Hopefully others will have heard this phrase before, often with parenting advice or in therapy. My therapist often says this, and I disagree with her.
Essentially, I have interpreted it as it’s ok to feel whatever you feel, but you have to control your reaction to it.
eg child is allowed to be sad she can’t have an ice cream, not allowed to throw a tantrum about it.
however, I don’t agree with this in principle AT ALL. Some feelings are absolutely not valid! And we shouldn’t be teaching children that it’s appropriate to have any kind of feelings they want - we should be teaching them that NOT all feelings are valid and how to recognise which ones are and aren’t. Otherwise how do you recognise that your feeings or opinions may be wrong?
for example, a partner might feel jealous of their spouse and say they can’t speak to other women. No the behaviour is obviously not ok, but (in a normal healthy relationship with no context) feeling that jealous is also not ok!
or someone might have the feeling to hurt someone for no reason. Men might have the feeling or desire of wanting to rape someone. We wouldn’t say “that’s ok to feel like that because you haven’t done it”
If opinions are somewhat based on feelings, and some opinions are blatantly wrong (eg misogyny, racism) how can we say every feeing is valid?