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Key points
- A common reaction to someone's emotional sensitivity is to tell that person to "not be so sensitive" or "not overreact."
- These tactics often backfire, largely because they lack empathy and do not provide validation.
- Validating others' feelings, even when doing so doesn't seem to make sense, can go a long way toward making others feel heard.
Did you ever have someone tell you to "stop being so sensitive" or that you are "overreacting?" If so, you might have noticed that such statements often have counterproductive effects. Someone who is emotionally sensitive may, for instance, become both sad and self-conscious upon being told that they are "too sensitive." And someone who is naturally emotional may well feel a variety of negative emotional states upon being told that they are being too emotionally reactive.
A core feature of human social interactions, as I've pointed out before, pertains to the importance of validating others' thoughts and feelings. Making others feel heard, seen, and, ultimately, validated, goes a long way toward the building of trusting bonds and loving relationships. As decades of work in the field of social psychology has documented1, we often see the world quite differently from one another. Further, we often have a strong inability to empathize with others' perspectives on things when these perspectives don't match our own. Empathy does not always come naturally.
A key to positive relationships of all kinds is found in the empathic part of one's emotional intelligence2. Truly empathizing with others—by feeling and understanding their feelings—even if they don't match one's own feelings, is a critical part of validating others' inner states and, ultimately, of building strong, trusting, loving relationships.
Validation in Parenting
As a parent of a 22-year old and a 19-year old, I can definitely say that parenting is, in so many ways, near the core of life for so many of us. For so many parents, our kids and our relationships with our kids are very much at or near the top of our priority lists in life.
A common problem in relationships between parents and offspring pertains to validation—which is a common issue in relationships writ large. Picture the following phrases that you may have heard parents say to their kids across the years:
- Stop being so sensitive.
- That doesn't matter.
- Nobody cares about that.
- It's not a big deal.
- You are overreacting.
- You shouldn't be sad/mad/anxious/worried.
- You're worry about nothing.
... and so forth.
Parenting is the ultimate balancing act. On one hand, as a parent, you're teaching your kids priorities and values that can help prepare them for all of life. On the other hand, as parent, you need to make your kids feel loved, heard, appreciated, and validated. As is often the case in social relationships in general, these goals are not always easily aligned with one another.
As an example, consider a little girl whose parents buy her a colorful, unicorn-style helium balloon in New York City on a fun family outing. She just loves the balloon and is on top of the world, walking around the streets of Manhattan with this cherished prize. Suddenly, the string from the balloon slips out of her hand and she watches the unicorn balloon sadly flying up among the tops of the skyscrapers. After it disappears from sight, clearly, she will never see it again. She starts to cry. In fact, she is all-out wailing.
As a parent, you might well be inclined to tell her that it'll be fine. That losing a balloon is not a big deal. You may tell her that she is overreacting. You may tell her that she shouldn't be crying about something like this.
Of course, you're telling her all these things in the spirit of trying to build resilience and to help her see situations in a larger perspective. And doing this is an essential part of parenting. Yet there is a flip side to the situation, which pertains to the importance of validation. Making her feel the her upset is somehow "wrong" can be, in fact, quite invalidating when you think about it.
Sure, she may be 4 years old and, at the end of the day, having a unicorn balloon is not exactly the end-all in life, but to that little girl in that moment, the situation, in fact, is a big deal. It is a big deal in her thoughts and in her emotions. It is a big deal in her heart. And to dismiss this fact fully is nothing short of invalidating, no matter how well-intended such an act might be.
Teaching kids values in terms of the things that "really" matter in life while validating their thoughts and feelings is, in many ways, one of the core challenges of parenting.
In my own parenting over the years, like so many of us, I'd say that I've done (and continue to do) my best. But that said, I will say that the balance between teaching about life values and validating my kids' perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, priorities, and emotions is definitely a challenge. And I imagine that it always will be. Parenting is not always easy. And perhaps the tension between the importance of teaching values and validating one's kids' inner states is a core reason as to why this is the case.
Bottom Line
Parenting is not easy—yet it is, for so many of us, a foundational part of our everyday lives. People often care greatly about their kids, and this fact seems to be importantly rooted in our evolutionary heritage3. A common tension found in parenting pertains to the motive to teach your kids important values and skills in life while, at the same time, validating their inner states to build confidence, love, and trust in your relationships with them. Both are important. As such, next time you tell your kid that what they are worried about is stupid or doesn't matter—or that their feelings are unwarranted or that they are being overly sensitive, etc., perhaps step back a minute and think about the importance of validation in the building of solid social relationships. While you might now always see eye to eye with your kids—or see the world the same way that they do—working to empathize with them and validate their feelings and other inner states is a critical part of building healthy, trusting, and loving parent/offspring relationships. Want to make your kids feel like they matter? Validate their feelings when the opportunity emerges. The importance of genuinely validation in relationships can truly never be overstated.
References
1: Ross, L., & Nisbett, R.E. (1991). The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill.
2: Mayer, J.D., & Geher, G. (1996). Emotional intelligence and the identification of emotion. Intelligence, 22, 89-113.
3: Geher, G. (2014). Evolutionary Psychology 101. New York: Springer.
