How to Offer Emotional Validation (and How Not to)

What should you say to a friend who is going through a tough time?

We ran a study with 148 participants to find out what people want to hear from their friends and loved ones when they’re going through a period of struggle. The results show that it’s very common to want to have one’s feelings validated. About 45% of respondents said they wanted emotional validation when describing a tough situation, with about 35% of respondents saying they give it when a friend describes a tough situation to them:

Source: Clearer Thinking

But how do you do that? Well, let’s start with what not to do.

How not to validate someone’s feelings

You’ve probably heard of gaslighting, a manipulative tactic whereby someone makes another person question their senses or their sanity, often causing psychological distress. For instance, if someone constantly tells you that events you clearly remember never happened, they might be gaslighting you.

But did you know that there's a less-recognized, opposite behavior that can also cause major problems, and which people sometimes do when they're attempting to validate feelings? As far as we know, it has no name, but Clearer Thinking founder Spencer Greenberg has coined a term for it: "lightgassing."

In essence, lightgassing is when someone validates or agrees with another's misconceptions or false beliefs in a bid to be supportive. Unlike the malicious intent behind gaslighting, lightgassing is often a well-meaning, and therefore unintentionally harmful, tactic of friends and supporters.

Here are some examples of common statements that, when they are not justified, can count as lightgassing:

• Justification: "It was reasonable for you to do X because the other person made you feel bad." (Even though X was really harmful.)
• Absolution: "You did nothing wrong. It was totally the other person's fault.” (Even though the blame was actually split between both parties.)
• Emotional reasoning: “You’re angry at them, so they clearly did something wrong.” (Even though it might not be justified anger.)

Ideally, when someone you care about is upset, you should validate their feelings and help them feel heard and understood, but do so without agreeing with statements that you know to be false or that rely on bad reasoning.

Finding the balance

The challenge is in finding a way to validate feelings and true beliefs without validating false beliefs, while still listening with openness and empathy. This can be a tricky maneuver, which might be one reason why many people are tempted to lightgas.

Of course, sometimes, it won’t be clear whether your friend or loved one’s beliefs are true or not. Perhaps that's because the only things you know about the situation are what they have told you while upset. In such cases, it is usually best to start with the charitable assumption that what they have described is an accurate representation of what they experienced (unless any reason to doubt it emerges).

And, in cases where you have reason to doubt the truth of their beliefs, it won’t always be helpful (and might often be unhelpful!) to challenge them in the heat of emotion when they are sad or upset. So, avoiding lightgassing will often initially involve simply not validating/agreeing with what you believe is false.

Later, when the person is feeling better, if they ask for your opinion on the facts (or if you feel it’s important for them to hear your opinion) you can tell them what you believe to be true at that point, keeping in mind whether this is appropriate given your relationship with them.

How to validate someone’s feelings

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We've talked about what to avoid when you're emotionally validating someone. But that raises the obvious question: How can you do it well?

The main difference between healthy validation of emotions and the unhealthy version is that the healthy version is based on genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in the other person's experience. The unhealthy version, on the other hand, involves a willingness to sacrifice those things in an attempt to make the other person immediately feel good.

At a more detailed level, we like the following framework for healthily validating other people's feelings.

Healthy emotional validation involves:

1. Care: Caring about the person whose emotions you are validating.
2. Willingness: Being totally okay with them feeling those emotions right now and in front of you.
3. Acceptance: Not thinking badly of them for feeling what they are feeling.
4. Interest: Being interested in learning more about what they are feeling and why they are feeling it.
5. Compassion: Having compassion and/or empathy for their unwanted suffering and wanting them not to experience more unwanted suffering (keeping in mind that sometimes people want to experience painful emotions for a period of time, such as after a significant loss, when such emotions feel appropriate).
6. Understanding of facts: Understanding the facts of what happened in the relevant situation (and, if you don't understand, asking open-ended questions in an effort to understand it).
7. Understanding of feelings: Understanding why they're feeling this way (and, if you don't understand, making an effort to understand it).
8. Legitimization of feelings: Seeing it as totally reasonable that their combination of situation, beliefs about their situation, thoughts, and past experiences causes them to feel this way right now (and, if you don't, making an effort to understand why their experiences led to these feelings).

While some of this is helpful to say aloud when a friend or loved one is upset, much of it will typically be expressed through body language, attention, attitude, presence, tone of voice, and so on. The main thing is that the ideas get expressed in a way that the other person receives them, whether that expression is verbal or nonverbal, explicit or implicit.

To summarize: when people are hurting, they often want emotional validation. When giving it, avoid lightgassing the other person, and go into the conversation, as much as you can, with genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in the other person's experience. Don't sacrifice these things just to help make the other person feel better temporarily.

This article was originally published on ClearerThinking.org.