Years ago, while pursuing a graduate degree in counseling psychology, a class I was in was shown a delightful little movie entitled “Validation.”
I recommend watching it before continuing with this (rather long) blog post about what it takes to learn how to self-validate.
In our society today, far too much time is spent hand-holding young adults and saying, “it’s not your fault. Here, let me do it for you.”
We fail to teach that nothing substitutes for hard work and discipline.
Of course, hard work and discipline are learned traits, and often the result of our upbringings. If our parents have strove to instill discipline on the way to some ingrained sense of self, then they have done their jobs. The notion of self-efficacy – the idea that if I think I can, then I will think that I know I can – is born of countless tough lessons in life.
Recall “The Little Engine That Could” (an old nursery rhyme, a story about determination and grit).
A little railroad engine was employed in a station yard for such work as he was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning he was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked one of the larger engines in the roundhouse to take it over the hill.
“I can’t; that is too much a pull for me,” said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. In desperation, the train asked the little switch engine to draw it up the grade and down on the other side.
Of course, the little engine immediately thought, “well, if the larger engine cannot do it, what makes you think that I can?” But he knew that was an excuse and nothing would be lost by trying. So, he began to think, “yeah, sure, I just might be able to do this.” He put himself in front of the great heavy train.
As it went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster,
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”
As it neared the top of the grade, which had so daunted even the larger engines, the little engine went more slowly. He kept saying, “I—think—I—can, I—think—I—can.”
He reached the top by drawing on bravery and then went on down the grade, congratulating himself by saying, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”
If parents have done their jobs, then most likely they will have encouraged failure, or at the very least, stood by while failure was encountered and dealt with. This is the process of building what psychologists call self-efficacy, or the idea that through repeated effort and determination, the child will finally arrive at a solution that is far more lasting than had the parent done the job for them. Helicopter parents are failing their children by not allowing for this process to unfold.
But many of my clients – particularly those born when helicopter parenting became vogue – have come into adulthood without a sense of self-efficacy so needed in life. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the Bernie Sanders and AOC’s and Elizabeth Warrens of the world are so appealing to a young generation of Americans who want everything given to them?
No wonder at all.
The problem is that no amount of government, no amount of “free” stuff, can ever instill in us the inner strength and determination needed to make the world a better place.
Developing inner strength is a function of self-validation.
Validation means to express understanding and acceptance of another person’s internal experience, whatever that might be. Validation does not mean you agree or approve. Validation builds relationships and helps ease upset feelings. Knowing that you are understood and that your emotions and thoughts are accepted by others is powerful. Validation is like relationship glue.
Self-validation is accepting your own internal experience, your thoughts, and your feelings. Self-validation doesn’t mean that you believe your thoughts or think your feelings are justified. There are many times when you will have thoughts that surprise you or that do not reflect your values or what you know is true. You will also have feelings that you know are not justified. If you fight the thoughts and feelings or judge yourself for having them, then you increase your emotional upset. You will also miss out on important information about who you are as a person.
Self-validating will help you accept and better understand yourself, which leads to a stronger identity and better skills at managing intense emotions. Self-validation helps you find wisdom.
But it isn’t easy.
To get there, you must engage in reflection, which nowadays is a lost art. Increasingly fewer of us stop to reflect upon how we are in the world, relying instead on others to tell us. The problem with that is no one will ever be as brutally honest in pointing out your blind-spots as, say, a loving parent might do.
Step One: Be Present and Reflect
Reflection requires that you be present, in the moment, at ease, at peace and in place where you can be brutally honest with … you. To be present means to ground yourself and not dissociate, daydream, suppress, or numb your emotions. Being present means listening to yourself.
Feeling the pain of sadness, hurt, and fear is challenging and difficult. But avoiding emotions often results in quite negative consequences. They have a tendency of building and building until they boil over in rage and depression (which is rage directed inwardly).
Accepting your emotions deprives them of their power. Even anger, perhaps the most powerful emotion next to love, is a good thing if properly channeled. And, once accepted, loses its power over you. Acceptance allows emotions to pass and will aid in the building of resiliency. And resiliency is the first step toward “I know I can, I know I can.”
Step Two: Be Truthful
I advise my clients to “tell the truth as fast as you can.” This means that for reflection to work – to really do the heavy lifting of resiliency – you must learn to accurately label your emotions. Take anger: perhaps in upon reflection, you arrive at what actually triggered it. You find the precipitating event. Maybe you reflect on the ways you feel the anger in your body and consider the actions that go with it.
When you observe and then accurately describe your internal experience, you do not interpret or guess or make assumptions. You would say, “I feel angry, and it started yesterday after my friend canceled lunch. I sense tightness in my stomach, so maybe there is fear as well.”
Saying, “I am a total loser, and no one wants to spend any time with me,” is to be untruthful with yourself. And falsehoods tend to build and boil over. By remaining truthful – by telling the truth as fast as you can – you are (viola!) engaging in self-validation! You build trust in yourself — you as the one person in this world who will always tell you the truth.
Step Three: If all else fails, GUESS
Sometimes you cannot be sure what you are feeling or thinking. In these situations, try saying something like, “If someone else were in this situation, they would probably feel sad. Am I sad?”
Take a moment and guess at it. If you want to hide, maybe you are feeling shame. Maybe you are thinking shameful thoughts. You can notice where you feel body sensations: fear, for example, is often felt in the throat. If you are feeling fear, maybe you are thinking scary thoughts. Guessing your emotions and thoughts based on the information you have will help you learn more about yourself.
Step Four: Remember that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it!
Sometimes you will have thoughts and feelings that are based on events which have happened before. Maybe you are afraid when people argue, because, in the past, arguments led to your being hurt. Validate yourself by saying, “It’s acceptable and understandable that I am afraid of arguments, because when I was young, my parents would hurt each other during arguments.”
Maybe somewhere in your “miserable past” (I am thinking of Julie Andrews singing these words in The Sound of Music) you encountered a similar situation and, without the skills of adulthood, retreated into pure emotion. Think about those times. Relive them and in doing so, isolate the feelings. Then, go back to Step One.
Step Five: Get Over It and Normalize
Everyone has emotions. No one is happy all the time. It is normal to feel sad, angry, hurt, or ashamed. After all, when your friends have these emotions, you (as the good friend that you are), leap to the first opportunity to tell them, “hey, you’re not so bad. I think you’re wonderful.”
Why not tell yourself the same thing? Remember the words of Carl Jung:
“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ — all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself — that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness — that I myself am the enemy who must be loved — what then?”
If you are sad because you didn’t get a job you wanted, remember that others would be sad if that happened to them. Check out whether what you are feeling is what most other people would experience, and validate those feelings as normal, even if you don’t like experiencing them.
Step Six: Engage in what I call “Radical Genuineness”
Be you. As mentioned above, never lie to yourself. Do not pretend to be someone you are not, because in so doing you are rejecting who you are. This is one of the highest levels of invalidation.
Remember this: who you are is different from what you do. You are not your behavior. This notion will free you to change some of your behaviors and perhaps alleviate some of your suffering. The alcoholic can wallow in self-pity and condemn himself for being just that, an alcoholic. But if he were to stop and say, “perhaps I am not, not an alcoholic, but rather someone who has a problem with alcohol,” then maybe he could step out of himself and address the behavior while knowing that he is not his behavior. He, his true self, is something else altogether. Does that make sense?
Concluding Thoughts
Self-validation is one of the critical steps for living with intense emotions. It is part of forming relationships and thriving. Practice and more practice will help you self-validate more easily.
From the time we are born, we need validation. Loving parents offer consistent validation to their children, validating their feelings, their perceptions, their gifts and talents, their form of intelligence, their interests, their kindness, caring, and intuition. You are very fortunate if you received this kind of validation from your parents as you likely learned to do this for yourself from their role modeling.
I know that self-validation is not only possible, but absolutely necessary to feel content, inwardly peaceful, secure, worthy, and have loving relationships with others.
Stop judging yourself or, at the least, comparing yourself to some unimaginably high standard. Take loving action in your own behalf: eat well, get enough sleep and exercise, speak up for yourself with others without blame, create a balance between work and play, move yourself toward doing work you love, and so on.
You will discover yourself feeling better and better about yourself and needing less and less validation from others as you take these steps.
