Validation 101

These terms typically come up during the discussion about validation:

Self-Worth: How external feedback and our own self-talk affects our self esteem, confidence, and overall general sense of worthiness as a person.

Self-Image: Not just our overall worth, but specifically what qualities we identify in ourselves based on feedback from others or our own self-generated thoughts.

Self-Compassion: Recognition of your own or another person’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors as understandable.

Self-worth

Studies have shown that self-worth is more often tied to what others think. Unhealthy reliance on external validation could look like the following:

• Narcissism or antisocial behavior: disregard of others’ feelings, putting others down to feel better, appearing to have high self-esteem but in reality it’s very low.

• A people-pleaser: fear of one’s true self, doesn’t know oneself but follows others blindly, codependent, lack of boundaries and the ability to say so.

• Over-reliance on the following: addiction to positive feedback on social media, attention-seeking behaviors, trying to get attention solely to feel good about yourself, wanting more sex from a partner because that’s how you feel loved and appreciated.

How do we improve this?

• Recognize that these thoughts and feelings are deeply rooted in us from a young age.

• Recognize that others’ reactions to you actually have much more to do with themselves than you.

• Learn how to balance taking feedback in a constructive way with feeling unnecessary shame about yourself in the process (episodes 281 and 282 on shame).

Self-image

Charles Horton Cooley, a sociologist, coined the term “Looking Glass Self,” which refers to how we think we appear to others and the judgments we make about those assessments and assumptions. It comprises of three main components:

• We imagine how we must appear to others in a social situation.

• We imagine and react to what we feel their judgment of that appearance must be.

• We develop our sense of self and respond through these perceived judgments of others.

Self-confidence

Many of us have a fear of being alone and feel as though no one can understand our thoughts. Generating skills for better self-compassion and understanding here is important, and as a bonus, they’re essentially the same as the skills you can apply to your interpersonal connections. This can give others much-needed validation and increase your trust and intimacy with others.

1. Be Present.

   • Start by recognizing your own feelings or those of others as being real. Even if you don’t think the perceptions that led to the reaction are true, the feelings are still real to the person feeling them.

   • Attempting to deny the emotion entirely doesn’t actually do anything to help get over it.

2. Just know the facts.

   • What exactly happened in the situation? (not your guesses about what other people intended, just the facts)

   • What are you feeling physically and emotionally?

3. Try to name the feelings

   • What might someone else feel in this situation? Is it angry? Are you feeling that? Is it fear? Are you feeling that? etc.

   • What kind of action do you want to take? Does that give any clues? I want to cry. Maybe there is some sadness. I want to run away. Maybe there is some fear. Etc.

4. Compassion and Normalizing

   • Everyone has emotions and we don’t always understand them or want them. It’s totally normal to feel this way.

   • Nobody is happy all the time, motivated all the time, energetic all the time, etc. 

   • Realize that other people in your/their situation would probably feel similarly. 

   • Acknowledge an impact your history might play in the feelings. Is this reminiscent of an older hurt or something from your parents?