How To Validate Yourself
Learning a tool to connect deeply with yourself.
I’ve written a lot over the years, and I’m enjoying sharing updated bits from the archive when it feels right. This original piece of writing was shared on Instagram sometime in 2021, and has been updated and republished here.
As always, join me in the comments if you have thoughts — I’d love to hear them.
So much of what I write and reflect on falls under the topic of mindful self acceptance, self-love and learning to engage with ourselves in a purposeful and compassionate way. I can’t help but think about how often I’ve referred to the self without defining or exploring what it means to me.
Validating ourselves requires us to understand what we mean when we refer to “The Self.”
To me, the Self is a a combination of experiences and internal wisdom about who you truly are when you feel your most whole and honest. Regardless of how messy, imperfect and unconventional it may be.
Each of us has a core self with internal, private experiences separate from the needs, feelings and desires of others. This includes our thoughts, emotions and physical sensations, our understanding of who we are, what we believe in and why they matter. This to me is the starting place for what I refer to as inner wisdom. This wisdom is thought to begin developing in childhood, and is shaped by our learning, our environment and our freedom to be our authentic feeling self as we grow.
Honouring ourselves, by asserting and validating our needs, values and beliefs, is an important skill to feel safe in our bodies, make desired changes to the self, address internal wounds and traumas, and show up for others and ourselves with authenticity, integrity and purpose.
So how do we validate ourselves exactly?
In no particular order, here are a few of my tried and true strategies for learning how to validate yourself. 🔑 Road-tested personally both as a therapist and a human being.
1. Label and describe what you’re feeling.
A key component of validation is learning to describe and record your experiences without judgment or undue criticism. You don’t have to agree with what you’re feeling to validate it. Validation simply communicates understanding and acknowledgement.
E.g. Noticing yourself feeling sad and then thinking: “sadness is a useless emotion,” or experiencing anger at someone we love, and then shaming ourselves for feeling that way.
2. Consider your core values and what matters to you.
Your Core Self is supported by your actions, decisions, the boundaries you set, and the ways you regulate and turn towards your internal experiences. However the foundation of this core identity are your values and beliefs. Reminding yourself of key values that matter to you is an affirming and clarifying process that can center you when you’re feeling invalidated and disconnected from yourself. Practice stating your core values by writing or saying out loud why it is important.
E.g. “Compassion is a core value of mine because I believe that care and concern for myself and others helps me thrive.”
3. Reduce unnecessary over-apologies.
When apologies are warranted, they can be useful in rectifying wrongs, demonstrating good will, and can signify personal accountability in your relationships. When you’re trying to validate yourself, apologizing excessively to make yourself feel better may serve to reinforce unhelpful patterns of linking the act of apologizing (and other people’s responses to your apologies) to your self worth and self esteem.
Over apologizing for having an opinion, disagreeing, for making a valid request, or for simply being alive teaches you that your core self is dependent on never making a mistake, which is unrealistic and unsustainable.
4. Validate with actions as well as with words.
Does this situation require action and decision making? You may feel more invalidated in a situation if all you do is talk about your feelings, needs and desires without making any necessary actions, changes or decisions.
E.g. Validating yourself by writing out a list of boundaries and needs is made more powerful by the communication of those boundaries AND following up on the actions required to sustain them over time.
This reinforces self trust and self knowledge, as you prove to yourself that the way you refer to yourself is consistent with your behaviour and actions.
5. Validate your ‘why’ even if you disagree with your ‘what.’
You can validate your reasons why you might be feeling, thinking or behaving a certain way without agreeing with the behaviour itself. When we act in ways that we don’t like or approve of, we need to be able to understand why we acted the way we did without losing our sense of self and connection to our identity. Communicating to ourselves about the causes of our behaviour without approving or accepting it can allow us compassionate understanding to make changes without spiralling into distress.
E.g. We can communicate that it makes sense to be somewhat hopeless instead of excited about a new job if every job we’ve had has lead to major burnout.
6. Stay present to your environment and experience.
Mindful attention to your current experiences can support honouring your Core Self through present focused understanding of how environmental circumstances may shape your feelings and actions. Over time, this mindful focus can be sharpened and focused to support other skills such as identifying thought distortions, noticing harmful relationship patterns, and emotion regulation.
📌 Challenges to staying present can look like:
tendencies to detach from physical and emotional needs.
making harsh internal judgments about your feelings.
experiencing burnout and/ or chronic fatigue.
traumatic symptoms such as flashbacks, numbness and extreme hyper-arousal.
Final thoughts.
Validation improves our ability for effective communication, can reduce negative emotional reactivity, and helps create necessary space to see the facts about our situation and experiences without losing ourselves in the process.
Manage your expectations of immediate success with them, and remember that validating yourself is just one tool you can use to allow for new ideas and change, as well as strengthen and sustain a strong sense of self.
You deserve to learn the tools to validate and show up for yourself.
Validation paves the way for deeper understanding of your core identity and behaviour without getting caught up in undue shame, misplaced guilt or emotional overwhelm. These skills will take time. Be curious and sensitive to yourself as you explore this.
— Meghan