Brianna Wiest - The Mountain Is You_ Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery (2020)

188 BRIANNA WIEST
LEARNING TO VALIDATE
YOUR FEELINGS
If we want to be effective in therapy, in politics, in relationships,
in teaching kids, in talking someone down from
the edge, in keeping peace, making friends, fostering connection,
and making progress, there’s one technique we
have to employ first.
It’s a little secret, and it’s one that requires very little effort.
But it disarms people. It opens them, makes them
receptive, willing to listen and adapt. It is healing, it is
mind-altering, but most importantly, it is the first step to
progress. It is emotional validation.
Validating someone’s feelings doesn’t mean you agree with
them. It doesn’t mean you concede that they are correct.
It doesn’t mean that those feelings are the healthiest; it
doesn’t mean they are informed by logic. Validating feelings
does not mean you make them more true; it means
you remind someone that it is human to feel things they
don’t always understand.
How often do we just need a partner to stop trying to
strategize and just say, that must really suck?
How much of a weight is lifted off our shoulders when we
think: Yes, I really am stressed right now, and I deserve to be?
How light do we feel when we see another person’s story