What does 'validating' someone mean?

[Pluvia]

I'm in a situation where someone I know well (or thought I knew well) as a friend and equal is having a hard time. She spends an awful lot of time telling me how terrible she feels, and how awful her life is, and I listen and acknowledge that things are tough right now and she's clearly struggling (and with good reason). But I sometimes also remind her that she's had fabulous times, many years of earning loads of money and living well and being secure and having good relationships, and that she'll have them again.

I've now received a letter from her (a handwritten letter) in which she says that I continually fail to validate her feelings because I interject with observations and reminders of the past that invalidate the way she feels now. In future interactions she wants me to be quiet, listen and validate her.

I presume that means just nodding along and agreeing that her life is shit and everyone is awful to her and so on. Am I reading this correctly? I don't think I'm prepared to just listen and nod for another six months while she goes on in full 'my life is over' mode. I'm her friend, not a therapist.

I think it means listening without suggesting they shouldn’t be feeling the way they do, or suggesting how they might improve the situation.
It’s difficult to do in my experience but I keep trying with one particular person!

It means stop trying to push your feelings onto her about how she should feel based on the past and accept she feels shit about her situation and is allowed to moan about it.

Allow her to feel that way. Listen to her. Say you’re sorry things are shit. Ask her what she wants to do.

I think it means kind of wanting your approval for everything she says. It's hard sometimes to support this woe is me attitude in friends when actually their life isn't that bad at all.

I know someone like this.

They don't want to hear solutions or suggestions in relation to their difficult situations, just want acknowledgement and sympathetic noises.

I'm a practical kind of person and it is very hard!!

I guess at least she has told you how she feels and you have the chance to digest that and consider how you want to proceed. If she had told you her concerns in person, you would have (understandably) justified your position, this way you can think post on MN first.

Question is, how do you want to respond / proceed after consideration?

Is she Russian?

You said it yourself, you’re her friend not her therapist. I’d use that as the basis for your reply to her. Friendship is a two way thing - does she have history for this, has she supported you in similar situations in the past?

You're supposed to shut up and listen. Oh, and agree that she's had it so so tough and nobody is suffering more than her and she's had nothing to do with why life is so hard.

She basically wants you to soak up her misery and nod along to it. And while she might be your friend, it's not really your job to agree with everything she says, particularly if you DON'T. It sounds as though she has a hard job accepting responsibility for anything. I'd cool the friendship off, if I were you, she wants a Yes man and that's not really any good for anyone.

I don't think even a therapist (a decent one, anyway) would simply validate everything she's saying.

I’ve been on a few parenting courses (I have SEN kids) and I think it’s called reflective listening where you listen, maybe repeat what they’ve said to make it clear you’re listening and you understand. Some
therapists recommend it. It’s very hard to not present solutions or remind someone in a mental health crisis that they haven’t always been this way.

i would say that if your whole friendship has been her struggling and it’s one sided I would probably distance myself. If this is unusual for her I would probably agree with her and wait for her to get better and come up with her own solutions.

What she wants is to vent and have you agree her misery is the worst misery.

Has she previously been that person for you who validated your feelings long term?

The problem seems to be you're tired of listening to it and being her misery sponge soaking it all up. It's very difficult to be around constantly negative people that won't do anything to change their situation.

The letter seems to make it clear she is not looking for solutions, but someone to be miserable with.

There's a reason for the saying misery loves company.

I'd back off.

To me, that's not friendship.

With my friends, I want to be able to bleat on about the terrible thing that's just happened, and then for them to give me their opinion, whether that be to 'validate' me or tell me I'm being a tool.

If you can't be honest with your friends, then who can you be honest with?

People spend too much time online and get funny ideas about things that don't really translate into real life. She says, online, to another online person, haha. Oh well.

But yeah I think it's fine to say, look, I'm not your therapist or your nodding support human and placing these kinds of rules on our interactions is not for me. I suppose it's also technically fine for her to demand these things of people, but that doesn't mean anyone has to do it.

For me, if it was a good friend who did this slightly crackers thing, I would probably tease her a bit and say what on earth and let her let it drop. Honestly, getting a hand written letter about my behaviour, telling me just to shut up and listen as that's my role in this relationship - no thanks.

I would reply telling her she needs a therapist, and it’s not you, then cut contact.

Sometimes you’ve just got to be with people ‘in the mud’, as someone once said (Simon Sinek I think), right where they are, so they can really feel and hear where they are. They will naturally pull themselves out of it when those feelings have had space to air, but that can’t happen if you’re jumping in with suggestions, action, or a ‘positive’ spin on things. We’re human beings, not doings, and if we get disconnected from being with ourselves it’s a really unhappy place to be in. So your presence, just being with someone, can help them get more connected to themselves and their inner compass, if that’s a gift you’re truly willing/able to give. Bear in mind that if someone is taking a long time to get to a more positive place, it shows how much shit they’ve been through.

You don’t need to soak up their feelings at all. If this is happening to you, you might not be the right person to sit with them in the mud. You might need to spend some time focusing on your own ‘mud’ and why you feel jealous, impatient, annoyed or whatever you feel.

Your friend obviously really trusts you and values your friendship to share so vulnerably what they need. It’s not really your place to question why they need this or whether it’s valid to need this (that’s exactly what you’re doing here and exactly what they’re complaining about!) It’s okay for them to need what they need, ask for it, and for you to accept/decline as far as you feel willing/capable. It’s okay for you to say no! Willingness is really important, because we feel whether someone actually wants to be with us in our process or not.

I presume that means just nodding along and agreeing that her life is shit and everyone is awful to her and so on. Am I reading this correctly?

Not quite - validating means listening to and accepting her feelings. She’s allowed to feel happy/sad/angry/lonely/whatever for however long she feels. We’re not in control of what we feel, only our response to our feelings. It sounds like she might be stuck in some feelings because she doesn’t know how to really be with herself and she might not yet be capable of responding (pausing, letting herself feel, and considering what action she wants to take - which may/may not align with the feelings). It’s always much easier to see the lack of pause and choice of response in others than it is ourselves, so maybe she really values your input but just needs some help pausing and feeling before finding the action that’s right for her.

Suggest she calls the Samaritans. I like PPs phrase misery sponge. I’m not sure I could or would take that on for anybody. Maybe once but not if she’s moaning on every time we meet.

Well that's what's friends are for. But only to an extent - you're not her counsellor or her therapist. You're not there to be her shoulder to cry on perpetually. That's not fair if it's just permanent one way traffic. Everyone's allowed to wallow in self pity if they want to, but they don't get to drag everyone else down with them.

So I'd write back to her and ask her what she's doing to change things in her life for the better (I'm assuming there's not a terminal health issue involved). Tell her that you're happy to listen to her properly, just not repeatedly - you don't want to keep hearinh the same complaints over and over again. If she's having a fresh catastrophe every week then fair enough (is anyone that unlucky though).

I do this all the time. But surely there comes a point where if that's all you say, you're just supporting her to be miserable?

Essentially, it's don't tell her how she should feel - don't talk her out of her feelings.There's nothing more infuriating than feeling rubbish and someone saying "you shouldn't feel like that because xyz". Best way to validate someone is when they say, "I feel rubbish at the moment," you can say "and that's okay, I'm here for you."

They don't want your solutions; they want your presence. They want to know that you accept them 100% as they are in their feelings. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them or their choices, but that you accept who they are in the moment.

No, it's the end of a long relationship. She'd been talking about leaving for some years: they were living separate lives in the same house. Then he met someone new and filed for divorce. She'd assumed she'd be the one to end it when she met someone new, but he pipped her to it.

There's been no lack of support and empathy, but she's lost a lot of it because she's got herself stuck in a self-pitying rut. She'll be in the kind of financial situation most of us would love to be in post-divorce. She's keeping the house. She has a good job. She has friends. Given the fact that they were already all-but separated her reaction seems disproportionate and has gone on for too long. Everyone was really sympathetic to start with but this thing about demanding to be validated and laying down the rules for what we can and can't say is ridiculous. It's not how healthy friendships operate.

It’s obviously important to her if she’s written you a letter. But I also think you need to share some perspective here. Reminder her that you do listen but you cannot be the only person she confuses in. It’s not for you to validate how she’s feeling, you’re not a therapist.
Active listening is important but you can’t let her dump her negativity on you or you’ll need therapy yourself. Samaritans is a good idea as they’ll listen without judgement.
Be careful how much of someone else’s constant negativity you take on. I had to listen to complaining, health anxiety and general negativity daily with my ex and it’s draining. It’ll make you miserable if you don’t set some healthy boundaries

I'm a problem solver too and sometimes have to remind myself to just listen / ask questions/ be genuinely curious when a friend is sharing problems.

Useful questions/ phrases, 'that sounds difficult/ hard, how can I support you?', 'what would need to happen to make that better/ are there any steps you plan to take?', 'what changes have you made since we last talked/ how have they gone?'

If someone is stuff in a doom cycle and not making any attempt to change their situation it is appropriate to set a boundary and say that you find it hard to listen to the same negative story without them taking any action and to decline to hear the same complaints on repeat.

Validating someone means agreeing with everything they say and/or do. It's extremely self centred and quickly becomes tiresome. You are allowed to have a personality OP, you're allowed to have your own opinions and voice those. If all she wants is pity party validation then she needs to go pay a professional. She sounds completely self obsessed and that makes for a very dull friend.

I'd tell her that she appears to have mistaken you for a therapist when you had been thinking it was a friendship, and maybe she should try cheering the fuck up instead of wallowing constantly and then criticising the one friend that hasn't walked away.

It’s a matter of balance, isn’t it?

You say she spends ‘an awful lot’ of time talking about her current hardships.

I wonder how far she might validate you in Your feelings that she uses a lot of time, and probably emotional energy, expecting you to listen?

Especially if you have never enjoyed much of the good fortune she seems to have enjoyed in former times.

I think I would reply sensitively buy directly and honestly saying you do appreciate that times are v hard for now, and you are very sorry if your conversations have come across as unempathetic, you did mean to problem-solve or dismiss her worries, but that as her friend you have (Been happy to have) spent quite a lot of time listening to her focus on her upset and sometimes you have thought that it might help to remind herself that things will get better. Because how can any of us function if we don’t look forward like that?

You are her friend, not her therapist.

Is she getting any counselling support? Writing you a letter using terms like ‘validate’ is often therapy territory.

I’d respond in the same terse manner, telling her she’d invalidated the friendship and we can no longer move forward on these terms.