validation and empathy are closely linked in my mind..
to me, validation is another person acknowledging my individual existence. it reinforces my confidence in myself because I know that my reality makes sense to others. I think in psychology, the terminology for the communication I'm thinking of is called "mirroring". without it, or with invalidation, I feel like I'm in the Truman Show.
it's maddening to be invalidated. it's like living a perfectly normal life with somebody and one day a stranger just walks into your home and starts living there. you react appalled and run to get the other person to help you deal with the situation. when you get back, the stranger has already gone to the fridge and is making himself a sandwich. you ask your friend/partner/parent "what should we do?!". but instead of responding to your distress, that person looks at you with a look of bewilderment and tells you that you're absolutely nuts. you press on explaining that this is NOT a joke and you need their help. the other person is convinced that nobody and nothing is there and they treat you like you're wasting their time. the stranger moves in and starts living in your house and after weeks of being told that you're crazy and afraid of what that stranger will do, you begin to doubt your own perception.
whew, that was a cathartic anecdote.
validation to me is confirming and acknowledging another person's unique individual experience and it's inherent worth without judgment. it is the support that you don't even realize is supporting you until one of your pillars gets knocked down. having other people we trust believe in us helps us believe in ourselves.
with invalidation, our belief in ourself becomes challenged. "so you think you're a good person? PROVE IT." or "you are wrong and unacceptable for having that feeling." in a sense, it's an attack on the credibility of our reality. invalidation causes us to lose trust in ourselves and we lose access to our strength and our true selves. it's easy to get sidetracked when you hold another person's opinion in high regard because we can tolerate inappropriate treatment if we begin to distrust our perception - which would tell us otherwise if we were more in tune with ourselves.
empathy is the means by which validation is given. to really validate another person's experience, you would need to first try on their shoes. if you don't reach out, listen, and feel the realness of that persons experience, you haven't really taken a close enough look to be able to validate their experience.
invalidation happens when two people are communicating and either one or both of them insists that their desires/feelings/ideas are the RIGHT ones to the exclusion of the other persons. this invalidates the worth of the other's perception.
just by understanding that ALL human beings have an innate need to be understood (not judged), you can start having different kinds of relationships with people. one way you can incorporate this knowing into your life is by bringing honesty and compassion into all of your relationships. so much of every day human communication serves some kind of purpose that is besides the point... the point being that... we can simply just be what we are with eachother. with validation, we can help eachother accept ourselves and GROW!
