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Decoded Genius distills decades of mastery from the top 0.0001% in every field. From health and longevity to business, AI, and psychology, each episode helps ambitious people shortcut the learning curve and level up their health, wealth, and happiness.
If someone is repeating something, it's
because they don't feel like
you've heard them.
What is.
The common thing people call validation
that is doing harm?
One of the first.
Line, Fleck is a clinical psychologist
who spent over a decade the.
Fighting for 500 teams
on the science of communication.
Which raises one question
is your communication
secretly holding your success back?
You're just talking.
You're only looking at the experience
through your own lens.
At people
getting validation from social media.
There's mostly getting the opposite.
Invalidation, I think, is the most hostage
communication pattern
that nobody is talking about.
Is there a psychological reason
why we hurt the people
we love the most?
So you coach fortune
500l and you have kept suicidal patients
alive, both using the same skill.
Yeah.
Invalidation is powerful enough
to work on the hardest person alive.
Why is almost nobody in business
using it on purpose?
Yeah, it's
actually kind of an interesting story.
History.
So back in the 90s, in the 1990s,
there was this therapy
called dialectical behavior
therapy, DBT that came on the scenes.
And it really like
revolutionized psychology as we know it
because prior to DB2,
there was all this emphasis on behaviorism
and behavior change and principles
like positive reinforcement
and the stuff
you read about in like Atomic Habits.
All of these like behavioral change stuff,
which makes sense
when you're working with folks
who are suicidal, self-harming
substances
who have really dangerous behaviors.
It makes sense
you focus on behavioral change.
What DB2 did was it came in
and combined that classic behaviorism
with this other set of strategies
that were aimed
at communicating acceptance.
So you've got, on the one hand,
these tools
that are used to change behavior.
And then on the other hand, you have this,
this method for communicating.
Basically, I see you
I accept you without judgment.
And what they found was that
when you combined those two approaches,
it was like a powder keg
for transformation.
So folks that we had previously been had
previously been considered untreatable.
Folks with conditions like borderline
personality disorder, BPD,
suicidality against self-harm
really the hardest of the hard cases.
When we used this method, all of a sudden
we were able to effectively
treat these populations.
And so that was huge.
That was huge in the 90s.
And it really changed
the field of psychology as we know it.
But that stuff is super
slow to seep into the mainstream.
It's interesting
because you have all these
like pop psychology concepts,
and I feel like folks think
this stuff is always coming out,
but it's actually like it
often lags behind the field
by about like 15 to 20 years. Wow.
So it's not too surprising to me
that it's been slow to seep out,
but it really just never made the made
the leap.
is combining those two approaches.
Validation.
Yeah, validation is like the how
we communicate acceptance.
And then, you know,
behaviorism positive reinforcement
shaping these types of things.
Yeah I feel like most people
when they hear the word validation,
they maybe just picture like a therapist,
just like nodding along.
What do they get most wrong
about what it actually is?
I think there's
a couple of common misconceptions.
One of the first is
that validation is agreement.
And so when I'm working with folks,
say I'm working with a couple
and I'm trying to get one
to just validate the other, right.
Like this person is really feeling
like they're doing a lot of work
in whatever capacity
and they're not being seen for it and
says, I don't agree with that.
Like, no, I'm doing all of the child care.
Like, I don't know where like,
why should I validate him?
Right.
And my point is always like,
you don't have to agree.
For instance, I'm a vegetarian for animal
reasons and environmental reasons.
I can easily validate
somebody who eats me.
I was a meat eater for most of my life.
I totally understand
why somebody would choose to eat meat,
or at least I see validity
in that decision.
Okay, it's easier to order at restaurants.
You know, some folks
see some health benefits from it.
Whatever.
If I wanted to validate somebody, I could,
even though I don't agree with them.
Okay, that distinction is so critical.
Otherwise,
you cannot have a constructive dialog
with someone that you disagree with
because you're just both going to be kind
of waiting for the other to agree.
And that's not going to happen.
And therefore the dialog is stuck.
So I think agreement
is a big misconception.
The other is praise.
And this I think is directly
a function of social media.
Everyone's like you should not seek
external validation is so bad for
oh my gosh, you're so needy.
You're
so you know you need to validate yourself.
And yes, that's true, that's true.
But validation is just a signal
of acceptance, right?
It's a sense of belonging.
When you think about it in those terms,
it seems pretty obvious
that everybody should.
And everybody would seek belonging,
and everybody wants to be seen.
And there's nothing pathological
about that or problematic about that.
Praise is a judgment.
Praise says like, good job.
Nice work.
Right.
Validation is more along the lines of
I accept you independent
of how you look or perform.
Right.
It's a it's a it's a small distinction,
but it's a critical
Let's talk about social media.
You mentioned social media.
Are people getting validation
from social media?
Are they getting the opposite?
They're mostly getting the opposite.
So all of the like harder
when you post a bikini pic.
And these types of things. This is praise.
And the problem with praise
is that you typically have to exceed
expectations to receive it.
And so you end up in this filter culture,
right, where we're constantly trying
to like, outdo each other.
Outperform
to get the clicks and the likes.
I did this
kind of it felt very vulnerable to me
thing to do on social media where I had
sorry, I hope this isn't too deep,
but I had
I had breast cancer a couple of years ago,
and I went through chemotherapy
and I had lost all my hair, and
when my hair came back, it looked fine.
I'm sure to like most people,
but to me it just wasn't my hair.
I just didn't it didn't feel right.
And I'd taken a picture of myself
like a selfie for something
that I was promoting for the book
and I posted on social media, and I said,
I'm wondering if folks can give me
I'm seeking external validation, right?
I don't want praise.
What I'm seeking is validation
around the fact that this picture
might look fine to plenty of people,
and people can heart it
and say, you look great,
but I don't actually want to hear that.
I want validation around the fact that,
like, this just doesn't feel like me,
and I'm sad, and I feel super shallow
for saying that at the same time,
because I'm healthy now,
I should be grateful.
And yet I'm just having this moment where
I feel bad and I don't like what I see.
And I'm wondering
if I could get some validation.
And it was this really interesting,
kind of like social exercise,
because about two thirds of folks
actually responded
with validation in that
they said things like,
I can only imagine how that must feel,
and like it makes total sense
that this would feel like a, you know,
a vanity thing, even though it's something
that's so deep to your identity.
People just said really touching
and moving things.
And then about a quarter
of folks were like, but you look awesome
and like, so hot and like,
did all this stuff, which was like, fine.
But man, that external validation.
People saying, like,
I think it makes total sense
that you're struggling with this and
it is hard and it doesn't matter
how many years it's been,
and it doesn't matter how whatever
it looks like, it doesn't feel like you.
And that's hard.
It's hard to look in the mirror
and see the ashes of your disease,
you know, like those types of words
in response to that experience
that feels restorative,
that fosters healing, at least for me.
It makes me feel less crazy
and less alone in the world.
Right?
Like, I mean, there's potential
in social media to do that.
These are just strangers
who are saying these things
that are deeply speaking to me.
But that's that's what I'm talking about
when I say external validation, right?
It's the seeing the other person's
experience.
That must have been hard for you.
It was it
felt vulnerable to put it out there,
mostly because I thought people
were going to think
I was like fishing for compliments, right?
There's that again
because of the language here,
but it was actually really powerful
and moving.
It honestly felt like restorative,
like I felt very seen and like grateful.
do you get emotional
when you're reading those comments?
Yeah, I did
and I like shared them with folks again,
literally for the person
who wrote the book on validation
and who was point
blank asking for it, right?
It's still surprising to me
how moving it can be, right?
And speaking to that,
you've written that feeling.
Understood.
Lights up
the same reward centers in the brain
as opioids, orgasms and cash.
Yeah.
Walk me through
what is actually happening in my head
the moment someone truly gets me.
Yeah, it's the dopaminergic system. Right.
So it's a hit of dopamine.
And if we look at kind of why
why did we adapt
to respond this way
to feeling seen or connected?
We survive in tribes.
We're not cats.
We don't go off on our own.
We evolved together and we learned
to survive through families and clans.
so being a part of a clan
is a pretty important thing, right?
And feeling accepted into that group
is pretty critical to our survival.
And so we seek out experiences
in which we feel connected and seen.
Those relationships feel safe to us,
they feel rewarding to us,
and our brains respond to them
so that we are drawn to them.
And we stay close to those people.
We get a little hit, right? It feels good.
I think every single person who's
listening to this has had that experience
of just connecting with someone,
and it's a good feeling, right?
That is the internal mechanism
by which this stuff works.
But there's great potential
there, obviously. Right.
Like that's a powerful thing
to be able to affect in the same way that,
you know, money,
orgasms and opioids can drive behavior.
So can feeling accepted.
So we're wired to for validation.
We're wired to seek it yet.
And then we're
I don't know, oriented away from like told
that that's a really bad thing to seek,
which is, I think, confusing.
I do this experiment sometimes with folks
where I'm like,
should you validate people that you love?
Yes, of course.
So good for relationships. Yes.
Should you seek validation?
No no no no no. That's weak,
that's shallow.
That's you know, and that to me suggests
just a fundamental misunderstanding.
Right.
We can't say that it's really
this is an important thing
to bring to relationships,
but an unhealthy thing to expect from them
like that seems backwards.
If it is that rewarding.
You're basically
describing a drug
that I can hand out for free.
What does that do to a person over time?
I think the really interesting thing,
the flip on that question is to look
at what invalidation does
to people over time.
Invalidation I think is the most caustic
communication pattern
that nobody is talking about.
Invalidation.
Folks who come from environments that are
highly invalidating are significantly
more likely to suffer from just about
every single mental health disorder
you can imagine.
The more invalidating an environment is,
the more person will struggle.
It's that black and white.
This stuff is caustic.
It's highly pervasive
in the homes of serial killers.
This is a pattern that you commonly see.
It's a profile that they would look for.
Behavioral psychologists would look
for a history of pervasive invalidation.
It's predictive of that type of
psychopathology.
Again, borderline personality disorder
PTSD, depression.
Right. This is really nasty stuff.
When you see somebody
who is inundated with validation,
validation, kids who grow up
feeling like their emotions are valid,
that their experiences are real,
they learn to trust their intuition.
They are better able
to validate themselves.
They trust their experience
even when the environment says,
you shouldn't feel that way.
We expect
people to be able to validate themselves,
and yet we don't prioritize
modeling that. And,
you know, teaching that in any real way,
which I always find very interesting.
guys, we've been so passionate
about finding the biggest geniuses,
and this is just one of the many episodes.
If you want to make sure you don't
miss the next one.
Make sure to subscribe.
All right, let's get back to the episode.
if you're going back and forth
with your spouse, your friend, your child,
and you're maybe in your head
one of those type of people that just is
maybe arguing to try to win a point.
Sure I'm harming the other person
by trying to get my point across
and not letting them feel
heard and validated.
That's right.
It's a matter of degrees, right?
So saying something like walk it off.
That's a pretty invalidating statement.
That can be pretty devastating depending
on what you're telling them to walk off.
Right. Boys don't cry.
Stuff those emotions.
You're too old for this.
That's something I have had
come out of my mouth, right?
Basically, you should not be feeling
the way you're feeling.
You should have outgrown this. Now.
It would be totally fair for me to say
throwing things at 12 is not appropriate.
That behavior does not make sense.
Being frustrated
and upset is valid, right?
There's and this is where
kind of the method comes into play.
This is where the training is helpful
because people are like
I don't want a valid I don't think it's
great to be validating my 12 year
old who's throwing stuff right.
Like that doesn't seem productive 100%,
I totally agree.
All right.
That behavior is ineffective.
That behavior is invalid.
But my job is to find the kernel of truth
in their experience
to find the validity in it.
Because if you believe
in cause and effect, then you know
that there is a reason for everything.
There is some validity in everything.
My job is to focus on that first,
and then I am better able to change
or challenge what is in effect of that's
kind of the the art there.
So let's take that example because we both
we were talking before this
and we both have children.
We both have a 12 year old.
So if our 12 year old, one of ours
does something that's a 12 year old
shouldn't do, you said throwing something,
hitting a sibling,
I don't know, something that you're like,
come on, you're too old for
what's the right response to validate,
but also maybe
let them know, hey, this isn't something
a 12 year old should be doing.
Can we make this, like, real?
Because I just, I. Let's do it 100%. Yeah.
I came with my daughter, who's 12,
and we are from Northern California.
She's, I would say
had a relatively privileged life.
Okay. She did not want to come to LA.
She would much rather
go somewhere cooler for her vacation.
Right now, you and I are,
like, immediately rolling our eyes
like you get to go.
You know, from my perspective, I'm
thinking like, look at everything
that's going on in the world, right?
You are so grateful.
We are. You're an only child.
We are planning an itinerary around
what you want to do.
You know, like,
can you imagine as a kid, at least for me,
as I was a child of three,
there was no world
in which my parents were like,
what do you want to do this right?
Like, let's make sure and eat at the place
you want to go to? No.
But she's she's doesn't want to go.
She's frustrated.
She wants to stay back and hang
with her friends because she's 12 now,
which is essentially 17.
Right. And she
let's just, let's imagine that she starts
to kind of have a fit about this and say,
I don't want to go.
Why do you guys make me do this?
I don't want to do this.
This is not fair. All right.
In my opinion, from where I'm
sitting, yelling at your parents
who you're then going to ask you
to, you know, buy things for you
while you're there.
It's not super valid
or effective for behavior.
We say behavior is valid
when it is effective in the long term.
Okay.
In terms of someone's goals and values,
one of her goals most definitely
is to get stuff in LA when she's with us.
So I'm going to call
that behavior ineffective.
I also see it as invalid
in the sense that she is so privileged.
I recently had cancer.
I think my family has a very real sense
of how precious life
is, and I have an almost visceral response
to this.
Like, you know,
I don't want to spend time with you.
I don't want to.
As if all this time that we have on
the earth is endless, right?
And so I have this, like,
I want to shut that down reaction.
But if I step back,
I also think, okay, she's 12 now,
it is developmentally appropriate
for a kid that age to want to spend time
primarily with their friends
and not with their parents,
and to not be in a car
for however many hours with their parents.
I also know that this child
has never been outside of the country.
She's never seen a third world country.
She's never seen a war situation.
She's never seen real poverty.
I can try and educate her on those things,
but she has no real sense of that.
And is that her fault?
No, arguably it's probably mine
if anybody's right.
So her lack of perspective and the fact
that she can't connect those dots,
that's totally valid.
If anything, it seems irrational for me
to expect her to be able to
if anybody is being kind of irrational
in terms of their response
here or their expectations,
I should say I think it would be me.
So what I can say is,
and what I did say in
this made up situation was
it makes total sense
that you want to spend time
with your friends
and you want to stay here.
If I were you at 12,
I think I would want the same thing.
I would not have wanted to be in the car
with my parents
for however long, doing things
that I didn't particularly want to do.
That's valid.
And then I said, it's also the fact
that you are going to want things from us
when you're there,
and pitching a fit before we go
isn't a super effective way to get stuff.
It doesn't make me want to buy stuff
for you.
I also want to remind you
that our time with each other is limited.
That's a fact.
It's it's a sad fact,
but it's one that we understand.
And that understanding
is actually a gift because it allows us
to look at these experiences differently.
And I, for one, am grateful for that.
And I think we can make
something important out of this.
So I'm kind of correcting in this moment.
And I think I was
I ultimately was a bit more clear here.
You keep complaining.
This is not going to be the trip
you want it to be, right?
That behavior is not going to
is not the path to getting what you want.
And you keep it up.
And this is going to be a worse
trip for you.
Very clear message there,
while at the same time saying,
I see where you're coming from.
It's valid.
Does that make sense? It does.
And I think one of the things
for potential parents out there listening
that could be hard is you told
you said you.
After she said what she said, you kind of
took a step back and took a moment
because I know a lot of people's
initial reaction and instinct
in the moment is to bounce back
aggressively or just without validation.
Right.
So how important is that?
Hold on. Let me take a step back.
And is that repetition or how do you
how do you get to that place
where you can take a step back
in those situations and pause
before you actually react?
So that way you can come with validation
in addition to reasoning.
Very good point.
I want to state for the record
that I don't always do that.
I think that's really important
because this is a practice.
I really do look at this stuff,
almost like meditation
or like a mindfulness practice.
It's something you aspire to.
You don't always succeed at it.
Okay, that's first and foremost.
But second, this is my training.
It is my job.
And it has been my job to have
folks come at me with what
seems like radically ineffective behavior,
radically offensive communication,
and to have to, like, pause.
And when I feel myself
like starting to have that reaction,
it is almost like a mindfulness bell
within me to like, okay, slow, slow, slow,
slow, rotate the snow globe
like I'm looking at it through one
angle and I need to kind of like really
try and see what else is valid here,
because I can feel like my line
of vision, like narrowing
and I need to expand it.
So that is a pretty critical catch
that like
I needed to take a step back
and I often will.
I'll often just say, like,
I'm going to go upstairs.
If you follow me, it'll be bad.
She hasn't.
It has been.
Okay, let's talk about science.
What is the science say is the one thing
that makes anyone trust you instantly?
Anybody trust you instantly?
Well, yes, it would be a feeling heard.
So the research on this is so fun.
And you know,
I set out to write this book
based on my training, which was primarily
from clinical psychology.
And then I had to do all this research,
and I found that everyone has pretty
much been studying
this same concept of validation
under a bunch of different terms.
Right.
And one of the ways it's been studied
is as like rapport, which is basically
signaling that you accept and understand
another person's perspective.
This is what I call validation, right?
And when they use rapport methods
with political detainees,
specifically suspected terrorists,
what they found
was that those rapport methods
were significantly
more effective
at getting honest communication
and reliable data from the individual
than, say, torture
or more aggressive tactics.
Right?
The same happens to be true for teenagers
as we were just talking.
When kids trust that their parents
will be validating, they are more likely
to tell the honest version
of what's going on for them,
rather than the kind of gee
version trailer that they give.
When you ask, how was your day? Right?
And they've done studies on this,
and it's really interesting.
If they predict that
the parent will be validating,
they are more likely to be honest
and real.
When they anticipate invalidation,
they censor, okay.
It's not it's not I mean, on some level,
it's very intuitive, right?
If we if we expect to be met
with judgments,
we're going to sense for what we say.
If we expect to be met
with acceptance and understanding,
we're more likely to talk.
It's just it's a truth serum in my
I kind of that's my way of
wrapping up this research very neatly
is just to say that it really does
function as a truth serum.
People just tend to open up
when they expect to be heard.
Yeah, it's
I feel like it's not rocket science,
but I feel like almost
no one actually thinks about it
and practices it It's not just something
we can talk about.
Someone can listen to this show
and oh, I'm going to go do that tomorrow.
No, you have to practice it
because it's not something
that you can just turn on and off forever.
It's something you have to practice.
You have to practice.
But here's the cool thing about this
is that we are in constant communication
with each other.
So unlike, say, meditation
where you really have to sit and do a,
you know, seated practice, eyes closed,
lights off for however much time it's
you have like endless opportunity
to work on this stuff.
I was again
trained in it in the context of therapy,
which I was doing a lot of,
and so I had a lot of repetition there.
But it's equally as effective
with your kids
as I'm describing in corporate settings
in the work that I do there.
And so, yes, it takes a lot of practice.
I would say more importantly,
it takes intention
because the opportunities to practice,
there's plenty right there everywhere.
The bigger challenge
is remembering to do it
and then bringing that willingness
when you're in front of a 12 year
old who's complaining about
not wanting to go on a great trip,
that you're planning them.
And you're very precise.
That validation, it's not praise,
it's not problem solving.
It's not necessarily agreement.
Of those three, which one do smart,
successful people get wrong?
The most. Probably problem solving?
I would say especially
so if I start to look at like the
in my corporate work, because we assume
and it is our job to solve problems
there, we tend to respond to every issue
with problem solving.
And so an employee
comes to their manager
frustrated with another team,
and the manager responds with, well,
have you tried pinging them every day?
Yes, I've ping them every day.
It's just more than, well,
have you tried this?
Well, have you tried that?
And really, what the person is seeking
is validation.
They want to here.
Yes. This team can be really difficult.
I get that,
you know.
How long have you been at it with them?
What's going on?
They want to feel heard
before they can even
be in the right headspace
to take feedback and problem solve.
But smart intellectual folks,
they see a problem
and they want to solve it.
It's really hard to just, like,
sit on their proverbial hands and
and listen and accept.
It's just counterintuitive, even though
it's way more effective in the long run.
Oftentimes
not always, but often. interesting.
And do you think it's is it slightly
different between male and female meaning?
I had a conversation
with Doctor Orion Turban,
and he mentioned that
when a male is talking
to a male, you just repeat back
what the other male says to you.
They'll feel heard.
But when a male is talking to a female
that they want to feel like you understand
how they feel, just repeating back to them
what they say isn't necessarily enough,
but showing them that you know
how they feel makes them feel heard.
Is it different talking
to male and female, or is it similar?
So he's
actually talking about a validation
skill there that we call copying.
Right.
So it's a low level validation skill.
You basically just repeat
without obviously doing it.
None of this like big, I hear you saying,
but rather you say something.
I kind of summarize it.
I think the point he's trying to make
is that women are often seeking
emotional validation versus perhaps
kind of reasoning or logical validation.
So I could validate someone's
logic and say like, yeah,
I can repeat
basically the argument you've made,
all I could try and read the emotion
behind that argument, I would say,
you know, I'm actually
kind of split on this, and it's purely
based on my work with couples,
because I often have a heterosexual
working with heterosexual couples.
And for whatever reason, the folks
I tend to see, I often the female partner
is often the more emotional and often
the one wanting to come to therapy.
Okay.
And the male partner is often I'm
in Silicon Valley as well.
So it's a lot of like engineer types,
a lot of very problem
solving, logical,
logically oriented folks.
And yet what I've found is that
although initially
the male partner is like,
I don't need any emotional validation,
I just want to know
that my arguments are heard.
You give that a couple of months,
and the entire therapy
is focusing on validating his emotions.
Wow. Really? Yeah.
And it happens like again
and again and again.
There's just I can see it come.
I can see the trajectory
of what this therapy is going
to look like for this couple
from the first session.
It's like okay.
He's so I don't I don't know about that.
I think it's what we think we need.
don't think men are necessarily
as used to being emotionally validated,
I don't know if it's
as common of an experience or something
that people tend to open with.
But when done well, like we said,
it's like candy.
So who doesn't Like like candy?
It's like cash.
It's like a orgasm.
It's like, whoa, it's the best. Wow.
Okay. And let's go to that. Right.
What's the difference between praising
someone and actually validating them?
All right.
So in the corporate setting
you have somebody who comes to you.
I'm just going off of an example
from earlier this week.
Someone's worked really hard on a project.
You say, My God this is great work.
Wow. You must have
you must have put in overtime,
like you must have been busting
at 12 hours a day to get to this point.
Like, this is really great. Awesome.
That's praise.
It's saying,
you know, you've exceeded expectations.
You've done good work.
Validation would sound more like
you must be exhausted.
Like if I were in your shoes, I'm worried
I might be teetering towards burnout
because this is the third or fourth week
that you've you've, you know,
pulled out a project like this
at the last minute.
Thank you.
But you're this is not lost on me.
The work that you're doing here
is not lost on me.
I haven't commented
on the quality of the work at all, right?
I'm simply
attending to the person's experience,
and that is the difference.
All right.
And again, in corporate settings,
like it's
so it's the lowest hanging fruit
that everybody is just missing.
Like people just want to feel like
you see the effort that they're putting
in, the sacrifices they're making,
even if they're not as big
as you think they should be or whatever.
Like people
just want to feel seen for that.
And when they do,
they become capable of greatness.
At least that's been my experience. Yeah.
So when you go for validation
instead of just praise,
it feels like you're also like
strengthening
that relationship with that person,
whether it's a colleague,
whether it's a friend,
whether it's a spouse,
whether it's a child, you're really like
strengthening the relationship.
And I feel like most people,
they're leading with the praise.
They're not leading with the validation.
Right.
Here's a test for you.
I validate you?
What makes it feel okay for you
to keep talking to me?
I feel like
when the person feels validated,
they let their guard down
and start opening up.
Because they feel more.
Safe.
Psychologically
Psychological safety Psychological safety.
Wow. That's the mechanism.
So they feel safe to to go there
when before they didn't.
if we don't trust that it's safe
to be vulnerable or safe to be real
or just safe at all,
we're not going to show up entirely.
Right. We're going to it's
going to be a lot of facades.
Yeah, there's going to be a. Wall
up. There's going to be a wall up.
And I think people like, well, okay,
a wall is kind of good at work, right?
I don't want everybody's just like,
you know, mess all over the place.
But psychological safety doesn't tend
to result in people being inappropriate
or unprofessional.
Again.
On the contrary, they tend to rise, right?
We take risks.
When we feel safe, we put ourselves
out there, we become more creative.
I've talked a fair bit with the folks
over at Second City in Chicago.
They do a lot of the improv work there,
and they've got this concept of yes,
and in improv, where they kind of build
off of each other's ideas.
There's there's no bad ideas, right?
Someone throws out a line or a character
and you just kind of. Yes.
And you build off it.
And in that type of a dynamic,
in that type of a setting, there's
this feeling that like, I can just say
something stupid and it's fine.
Everyone's going to roll with it.
The show will go on.
And that's kind of it's
kind of a very similar thing that happens
with validation is it's like, okay,
I can kind of like I can take some risks.
I can throw out an idea
that's kind of out there, and I won't risk
being rejected as a result.
And so no, people don't become,
you know, a huge mess in front of you
all the time.
On the contrary, they tend to rise and do
more creative, more innovative things.
Okay, let's picture
a tense negotiation. Okay?
So let's picture a negotiation where
the other person is getting defensive.
They're refusing to budge.
you say that once someone feels validated,
they have nothing left to fight against.
I want to lower the temperature fast
in that negotiation,
what are the actual words
I should say to them first?
It's a really good question.
We're going back to that copying strategy
that I mentioned before.
You'll see this technique called
a bunch of different things.
You'll find it in international conflict
resolution.
It's known as the Rapoport method.
In Gottman Method couples therapy
they use the same approach
because here's the situation.
If you're in conflict with someone,
you probably don't agree
with what they're saying.
And you might be struggling to understand
where they're coming from.
Moving that snow globe that I described
earlier is hard.
Okay.
So often the only thing you can do
is repeat back what they said, right?
And again,
I encourage you to do this from a position
of like curiosity,
kind of checking the facts.
Not like, I don't know,
mocking
or I hear you saying but like, really?
Okay, so from your perspective.
You don't want to come to LA and we're
making you do this against your will.
Is that right?
That's where you're coming from.
That simple act of copying this, this one
strategy strategy
does some incredibly heavy lifting.
Not only does it result
in the other person
literally feeling heard, okay,
because you've just said their words,
it activates mirror neurons on my end.
And mirror, mirror neurons
allow us to intuit
or taste feel some of what
the other person is experiencing.
That is how they function.
So by using this simple strategy,
I am both affecting the other person,
but I'm also affecting myself.
I am increasing my ability
to empathize and understand.
As someone who has worked with folks
who are saying some really out there
things as a clinical psychologist,
like I have heard it all,
and often things that are very offensive
to me that are aggressive.
Okay,
I can tell you that if I just slow down
and simply try and reflect
what I'm hearing and clarify
where the other person is coming from,
something happens to me, okay.
And it surprises me every single time
that like to this day,
it just it gets me every time.
I'm like, all right, I don't know where
the person's coming from.
This is so problematic.
I'm just going to reflect it back.
I reflected back. I see.
right.
Well, I don't.
See it that way.
But what if I take this thing?
It just every single time and again,
this is one of those
those strategies
that we have so much research on.
It's unbelievable
copying folks, both their nonverbal
and their you know what they're saying.
It functions
to reduce things like implicit racism.
It softens the positions of folks
on on either side of a war.
These increases attraction.
These are like.
A study after study after study.
This is such low hanging fruit.
And yet we just
it's just not common knowledge.
If step one is copying okay or mirroring,
let's say within,
then what's the next step, right.
You're in a tense negotiation
or you're in a back and forth.
Someone said something.
You totally disagree with you okay.
Step one you copy?
Is there a playbook here? What?
Step two. What? Step three.
Yeah.
So as a function of that copying I will.
And if I do it enough
I will start to understand
and or empathize with the other person.
And then I can land
a higher level of validation,
one of the most powerful steps from
there is to propose
a very specific validation strategy,
where I basically say something
that I think you might be thinking
that I think you might be feeling,
but you haven't said yet,
if I land this, it's.
Like, boom. Oh, she gets me.
If I can say something
that you haven't articulated yet.
Better yet,
if you haven't even fully framed
that idea in your head
and I land it, it hits like a bullet.
The queen of proposing is Oprah.
I talk about this a lot.
The Oprah Effect
I think literally she built her
entire career around this ability to just.
Hit that note,
say the thing that the other person
is thinking or feeling,
but hasn't quite put out there.
She did this great interview with
Meghan
Markle She's talking about
being the subject of all this scrutiny
and tabloid press and just bad blood.
Everyone's
just telling these stories about her,
and she's not standing up for herself.
You know, she's these these stories
are circulating and she's staying quiet.
And Oprah says, you know, like,
you know, something to the effect of like,
did you, you know,
why didn't you say anything?
And you can just see in that moment
Meghan's just a little bit like,
I don't know, I, I, I knew it was wrong.
I couldn't see a way
I, I should have said something,
but I didn't, I don't know, I,
it was really complicated.
It was difficult.
I was just silent
and she looks like a little defeated.
And then Oprah goes silent, silenced.
It was Boom.
And that was like.
Being like super dramatic.
So it's like not, you know, it's cheesy,
but it was this moment of like,
that's what she was teetering around.
She was trying.
It was choosing this delicate position
of wanting to like,
not throw the royal family under the bus,
but at the same time
say, like,
I didn't feel like I could say anything.
I don't know, I guess I just stayed quiet
and she was saying no.
Seems like there was some pressure there.
Seems like
this was not totally within your control,
and that is a fundamentally different
experience.
It's not just that you were quiet
or that you lack the strength,
and that you weren't brave
is that you felt powerless.
So with that one word,
she reframed and clarified that message
in such a way that it's like, yeah, that's
kind of what was going on.
And what can you deduce
from that other than you get it?
If you were able to pull that together
and say what I didn't and say it in
such a way, that speaks to the experience,
you get it now.
Again, like that's high stakes stuff
like Oprah knows what.
She's been doing. This for a long time,
right?
But like, if you were to ask what's
the step up from there, it is to propose.
And again, notice I don't have to agree.
I do not have to agree with her experience
that she was silenced.
I don't know anything about it.
Oprah doesn't really know anything
about it, but she can, in that moment
read the signals and say, it seems like
this was what was going on for you.
That's that's what this is.
So step one is copying.
Step two is potentially trying
to propose something.
And when you're proposing something,
should you assume or have an idea
about the way someone feels.
And that's what you propose.
You're trying to propose?
Oh, it must have felt like x, y,
z, could be a thought, could be a feeling,
could be a.
You must have wanted to shoot them, right?
Like you must have been terrified.
You must have been thinking,
I got to get out of here.
You can say it as a fact, like
you were silenced.
You can ask it as a question.
Were you silenced?
There's all these, like,
little delicacies, you know, intricacies
of how you do this, but it's just saying
something the other person hasn't said
that speaks to the experience
in a way that they haven't yet.
So copying and mirroring
that's that's that's level one.
That's pretty easy. That's
you can do with anybody.
I always say like think
if I was across from like that one
politician that I can't stand,
how would I validate them?
Like, everybody wants to know,
how would you validate this person?
Right.
And I always think like low level
I would be copying
we've got another strategy in there called
attending, which is also just kind of,
you know, really low level.
And that's what I would do.
I would just kind of
I could do that with anybody.
And from there, I'm pretty confident
that I could even propose.
I could even probably read into that
situation in a way that would soften it.
Okay. I want to see this in action.
So let's do a live role play.
a business owner,
you're providing some product or service.
I'm I'm the customer I'm
the anger customer. Right.
So the project is laid I feel ignored,
Im coming in hot and we'll go into this
and I want you to respond the way
that you really would based
on, you know, because you have
a very specific set of skills.
Okay. So let's go.
I'm done being quiet about it.
You promised this two weeks ago.
I have a launch that's writing on it.
Do you actually care about this project
or am I just a number?
Now that the invoice is paid, Okay.
Two weeks. It's been two weeks. Yes.
so I'm sorry. Do you have.
So you're saying you reached out to us
two weeks ago, and
did you get a response or.
No. No, I'm two weeks late on the project.
I've been waiting on your team.
Oh my gosh,
I didn't realize it had been two weeks.
Did this go to me or to the team?
It went to your team? To the team?
Okay, okay.
Did you email my email address?
No, I emailed your team.
They didn't even reply at all.
I see, I see, and I mean, to be honest,
I am responsible for my team.
So regardless of whether or not
you emailed me or you emailed my team,
it shouldn't matter.
That said, I didn't see it.
I did not see it.
I take responsibility for it.
But I want you to know I did not see it.
All that aside, you are absolutely right.
Like if you depended on us,
you didn't get what you needed.
That's not the contract you signed up for.
Okay, what can I what can we do today?
I need the project I'm past.
Do I need the project
by the end of the day today?
Like, otherwise, I want to refund.
Okay. That's fair, that's fair.
Here's what we're going to do.
I'm going to see what we can get done
by the end of today.
You're a rational person.
I think you can appreciate that.
You know,
we have a certain amount of hours
we're going to get done everything
that we can, and I'm going to refund you
for whatever was not completed
within, you know, within that scope.
But more importantly, I want you to know
that this was not personal.
This was not us not taking you seriously.
Although I can see
absolutely how there's a lot of signals
suggesting that I did not see a message
from you and ignore it.
Okay?
That was not what happened here,
even though that may be how it appears.
We're going to do everything we can
to make this right.
And in the meantime,
you have every right to be upset.
And if I were in your shoes,
I'd be. Upset, too.
Is there anything else I can do? Just.
I would just need it
done by the end of the day.
If you can do everything in your power
to just get it fully
finished by the end of the day,
and if you can't do it
by the end of the day,
I want a full refund. All my money back.
We're going to try and do
as much as we can. How about I.
How about I follow up in two hours
and give you a heads up?
Do you want me to check in, or would you
rather just us plow ahead? No.
You can check in with me as soon.
As soon as soon as possible. Great.
All right, so I'll do check ins.
How about every every hour?
Does that work?
Yeah.
Okay, I bought myself a little bit of time
there because you're coming in hot,
and I know that emotions come up
and then they come down.
I'm doing a lot of just let me hold, let
me get through this and keep it steady.
You noticed I did a bit of repeating
in the beginning with the two hours.
I was also using that to buy myself
a little bit of time, frankly, to think.
So I knew that that piece
really resonated with you.
I knew that because you repeated it.
Really important note for anyone
who's listening, if someone is repeating
something, it's because they don't feel
like you've heard them.
If they are repeating something,
it needs to be validated, right?
So I leaned into that two hour thing
because you'd repeated it
and to buy myself some time, right?
I also did a little bit of proposing
by suggesting that I hadn't
taken responsibility, that it was my job
to take responsibility for it.
As soon as I did that, like,
oh, did you email me?
Oh, you emailed my team.
Oh, sorry.
Like, I could easily see the person
on the other side going like, yeah, but.
Right. And so I proposed there.
I stepped in and said,
but it doesn't matter.
It's still my responsibility.
Knowing That which was that's
what the person was thinking, right.
the proposed right.
I also use this other strategy
that's taking action.
Okay.
Taking action is a very high level
validation strategy.
It's different from problem solving.
Problem solving
suggests solutions that you could do.
Well, why don't you contact your team
and see what you guys can get by on?
Or why don't we all powwow together?
Problem solving suggests solutions
the other person should do.
Taking action
has me intervene in some way.
So I said, basically, I'm going to now
prioritize this.
I'm going to check in with you every hour.
I am actively putting myself. Out.
To basically meet this need.
That's a high level strategy.
You need to be careful with that,
because if you jump in and take action
every time somebody falls
or runs into trouble,
they're never going to develop the skills
they need, right?
But in certain situations,
it can really land.
And this is one of those.
And we also extending
the refund is taking action.
Let me saying I'm going to like
I take this really seriously.
It's going to be reflected in my behavior
is essentially what I'm doing
could you have validated, copied, proposed
potentially taking action without throwing
in the Without throwing in the refund?
Yes, I would have needed
a really good reason though.
So, for instance,
if it was corporate policy, let's say
that I'm at UPS or something
But you can't give a refund, right?
yeah, I would say like I would go
to great lengths to communicate.
If it was within my power.
I absolutely would like.
This is not my decision here.
I'm saying I want to help you,
but my hands are tied,
which frankly is a is a good move
if you're in,
you know, in certain situations
where you can deflect to a higher power.
They're to say, well,
I want to talk to your manager.
Yeah. Great. Please do.
We have we have the levels here.
Number one, copy.
Number two, propose number three.
If you can take action. Yeah. Take action.
That's level three.
It is another.
Level
three move is self-disclosure. okay.
So tell me about that.
Yeah, it is exactly what it sounds like
it is to say I've been in your shoes
basically.
Again,
there's risks to these higher strategies.
If they go poorly,
they can blow up your life.
If they go well, it can really land.
I didn't see an opportunity for it.
So disclosing here
would have been something like,
you know, like I
interfaced with this exact company,
you know, when I worked,
when I do stuff with UPS, sometimes
this happens and it drives me crazy.
Like, seriously, what's going on? Right.
I'm trying
to, like, level the playing field.
If you look at what happens in AA
and Na groups, there's a lot of disclosure
and that is the means
by which validation is often communicated.
It is not.
I'm sitting back and listening
to your story about addiction.
It's my name is Caroline
and I am also an alcoholic.
Right.
There is this leveling
that makes it safe for everybody
to be vulnerable
and be honest and be real.
I think there's all in psychology.
Everyone's always wondering,
how did how is AA so consistently a fact?
It's been around forever.
Like what does it doing?
I think that is one of the most powerful
ingredients that gets overlooked
is just the the bare bones,
the basics of disclosure.
And like we all come here
honestly and with no facades
and nobody is better than anybody else.
As a therapist,
this is one I lean on heavily
because there's often a power dynamic.
Anytime there's a power dynamic
where someone feels or believes
that you are, you believe yourself
to be higher than them, better than them.
Disclosure can really level it.
It's like when a doctor says, oh,
that's what I would do.
Oh yeah, I would get a second opinion
if I were you.
You're like, oh okay. Good. Yeah.
You immediately feel safe
and you let your guard down.
You trust that you trust the person
more. Yeah.
Oh my daughter had Covid last year.
It was the worst.
Oh, we were so scared. Oh, good. Okay.
All right.
There's just this leveling
that happens through disclosure or can.
Okay. Let's talk about teams.
So if I'm not mistaken,
you get hired to fix executive teams
that are quietly falling apart
when you walk in.
What is the validation breakdown
you find underneath the dysfunction?
Like every single time?
Leadership more often than not.
And it's always very interesting to me
because often it's
the it's leadership that's coming to me
and saying
we have all these issues down below.
And then I basically want to be
a fly on the wall and see how they talk,
to see how the directors,
the CEO, the CFO, the C-suite.
Let me see how you guys are communicating.
And frankly, sometimes I do this
in kind of a sneaky way,
which is to say, like,
let's have a meeting.
I want to hear all about the problems
that are going
on, and I just want to sit back and absorb
information.
I want you guys to talk
because I want everyone's perspective.
I do want everyone's perspective.
I also want to hear how they talk
about these problems.
And in that nine out of ten times,
what I see
is that there's a ton of criticism,
contempt and negativity bias,
meaning everyone is focusing on
what's wrong.
There's
this sense that everything is awful
and there's just no texture, there's no
dimension, there's no positivity anywhere.
What's communicated
is criticism and contempt.
And if that's the way
people are communicating,
you have to presume that filters down.
usually my work is like,
okay, great, I will work with them.
Can I work with you guys? first?
let's set the stage and then filter down.
Because people learn by watching people.
And we understand the culture of a place
by through observation.
And that filters down from the top.
So let's like like what are you modeling?
And until I'm really confident
that that's solid, I'm not going to
necessarily intervene
on a, on the team or a lower level.
what's the one thing that let's say
there's business
owner executive out there.
Person
with the business person with the team.
What's the one kind of takeaway
or the one quick fix maybe going in
that they can make a quick change
to change the organization?
It's often this should I respond
with problem solving or validation.
Right.
So this was a piece of advice
that I got from a way, way
back, like 20 years ago from a mentor.
Someone comes to you with an issue.
You have to decide, do I respond
with problem solving or validation?
You can do one and then the other, but in
any moment you can only respond with one.
And if you try to solve the problem
in, the person pushes back, switch
to validation right and then go.
Nine times out of ten, these guys
are all problem solving all the time.
And they're really
they're negativity bias,
which we all have to
this tendency to focus on what's wrong.
It's almost at the exclusion of things
that are going
well, of things that are working,
of progress, of perseverance.
And so I need to balance that out.
Interesting.
Let's talk about apologies. Right.
Because this is big.
Most apologies.
Do they actually make things worse.
Like so from a validation standpoint
what separates an
apology that rebuilds
trust
from one that's just really there
to make the person, say, felt better.
think one of the really if you study
apologies, it's really interesting to see
what people do because they are often
much more focused on themselves.
So for instance, I was late today.
All right.
And I caught myself.
You said, oh yeah, we're ready to go.
And I said, oh, I'm sorry.
You know, we took a wrong turn.
And then we were sitting over there.
That is the wrong way to approach
an apology, because I'm focused on myself.
Right? I'm focused on saving face.
And here's my excuse.
Right.
The person who's been offended
doesn't really care about.
I mean, they may be kind of whatever.
They'd much rather hear.
Hey, I'm sorry you guys had to wait.
You must have been running around.
You must have been nervous.
Is she going to show up?
Right? That.
That must have been really uncomfortable.
I'm sorry.
That's what people want to hear.
They want you to attend
to their experience, right?
Again, even knowing that,
I still defaulted to me.
Right.
Which is to make the point
that this is a practice.
You mess it up,
and then you have another chance
tomorrow when you're late again
to correct the next time.
But that's the distinction in apologies.
It's about attending to the other person's
experience, not yours.
We're so worried about saving face and.
just not being seen as as unreliable
or X or Y
that we fail to appreciate
the other person's experience,
which is really what was compromised.
so there's a wrong way
to have an apology in the right way.
The wrong way is I'm sorry I did this
because X, y, z
whatever happened with me versus I'm sorry
and then address their feelings.
Yeah I think it's a both.
And like I think it's fine to say I'm
sorry I missed the exit.
And you guys must have been sitting here
like,
seriously worried about
what was going on with me.
You can do both. Right?
If you're just going to do one,
definitely focus on the other person's
experience first.
And there's plenty of times
where that's sufficient.
It's just interesting
because instead we almost always do
the latter
at the exclusion of any validation.
Let's talk about a relationship, right?
Whether that's husband and wife
or boyfriend girlfriend.
there's a couple
and they fight constantly.
And it's just it's like a circle.
It just goes over and over.
It's the same thing.
They keep whatever it is, it's
taking the trash out or whatever it is.
Right?
Is there a validation move
that breaks that loop?
In the context of a dynamic,
I think that I rely a little bit
on the research here,
at least in my own relationship,
because, again, John Gottman,
who doesn't research
on just thousands of couples
and they have this very
sobering statistic, which is that and they
study folks over like 20 years, right.
The same couples.
So they've got rich data,
the things people are arguing about
in 1980 are the same things
they were arguing about
20 years later,
which were the same things that
they were arguing about 20 years later.
I think they say approximately
60% of our issues
are perpetual, meaning
they're not going anywhere.
We're going to be
I'm going to always run a little late.
You're going to be really punctual.
That's going to create a rift.
The strategy is to be able
to accept each other's God.
There was this great line from
what was it, good Will hunting.
I'm remembering
Robin Williams talking about his late
wife and saying, you know,
you got to pick a Dios.
I think it's what I like.
He's like, you got to just accept each
other's little weird things.
And that's marriage.
I really think there's something to that.
It's less about winning the argument,
perhaps
less even about getting the other person
to take out the trash.
It's more about being able to laugh
at the fact that they always forget it
and not hate or judge them for it.
And I think that is where validation comes
in, because it's it's the like,
I see you and I accept you anyway
for some stuff.
And I want to be really clear about this
because there are some obviously,
there are some dynamics and relationships
that need to change
that should not be tolerated and
that cannot and should not be validated.
I'm obviously speaking about violence,
abuse,
neglect, manipulation, exploitation,
that type of stuff.
Is there a psychological reason why
we hurt the people we love the most?
I'm a fan of the line
hurt people, hurt people.
And I think, at least
in my experience,
the folks that I have seen suffering
the most internally often have the most
fraught relationships with others.
And I think our when when we struggle
with ourselves, when we're not at peace
and we're not happy with ourselves,
we don't treat the people around us
well either.
I also think that we are really prone
to taking things for granted.
And the more present
something is in our life,
the more entitled to it
we feel and the less precious we see it.
And that's just a cognitive bias
we have to overcome.
But I really think when it comes to like,
why do we treat the people around us
poorly?
I would encourage folks to reflect back on
how are they treating themselves?
Are they driving themselves super hard?
Then they're probably driving their family
and the people closest to them hard to.
And I feel like
there's there's times where
we really
hard on the people we love the most.
But then there's also the opposite, right.
Why is, you know,
why is it that in some cases, the people
that we love the most, they're the ones
that we find the hardest to stand up, to.
Stand up to? Yeah.
Because we're most concerned
about losing them.
being rejected by the
barista at Starbucks.
Like who cares?
My daughter, my partner, my my family.
That is riskier.
That is going to stick with me.
And their perception of me informs
my understanding of myself.
And so if they are hostile
and negative to me because I'm standing up
to them, it's hard for me to see myself
on fair terms or good terms.
I internalize that, or at least I can't.
Many people do.
in some cases, why do we let someone we'd
never accept behavior from,
like from a stranger?
But we accept we we can.
We let the loved
one completely get away with
Because it's costly to call it out, right?
And we have to interact with them
more frequently.
Like, I find this actually
all the time in my work
because I can be super effective
as a therapist, even helping,
you know, to with parent training
and parenting issues
with like really pronounced difficult
and tractable problems.
And then I can come home and find. It so.
Much harder with my kid.
You know, she's tantrum and I'm like,
you want a lollipop?
Like, what am I doing?
And it's just that.
It costs.
Me so much more and for so much longer.
And I have to keep it up for
so much longer that it's a harder thing.
It's a marathon.
I'm really good at sprinting over here,
but the marathon is really hard.
And I always,
I think, one of the most important things
to think about
when it comes to relationships.
Again, I go back to behaviorism,
which is punishment and reinforcement,
and we avoid punishment
and we seek reinforcement.
And so if standing up to you is punishing,
I'm going to avoid it.
yeah.
Let's talk about the
like where we draw the line.
Because everything you teach, right.
It makes people trust you
faster and argue with you less.
But is there a line between validation
and manipulation?
It's a good question. It's a question
I get asked a lot.
And one of the points I always make is
that you have to be authentic with this.
Okay?
I cannot pretend to feel something
or suggest
I feel something that I don't, or
that to suggest a level of understanding
that I don't have that is manipulation.
That is what politicians do.
They come out and say,
oh, I know this water is such an issue.
When I'm elected, I'm going to
and they're lying.
They just want to get elected, right?
You can do that. It's not validation.
Validation has to be authentic
or else it is
something like manipulation, exploitation.
I would also add, however, that
if you come at it in this way,
like I said, you've got to be authentic.
So if all you can do is copy, that's
all you got, it will affect you too.
And so I'm often saying to folks, if,
if you want to validate me
just to manipulate me, please do, please.
Like if you're going to make attempt
I say validation
means that you're there, you get it
and you care.
If you're going to really try
and understand
me and really try to empathize with me
so as to manipulate me,
go ahead, please do it all day.
I want you to.
Because the more you try to understand
and empathize with me,
the harder
it's going to be for you to manipulate
Okay.
Let's talk about the internet
and social media.
We talked a little bit about it.
Let's talk a little bit about it again
the whole internet tells people
to stop seeking this external validation
right.
Do you think that advice is mostly wrong
and if so why.
would encourage folks
to stop seeking praise.
Some praise is fine. Like it's important.
Praise and validation can go hand in hand
and should to be effective.
A lot of the time that's fine,
but if you're building your identity
around praise, it's
like building it around a house of cards.
It's a very fragile thing.
You've put so many filters on yourself
that you almost can't go outside.
You know what I mean?
Because ultimately, as I said before,
you have to exceed expectations
to get praise, seeking belonging,
seeking acceptance
for even from strangers.
I think that's a very powerful thing.
And the example
I gave before of me blatantly
seeking external validation,
I was shocked.
I was really trying to do this
big like teaching moment, you know,
in my head, like I'm going to show that
there's folks confuse the two or whatever.
I was not expecting to feel so
seen by so many different people
that I didn't know.
And it was powerful
because it was so many people
and because I didn't know them,
you know,
just the sense of humanity and connection.
And I think that's, my God.
If we were genuinely
just validating people on social media,
that would be awesome, right?
Because it would
there would be no filtering.
It would be the opposite.
And so, yeah, I think we should seek
external validation, not praise,
but what your
but what most people are seeking
is praise,
They're not going after the good stuff.
They approximate.
They get the, the thing
that kind of rhymes with it feels kind of
in the same camp but is fundamentally
You have a rule that you only validate
the part of something
that is actually valid. Yeah.
That's right. And you call that
I think the kernel of truth
say someone believes something
that is just outright false.
How do I validate them
without agreeing to the false part?
I use this example in my book.
It's an extreme example. It's honest one.
I was working at the VA
with a client who had schizophrenia,
says someone who believes things that are
and sees things that are not there.
This is as false as you can get, right?
And in this case, the client had said to
me, you'll know if I go off my meds
because I
think that you're colluding against me.
I worked with this guy for months.
He was.
Very stable, very. Sweet guy.
He stopped showing up.
He is brought by a family member
to my office after several weeks,
and he is like a
like an animal in a cage in my office.
Just like.
Very uncomfortable shaking.
Apparently he had gone off his meds
and had like wallpapered his house
in tinfoil to prevent anthrax
from coming in with the mail
because apparently the government
was trying to take him down.
And of course I was part of that scheme.
So now, from this guy's perspective,
based on what he's thinking,
I am trying to kill him
and he is stuck in my office.
I do not see any validity
in those thoughts.
They are not based on fact.
But if I thought that, in other words,
if I believed what he believed,
of course I would be scared.
I would be terrified.
I would probably want
to record the conversation
or have some evidence of my own.
And so that is how I approached him.
And it was very interesting
because all of the staff is involved
at that point and everybody's like.
You know, do we sedate him? Like,
what do we do?
He's acting.
And I just went in and was. Like.
Listen, you don't have to look at me.
You can look down.
Do you want another person here?
Do you want to record the conversation?
I understand that you are really,
really scared.
And if I were in your shoes,
I would be really scared too.
So you don't.
You don't even have to talk
if you don't want to.
I can just talk.
But I'm basically
I'm validating the emotions
which are real and valid
based on what he's believing.
His thoughts are invalid,
but his emotions are valid.
This is one of the most important tools
I want to give folks,
because this is where we get stuck.
We get stuck on what's wrong,
and looking for the kernel of truth
means I look for what's valid
in spite of everything that's wrong.
And I get one of three things
to focus on a person's
emotions, the thoughts or their behavior.
If their thoughts are not rational,
their emotions may be.
Their behavior may be in response
to those irrational thoughts,
if their behavior is invalid
or ineffective, like my daughter,
I could still validate her emotions, her
thoughts based on where she's coming from.
So it's just, again, I notice right away
what strikes me
as problematic, which is often behavior
when it's aggressive or hateful.
Sometimes it's it's thoughts
when I disagree with them
and don't see the logic in them,
in which case I'm just focused on,
okay, I can validate their behavior
based on what they're thinking, right?
It makes sense
that you're worried about aliens.
If you've been listening to a news channel
that tells you UFOs are coming.
Okay, I don't agree with that,
but I can see where you're coming from,
and I see why you're scared
and I can validate while you're Right?
So it's you look at emotions,
thoughts and behavior
and maybe their thoughts are false.
Like for example,
in this case with this patient,
you know, what he was thinking
wasn't true.
But how he felt in that moment,
that moment,
and maybe his behavior because of how
he felt, those are both valid.
And those are like you said,
a big part of this seems to be about
putting yourself in that person's shoes.
It can't.
That's a
that's a quick little trick to get there.
At the very least,
I'm very clear in my head
with what is striking me
as problematic here.
So, for instance, often with the news
and politics today, it's immediately
apparent to me that I don't I don't see
the validity in what somebody is saying.
I see that as a false narrative.
I see that as a lie,
that those thoughts are problematic,
I and invalid in my opinion.
I can see how somebody who believes that
or is thinking that might feel
or might vote
the way that they were voting,
or might say
the things that they were saying.
I understand that I could validate that.
Given what you think,
it makes sense that you're doing whatever.
That is different from me
saying your thoughts are valid,
Are any politicians practicing validation?
Oh man, what a great question.
Not actively
and not to alienate too many people,
but I think that Obama was often close.
He was a notorious reader and I.
Which is.
In my opinion, often
an indication of somebody who really is
invested in empathy,
in trying to understand experiences
from another person's
perception or perspective.
he has some great quotes
about the importance of, of empathy.
And I think he did
his as best as any politician could. Do.
In trying to to practice some of that.
It seems like maybe validation
online has maybe become like a buzzword.
What is the most common thing
people call validation
that is actually doing harm?
Praise and manipulation?
I think it is probably the praise though.
This like, you know, you're seeking
something that should be coming
from within, when really
what they're seeking is, is praise.
And the reason they're seeking it is
because they don't have a solid sense
of whether or not their experiences
are valid, and so they distort them.
Is there a kind of person,
maybe a situation where validating them
makes things worse? Sure. Yeah.
This is where you get into.
This is the.
Importance of only validate the valid.
So if with my daughter for instance,
if I was to say like you know,
of course you are going to pitch a fit
about this and like, or if I was just
really accommodating to her, like whining,
whining, whining
right then I am I am validating something
that is not valid,
which is her behavior, right?
I work with folks who, as I said before,
are often suicidal or self-harming.
I need to be very careful
not to validate that behavior.
I can validate
why somebody would want to give an where
they're at self-harm or suicide,
depending about depending on what I know
about the situation,
I'm never going to validate that
that's an effective way to handle
the situation is the distinction.
But it's critical, right?
If somebody has really bad arthritis,
I can validate why they would not want to
work out, why they wouldn't want to
exercise, why they'd want to lie in bed.
Of course, that makes perfect sense.
And if you keep doing that,
you will feel worse.
Same thing with depression.
Same thing with anxiety, right?
Makes total sense that like, you want to
just be on social media
and under your covers and not go to work
when you're really struggling to get by
and you're just really in a dark place,
of course you're behaving that way
and you will feel worse.
That is a recipe for depression.
there's a lot of people watching that
probably have parents, loved ones,
friends, you know, you know,
family members
that are suffering from depression.
Right.
And first of all, is validation
a cure for depression?
Is it a potential path
towards a cure for depression?
And how do you validate someone's feelings
that is going through depression,
but at the same time, don't push them down
a deeper path of depression
or these suicidal thoughts. Yeah.
So there's a distinction
between validation and reinforcement.
Right.
Validation can be reinforcing
because it feels good.
And so I need to be careful
not to kind of
say, well,
of course you want to kill yourself.
Here's a knife.
Right.
Like, if I really see that as valid,
then I would take no issue with them
hurting themselves or doing whatever it is
they're doing to some extent.
Right.
And that is where that distinction
between behavior and emotion and thoughts
comes into play.
Because I can say, and I need to say,
of course you don't want to get out
of bed.
Of course this is hard,
and that's why you need help, right?
I take I care about you so much
that I can't just sit back
and let this continue.
And I'm not in a position to help.
I don't know how to treat depression,
but I care about you.
And I see that you're struggling.
That's the very, very delicate line
that you're trying
to to walk in, in supporting
somebody who needs help.
It's really to get them to get that help
and not be like,
so reinforcing that they,
they don't really need it.
They're getting enough out of you.
Right.
So I need to be clear
that like this is problematic.
You can't keep skipping work
like this is adding up and this is not
this is going to make you feel worse
and you feel horrible.
You haven't slept in four days.
This can't go on.
I'm not doing you any favors
by pretending that this is not happening.
So it's that balance of like,
I get it, I get it change,
I get it, I get it change
what's in effective.
Validate what's valid.
Focus on changing what's not.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Let's talk about AI.
I want to figure out
how AI fits into all this. Right.
So because validation
it starts with paying real attention
to the other person.
But now we live in a world where
half the time people are just staring
at their phones. Right.
And they're feeling they're starting
to feel from what I've seen, understood by
Claude ChatGPT as their therapist, like,
are we getting worse at this as humans?
A couple things there.
One is that Claude ChatGPT
they can validate up to a point.
So for instance, they can't disclose.
And in many ways
they can't like take, take action.
Sometimes they can kind of like rewrite
an email for you.
Right?
But there's many ways
in which they can't really intervene.
That said,
I do think
part of what has become so addictive
and we have seen and as a psychologist,
my God, the problems I see
with AI,
it's that it can be so validating
that folks are kind of addicted to it
in the same way they would be with opioids
or orgasms or any of these other things.
Right?
They're getting that hit of
I totally get you.
It makes sense that you're struggling
with this. Yes.
That is so horrible.
How unfair they're getting that hit.
And then they're, you know,
doing whatever AI says to do, right?
AI is very effective at implementing
the validation with change.
Like, yes, this idea is brilliant
and you're so smart and you should
continue to build this made up thing,
this made up spaceship together.
Let's keep working on it, you know,
so it can provide a low
level of validation
that is in many ways very dangerous
because it's not necessarily validating
the valid, is it?
It is saying what you want to hear,
but that's different
from validating the valid. Yeah.
If it's but if it's making a lonely person
feel more understood
than maybe the people in their own life,
is that a good thing or is it?
Should we be taking that as a warning?
I have seen more bad than good
come of that, I would say,
because there is again
no concern for you, for the person
when it comes to a ChatGPT,
it is saying what you want to hear,
but that is not necessarily
good for you, right?
Giving somebody who is anxious
a lot of reassurance,
it is going to cause them to seek you out,
seek out the chat, GPT,
whatever, more and more and more
which will make them more anxious,
which will cause them to
it. It cycles things up.
It's not actually helping you.
Anything that feels good in the moment
is going to lead to another click.
But is that helping you?
That's the question.
And that's not its job.
Its job is often to be a sycophant.
It can be good at that.
But is that what the AI wants?
It wants you to keep coming back to it.
It wants to serve ads or whatever
it's going to serve at some point.
It wants to make more money.
The AI doesn't care about your feelings,
but people don't feel
that they feel like it
does. Yeah, that's the problem.
I mean, That's worth it.
That's where the brave New World
situation is that we're so freaking
desperate for these signals
that now that we're getting them,
it makes us very susceptible
in the very ways I've explained.
But consider the motive of the quote
unquote person on the other side of that.
And are they genuinely validating?
You know, it is not authentic.
It's made up and it's not for your good.
It's for the model.
You talk about the eight skills, okay.
You took something that therapists
trained for years to do
and broke it into these eight skills
that anyone can learn.
First of all, before
I ask the next question,
what are those eight skills?
So we break them down, I say validation.
I never gave this definition validation,
I guess I did it.
So it communicates that you're there,
you get it and you care.
It has these qualities of mindfulness,
understanding and empathy.
And when they're packaged in such a way,
it can result in the other person
feeling accepted.
All right.
So these these skills help me
hit those notes in just the right way.
That mindfulness
understanding and empathy.
and kind of stack them
up like this on a scale of
1 to 8, those lower ones, the attending
and copying which we talked about,
they're just showing mindfulness.
They're just a way of signaling.
I'm paying attention
to what you're saying.
I'm hearing you without judgment.
That's it.
It's a very low signal, but as we've
discussed, it can be very powerful.
And if you don't understand or you don't
empathize, that is all you can do.
And remember, as clinicians, by design,
we are working with folks
whose thoughts are often distorted,
whose behavior is often
very ineffective, and for whom
it can be very difficult to validate.
And so we needed strategies to help us
reliably and authentically do this.
And that's what those first two skills
do, that attending and copying
help us just send that signal
when it's really hard to do. So.
From there we have three skills
to communicate understanding,
contextualizing, equalizing,
and proposing, which we discussed.
All right.
That shows not just that I'm paying
attention, but I get it on some degree.
I understand I can see how you got
to how you're thinking
or how you're feeling or why you did that.
Right.
And at the highest level, we can say,
I don't just understand it intellectually,
emotionally,
I get it, I empathize, I've been there.
Disclosure. Right?
I'm willing to
put myself out taking action.
I am affected,
emoting, crying,
having an actual emotional reaction.
Those are the strategies
that we use, and
I always use the most powerful one I can.
I mean, if I can disclose
and it's an appropriate time to do
so, I'll do it because I know that
that's going to send a powerful hit.
When you walk into a room,
can you tell within a minute
whether someone actually feels understood
by the people around them?
Like, what are you picking up on that
the rest of us would miss?
One of the most basic
things I'm looking for is the ratio,
kind of of how much people are attending
to themselves versus others, right?
And so like in that exchange
I described in the beginning
where I came in and I was focused on me.
Right.
That was off balance.
I was not attending to you.
And so if I'm watching you interact
with with your staff here,
and I'm seeing a lot of focus on you,
which would make sense.
You're the host. They're
all spinning around trying to help you.
But if I also see you attending to them.
Hey, you need some water?
Hey, how's it going?
Hey, thanks so much. Right.
I am seeing some degree of equality
in the dynamic.
Those are the types of things
that I'm attending to.
It's really just attention.
Where are people
putting their attention is.
And is it all on one person?
Is it across the room?
What does that look like?
So tension that's the most important
maybe because and can
that be taught or is that something
you have to again repetition.
Absolutely be taught
and practiced through repetition.
Right.
And also is that attention
positive or negative?
I didn't interview with this woman
actually.
And my lord.
She had these. Guys just running.
Circles around her.
Because like she was.
Very snappy
and the negative attention was just.
So you got a sense that there was some
bite behind that because she would kind
of, you know, give a look
and everybody would like scramble.
And, you know, that some stuff had gone
down in the past, right?
So that attention can be positive.
Let me get you some water
or it can be negative.
I'll bite your head off.
Dmitri, I love you. You're the best.
I've not been attending to you.
I I like he's focused. He's great at what?
You're great at what you do, by the way.
Okay.
And we talked a little bit
about disclosing,
Sharing something from your own life
so the person feels less alone.
Where is the line between that
and quietly making the moment about you?
Yeah, it's a thin line, which is why this
one takes a little bit of of practice.
We've all had that parent
who's like, back.
In my day, we had to. Right.
So there's the issue where you're like
trumping their story with yours
or you make it all about you.
And there's a little caveat here,
which is that
I have found it really tricky to
to navigate disclosing with folks
who are very emotionally intelligent,
because if you disclose with them,
they'll often take that as a cue from you
that you want to talk about yourself.
And so they're very good
at getting you lost in your story.
They'll do this like,
oh my gosh, you had cancer.
What happened?
Tell me.
Like they'll really lean in
and if you're not careful,
you know, 20 minutes in
and you're still just talking about you.
So it has to be this very.
We do this like, flip it back strategy.
Actually, you see this I've seen this
talked about in the dating literature.
They talk about like you know,
disclose a little but then reflect it
back to the other person
as like a dating technique.
And it it works in therapy
and just about any dynamic as well.
Like whatever it is that you disclose,
just find a way to like map
it really quickly back to the other person
so you don't get too
caught up in yourself.
I feel like.
You, if I'm not mistaken, talked
a little bit about when you were dating
using this. Tell me about that.
Which one did it?
Did it. Ever backfire on you? Oh, gosh.
I always
feel like this one will backfire with me
because in therapy, I use it a lot.
So I disclose a lot, which I feel like is
historically a very controversial thing.
Like, the therapist
shouldn't talk about themselves.
They're supposed to be,
you know, it's all about you.
It's a messed up relationship
if there's no equality in it.
Right?
In my experience.
Still, that said, it's it's very easy
to get caught up in your own thing
and in the same thing in the same way
that you might with a relationship.
Yeah.
I can't think of anything
right off the top of because people.
Like probably talking about themselves
more than they do, inquiring and trying
to get your story and then not relating it
back to my own story in my head.
You know, we're wired to probably
want to talk about ourselves,
want to think about ourselves.
But in order to build a true relationship,
you actually have to give a ish about what
the other person feels and things.
That's exactly right.
I think that's one of the best, like,
dating techniques is to like,
get the other person talking.
It's like one of the most basic strategies
I teach folks, like right out
the gate is like, ask questions,
think about how much time you're talking
relative to how much you're listening.
The balance should be that
you're listening more
than you're talking in in most situations.
Adam granted,
some was talking about some research on
really good leaders
and looking at the ratio of how much
they talk, relative
to how much they listen.
And the more effective a leader is,
the more they tend to be
in positions of listening
rather than talking, which is,
I think, very interesting,
especially when you look at some of the
more kind of narcissistic CEO types
that can be out there.
To really lead well,
you have to understand.
You have to understand the organization
and the people that you lead.
And the only way to get
there is by listening.
If you're just talking,
you're only looking at the experience
through your own lens.
That's not effective.
It will come back to bite you.
when you're listening to, you know,
let's just say you have two hypotheticals.
You have a room with business leaders
all in it or a team in it.
And maybe you also have,
on the other hand,
just you're out to dinner with
a group of friends is the smartest person
in both of those rooms.
The person that's probably
the one listening, the most.
Certainly
the most emotionally intelligent.
I would say smartest. I don't know, Okay.
Maybe, Maybe not.
But I would say that
the emotionally intelligent
folks tend to pick up the threads.
Yeah.
And even if they are talking,
they are talking through the other
person's experience, or they're simply
relating something of theirs to that.
It is it is very again,
it comes back to that attention.
Right?
And emotionally intelligent
people are very sensitive to the needs
of other people, and most people
want to be talking about themselves.
And so they facilitate that
to some extent.
Yeah.
It kind of goes back to like
how to win friends and influence people.
Whereas yeah. it's reinforcing.
It's dopamine.
Let's talk about your father. Right.
If I'm not mistaken
your dad went to West Point.
You did.
He was a military man.
Yeah. He didn't show much emotion.
No no no.
Well he's like a tricky guy.
He's Italian.
Okay. as am I as you could tell.
I talk a lot with my hands. But yeah.
Military guys raised in the 50s.
60s not very emotionally dynamic.
He would always say, like, if you tell him
something really big, he would say,
oh, you got to be kidding me.
You could tell him
the Pistons won the playoffs.
Oh my gosh, you got to be kidding me.
Dad, I have cancer.
Oh, you got to be kidding me, right?
Like that is about the range
of his negative emotion display.
He can be very animated
when it comes to positive emotions,
but as a military man
from decades ago, his range of negative
emotions is quite narrow.
Interestingly, that means that in order
for me to kind of speak to him
in a way that feels psychologically safe
would not be for me to say
that I'm feeling super depressed
about my recent cancer diagnosis.
I feel a fair degree of embarrassment
and some amount of even humiliation,
which I know must sound strange,
but I can't help but cry myself to sleep.
He would be like,
you got to be kidding me.
You know what I mean?
And so for me, when I do talk to him
about heavy stuff,
I stay much more narrow.
So he had a health thing a few years back,
and he told me about it,
and I didn't say,
I feel depressed, scared.
I said, you got to be kidding me,
because that's within his wheelhouse.
That is his where he's comfortable, right?
And again,
part of validation is being able
to create
a psychologically safe space for somebody.
And that means working
within their bandwidth, not yours.
That means accepting, not trying
to change, at least not in that moment.
It feels, you know, you're
it seems like
you're very emotionally intelligent,
but in the context of how you grew up,
it seemed like the opposite
of that environment.
How do you how did. That.
You know, complete when it happened?
I feel like I feel like I see
a lot of people like especially.
I think our generation
nowadays, we do a lot.
We're really you've got young kids
around the same age as me.
And so we've been inundated
with like positive parenting and like we.
Are. Working full time and playing full
time with the kids and really trying
to validate their emotions.
My mom didn't give a crap
about the validity of my emotions.
She could care less, right?
Like we were just
running around the neighborhood
and getting screamed at when we got in.
There was just it was a different time.
I also think I struggled with that a lot.
know a lot of women I think struggled
with being unseen
in their emotions, unseen in their
or misrepresented,
let's say, in their sexuality.
At least.
Again, for I can speak for my generation.
And I think that has led
to a lot of problems.
But part of what I'm trying to do
with this book
and with this information
is to show how these this insight
that's awareness can be a superpower,
even if it wasn't honed or nourished.
It's a superpower, like flying, like
if you can fly, it's important
that you not just fly into walls, right?
You've got to figure out
how to kind of navigate this.
And then it's a tremendous power. Right.
And that is very much
how I see a lot of this stuff.
Can you take me back
to the first time that you watched
validation
actually work the moment you saw like.
Whoa, what just happened?
Yeah, I talk about this in my book.
It was this super weird experience
that like, now in in retrospect,
I can see like, oh,
this was kind of weird, but at the time
it was just deeply meaningful.
I had gone over
to a friend's house to play
and she wasn't home yet from dance.
So I was just waiting in the kitchen.
And the mom is like unpacking groceries,
and she knocks over a two liter of pop
soda. I'm from the Midwest.
The two liter of like, Coca Cola spills
and she just starts bawling.
And I am like, you know, I'm seven.
So presumably
this is because the coke spilled, right?
So I'm like, it's okay.
I go to like helper. And she starts
sobbing about her
marriage
and how this guy is cheating on her
and it's falling apart
and she doesn't know what to do,
and they're going to be separating
or divorcing or something.
And all.
All I was just trying to do in that
moment was like, make her feel better.
You know?
Like I was just worried about this woman.
And I said something
to the effect of like, oh,
it must feel like you're, you know, dying
and being born all at once or something
just very intense for a seven year old.
And she just looked so she was like, yes.
And I frankly felt so powerful.
I was like, what did I do?
Like, yay!
This was this really, like,
touching moment.
I happen to just say this thing
that soothed
this adult superpower, right?
And it a light bulb
went off for me that like, what was that?
And I would say that
I spent a lot of years chasing that,
you know,
trying to find those moments with people.
I think probably that's
why I became a psychologist.
if that moment never happened, do
you think you'd be doing this right now?
Yeah. Because because I've had many others
like Okay.
Since then, I was always
just kind of trying to chase those,
find those private moments of connection
with people, trying to find a way
to say the thing they needed to hear.
Did that feel really good on the inside?
Not just like you're powerful,
especially at that age, but like like
like you said, like a superpower. Like,
what the hell did I just do?
All I did was just say some words.
And this person,
like, their whole demeanor,
everything about them just changed.
And for someone who was sensitive,
I think to feel like that sensitivity
could do something positive for others
was really powerful for me.
And it was very validating.
It was like, there's utility in this.
This isn't a burden necessarily.
Right? Like, this is this is who I am.
This can be a positive thing
for other people.
And that has really shaped my life.
Like, how can I be of service
through this to others?
That has always been my Northstar.
And I'm sure you get so many people
reaching out to you after your book
that are using this in the real world
and changing other people's
lives, changing their own
the way they feel about other people even?
Yeah, it's very humbling, I'll say that.
think it's
the greatest thing I could do with my life
is to help people use whatever experiences
they have to connect
better with each other.
I think that's what it's all about,
frankly. 100%.
And at seven,
did you realize in that moment
exactly what you did and like, okay,
now I'm going to try to go do that again
tomorrow, the next day.
Or did you do you not put it together
at that young of an age?
I thought about it a lot.
You know, so much that I can I can still
recall it now, but I don't think.
And then I would notice, like,
you know, years later with like a friend
or somebody, like in high school,
I was always the person people went to.
And it was that feeling.
So I knew that I was mapping on
to this feeling.
I just couldn't reliably hit it.
You know,
I was kind of like throwing darts.
And then when I learned these skills,
when I was training to become a therapist,
I was like, oh.
That's what I was doing.
And here's how I can reliably hit that,
and here's how I can get better
at throwing those darts. Right?
And now you hit
the bullseye every time. Now
I much, I get much closer.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's talk a little bit
about your patience. Right.
And this is so important
because you've sat
across from people
who genuinely wanted to die,
and your job was to keep them alive,
basically, or change how they feel.
What did that teach you?
That kind of no executive coaching
room ever could.
That my own suffering
is incredibly powerful
in those moments when I,
when I think back
to some of the real turning points
with really challenging clients,
it was always when I was vulnerable
and extended, you know, related to them,
disclosed something to them in a way
that made them feel seen.
That was the turning point,
and that has been
the greatest lesson of my like, I'll have
these things happen, like the cancer.
And in the moment I am thinking,
no good can come of this.
And yet there's a deeper part of me
that knows I will pay this forward.
This will be of service to someone other
than me if I can get myself through this.
Because that is what those experiences
have taught me.
It's that like you move people
by having been moved yourself,
and if you can kind of store
that stuff within you and then find a way
to challenge it, channel it,
I should say, in the right moment,
at the right time, with the right person,
you can really change the course
of someone's life.
I'm so grateful that I have like
the training and skills to do that,
but really I, I try and find ways
to do that outside of my work as well.
You know,
just whatever suffering I'm experiencing
or have experienced, how do I connect it
to something greater than myself?
How do I use it to help someone?
Is there one person
you were not able to reach?
Yeah, I can think of at least one.
One that I'm even still in communication
with.
I wouldn't say not able to reach.
It was not able to change.
I have had a few of those and there I rely
on my training too, which is that,
you know, everybody has free will.
I am not God.
I can do the best that I can
do, and I can want the best for somebody,
and it might not work.
And that's the reality of what I do.
And if I internalized all of that,
I wouldn't be able to do this.
I couldn't because it's,
you know, people relapse, people die.
People do exactly the opposite of what I
tell them to do, despite how hard I tried.
And all I can do is try.
Let's talk about self validation.
Yeah.
You said, if I'm not mistaken, that the
most important relationship to validate
is the one you have with yourself.
Yeah.
Are you actually good at this
with yourself or is it easier on
other people?
is so much easier with other people.
It's interesting you ask that
because when I wrote this book,
I really value self validation.
And yet I have found it
very hard to teach people just to start
off validating themselves,
because so much of that communication
that we have with ourselves is,
is subconscious and hard to hear, right?
Whereas when we're talking with others,
we're reflecting somewhat
on what we're saying.
We're choosing our words. All right.
And there's more intention.
And in that you can be more deliberate
in using these strategies.
And so I learned to validate myself
by through the process of validating
others, developing these strategies,
practicing them on others.
I started to see where I was invalidating
my own emotions, my own thoughts.
Oh, I shouldn't have said that.
I shouldn't be angry.
I shouldn't be this.
I shouldn't feel this.
And I could recognize that
if that was a client,
if that was a patient of mine,
I would be saying, no, what's valid here?
Right.
And so I learned how to validate myself
through the process of validating others.
And so my focus is first
and foremost on validating others.
And the full circle of it is that
if you're going to get good at validating
yourself, the best place to practice first
and foremost is with others.
Because yourself, that's hard.
It's very hard.
And how do you do that with yourself?
Because I feel like a lot of people's
thoughts there in their own head.
Are you saying it out loud to yourself?
Are you just in your head
trying to validate
what the emotions you are
that you're going through in that moment?
It seems like it's more difficult
to validate yourself,
but like, what are the steps,
you know, to self validate?
yeah, I so I use the same many of the same
strategies and I imply them inward.
Are you saying these things out
loud to yourself
or are you just thinking them
in your head.
Yeah.
So I got really angry at Comcast
the other day.
Okay.
actually write about being angry
at Comcast in my book.
You think my whole life.
But just happen to be setting up
a new business line with them,
and it was just all sorts of shenanigans.
Just for reference, Comcast, we love you.
We have no problems with you.
Sorry.
We're taking sponsors.
Okay. No, just.
Okay. Go ahead.
bombast.
So if I was to walk through this
I got really angry.
And I don't like getting angry
I don't usually get angry.
So what I would do and I typically do this
at night before I go to bed,
I'd be lying in bed
and I would first think, okay,
what am I feeling
when I think about this situation?
I don't feel good about it.
What am I feeling?
And the first feeling
that comes up, for me, at least right
now, is annoyance and frustration
and guilt.
Okay.
And so I've identified those emotions.
I label them, I give them emotion
adjectives, and then I just repeat,
all right, in much the same way
that I would copy with someone else.
So I'll try and do this now.
I'll focus on angry.
So I say to myself, just over
there's anger, there's anger.
I'm just repeating it.
And the reason I'm just repeating it
is because I'm trying to feel
that emotion as intensely as I can
without feeding it the narrative.
I'm trying not to think about the memory
of what was said,
and frankly,
the fact that I'm talking to you.
I'm just focusing
on where in my body I feel that anger.
And I try and squeeze that emotion out
almost like a sponge.
And once you've really wrung it out,
really felt it as intensely as you can
without feeding it, it will go down.
It absolutely will go down
so long as you don't feed it.
And by that I mean like
replay the situation in your head
and then once it starts to go down,
I look for why was I angry?
What's the validity in my emotion?
Okay, I can think about
they said this, this happened.
Oh my gosh, that part's really annoying.
Okay.
And I'm just kind of going through and I'm
looking at the facts that substantiate
my emotion.
That's it. I'm just trying to understand.
And if I start getting caught
in the story again, which often happens
if I start to get,
I just go back to the repeating
the emotion to myself and just feeling it,
just letting myself feel it.
That is how we process
emotions is to let them be all right.
And I'm kind of I kind of toggle
between those two spaces of kind of
just wringing out the emotion
and then validating it,
ringing it out and validating it.
And once it's
kind of come down a bit between,
you know, going back and forth there,
I'll usually do some type of self-care.
I would drink a tea
if I was awake,
since I do this at night often.
I will put a hand on my chest
or on my stomach.
I'll breathe into my stomach.
And say something like it's okay.
Make sense that you're angry.
You're not a bad person for being angry.
Even psychologists get angry.
Now you're really hearing the self-talk,
and I basically try and comfort myself
in much
the same way that I would want someone
to comfort me, or that
I would try and comfort somebody,
then I reach the most critical part,
which is now
what am I going to do with this?
I've alluded to this several times,
and I think this is
just so important
with those negative emotions.
It's energy.
All right.
Energy is not created nor destroyed.
But if you don't do anything with it,
it's just going to eat at you.
So I have to decide
what am I going to do with this?
All right.
So when it was when it was sadness
about having to do
chemotherapy, we got some cats to foster.
I used that energy and directed it
there with this anger.
I actually think it's important
to follow back up with Comcast
and make sure
that they correct the situation.
So I'm not going to avoid this.
I'm not going to, you know, just pay
whatever it is they want me to pay.
I'm going to follow up with them again.
That's the action I will take.
And so that's the full cycle.
I kind of just go through identifying
the emotion, wringing it out, validating,
see what, seeing why it was valid, why
it was logical, what makes sense.
Then I self soothe and take action.
I love that okay, last one.
If validation really
is this powerful, Yeah.
which I believe it is now
after talking to you and it's this free
and it's this easy to learn,
is there a version
of this world
where we start using it on purpose?
And most of the conflict that we've all
gotten used to just quietly fades away?
There's a world where it gets
significantly better.
Like I said, this is a practice.
I don't expect perfection.
I don't think it's possible
because I have really practiced
this stuff,
and my kid can attest to the fact
that I still invalidate her
from time to time.
But my God, how much better
the world would be
if we spent as much time
working on opinion writing and debate.
If we spend as much time working on
seeing the kernel of truth
in another person's perspective,
being able to validate
even when we don't agree.
If we taught kids how to do that
because, my God, can they learn this stuff
much better than my adult clients?
Can they pick it up?
That's what we should be teaching in
grade school, right?
There's so much value in that
and we do not value it as a society.
We don't even have the language
to talk about it.
We can't even conceptualize it.
And so yeah, I see a world
that is infinitely better in so many ways,
but ultimately
in the ways that matter most,
which is the connections
we have with each other.
Totally agree.
Doctor Caroline Flack,
thank you so much for coming on the show.
was such a blast.
I really appreciate it. Thank you.