Musings on Faith and Psychology

You’re in the midst of a conflict and you find you and your loved one volleying back and forth debate points. You make a good point. They acknowledge with a “yes, but…” and go on to make their good point. You return the “yes, but…” and so the argument goes. While you know your good point was not really acknowledged and admitted, neither did you really validate their point.

When we interact with folks who are thinking/acting/believing differently from ourselves, we find it easy to ignore/negate the other’s ideas because to stop and validate would cause us to miss the important point we REALLY think they need to hear.

Why does it seem that if we stop and acknowledge that we lose? Often, fights and differences are made worse because we are unable or unwilling to validate the other. Validation is communicating in verbal and nonverbal ways that we see and caringly understand–even if we disagree. We don’t validate because we are too much focused on our own ideas or too fearful that if we do validate, the other person will miss the point that we want to make.

Counselors often have dreams and desires for their clients’ growth. We can imagine how they could be more healthy. However, our challenge is to validate pain, hurt, guilt, grief while pointing them to some better ways to live and function. “Yes, self-harm may regulate your emotions. It works. I wonder if some other ways might produce less guilt and greater comfort?”

One of the best ways to validate another to treat them as an equal. In most of our disagreements, we tend to place ourselves over others and in so invalidate their personhood.