Comment by danielmarkbruce

> You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid.

We could decide on a similar word to use if you prefer. Perhaps "acceptable" from a sibling comment. Replace "valid" with "acceptable" and "validation" with "acceptance" in all of my comments and the meaning is still true; that seems to suggest I've been consistent with my use of "valid".

> You are just wrong on this.

What you mean is that we are of different minds. You try to make yours the objective one in spite of the glaringly obvious fact that opinions are not necessarily shared between differing minds.

> You want to seem sophisticated and understanding

Genuinely, what a compliment! I was just writing about my perspective. My goal with the writing was primarily to espouse my understanding of this subject while secondarily avoiding "you" statements in my comments. If you think the result sounds sophisticated and understanding, I am more than willing to believe you. If you don't think that, well, you might want to consider where those words came from because I sure noticed. (It might also help to consider that you have no means of discovering my motivation; you must have made an assumption and expressed said assumption using your own words.)

The fact of the matter is that I spent the first three decades or so of my life being extremely emotionally unstable until I (at least somewhat) learned to manage that. I suspect this "sophisticated and understanding" sense you get from my writing on this topic comes from the care with which I write about a subject so dear to me.

I think their definition of valid is consistently aligning with the meaning of "acknowledging and accepting someone's internal experience".

As soon as you start trying to apply normative judgements to someone's feelings, as opposed to their behaviour, you inevitably end up drawing an arbitrary and cutlurally informed line between what you or socirty think is okay and what's not. It's only a problem if I feel excited by someone else's pain if my consequent behaviour actually leads to the other person suffering. I have no direct control over my emotions, but I can control my reaction to them. You just telling me it's wrong to feel excited is futile and potentially counter-productive.