Hi there, you're listening to Take Out Therapy, short weekly lessons about all things mental health that you can take into your life and use. No topic will go unturned. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter.
My day job is a therapist, and we don't really just tell people what to do. We listen a lot and validate and help people reach their goals. But in the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations.
Yeah, I am going to teach you about how to have a higher level and more functional, happy life. While I'm a therapist, I'm not your therapist. If you need a therapist, go get one, friend.
But listen in as I open the door to my office in an exploration of things we all struggle with. And if you have little people in the room, you might want to throw on some headphones unless they already know all the swear words. I'm grateful you're here.
Thanks for showing up. Well, hello from the studio. I am recording this on a beautiful Friday afternoon.
Me and Lily are here in the studio. She's funny. I don't know if you guys have met Lily, but she is on social media on my page.
And I really like to post pictures of my dog. So anyways, thank you for joining us today. I am looking forward to talking about this topic.
It's called validation. I don't know what I'm going to call this episode, but it'll be titled something with the word validation in it. The way I record my podcasts is I just record a whole bunch in one day.
And then I go back and like, you know, schedule them out and do all the work required to put them out. That just makes it really easy for me. And I was recording, I was doing the outline for this and I was like, ooh, this feels like really important to get out there right away.
So I was like, well, I might just, you know, release an extra one this week. So I'm not going to do that, actually. I'm just going to keep my little schedule.
It just works better that way. But I'm excited to talk with you about validation because it's kind of important. Guys, validation.
Oh my God, what is it? What even is validation? Validation is, let me see, I'm going to, you know, I have to go off the cuff and give you my own formulated definition. So I think for like validation is when you feel seen, you feel like somebody is hearing you and knows what the hell you're talking about. Right.
And it, and, and like how you feel like they get, they get it. And validation is actually something that comes back to you. And so when we don't get validation, it's like, you don't feel like people understand you or somebody who's understanding your feelings or like seeing you who you really are and, and, and knowing you basically and hearing you frankly, right.
Have you ever like talked to somebody about something that was happening in your life and you went away from the conversation? Like what the what? That was not what I was hoping for. So I'll just tell you, you did not get validation. Validation is connection.
It's just like connection with other people, which, you know, is kind of important. Validation is like when we, it just, when we connect, it feels so good. Right.
When we feel understood, we're just like, oh my God, this feels so, it's like, it doesn't make things better, but it just feels good. Right? You feel like you are human and the person in the room with you cares about you, loves you and they are human too. So that's why validation is kind of a fad, right? It's kind of a fad.
It's kind of something that's catching on you guys. Validation is kind of important. It's very important.
If you want to be in relationships, I would recommend learning about validation, but I'm going to help you in this episode. I'm actually, I'm giving you like a little, um, information that I read in a book. And so the book is I Hear You by Michael Sorensen.
And the full title is I Hear You, the surprisingly simple skill behind extraordinary relationships. So I'm going to give you some information about validation that like you guys, I'm not an inventor of information. Some really smart people have already done all the hard work to provide us with amazing information about many topics.
And it just so happens I'm nerdy enough to want to bring them to you. So validation is really important. It's about connection and it's about healing you guys, right? This is something I always say.
It takes 18 years to grow up and like 40 more to get over it. Right. We have healing to do.
And if we can connect with other people and feel understood and seen and heard, Oh my God, it's so helpful. Right. But people don't sometimes know about validation because they've never seen it.
Right. Or like that wasn't how things were in their house growing up. So it hasn't been modeled.
They don't know how to do validation or like they don't even know what it is. Right. And then sometimes you guys, people don't use validation because they're just not being insightful in their relationships.
And so sometimes relationships can get really like a competition and a fight of like, no, I'm tired. No, but I worked all day. So like, I'm tired.
But I can't do the dishes because I worked harder than you and I'm more tired. Right. And we've all had that conversation.
So that's not validation. It's not helpful and it's not really being insightful in our relationship. So if we're not paying attention, we get into this thing where we don't validate each other.
Right. And, and our ego puts us there because our ego is very competitive and it protects us. Right.
Because nobody's going to fuck with us when we have our ego, right. So you just have to understand like validation sometimes doesn't really come naturally. It doesn't, it's not like your first go to, um, and it takes practice.
So this guy, Michael Sorenson, I don't know him, you guys look him up. I hear you by Michael Sorenson. He wrote this great book and I read it and he just really, um, expresses what validation is and how to do it.
And he does it in this nice, succinct way. So the first step in validating, like if you want to start to validate people, if you want to hear, here's a good way to put it. If you would like to receive validation, you need to model it.
Let's just say that. Okay. If you want to change your course in terms of, are you in a relationship in which you don't feel seen or heard? Or are you like in a relationship with your kid in which you do not do the best job of just seeing and hearing and, and feeling how things are for them, right? This is really important when it comes to teens too, right? Is just to validate them, just to validate them.
I just said yesterday, my new motto is unconditional positive regard and I'm not joking. Like it's okay, you're good. That sounds great.
Right? So the first step to validation is just like to listen. So PS, like put your cell phone down. If you're in a relationship and you're having a conversation because you cannot listen, you can hear, yes, yes.
You can, you can hear, you cannot listen to someone much less listen empathically, which is the first step in validation if you're on your cell phone. So put that thing down and then like, listen, like, see, look into somebody's eyes and hear what they're saying, right? When they're speaking to you so that you can be empathic. Right? And so like I could do a whole episode and I will on what empathy is, but basically like empathy is when you're willing to go in it, not just stand on the sidelines of what somebody else is experiencing.
So somebody comes to me and they're really frustrated about something. I have to be willing to join their energy level, but their frustration and feel it with them in order to have empathy. Right? That's kind of vulnerable, which is why I promised to come back to this later.
I'm writing this down, you know, so listening empathically is really necessary in order to validate somebody. Right? And the next step is just like validate the emotion that, that they are experiencing. Right? So like if you don't understand the emotion or you kind of have to guess at the emotion, just ask them like, well, how is that for you? Right? But a nice way to do this is just like figure out what the emotion that they're experiencing.
So we'll just go with like frustration and then like validate like, oh yeah, that is so frustrating. I would totally feel frustrated if my boss kept asking me to work on the weekends. Right? Like you just went there, you went there, you're empathic, you match their emotion level.
You talk about what their specific emotion is and like just to give nice justification for why, why they would feel that way. Right? Right? And then this is a really important step to validation, but offer encouragement. So what this doesn't mean is fix it.
This does not mean that is your job to now think of all the solutions and use the word should no, no, no. Offer encouragement, right? Like I know you can deal with this. Or like, what are you going to do about this? Or you've got this, right? That does not offer up any solution.
And the reason that I just think it's important to just poke in here about like why we don't fix is because it's really important. Validation is not about solution. Validation is about connection.
Okay? Validation is not about a solution. It's about connection. So everybody's problems are their own to solve, by the way.
That's okay to let other people just kind of be in their mess. It's okay. Right? We don't need to fix.
We don't have to do that. It's not empowering for other people anyway. And it's also not validating because of what it means is like, oh, I hear you.
What you got going on isn't good. And let me just help you do something about that because you probably can't handle it. Right? And that's like, that's not what we want.
It's not an intentional thing that we do. But it happens, you know? And then like, always just go back, right? After that encouragement and validate that emotion again. I would totally, yeah.
I can see why you're frustrated. You know, I'd be frustrated too. So like, it's super simple.
So listen empathically, which is a skill that takes some practice because we're kind of all over the map right now. And then validating that emotion, matching the energy, and like a justification. And then offering encouragement without fixing.
And then validating the emotion again is like an awesome method for like just experiencing validation. And also like if you validate the people in your life, you're modeling for them how to validate you. And so I'm telling you, modeling works.
If we just live the way we want to be treated, it starts to happen. And if it doesn't, then it's really easy for you to go like, hey, so maybe this relationship's not working. Yeah.
Or, or better, right? Or first, I should say, like ask for what you want. So have good boundaries and just ask somebody to do some work like, hey, so I'm kind of into this whole validation fad. Right? And I'd love for you to learn about that.
You know, I think like, and I'm just like, totally not going to go super deep here. But typical male, female roles that I see in my office, like in my, you know, in my culture, in my town, in my region. Males like to fix stuff.
And, and there's so much behind that. And it's so understandable. But what I've noticed is like females are all done with males fixing stuff for them.
Right? And so it's, it's like, that is a lot of what I see in relationships right now is like women really struggling with men that are fixers. And it's so, you know, and I always say like, it's so, the intention is love, right? When we love each other enough to help, to help fix each other's shit, like that's love, you guys, it's not bad. But we've got to get away from trying to fix each other's stuff, because it's just not empowering.
Like if I'm always, you know, like telling John what I think the solution to his, you know, trouble is, like, how's that going to be for him? Right? Like he can't solve his own problems. Like he just wants to be heard. He wants to be understood, right? He wants to feel that connection of like, shared humanity.
We're all in this together, you guys, and it's not easy. So let's like be in it together. Right? And hopefully just understand each other, and not try to change anything about each other, but just be there, understand and speak to that.
So hopefully this episode was helpful. I'm down with some validation. I really enjoy being validated.
So let me know if you liked the episode. Okay. Thanks.
This podcast is meant to be helpful, to help you learn some stuff and grow as a person, and to help me fulfill my mission of opening the doors to the therapy office a little bit wider so we can get rid of some of this stigma. Life is challenging, and we all need all the help we can get. This podcast is in no way meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I recommend therapy or coaching, regardless of whether you're struggling or not.
It can be a great way to learn about yourself so you can navigate a bit easier. I'll see you next time.
