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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> Emotions and feelings are always "valid", in the sense that they are a natural consequence of events and prior conditioning.

If “validating” someone’s emotions comes down to simply saying that, yes, I agree you felt that way, then I suppose that’s true.

But when people talk about validating other people’s emotions it implies that they’re saying the emotional response was valid for the circumstances.

I have someone in my extended family who has a strong tendency to catastrophize and assume the worst. When she was in a relationship with someone who constantly validated her emotions and reactions it was disastrous. It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior.

There’s a hand wavey, feel good idea where we’re supposed to believe everyone’s lived experience and emotions are valid, but some people have problems with incorrect emotional reactions. Validating these can become reinforcing for that behavior.

I’m not saying we should start doubting every emotional reaction or white knighting everything, but it’s unhealthy to take a stance that validating other people’s emotions is de facto good.

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I quite like the definition on Wikipedia:

> Emotional validation is a process which involves acknowledging and accepting another individual's inner emotional experience, without necessarily agreeing with or justifying it, and possibly also communicating that acceptance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_validation

It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the emotions, and trying to justify or prove them right. But this is quibbling over semantics; I think we both agree that challenging someone is sometimes the kindest thing to do.

I understand the academic concept, but the word "necessarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that definition.

In real human conversation, when someone is expressing an emotion they aren't looking for other people to confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion. That's not even a question up for debate. They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a valid response to the situation.

The overly academic definition doesn't reflect how people communicate in the real world.

There's also a factor of consistency over time: It's no big deal to go along with someone venting from time to time, but when someone you're close to is overreacting to everything and having unreasonable emotional reactions all the time, validating those emotions consistently is going to be viewed as an implicit endorsement.

> It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the emotions, and trying to justify or prove them right.

Not in this case. Just going along with it.

The emotional world is vast. From what I hear here, there is a collapsing of a couple things all under 'validation'.

Emotional processing, in my experience, is completely separate from action. I hear that your family member had her actions validated - what she decided to do.

An emotion itself can be complex, scary and counter-intuitive. In my experience, always valid - but that doesn't mean you have the right reasons. It's often very difficult to get the right environment to actively explore where an emotion is coming from - purely because of the reactions in other people - which try to suppress, deflect, minimize, etc.

Strangely, simply agreeing or validating someone's outcome is actually a way of minimizing or deflecting the scary expression. Let's not go deeper, let's not figure out where this is coming from - you just go with your gut and act.

Getting to the root of an emotion can come in waves and many iterations. It can be incredibly useful to try and completely unhook action from it.

I've had very strong emotions from events that were almost always "right emotion, wrong reason/story" and I've slowly corrected the 'why' multiple times over.

A lot of those corrections took removing people from my life that made it hard to feel or have access to those difficult emotions.

I wonder if you value that family member or just the idea of them. Value them only when they're 'stable'? Want to get in the muck with them to find where instability comes from? It's okay to not. It's less okay IMO to stay connected to someone you require change from. If you don't like behavior, say it and leave/create much space. Give them agency to choose, agency to fail, agency to be someone you don't like, agency to not be okay.

> I hear that your family member had her actions validated - what she decided to do.

A lot of people in this comment thread are trying to rewrite this situation. That's not what happened.

The problem was that she would have a strong emotional reaction to something and her partner would go along with it: Validate her emotions, offer comfort, not question the validity of responding that way.

This is the problem with the overly abstract notion of validating emotions without endorsing them. If you consistently "validate" the way someone is feeling even when it's obviously harming them, you're not actually helping. You're implicitly agreeing and condoning.

> Validate her emotions, offer comfort, not question the validity of responding that way. IDK if anything here counts as a good container for emotion.

'validate' is very ambiguous. 'comfort' is very different from presence. It can actually be a way of invalidating funnily enough. 'not question' has a lot going on.

I definitely hear a lot of enablement in your example. It sounds like she is better off without that.

> This is the problem with the overly abstract notion of validating emotions without endorsing them. If you consistently "validate" the way someone is feeling even when it's obviously harming them, you're not actually helping. You're implicitly agreeing and condoning.

I agree here. Validate itself is a loaded term, especially in the tech world. It sounds like it implies correctness. Maybe I'm onboard with just a need for 'emotional presence' over 'validation'.

Validation can slide into enablement. Challenge can slide into invalidation. Presence is the impossible one. Having someone you can openly explore an emotion, even just say it all without evoking a fear or anger response, a validation or invalidation response from. Let's it just hang in the air without reaction. Let's it exist without adding distance or withdrawing connection. Have endless curiosity.

I do think I am onboard with validation being a more dangerous term. I get its origin/concept - maybe trying to combat the amount of invalidation in the world but it's ironic to see how invalidating the wrong kind of validation can be.

I've clearly struck a nerve with how many people arrived in this comment thread to project different scenarios on to the situation, as well as all the different and conflicting definitions of "validate emotions"

To be honest, I'm growing even more distaste for the "validating emotions" academic concept after reading some of the mental gymnastics people are doing in this thread.

You wrote

> validated her emotions and reactions

But in other instances in this thread I am not so sure each time you mention her emotions you are talking about her feelings, distinct from her actions or interpretations. There is a difference between anger (the emotion), aggression (waving hands, loud voice etc), and physical contact (undirected against objects, directed at objects, against self, against others). Maybe you are “striking nerves” since it’s not always clear which one you are referring to in terms of her “validation”. And these distinctions are not academic.

> To be honest, I'm growing even more distaste for the "validating emotions" academic concept after reading some of the mental gymnastics people are doing in this thread.

(chiming in)

It's not academic, but practical. For me, these skills have been immensely helpful for navigating both my own emotions and those of others. My relationships improved quite a bit once I started using these skills. I'm closer to more people, I can get to depth more quickly and more safely with new people, and me and those close to me are all growing/healing more quickly because we can meet our emotional needs while also gradually working to reshape those needs.

To me, "validation" is about addressing someone's actual underlying emotional needs. But it still leaves space for disagreeing with the interpretation/perception of what happened. My own saying is that we should "accept our emotions, but not always accept the story they are telling us".

> as well as all the different and conflicting definitions of "validate emotions"

What mental gymnastics do you see?

> They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a valid response to the situation.

Which is what the whole "empathy movement" of recent years seems to emphasize. The problem is that when empathy is unmoored from the objective good, this can become scandalous (not in the sense that it causes outrage, but in the older sense that it encourages evil). Not every response is a valid response. You must be able to identify whether something is good, you must refrain from actively enabling things that are bad, but you must discern whether to correct, and if so, how to correct. Not every problem is yours to correct. Busybodies think they are.

(N.b. the Catholic Church, drawing on ethical distinctions, makes distinctions between moral principle, the objectively moral status of particular acts in light of moral principles, and the pastoral needs of particular persons. So, e.g., while prostitution as a practice is roundly condemned as a matter of principle, particular prostitutes may be treated gently. This is especially true if he/she expresses remorse for the way he/she has lived his/her life (the parable of the prodigal son comes to mind).)

This is a bit of a difficult stance to take if, like me, you don't think that there is an objective good or an objective moral status.

If there is no objective good, should I also share your view?

> confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion

This is not emotional validation; nobody wants to be told something they can decide for themselves. Instead, they want to hear that it is okay to feel said emotion. When venting to someone, one doesn't want to hear "I understand that you feel that way", they want to hear "I understand why you feel that way". The former is a dismissal (taking the guise of a validation) and the latter is a validation. "I don't get why you feel $EMOTION about this" is the ultimate emotional sucker punch of invalidation from an active listener even though it necessarily implies said confirmation that they feel $EMOTION.

> They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a valid response to the situation.

Notably, "sharing" the emotions is not the only way to validate them; I do not have to feel (or even understand) one's sadness for their sadness to be valid. The second part is the only thing they're looking for and it is very unlikely to be false given the appropriate context. From another comment, "the emotional response was valid for the circumstances" is accurate when one understands "the circumstances" to include the life experiences that cause them to have such an emotional response from something that doesn't trigger the same emotions in oneself.

> overreacting to everything and having unreasonable emotional reactions all the time

There are healthy avenues for expressing such emotions as well as unhealthy ones. Validating the emotional response to something is precisely what will allow the person feeling the emotions to calm down and decide on actions that will benefit their situation. If they are invalidated, they will instead spend effort seeking that validation.

> Just going along with it.

Well, if "it" is referring to behaviors and attitudes, then there's an obvious problem (in all likelihood) but that's also distinct from emotional validation. As I said in my other comment in this thread, one can logically say "it's okay to feel that way but you shouldn't think that". I strongly doubt that is the likes of the validation being complained about here. The negatives of the situation being described do not seem likely caused merely from emotional validation. And I would bet with near certainty that the partner they met who got them to choose healthy behaviors did so by first validating their emotions.

> Instead, they want to hear that it is okay to feel said emotion.

That's not the definition the others are using, but this seems to be a game of whack-a-mole with everyone's different ideas about what it means.

That said, I think your definition highlights the problem: By telling someone it's okay to feel the emotion, you've implicitly endorsed the response.

The situations I'm speaking about involve people developing inappropriate emotional reactions that lead to self-harm. When they surround themselves with people who do this "validate emotions" game, they're implicitly gathering consensus that it's okay to react that way. The cycle continues.

It's clear that a lot of people have picked up this idea of "validating emotions" being virtuous and good, but some times what people need is for people around them to explain that their reaction is not actually appropriate or okay.

> That said, I think your definition highlights the problem: By telling someone it's okay to feel the emotion, you've implicitly endorsed the response.

This tells me that you've not understood my meaning. One is not condoning or endorsing any behavioral response when they say the emotional response (which motivated the behavior) is valid and natural. They are distinct things and one does not necessarily follow or precede the other.

> their reaction is not actually appropriate or okay

I suspect we are talking past each other here. If "their reaction" refers to their emotions, that is not your concern; to think otherwise is wildly antisocial. If it instead refers to their actions and/or behaviors, you simply are not bemoaning emotional validation.

>> emotional response (which motivated the behavior) is valid and natural.

This is obviously nonsense. If an old woman falls over and breaks her knee, and one's emotional response is happiness - they have real problems - it's not natural or valid to feel that. If the idea of choking women to death makes one feel excited - no it's not natural or valid to feel that emotion, they have serious problems. One could go on.

Maybe you haven't met any really bad people in life - when you do you will often find they have very strange emotional responses to things.

I guess I should make explicit my general assumption that we are not talking about psychopaths given the overwhelming odds that a given individual is not a psychopath. That said...

> If the idea of choking women to death makes one feel excited - no it's not natural or valid to feel that emotion, they have serious problems.

I disagree. That is surely a natural and valid emotional response for whatever reason this hypotheticals individual feels it. Yes, they also surely have serious problems but I contend that said problems are obviously what lead to this "very strange" emotional response. Their problems are also valid, regardless of the personal damage (read: devoid of outward violence) they cause.

In this case, the response might affect their behavior such that they actually do it and that would obviously be tragic; that behavior is not valid regardless of the emotions (or lack thereof) which motivate it. Otherwise, speaking of their emotional response, I don't see a reason to condemn them for a reaction they have such little control over.

You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid.

You are just wrong on this. You want to seem sophisticated and understanding, and it's just lazy stupid thinking.

I think their definition of valid is consistently aligning with the meaning of "acknowledging and accepting someone's internal experience".

As soon as you start trying to apply normative judgements to someone's feelings, as opposed to their behaviour, you inevitably end up drawing an arbitrary and cutlurally informed line between what you or socirty think is okay and what's not. It's only a problem if I feel excited by someone else's pain if my consequent behaviour actually leads to the other person suffering. I have no direct control over my emotions, but I can control my reaction to them. You just telling me it's wrong to feel excited is futile and potentially counter-productive.

You have a serious problem != it's wrong.

If you have cancer, you have a serious problem. It's not "wrong", but it's a serious problem to be dealt with. If you are excited by the idea of an old woman hurting herself or choking a woman to death, you have serious problems to deal with.

> You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid.

We could decide on a similar word to use if you prefer. Perhaps "acceptable" from a sibling comment. Replace "valid" with "acceptable" and "validation" with "acceptance" in all of my comments and the meaning is still true; that seems to suggest I've been consistent with my use of "valid".

> You are just wrong on this.

What you mean is that we are of different minds. You try to make yours the objective one in spite of the glaringly obvious fact that opinions are not necessarily shared between differing minds.

> You want to seem sophisticated and understanding

Genuinely, what a compliment! I was just writing about my perspective. My goal with the writing was primarily to espouse my understanding of this subject while secondarily avoiding "you" statements in my comments. If you think the result sounds sophisticated and understanding, I am more than willing to believe you. If you don't think that, well, you might want to consider where those words came from because I sure noticed. (It might also help to consider that you have no means of discovering my motivation; you must have made an assumption and expressed said assumption using your own words.)

The fact of the matter is that I spent the first three decades or so of my life being extremely emotionally unstable until I (at least somewhat) learned to manage that. I suspect this "sophisticated and understanding" sense you get from my writing on this topic comes from the care with which I write about a subject so dear to me.

> they have serious problems

Or they are practicing buddhists. Or victims of trauma. The former doesn't need (but won't mind) validation, the latter does.

> That's not the definition the others are using

For what it's worth, imo this is included in the definition of "accepting" someone's feelings. You are saying "it is acceptable" to have the feelings.

What do you mean by "going along with" ? Just that it sounds suspiciously like agreeing with an opinion, rather than accepting a feeling.

You’re making a reasonable point, but I think you’re arguing against a somewhat strawmanned version of emotional validation.

You’re treating “validation” as synonymous with “agreeing the emotional response was proportionate and correct.” But that’s not really what validation means in a therapeutic or even colloquial sense. Validating someone’s emotions typically means acknowledging that the emotion is real and understandable given how that person perceived the situation. It doesn’t require you to endorse their perception as accurate.

You can say “I get why you’d feel terrified if you believed X was happening” while also gently probing whether X is actually happening. That’s still validation. What you’re describing as helpful for your family member isn’t really “invalidation” so much as reality-testing, which is a different thing and can coexist with emotional validation.

Your anecdote is doing a lot of work here. We don’t know what “constantly validated” actually looked like in practice, or what the “level headed” person was doing differently. It’s possible the first partner was just conflict-avoidant and agreeing with distorted interpretations of events, which isn’t validation so much as enabling. And the second partner may have been effective not because they said “your reaction isn’t valid” but because they offered a stable outside perspective while still being emotionally supportive.

Your broader point about reinforcement is worth taking seriously though. There are absolutely cases where excessive reassurance-seeking gets reinforced by certain responses. But the solution isn’t to tell people their feelings are wrong. It’s to validate the feeling while not automatically validating the catastrophic interpretation driving it.

I disagree. I think the overly academic isolation of "validating emotions" into something that happens without endorsing the response isn't how real people communicate.

Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid.

The idea of "validating emotions" being synonymous with saying "I agree that you feel that way" is rather infantile. Nobody needs someone to agree that the emotion they experienced is the emotion they experienced.

My partner and I have been through this cycle. Something happens, she interprets it a certain, very specific, way and then has an adverse emotional reaction.

In the early days of our relationship I would try to explain to her why her emotion doesn't 'make sense'. That just made things worse. Much worse. When she helped me understand that she needed me to validate that what she was feeling was legitimate - based on her interpretation of the events - she was able to let go and consider other interpretations.

Note that this "letting go" almost never happened in the moment, but only after the emotions abated and she had time to process the entire situation. We're talking hours, not minutes.

You’re collapsing two distinct claims. The first, that real-world communication is messier than clinical frameworks, is obviously true but doesn’t do the work you need it to. The second, that acknowledging someone’s emotional experience is “infantile” because “nobody needs someone to agree that the emotion they experienced is the emotion they experienced,” is empirically false.

People frequently do need that. That’s basically what dismissive attachment styles and invalidating environments produce: people who aren’t sure their own internal states are real or legitimate. “I can see why that hurt” lands very differently than “that shouldn’t have hurt.” The former isn’t agreeing the other party was wrong or the reaction was proportionate. It’s communicating “your inner experience makes sense to me.”

The implicit endorsement concern is real but overstated. Skilled communicators navigate this constantly. “That sounds really frustrating. What do you think was actually going on there?” validates the frustration while opening space for reexamination. The failure mode you’re pointing at is when someone only validates and never probes, which is just conflict avoidance.

The “overly academic” framing is doing some rhetorical work here. These distinctions come from observing what actually helps people versus what entrenches them. Therapists, mediators, and anyone who’s gotten good at difficult conversations know the difference intuitively. It’s not academic. It’s practical.

Thanks, you've put this in clearer and more concrete terms than I've been able to.

> Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid.

Hard no.

In the real world, when I emotionally validate my friends or partners it looks like slowing down and being there, with them, with their emotions. Being present with their emotions then often addresses the underlying emotional need: for example, to feel heard, or to acknowledge their feelings to themselves, to feel cared for and accepted, to feel like someone has their back, etc.

None of this requires that I accept their interpretation of events. And almost always, there will be space at some point for me to disagree with their interpretation. It is much much much more effective to tease apart that interpretation once their emotions have calmed down.

TL;DR: addressing someone's emotional needs (aka "validating") doesn't imply that you agree with them about their interpretation of what happened

> It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior.

I guess at the risk of splitting hairs, I think it's more likely they stopped misappropriating more than they started invalidating. I see a difference between "you shouldn't feel that way" and "I disagree with that conclusion" such that one can logically say both (well, the former being "it's okay to feel that way") in the same breath.

So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote or substitute their own reality.

The reality is simpler: It was basically "Yeah it sucks that <minor annoyance> happened at work, but sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that"

Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight

Feeling a little upset over minor annoyances is valid. Having your emotional state crumble at the slightest breeze is not. Having someone around who basically validates the latter is not good.

> So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote

For what it's worth, I imagined a scenario very similar to the one you described in this comment.

> Yeah it sucks that <minor annoyance> happened at work

This is emotional validation.

> sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that

This has nothing to do with emotional validation. It can be said before, after, or without said validation.

> Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight

It sounds like the "validating emotions" person was validating the sulking behaviors (whether in addition to validating the related emotions or not) and saying that they were only validating the emotions.

Anyway, the purpose for my replies is not to get you to agree with that person or to change your mind about the anecdote, but to offer a more meaningful distinction of what's being discussed.

Valid feelings and validation are unrelated.

The good kind of "valid" is about whether (a) your process of measuring reality might be broken to your detriment. And by extension (b) whether your communications channel with the person you are talking to is working.

Chris Voss's mirroring is basically TCP ACKs.

Then there are the people who say that they lack validation and are just narcissists looking for yes-men. Big difference on how much of your time is being wasted.

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