. . . if s/he uses the expression “to validate somebody’s experience.”
A person who is not in health care and who uses the expression is simply not very bright.
Even Dr. Phil makes fun of this meaningless concept of “validating experiences.”
A Mental Health Specialist Is a Quack. . .
Clarissa's Blog 
Doesn’t that just mean “believe it was real” ?
As in: I always seek mental health professionals willing to believe me that:
–my mother really was emotionally abusive and was able to be so without also engaging in overt sexual abuse (they seem to really want it to have been Gothic and gory)
–I really can do things like drive from here to New York alone without getting scared, and it is not because I do not know how to estimate relative danger but because I am competent
–career success does not have to bring denial and repression with it, at least not for me
–my intellectual orientation does not mean I am devoid of feeling
–I do not view research as an onerous obligation, it is what I came into the profession for … “teachers,” with teachers’ priorities are K-12 people and it is a different career, a professor has rather different interests and priorities
–and finally, that I am not imagining all of this, it is as real as anything
I think a lot of mental health practitioners assume the clients are liars, devious, deluded, incompetent, etc. and that this is why the importance of their actually believing the clients’ experiences are real has come to the fore.
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The mental health specialists who make the clients feel doubted, deluded or icompetent are definitely quacks. I’m really sorry you had to experience this because with the kind of abuse that you underwent this had to be extremely damaging. The programs that prepare these specialists in this country are bizarrely bad. Whenever I hear what it is they are teaching , my hair stands on end.
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\ Doesn’t that just mean “believe it was real” ?
I’ve always understood the expression in this way too.
I suspect Dr. Phil thinks clients need “deal with your own lies to yourself” approach from a specialist. That they should be challenged, not supported as a rule. And, may be, in most cases it is so, but not always.
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I don’t object to the idea that people’s experiences are real to them. But I am a philologist and I believe in being careful with words. This cloying, meaningless verbiage signals to me that the “specialist” will bury everything under a barrage of words that sound important but don’t really transmit anything. Needless jargon conceals lack of expertise.
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Yes, Dr. Phil believes this, but he is entertainment not therapy. He’s a reality show that does pseudo-therapy, interventions of a sort. There are people who lie to themselves but the question is why they need to do this, and calling them liars will not help.
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Of course, it’s a show. But there was an episode last week where a genuinely mentally ill person came on and Dr. Phil managed to get him kind of stable and talking. I would have already exploded and trashed that guy out because he was so annoying but Dr. Phil managed to get through to him. I kind of respected that because many people are watching and it’s good to see a mentally ill yet very functional person treated with kindness.
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Well, that is indeed good!
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I think a legitimate use of this phrase is when a student says to me: “It was a validating experience when you told me you took nine years to solve a math problem once. I don’t feel so bad that it took me seven hours to finish my homework assignment now.”
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