Validity of Validation
The word validation or to validate another is spoken a lot by therapists. It is fundamental, I would say, to the therapeutic relationship and therefore, key to therapeutic change. Yet, in my experience, it has been spoken of and presented to me many times in rather invalidating ways!
Validation is important in therapy and indeed in life, as it genuinely recognises and authentically accepts another’s experiences or emotions. Validation is vital. Validation is rare.
The child going to school, it is too noisy and too busy, and they can’t concentrate, it’s suffocating. What is the likelihood of that child being told to sit down and be quiet by the teacher? The teenager plucking up the courage to go to their doctor as they have anxiety, which is far higher than they have ever experienced. The doctor knows they are autistic, and so responds with “Well, you are autistic, so you are bound to be anxious”. The environments that are causing sensory overload and we are told “it’s not that bad” or “pull yourself together”. The social situations where we feel it is actually painful to speak, yet we are told by our parents or teachers “Come on, don’t be rude, speak up”. The adult who recently discovered themselves as autistic, manages to tell his boss in the hope he can finally get some support, but is met with “Really, you don’t look or sound autistic?”. The friend you open up to about your attention differences or OCD responds with “Oh, everyone wants a label these days”.
The counsellor who says ‘Aww poor you, and how does your autism affect you’. - This actually happened to me!
I have heard all of these statements and more, and I know that many of my clients have experienced far greater invalidations, and let’s face it - these are microaggressions.
When so much invalidation occurs, we really start to believe it. It is conditioning, and these microaggressive or invalidating words or looks get introjected. They infiltrate our armor and break us down from the inside. They aren’t just other people’s views of us anymore, oh no, they have mutated into our views of ourselves.
We lack trust in ourselves, our decisions, our emotions, our behaviours. We realise that we probably shouldn’t cry for help or bother people with our problems - we don’t want to be a burden or not be believed. We shut down, we shut up, we tell ourselves the same messages that have been told to us time and time again. We believe those messages so genuinely that they become instantaneous thoughts and behaviours.
But the problem is, the pain is real, it does still hurt.
Humans generally have a need to belong, for acceptance of varying degrees. If we didn’t belong and be accepted in our cave person minds we would be rejected by our tribe and left to be eaten by the many predators that co-existed with us. To be validated, is to be accepted. It is securing our place in that tribe. It is safety.
If we know that someone has properly listened and heard us, and authentically shows us validation and no judgement, we can start to relax, and we can trust ourselves. We won’t get eaten by that sabre-tooth tiger! With continued validation, we might feel secure enough to leave the tribe if we wanted to anyway, knowing that there is safety there.
I’ll finish as I started. True, authentic validation is rare. Not to damn my own profession, but it is rare. When people ‘try’ to validate, but it’s clear it is an act, I can tell right away. It is partly why I struggled socially growing up. People would say one thing, but it was obvious to me that they meant something else. Validity is more than just being nice. It is about truly listening and accepting another. It is accepting them with zero judgement!
The therapist that had said to me ‘Aww poor you, and how does your autism affect you’. They were clearly trying to be validating, trying to be ‘nice’. Yet it stung me with a really icky sticky gloop!
‘Poor me’? That was invalidating. ‘How does my autism affect me’? That is incredibly ignorant and invalidating. Instead of making me feel accepted, I felt deeply judged. I felt like something was wrong with me, that I was inherently wrong. I had enough of those feelings already, I didn’t need that layer from my therapist.
So I guess I am writing this for the many people out there who have felt constantly invalidated or judged. To know you are not alone.
I also write this for the many therapists to start to really question their validity of validation. Are you being genuine? Or are you just trying to be ‘nice’?
