…is a private commmunication with people who can be expected to agree with/“validate” one’s feelings.
Not a public forum.
I largely agree with you. I do think we tend to use the word “validate” colloquially to mean “indulge”, as if we are expected to buy in to all of the other person’s emotions. It’s one thing when you’re comforting a friend who’s going through a difficult time or sharing in their joy, but it’s quite another when the other person wants you to buy into their bullshit, hence my use of the word “sometimes”. Sometimes it’s necessary; others, it’s the worst thing you can do.
Right, I see what you mean. I think in a situation like that though one has to be sensitive enough to follow the lead of the other person. I think it’s normal after commiserating about how much the job market sucks to say something like, “Did you follow up with Bill about openings at his company” and if the person is receptive to talking about potential leads, then great- maybe there is a lead they haven’t pursued. If they’re not receptive and are only venting about how much it sucks, then you drop it and listen to them.
Same for talking about pretty much any problem. Discussing death is a whole different ball game, obviously.
On the topic of people venting about things that are unreasonable which Manda JO and MsRobyn brought up- that’s always awkward and I try to gently point out a different perspective, but maybe it is best to just listen and stay neutral. Some people are determined to see things only one way and one has to decide if the issue at hand is worth potentially destroying a friendship over.
One could argue that a lot of people on public forums, just listen. Look at the huge variance between the number of replies to any given thread and the number of views. Those views are just people politely listening. 
The problem with validating people in certain situations is that it kind of encourages the behavior. If someone online is always complaining about getting called out for being a spaz, and everything they describe suggests spaz-like behavior (overreacting to people, inability to empathize with others, complete refusal to change or adjust their behavior, oblivious to anything they might be doing wrong), validating them is just going to encourage the behavior. How much do we really want to encourage people to act like this?
I didn’t watch the video, but someone like what you’re describing does** need advice and if they’re unwilling to make changes then I would reevaluate my friendship with them.
If it’s someone on a message board acting like that I would totally ignore them and at some point mods may get involved.
Wow, this thread has given me lots of matter to ponder, monstro. Thanks for starting it!
It strikes me that we get a fair amount of posting from people who are looking for some objectivity or alternate opinions on situations (emotional and not) in which they can’t find otherwise objective advice for whatever reason.
For example, in abusive emotional situations, or situations where someone’s been struggling with a bad emotional climate for a long time, they may be experiencing “up is down” syndrome. As in, their SO, parent, whomever, is telling them that in their relationship / specific fight, the poster is really off base in his / her emotions, reaction, etc. It can help to solicit a variety of opinions on a message board like this just to hear some views of the situation from (mostly) unbiased individuals who don’t have a dog in that fight, so to speak. In abusive situations particularly, the abused person may have become so isolated that s/he really needs a starting point on other perspectives than the abuser’s.
From what I’ve seen, there will be some people who agree with the poster, some who disagree, but it’s always instructive to me how the balance comes out on the equation: more people saying to the original poster, “you’re in an abusive situation / your mom is taking advantage of you / your kid is leading you down the garden path,” whatever. If a poster here takes every word of advice or drop of sympathy as gospel truth, yep, that’s not going to work out well. But this board is wonderful at providing the whole gamut of perspectives on a given situation, whether it’s some devastating emotional crisis or “Is my mechanic overcharging me for replacing this water pump, and do you think it’s really the water pump?”
My point is that often the people online wanting the most attention are doing it for the worst reasons. I think the people who need the most help or support are making little if any noise about it, because they are so ashamed, embarassed or upset that they dont want to drag other people into their drama.
The ones that make a huge snit online don’t need the kind of help or validation they are begging for. They want attention more than anything, because they know that if they cast a wide enough net on the internet someone will agree or validate them.
Why is it hard for people to validate others? Because they know that it doesnt take any effort to play victim on the internet. They’ll save their effort for people with the spoons to actually do something with the support.
Right. If it’s a troll or someone who is so forgone that it’s pointless to engage them, then I ignore them. This requires no energy on my part, and I don’t have to risk hurting the feelings of someone who may actually be in pain.
If I don’t have compassion for someone and their problems, I just move onto another thread. Likely anything that I’d post would be insensitive and unhelpful. So I just scroll on by.
Being able to ignore annoying people is the best thing about the internet, and it can have the same effect as “shaming” without actually being shaming.
I think we’re on the same page. Go back and read my post again about choosing the most appropriate feeling for our situation and how others can help us with that.
But I have to repeat that feelings are facts. They truly are real. Let me try an example:
Feel abandoned by your friends? (You’ve made a false assumption. They all still care about you but each of them has some kind of a crisis at present and you don’t know it.) So you have tension and anger and your stomach may feel queasy. It is a fact that you are experiencing a feeling. Even if you “shouldn’t feel that way.”
Later you talk this over with someone and find out what was happening and you are able, with more information, to alter your feeling about what happened. Perhaps you have a feeling of security now.
Feelings are such a fact in our lives that they can make us physically ill. I hope that nit-pick makes it more clear to you what I was saying.
I think it depends on the person.
My older sister is a problem-solver to the core. She’s a civil engineer, and she just wants to fix things; that’s who she is. Hell, she’ll propose fixes for problems in your life that you haven’t even asked her about, if she sees them.
I’m a pretty good problem-solver myself, but I’ve at least managed to internalize the joke about how many psychologists it takes to change a light bulb. (One, but the light bulb has to want to change.) You’ve got to suss out whether the person is at the point where they’re looking for ways to fix things, or whether they are still just processing the reality of their problem. Because life usually isn’t like a business problem, where you spend five minutes defining the problem, and then get on with looking for the best way to solve it.
Hell, sometimes a problem isn’t in need of a solution at all, but you need to rant about it for twenty minutes before you can get past it, and get back into the rest of your life. Or you need to figure out whether the problem is you, or whether it’s that someone else was being a jerk to you. Etcetera.
The way I’ve learned it is that thoughts can be wrong. You can argue over thoughts. But feeings are neither right or wrong. You can’t argue over them. You can’t shame them away. You can validate a feeling (“I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings by not calling you earlier” without validating the thought, “I wasn’t intentionally ignoring you, though. I was busy and forgot you were waiting for me.”)
When I was a little monstro, I remember how bad it felt not having my feelings validated. If I scraped my knee on the sidewalk or if my feeings were hurt over something someone said, my mother’s first response was always to dismiss the pain by saying, “Now why are you crying over something so silly?” Well-intentioned, yes. But I got it in my head that any negative emotion is “silly”. I was once a sensitive child. Now I have to force myself to care about stuff because everything–including good things–seem trivial and not worth talking about. I don’t think this is my mother’s fault. But I think I inherited her tendency to belittle feelings, and I’m trying not to be this way. I do not want to be cold-hearted.
Because U GOT PWND!!! LOL! ROTFL!! U mad bro?
That’s why.
Seriously, have you been to the Internet? There are a lot of jerks out there. Not the best shoulders to cry on.
IME with some people it is easy to commiserate. But with some people it is often a question of them saying “don’t say anything - just listen to me complain about what happened when I made the same mistake in the same way for the twentieth time”. Maybe it makes them feel better, but biting one’s tongue can be an exhausting exercise.
Some people aren’t happy unless they are miserable. Giving advice doesn’t help these people, but neither does sympathy or anything else.
Regards,
Shodan
Some people here and elsewhere on the Internet always seem to be on the lookout for any weakness or problems that a poster might have so they can call them out on it. I think that is so sad. What is causing the impulse to tear somebody down? I could see it if they were posting something vile or wacko but otherwise I don’t get it. I don’t vent here anymore. The Internet is a tough audience.
I agree. By recognizing that the feeling is real even though the thought behind it may be erroneous we aren’t so apt to run the risk of invalidating each other.
My mom used to tell me I had such sensitive feelings that I’d be forever walking around with a broken heart. “You have to learn how to toughen up,” she’d say. So dutiful daughter tried that for about a decade but it was such a farce. A lie. And it made me numb.
It took me a while to figure out that the solution wasn’t to toughen up. The solution was to learn how to live with sensitive feelings. :smack:
We’re all different so that probably applies. Sometimes a person can overthink all this.
I can confidently say that underneath my own personal problem solver there is a hidden well of anxiety that he relieves by solving problems. Not such a terrible solution.
Many years ago I remember reading something about how curiously revealing the giving of advice actually is. I can’t remember all of it, (Freud? The subconscious?), but the gist was that when we offer advice to others it is much more often, advice we ourselves need to take or get.
I remember, for a long time afterwards, I would always reflect later on any advice I offered, and was repeatedly struck with the truth of this. Uncomfortably so. Perhaps advice we offer has less to do with the OP’s issues, than we like to think? And is more about us, than we would be comfortable admitting.
Must give a person pause to post! Even more thought-provoking than that, I believe that every word that come out of our mouths, even the lies, tell something about ourselves. :eek:
Sure gives a person a lot of incentive to develop healthy thoughts.
I’m questioning how accurate it is. I’m guessing that the older we become and the more experience we gather the more useful our advice may be (not always true). So it could be things we have personally worked on. And continue to work on?
If true, it seems like a good way for a person to stay on track with their plans for improvement.
Humans, as much as we don’t want to admit it or even have the idea in our heads, are Herd Animals. We’re also predators, and we prey on our own kind. So when someone shows weakness, many times we distance ourselves, or shy away. Because we instinctually know that predators attack the weak. We may also be (consciously or unconsciously) disillusioned or disappointed that this person is showing weakness, when we had thought them so strong.
One of the reasons people act like tough guys or bullies on the internet is to prove to themselves how tough they are. To not allow themselves to show any weakness. Because deep down, they’re afraid of being weak, because they’re afraid they might be victimized.
The tougher someone (consistently) acts, the more they do to puff themselves up to others as being strong, the deeper their inner fear of being weak.
One of the problems with communicating ideas and paths to others is Context. We each have our own Personal Context, made up of our subjective experiences, our knowledge, the ideas and experiences we’ve picked up from reading and other media, etc. When I say a word, it has a meaning within my personal context that I could not hope to convey to you in my lifetime. I have to hope that it has at least something of the same meaning within your context. When it doesn’t, you don’t understand fully what I am saying. (Welcome to the World, eh?)
As we get older, assuming we have been at least moderately intellectually active and aware, our Personal Context is much more complex, much more full. So we may have bits of advice that came from our personal experiences, or from the experiences of those we have known, or from what we have seen and read. The unfortunate part is that advice may come packed with a lot of assumptions based on that prior experience, or our personal context, and have little or nothing to do with the other person’s current experience.
And why do old people ramble like this? Trying to explain their Personal Context. 