175. SELF-INVALIDATION: Why We Judge Ourselves & How To Accept Your Emotions

Jan 13

listen to this episode:

In this week's solo episode, I discuss why we invalidate our emotions and the power of self-validating! I share what self-validation is and how it's used in DBT, the two most common ways that people self-invalidate, why we self-invalidate and the consequences of doing so, the cycle of self-invalidation, three skills you can use to start validating your emotions, how to make self-validation a habit, goals to set and exercises to practice so you can start self-validating, and your most-asked questions on self-invalidation. If you want to stop judging yourself for your emotions and start accepting your feelings, then this episode is a MUST-LISTEN!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ DBT Self-Validation Manual

+ DBT Self-Validation Lesson

+ Emotion Vulnerability and Self-Invalidation

+ How to Measure Emotional Self-Validation

+ Self-Validation: How to be Less Critical and Validate Yourself Instead

+ She Persisted Ep. 28 feat. Dr. Blaise Aguirre

+ The Cycle of Invalidation Chart

+ The Power of Self-Validation

+ The Self-Invalidation Due to Emotion Scale

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

I learned self validation and I prioritized self validation so much because I realized that that was one of the things that no one could ever take away from me. It didn't matter what anyone else said or thought or believed because I could always validate myself.

Previously, I was relying heavily on friends validations or peers validation, or really my parents validation was a huge one. And that's not a guarantee. We have no way of knowing if that's going to happen or not. The only thing that we can guarantee is how we validate ourselves.

Hello, hello, and welcome to She Persisted. I am so excited you're here today. We're talking about self validation and self invalidation. If you have listened to the podcast before, or probably done any type of interpersonal therapy, or trying to improve your relationships, you've probably heard of validation.

And validation is the idea that we are creating space and appreciating others. experiences. It could be a lived experience. It could be an emotion. It could be a belief. Any of these things that each of us hold and are subjectively valid. It's not facts. It's not things that are objectively right or wrong.

These emotions and these beliefs and these experiences just are. And so, This is kind of the gray area in mental health, which I think if you are a very black and white person , it's either a little, , tough to accept, but it can also be very freeing to be like, no matter what I'm experiencing emotion wise, it's valid.

It's not always justified, but it is valid, and I can make space for that and appreciate that, and the same goes for someone else, and so we don't have to fit in there. to these boxes or get someone else to feel a certain way because it's not how we would have responded or things like that. And so. I'm really excited because today we're going to talk about a little bit more of a nuanced side of validation, which is how we validate ourselves and what happens when we're not doing that.

This is something that was It's a really, really, really big part of my mental health and my recovery. I think about how I spoke to myself and how I experienced my emotions when I was at my lowest points, and it really was just chronic self invalidation. I was really overwhelmed by the emotions I was experiencing.

I didn't think I was deserving of experiencing what I was. It was like that mindset of, I don't have a reason to be depressed. I don't have a reason to be anxious. I shouldn't be depressed and anxious. Or no one else is feeling this way. no one else understands what's happening. So why am I doing this? And so what we'll get into in this episode is The fact that when we don't create space and accept our emotions, we start experiencing secondary emotions about that emotion.

It's like, maybe you're sad, but then you're angry at yourself for being sad, and then you believe that you're a bad person for feeling sad. And so you're just creating more challenges for yourself. So if you can set up this system, and this mindset and this ability to validate yourself first and foremost, you save yourself a lot of pain and suffering.

So I think I've compiled some really great information, some background research. I promise I'm going to make it interesting. And then also some skills for you to implement so that you can leave this episode being like, I know what validation is. I know what happens when I don't validate myself and I know how to do that.

So. We're going to start with a quote that I found on a validation worksheet when I was doing some research for this episode, and these worksheets were actually compiled by a clinician at 3East, and if you're not familiar with my story, I went to an incredible DBT residential program called 3East at McLean Hospital.

They are the best of the best. They do amazing work if you are a parent or a teen and you're thinking about residential as a next step. They Definitely check them out. Incredibly evidence based. Incredibly compassionate. Just, I cannot say enough good things. And we've had, , Dr. Blaise Aguirre on the podcast many, many, many episodes ago.

Like, first 50 episodes of She Persisted to talk about the work they're doing and his philosophy, so. A little sidebar tangent, but when I saw , that the doctor who had put together this fabulous worksheet was from Therese, I was like, ugh, this makes sense. Of course he's at Therese, because so hand in hand.

Anyways, this quote is, when you understand you cannot help but love, you cannot get angry. To develop an understanding, you have to practice looking with eyes of compassion.

When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people. And I'm not going to say this name right, but it's by Thich Nhat Hanh, I think is how you say it. , and I really love this quote and it's something that my last therapist said to me when we kind of wrapped up meeting on a regular basis when I went to college and she just gave some really wonderful wisdom and advice about how, when we have experienced mental health challenges and when we've had these experiences of suffering, it gives us this great ability to truly empathize with others and support them in a way that someone who hasn't been through that maybe isn't able to do.

And so we can use our suffering to support others. And, , that's really true of validation. So. So, I loved that quote for why validation can be such an asset and a skill, even though we're going to be talking about validating ourselves, , today too. But it's very true. Practicing self validation is a way of practicing self love and giving yourself compassion and allowing yourself to understand what you are navigating.

And relieve your suffering by not avoiding and suppressing what you're experiencing. So I wanna start with what self validation is. We kind of talked about, okay, like emotions are valid and we're creating space for things, and maybe beliefs and experiences can also be valid. But what is self validation?

Especially in more of like an intervention habit mindset. , kind of like a repeated behavior sense. So I looked up a study. about self validation that created an objective measure for how we can track self invalidation. And this is interesting, it's something newer in the scientific literature, and it's a more recent thing that is being catalogued and tracked.

Obviously, mental health research is constantly changing and evolving, so even this idea isn't something that is as common as like a depression score or an anxiety score. And so, In the context of the study, they defined self invalidation as someone's view towards their emotions, and that view is that the emotions aren't okay.

And secondly, the quote unquote improper emotions they're feeling mean they're less respectable and less worthy as a person. And, if you have talked to yourself in an invalidating way, those are probably things that you've said to yourself, or messages that you recognize, that your emotions aren't okay, and that because they aren't okay, that also connects to your worth. And, you've heard my story before, I share that a big shift that really changed my mental health was changing the core belief that I didn't think I was deserving of love from anyone, including myself. And so, when we talk about these belief systems, we also have to talk about how they're showing up in our relationships and the way we talk to ourselves, our inner dialogue, all of those kinds of things. And so, was really a way that I was like maintaining and continuing these negative belief systems and really low self esteem.

So, if you're still hearing this word and you're like, okay, I get it, self invalidation, but what does that mean? I'm not sure if that's something that I'm doing. I'm not sure if that's something that is at play here. Here are some examples, and I'll put the link to the article that I pulled these from in the show notes.

But these are some of the messages that might be on repeat, that are by nature invalidating. So you're overly sensitive, you're overthinking, you should let it go. Why did you take that personally? I'm sure it wasn't that bad. You'll get over it. , it could have been worse.

You must have misunderstood. You shouldn't be so angry. You shouldn't be sad. You're making things more chaotic than you need to. That didn't happen. Stop imagining things. You're overreacting. So it's like these judgments that we place on the emotions themselves.

And so I found this really incredible article that talked about what happens when we invalidate ourselves or when we experience invalidation from other people. And you've probably experienced this. When we have that invalidation occur, our emotions end up getting more intense.

Our thoughts turn to a place of judgment, we start criticizing, and then we really start acting from an emotion mind place. We do things that are not effective, that don't get us further in the relationship, that don't get us further towards our goal.

Again, the, the ineffectiveness and emotionality is really at play because the self invalidation just intensifies the emotional experiences. So it also leads to more of these unwanted feelings, maybe it's more pain, maybe there's more self criticism, maybe there's self hatred, it really reinforces those feelings.

And because this likely is not happening in isolation, having that initial, like, you shouldn't be feeling this way, why are you feeling this way, why are you overreacting, tends to put us on that spiral of self invalidation.

And so where self validation comes in is that it helps us kind of cut that spiral off and it might not get rid of the emotions that you initially are experiencing. It's probably not going to change the situation. It might not even move you forward. towards a resolution, but it doesn't cause additional suffering.

And you are able to observe, you are able to focus on the facts, and you are able to create space for your emotional experience. And so that self validation really helps us move away from that criticism, and it helps us be more compassionate. It's like a very tangible way that we can increase our self compassion and our self love.

And increase our acknowledgement for our own experiences, and also accepting ourselves for who we are and what we're feeling. Because I think especially when you're struggling with your mental health, some of us can kind of like beat ourselves up for what we're experiencing or what we're thinking.

And so if we can build in this self acceptance, again, we are really employing that principle of not making things worse, which when it comes to mental health is one of the most powerful things you can do. So, I wanted to share a little bit of information with you guys about what happens when we invalidate.

And there are kind of two ways that people invalidate. Some people invalidate themselves for saying that they're not being emotional enough. Like, I should be feeling this way. Other people are reacting in this manner. Why am I not having those emotions? And then some people, , if you're doing TBT, this is probably you because emotion regulation is a big part of that, is that you self invalidate for feeling more emotions than you think maybe you should in a given moment.

So what's really interesting is that people who invalidate themselves for not having enough emotion are actually less inclined to show their feelings. So when you're beating yourself up for what you're experiencing, it makes it even more difficult and more challenging to express your emotions. And share those with other people down the line.

So kind of like reinforces that cycle and makes it more challenging to break. And then these people that are invalidating because they think that they are over emotional in a situation.

It's also a self fulfilling prophecy. So, they struggle more with managing their emotions. They feel more upset. They're more prone to finding that their emotions are more readily activated. They feel their emotions are stronger, and they feel their emotions last longer. And so Again, it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

If we are beating ourselves up and judging and criticizing the emotions that we're experiencing that we can't change, like, emotions are valid, we create space for them, they come and go, we can't just be like, oh, I'm gonna snap my fingers and feel sad and I'm gonna snap my fingers and feel happy now, like, these things are caused and correlated with external happenings.

. And so if we're criticizing and not creating space for those, it's a self fulfilling that causes us more suffering.

And so, what they found on this study really just reinforced that. And the direct quote is that people that self invalidate for being too emotional have a tougher time with their emotions, and they're harder on themselves, and they continue the cycle of suffering.

So, that's kind of what self invalidation is, and a lot of this episode I'm speaking from the experience of self invalidating for being too emotional. I think that's what I've had the most lived experiences with, and that's kind of what I can speak to, and I think also something that's very common, , ,

And like I said earlier, DBT serves a population that struggles with emotion regulation. So when we're looking at self validation through a DBT context, it really is hand in hand with emotion regulation. And so, from the DBT perspective, we see that if you have trouble regulating your emotions, then you probably have a hard time accepting them as well in the first place.

And if you want to learn more about this, I'm going to put a link in the show notes for DialecticalBehavioralTherapy. com,

and so to add a little bit of additional context before we move into why we do this and how we can overcome and adjust that. DBT also adds the context and the insight that. When we have trouble regulating our emotions, it's very common that that's because we have a hard time accepting them in the first place.

If we can't accept them and accept reality, we can't then solve reality or move forward or cope with what's happening. It's like if you're not aware of a problem, you can't fix it. If you're not acknowledging a situation, how can you possibly navigate that situation? And so the same thing is true in DBT.

So the example they give is really great, which is that you feel sad, maybe you feel angry about something that's happening, and so the way that you respond to that is you tell yourself, I shouldn't feel like this, I should know better, I shouldn't have this reaction, so on top of that initial primary emotional experience

of sadness and anger, you now are having negative secondary emotions of judgment and shame and embarrassment and self criticism. And so when that is the cycle you go through every single time you feel an emotion, it's really exhausting and it's really uncomfortable and it's not sustainable. So. why do we do this?

It's clearly ineffective. It's clearly not something that is allowing us to be our best selves and, be as nice as possible to ourselves. So why does this happen?

There's a couple of reasons this might happen and I'm again putting so many links in the show notes where you can read more about this and continue to do research if that is of interest, but one factor is definitely seeing this modeled. If we are either seeing people invalidate themselves and the way they speak to themselves, or we are invalidated by others when we are experiencing emotions, like you go to someone and say, I'm so stressed about this test.

I'm like, why are you stressed? It doesn't impact your grade. Like you're going to do fine. Why are you freaking out about that? Or you say, I'm really feeling bad about this thing I said to that person. And they're like, you shouldn't even be thinking about that, like, you're so anxious all the time.

Like, when we see these things modeled and these judgments attached, they can sometimes become internalized. So there's that element of social interactions that can initiate this pattern of self invalidation, but there's also three internal reasons that can cause this self invalidation to come up and also be maintained.

So the first is that we don't want to feel uncomfortable feelings, so we try and talk ourselves out of experiencing them. This was huge for me. I found my emotions to be I'm going to be talking about a couple of things that I found really, really uncomfortable to experience. They were big, they were overwhelming, I didn't feel great about my ability to cope with them, they were uncomfortable.

And so I avoided them at all costs. And a big way that I did that was self invalidation. Because if you tell yourself you're not supposed to be feeling that way, maybe you won't feel that way at all. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. It bubbles up, it gets more intense and more overwhelming. But I did it.

That can be a reason why we self invalidate, is that we don't want to experience an emotion so we tell ourself we shouldn't be feeling that way. The second is that we might have a judgment about ourselves and the emotion,

So a really easy and great example for this is fear. If you're really scared of heights, I don't really like heights very much myself, but maybe you say everyone else is doing fine, like I should not be nervous about this, or you're really nervous about Being in a new social context and everyone all seems so extroverted and fine talking to people they'd never met before.

We're like, everyone else's handling is fine, I shouldn't feel this way. And so we are attaching judgments either to ourselves or to the emotion. That can be a second reason we invalidate. So the third reason we invalidate ourselves is through logic and reasoning. So we kind of tell ourselves, it doesn't make sense for you to feel this way. I shouldn't be feeling this way. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you approach it, emotions are always valid.

What the context is. We can't control our emotions. And so we create space for them. We appreciate them. Emotions are valid. So we can't logic ourselves out of an emotion. We could say it's not justified and we could say it's not effective for me to have this intense of an emotional response. So how could I move forward?

But we don't say I shouldn't feel this way or, It doesn't make sense, blah blah blah blah blah. Because again, we're not creating a space. space for something that we don't have control over, if that makes sense.

So, before we dive into how we can self validate and how we can go through that process, I wanted to talk about a couple more consequences of invalidating ourself. Obviously, we talked about how it can be a self fulfilling prophecy that we're creating more suffering for ourselves when we self invalidate, but I also wanted to talk about the long term experiences of not only, like, having that emotion, but , stick around for longer in the moment, but you also are increasing shame, self hate, inward directed anger, and sometimes beliefs that you're not worthy,.

So, we not only have these short term consequences, but there are long term ones too. And so, it's really important to work on this and pay attention to how you are talking to yourself when it comes to your emotions.

Alrighty. So, we're going to talk about how to self validate. I'm going to give you step by step exactly what to pay attention to, exactly what to look for in your thoughts, and how you're speaking to yourself. And then lastly, we're going to do a listener question or two to add a little bit more clarity.

So, the first thing to talk about when we talk about the scale is how this shows up. What is the pattern? What is the circumstance in which we self validate so that we can understand the context that we are implementing this in? So, I am going to link this in the show notes. You guys know everything's in the show notes, but it's a really great chart of how self validation works.

I made like I did a cuter pink Canva version a really long time ago and it was on Instagram, but if you Google self invalidation and you see a diagram with a bunch of arrows, you found the right one. Basically what happens is we have the context in our lives of either a history of invalidating ourselves or others invalidating us, and so if you are someone like I chronically self invalidate, a vulnerability factor.

So we know that we're already predisposed to this happening and it's already a pattern that's on loop. Another vulnerability factor is any emotional vulnerability you're currently having. So maybe you're feeling more sensitive, maybe you're feeling more reactive, maybe you're hangry, maybe you're tired, maybe you just had an argument.

Any of these things that are making you more susceptible to having a more intense emotional response is the context of the situation. And then we experience an event. Maybe it's an argument, maybe it's anxiety about something that's coming you just felt a little bit of an emotion at some point, and then you start having judgments about it. The precursor to the emotions and the judgments is the event. And so from that we experience both heightened emotional arousal.

And this is not only I feel sad, but also I feel sad, and now I'm judging myself for feeling sad. So we have both those things happening, and at the same time, we're also experiencing the judgment for the emotion we're experiencing. So. Ideally, best case scenario, what ends up happening is that you have an event, you experience an emotion, then you self validate.

But a lot of times, if you struggle with self invalidation, you experience the event, you experience an emotion, and then you immediately experience those judgments for feeling that emotion.

And then what happens is that we are expressing this emotion inaccurately, maybe we have some behaviors that are ineffective or out of control, and then you get the invalidating responses from either yourself or from others. And so as a consequence, we experience embarrassment, shame, , low self esteem, avoidance, withdrawal, or just to cope using dysfunctional behaviors.

And then on top of that, we reinforce that cycle of having that context and habit and pattern of invalidation. So to like give you again that really quick cycle, we have emotional vulnerability of both our emotional state and maybe a chronic pattern of self invalidation. We experience an event that causes an emotion, we then judge that emotion, causing more emotions to occur.

Then we inaccurately express that emotion because all of these crazy things are happening in our brain. And so then we have a behavioral response that maybe isn't justified given the situation. And then there's more invalidation, either from yourself.

or from someone else. And then likely what's going to happen is that they do feel another emotion in response to that invalidation and then we again inaccurately express and then the behavior is ineffective and then there's more invalidation. So it's a really ineffective cycle and we are working to break that using these skills.

So, when we self validate, we're taking ourselves seriously, we're allowing ourselves to feel what we feel, which is our primary emotions, we're allowing ourselves to think what we think, which are like, duh, but it can be more challenging than you would think, because a lot of times, again, we think something and we're like, I shouldn't be thinking that, and we attach judgments.

You allow yourself to want what you want, and you do that with acceptance and without judgment, second guessing, self loathing, or self content. So, we're creating space again for feelings, thoughts, and wants. When we are validating, we can use three skills.

We can use mindfulness, we can use radical acceptance, and we can also change how we want to respond to ourselves. So when we're using mindfulness, we're being mindful of our thoughts and feelings. So we are observing our thoughts and feelings, we're describing them, and we're also participating non judgmentally.

So you're just sitting in your thoughts. You're letting them kind of go through your head, you're letting your feelings pass through. You are just observing and noticing objectively without these judgment words that you kind of want to attach. So if you do notice them, we don't attach them, we let them go, we don't pass through, we don't judge the judgments, because again, we're getting into this messy cycle.

But you're noticing your thoughts, you're observing it, and we don't also have to believe that all of these thoughts are true. We're just creating space for them, they're passing through like a wave, and we continue to move on with our lives. And so what you're going to do when you're doing this mindfulness practice is you also are going to try and accurately identify the feelings that you're experiencing.

This is something that was really helpful for me when I initially started to get better at regulating my emotions, was differentiating between these primary and secondary emotions.

So, in DBT, we have a set number of emotions that have, like, an infinite number of synonyms. But if you have, , a shorter list of emotions, it can be easier to identify what's happening. So we have love, guilt, anger, shame, fear, sadness, and happiness. And a lot of the times, as a primary emotion, you'll feel shame, you'll feel guilt, you'll probably feel sadness, and then if it's a positive, you'll feel, like, Love or happiness?

A lot of the time, shame, anger, sometimes guilt, anxiety, like all of these things can definitely be secondary emotions. But primary emotions are what you experience in response to the event. Secondary emotions are what you feel in response to your feelings. And then once you've identified those emotions, you allow yourself to sit in that primary emotion.

So we're not escaping from them using judgments, we're not using out of control actions to try and avoid that. experience. We're not trying to numb. Instead, we are allowing and managing them skillfully. And maybe that means deep breathing. Maybe it means listening to music. Again, you're sitting with them and coping with them effectively.

And I promise they will pass. And the last part of the mindfulness section of self validation is to respect your own values. This is a really important part of creating space for your emotional experiences because values are something that can be really easily invalidated and also are something that are valid and that we create space for.

So identify what those are and make sure we're not attaching judgments or shame or guilt or anything like that to those core values. So when we use radical acceptance to self validate, we look for understanding legitimacy in our emotional experiences, and we are being honest and non judgmental when we are looking for those aspects.

So we are accepting our being, so the situation, the cards we've been dealt, what's going on. We are accepting our feelings, we are accepting our thoughts, and we are accepting our actions. Denying the existence of any of those, again, is going to create more suffering. So we accept those, and then we move on to the next steps.

And alongside that, we also practice willingness with respect to your own existence, and we re contextualize the things that you tend to invalidate. So you broaden and balance the context of the thing that you're invalidating. So, if you say to yourself a lot, I shouldn't feel this way, I shouldn't feel anxious, no one else is feeling anxious, I should not feel nervous. We recontextualize and say, I am nervous about this test because I value my intelligence, I value how I do in my academics, I value the perception of me as someone who does well in school.

That's something that's important to me. And so, it makes sense that a threat to that performance or that value would cause me anxiety. It also makes sense because this is a challenging subject and I'm not sure what the outcome will be. So it makes sense that I am feeling anxious. So instead of attaching that judgment, understanding , and recontextualizing why these things do make sense.

And then the last way that we can self validate in this little segment of like a 40, 000 degree summary is that we change how we respond to ourselves. So we respond in a way that takes yourself seriously. So if you are invalidating that you're anxious and just expecting yourself to like, We respond in a way that takes yourself seriously, where you're saying, okay, I need to take a minute.

I need to take a deep breath. I need to go outside. I need to drink some water. I need to take active steps to cope with this because I am responding in a way that tells myself I am experiencing anxiety and I need to deal with that. We also normalize normative actions rather than criticizing or judging them.

So like a great example of this is if you're judging yourself, why did I blush when I was embarrassed in that moment? That's a normative emotion and a normative action. So we're not judging and criticizing our own lives. We're not saying, everyone blushes. We can't control that. That's just part of the experience.

We are recognizing truly problematic behaviors and targeting it for change. If you are in DBT, you have target behaviors for your therapist. These are things you're working to decrease, but We recognize what is ineffective and these behaviors that we might respond to the self invalidation with. Maybe it's talking negatively to yourself, maybe it's avoidance, maybe it's looking for validation from someone else to kind of cover up that self invalidation.

So, we recognize those problematic behaviors and work to change them. We also provide ourselves with nurturance and support and also seek it from others. So, Surrounding yourself with a community that helps you feel validated, you feel seen and heard, and also speaking to yourself in that way.

Giving yourself a little pep talk, saying, This will be okay, I'm experiencing this, and this is fine, it will pass, it will be alright. We also find compassion for ourselves when we're suffering, as you would for any human being. A lot of you listening are probably like, I could absolutely do this. Do this for someone else.

No problem. I validate others all the time, but when it comes to yourself, you're holding yourself to a different standard. So think about how you would respond if your friends said to themselves, this is absolutely ridiculous that I'm feeling this way and I shouldn't feel this way and I'm so bad and horrible for thinking this.

You'd be like, no, it completely makes sense that you're experiencing that and I don't blame you at all. Like feel what you need to feel. This is just how life works. And so apply that same energy towards yourself and how you speak to yourself.

So I want to go through like what your old pattern of self invalidating is, and what your new pattern will be of self validating. So historically something happens, the event happens, you then beat yourself up, you criticize yourself, you feel embarrassed, you feel shamed, you Don't feel like how you're feeling is justified by what you did.

Then you retreat, you continue to feel bad about yourself, and then you just get stuck in that old pattern, and you rinse and repeat. Our new pattern that we are going to implement is that the event happens, you catch yourself as you begin to self invalidate, and you'll get better and better and better at recognizing that earlier and earlier until you experience an emotion and you just start validating.

Recognize as early as possible when you are self invalidating, we're going to pay attention to that primary emotion. So what happened and what would anyone feel in this situation if you didn't get judgmental? Would you feel angry? Would you feel sad? Would you feel hurt? Would you feel guilty? Would you feel ashamed?

, And then once we understand that primary emotion, we also understand the secondary emotions from those judgments. Are we feeling shame? Are we feeling guilt? Are we feeling anger? But we really want to work on trusting that primary emotion because if we don't focus on feeling and sitting with and coping through that primary emotion, again, it just comes back bigger and more intense.

So, once we've done that, we are also preventing ourselves from using words like idiot, stupid, horrible, any of those negative words that tend to pop up. We also remember to make space for what we want. This is something that we also tend to invalidate ourselves for, like make fun of ourselves for. We believe that our wants are valid.

So remember you get to want what you want. Maybe it's not going to happen. Maybe it's not justified. Maybe it's not realistic, but we're allowed to have that want. So make space for that. We also want to take into account our vulnerabilities, understanding your. Vulnerability to feeling an emotion really helps to validate and create space for that.

Be like, I didn't sleep well last night. I had a really stressful interaction earlier this morning. I have a test tomorrow that I'm already stressed about. So understand that maybe on a perfect day, you wouldn't have reacted the way you did, but given the context of the situation, you did. And that makes sense because you are more vulnerable.

So create. Awareness of those vulnerabilities and kind of like mentally appreciate that that's something that's at play here. Ask yourself, does it make sense that you feel what you feel and how would other people feel in this situation? Again, if you are more challenging on yourself than you are to someone else, ask yourself if someone else navigating this stressor would feel an emotion.

If you're like, yep, they would. Again, we create space for that emotional experience. We are actively going to say out loud. How this makes sense, so what the primary emotion is, what the sensations are, what you want, and what you don't want. We're going to do some self soothing, maybe you're going to do a pep talk, maybe you're going to do some deep breathing, maybe you're going to repeat a mantra, and then we move on with our activities.

So we re engage with our lives. as a whole and valid person. Not a shameful or bad person, but a person who has just validated themselves. And then we rinse and repeat this new and effective pattern. So the TLDR, it's a very millennial thing to say, but the too long don't read version of self validation with that new pattern we just went over is that we're letting go of judgments about ourselves because those cause shame.

We are noticing the shame as it comes up.

We are letting it go by finding an alternative primary emotion. Maybe it's sadness, maybe it's hurt, maybe it's guilt. We're sitting with that, we're fully experiencing that. We are describing the situation and acknowledging our wants and preferences in that context.

We are practicing just being as we are and noticing and describing what has happened and what we're experiencing. And when in doubt, imagine someone you care about and respect in your situation. How would you respond to them? and respond this way to yourself. This is the TikTok trend where you put a photo of yourself as a baby on the mirror and you say, I would never talk to that person like that.

I would never say these awful things. I would never be judging them for looking this way or acting this way. And so we also apply this with self invalidation and it's an incredible tool. The last thing that I want to give you as a very tangible practice that you can do is the goals and a little script that you can use to self validate and then we're going to do some quick questions.

So, your goals are first to separate your experiences. So, your first goal is to separate your experiences, which are your feelings, thoughts, desires, and sensations, from your explanations, judgments, and future events or worries about the future. These are separate. Our feelings, thoughts, desires, and sensations are valid.

Our explanations, judgments, and future worries are not always valid. And so, we have to separate those, that we can validate what's valid and not necessarily validate or reinforce these inaccurate explanations or these really critical judgments that we're applying. The second goal is describing your primary emotions, your wants, beliefs, and your facts. We're not attaching judgments, we're just saying, this is what I feel, this is what has the potential to be invalidated, but instead we're going to create space for that.

And then once you understand your primary emotion, you're connecting that to what happened. And this is exactly what you're going to say to yourself, it's so easy to remember and it works so well. It makes sense, given that blank happened, that I feel this way. It makes sense, given that someone said something mean to me, that I feel sad.

It makes sense that I feel ashamed because I hurt someone that I am close to. It makes sense that I feel guilty because I did something that was not aligned with my values. Just add it makes sense in front of all those thoughts and your self validation will skyrocket, I promise you.

And lastly, we are being effective. So we are empowering ourselves to handle any situation skillfully by reaching into our toolbox and using all the skills that might be helpful. Deep breathing, distress tolerance, asking for help, all of the things. And then some additional scripts that you can use is I am, by itself, very validating, I am a physical description.

I am in this objective place. I am having an argument. I am talking to this person. I feel emotions, temperatures, sensations, when you feel sad, when you feel happy, afraid, excited, hot, cold, all these things. I want, so an object of desire or longing, not needs. But I want something, I think, these are your opinions, beliefs, expectations, ideas, appraisals, but they're not necessarily facts.

I notice anything you can observe non judgmentally. So someone in front of me, these things around me, something I can hear, and then I am doing. I am standing outside. I am doing my deep breathing, whatever it is. And so creating space and really laying out these specific things without giving yourself space to judge them can be really helpful in the beginning stages of self validation.

So that is a lot of self validation 101 for you. I hope that was helpful. Again, if you are someone that likes to read worksheets and read articles instead of hearing them, definitely go to the show notes because I'm linking everything that I used in this episode. And I loved reading these articles when I was prepping to record this.

So those are in the show notes. We have two questions that we're going to answer. The first is how to self validate in a conflict situation when the other person is sure you're in the wrong. Okay, the first context that I always remind myself whenever I'm in an argument is that both people's lived experiences are true.

Multiple things can be true at the same time, and my lived experiences and your lived experiences are both true at the same time. So we have to understand that the person's feelings, their thoughts, their Perceptions are, by definition, going to be different from ours. And then we also have to remind ourselves that we are validating thoughts and feelings. And so if we are validating their thoughts and feelings, that can absolutely happen without us agreeing with them. We also have to remember that if we validate our own thoughts and feelings, that doesn't have anything to do with their belief about us.

These things are completely independent. So we just remember that regardless of the context, our emotions are valid. Our thoughts are valid, we create space for those, we appreciate them, we don't judge them, and then we can work to mediate and get to a happy middle path solution within the context of the conflict.

But when we're validating either the other person or ourselves, that's completely independent of these other belief systems.

Because we are validating things that we might disagree with, we might not approve of, we might have a completely different belief system, we might feel completely differently, and yet we can still validate. So again, it's completely independent of anyone else's opinion. Even our own like again, we have these opinions like maybe I shouldn't feel this way or maybe I wish this was different and yet we still have to create space for these emotions and feelings And then the last thing I'll add there the phrase in the question is that how do we validate when the other person is sure you're in the wrong?

That kind of sounds like something in regard to action. You shouldn't have done this, you shouldn't have said this, and again, we're validating feelings and thoughts. We're not validating actions, we're not validating things people have said. We could say, it makes sense why you felt that way, and that was like the precursor to what you did.

We can validate the emotional experience that happened alongside those things, but again, we're not validating actions, we're validating the thoughts and feelings, and so it can be completely independent of the conflict. And the last question is how to help your loved one learn to self validate instead of seeking validation online.

This is very challenging and I will say that I learned self validation and I prioritized self validation so much because I realized that that was one of the things that no one could ever take away from me. It didn't matter what anyone else said or thought or believed because I could always validate myself.

And so that was much more reassuring and Much more effective for me to rely on and lean on because we all need validation. It's something that almost all of us strive for and so, understanding that because it is such a core human need And we want to make sure that that need is getting met. Being able to do that internally is going to be a lot more effective and reliable than trying to get it from elsewhere. So it's kind of like the internal dialogue you take.

And I think through lived experiences you, you kind of have that revelation of it doesn't feel great when I think I'm going to be validated by someone else and instead they're super invalidating. And so when you have that invalidation, time and time again, you start to look for it elsewhere and hopefully you look for it inwards.

The second thing I want to add to this is because a lot of parents listen to the podcast and follow, I assume this is about a teen who hasn't had all those lived experiences and isn't yet at the point where they're like, I self validate because I know that's what's most effective, but they're still trying to figure out where they can get their validation from.

And so for that context, we're going to go back to something that we talked about at the beginning of this episode, which is that sometimes we self invalidate because we are exposed to invalidation by family members or peers or social groups. And so we no longer trust our own emotional reactions and have attached their judgments to our own experiences. And so, in that respect, I would recommend modeling that self validation.

in front of your teen. So how do you speak to yourself? How do you encourage maybe younger siblings to speak to yourself? And really modeling those thought patterns, those scripts of, it makes sense, I'm so stressed, literally so much was going on this week. Or even saying to your teen and modeling that validation in a way that they can then repeat to yourself.

Of course, you're still external validation, but it's not unlined and I think it's improved and you're doing it in a healthy way, which is, It makes sense that you're feeling angry at your friends because they didn't sit with you at lunch. It makes sense that you're feeling ashamed because you said something embarrassing or whatever it is.

So I would say model those patterns when you're speaking to yourself in front of your teen and model those validation scripts and validation dynamics when you speak to your teen. Again, kids and teens learn a lot by observing their parents and their family members.

So, if you are showing them how to validate in a really effective way, and as they start doing themselves, like, this works, this helps me feel less emotional and less overwhelmed. And so, I think showing by doing is a really powerful way to kind of increase that behavior.

Alrighty, that is everything for this week's self validation episode. We went a little bit all over the place. I gave you a lot of information. But I really hope this was helpful because this was so instrumental in my mental health journey and it's still something that I practice every single day. So if you enjoyed this episode, share with a friend, share with a family member, post about it on social media, tag me, it really helps the podcast and I love seeing you guys listening and if you have any thoughts or feedback or anything you want to talk about after listening, DM me, we can chat about the episode, but I am so grateful.

To all of you who tuned in and I will talk to you next week with another interview.

Sadie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.

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