Comment by n4r9

Being a good listener is one of the hardest jobs in the world.

And narcissists are soul sucking traps for good listeners.

> Emotions and feelings are always "valid", in the sense that they are a natural consequence of events and prior conditioning.

If “validating” someone’s emotions comes down to simply saying that, yes, I agree you felt that way, then I suppose that’s true.

But when people talk about validating other people’s emotions it implies that they’re saying the emotional response was valid for the circumstances.

I have someone in my extended family who has a strong tendency to catastrophize and assume the worst. When she was in a relationship with someone who constantly validated her emotions and reactions it was disastrous. It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior.

There’s a hand wavey, feel good idea where we’re supposed to believe everyone’s lived experience and emotions are valid, but some people have problems with incorrect emotional reactions. Validating these can become reinforcing for that behavior.

I’m not saying we should start doubting every emotional reaction or white knighting everything, but it’s unhealthy to take a stance that validating other people’s emotions is de facto good.

Other people have given good insights, so I'll instead describe one of my pet theories.

Given by how we talk about emotions, I think they are "rational", but operate under a different set of rules than we normally apply to "rational" thinking. In fact, feelings are deeply intertwined with our supposedly "rational" thinking, to the point where I don't think there is a significant boundary. The lack of information is prevalent when feelings are in play, and I believe the same is true in general. Even physics feels far different than pure mathematics, after all. Instead of deferring to conventions in how to act when feelings are involved, as if they belong to a wholly different and mysterious world, we can make sense of the entire world. But of course, empathy, kindness, and good judgement are not exempt. None of this conflicts with what you're saying, but I think a subtle shift in mindset will be fruitful in applying it.

Indeed, the more strong the feeling, the less rational it can become, even though the feeling is there for good reasons. A pure rational solution won't help, pure empathy as well not.

I agree with your descriptions of the terms, but I think there's often a divergence between empathy (which I find great) and reflecting people's feelings (which I find good with caution). I want people to understand and help each other. But in some situations, reflecting people's feelings encourages them to make poor decisions. I should always provide a space for people to speak without scorn and with understanding, but I don't want to give a false impression of my concerns. Acknowledging that someone's life sucks is subtly different from acknowledging it aloud, and sometimes the subtlety is crucial.

To me the confusion is the word "validate". Sounds like what you're talking about is more acknowledgement than validate. I hear / see how you're feeling and I empathize.

Dictionary definition of validate are things like:

- check or prove the validity or accuracy of (something).

- demonstrate or support the truth or value of.

Which don't seem like the intent of "validating" the emotion in this context.

> In the end, you can validate someone's feelings without validating what they're feeling those about, by just saying "that sucks".

If you say "that sucks" the other person is going to assume you're agreeing with them that the thing they're angry about sucks. They're not going to think you're saying "that sucks" that they have an emotion, as an isolated feeling that happened for no reason.

This is where the overly academic concept of "validating emotions without endorsing them" falls apart in the real world.

In actual human interaction, people don't debate if the other person actual feels an emotion. Angry people don't need other people to agree that they feel angry. They share the emotion because they want other people to agree that the emotion is right and justified.

Nobody actually says "I agree that you are feeling that emotion but I neither endorse it nor disagree with it" (in less formal wording). If you're going along with someone else's emotions, you're implicitly endorsing their reaction as justified.

This is super important. I'd argue that a huge part of learning to process feelings healthily is being and able to tell the difference between how one feels (which is an involuntary reaction that isn't controllable) and the actions taken as a result of that feeling (which require explicit choice to take). It seems obvious in the abstract, but I think it's almost a universal human condition for the line between them to get blurred. People will often say something like "I'm sorry I got mad" as if being angry is something that can be controlled, when what they should instead be apologizing for is the actions they took while mad (e.g. "I'm sorry for yelling"). There's a reason that "anger management" is a known term rather than "anger prevention", after all. If someone asks why you did something, "because I was mad" is not a healthy explanation; it removes your choice from the equation and paints yourself as a helpless victim of your emotions rather than someone with agency and the ability to act better even in the face of extinuating circumstances.

While it might seem like these are just linguistic quibbles, I've seen so many cases of people genuinely thinking that trying to suppress their emotions is the correct way to handle tough situations, and I don't think that ever works well in the long run. At most, it's sometimes beneficial to avoid expressing strong negative emotions immediately in certain situations, but that's only a short term tradeoff to avoid exacerbating whatever is currently going on, not a long term solution to avoid consequences of taking actions under the duress of heavy emotions. I believe that people would learn to act better by mentally framing their emotions separately from their choices and allowing themselves to feel them fully and ideally express them in a healthy way. Venting to a sympathetic family member or friend can be a good way of doing this, but that's also why therapy is something that would be benefit pretty much everyone in my opinion; having a trained, neutral professional to be able to talk through emotions without having to worry about overburdening them or worrying about having to interact with them in any other part of life is hard to beat in terms of a strategy for dealing with tough emotions in a healthy way.

> someone has constant emotional but irrational reactions to everything

What are "emotions" if not "irrational chemical reactions in our brains"? Seems really strange to decide what it or isn't "irrational emotions" for someone else to have.

I, just like you I presume, see myself as a rational and logical person (maybe you're also a programmer), but I also realize that humans are humans, and having irrational emotions is very much part of being a humans, and emotions in general is such a subjective experience.

If it becomes damaging to you (the person that is expected to be emotional support), "grey rocking" is the next step. Acknowledge, but don't respond. "uh huh" instead of "I am so sorry" or whatever. Don't take advice from me though.