It’s Counterintuitive But it Works
When someone declares that their life isn’t worth living, you don’t agree with them, right?
I can tell you from experience that I have encountered friends and loved ones who confessed feelings so dark and so hopeless that I felt obligated to encourage them with words of hope and disagree with them that all was lost. I felt like agreeing with them in any way would tip them over the edge and terrible things might happen.
Turns out, people desperately need validation. We feel deepest dark when we feel alone. When no one understands what we feel. Not only that, but when people tell us we shouldn’t feel the way we feel. It’s demoralizing. It’s isolating.
Whether you tell people they shouldn’t feel that way or offer solutions without hearing their hurt, you won’t get far without validation.
But how do you validate without empowering darkness?
Stay tuned. More to come.
Grief is a form of validation. It says, ‘The wound mattered.’
-John Eldredge