Month: December 2023

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Validating vs. Condoning

Validating vs. Condoning Young Woman Old Woman Optical Illusion

One of the skills of mindful communication is Validating vs. Condoning.

Look at the picture above and describe what you see.

Did you see an old lady, or a young lady? If you saw both, which did you see first?

Now assume your partner saw the old lady in the picture, and you saw the young lady. Which of you would be ‘right’ and which of you would be ‘wrong’?

Obviously, neither is ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ You’re both just looking at the same picture and coming to different conclusions. Suppose you can readily see the old lady, but have a hard time seeing the young lady. Further suppose your partner can readily see the young lady, but has a hard time seeing he old lady. Even though you’re not seeing the same thing your partner sees, would you be able to readily agree that your partner sees it?

Validation works in this way. You can validate your partner’s way of seeing the picture without having to agree with what your partner is seeing. Now let’s apply this to the concept of feelings.

Validating vs. Condoning…What’s the Difference?

How many times have you told yourself not to feel angry, or to cheer up, or to “snap out” of a depression?

How successful were you at changing your feelings? We’re sometimes conditioned to believe that certain feelings are ‘bad’ or ‘unacceptable’ while other feelings are okay. But the truth is that there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ or ‘unacceptable’ feeling. Feelings are feelings. They exist. You cannot help the way you feel about a thing or a situation.

Often when we tell ourselves or others to “snap out of it” or to try to repress certain feelings, what we really mean is to repress certain behaviors. While there are no wrong or problematic feelings, the behavior that comes after the feeling may cause problems. For example, simply feeling anger is perfectly okay. Just being with the anger in the moment is entirely different than feeling anger and then acting upon it in negative and destructive ways.

Validating vs. Condoning: Understanding doesn’t Mean Allowing

If you or your partner is feeling angry, that’s okay. But if you or your partner choose to act on that anger by saying or doing hurtful things, that’s not okay. Both you and your partner have a right to feel what you feel. You just don’t have the right to act on those feelings in negative or destructive ways…especially when others are involved.

If your partner is experiencing negative emotions like anger, sadness, or depression, you can validate their feelings without having to understand and agree with those feelings. You can do this by saying things like, “I understand you’re mad right now. I may not understand why you’re mad right now, but I respect your right to be entitled to your own feelings.”

Notice that this does not mean that you have to validate, condone, or even tolerate bad or negative behaviors. You are simply validating the feelings, and not necessarily the behaviors that come after the feelings.

You and your partner can choose when and how to respond to those feelings and act upon them. You may also choose not to act upon them at all, but to simply acknowledge their presence and sit with them quietly, knowing that they will eventually subside.

When you learn to do this you will be able to validate each other’s feelings without condoning any emotional aggression those feelings might generate.

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Body Communications

Body communications children playing at the beach

Body communications are a way of learning about how our bodies respond to emotional situations.

Automatic processes are processes that we have engaged in so often that we don’t even have to think about them anymore. Remember when you first learned to drive a car? You were probably nervous, trying to remember all the rules of the road, what all the gauges represented, which pedals and switches did what, and so on. But after a few weeks behind the wheel, driving a car is an automatic process. It may become so automatic that you can drive right past your exit while busily eating a cheeseburger and fiddling with the radio.

Riding a bike or roller skating can be an automatic process. Reading a book can be an automatic process. So can washing the dishes, folding laundry, or clicking through the television channels.

Many things in our lives, over time, become automaticized.

Moods can also be automatic processes. Moods are behavioral responses to emotional states. Over time we become accustomed to responding to certain emotions in certain ways. Sometimes these automatic mood processes are conscious, but sometimes they occur on a subconscious level.

Conscious processes are easier to change, simply because if they are conscious processes we are aware of them and we can consciously choose to interrupt the cycle and act in different ways if those automatic emotional processes are leading to results we don’t want.

But what do we do if our automatic mood processes are occurring on a subconscious level? If they’re subconscious, we are not consciously aware of them, so how do we learn to change them?

One answer to this is that subconscious processes often leave visible traces that we can be consciously aware of. Emotions have physiological responses. These physiological responses are body communications.

Body Communications and Subconscious Emotions

In previous blogs we discussed the “reptilian brain” response of ‘fight or flight.’ When that primal part of the brain is activated, the body responds in various ways. The good news is that this is the first part of the brain to be activated when a subconscious emotional process is triggered. This leads to body communications that can help detect these subconscious emotional reactions.

Suppose I’m headed out the door on the way to work and I see the garden hose out of the corner of my eye. Further suppose that the “fight or flight” part of my brain mistakes it for a snake. I have an automatic response. I might be startled and jump, or I might run away. If I turn to look at the garden hose and see that it is just a hose, then my conscious brain takes over and soothes the fight or flight instinct.

In this situation, the first thing that happened was the startle response. This is that subconscious ‘fight or flight’ trigger being activated. The second thing that happened was that my mind became consciously aware that it was a garden hose, and not a threat. My conscious mind became aware of the situation and overrode the subconscious response.

If we can learn to be more in tune with what our bodies are telling us at any given moment, we can be aware of when these automatic subconscious emotional responses are activated.

If we are aware of when these responses have been activated, we can consciously prepare ourselves to avoid acting out in emotionally aggressive ways.

Strong emotions usually have physical precursors. Do you clench your fists when angry? Do you break out in a sweat when anxious? Do you get butterflies in your stomach when confused?

Our bodies communicate emotional reactions before we become consciously aware of them. We can learn to be attuned to these physiological responses so that we can better predict strong emotions and be prepared for them.

How does your body communicate to you?

By becoming aware of these body communications, you are able to better predict when you are about to have a strong emotional reaction so that you can prepare yourself.

Your body is going to do what your body is going to do, but you don’t have to let it push you around! You can choose to be in control! The place to start is to begin to learn how your body reacts in emotionally difficult situations. When you learn your body’s way of communicating, you will be well on the way to modifying your responses to these situations.

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Internal Validation vs. External Validation

Internal vs. external validation emotional aggression

`“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.”`

-Richard Bach, author

Internal Validation is the art of validating ourselves. We all like to be validated. It’s why we have relationships in the first place. We enter relationships so that others can support us emotionally. This can become a problem if we come to expect that others are responsible for validating us. Emotional aggression happens when we try to force others to validate us.

While others can choose to validate us by acting in emotionally supportive ways, we can also choose to validate ourselves. If others are validating us, then that validation is external because it is coming from someone besides ourselves. If, however, we are able to meet our own emotional needs, we are internally validated. It’s nice to have both, but there may be times when others cannot satisfy our emotional needs. In those times, it helps to be able to meet those needs ourselves.

The only healthy way to be emotionally validated by others is when others are willingly granting us such validation and support. If we attempt to force such support from others, we are acting from emotional aggression.

If we engage in fault-finding in an attempt to seek validation, we are projecting blame. Projecting blame is emotional aggression, because we are abdicating responsibility for our own emotional validation by attempting to blame, shame, or guilt others into emotionally supporting us against their will.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a guilt-trip, you know that it is not a pleasant experience. If you’ve ever been the victim of a guilt-trip, ask yourself, “Is trying to make me feel guilty more likely or less likely to make me emotionally validate you?”

Now turn that around and put the shoe on the other foot. If you’re projecting blame onto your partner by trying to shame them or guilt them into doing what you want, do you think that such behavior is more likely or less likely to get the results you want?

If others are not meeting your emotional needs, and you are seeking external validation by behaving in emotionally aggressive ways in an attempt to get them to submit to your desires, do you really think you’re going to get the results you want? If the other person was doing it to you, would you be willing to respond in the way that they wanted?

Internal Validation is Loving Yourself

One way to avoid the tendency to engage in emotional aggression is to learn the art of internal validation. To be internally validated is to accept responsibility for your own emotional needs. The way to do this is to learn to love yourself.

Sometimes we get caught up in the idea that loving ourselves is somehow selfish or egotistical. But think about that for a moment. If you don’t love yourself, is it really fair of you to expect anybody else to love you? Not only that, but if you don’t love yourself, and you’re in a relationship with someone who loves you, eventually you might find yourself thinking along these lines, either consciously or unconsciously:

“I don’t really love myself, yet this person loves me. If I don’t love myself, yet this person says they love me, then there must be something wrong with him/her! How could a ‘normal’ person love someone like me, when I can’t even love me?”

If you don’t really love yourself, then you can’t really expect others how to love you in the way you’d like to be loved.

To learn to love yourself, first ask yourself, “Who am I, really?” Be as honest as possible when answering this question. In future weeks there will be an exercise to recognize some self-defeating beliefs and replace them with self-affirming beliefs.

For now, think about ways you can learn to love yourself and be happy in your own skin. It might help to talk these things over with your partner or with a friend or family member. A good way to start is to find out what others like about you.

If you feel uncomfortable asking others what they like about you, you could get the ball rolling by making a list of things you like about others, and sharing it with them. I’m willing to bet that they’d be likely to return the favor.

The more you are willing to do so, the more you’ll be able to self-validate as well.

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Aggressive vs. Assertive Communication

Assertive vs. Aggressive Communication

In mindful communication, we learn to communicate in ways that are assertive rather than aggressive. By setting firm boundaries in non-aggressive ways, our interactions with others become assertive without resulting in hurt feelings, arguments, or conflict.

If setting boundaries does lead to conflict, learning to be assertive rather than aggressive allows us to find peaceful and productive resolutions to differences of opinion.

Assertive Communication: No ‘Buts’

In grad school I had a supervisor who said, “After ‘but’ comes b.s.'”

The first step in moving from aggressive communications to assertive communications is to eliminate the word ‘but’ from our vocabulary. Using the word ‘but’ is rationalizing our behavior, and rationalizing is evading. Evading conflict can be a type of emotional aggression in that we are asking others to interpret what we mean without giving them enough information to draw such conclusions.

Also, using the word ‘but’ means that we’re offering excuses for our behaviors instead of owning up to them and taking responsibility for them. For an example illustrating this point, look at the sentence below:

“I’m sorry I swore at you, BUT it was because you made me angry.”

In this sentence, the person speaking has just rationalized the swearing by making excuses. If this statement was offered as an apology, the sentiment has been weakened because this person has shifted the blame to the other person. The implication is that it is the other person’s fault because the other person did something that the person speaking chose to react angrily towards.

Would it sound more like an apology if this person had simply stopped at the first part of the sentence, leaving everything after the word ‘but’ out? By saying ‘but,’ this person is attempting to manipulate the other person into being responsible for the swearing. He has evaded responsibility by blame-shifting.

Assertive speech agrees with specifics, not with generalizations

The Three Ps are personal, permanent, and pervasive. Statements that include ‘always’ and ‘never’ are broad generalizations that eliminate the possibility of change by stating that one instance of a behavior indicates a permanent or pervasive pattern of behavior. Look at the statement below:

“You always ignore me!”

In the above sentence, the person speaking is attempting to make a particular instance of a behavior permanent and/or pervasive by generalizing it to ‘always.’ If you’re on the receiving end of such a statement, you can agree to a specific instance where you engaged in the behavior without agreeing to the generalization in the following way:

“I’m sorry, I did ignore you that time.”

Here the speaker is agreeing to a specific occurrence of the behavior by using the phrase, “that time.”

When agreeing with a specific instance, you may point out that you are agreeing with that specific instance, as long as you avoid the temptation of following it up with a ‘but,’ such as:

“I’m sorry, I did ignore you that time, but I don’t always ignore you.”

If you add the word ‘but,’ you’re back to rationalizing and evading. When agreeing with a specific instance, you’ll have to trust that the other person understands implicitly that you are not agreeing with the generalization. If you feel tempted to point out that you don’t agree with the generalization, remember to avoid blame-shifting.

Don’t try to make it their responsibility that you behaved in a certain way.

Playing ‘dumb’

If you find yourself the victim of a barrage of criticism, you can de-fuse it by ‘playing dumb.’

You can play ‘dumb’ by asking “What do you mean?” After a critical statement. The idea here is that you are refusing to engage in arguing by asking for specifics in an attempt to understand what’s really bothering the other person.

Children are really good at this. Here’s an example:

Child: “Daddy, why is the sky blue?”
Daddy: “Because the air absorbs all the other colors of light”
Child: “Why does the air absorb all the other colors of light?”
Daddy: “Because the other colors of light bounce off the molecules in the air”
Child: “Why do the other colors bounce off the molecules?”
…and so on, and so forth. You get the idea.

In a relationship, here’s a possible scenario in which ‘playing dumb’ might be used:

Husband: “Why did you look at Jim that way?”
Wife: “I don’t know what you mean. What way was I looking at Jim?”
Husband: “You know…that way.”
Wife: “No, I don’t know what you mean by ‘that way.’”
Husband: “Like you were flirting with him!”
Wife: “What do you mean, ‘flirting with him?’”

The conversation would continue in this manner until the husband realized the absurdity of his assertion and gave up. You have to exercise caution in using this technique. The underlying goal is to illustrate the absurdity of the accusation without letting it turn into a full-blown argument.

Avoid the temptation to become emotionally aggressive when using this one. This should only be used in a playful way, and not in a mean-spirited way.

Assertive communication means admitting your mistakes

Saying, “I’m sorry, I screwed up this time” de-fuses any conflict because if you are agreeing with a person who is attempting to criticize you, there’s nothing to argue about. We have a natural tendency to go into ‘defense mode’ when being accused of something, but if the accusation is true, then there’s nothing to defend against.

For example:

Wife: “You forgot to pick the kids up from soccer practice!”

Husband: “I’m sorry, you’re right! I did forget!”

It will be very tempting, when agreeing with a criticism, to give a reason for your behavior.

You should avoid this temptation for two very important reasons:

  1. If you offer an excuse, you’re evading responsibility for the error; and,
  2. If you offer an excuse, and the other person can invalidate the excuse, then you’re left without a leg to stand on. You don’t have to give a reason.

Just accept responsibility for the error and move on.

Here’s an example to illustrate the point:

Wife: “You forgot to pick the kids up from soccer practice!”

Husband: “I’m sorry, you’re right! I did forget, BUT I had a lot of work to catch up on at the office!”

To start with, there’s that magic word ‘but.’ It’s an attempt to evade responsibility by making an excuse. Furthermore, suppose the wife in the above scenario replies with:

Wife: “All you can think about is work! Sometimes I think you care more about that job than you do about your own children!”

Granted that the wife in the above situation is making a generalization about a specific instance of a behavior, but by making the above statement she has also effectively negated her husband’s excuse and added another accusation on top of it.

If the husband responds in kind, the conversation will degenerate into a series of rationalizations, excuses, and accusations. If you find yourself caught in such an episode of blame-storming, the best response is:

“I’m sorry. What can I do to make it better?”

With this statement, you are showing that you are acknowledging the mistake, and also being proactive in finding a solution by asking the other person to help you to find a solution. This has the added benefit of moving the other person from a problem-focused mode to a solution-focused mode.

Think of it like a game of ping-pong. Every time you are served an accusation or a criticism, hit it back over the net by asking the other person to help you come up with a solution so that it doesn’t happen again. In doing so you’re engaging their help in solving the problem, and you’re not stuck having to guess what sort of solution they might find acceptable, because you’re asking them to tell you instead of having to guess.

Offer a compromise

In any conversation where there is disagreement, there are some areas in which you may be willing to compromise, and there are other areas in which you are not willing to compromise.

An issue in which you are willing to negotiate is a compromise issue. An area in which you are not willing to negotiate is a core issue. The way to tell the difference between a core issue and a compromise issue is to ask, “Will my own feelings of self-respect be compromised if I give in on this issue?”

If the end goal requires you to sacrifice your own sense of self-worth, then it is a core issue, and you should not compromise in that area.

Validate but don’t capitulate

When met with resistance, the way to be assertive without becoming aggressive is to validate the other person’s feelings without allowing them to tread on your boundaries.

You can let them know that while you don’t agree with their feelings, you respect their right to see things the way they see them. Both of you don’t have to agree on every single aspect of life.

For example:

Wife: “George Clooney is the sexiest man alive!”

Husband: “I respect your right to feel that way.”

Here you’ve acknowledged that your partner is entitled to her opinion without you having to share it. Remember that you can always validate your partner’s feelings without having to agree with them.

When you have practiced all these skills you will be well on your way to developing an assertive rather than aggressive communication style.