Everyone wants to feel that their perspective is taken into account and understood. That their emotions are heard and accepted by others. Emotional validation is a vital skill to communicate understanding, empathy and acceptance in important relationships, such as those with your partner, but also with your children and friends. It can be particularly useful when someone is highly emotional. You can help the person feel heard, supported and cared for. It can also help to calm a situation down, make a person feel less agitated and help someone to regulate their emotions.

Emotional validation versus invalidation

Emotional validation is the ‘’recognition or affirmation that a person or their feelings or opinions are valid or worthwhile.’’ When we validate someone, we show them we understand where they are coming from and that their feelings and behaviour make sense in their current situation.

Emotional invalidation is when someone’s emotions are seen as not valid, irrational, and should be hidden or minimized. That their personal experience is incorrect or insignificant.

Have you or maybe someone close to you expressed that they often feel misunderstood or unheard by others? Validation may be a crucial skill to improve your relationship. 

How do I validate someone?

Validation involves three steps:

1. listening & observing

Listening to what the other person says about their feelings and what has happened. Observe their reaction and their emotions. Take a moment to stand in their shoes. 

1. reflecting

Reflecting is restating what you just heard in your own words. This involves reflecting the other person’s feelings, thoughts and behaviour, to confirm that you have correctly understood what they are trying to communicate.  

1. direct validation

Showing the other person that you understand where they are coming from in a non-judgemental way. Normalizing their reaction in the current situation. Avoid arguing, giving advice or disagreeing with them. 

Example

For example, you come home from a long hard day of work and sit on the sofa. Your partner starts shouting that they have to do all the household chores by themselves and that you don’t help them with anything around the house. A validating statement would be to say that you can imagine that it must be very frustrating that they feel like they do everything in the house, and you would like to work out how you can make it easier for them or share the responsibilities.

Things to avoid saying or doing

• Disagreeing or arguing with them – Validation doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with the other person. It just means that you understand their perspective and accept their feelings. Once you have validated them, you can discuss your own perspective at a more suitable time. 
• ‘’I’m sorry you feel that way’’ – although the intention with these sort of statements might seem good, it can be seen as a polite way of saying that someone’s feelings are not correct.
• Minimising the situation – Statements such as ‘’it could be worse’’, ‘’why do you care’’ or ‘’what’s the big deal’’ only lead to increased feelings of invalidation and agitation.
• Problem-solving or giving advice – This can be problematic when emotions are particularly high. Save this for after they feel validated and are in a place to discuss the next steps. 

Final tips

• Consider your body language or facial expression – Try to convey empathy and attentiveness with your body. Acting disinterested or fed up for example will only act against your validating statement. 
• Show curiosity – Ask questions and clarify if you understand what they meant. 
• Show empathy – Show the other person that you care about how they feel

Validation doesn’t mean your feelings don’t matter

Bear in mind that validating someone’s emotions does not mean you have to allow yourself to be treated badly by another person. If you feel like some are acting unfairly or aggressively with you, it is important to maintain your boundaries and leave the situation if necessary. 

If someone is struggling with their emotions, it can help to encourage them to seek professional help. You can find out more about online or blended treatment via NiceDay at www.nicedaynederland.nl

Overwhelming emotions can occur in all emotions: angry, happy, sadness or fear. For some people emotions are like a wave of emotions. If emotions overwhelm you, you may react more violently than you wanted. When you try to suppress emotions, it will have a opposite effect and make the emotions even more overwhelming when they do come out. If you suffer from overwhelming emotions you will probably recognize this. Why do some people have overwhelming emotions and others do not?

Causes of overwhelming emotions

Research shows that having overwhelming emotions is often a combination of your genes, the environment in which you grew up and what you experience in your life. If this is a safe supportive environment, you are less likely to struggle with overwhelming emotions later in life. However,  experiencing a trauma brings a greater chance of overwhelming emotions.

Strategies for dealing with emotions

It can be difficult for people who experience overwhelming emotions to deal with pain and sorrow. Some people develop strategies (also known as coping) that often give them relief in the short term, but are often harmful in the long run. Examples are:

• Alcohol or drug use
• Withdrawing yourself and become passive
• Being very selective in food intake or overeating
• Many varying sexual contacts
• Ruminating  or hurting themself

Do you recognize yourself in one of these strategies? Please, contact your doctor or practitioner for support.

Long and short term

People are often aware that these strategies have negative consequences in long-term, but when overwhelmed it is difficult to make a good choice. This makes it difficult to break a circle of this behavior.

How to deal with overwhelming emotions?

Learning to deal with your emotions requires some practice, because sustainable change takes time. Start with distracting yourself from the overwhelming emotions. Make a plan in advance so that you know what to do if the emotion overwhelms you. You can write this plan on a note and keep it somewhere with you. Or place it in sight, for example on a mirror. 

You can distract yourself in different ways:

• Do a chore; wash the car, water the plants, clean up, do the laundry or go to the hairdresser..
• Focus your attention on someone else. For example: call someone and ask if you can do something for them. This can be a friend or family member, but also at a volunteer organization.
• Distract your thoughts; think of a pleasant event, focus your attention on your breath or do something creative.
• One of the exercises that I personally find valuable is counting. It has a calming effect. You can count how many doors you walked through today (back and forth counts as two). But you can also count your breaths.

Want to read more?

If you want to read more about this you can purchase the book Dealing with overwhelming emotions by “Matthew Mckay, Jeffrey Wood and Jeffrey Brantley”. This is a book provides practical information about dealing with overwhelming emotions.

Emotions are very important. It gives us insight into our needs and limits, but it also gives us insight to the needs and limits of others. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the capacity to understand, manage and effectively express your own feelings, but also the ability to deal with someone else’s feelings. A reduced EQ is associated with interpersonal problems and difficulty coping with stress. It is also related to various mental problems such as depression, addiction and borderline. On the other hand, an improved EQ is associated with getting better grades at school, strong relationships with others and more satisfaction in life. You can subdivide EQ into five components:

• Self-awareness: knowing what we feel and why we feel that way.
• Self-regulation: being able to express our feelings in the correct way.
• Motivation: the internal endeavour to change how we feel and express ourselves.
• Empathy: being able to empathise with someone else’s emotions and seeing the world from their perspective.
• Social skills: being able to communicate effectively and build a good relationship with others.

Train your emotional intelligence

Intelligence is partly genetically determined, but it is not all about genetics! Just like your IQ, you can also train your emotional intelligence. You can do this in different ways.

Awareness and recognition of emotions

During the day, keep track of which positive and negative emotions you have felt, how strong you felt them and why you felt them. Also notice when someone else has certain emotions and whether you can recognize them. You can even give this feedback to someone else. It can be very nice to acknowledge someone’s feelings. Saying “I see you are feeling sad …” or “I notice that you are angry.” can mean a lot to someone!

Listen, acknowledge and act on emotions

Emotions are a signal. For example, there may be a need for change because you are not comfortable with something. Many people find it difficult to express frustrations, for example. If you do not do this, it often means that borders are being crossed. Getting angry and expressing it is a way to respond to the situation, but in this way you are crossing the boundaries of someone else. Try to practice dealing with a situation assertively! This gives a lot of satisfaction.

Put yourself in someone else’s shoes

We often think and act from our own perspective, because that is what we know. But can you also view situations from the perspective of someone else? Would someone else have different needs and interests in a certain situation? And have different feelings than you? Every now and then take the time to think about what it would be like if you were in someone else’s shoes. Maybe you have a friend who needs help, but is not asking for help which makes you angry. Your friend on the other hand might feel terribly burdened to ask you for help. This means that in a situation people can have different emotions and thoughts!

NiceDay app

Good luck with training your emotional intelligence! In the NiceDay app, keep track of your emotions during the day and describe why you felt them. Plan an assertiveness exercise and reflect on this or think about someone else’s experience and describe this in a diary registration!