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“I just need you to validate my feelings.” It's a phrase therapists, partners, and friends hear constantly—and it reveals something fascinating about our cultural moment. Validation has become the currency of care, the supposed antidote to harm, the thing we believe we need most from others. But what if we've been chasing the wrong thing? What if the deepest human need isn't to have our perspective confirmed, but to know we matter—regardless of whether others see things our way?
In clinical practice, this shift is unmistakable. Some clients insist validation is all they need from therapy, describing an almost insatiable hunger for it—often rooted in never having felt sufficiently seen or affirmed. Others organize entire lives around pursuing external validation, using it as the primary measure of their performance, worth, and identity.
Where validation came from: stopping psychological invalidation
The idea of validation entered psychology as a corrective, not a doctrine. In the mid-20th century, Carl Rogers reacted against the prevailing psychoanalytic stance, which often interpreted, corrected, or reframed clients’ experiences—telling a grieving person they secretly wanted the loss, or suggesting that anger toward an abusive parent was really displaced self-hatred—in ways that left them feeling unseen, pathologized, or subtly shamed.
Rogers emphasized empathic listening, mirroring, and unconditional positive regard. His intention was not to declare that every perception was accurate or every conclusion correct, but to stop invalidating the client’s inner experience. Validation, in this context, meant something both modest and profound: your feelings exist, they make sense within your internal world, and they deserve to be heard.
This was a relational intervention aimed at restoring safety and dignity, not a philosophical claim about truth or reality. Validation was never meant to replace reflection, discernment, or growth—it was meant to make them possible.
Validation as a regulatory tool, not a 'truth claim'
Decades later, Marsha Linehan gave validation an even more precise—and limited—purpose within Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
In DBT, validation is a strategic tool for helping highly disregulated individuals—especially those with intense emotional reactivity—return to a tolerable state. When someone is overwhelmed and feels judged, invalidation escalates their arousal to dangerous levels; validation helps lower it.
In DBT's model, validation means acknowledging the client's emotional experience so that regulation can occur. It is a crisis intervention—not designed to 'agree' with the person, confirm their beliefs, or suspend reality testing. The rationale is straightforward: when someone who is highly activated feels invalidated, the situation can become dangerous for them and, at times, for others. Once arousal returns to a tolerable level, reflection, skills-building, and perspective-taking become possible. Validation is a bridge—not a destination.
When validation became an identity claim
As psychological language migrated into popular culture, validation gradually detached from its clinical roots. What began as a relational and regulatory tool evolved into a broader moral expectation: if I feel something, others should validate it.
Validation came to mean not just “I understand how you feel,” but “I agree with how you see things,” and eventually, “If you don't agree with me, you're invalidating me.”
At this point, validation stopped being a tool for emotional processing and became a proxy for self-worth itself. Feelings were no longer something to explore—they became something to affirm without question. Disagreement felt like rejection. Reflection felt like invalidation. And validation became not just a bridge to safety, but safety itself—dependent on constant external confirmation rather than internal grounding.
This shift has had profound consequences—not only for those seeking validation, but for those expected to provide it. Validation becomes an exhausting test, a relational chore, a skill to perform. And for people whose sense of self is already fragile or whose perception is shaped by fear, trauma, or insecurity, the consequences run even deeper.
Trauma, perception, and why validation has limits
Trauma does not simply leave memories or intensify emotional reactions; it alters perception. When survival circuits are sensitized, the brain becomes primed to detect danger even when none exists. Past threat is easily mapped onto present ambiguity. The nervous system reacts not to what is, but to what was.
In these states, people may sincerely experience the present as unsafe, hostile, or rejecting—even when it is not. Their distress feels entirely real, even when their interpretation doesn't align with what others observe or what the situation actually contains. This is why validation is not always helpful. When validation is applied indiscriminately—especially when it confirms distorted perception—it can unintentionally reinforce fear, anchor someone more deeply in a traumatized view of reality, and prevent the very clarity needed for healing.
Saying “I can see that you feel this way” is very different from saying “I see the situation the way you see it.” When those two are collapsed, validation no longer supports healing—it may actually impede it. This is why validation alone cannot resolve a traumatized system. Regulation without reorientation may soothe, but it does not restore clarity.
Being valued is a different experience altogether
Being valued—what most of us are really looking for when we fish for validation—is something different. Being valued does not depend on moment-to-moment agreement, nor does it require constant confirmation. Being valued means being seen as a whole person, not reduced to a single emotional state or interpretation. It means being seen and accepted regardless of the experience one is having.
When someone is valued, they can be soothed without being indulged; they can be corrected without being diminished; they can be disagreed with without feeling erased, judged, or rejected. A parent who values their child can say, “I love you, and I'm not buying you that toy.” A therapist who values their client can say, "I hear your pain, and I see what happened differently. Can we explore both perspectives?" The relationship holds.
Being valued involves attunement, authenticity, and co-regulation—not because one’s perceptions are always accurate, but because one’s worth as a person is not contingent on being right. Validation may soothe an emotional state, but being valued shapes the self. Validation can be spoken; value is felt.
The exit from endless validation-seeking is clear: reclaim the capacity to hold yourself steady even when unvalidated. Learn to distinguish between being understood and being affirmed—between having emotions and being defined by them. A mature sense of worth emerges not from constant agreement, but from internalized experiences of being valued: by others first, and eventually by yourself. It grows when you can reflect on your emotions, question your interpretations, differentiate past from present, and remain solid even when your perceptions are challenged. This is what allows both connection and growth.
Psych. Today
