Have you ever felt like you’re living according to other people’s expectations rather than your own?
Are you constantly feeling empty or overthinking your purpose in life?
Have you pushed down or tried to avoid feelings of discomfort?
If you answered yes to any of these, you might lack self-validation.
You must be thinking of many questions by now, “What is self-validation? How to seek validation from yourself? How to find validation within yourself? Is it even possible to validate yourself? “
Don’t worry. You will find all these questions, and more answered below.
Self-Validation is all about accepting and observing our emotions as they are, without judging them. It is officially recognized as a Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) tool, but the concept and practice also existed long ago.
According to the American Psychological Association(APA), DBT is a “flexible, stage-based therapy that combines principles of behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, and mindfulness.”
As part of DBT, self-validation helps you balance, accept and live with intense or overwhelming emotions. It means to treat yourself as you would a dear friend. It includes taking time out for yourself and showing yourself little acts of kindness. These acts acknowledge your presence and send a message that you’re worthy.
Self-validation refers to having the courage to accept ourselves, including the good, bad, and ugly parts. “We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” This quote by May Sarton supports the point we’re trying to make and states that we must nurture the courage to be authentic and truly live a good life. But it also raises a question as to how we are inauthentic.
To understand authenticity and how to validate yourself better, we should first take a look at external validation. External validation is feedback from your environment. It can be your relatives, family members, or friends. It can also be social media, popular opinion posted through social media, or other public outlets for views.
Simply put, any validation that does not come from within is external validation. Your opinions are not merely your opinions. Everyone you’ve met and everything you’ve learned changes your perception.
It is good to rely on loved ones and friends for validation but ensure that you’re not merely mindlessly doing what you’re told. Being your authentic self is necessary for being happy and motivated.
Why is Self Validation important?
Learning how to validate yourself can help you cope with tough times. It helps you better understand your thoughts and emotions without judging them. In the long run, it enables you to develop greater self-awareness. It is also linked with greater emotional awareness and emotional regulation.
Many people begin to view themselves with self-hatred if they cannot meet society’s standards. Self-validation can help you overcome these feelings and develop self-love. You are worthy, and your emotions are valid. Self-validation enables you to recognize and acknowledge yourself. Below are some super tips to help you understand how to validate yourself better.
How to Validate Yourself
By treating yourself as a friend during this time, you will be able to navigate through the ups and downs of your relationships. Don’t forget to show love to the most critical relationship in your life: your relationship with yourself. Being friends with yourself is about finding ways to meet your own needs in a way that feels right for you. It is about being there for yourself even when others cannot or won’t be there for you.
1. Come to Terms with Your Past.
For many of us, our pasts overtake our lives. We still agonize over regrets, hold grudges, and think over events that have already passed. In this process, we forget to live and invest in the present.
Seeing our emotions through an unbiased lens helps us gather courage and strength. Self-validation allows us to come to terms with and move on from our past trauma and emotional pain. Being free from the shackles of the past empowers us to make decisions based on the present.
2. Radical Honesty
Nobody can be honest all the time. But radical honesty aims to be completely honest, at least with yourself. While honesty with yourself can be brutal and heartbreaking, it is better than the alternative. You can also develop greater resilience through radical honesty. Resilience is a life skill of adapting to and overcoming challenges, eventually leading to growth. Honesty also makes you more open-minded as you grow mentally strong and become capable of entertaining different viewpoints.
Radical honesty is an approach based on a book of the same name by Brad Blanton, Ph.D. It proposes the simple yet profound principle of being brutally honest with ourselves. This sounds easy in principle but is very hard to apply.
So how to seek validation from yourself? The first step is to be honest, and not judge your thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can instead try to understand the motivation and urges that lead you to act or feel a certain way. Understanding this brings us to our next point, which deals with self-awareness.
Many people struggle with low self-esteem, usually because they lack self-honesty. This does not mean they are to be blamed for feeling this way. People are influenced by their experiences and how they are seen by peers, friends, and family. But it is essential to note that we know ourselves the best and should view ourselves with that knowledge.
3. Be aware of your body and emotions
Becoming aware of your internal processes is one of the fundamental ways to validate yourself. It also helps you change these processes, especially thoughts and emotions. Greater awareness of emotions also gives more mental health understanding and awareness.
You are less likely to behave in ways that have negative consequences if you are more aware of how these actions impact you. For instance, you are likely to avoid eating unhealthy food, using social media obsessively, or perfectionism if you know that they harm you.
4. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a practice from Buddhism used in therapy and modern psychology. In learning how to validate yourself, being mindful of your emotions can be very beneficial. The approach has been proven to have long-term and short-term mental health and well-being benefits. Mindfulness grounds you in the present moment, eliminates worries and distractions, helps calm your mind instantly, and makes you focused and productive. Hence, it is one of the most effective ways to validate yourself.
Become more mindful in daily life, and the quality of life and relationships will improve. Here are some simple ways to practice mindfulness:-
-pay attention to your feelings,
-keep a gratitude journal,
-activate all of your senses and practice focused meditation,
-practice deep breathing exercises,
-use the power of mindful eating exercises,
-download and use mindfulness apps for free,
-develop active listening skills, and more.
Mindfulness is similar to learning how to validate yourself in principle and could be called one of its aspects. Both aim to observe emotions, thoughts, and the body through a state of presence.
5. Reduces Overthinking
Overthinking is the silent killer. Overthinking wastes your time and eats away at your energy. It can get you stuck in loops of negative thinking. It often leads to analysis paralysis — an inaction caused by overanalyzing a situation or decision. Self-validation practiced over time reduces your overthinking as you stop feeding into your negative thoughts.
Negative or intrusive thoughts can also result from negative bias. You may seek out or pay more attention to negative events. In this case, you can focus on developing a more optimistic outlook. While overthinking, you are also prone to emotions like anxiety and anger.
6. Learn Emotional Regulation Skills
Emotional Regulation is the next step to emotional awareness, as it combines a variety of factors discussed above to produce something beautiful. The stages of emotional regulation are:-
1. Planning
Planning is the first stage and the most important one. Making the right plans requires a lot of awareness, dedication, and brainpower. SWOT (Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats) analysis is a model that helps you identify opportunities and threats, increasing your self-awareness. It helps achieve better results in your personal and professional life. Good planning also helps you reduce anxiety for the future and makes you less stressed about everyday decisions. Life becomes much easier after you know what your values are.
2. Monitoring
The second stage is monitoring. Monitoring contains the actions taken and records what impact said actions produce. Monitoring notes the results of the work undertaken and evaluates changes in outcomes with different approaches.
3. Reflecting
Reflecting is the third stage and the foundation for all future planning. You must reflect on past and present results and determine cause-and-effect relationships. This will help you understand how to validate yourself better in the future.
Mastering emotional regulation and learning how to control your emotions takes time but is well worth the benefits.
Emotional regulation is hard to imagine for people, and most people get discouraged before taking concrete steps to regulate emotionally.
Conclusion
We hope you can understand more about self-validation through our tips on how to validate yourself. Self-Validation is one of the most powerful resources at your disposal. It aims to identify better, accept and take action on day-to-day emotions.
Hence, a vital part of validating yourself is knowing how to manage and deal with your emotions in daily life. To be emotionally healthy, you don’t need to be perfect. An easy parameter to know whether you’re emotionally healthy or not is the goals you set for yourself and your ability to achieve them. To learn more about what good emotional health consists of, read this.
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