The first thing most people hear in the word validation is parking.
It is a small thing and it does real damage, because the everyday meaning of the word points in almost exactly the wrong direction.
When I first heard the word validation, my initial thought was, oh, I validate my ticket when I am leaving a garage. It is like, okay, I am passing this thing off to get accepted.
That association is not trivial. It shapes how people resist the skill. If validating means stamping something as approved, then validating a person you disagree with is a concession, and no one wants to concede in the middle of an argument.
That is not what the word means in DBT.
The actual definition
The technical meaning is narrower than the everyday one, and the narrowing is the whole point.
In DBT, validation is not necessarily acceptance. Validation is simply the communication that how another person feels, thinks, or behaves makes sense. It makes sense given your history, given your biology, given what you have been through, that you would feel, think, or act this way.
Makes sense, not is correct. The claim being made is causal, not evaluative. You are saying: given the inputs, this output is intelligible. Nothing in that sentence commits you to agreeing with the output.
Nowhere in that statement am I saying, oh, I agree with how you think or feel or behaved. No, we are just saying that it makes sense.
Why people conflate the two
The conflation is understandable. In ordinary conversation, acknowledging someone's reasoning often does function as a concession, because most conversations are structured as contests. Once you have granted that the other side's position is intelligible, the argument feels half lost.
Validation only works if you drop that structure. It requires accepting that a person can be fully understandable and still, in your view, wrong. Which is true of everyone, including you, on most topics.
The dinner table experiment
Dr. Finkelstein proposes a specific exercise, and it is worth doing exactly as described rather than in theory.
The next time you find yourself at the dinner table having a heated political discussion and you notice your own emotions getting very big, pause for a second, just as an experiment, and see what it is like not to say that the other person is right or that they are wrong. Simply try to make sense in your own mind why it is that this person would feel this way.
The instruction is internal. You do not have to say anything. You are running a private process while the conversation continues around you.
The questions to run:
- What are the stressors in this person's life right now?
- What is their history with this subject?
- What context makes their position the obvious one from where they are standing?
What are the stressors? What is their history? What is the context in which their experience makes sense?
What you will actually notice
Two things, usually, and the second surprises people.
The first is that your own arousal drops. Attempting to reconstruct another person's reasoning is cognitively demanding in a way that is incompatible with escalating. You cannot model someone's history and rehearse your rebuttal at the same time.
The second is that your position does not soften. People expect that understanding the other side will erode their own view, and avoid the exercise for that reason. In practice you usually come away holding the same position with less heat attached to it. That is a better place to argue from, if you still want to argue.
There is a third effect that shows up later. Conversations you have run this process on tend to stay available. You can return to them, raise the subject again, and find that the other person is willing, which is rarely true of conversations that ended in escalation.
Where validation does not apply
Worth being clear, because the skill gets overextended. Validation is about what is valid. If someone's account of events is factually wrong, you do not validate the wrong facts. You validate the part that is real, which is usually the emotion and the reasoning that follows from what they believe.
And validation is not a tool for absorbing mistreatment. Understanding why someone behaved badly does not obligate you to accept the behavior. Those are separate decisions, and in DBT they stay separate.
The two most useful sentences here tend to be held together rather than chosen between. I can see how you got there, and I am not going to keep having this conversation on these terms. Both can be true, and saying only the first is how validation turns into something it was not designed to be.
Where this leads
Validation is one of the skills DBT uses to build compassion toward yourself and others. Once the definition is clear, the next two pieces are the tone that carries it, covered in curiosity and compassion, and what it is doing between people, covered in validation as a way to connect. For parents, walking the middle path shows validation and a limit held in the same sentence.
Axis Psychological Services offers DBT informed individual therapy and couples therapy in New York City. You can book a free consultation.
If you want to practice validation with support, learn about DBT therapy in NYC, or join the DBT skills group in NYC.
Common questions about why validation is not agreement
What is the difference between validation and agreement?
Agreement is about the content. Validation is about whether the reaction makes sense given the person's situation, history, and information. You can tell a colleague that of course she read the email as a dig, and still think the sender meant nothing by it. Both statements hold at once, which is exactly what people find hard to believe until they try it.
If I validate my teenager, am I approving the behavior?
No. Validation is not agreement, and approval is a separate act that nothing stops you from withholding. It makes sense you were furious when I took the phone costs you nothing and does not return the phone. Parents usually find the opposite of what they feared. The limit holds better once the feeling behind it has been named, because there is nothing left to argue about except the limit itself.
Where does validation not apply?
To anything that is not actually valid. You do not validate a plan to hurt someone, a distortion you know to be false, or a story that has drifted from what happened. In those moments you look for the part that is valid, usually the emotion or the need underneath it, and validate that. Validating what is not there teaches the person that your reading of them cannot be trusted.
How do I start if this feels unnatural?
Pick one conversation a day and do nothing but describe back what you heard, with no correction attached. It will feel mechanical for about a week. The awkwardness is the sign that you are removing a habit, usually the habit of jumping straight to the fix. Most people notice the other person talking longer and getting less defensive before they notice anything else.
