"Validation" is Invalid

Another "Newspeak" word created for destruction of marriage, family and friendship.

From the Cambridge Dictionary, “Validation”:

There is a third, newest definition as well, which involves “being accepted for one’s beliefs and identity.”

However, this third definition is utterly unnecessary when we have the long-used and descriptive synonym for that one called, “acknowledged,” or “heard,” or “listened to.”

When you think about these more accurate synonyms, you’ll realize they are mature and well-boundaried, of high character and virtue since they acknowledge the other person has a right to their opinion, that you are listening to and considering it, but also self-respecting that you may have a different opinion.

Opinions are simply “small beliefs,” and neither of those constitute facts. They are personal and they matter to the individual, but they can never be “facts.”

Let’s return to a word that should never have existed in Newspeak: “Validation.”

This word takes opinions and tries to make them “facts,” like one validates or verifies that a driver’s licence, “in fact,” represents the actual person whose image is printed on it.

I seriously want you to try this at home or on your life and get back to me:

Someone you know wants “validated.”

What you need to test is to respond “what is the exact definition? Because I care about you I want to do it for you.”

They will respond with a hemming and hawing, “well, uh, um, I know it when I hear it.”

This may make you think they are struggling with a complex thing that it is not.

This may even make you think you’re dumb, for not being able to define it for them or grasp it without a clear explanation.

This is because it is not complex and not because you’re dumb. You’re just in the narcissistic fog.

The exact meaning is “I agree that anything you say is right, true and factual, and any contrary ideas on my part not only don’t need discussed, but are wrong. I’m sorry I have different ideas than you. In fact, I agree to change all my views to your view and literally demonstrate believing them as fact.”

It’s agreeing to be spun and brainwashed, propagandized to cult proportions and demonstrate it.

The reason they can’t define it for you is they know its exact definition but can’t say the above out loud. It would be like dropping the mask and admitting “I’m a huge narcissist and I want total, covert control over you without you even knowing, ‘gaslighting you,’ okay?!”

We don’t need the word.

We have perfectly good words that bring people together instead of destroying relationships: “communicate” “collaborate” and especially “compromise” not to mention “negotiate” and “meeting of the minds”, and above all—the hallmark of mature boundaries and character virtue: “agreeing to disagree” (and still love and like each other.)

“Validation” is a covert, toxic word insidiously designed to obliterate romantic relationships, friendships, and family ties.

Really, try the above in real life and see what you learn…

If someone good-hearted and empathic, collaborative and willing to have a “meeting of the minds” uses this word, “validation,” as something they would like, what they are really asking for is more simple than this confusing word.

They want to be listened to, where they and you are being authentic with each other, where you both are being present-minded, attentive and reflective. It is the use of a learned, mature skill that Freud called, “Observing Ego.”

In relationships, the masterful couples counseling researcher Dr John Gottman might say that what “validation” of the good-intentioned kind is resembles giving and asking for mutual “bids” in his parlance.

A “bid” in Gottman Therapy means that you are offering the loved one something authentic of yourself to them—emotion, thoughts, beliefs, truths about your identity—that you want them to know and be known, joined in attention on each other.

Atonement—”at-one-ment.” Being “of one mind” with each other and accepting each other’s virtues and flaws, in peace, in understanding.

GO HERE TO LEARN MORE.

Instead of learning vague new words, neologisms, we could use the precision with each other that Gottman and other researchers offer us, or we could just use clear and common sense words such as “collaboration” and “mutual understanding, listening and acceptance” of where we are.

From there, we have a chance of coming closer together instead of “fogging” each other, covertly confusing and power-groping at each other, “gaslighting” each other.

I started with a quick note on this, but saw the value of expanding on it here, because what could have been a new, good-natured word that brings couples, families and friends together in more love, mutual understanding and acceptance for differences—in the hands of a very narcissistic person, this word is nothing more than another technique of manipulation.

I don’t wish that for your life, my life, or any good person’s life, and thought you ought to be aware of its intricacies.

Feel free to let me know in the chat, comments or DM’s what you think, and whether you are a woman or man, stories you may have had encountering this word and situations it gives rise to…