Where did the ridiculous expression “to validate somebody’s emotions (or feelings)” even come from? I keep encountering it and it makes me cringe in vicarious shame to see people use it.
Come on, folks, even Dr. Phil made fun of the expression and dismissed it as meaningless psychobabble. Surely, you don’t want to be dumber than Dr. Phil’s intended audience. Your emotions are your own, and it is nobody’s business to proclaim them as valid or not. Nobody needs a permission to feel things.
Where it comes from is as a corrective to the idea that people should correct others’ emotions. My parents recently had this conversation, for instance:
Dad: Well, I was terrified that I would not make tenure, so…
Mom: You were certainly not terrified of that! You were doing very well and anyone could see you would make tenure, so it is impossible you could have been terrified!
Where the person refusing to recognize the emotion is going way off the point, since the conversation was not even about whether or not Dad was doing well enough or made tenure, that was determined long ago … the conversation was about how the experience had been and had started idly, about why he had made a set of decisions he made back then, to be ready for the eventuality of moving / unemployment / career change / whatever.
The point is that if you refuse to believe you kill the conversation or worse, depending on how serious the conversation is. The problem is that “validating someone’s emotions” gets misused. As in me: “I do not need a new chair, I need certain books.” Dept. head: “I understand your feelings.” That isn’t a great example but my point is that “validating feelings” for the sake of doing so does no practical good, especially when the issue is not even about feelings but about a problem that needs a solution.
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“Dad: Well, I was terrified that I would not make tenure, so…
Mom: You were certainly not terrified of that! You were doing very well and anyone could see you would make tenure, so it is impossible you could have been terrified!”
– Oh yes, very very familiar. In my case it goes as follows:
– I did not want to get married to A. but you made me. I was too young, I didn’t love him, I didn’t want to do this.
– Of course, you did.
– No, I did not. I told you then, I’ve been repeating it for the past 20 years, and I’m telling you now: I did not want to marry him.
– Of course, you did. I know you did.
Or, more recently:
– The doctor says I’m managing my diabetes very well with diet.
– You don’t have diabetes.
– Yes, I do. Hopefully, it will go away after I give birth but for now I have it.
– No, of course you don’t have it.
– Well, my doctor says. . .
– This is silly. You don’t have diabetes.
I will let everybody figure out what the goal of these endless denials of the obvious and easily demonstrable things is.
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I am not sure about the goal but effects include blocking the possibility of a real conversation, turning all attention instead to the histrionics of the reality-denier, and so on.
It is difficult to know where to draw the line on telling people what you see. I have someone with an emotional crisis right now and from the outside I believe can totally see what it is about … and if I am right it would be good news, because I think the problem has remedy. But if I speak up I will be essentially telling him how he feels … and it will be intrusive.
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“I am not sure about the goal but effects include blocking the possibility of a real conversation, turning all attention instead to the histrionics of the reality-denier, and so on.”
– Yes, and also, if you do this often enough, a person will begin to doubt everything she thinks or feels. She will lose her grounding in reality and will have to turn to the denier to tell her who she is and how she has to live.
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“I have someone with an emotional crisis right now and from the outside I believe can totally see what it is about … and if I am right it would be good news, because I think the problem has remedy. But if I speak up I will be essentially telling him how he feels … and it will be intrusive.”
– I think this really depends on the degree of closeness you have with this person. If you are very very close then this might work but if not, things become more difficult.
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Yes … key points, key ! ! !
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My “key points” comment is to your 11:02 comment … had not seen the 11:03. On the speaking up — I guess the degree of closeness is measured by how sure one can be that on really sees how they feel. In this case, there is a possibility he is really experiencing something I do not fathom …
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It’s psycho-pop language, but if it were not, it probably would not be able to communicate anything in any case, to a world dominated by psycho-pop.
Emotions are often the first indicator that something is wrong, so I like to pay attention to them. Constitutionally, I understate and under-react to most things, as does my family of origin. If it’s a life and death matter, we are a family of stoics. Therefore, when I say that something feels very, very wrong, I actually mean that I am facing an issue that is heavy indeed.
There are people who will say, “No, you are exaggerating.”
Me: “I am facing a very desperate issue indeed.”
Them: “No, you are exaggerating.”
Of course they are as entirely welcome to their feelings and beliefs as I am to my self-reliance. I’ve learned a lot of self-reliance from such people. You can see it reflected in my current lifestyle..
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Oh yes, I hear the “you are exaggerating” reproach very often, too. It is almost always followed with the promise that 20 years from now I will see that I was wrong and my interlocutors were right. This is obviously an unanswerable claim, so the discussion dies. Which is the interlocutors’ goal: covering everything up with silence lest somebody have an insight and expect change.
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A young Christian Scientist of Deal
Once said, “Although pain isn’t real
When I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin
I dislike what I fancy I feel.”
So I wonder how valid her fancied feelings were.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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