V is for Validation

L is for the way you look at me…

O is for the only one I see...

V is ve-...record scratch

I want to talk about a different “V” in love—V is for Validation.

Because what is love, really, if not the ability to see someone fully, to hear them, to acknowledge their emotions and experiences? Validation is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to communicate love. It’s a way of saying, “I care about the way you feel because I care about you.” It’s not about agreeing, fixing, or offering solutions—it’s about creating a space where someone’s emotions are allowed to exist without judgment.

Validation is seriously SO powerful and SO simple—and yet, SO frequently overlooked. The simple act of validating someone’s feelings or experience can convey love, safety, care, and compassion. It can build unity, diffuse an argument, calm a nervous system, and bridge emotional gaps between people. It’s such a small act, and yet it has the power to heal, to repair, to soften, and to strengthen. Validation can be the difference between someone feeling completely alone and someone feeling deeply seen.

So why don’t we do it? If validation is so simple, why isn’t it second nature? Why do we instinctively default to other responses—fixing, defending, explaining, dismissing—when validation is so often what’s needed most?

I think the answer is twofold. First, many of us never really learned how to validate others, because we didn’t grow up experiencing consistent validation ourselves. And second, validation asks us to sit in discomfort—our own and others’—without rushing to make it go away. That’s not easy. But it’s essential.

What is Validation?

Validation is the process of hearing, understanding, and expressing acceptance of another person’s emotional experience. These three steps are the foundation of real connection, and without them, conversations can quickly veer into invalidation—whether we mean to or not.

Hearing: The first step is simple, but we often get it wrong: just listen. Not listen to respond. Not listen to fix. Just listen. This means putting down your phone, making eye contact, and focusing on what the person is saying—without interrupting, dismissing, or immediately offering your perspective.

Understanding: Understanding means trying to step into their emotional experience and ask: Where is this feeling coming from? What might have sparked it? It’s not about whether you would feel the same way—it’s about recognizing that, given their perspective, their emotions make sense.

Expressing Acceptance: This is where validation happens. Once you’ve listened and understood, you communicate back that their feelings are real and worthy of acknowledgment. Simple phrases like:

• “That sounds really frustrating.”

• “I see why you feel that way.”

• “You're really hurt by that.”

…can be incredibly powerful. These statements don’t solve anything—but that’s the point. People don’t always need solutions. They need to be heard.

Why We Struggle to Validate

When someone comes to us with a problem, our instinct is usually to fix it. Someone vents about a bad day at work, and we immediately suggest setting better boundaries. A friend expresses loneliness, and we jump in with advice about how they should join a club or put themselves out there more. A partner shares frustration, and we respond with, “You should do something about it.” We do this because we genuinely want to help. But the thing is—it’s not about us.

More often than not, the need to fix someone’s problem isn’t actually about them at all—it’s about our own discomfort with emotions. When someone is upset, anxious, or struggling, we feel that discomfort rising inside of us. We don’t like seeing someone we care about in distress. It makes us anxious, unsettled—maybe even powerless. And so we rush to make it stop, to smooth it over, to make it go away. We offer solutions, not necessarily because the other person needs them, but because we need to relieve our own discomfort.

Think about what happens when someone cries in front of you. Do you immediately try to calm them down? Do you say, “Don’t cry,” or “It’s going to be okay”? That response isn’t for them—it’s for you. Sitting with someone in their pain, without trying to change or fix it, is uncomfortable. And as humans, we are wired to avoid discomfort, so we do whatever we can to make it disappear. But when we try to fix someone’s emotional experience, the unintentional message we send is, “You weren’t capable of figuring this out yourself,” or worse, “Your emotions are too much for me.” Even though we mean well, what we’re actually doing is invalidating them.

Beyond discomfort, many of us also struggle to validate others because we’ve never truly experienced emotional validation ourselves. If your own emotions were regularly dismissed, ignored, or minimized, you likely internalized the belief that emotions aren’t to be acknowledged—they’re to be controlled, pushed aside, or solved. Maybe when you expressed frustration, fear, or sadness as a child, you were told, “You’re fine,” or “Stop crying,” or “You’re overthinking it.” Maybe the people around you rushed past your emotions, urging you to be strong, move on, or stop making a big deal out of things. When you grow up in an environment where emotions are treated as inconveniences rather than experiences to be acknowledged, it feels normal to do the same thing to others.

This is how the cycle of invalidation continues. Not because we don’t care, but because we don’t know any other way. If you never received validation, how would you know how to give it? If your parents minimized your emotions, why wouldn’t you instinctively do the same? The good news is that this cycle can be broken. By becoming aware of your own discomfort with emotions, recognizing where it comes from, and making the choice to respond differently, you can shift the pattern. Instead of rushing to smooth over someone’s emotions, you can pause. Instead of offering a solution, you can sit with them in their experience. Instead of needing to fix, you can simply be there.

Validation is not about doing—it’s about being. And in a world where so many of us grew up never feeling truly heard, choosing to validate is choosing to change everything.

Validation is Not Agreement

One of the biggest misconceptions about validation is that it means agreeing with someone’s emotions. It doesn’t. You don’t have to believe that someone’s reaction is logical, proportionate, or justified in order to validate the fact that they are experiencing it. Feelings don’t require permission to exist—they simply are. And when we acknowledge them, we aren’t endorsing or reinforcing them, we’re just recognizing the reality of what the other person is going through.

Too often, people hesitate to validate emotions because they’re afraid that doing so means they’re admitting fault or taking responsibility for causing the feeling. But validation isn’t about blame—it’s about acknowledgment. You can validate someone’s emotional experience without agreeing with their perspective, just as you can recognize that a storm is happening outside even if you don’t think it should be raining. The rain is still falling, regardless of how you feel about it.

A common example: A couple is in counseling. One partner shares that they feel deeply hurt when their spouse works late without communicating. They explain that it makes them feel lonely and confused. The other partner responds, “I can’t always control my work schedule. I can’t just drop everything to send a text.”

This response is invalidation because it immediately shifts the focus away from the emotional experience of the first partner and toward a defense of the behavior. The person expressing hurt isn’t necessarily asking their partner to quit their job or stop working late. They’re simply saying, “This affects me. This makes me feel lonely.” But instead of acknowledging that loneliness, the response dismisses it as unreasonable or inconvenient to address.

Let’s try again. A more validating response could be: “I know you feel hurt when I work late and don’t communicate. I hear that this makes you feel alone.”

Notice that this statement doesn’t involve agreement or blame. The working partner isn’t apologizing for their job, nor are they committing to changing their behavior. They are simply acknowledging what is real for their partner: that the lack of communication is creating feelings of loneliness.

This small shift in response can make an enormous difference. When someone feels heard, they are less likely to become defensive, escalate the conversation, or feel the need to convince the other person that their emotions are real. When people don’t feel the need to prove their feelings, they can begin to process them in a more constructive way. Validation de-escalates emotional tension because it removes the underlying need for someone to fight to be understood.

We see this all the time in arguments—one person expresses a feeling, and the other person immediately counters with an explanation of why that feeling is misplaced or unnecessary. “I don’t like how you spoke to me in that meeting.” “Well, I didn’t mean it that way.” “I feel hurt that you canceled our plans last-minute.” “I had no choice—I was busy.” The pattern continues, and soon, the original issue is buried under layers of justification and counterarguments.

But imagine if those same conversations went differently: “I don’t like how you spoke to me in that meeting.” “I hear that. It sounds like it didn’t sit right with you.” “I feel hurt that you canceled our plans last-minute.” “I understand that it was disappointing. I can see why that would be frustrating.”

This approach doesn’t mean you’re taking the blame or admitting wrongdoing. It simply shows the other person that their feelings are recognized, which allows the conversation to move forward rather than getting stuck in a battle over whether they are allowed to feel a certain way.

Validation is not an agreement contract. It doesn’t mean you endorse someone’s perspective, nor does it mean you have to change your behavior. It just means you care enough to care about what they’re feeling. And often, that alone is what people need most.

The Rabbit Listened

My daughter has a children’s book that we read often. It’s called The Rabbit Listened. I saw the book at a friend's house and she mentioned it very good. Beyond seeing a rabbit on the cover, I knew nothing about the story. The first time I read it to her, I cried.

The story follows a young child who builds "something amazing"—only for it to come crashing down. The child is devastated. One by one, different animals come in with solutions. The chicken wants to talk about it. The bear wants to get angry. The elephant wants to fix it. But the child isn’t ready for any of that and turns the animals down. And so, one by one, the animals leave.

Until the rabbit comes.

The rabbit says nothing. It just sits quietly next to the child. Eventually, the child asks the rabbit to "Please stay with me". And because the rabbit stays—because it listens—the child eventually talks, expresses their feelings, and, in time, begins to rebuild.

This book is a beautiful, simple illustration of the power of validation. We don’t always need to fix. We don’t always need to offer advice. Sometimes, people just need to know they’re not alone in their feelings.

The Enemy of Validation: The Word “But”

Adding “but” to a validating statement is like taking an eraser to someone’s emotional whiteboard. It completely wipes away whatever came before it, leaving only what follows. When someone hears “I understand you’re upset, but…” their brain registers everything after the but as the real message. The validation that came before it? Gone. It’s the emotional equivalent of giving someone a gift and then immediately taking it back. It shifts the focus from the person’s emotional experience to your perspective, your reasoning, your defense.

We do this all the time, often without realizing it:

• “I hear you’re upset, but I didn’t mean it that way.” = “I didn’t mean it that way.”

• “I can see why you’re hurt, but I think you’re overreacting.” = “I think you’re overreacting.”

• “I understand you’re frustrated, but I was just trying to help.” = “I was just trying to help.”

Its understandable to think that we’re validating while using but. We think that by saying, “I hear that you’re hurt,” before explaining our side, we’ve done the work of acknowledging the other person’s emotions. But...that’s not how it lands. The moment we introduce but, we’re telling them that their emotions are secondary to our explanation. It subtly implies, “Your feelings are real, but they aren’t valid enough to stand on their own without being corrected or explained away.”

So what can we do instead? Sometimes a simple fix is to replace “but” with “and.” The word and allows two things to be true at the same time. Instead of negating someone’s emotions, it keeps space open for both perspectives:

• “I hear that you’re upset, and I didn’t mean it that way.”

• “I understand why this hurt you, and I want to explain what I was thinking.”

Even better, the most powerful thing we can do is just stop at validation alone and resist the urge to follow it with an explanation or justification:

• “I hear that this made you feel hurt.”

• “I can see why that would upset you.”

That’s it. No qualifiers, no debate, no need to defend or correct. Zip. Just a simple acknowledgment that leaves space for their emotions to exist.

This is hard stuff! It requires us to resist our natural urge to make sure our side is heard or to clarify our intent. But in most cases, the person expressing hurt already knows you didn’t mean to upset them. They don’t need a justification—they need to know you care that they’re hurting.

The Consequences of Emotional Invalidation

Emotional invalidation is more than dismissive—it’s profoundly damaging. When someone’s feelings are ignored, minimized, or criticized, it sends the message: “Your emotions don’t matter.” Over time, this erodes self-trust, disrupts emotional regulation, and strains relationships.

When invalidation happens repeatedly, people begin to question not just their emotions but their entire sense of self. Being told, “You’re overreacting” or “It’s not a big deal” can lead to deep self-doubt, making it harder to trust one’s own instincts. Suppressing emotions doesn’t make them disappear; instead, they resurface later—sometimes in overwhelming or explosive ways. Without validation, people struggle to process and regulate their emotions, which can contribute to anxiety, depression, and emotional instability.

Research has linked chronic emotional invalidation, especially in childhood, to significant long-term distress. Many individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD), for example, report early experiences of persistent invalidation, which contributes to their difficulty regulating emotions. Tragically, their chronic heightened emotional responses often lead to even more invalidation, creating a painful and self-perpetuating cycle.

Invalidation damages relationships, too. Trust and connection depend on feeling seen and understood, and when people consistently feel dismissed—whether by a partner, friend, or parent—they become less likely to open up. Small, seemingly harmless phrases like “It’s not worth getting upset over”, “I think you're worrying about it too much”, or “Sorry that hurt your feelings, but that's not what I meant” can chip away at trust, leaving people feeling isolated.

There is a lasting impact of invalidation experienced during childhood. When emotional invalidation starts in childhood, its effects can last a lifetime. Children rely on caregivers to help them understand and regulate their emotions, but when they are repeatedly told to “calm down,” “stop crying,” or worse, “toughen up”, they internalize the belief that emotions should be hidden, not expressed. This can show up in adulthood as emotional suppression, low self-worth, and difficulty trusting their own feelings.

Major family events—like divorce, illness, or conflict—can be especially damaging when they are shrouded in silence. Children learn that emotions aren’t meant to be talked about, that opening up is unnecessary—or even wrong. Instead of learning how to process their feelings, they may feel pressure to “just move on” and avoid talking about difficult experiences.

Parents often believe they are protecting their children by downplaying emotions or shielding them from pain. But instead of "resilience", this teaches them that emotions should be controlled or ignored. This impossible expectation to suppress feelings creates frustration and self-blame, making it harder for them to trust their own emotional experiences as adults.

Unfortunately, the cycle of invalidation often continues into future relationships. Adults who grew up without emotional validation are likely to unconsciously repeat those patterns, struggling to provide validation to their own children, partners, and friends. Someone who was taught to suppress sadness may struggle to comfort a grieving friend, defaulting to phrases like, “They are in a better place now,” rather than offering true empathy. Someone who was punished for expressing anger may put up their defenses when a partner shares frustration, seeing it as an attack instead of an emotional experience to acknowledge.

We are able to break the cycle. The good news is that while invalidation has lasting consequences, its effects are not irreversible. The cycle can be broken through self-awareness and intentional change. By recognizing how invalidation has shaped our own responses, we can make different choices—for ourselves and for others. We can pause instead of dismiss, listen instead of fix, and validate instead of minimize.

Validation isn’t just a gift we give to others—it’s a way to rewire patterns of the past and build healthier, more compassionate connections. It doesn’t require agreement or approval; it simply acknowledges the truth of someone’s emotional experience. And that acknowledgment alone can be profoundly healing.

Validation as the Antidote

While emotional invalidation can leave deep scars, validation provides a powerful antidote. It’s more than just a technique—it’s a way of being present, of showing someone that their feelings are real, important, and worthy of attention. Validation doesn’t erase past pain, but it can begin to repair the damage caused by years of being dismissed or misunderstood. It fosters connection, strengthens relationships, and helps people develop a healthier relationship with their emotions.

At its core, validation creates a safe space where emotions are allowed to exist without judgment. It doesn’t require agreement, solutions, or approval. Instead, it says, “I see you. I hear you. Your feelings matter because you matter.” This acknowledgment alone can be transformative, offering comfort and reassurance that emotions—no matter how complex or intense—are valid.

Validation is also a bridge. It closes the emotional distance created by invalidation and invites trust and connection back into relationships. When someone feels validated, they know their emotions are not only recognized but also understood. This fosters emotional safety, which is essential for meaningful relationships. For example, when a partner says, “I hear that this situation made you feel frustrated, and I understand why it’s upsetting,” they’re not solving the problem or debating its significance—they’re simply making space for their partner’s emotional reality. Over time, moments like these build trust, strengthen bonds, and create a foundation for deeper connection.

Final Thoughts

Validation is more than a skill—it’s an act of love. When you validate someone’s emotions, you’re saying, “I care about the way you feel because I care about you.” It’s a simple yet profound way to strengthen relationships, build trust, and remind someone of their inherent worth.

Validation doesn’t require you to fix, agree, or have all the answers. It’s about being present, listening with intention, and creating space for emotions to exist without judgment. In those moments, you’re not just acknowledging their feelings; you’re affirming their importance in your life.

It’s not always easy. Validation asks us to set aside our instincts to defend, explain, or solve. It challenges us to focus on connection over correction. But when we choose to validate, we offer something truly powerful: the reassurance that someone’s feelings matter because they matter.

In a world that often prioritizes being “right” over being kind, validation reminds us of what truly matters—showing up for each other with empathy, compassion, and care. It’s a choice we can make in any moment, with anyone.

Validation is incredibly powerful. It’s not about grand gestures; it’s about the quiet, consistent practice of seeing, hearing, and valuing the people around us. Doesn't that sound like the perfect way to show people you love them? ❤️