Welcome to Sheep Assisted, the Gen.
Z mental health podcast. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton.
Let's get into it. You have to make meaning out of
suffering. If you don't, it's just
suffering and it was for nothing.
If you do, then you grow through it or you help others as a
result of it, but it's not for nothing.
And that is a choice we have to make.
And I do believe that everybody can make that choice in some
way, shape or form. Hello, hello you guys and
welcome back to She persisted. We have an episode that is like
six years in the making today, basically almost since I started
the podcast. We have my therapist on the
show. She just came out with a book
called Validation, which I'm absolutely obsessed with.
You guys have heard me talk about how crucial of a shift I
saw with my relationship with my parents once we both learned to
validate, when I learned to advocate for validation and be
vulnerable about what I was experiencing so they could in
turn speak to that createspace for it, help me feel like I was
seen and heard and belonged. And so we talk about that and so
many other things in this episode.
A little bio for you. Doctor Caroline Flack is a
licensed clinical psychologist, corporate consultant, author,
and an adjunct clinical instructor at Stanford
University. She's a respected voice in
psychology and has been featured in national media outlets
including The New York Times, Good Morning America, and
Huffington Post. And her new book Validation is
available everywhere. You can buy books.
I highly recommend whether you are going through mental health
challenges, someone in your life is or you just want to be more
effective in your relationships or more effective with yourself,
like we talked about in this episode.
And she dives into in her book, there's really no one that can't
benefit from learning the skills of validation and see outcomes
in almost every area. It's like really the psychology
magical skill that we're all for some reason lacking.
So to dive into the topics today, we talked about this
stigma about receiving dialectical behavioral therapy
treatment, if meditation can help in treating depression, how
you see the world when you're depressed.
We talked about the roles of acceptance and change in DBT.
What types of people are more motivated to accept their
experience versus just lean into changing it.
We talked about why Gen. Z is facing a mental health
crisis and both our thoughts on that validation and why it's so
important to start practicing it.
Eight ways you can validate someone else.
The key between validation and praise because they are very
different. We talked about why we self
invalidate and how to change this.
What happens when we're chronically invalidated using
DBT to treat self harm and suicidality.
Not much of A trigger warning here.
We do talk about what that looks like in DBT and like the
different boundaries that are set and how you can support
something, but no details are gone into there.
And we have a therapist on the podcast so it's done in a very
effective, nuanced and mindful way.
We talked about supporting a loved one in crisis without
reinforcing harmful behaviors, which is something that's really
challenging to do, but also important to be aware of.
Seeking external validation, whether that's something you
should be doing or should not, spoiler alert, you should be.
And we dive into why. We talk about the best way to
describe living with mental health challenges or mental
illness because it can be really hard to verbalize that and then
in turn get validation for that experience.
We talk about ways that suffering can add value to your
life and what Gen. Z should know about validation.
So we really go all over in this episode.
It is truly, I think my favorite conversation I've ever had on
the podcast, if not like top three.
This is an episode everyone should listen to.
And I really, really hope you get as much value out of it as I
did. And I loved bringing this
conversation on the podcast. So I don't want to take up too
much of your time yapping in this intro, but I really do hope
you love it. And if you do share, leave a
review, tag me, send me a message.
All the things and all the links to things we mentioned will be
in the show notes. So with that, let's dive in.
Well, Doctor Fleck, welcome to, she persisted.
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.
It's been like six years in the making.
It seriously has been just about that.
It's. Crazy.
You have a new book about validation out and we're going
to talk a lot about that and why it's so important, both from the
perspective of struggling with your mental health and that
being an unmet need for a lot of people that are not feeling seen
and heard, which is a very prominent element of suffering
with mental health challenges. But also why it's so important
in your other relationships and getting what you want from other
people and being effective and just showing up in all these
really crucial aspects of our lives.
So to get started, for people who haven't read your book, can
you tell me your background, how you decided to go into
psychology, specifically DBT and BPD, which is a very unique
subset that a lot of people don't choose to go into?
And then how you came across validation as this area that was
so under discussed and under emphasized especially in like
the general public? Yeah, So I can give my very
protected and professional answer to that question, which
is all about my research interests and everything.
But, you know, given that I think a lot of your listeners
can relate, empathize, understand, hopefully not judge
mental health issues. I'll just be straight and say
that I I suffered from depression when I was in high
school and in my early 20s. So I was in a pretty serious
episode of depression for what felt like almost 10 to 15 years.
And I had just tried everything. And I frankly found many of the
providers that I spoke with to be, and by providers, I mean
therapists, psychiatrists, to be really invalidating.
I found therapy often was punishing, confusing and not
helpful. And so in addition to therapy, I
had tried a bunch of other, you know, interventions, meds, XY
and Z, and nothing had really helped.
So I selfishly, I think, wanted to go into the field to, like,
see if I could figure out how to treat depression.
I mean, clearly the what I was receiving was not doing anything
for me and I certainly experienced a lot of it to be
damaging. And so I wanted to kind of right
that wrong. So that I mean, on some level
that was my motivation to go into it and what I had found to
be really helpful for me. The only thing that seemed to
have any real substance to it was meditation.
So meditation for me was just the only space in which I could
kind of calm my mind and maybe get a sense, just a slight taste
of what freedom from suffering would be like.
And so I was really interested in mindfulness based therapies
and at the time and, and still DBT was like the intervention.
It was the first psychotherapy to introduce mindfulness as a
key component, as like a skill set that that patients learn as
part of the treatment. And so although DBT was focused
on, it is a treatment for borderline personality disorder,
not depression. The meditation piece really
pulled me in. And then once I started studying
DBT and training in it and learning more about borderline
personality disorder, I felt really called to work with that
population because it is among the most unfortunately
stigmatized. And invalidated.
Yeah. And so, you know, the, the
amount of stigma they're coupled with the, the, the work and
meditation that I was seeing in DBT, that kind of combo drew me
to it. So I have two things that came
up. One is this idea of borderline
personality disorder being like this almost a case study for
DBT. And like, I don't think it's
understood and perceived. It's like, well, this is the
best possible news. And I feel like it should be
like when we think about what we learn the most about humans, a
lot of it, it's from these extreme conditions, right?
We know about loneliness from people that are completely
isolated from society and lack relationships and interaction.
Like I think of Genie, the linguistics example.
We don't have that connection and exposure to these things.
We're forever put on this trajectory we can't come back
from. We lot learn a lot about our
physiological health from being in extreme conditions, whether
it's like weather, climb, all these different things.
And I think DBT is the best example of that where when we
look at borderline personality disorder, it's this case study
of individuals that struggle so much with emotion regulation and
tolerating distress and being effective in our relationships
to like to the NTH degree. And if these skills in this
framework is effective for people who are struggling so
much, think about what it can do for the everyday person, and we
don't think about it like that. Oh my gosh, you are so speaking
my language like that is what I was like wanting to scream from
the rooftops for the last, you know, however many years I've
been doing this, which is too long.
But like yes, if this works in these extreme situations.
Sadly depressed, no patient, no therapist want to work with
these patients. Right.
And if it can affect change there, imagine what it can do at
the less extreme. So I think you're exactly right.
It's like, you know, some of the the strategies and skills and
DPT, the fact that they work for this population, that's an
indication of their potential. Not like they're limited, yes.
Yeah, and we think about, like, extreme athletes, like the
Wellness practices they're implementing now.
Your favorite influencer is doing, like, hyperbaric and
cupping. Like why aren't we doing the
same thing for mental health? That is such a good point.
And I honestly think, and this makes me very sad because I
think we've come a long way with how we talk about research and
treat BPD. I still think a lot of it comes
down to stigma. That makes me sad, but I think
we see folks with BPD as almost so unrelatable, so other, so
different, that it's hard to even imagine how that you know
what works there could work for me on some level.
I think it's also so challenging because our mental health is so
synonymous for a lot of people with our identity.
It's such an internal experience that the way that we experience
things and cope with them, to separate that from who we are as
humans and how we choose to identify and present ourselves.
So I think for some people when they're like I'm doing this
treatment that is really effective for borderline
personality sort, there's like this in Group, out group.
I don't want to. So like, yeah, yeah, yeah is
really prominent as well. Yeah.
And then there's another, you know, equally important factor
here, which is that, you know, thankfully BPD is relatively
rare. And as you've I know, mentioned
on on this podcast before, it's finding evidence based
treatments and finding folks who are comprehensively trained to
provide DBT is even harder. So this is like a very small
community. And so getting the word out is
again that much harder. Yeah, yeah.
The other thing you mentioned is mindfulness, which every time
I've done DBT, especially when I was at like my lowest points,
you do mindfulness with the caveat of like if you're really,
really struggling and suffering and their self hatred and all
the intense emotions, maybe mindfulness isn't right for you
yet. So I'm really curious why that
was something that was so effective in that dark point
when for so many it's like, oh, that's like might be dangerous
at this point. Let's wait.
Yeah, and I'm actually glad you flagged that because for folks
who are severely depressed or in the throes of a bipolar episode,
we know that, you know, sitting in meditation, sitting with your
thoughts, may not be the most helpful and in fact, could make
things worse. For me, it gave me insight into
the judgmental voice in my head, and I was able to see that I was
not that voice, which sounds incredibly meta, but like we're.
Metacognitions. Yeah.
How do we think about our thoughts?
Yeah. And that was really the insight
I had. And I would just get these, I'll
be straight like sitting in meditation for 45 minutes when
you're super depressed, like 2/3 of that was very painful.
But I was fortunate enough to have just like these moments
within that sitting where I would just have like, freedom
from just the suffering and the voice and everything else.
And so it was those moments that I was like, oh, there's
something there. Like I'm not seeing this in
anything else. I'm not getting this anywhere
else. Like what is that?
Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think a lot of people find
that a different ways and that's what they latch onto is like the
beginning of their healing process for some, like maybe
it's exercise and that's the alleviation from those feelings.
But especially with depression, it's so all consuming that
anytime you're not feeling that, like you're very aware of it
because it's so different from your almost constant emotional
and internal experience. Yeah, and I, I think another
really, I mean a hallmark of depression is that negativity.
So there's just this, this negative judgement, you know,
this these sunglasses basically that you're you have on that you
can't seem to take off. And it just feels like
everything has this shade to it and the ability to see things
non judge mentally or more objectively, I think that's a
huge relief if nothing else. Yeah.
And I think we're going to validate like this is something
you don't learn when you're depressed, but that's like
biologically how depression works.
Like when we look at studies of depressed versus non depressed
populations, they spend statistically longer staring at
negative stimuli. They when they reflect on their
past experience, they coat them with this negative bias that
doesn't exist in the like 10 years from then when you then
reflect. So it's like, it's not your
fault. It makes sense that you're
thinking this way. It's not that you can't take the
goggles off. It's like, no, that's how your
brain is actually working. And that's what's so
challenging. And that you're not even aware
'cause you're like, why can't I just think differently?
Like why am I not noticing the good things?
And it's like. That's the disease.
That's the disease, right? That's like, I mean, it would be
the same thing if you have diabetes.
Like, why can't I just regulate my blood sugar?
Well, that's what diabetes does, but that's the nature of the
disease. And again, it's like it's so
internal that we can't objectively think about it that
way, which is what's so challenging.
I want to talk about acceptance and change, and DBT is the
origin of validation because I think it's so fascinating.
And it also explains why validation is so crucial and
shifting behavior and mental health, in addition to just like
feeling good and being helpful in our relationships.
But it has really meaningful impacts on clinical outcomes and
just our lives as a whole. So can you explain this, like
balance of acceptance and change, how Marshall Lenihan
came across this? Because validation, I think,
really sits on that dialectic. It does.
So, you know, by the time Lenihan came on the scene and
started to develop this treatment DBT for borderline
personality disorder at the time, it was all like behavior
therapy through like all of the evidence based treatments we had
at that time were behavioral or cognitive behavioral
interventions, which simply means that the focus was on
changing behaviors and or thoughts.
And so we were really relying on strategies like positive
reinforcement and shaping and stuff that frankly most folks
have heard of now, right? We've got like 1000, have you?
Trained a dog, You're a pro. Yeah, yeah, Pro modification.
Exactly, exactly. And we have like all sorts of
books on this, like how to train your boss, how to poppy train
your kid, you know, and it's all the same principles and that's
topic habits. Exactly, exactly.
And that stuff does it works really well a lot of the time.
However, it doesn't work all the time.
And with the folks Marsha was trying to Marsha Linnehan was
trying to treat folks with BPD and severe suicidality, self
harm, really rigid and difficult to treat behaviors.
She found that that population was not very receptive to the
emphasis on change. And she talks in her book about,
you know, OK, so she thought I'm going to just communicate
acceptance. If, you know, she's going in
there, she's trying to help them problem solve and fix what's not
working. And they get really shut down
and they feel really judged and they don't like her.
So then she goes to the other extreme as she describes and she
really focuses acceptance, you know, in this kind of
unconditional positive regard. And, and you know, then patients
maybe loved her, but they weren't getting any better.
And so combining those strategies, is there a way that
I can communicate that I accept you as you are, while at the
same time emphasizing that there needs to be some change here.
And that is the motto of DBT. It's kind of that you're doing
the best you can and you need to do better.
And what she did was she developed a set of validation
skills to help therapists communicate that acceptance, and
she used those alongside those tried and true behavioral
principles. And when she combined those two
methods, all of a sudden we had something incredibly powerful.
We were able to get through to folks and help people whom we,
up to that point, considered untreatable.
This is a very big breakthrough that for some reason didn't get,
you know, certainly not have a lot of public attention.
But it was huge when this happened.
This was in the early 90s. I'm curious if you have any
thoughts or theories even just, like anecdotally about who just
change works for and also who really desires that acceptance?
Because when I think about just changing, and I see this content
all the time on social media where it's almost like it's like
the life coach model where someone is like, no one's coming
for you. Nothing's gonna change until you
do. You are on your own.
And I'm like, like, it makes me less motivated.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that sucks.
I'm like, you suck. Like, I'm not gonna take your
advice now. Like, it almost turns me off to
making any shifts. I'm like, well you try solving
this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Are you kidding me? And so I'm kind of curious, is
it people that maybe internally have a high level of acceptance
for their experiences? Is it people that are less
emotionally sensitive? Are they not stuck in that
suffering spiral? I'm curious who you kind of
think can rely on just change to kind of almost offer insight
into that experience and then who really does require that
acceptance? We can have that self-awareness
like, OK, I'm in that camp. I need someone to like, really
be like. This is hard and here's how we
can shift it. I actually have a radical view
on that, which is that even the folks who are more change
oriented, in my experience, they benefit more, improve faster,
reach their goals quicker when validation is also part of the
equation. When I incorporate validation
with those folks that said they're, you know, I do a lot of
executive coaching and so I'll have folks coming in and they
have very specific agendas for the things that they want to
work on and address. And it is very like, help me
solve this problem. And you know, this is going to
sound maybe like a stereotype, but there's a very type A
quality to that. Like give me homework, right?
And I think certain people feel a certain amount of control in
that, and in that they find reassurance, whereas some others
here overwhelming, like what they feel from that is stress
and pressure. And so though I think for folks
who are, again, perhaps more type A focused on solving the
problem, feel control when they have more answers, change
strategies can work really well. Yeah.
And it frankly, if they've been effective.
So if they have some sense of mastery already, they have some
degree of confidence in their ability to execute.
Yeah. In the absence of that, yeah, me
just telling you to change. Yeah.
Is is disheartening if you don't feel, if you feel like you
fundamentally lack the capacity to do so.
Yeah. I took great lab last semester
and one of the things that Angela Duckworth mentioned was
like, we have these mental frameworks we use to motivate
ourselves. And we see this at every level.
And especially with extremely high achievers.
Like one of the most common things you think of is like,
it's about the journey, not the destination.
And you hear all these highly successful people parrot and
repeat that and you're focused on the day-to-day.
It doesn't matter when you get to the end point.
And she found through research that if you've never reached
that destination, focusing on the journey, journey is not
effective. You're not motivated.
It doesn't cause change. And so when you're doing this
for the first time, the destination is far more
motivating and essential in getting through that journey at
all. That is right.
Once you've gone to the destination, then you can think,
OK, it's about the journey. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But if you've never had that success in the 1st place, who
wants to be continuously stuck in the journey?
Like that's what you're trying to get out of?
So it just doesn't motivate people.
That's exactly right. And in fact, in DBT, kind of one
of the skills we teach clients or those in DBT is mastery.
So we try and set up experiences for them that are achievable,
that can help them consistently reach that end goal so that they
can start to enjoy the process a little bit more.
Because you're absolutely right, there's a bit of learned
helplessness that has taken shape.
And in the context of that, you don't enjoy the process.
The journey is really painful and it doesn't go anywhere.
It's just a circle. We're going to talk about the
Gen. Z mental health crisis, but my
theory areas like we lack agency and mastery and that is what
everything sits upon and why everyone's struggling.
But like, I think that Gen. Z feels a huge amount of
responsibility and capability when it comes to like solving
the world's problems like the environment, politics, higher
education. We are more motivated.
We're trying harder for all these things.
Like academics is a completely different world.
Like we're highly motivated and we feel the responsibility, but
I don't think that we have the belief that our actions have a
meaningful outcome on those markers.
And I also think it collapses on an individual level.
I don't think Gen. Z as individuals has a belief
that their actions will have a meaningful impact on their
mental health, on their relationships, on their
connections. And so without that, everything
collapses. And there's that lack of mastery
when it comes to like, our own individual experiences, but also
the world as a whole. Yeah, I think that's really, I
think that's a really smart observation.
And you know, I, I do think some of it comes back to we're not as
like plugged into like small community things anymore either,
right? So it's like you're not seeing
change within your community with the with the activities
that you plug into like the social world.
The Internet is huge. You know, in order to get a
following on TikTok or all the other markers that folks are
using now to like see if they're affecting change are incredibly
hard to achieve. Yeah, 100%.
OK. So validation obviously hugely
effective. It sits on this like, balance of
acceptance and change, but how do we validate?
And if people want the full thing, they can read the entire
book and there's all these different ways and like all
these different levels and like, there's literally endless skills
they can use. But for people who are like, OK,
I get it. Like I should be validating.
How do we do that? OK, so it's first really
important to understand what validation is, because I think
this term is horribly understood and often.
Misused, but it's now used even more, which is like I love, but
I hate like I was sending you all these love is blind videos
and I was like, they're just talking about how they're not
being validated. Like they're literally with
their significant other being like you're not validating my
experience. And I'm like, that's not
something that can be validated. You're gossiping about someone
else and this isn't validation. Yes, yes, yes.
OK. So validation is purely
communicating that you are mindful, you understand and you
empathize with some part of another person's experience and
thereby accept it as valid. OK, so it is seeing validity in
and let me underline this some part, OK, I can validate your
emotions without validating your thoughts or behaviors.
I can validate your thoughts without validating your emotions
or behavior and vice versa. And this is really important
because where people struggle with validation is in confusing
it with agreement. So we think that I can't
validate, you know, this person's position because I
don't, I don't agree with it. And to that I would say you may
not agree with their beliefs, right, But you can validate the
emotions they have in response to those beliefs.
And that really is the key to validation in in DBT, we talked
about finding the kernel of truth in someone's perspective,
and that is it. And because we are wired to
focus on what we don't like and what we don't agree with, we end
up losing that and missing it and giving a lot of attention to
the things we don't like rather than reinforcing the things we
can connect with and that can lead to connection.
So if we go through like the levels of validation, because
there's some very easy ways to validate someone's experiences
and then just you can validate a stranger on the street.
And then there's others where it's like you really need to be
in a relationship with someone to be able to mind read or to be
able to imagine what they'd be experiencing or think about
their lived experiences and how that's impacting their emotional
vulnerability. At this point.
It's like, what are these different like levels that we
can validate someone's experience and be more and more
and more effective and making them feel seen?
Yeah, great, great question. So I break down.
I've got 8 skills that yeah, use that you can use to validate
someone and they range from sort of validating to super
validating. And that's just depends on how
much mindfulness, understanding and empathy they can
communicate. And so if I don't understand
what someone is saying, if I'm sitting across from someone
whose political abuse deeply offend me, I'm really only going
to be able to be mindful, right? And to hopefully engage in a way
that is non judgmental. I can, I can work that muscle
even even if I don't understand or empathize.
And so we talk about just lower levels of validation, including
validation skills that just focus on mindfulness.
And for those we've got attending and copying.
And of the two, copying is my favorite because it is freaking
magic. And it is what it sounds like.
It is just repeating another person's position, the words
that they said, without adding your interpretation to it or.
And this is in so many sitcoms, like, there's so many good clips
of this. There are the other really cool
one with copying is body language.
So when we copy the gestures body language of another person,
we can start to empathize with their emotions.
This is through mirror neurons. We are wired to connect with
people in this way. As babies, we copy our parents
facial expressions as a form of connecting with them.
And so we've got study after study after study that shows
that simply copying someone's behavior or subtle movements,
facial expressions effects how we relate to them, the degree to
which we connect with them, and interestingly, the degree to
which they like and connect with us.
So that's pretty straightforward stuff.
Again, I don't have to agree or empathize with somebody in order
to do that. However, in copying, I often end
up arriving at more understanding and empathy.
Yeah, yeah. So that's a very basic one.
You talk about in the book how we shouldn't validate
inauthentically, like we validate what we authentically
can understand and be non judgmental Love.
Can you explain why this is 'cause we could all like pretend
to copy, we could activate situations, we could like pair
it. It makes sense that you feel
that way. Of course you're overwhelmed.
What happens when we do that and it's not actually an authentic
understanding? So with the copying stuff, that
one can be a little bit more contrived I would say like you
can push yourself to just. Shift your behavior and then the
thoughts and emotions. Change yeah, yeah, where it gets
tricky is when we start looking at communicating, understanding,
right. So if I was to try and like
communicate that I see the logic in what you're saying.
If I'm faking it, if I don't really see it, that does not
work. People feel it even if they
can't put their finger on it. This is like the used car person
example, like you just or politician, you get that feeling
of like this person is saying all the things I want to hear,
but it doesn't feel good. That's what will happen.
And that is why you cannot unfortunately, fake this, which
is why you need to actually actually develop skills to help
you do it authentically. Because in the absence of that,
it's it's hard. Yeah, yeah.
I'm curious. Validation obviously create such
change in behaviors and emotional experience, in our
ability to connect in relationships.
What need is it meeting like? We wouldn't do it, it wouldn't
feel good, it wouldn't be in reinforcing if it wasn't feeling
like some internal experience. So what does validation do when
it comes to like that unmet need, especially in mental
health contexts? Yeah, the social psychologist
Mark Leary has a great quote. Human beings differ from animals
not so much in our need to affiliate, but in our need to be
accepted. And I think that really gets to
it. Part of humanity, part of being
human, is this need that we have to feel seen and heard.
This is different from feeling praised, which we love.
We like feeling praised, but it's subtly different.
When I feel like somebody sees me, understands me, gets me like
I'm part of their tribe, that is as satisfying to me as food in
some circumstances, right? And I think in mental health
situations, folks are often dealing with symptoms that most
people don't understand and actually often judge.
And so there's this sense of I am alone with this, and there's
nothing worse than being alone in your suffering.
And I think that's why, particularly with folks who have
been exposed to a lot of judgment, who are struggling
with things that other people don't relate to, validation is
so powerful. Yeah, and loneliness comes from
not feeling seen and hurt. It's not about who's around you.
It's not about what context you're.
It's not about if you're with others.
And so I think this is another element of the experience and we
see this and how Gen. Z behaves like we're more vocal
about our mental health experiences.
We apply more labels, which is a sign of wanting to feel seen and
being able to attract people that feel and identify the same
way as you. And so I, I think that's another
really huge element like you're talking about where we don't
feel seen and heard. And again, it's really hard to
feel seen and heard in these larger contexts and when you
have less relationships. So again, the agency, the
belief, you can get that validation reliably.
Well, and there's another thing at play here, which is that, you
know, on the Internet, on social media platforms, the you are
reinforced for pleasing or exceeding people's expectations.
Or going wildly against them and being very controversial.
That's right. And being invalidated.
Right, but neither of which is you.
There's a distortion, you know, you need to look different, you
need to present better, you need to stay something radical.
And so you're distorting yourself in very various ways
through various real and, you know, metaphorical filters.
But when you do that, the result is that you don't end up feeling
seen right. You end up feeling the pressure
to keep changing and and keep adapting in ways that are hard
to keep up with. Yeah.
So again, validation is not praise like a thumbs up and a
heart emoji. That's all praise that says I
like how you look or perform. That's different from saying I
accept you independent of how you look or perform.
And like you're saying, even if someone comments that word for
word, it's still a variation of you and you're not being
validated for your true experience.
You're being validated for that changed and altered and
presented version of yourself. Yeah, the filter is getting
reinforced and then the need to have a better or more consistent
filter is the sense that you're left with not I'm OK as I am,
yeah. Why do we self invalidate?
Because we're going to talk about like why people don't just
internally validate because we're social animals, we have
social brains. There should be something
internally that we just do because it obviously helps our
relationships. But I'm really curious why this
wouldn't be an internal function that is just there and working
and effective. Because our mental health is so
much better when we validate our own experiences and we
createspace for these emotions. You know that subjectively the
research supports it. So why do people invalidate
their own experiences and like, fight again?
What's just happening? Yeah, as a society, we suck at
modeling self validation. Yeah.
I don't know very many people who are good at validating
themselves, much less doing so openly, publicly in front of
their children in a way that models what that would look
like. Yeah, instead we tend to model
and reinforce problem solving. You know, what can we do to make
sure you get on the team next year?
Even if they've already self validated though, you only see
the problem solving. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. So as as parents, we are wired
to solve our children's problems like that is what we are
designed to do. In so doing, however, we can
often fail to validate the emotions, the thoughts that they
have in reaction to those experiences.
And we're so focused on changing what hurts that we fail to
validate it. And therefore the individual
does not learn how to validate the hurt.
They learn to focus on changing something in the environment,
something about themselves, to make that feeling go away, as
though the feeling is bad. Yeah, yeah.
And I think this also goes back to what we talked about
initially where when you find something that alleviates the
emotional experience you're drawn to that you do it again
and again, it's reinforcing itself.
And we like you're saying less frequently organically self
validate and feel that emotional pain alleviate.
And so it's not something that we're being set up for success
for to like automatically come across reinforce and build into
part of our identity. It's and I can I can just say
like as a parent, despite having written the book on validation,
I I struggle with this is hard. Like I am routinely finding
myself leaning towards problem solving when I should be
validating or having to circle back around to validate.
But I've got to say that having developed my own self validation
practice, that has been one of the greatest contributions to my
ability to validate my daughter and model self validation.
What is the practice you have to tell us?
I know, I know. It's my book.
It's like an 8 step process. Yeah.
You need to be able to identify what you're feeling and just
focus on the emotion without reinforcing it with the
narrative that we ascribe to the emotion and that feeds it and
keeps it going. Don't do that.
I just want you to feel that emotion.
Feel it as intently as you can. It will if you're just focused
on feeling it go down a little bit.
Once it does, you just want to travel down that chain of cause
and effect to understand how you got there.
Just a little. Like chain analysis, if you're
doing DBT to see why am I feeling this way?
Because emotions and thoughts, they come from somewhere.
They come from a valid place. You just need to see where.
And once you've done that, you can then choose to self soothe,
take some action to respond to yourself in the same way you
would respond to somebody else who is suffering.
OK. I'm curious what you see
anecdotally with patients etcetera from like an identity
perspective, a mental health perspective, relationships.
Even when we chronically self invalidate, I imagine it impacts
our ability to validate others. Certain diagnosis are much more
synonymous with chronic self invalidation.
Like what happens if we never createspace and accept and don't
judge those emotions and beliefs and thoughts and internal
experiences? Yeah.
Well, this might actually pivot a little bit here because I'm
I'm realizing another, another factor to consider in the why we
don't self validate is that not only is self validation not
modelled for us, but many folks come from environments that are
chronically invalidating. Yes, OK, where what they are
thinking or feeling is consistently dismissed or
trivialized. And so they don't even develop a
sense of whether or not their feelings are valid, and they're
looking to the environment to tell them what they should be
thinking or feeling because they don't trust their intuition.
Yeah. You know, we have a lot of
research on the effects of invalidation from the
environment, and that is some nasty stuff.
OK. So that is like the common
denominator across a lot of different mental health
disorders. In other words, the more
somebody is exposed to invalidation, the more likely
they are to suffer from depression, eating disorders,
even psychopathy. All right, this is nasty, nasty
stuff. There is no doubt about it.
It is directly related to conditions like self harm and
suicidality. And So what are the effects of
that? One might even argue are in a
lot of cases. I know it was for mine an
extreme attempt to get validation.
Not like validation, like praise, but I'm in so much pain.
Can you see that I'm suffering? Yes, yes, yes, yes.
And that's actually a really good point because I've been
seeing on social media lately all this, this kind of
judgmental discourse around attention seeking and all these
people saying, oh, she's, you know, he, she, they are only
saying whatever to get attention.
And let's just like stop and look at what's going on there,
OK? Because the person who is going
to Great Lakes to seek attention, if they're going to
the extent of hurting themselves to get attention, there is
something deeply wrong there that I don't think we should be
judgmental about. That is a very desperate move,
OK? And we don't arrive at that if
it's not for such serious reason.
And so I think you're right, often times folks start to
innately aggrandize what they're experiencing so that other
people can, you're kind of trying to put it in terms that
they can understand because they're not responding to what
you're saying otherwise. Externalizing it in a.
Lot of ways that's right. Yeah, yeah.
And this is something that I learned from you, which is that
while the emotion is always valid, it's not always
justified. It's not always a proportionate
response, It's not always effective.
And so even though we might not validate the behavior or the
belief or the thought that would lead to that outcome.
The emotion itself is valid. Again, it's might not be
proportionate, it might not be effective, it's maybe not a path
forward, but it doesn't change the emotional experience itself.
We have to createspace for it and non judge mentally interact
with it or nothing else ever changes.
Yeah, I, I say that a lot, especially when I'm teaching
validation for most people. Like, unless you're at the
psychologist, basically don't get in the business of telling
people that they don't feel what they're telling you they feel
all right. Like, do not minimize other
people's emotions. It does not not turn out well.
That's different. Like you don't have to reinforce
their behavior, right? Like somebody who is engaging in
self harm to get some sense of validation and feeling seen in
their suffering. That is super not effective,
right? I'm not going to reinforce that
behavior. I'm not going to give it
attention. I will validate their suffering
outside of that, but not in connection to that, that
behavior, or that incident. It's a very important
distinction. I think a lot of people that are
listening to this podcast and seeking out mental health
resources, they're in that camp where we're not like low level.
Yeah, let's just validate. It's like, I want to shift these
behaviors. These things aren't effective.
And so there's a lot of nuance there and that clarity of like,
what do we validate in these extremely challenging, high
suffering, very distressing moments, whether it's your own
experience or a child's, a friend, a peer, a parent,
whatever it is. And and that nuance is is hard
to master, but really important to understand.
Yeah, let me give an example of that because I think we see this
with self harm and I think friends of folks who are self
harming, parents, relatives, this is some really tricky
space. And So what I do as a DBT
therapist upfront with clients who are self harming or suicidal
is to say I care about you way too much to risk reinforcing
that behaviour. And to be clear, that's not to
say you're doing it to get attention from me.
However, attention is reinforcing and so it could
subconsciously have that effect on you.
And I can't let that happen. That is my responsibility and I
care about you way too much to to do that or risk doing that.
So if you self harm, I am not, and this is kind of a rule
within DBT as a therapist, I don't speak to my clients for
24. There's a, we have the 24 hour
rule, which means that if you engage in self harm or a suicide
attempt, you're not going to get attention from me for 24 hours.
If it's a, if it's a real situation and I need to call in
the police or EMTs, I will do that.
But it's clear that they are not going to get a happy, sunny
version of me. However, if they reach out to me
beforehand right as the therapist.
Again, this is the therapist role, not a parent or a friends.
But I I'm willing to jump in there.
None of that is to say that I don't take their suffering
seriously. On the contrary, I'm saying I
take it so seriously that I don't want to do anything that
might make this worse for you because it's already so painful.
And if I feed into a cycle that's even worse and more
dangerous, what good am I doing You?
So that's an example of like I can validate the emotion without
reinforcing the behavior. Yeah.
I want to follow up on that because this is something that's
so unique to DBT. And again, it's that extremely
distressing experience that most of us don't go through.
And so when parents or friends or even yourself is put in this
position, you just don't know how to navigate it.
And if it's ongoing mental health challenges, not
reinforcing these things is paramount.
And so in DBT, the 24 hour rule, it's mean, it's widely accepted,
all clinicians practice it. It's something that they know
works. And I think people listening,
and if you're the one who has a peer, friend, family member,
etcetera, who's going through this, your internal dialogue is
probably like, but they're struggling so much right now.
They're at their lowest of points.
How could I possibly withdraw from this relationship?
Isn't that going to make it worse?
And so obviously the role that the therapist plays is
different. But I think this is something
that people don't talk about in these crisis moments.
And I want to get your perspective there about how you
navigate that without reinforcing but also validating
the experience, because especially if it's invalidated
and these crises keep happening to get validation and support
and connection. Yes.
How do you even go about that? Yeah.
So one thing I did there is I have these conversations outside
of a crisis. Yeah, OK.
So that is critical. So I'm not.
Waiting one. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's a 24 hour rule. Right.
And so if this is a friend or a family member, same rules apply
You don't want to wait for a crisis to erupt to be like, by
the way, here's my line in the sand.
You know, like, good luck. Blocked.
Yeah, that's horrible. So having some communication
about that upfront. The other thing for friends and
family to consider is that as fabulous, loving and supportive
as you are, it's probably not as effective as that person getting
the treatment they need. And so if you are serving that
function right, if you are the person who's absorbing a lot of
that distress in those moments, you could be getting in the way
of them getting help. And So what I really encourage
folks to say is that like, I will do whatever I can just to
help you get services. Here's crisis lines, texting,
like, like all of these other resources that can have you get
the support you need in those extreme periods of crisis
because I care about you. And I don't know how to manage
that. Like, I don't know what I would
be reinforcing or not reinforcing like that is so
unfair to you as your friend, as someone who loves you.
The best thing I can do is support you in getting help, not
pretend to be that support or pretend to be that therapist
when I don't know how to do that.
So what is the line of we are in crisis and I'm actually doing
you a disservice by being the person here rather than a
professional. And also what do you do?
Obviously this probably is like something you hear from your
clients, but you're a professional, so you're not in
this position directly. When they don't have a therapist
or they don't have ongoing treatment, they're not already
in DBT. So it's like I think a lot of
people are in this position where they're like, they
literally feel backed into a corner.
I'm the friends only resources, especially the teen, their
parents don't get it. They can't talk to the teacher
or the school counselor will call their family.
I'm their only lifeline. And like I can't express enough
how ineffective and not true that is.
And it just again, puts both people in such a tough spot.
But like, what's the line? How do you navigate?
And like now my motto's like not my monkeys, not my problems
we're going to cause, but like the first time you're
experiencing it, this, you're literally like, it's life and
death. What do I do?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually want to validate
there's something very true to the sense that like if you guys
have a very special connection, a very special relationship,
there is something that you can do for that person that it feels
like nobody else can do. And that is a very sacred thing.
And it would feel like a complete betrayal or judge
mental to be like, I'm not dealing with this.
That being said, you know, if this is kind of like your first
interaction with this, you have no idea that the person is
struggling in this way and they clue you into it and you're in
the middle of it. It's again.
It's unfortunately oftentimes. Oftentimes.
So in those situations, you just get through that first.
You know, you talk them through it, whatever afterward, it's
like the next opportunity is this conversation about like, I
need you to get help. I cannot I I will not let you
suffer like this without getting help.
And if the person says, you know, well, so I don't have any
resources, I can't go to a therapist.
I can't go to with this. I would again, like, let's look
at crisis lines. All right, let's look at free
services. And if it's a if it's a friend,
it's like, do you want me to talk to your parents perhaps?
Is there any way I can do it? But what I know for sure is that
you being in this state untreated is so unfair for you.
Yeah, yeah. And I also think what you said
there that that relationship is so special if they're going to
you in that point and if you have to be really honest with
yourself and in somewhat of an objective position to ask
herself, how much do I care about this person?
And if I really do care about their well-being in their long
term mental health, you have to have that radical acceptance and
honesty around me. Filling this need is doing them
a disservice. And there's no way to get like
there's. That's just the truth.
Yeah, there's another, again, very valid, you know, reality
here that we're not speaking to, which is that frankly, getting
mental health care sucks and it's very difficult.
And it's shown that like people that are go to treatment
involuntarily after disclosing suicidal ID, they're less likely
to be transparent, They have less trust for providers going
forward. So again, negative
reinforcement, lack of validation can create problems.
Yes. So what do, what do we do with
that? I mean, that's a very
unfortunate reality, but it is the reality.
And so we need to think about that.
What we do know is that there are crisis lines and support
systems that are free and are available.
And effective research backed, professional trained.
Yeah. At the very at least these folks
are trained in basic protocols for navigating crisis, which I
don't care how great of a friend you are or how much relief your
friend or, you know, partner or whatever appears to have after
speaking with you, you don't know what you're doing.
And that is problematic in ways that you can't even appreciate.
And so at the very least, at the very least, I would ask them to
reach out to a crisis line, have those numbers for them.
It's it's a process supporting someone in finding treatment,
but let that be the focus, not serving as their therapist, but
helping them get help, helping them through that process,
validating them through that process.
That is the role you can and should play.
So obviously these we're talking about ways that people are
searching for validation, trying to get it from other people.
We talked about this at the beginning that validation is not
searching for praise. If we get back to like these
day-to-day examples, why should we look for validation even to
like avoid these really extreme attempts to gain it and feel
that acceptance and belonging? Like, why is it so important
that we actually seek that out instead of just like, waiting
for it organically to hopefully come to us?
Like, why should we as individuals seek validation?
I love this question because there's so much discourse.
Yeah. And there's there's this whole
like motto. And mail validation also is
like, just not like. It's not a like, that's not what
validation means. No, because again, that's
looking for approval, right? That's liking, that's praise.
That's not. That's not validation.
If we were actually just looking for validation from males, I'd
probably felt like a lot of like the male loneliness crisis.
They'd feel more sense of purpose, they'd be more
connected, less like that'd be great.
Like if they we were truly searching for male validation.
Like bye bye depressed. Yes, exactly.
Exactly. Again, that's not what people
are looking. For that's not what they're
looking for. So seeking when I say seeking
external validation, if that like makes you cringe or go
what? Just like flip it with seeking
acceptance or being seen and heard.
OK, I want you to have relationships in which you feel
seen and heard. And that should, that is a
reasonable thing to expect from your relationships and you
deserve that. You should have that.
And if you don't, and if you're settling for something else,
that's when things get problematic.
That said, within those relationships, people aren't
mind readers. And we are all, as we've
discussed as a result of our culture and upbringing, really
focused on solving problems. And so within our relationships,
when we come to our friends, family, partners with problems
and they try to solve them, that's understandable.
What I hope what I want for folks is to have the language to
be able to say what I need in this moment is validation, not
problem solving. So it's like the most like
common thing that's set in my house.
Like, are you looking for validation or problem solving?
Because sometimes I do just want to know how to, you know,
resolve whatever the issue is. A lot of the time what I want is
validation. And I trust that the people who
love me want to support me and they just may not know how in
that moment. And that's fine.
I can ask for what I need so long is that it's clear on what
that ask is. We talked about there's like low
levels of validation and they feel less great than like these
really. I feel truly seen and heard and
understood. And you have to meet in the
middle because if you're not articulating your experience and
sharing that they can't validate.
Like they're my reading, they're guessing it might work, it might
not land, who knows. And so I think when people that
teens and young adults especially struggle with,
whether it's with their friends or their parents or people who
haven't experienced mental health challenges, is getting
that lived experience validated because it's so foreign.
And yes, we can validate the emotions and the thoughts, but
being able to articulate that so they can think, wow, I didn't
even realize that's what your day-to-day looked like.
I didn't even realize that we're functioning with like completely
different perspectives. And so I'm wondering if you have
any effective examples or metaphors to explain that lived
experience of really suffering with your mental health and
explaining that to someone who's never been depressed like a day
in their life. Yeah.
So one metaphor I use, and these are, these are kind of extreme,
but it would be like like if you had your hand on a burning
stove, all you would be able to think about is getting your hand
off that stove. Yeah, not what you were going to
wear to the party not getting your math assignment done.
It would be hard to focus on anything else other than.
How others are perceiving you. How you're causing stress to
their life. Right.
Like you can't, you can't see clearly in that amount of pain.
We can, we can understand that because we've all experienced
physical pain. So I think that's a helpful
framework like it. And as someone who struggled
with depression and frankly, cancer, I, I can say that the
depression was in many ways so much harder.
Wow. Than the breast cancer people
understood. Breast cancer people empathized
and reached out and were supportive in ways that I
needed. When I had breast cancer, when
it was depression, I experienced much more judgement, much more
folks internalizing me, not showing up.
And that was confusing and painful.
Yeah. One thing that you talk in your
book about is how, and this is one of like the biggest thing
I've learned working together is the value that suffering can add
to our lives and that sense of purpose and the gift that it can
be in our ability to connect with others.
And this is something that you don't want to hear when you're
in the depths of it. Like you hear it in the depths
and you're like, literally, I can't go away.
It's not validating, it's not effective, it's invalidating.
But when you're have these accumulated sense of mastery,
your agencies back intact, maybe you're on the other side of it.
There's this whole new lens that you can see the world through.
And I'd love if you could speak to that, what these experiences
and periods of suffering allow us to connect with others,
validate, etcetera. Like this gift that it can be.
This is is probably the most kind of important or
fundamental. I don't know.
If it's a belief, sure, let's call it a belief that I have.
Like a guiding principle. Yes, which is that you have to
make meaning out of suffering. If you don't, it's just
suffering and it was for nothing.
If you do, then you grow through it or you help others as a
result of it, but it's not for nothing.
And that is a choice we have to make.
And I do believe that everybody can make that choice in some
way, shape or form. And, and my experience has been,
you know, in, in writing this book, I was looking back, I, I
speak a lot about, you know, the, my personal stuff.
And people have left comments being like, Oh my gosh, like
she, she's gone through so much. Like there's like almost a sense
of like pity or something and I'm like, Oh my God, that is
like not you missed. The point?
Yeah, that's not my perspective at all.
It's not. I can see how you can look at
some of the that stuff and think like, oh, that's horrible.
But, and I never thought I would say this, but I'm grateful that
I struggled with depression to the extent that I did because I
am able to connect with people. I understand that experience and
mental health problems in a way that many other clinicians do
not. And that is a freaking gift.
It's a gift I wished I'd received when I was in that
situation myself. And it is a gift that I am
forever grateful to be able to give to those I connect with.
And I try to do the same thing. I mean, it was what got me
through cancer. Like the day after I was
diagnosed, I told my husband we are like going to adopt some
kittens or we're going to go foster some kittens.
Like this is, which seemed very unrelated cancer in kittens, but
like I just needed something that I wouldn't have other
otherwise done. Like, OK, now I'm going to do
this because of the cancer. These kittens are going to have
a better life. And like, for me, it has to be a
very one to one in that way. And that has been everything.
Yeah. You talk about choice points
with turning suffering into purpose and meaning, going back
to one of these like life coach, More change base, less
acceptancy. The idea that pain is
inevitable, suffering is avoidable, and suffering is
choosing to prolong pain. What do you think about that?
I 'cause I don't love it. Yeah, I don't love it 'cause
there's, there's also a lot to be said around like, you know,
there's that. I'm sure you've heard of this.
Pain plus resistance equals suffering.
You know, pain on its own. It's just pain.
There's there's truth to that, but like, let's not sugarcoat
it. Suffering sucks, OK?
Like it by definition it sucks and that is OK.
We can accept that. You should accept that.
Like don't lie to yourself. Don't judge yourself for
struggling and for suffering. Like that's what it is.
It's suffering. The choice is simply in what you
do with that energy. And this is going to sound like
weird and metaphysical, but like I really believe that like, you
know, when some energy is never, it's not destroyed, you have to
do something with that. And if you don't, that
negativity will eat at you. It will break you down, it will
make you smaller. But if you can direct it at
something with intention, it can also heal.
It can also love. It can also support in ways that
you otherwise perhaps wouldn't have thought to.
OK, 3 rapid fire questions for you to wrap things up.
What is the hardest thing you've had to validate?
Oh my gosh. So two things.
One, in my in my professional life as a psychologist, I would
say when you're working with folks who have psychosis and
they're there's just such a different reality.
Like they are literally believing and seeing and hearing
things that are not there. That can be a very tricky
situation. Where's?
The truth and the situation to validate.
Right. And usually there it's just the
emotions, like I don't understand, like there's not an
alien invasion going on. But I can understand why you
would be afraid you're so distressed.
Yeah, if that's what you think. Similarly, I would say, you
know, these last few years with folks on on the topic of
politics and folks that I love and care about.
Who believe things that in my opinion, at times feel as
radical, almost like it it it feels the same in my body as
those moments when I'm sitting across from somebody who is like
we. Are not seeing the same facts.
We are not in the same reality. And so in those situations, the
interesting thing is the schizophrenic is actually so
much easier because it's not like a direct threat to me.
And that is a really important thing to recognize that part of
what we're responding to when we're struggling in those
moments to validate people in our life is the threat that they
present. There's this fear of of what's
going to happen to us, to our relationship, what their beliefs
are going to do to the world, and that really impedes my
ability to see any validity in their experience.
And then it goes back to the oxygen mask, right?
Like you can help others as much as you've helped yourself if you
don't self valid out. Like wow, this feels like a
direct threat to me. I have emotions coming up.
You can't validate theirs. Exactly.
No, that's a really good point. Like just noticing.
OK, this is hitting me. This is scaring me.
Usually what we notice is the anger.
Yeah. But I, yeah, what's almost
always anger comes down to some degree of feeling threatened or
afraid. And so I try to identify pretty
quickly, what am I afraid of losing here?
What's at stake? The second one is what do you
think Gen. Z should know about validation?
Like what are they lacking? If you could wave your wand and
Gen. Z was like mass equipped with
this insight or skill, our mental health crisis generation
about to inherit all these problems.
Yeah, yeah. A lot of really interesting,
unique and invalidating messaging coming at us.
Yeah, I want to just protect Gen.
Z from the just distinguishing the need for being seen and
accepted from being liked and judged positively and followed
like that. That feels good.
There's a little dopamine hit there, but you cannot build your
life around it. It's it's not, you're not being
seen in that. And so if, if I if folks would
understand that and then also have the skills to validate
themselves, seek validation in their relationships, that is
what I would want for Gen. Z.
If people leave this conversation an episode with
like one line that they only use that to validate for the rest of
their lives, what would it be? You know, as opposed to one
line, I think I would think of one question when someone comes
to you with an issue or a situation or even with yourself,
to just pause for a second and think, do I respond with
validation or problem solving? Yeah, 'cause 9 times out of 10,
we tend to respond with problem solving, and nine times out of
10, people just want to feel seen and heard in whatever it is
that they're experiencing. That that's not to say that you
don't get to, you know, a few sentences later, jump in with
some suggestions. But don't say, but say and.
But the that that validation has to be where you open.
That has to be, you know, not always, but at least if you can
pause and just even think in those terms, I think you will be
light years more effective. Yeah.
Well, where can people follow along, get the book, learn
everything about validation, all the things?
Yes, so my book is available wherever you get books right
everywhere. You can check out my website,
doctorcarolinefleck.com. And I hope to have, you know,
relatively soon, I hope to have a course up to kind of
supplement the book and to solidify some of this stuff.
Amazing. Oh and I'm I guess I'm on yes,
Instagram. I forgot searching for neither
praise or validation because it's effective and not effective
in that context, yes. Yes, you can find me on
Instagram and tick. Tock is amazing.
All of that will be in the show notes.
Thank you for joining me.