The Importance of Validating Your Own Feelings
Your friend cancels your lunch plans at the last minute, and you feel a pang of disappointment and sadness. What is your first internal response? For many people, it’s a voice of judgment: “You’re being so dramatic. It’s just lunch. You shouldn’t be this upset.” We often treat our own emotions as if they are wrong or invalid. We tell ourselves we “shouldn’t” feel the way we do. This act of invalidating our own emotional experience is one of the most common and damaging things we do to our mental health. It is a subtle form of self-betrayal.
At Televero Health, we teach our patients that emotional validation is a foundational skill of self-compassion and emotional regulation. Learning to validate your own feelings is the process of learning to be on your own side. It is the simple but profound act of acknowledging that your feelings are real, understandable, and okay, no matter what they are.
What Is Emotional Validation?
Validation is the act of recognizing and accepting another person’s (or your own) internal experience as being valid and understandable. It is not the same as agreement. You can validate someone’s feeling without agreeing with their interpretation of the facts. It is simply the act of communicating, “I see that you are feeling this way, and given your perspective, that makes sense.”
Self-validation is the process of turning that same skill inward. It is the ability to acknowledge and accept your own emotions without judgment. It’s the ability to say to yourself, “It’s okay that I’m feeling this way.”
Why Do We Invalidate Ourselves?
We often learn to invalidate our own feelings in childhood. We might have grown up in a family where we were explicitly told not to feel certain things (“Don’t be sad,” “You have no reason to be angry”). Or we might have had caregivers who were uncomfortable with our emotions and who ignored or dismissed them. We learn that to be loved and accepted, we have to suppress certain parts of our emotional experience. This becomes a deeply ingrained habit that we carry into adulthood.
The problem is that when you invalidate your own feelings, you send yourself a powerful message: “There is something wrong with me for feeling this way.” This creates a secondary layer of suffering. Now, not only are you feeling the original pain of disappointment, but you are also feeling shame and guilt for having that feeling in the first place. This emotional invalidation is a major driver of low self-esteem and emotional dysregulation.
How to Practice Self-Validation
Learning to validate yourself is a practice. It can feel very foreign at first, but it is a skill you can build over time. It involves a few simple steps.
- Notice and Name the Feeling: The first step is to simply be aware of what you are feeling. This is a mindfulness skill. Pause and check in with yourself. What is the primary emotion you are experiencing right now? Try to label it with a specific word. “I am feeling lonely.” “I am feeling angry.”
- Allow the Feeling to Be There: Give yourself permission to feel the emotion without trying to push it away, fix it, or judge it. You can even say to yourself, “It’s okay to feel this way.” Remind yourself that feelings are not good or bad; they are just information.
- Get Curious About the Feeling: Try to understand where the feeling is coming from. What is the story behind it? What need is it signaling? For the canceled lunch example, you might realize, “It makes sense that I’m feeling disappointed. I was really looking forward to connecting with my friend, and I feel lonely today. This cancellation is tapping into my fear of being rejected.”
- Offer Yourself Some Compassion: The final step is to respond to your own feeling with kindness, just as you would for a friend. You can say something gentle to yourself, like, “This is really hard right now. It’s understandable that you’re hurting.” You can even place a hand over your heart as a physical gesture of self-soothing.
Self-validation is not about letting your feelings run the show. In fact, the opposite is true. When you can accept and validate your emotions, they are less likely to become overwhelming. You are no longer fighting with yourself. You are creating a relationship with your inner world that is based on acceptance, trust, and compassion. This is the foundation of true emotional freedom.
Key Takeaways
- Self-validation is the act of acknowledging and accepting your own emotions without judgment; it is a foundational skill for mental health.
- We often learn to invalidate our feelings in childhood, which can lead to a secondary layer of shame and guilt about our emotional experience.
- To practice self-validation, you must first notice and name your emotion, allow it to be there, get curious about its source, and then respond to yourself with compassion.
- Validation is not about letting your feelings control you; it’s about creating a trusting and accepting relationship with yourself, which is the key to emotional regulation.
Ready to take the first step? We can help. Get started with Televero Health today.