Validate Your Feelings Quotes

It annoys me when people try to convince other people that their anger or stress isn’t warranted if someone else in the world is worse off than them. It’s bullshit. Your emotions and reactions are valid, Merit. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. You’re the only one who feels them.

I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.

…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….

Which is why I am not here to tell you tomorrow will be a new day. That the sun will go on shining. Or there are plenty of fish in the sea. What I will tell you is this; it’s okay to be hurting as much as you are. What you are feeling is not only completely valid but necessary—because it makes you so much more human. And though I can’t promise it will get better any time soon, I can tell you that it will—eventually. For now, all you can do is take your time. Take all the time you need.

You're allowed to want the romance parts without the sex parts. Or the sex parts without the romance parts. All of those feelings are valid. You're deserving of a relationship in whatever form you want it.

Your emotions and reactions are valid, Merit. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. You’re the only one who feels them.

You have to remember that your feelings, while valid, are not often real. They are not always accurate reflections of reality. They are, however, always accurate reflections of our thoughts.

Attitude Is Everything We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations. The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances? When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.

Repeat after me, Gray: My feelings are valid.” “Stop talking,” Grayson ordered. “My emotions are real,” Xander continued. “Go on. Say it.” “I’m hanging up on you now.” “Who’s your favorite brother?” Xander called loudly enough that Grayson could still hear him even as he removed the phone from his ear. “Nash,” he answered loudly. “Lies!” Grayson’s phone vibrated. “I’m getting another call,” he told Xander. “More lies!” Xander said happily. “Give my regards to Girl Grayson!” “Good-bye, Xander.” “You said good-b—

ready for a harsh truth? women don't need your validation. we already have our own. - my self-worth shouldn't feel like an act of bravery.

When you begin to relinquish your ego, you will no longer feel compelled to prove to people how busy you are in an attempt to validate your sense of worth.

But some people are just starfish--they need everyone to fill the roles that they assign. They need the world to sit around them, pointing at them and validating their feelings. But you can't spend your life trying to make a starfish happy, because no matter what you do, it will never be enough. They will always find a way to make themselves the center of attention, because it's the only way they know how to live.

The interior drama, therefore, is always the important one. The “story of your life” is written by you, by each reader of this book. You are the author. There is no reason, therefore, for you to view the drama and feel trapped by it. The power to change your own condition is your own. You have only to exercise it.

If you feel okay only when life is happy and easy-breezy-beautiful Cover-Girl, then guess what? You are not free. <...> You are the prisoner of your own indulgences, enslaved by your own intolerance, crippled by your own emotional weakness. You will constantly feel a need for some external comfort or validation that may or may not ever come

Big Friendship can hold you when you’re worried that everything else is falling apart. It can be a space of validation when you feel alone in the world. It can provide the relief of feeling seen without having to explain yourself in too many words. And it offers the security of knowing that you won’t have to go through life’s inevitable challenges alone.

Many writing texts caution against asking friends to read your stuff, suggesting you're not apt to get a very unbiased opinion[.] ... It's unfair, according to this view, to put a pal in such a position. What happens if he/she feels he/she has to say, "I'm sorry, good buddy, you've written some great yarns in the past but this one sucks like a vacuum cleaner"? The idea has some validity, but I don't think an unbiased opinion is exactly what I'm looking for. And I believe that most people smart enough to read a novel are also tactful enough to find a gentler mode of expression than "This sucks." (Although most of us know that "I think this has a few problems" actually means "This sucks," don't we?)

Thank God for books, for validating your feelings, and letting you know you’re not alone.

When we tell our partners that we feel jealous, we are making ourselves vulnerable in a very profound way. When our partners respond with respect, listen to us, validate our feelings, support and reassure us, we feel better taken care of than we would have if no difficulty had arisen in the first place. So we strongly recommend that you and your partners give each other the profoundly bonding experience of sharing your vulnerabilities. We are all human, we are all vulnerable, and we all need validation.

Your feelings are valid and real. Do not let anybody denounce them just because they do not feel the same way. These feelings do not make you weak, or clingy, or overly emotional. They make you strong, brave, and beautiful. You are not merely made of stardust; you are the comet streaking through the sky on the way to do good and bright things.

I don’t think pain is a competition,” her aunt answered without hesitation. “Somebody else’s ten might be your six. You can’t compare heartbreak. No matter what, it’s valid. And that’s all that matters. You’re allowed to feel,

Being with other people was, to me, the feeling of being realised. This was why I wanted to be in love. In love, you don't need the minute-to-minute physical presence of the beloved to realise you. Love itself sustains and validates the rotten moments you would otherwise be wasting while you practise being a person, pacing back and forth in your shitty apartment, holding off till seven to open the wine.

kisses explode when... someone believes in me when my heart cries out a song of thanks to yours.

But if there is an absence of such validation of a child’s importance to the parent, if a child is made to feel shame for wanting or needing attention from one parent or the other often enough, she will grow up being blind to many of her own emotional needs.

Cord followed up with, “I like it here, but it’s beginning to feel creepy. Does anyone else think it’s creepy?” “You’re talking to a bunch of guys,” Yul said. “No one here is going to validate your feelings.” She tossed sand at him.

Try to forgive by trying to understand how it would feel to be in the other’s shoes. If someone hurts you – ask them - “What hurts you so much that you would do this?” Listen to the answer and try to understand what is valid for them. They may have been fighting for your attention, but no one thinks of themselves as attackers, only defenders! So don’t judge their ways, only set them free by giving them a chance to speak. You may both learn a lot from your kindness and courage in asking for the truth. But even if nothing changes, release it, remember that you both have a right to be who you choose to be. When we make judgements we're inevitably acting on limited knowledge, so ask if you seek to understand, or simply let them be!

Stop trying to get validation from people who can't or won't acknowledge your feelings. This reflects their inability to empathize. It's a failure on their part and has nothing to do with you.

The idea tells you everything. Lots of times I get ideas, I fall in love with them. Those ones you fall in love with are really special ideas. And, in some ways, I always say, when something's abstract, the abstractions are hard to put into words unless you're a poet. These ideas you somehow know. And cinema is a language that can say abstractions. I love stories, but I love stories that hold abstractions--that can hold abstractions. And cinema can say these difficult-to-say-in-words things. A lot of times, I don't know the meaning of the idea, and it drives me crazy. I think we should know the meaning of the idea. I think about them, and I tell this story about my first feature Eraserhead. I did not know what these things meant to me--really meant. And on that particular film, I started reading the Bible. And I'm reading the Bible, going along, and suddenly--there was a sentence. And I said, forget it! That's it. That's this thing. And so, I should know the meaning for me, but when things get abstract, it does me no good to say what it is. All viewers on the surface are all different. And we see something, and that's another place where intuition kicks in: an inner-knowingness. And so, you see a thing, you think about it, and you feel it, and you go and you sort of know something inside. And you can rely on that. Another thing I say is, if you go--after a film, withholding abstractions--to a coffee place--having coffee with your friends, someone will say something, and immediately you'll say “No, no, no, no, that's not what that was about.” You know? “This is what it was about.” And so many things come out, it's surprising. So you do know. For yourself. And what you know is valid.

It's never ok to hit a girl. Never. Not even if she cheats on you. A girl is not your property. She's a human being. She is just as important as you. She is your equal. And her wishes and feelings are just as valid as yours. All you can do is treat her nice, and hope she wants to be with you. If she chooses to be with you, great! If not, or if she chooses to leave you at some point, you have to let her go. You have no right to stop her. You don't own her, and you don't have the right to tell her what to do. She's your partner. Not your servant, not your sex slave, and not your punching bag.

Being a winner in life means finding a way to keep yourself in the personal space where you’re being the best and most vibrant you instead of the smallest you. That is the secret to success in anything you want to do in life. That means not comparing yourself to anyone else and concentrating on you. Because when your self-esteem is in the shitter and you don’t feel worthy, you look to others for validation, you settle for crappy things and all you get is crappy things and who wants that?

The reason why you need emotional support is because it's important for survivors to be heard. To be understood. To be able to express yourself without fearing criticism or harsh judgement. To be validated for your pain, suffering, and loss. For others to be there for you to encourage you, especially if you're having a bad day or feeling triggered.

Stop minimizing and discounting your feelings. You have every right to feel the way you do. Your feelings may not always be logical, but they are always valid. Because if you feel something, then you feel it and it’s real to you. It’s not something you can ignore or wish away. It’s there, gnawing at you, tugging at your core, and in order to find peace, you have to give yourself permission to feel whatever it is you feel. You have to let go of what you’ve been told you should or shouldn’t feel. You have to drown out the voices of people who try to shame you into silence. You have to listen to the sound of your own breathing and honor the truth inside you. Because despite what you may believe, you don’t need anyone’s validation or approval to feel what you feel. Your feelings are inherently right and true. They’re important and they matter — you matter — and it is more than okay to feel what you feel. Don’t let anyone, including yourself, convince you otherwise.

The great common denominator among women with unloving mothers is the longing for validation—to find someone who will say, “Yes, what you experienced really happened. Yes, your feelings are justified. I understand.

But please, father, understand me correctly: these were completely insignificant details, yet they oppressed me, because you, a great man of authority, could lay down rules for me, and ignore them.  And through this I saw that the world was divided into three parts: in the first lived the slave, me, under laws invented solely for my life but to which, without understanding why, I could never fully adjust; and in the second part lived you, infinitely far from me, busy ruling, giving commands and being angry when they weren’t followed; and in the third lived everybody else, happy and free from commands and obedience.  And I was constantly in disgrace, either because I followed your commands, and that was a disgrace, as they were valid only for me; or I was stubborn, and that was also a disgrace, because I was being stubborn to oppose you; or I wasn’t able to obey, because I, for example, had not your strength, your appetite, your skill, to do whatever it was that for you seemed natural – and of all things this disgrace was the greatest.  But these aren’t the reflections of childhood, but the feelings. Perhaps

When a child’s emotions are not acknowledged or validated by her parents, she can grow up to be unable to do so for herself. As an adult, she may have little tolerance for intense feelings or for any feelings at all. She might bury them, and tend to blame herself for being angry, sad, nervous, frustrated, or even happy. The natural human experience of simply having feelings becomes a source of secret shame. “What is wrong with me?” is a question she may often ask herself.

Recovery from verbal abuse is the opportunity to accept all your feelings and to recognize their validity. You may be the first person to recognize and accept them and to know that they are not wrong. They are, as we have said earlier, indicators that something is or was wrong in your environment, and it isn’t you.

Yes, that. You’re feeling cognitive dissonance, Jamie. Two contradictory-yet-entirely-valid-within-their-contexts thoughts about the same subject. And humans hate that shit. We hate it so much. The worst answer for us for anything is, ‘It depends.

There are no asterisks here. Your feelings are completely valid, you are under no obligation to pardon me, I have yet to earn it for putting you through fear.   What I am trying to say is, I know now that becoming kind is worth every single exhausting effort and sometimes it takes a thousand years.   Today, I apologised to someone I owe an ocean full of amends to.

Pain is about feeling real, appropriate, and valid hurt when something bad happens. Suffering is when you add extra dollops to that pain. You’re feeling bad about feeling bad.” “Double punishment,” I clarify. “Yes. So getting rid of suffering means you’re not adding to the pain.

They laugh. They take off. He talks about his aches and pains, and then she talks about her aches and pains, and then they talk about how much more fun it is to talk about their aches and pains than their younger selves expected it would be. “It honestly doesn’t even feel like complaining,” Gary says. “It’s just like, valid subject material.” “I agree,” she says. “How are we not supposed to talk about the slow decay of our bodies?” “It’s truly the most dramatic thing that will ever happen to us,” he says. “It’s basically like being on a sinking ship. Except you’re never allowed to acknowledge that the ship is sinking.” “And then people roll their eyes every time you mention that the ship might be sinking,” Phoebe says.

They validate perceptions that need validating, especially in adolescence--ie, under the bland, forced optimism of American life terrible forces are at work, things are not what they seem, and if you feel lonely, persecuted, a misfit, and in terror, you aren't crazy. You're right.

I know you’ve lost someone and it hurts. You may have lost them suddenly, unexpectedly. Or perhaps you began losing pieces of them until one day, there was nothing left. You may have known them all your life or you may have barely known them at all. Either way, it is irrelevant — you cannot control the depth of a wound another soul inflicts upon you. Which is why I am not here to tell you tomorrow is another day. That the sun will go on shining. Or there are plenty of fish in the sea. What I will tell you is this; it’s okay to be hurting as much as you are. What you are feeling is not only completely valid but necessary — because it makes you so much more human. And though I can’t promise it will get better any time soon, I can tell you that it will — eventually. For now, all you can do is take your time. Take all the time you need.

It’s human nature to want your decisions validated. You feel better about yourself and your life when others make the same choices as you do.

I’ve learned not to look outside myself for validation—you can’t base your self-worth on someone else’s feelings

Fancy words and ambiguous notions make you feel like your argument is valid but it exudes multiple logical fallacies, which make you continue to search for a valid point.

Everyone grieves differently. Tears are a symptom of sadness, not the feeling itself. You can be sad with your eyes dry. Your pain is valid in whatever form it comes.

Everyone has a rough go. I've had it far easier than most people." "Maybe. But that doesn't mean your feelings matter less.

Our beliefs are merely stories in our minds that we ourselves wrote long ago. Knowing that, don’t you feel empowered to rewrite them if they no longer serve you? Scan your mind for viruses called fears, anxieties, judgments, doubts, hatred and despair, and put a little note next to them that says “Outdated; no longer valid.” I’ve learned so much from my mistakes, I think I’m gonna go out there and make some more! —Anonymous

Another step is that daughters can learn to monitor their own feelings and instincts by saying, "I feel uncomfortable (angry, dominated, usurped, inadequate, guilty, furious) with my mother more often than I do not. I have to pay attention to that, because it shows in how I treat my friends (lover, spouse, kids, colleagues). There is validity here. I don't have to blame or excuse my mother-I just have to see her so I can see myself.

does it really matter if your ex was a psychopath, a sociopath, a narcissist, or a garden-variety jerk? The label doesn’t make your feelings any more or less valid. Your feelings are absolutes.

The world tried to crush you, and you refused to be shattered. You've recovered from every setback a stronger person, rising form the ashes only to astonish everyone around you. And you will continue to surprise and confuse those who underestimate you. It is an inevitability. A forgone conclusion. But you should know now that being a leader is a thankless occupation. Few will ever be grateful for what you do or for the changes you implement. Their memories will be short, convenient. Your every success will be scruntinized. Your accomplishments will be brushed aside, breeding only greater expectations from those around you. Your power will push you further away from your friends. You will be made to feel lonely. Lost. You will long for validation from those you once admired, agonizing between pleasing old friends and doing what is right. But you must never, ever let the idiots into your head. They will only lead you astray.

Mr. Wu, is it true that you have an internalized sense of inferiority? That because on the one hand you, for obvious reasons, have not been and can never be fully assimilated into mainstream, i.e., White America— And on the other hand neither do you feel fully justified in claiming solidarity with other historically and currently oppressed groups. That while your community’s experience in the United States has included racism on the personal and the institutional levels, including but not limited to: immigration quotas, actual federal legislation expressly excluding people who look like you from entering the country. Legislation that was in effect for almost a century. Antimiscegenation laws. Discriminatory housing policies. Alien land laws and restrictive covenants. Violation of civil liberties including internment. That despite all of that, you somehow feel that your oppression, because it does not include the original American sin—of slavery—that it will never add up to something equivalent. That the wrongs committed against your ancestors are incommensurate in magnitude with those committed against Black people in America. And whether or not that quantification, whether accurate or not, because of all of this you feel on some level that you maybe can’t even quite verbalize, out of shame or embarrassment, that the validity and volume of your complaints must be calibrated appropriately, must be in proportion to the aggregate suffering of your people. Your oppression is second-class.

Your true self or your higher self or your superhero self...gets validation from within (I love and trust myself, this feels right to me, I have a purpose, I am loved), it's proactive (I'm in control of my life, I think I'll head on out and kick me some ass), love-based, and is committed to creating based on your limitless potential-- as soon as you wake up from the Big Snooze.

It is very important that you understand the true innocence of all feelings, for each of them, if left alone and followed, will lead you back to the reality of love . -In their way the hateful or revengeful thoughts are natural therapeutic devices, for if you follow them, accepting them with their own validity as feelings, they will automatically lead you beyond themselves; they will change into other feelings, carrying you from hatred into ... fear - which is always behind hatred. (1 1;220-22 1) 2. Regardless of what you have been told, hatred does not initiate strong violence ... The outbreak of violence is often the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness. (21;418) 3. There are adults who quail when one of their children say, "I hate you'. Often children quickly learn not to be honest. What the child is really saying is, “I love you so. Why are you so mean to me?' or 'What stands between us and the love for you that I feel?' (21;423)4. You become conditioned so that you feel guilty when you even contemplate hating another. You try to hide such thoughts from yourself. You may succeed so well that you literally do not know what you are feeling on a conscious level. The emotions are there but they are invisible to you because you are afraid to look. To that extent you are divorced from your own reality and disconnected from your own feelings of love. (21;424) 5. Even your hateful fantasies, left alone, will return you to a reconciliation and release of love. A fantasy of beating a parent or a child, even to death, will if followed through lead to tears of love and understanding. (2 1;424) 6. You may love a parent, and if the parent does not seem to return the love...you may 'hate' the parent .... Hatred is not a denial of love then but an attempt to regain it

Parents are often told to “name the feeling” when our children are upset (“You are so mad!” or “You’re feeling sad, I know”). This can be useful when we are trying to connect with our kids in “regular” moments, but in moments of big tantrums, I find that validating the magnitude of the feeling is much more effective.

For example, when a loved one dies, you validly think, "I lost him (or her), and I will miss the companionship and love we shared." The feelings such a thought creates are tender, realistic, and desirable. Your emotions will enhance your humanity and add depth to the meaning of life. In this way you gain from your loss.

The aim of far too many teachings these days is to make people "feel good," and even some Buddhist masters are beginning to sound like New Age apostles. Their talks are entirely devoted to validating the manifestation of ego and endorsing the "rightness" of our feelings, neither of which have anything to do with the teachings we find in the pith instructions. So, if you are only concerned about feeling good, you are far better off having a full body massage or listening to some uplifting or life-affirming music than receiving dharma teachings, which were definitely not designed to cheer you up. On the contrary, the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful.

I hate being fat. I hate the way people look at me, or don't. I hate being a joke; I hate the disorienting limbo between too visible and invisible; I hate the way that complete strangers waste my life out of supposed concern for my death. I hate knowing that if I did die of a condition that correlates with weight, a certain subset of people would feel their prejudices validated, and some would outright celebrate. I also love being fat. The breadth of my shoulders makes me feel safe. I am unassailable. I intimidate. I am a polar icebreaker. I walk and climb and lift things, I can open your jar, I can absorb blows - literal and metaphorical - meant for other women, smaller woman, breakable women women who need me. My bones feel like iron - heavy, but strong. I used to say that being fat in our culture was like drowning (in hate, in blame, in your own tissue), but lately I think it's more like burning. After three decades in the fire, my iron bones are steel.

Just give yourself permission to feel it all, Jenny. The sadness, the anger, the heartbreak… let it come. All your feelings are valid. You don’t have to choose between them.

Greatness is achieved when you feel you have it. The validation is only yours to give, no one else’s.

Self-awareness is a great tool to combating resistance. When you feel resistance to taking action, stop in your tracks. Try to understand the ‘why’ behind it. Is the resistance valid?

notes to the neglected ones II. no one taught you to love you and that’s your biggest problem searching for validation in people who will never accept you for you being made to feel like you’re not good enough trying to prove yourself to those who will never be good enough for you

You would always find people to validate your feelings; good and bad likewise. Whom do we then depend on for our most important decisions ? Well, depends on which direction you want to go.

In a negotiation, that’s called labeling. Labeling is a way of validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it. Give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels. It gets you close to someone without asking about external factors you know nothing about (“How’s your family?”). Think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy, a time-saving emotional hack.

It takes a great deal of energy to doubt yourself constantly, and even more to beat yourself up—or down—even if it’s only in your own mind. While you are engaged in mental or emotional battery, you are bound to feel exhausted. In the midst of mental or emotional exhaustion, the negative ego can and will trick you into believing that you now have a valid justification for why you should not, cannot, and do not trust yourself. This is what I call “the dark side of trust,” the internal experience of questioning and doubting yourself, your desires, and your ability to hold your own.

Caloric restriction is the only valid, scientifically proven dietary intervention that has been shown to slow the aging process and improve health. The reason we hear so little about this approach is because no one stands to make a profit on all of us eating less food and more apples, cranberries, and prunes.

Your feeling that something is corny has to do with trust, you not believing people are being authentic, which probably meant for you they were lying to get their way, in other words manipulating you, so when you see or hear corniness you're just responding to a very real and valid feeling you have around trust.

When we don’t think we’re worth much, we find ways to make our world small. We don’t allow ourselves to hope because we’ve already excepted failure. And this pattern of thinking often determines the outcome of our most important choices. But Sam, I have to tell you that doubt and confidence are both acts of faith. They’re both predictions of our capabilities. We either tell ourselves that we can or that we can’t. And these beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophecy, because we validate our doubts by giving up just as much as we are embolden ourselves by refusing to give in. The only way you can break this cycle is to be brave. You have to ignore your doubts and risk failure. You have to try to achieve something that seems unachievable. This is the best recipe for confidence. And confidence is how we get how we start giving ourselves permission to take up more space in the world, to want more for ourselves, and to feel as though we deserve it.

It may be different for you. Your happy place. Your joy. The place where life feels more good than not good. It doesn’t have to be kids. My producing partner Betsy Beers would tell me that for her that place is her dog. My friend Scott would probably tell me that for him it is spending time being creative. You might say it’s being with your best friend. Your boyfriend, your girlfriend. A parent. A sibling. It’s different for everyone. For some of you, it might even be work. And that, too, is valid. This Yes is about giving yourself the permission to shift the focus of what is a priority from what’s good for you over to what makes you feel good.

Empowered Women 101: Forgive yourself for having chosen to expose yourself to people who don't care about your feelings and help others to do the same. Enjoy life! It is as simple as changing your focus or perspective when you start thinking about people from the past who hurt your feelings. Eventually, you will forget about those types of people because your time and attention will be taken up by more positive things/people/events/activities etc. When you understand how much time is wasted trying to make people see you, understand you, respect you, value you, like you or agree with you...life becomes a pointless negative fight for validation that will drain your happiness. You are worth more than the indifference, inattention or crumbs people throw you. You are a queen that demands respect and God will bring the right person into your life to make you forget why you ever wasted your time on nothing important.

As far as the ego’s plan is concerned, your seemingly multiple problems show up in this world in an attempt to get you to react — to feel bad, guilty, mad, defeated, bored, scared, inferior, self-conscious, annoyed, lonely, or superior and condescending. It’s all some kind of a judgment, regardless of the form. As soon as you make that judgment, you give validity to the ego’s world and reinforce the seeming reality of the separation and everything that goes with it.

Never get your sense of worth from outside yourself. Never fall into the trap of thinking that who you are is not enough and that you need other people’s approval, love and validation in order to feel that you’re of value. Never allow external things, places, people and circumstances to determine or tell you how much you’re worth. It’s called self-worth, not others’ worth.

Environments become invalidating when they fail to protect you or neglect your basic needs. Environments for children invalidate when they regularly communicate that their needs, feelings, and preferences are bad, or wrong, or otherwise lack validity

you want is someone beside you, holding your hand. When I try to make sense of the past year, it feels to me like the world pressed pause. When we stopped moving, we noticed that the ways we have chosen to validate ourselves are lists of items or experiences we need to have, goals that are monetary or mercenary. Now, I’m wondering why those were ever even goals. We don’t need those things to feel whole. We need to wake up in the morning. We need our bodies to function. We need to enjoy a meal. We need a roof over our head. We need to surround ourselves with people we love. We need to take the wins in a much smaller way.

Always listen to your conscience. If your conscience conflicts with your faith, question everything. You discover your true faith when you start flowing with your conscience. After lessons, visions, and theories validate themselves to you, you begin to build faith in that hypothesis/feeling/idea that originated from your own heart and mind -- not that of others. Before you submit to any one religion, create your own first and then find out which one out there resonates closest with the one already in your heart.

Do not accept the love of a man who makes you feel small, the universe is already so vast. 2. You are innately beautiful and completely irreplaceable. 3. You don’t have to go far to find love and validation, start from within. 4. Boys are boys and men are mean, tell them apart. 5. Be alone often, as you are, but don’t that turn into loneliness. 6. Remember to remain gentle. 7. Don’t stay angry at the world too long. Seek out life in little things and move past sadness. 8. Touch somebody, with your hands or with your heart, with your words or with your silence. Share yourself. 9. Celebrate your skin. 10. Be yourself and never apologize for being someone you love.  

Camus-boy, you're always going to be the same you, just older. It's not like there's a moment when you wake up and go, Shit, I'm grown-up, I don't feel like myself anymore.' I don't tell him, but this is the scariest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Being grown-up should feel like a big transition. It can't be something that, despite my best efforts, I've been drifting closer and closer to every summer. It needs to be a shock. I need to know at what point to stop holding on. And that moment will suck, and probably every moment after that will suck, but at least I'll know that everything that came before really was valid. I really was young and innocent. I wasn't fooling myself.

This world is full of people who would rather hate you than examine the pain in their own hearts. They will try to limit who you can love, who you can spend time with, who you can fuck. Some of these people will act like their condemnation is in your best interest. Like one day you’ll thank them for showing you the error of your ways. Some of them feel better about their own lives when they can deny the validity of yours.

the great divide lies between men as lovers and men as consumers. Does he seek her out, long for her, because really he yearns for her to meet some need in his life—a need for validation (she makes him feel like a man), or mercy, or simply sexual gratification? That man is a Consumer, as my friend Craig calls him. The lover, on the other hand, wants to fight for her—he wants to protect her, make her life better, wants to fill her heart in every way he can.

It is far from guaranteed that an empathic state leads to a compassionate act. One reason for this is captured superbly by the essayist Leslie Jamison: [Empathy] can also offer a dangerous sense of completion: that something has been done because something has been felt. It is tempting to think that feeling someone’s pain is necessarily virtuous in its own right. The peril of empathy isn’t simply that it can make us feel bad, but that it can make us feel good, which can in turn encourage us to think of empathy as an end in itself rather than part of a process, a catalyst.46 In such a situation, saying “I feel your pain,” becomes a New Age equivalent of the unhelpful bureaucrat saying, “Look, I sympathize with your situation, but …” The former is so detached from action that it doesn’t even require the “but” as a bridge to the “there’s nothing I can/will do.” Having your pain validated is swell; having it alleviated is better.

Being with other people was, to me, the feeling of being realised. This was why I wanted to be in love. In love, you don't need the minute-to-minute physical presence of the beloved to realise you. Love itself sustains and validates the rotten moments you would otherwise be wasting while you practise being a person, pacing back and forth in your shitty apartment, holding off till seven to open the wine. Being in love blesses you with a sort of grace. A friend once told me he imagined his father or God watching him while he works, to help force productivity. Being in love was like that to me, a shield, a higher purpose, a promise to something outside of yourself.

In order to heal the scarcity wound—created by the lack of nurturing both in our families and in our culture—we must learn to become the loving mother to ourselves that we never had. This ‘remothering’ is the ongoing practice, tremendously helped by a mentor, of learning to care for your body’s needs, validating and expressing your feelings (even if they’re unpopular), holding healthy boundaries, supporting your life choices, and most of all—being welcoming towards all that is yet unsolved in your heart.

Codependents use it to dismiss their own needs and emotions, deciding they must rescue and help even more people in order to achieve selfless sainthood. Narcissists use it to start cults and show others how worldly and wise they are. Borderlines use it to seek sympathy and validation from a higher power for their poor decisions, and then feel betrayed when their decisions inevitably backfire. Avoidants use it to stay lost in their imagination, viewing their own healing through the lens of invented characters.

Well done. Here come the test results: You are a horrible person...I'm serious, that's what it says: "A horrible person." We weren't even testing for that. Don't let that horrible-person thing discourage you. It's just a data point...If it makes you feel any better, science has now validated your birth mother's decision to abandon you on a doorstep.

Your truth matters. Your feelings are valid. Your experiences hold significance. Your trauma deserves attention. Please don't let anyone undermine your reality or your voice because you have the absolute right to experience and express your feelings without judgment or dismissal. Embrace your truth and honor your journey no matter how long it takes.

If you get into a relationship with somebody who’s not treating you poorly, you may find yourself feeling increasingly uncomfortable. And then, unconsciously, your mind might seek a ‘predictable’ response. You may try to provoke a bit of a response. Maybe I’ll do X and it’ll piss him off. If this elicits the behavior you’re most familiar with-he gets angry and treats you poorly-it can actually be validating. The worldview has been confirmed. Even though the result is chaos and conflict, it’s comforting to know that it’s familiar.

I told her I felt empty and she said that since childhood I had always looked for external factors to validate my pre-existing feelings of emptiness. But it’s okay to feel empty, she told me. I guess I would have been the world’s worst mother anyway, I said. And Clare looked out the windscreen and switched the wipers on and said: What you’re feeling is okay.

Turns out, it's pretty simple to win people over, especially in tense situations, if you're able to take their perspective and validate their feelings.

The hurt that I feel from your harsh words doesn't need your validation. Only I have the right to decide what hurts me and what doesn't.

I didn't bare my feelings so you could explain why they were wrong. I wanted your support.

It’s okay.” He smiled at me. “I may not understand, but I don’t have to. It felt real, and you’re feeling real emotions, and those emotions are valid.

Your feelings may not always be logical, but they are always valid.

When she becomes upset, we assume she has her own valid reason. So we say, “I see that you’re upset. Are you ready for a solution yet? Or do you just need to feel this way for a while?

Dating from a place of co-dependency, like a lot of us do, is immediately feeling as though the guy you went on a few dates with (who keeps ghosting you) is suddenly the one - just because he ticks a few of your boxes, texts you back sometimes and happens to be cute. But no, he's not being mysterious for intermittently disappearing on you. He's actually keeping you at a distance and playing on your need for validation, so that when he's done with his other options, he can return to you with minimal effort, knowing that you've been waiting for him all this time.

Remember that you are not invalidated on those days you feel unhappy about your skills, grades, and achievements. You are not less human on those times you question your worth and progress.

come. Some of you will do this successfully at your first try. Others may take longer. When you feel within yourself this source, then try to sense this power flow outward through your entire physical being, through the fingertips and toes, through the pores of your body, all directions, with yourself as center. Imagine the rays undiminished, reaching then through the foliage and clouds above, through the center of the earth below, extending even to the farthest reaches of the universe. Now I do not mean this to be merely a symbolic exercise, for though it may begin with imagination, it is based upon fact, and emanations from your consciousness and the creativity of your soul do indeed reach outward in that manner. The exercise will give you some idea of the true nature, creativity, and vitality of the soul from which you can draw your own energy and of which you are an individual and unique portion. (Humorously): You may take your break.

You must love the truth more than anything else, and your love of the truth must grow. You must be able to feel the truth as distinct from other forms of stimulation—self-validation, pleasure, fulfillment or anything else—for the truth has its own experience, which is unique. As you are able to identify it, value it and experience it again and again, you will want to return to it.

When you’re whole, you don’t need someone else’s validation to be happy — because you accept yourself. You don’t need someone else to love you in order to feel loved — because you love yourself.

Oh, and those like buttons on Facebook? You know why you feel that little thrill when they boost your score? You just experience peer approval and class validation. And that makes us all happy monkeys.

validation (in the context of interpersonal skills, anyway) is the act of recognizing and affirming the validity or worth of a person’s emotions. Essentially, validation means saying to someone, “I hear you. I get what you’re feeling, and it’s perfectly alright to feel that way.” Effective validation has two components: It identifies a specific emotion It offers justification for feeling that emotion

Validate others. Most people you meet will not care about how much money you make or what kind of car you drive. Most people will care about how you treat them. If you make them feel heard and validated, that feeling will override anything of supposed importance that money can buy. People value your value of them, and there is no price tag on a friend who truly sees you and loves you for who you are.

1. Acknowledge and grieve the abusive and dismissive ways in which your family has mishandled your humanity. List the misdeeds done to you, and acknowledge where you didn’t get the validation or compassion you sought and deserved just out of basic human decency. One of the greatest ways to bring these memories up is to write to a F*ck You For list. I do this often with my patients. Begin each sentence with F*ck You For, and complete the sentence with the painful, angering, or frustrating memory. This exercise helps move you from feeling like a victim to taking the trash out. It places accountability on the right people. It also illuminates areas of growth for you, as you may feel anger at yourself for how long you allowed yourself to be passive or submissive to the members of your family you felt had power over you.

I don’t need that kind of external validation. If you engage too much in outside validation, you lose the path to yourself. You get off course. Self-love is being proud of yourself by your own lights. What is your best? Move toward that, not the best of your neighbors. Back yourself. Care for yourself. Not by protecting your ego, no, but by remaining present for your being when you feel most afraid, most uncomfortable, or awkward. Be calm in your love for yourself. It will enable you to see others more clearly and with more compassion. Don’t seek to change others; change yourself. Just mind your own mind and let others mind theirs. Show them who you are through your actions, through your conviction. Be clear and transparent, vulnerable. If I cared what others thought of me, I would have stopped going a long time ago. I would have been eaten by the system.

Core needs for children include, but are not limited to, receiving adequate levels of time, love, and attention, along with meeting their needs to feel heard, validated, and understood. When these needs aren’t met, there is no way to rewind to the beginning of life in a way that enables any outside love relationship to heal or meet your core needs. Research naively suggests we seek other relationships outside our family to supply our basic needs of love, acceptance, and emotional support. Although other love relationships are fundamental, necessary, and important to our overall well-being, I believe it is not only inappropriate for us to put this type of pressure on others to fill the needs our family neglected, but this request is also impossible to satisfy. It is unwise and emotionally dangerous to assume anyone could meet the core needs that can be met only by the family we were born into. The unfortunate message from this type of information is that other people can heal our wounds and meet our core needs when, ultimately, we need to learn to heal our own wounds and meet our own needs.

Any system that does not allow one to question it, has its roots digging into manipulation and control. And manipulation and control are devised by people in power. Not by gods and angels. If you fear questioning what you have been taught and if you fear to think freely and make decisions based upon what you feel, see and know; because a system has taught you to have that fear, you should know that you are under that manipulation, you are under that control. You have this one life and you are planning to live it based upon a path dictated to you as the truth, instead of questioning and seeking what the truth might actually be. Truth does not need to tell you not to look left and not to look right, because the validity of its character does not depend upon whether you open your eyes or not! Truth remains true in all times and it will encourage you to think freely, to ask questions, and to seek! Truth is not a fragile thing easily broken if you fail to tiptoe around it. Truth is not a fragile thing easily broken if you fail to wrap your hands around it. Truth is never failing and does not need the human race, or any other race living or dead, to validate it.

…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape.

I want to implore you not to hurt yourselves. Not to cut your skin, or swallow pills, or drink to drown pain. Not to hand yourselves over so easily to men for validation. Stop feeling useless and worthless. Stop drowning in regret. Stop listening to the persistent voice of your past failures. You were that child once, who Margo would have killed for. Fight for yourselves. You have a right to live, and to live well. You’ll inherit flaws; you’ll develop new ones. And that’s okay. Wear them, own them, use them to survive. Don’t kill others; don’t kill yourselves. Be bold about your right to be loved. And most importantly, don’t be ashamed of where you’ve come from, or the mistakes you’ve made. In blindness, love will exhume you.

On a collective level, the mind-set “We are right and they are wrong” is particularly deeply entrenched in those parts of the world where conflict between two nations, races, tribes, religions, or ideologies is long-standing, extreme, and endemic. Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own “story,” that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid. Israeli writer Y. Halevi speaks of the possibility of “accommodating a competing narrative,”3 but in many parts of the world, people are not yet able or willing to do that. Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the “other” as evil, and because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy, they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children, without feeling their humanity and suffering.

Because you’re interrogating me!” He whips off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “It was a slip of the tongue. And I hate that too, almost as much as the freckles. It always gives away how I’m feeling. I’ve never been able to talk to a cute girl without turning into a fucking tomato.” “Would I fall into that category?” His deepening blush says it all. Huh. Neil McNair thinks I am a cute girl. “You know you’re not unattractive,” he says after a few seconds of silence. “You don’t need me to validate that.

When you make a decision you believe in but you know will upset your child, you might say as much to your kid: “Two things are true, sweetie. First, I have decided that you cannot watch that movie. Second, you’re upset and mad at me. Like, really mad. I hear that. I even understand it. You’re allowed to be mad.” You don’t have to choose between firm decisions and loving validation. There’s no trade-off between doing what feels right to you and acknowledging the very real experience of your child. Both can be true.

You-the-organism are energy efficient and looking for love to sustain you. You learn that your energy doesn’t bounce back uncomfortably if you adapt your behavior to match your parents’ beliefs and unconscious body postures. You copy them and stop trying to express yourself when you can’t get through. You won’t be expansively creative if you’re punished for it. You stop being affectionate if it makes your parents uncomfortable and rigid. You stop radiating warmly from your chest or eyes if your mother’s eyes are unresponsive or your father’s heart is hard. You learn to be silent because your mother is more relaxed then, or walk like your father because it validates him, or act funny because the moments of laughter feel better than the absences created by your workaholic parents.

As you might suspect, anger is part of this process. When you get to the grief phase of your recovery journey, you have accepted your reality and can feel really angry about the way you have been treated. This feeling is totally valid, because you were truly injured.

It annoys me when people try to convince other people that their anger or stress isn't warranted if someone else is worse off than them. It's bullshit. Your emotions and reactions are valid, Merit, don't let anyone tell you any different. Your the only one who feels them

Kübler-Ross wrote that she regretted writing the stages the way that she did, that people mistook them as being both linear and universal. The stages of grief were not meant to tell anyone what to feel and when exactly they should feel it. They were not meant to dictate whether you are doing your grief “correctly” or not. Her stages, whether applied to the dying or those left living, were meant to normalize and validate what someone might experience in the swirl of insanity that is loss and death and grief. They were meant to give comfort, not create a cage.

Putting It into Practice: Neutralizing Negativity Use the techniques below anytime you’d like to lessen the effects of persistent negative thoughts. As you try each technique, pay attention to which ones work best for you and keep practicing them until they become instinctive. You may also discover some of your own that work just as well. ♦ Don’t assume your thoughts are accurate. Just because your mind comes up with something doesn’t necessarily mean it has any validity. Assume you’re missing a lot of elements, many of which could be positive. ♦ See your thoughts as graffiti on a wall or as little electrical impulses flickering around your brain. ♦ Assign a label to your negative experience: self-criticism, anger, anxiety, etc. Just naming what you are thinking and feeling can help you neutralize it. ♦ Depersonalize the experience. Rather than saying “I’m feeling ashamed,” try “There is shame being felt.” Imagine that you’re a scientist observing a phenomenon: “How interesting, there are self-critical thoughts arising.” ♦ Imagine seeing yourself from afar. Zoom out so far, you can see planet Earth hanging in space. Then zoom in to see your continent, then your country, your city, and finally the room you’re in. See your little self, electrical impulses whizzing across your brain. One little being having a particular experience at this particular moment. ♦ Imagine your mental chatter as coming from a radio; see if you can turn down the volume, or even just put the radio to the side and let it chatter away. ♦ Consider the worst-case outcome for your situation. Realize that whatever it is, you’ll survive. ♦ Think of all the previous times when you felt just like this—that you wouldn’t make it through—and yet clearly you did. We’re learning here to neutralize unhelpful thoughts. We want to avoid falling into the trap of arguing with them or trying to suppress them. This would only make matters worse. Consider this: if I ask you not to think of a white elephant—don’t picture a white elephant at all, please!—what’s the first thing your brain serves up? Right. Saying “No white elephants” leads to troops of white pachyderms marching through your mind. Steven Hayes and his colleagues studied our tendency to dwell on the forbidden by asking participants in controlled research studies to spend just a few minutes not thinking of a yellow jeep. For many people, the forbidden thought arose immediately, and with increasing frequency. For others, even if they were able to suppress the thought for a short period of time, at some point they broke down and yellow-jeep thoughts rose dramatically. Participants reported thinking about yellow jeeps with some frequency for days and sometimes weeks afterward. Because trying to suppress a self-critical thought only makes it more central to your thinking, it’s a far better strategy to simply aim to neutralize it. You’ve taken the first two steps in handling internal negativity: destigmatizing discomfort and neutralizing negativity. The third and final step will help you not just to lessen internal negativity but to actually replace it with a different internal reality.

Love doesn't mean sacrificing your mental health. Love doesn't mean sacrificing your mental stability. Love doesn't mean sacrificing your self-esteem and/or the validation of your feelings. Love doesn't mean the end of you. At the end of Love, you should find more of you, not less of you.

ever validated that what I went through was wrong. Forgiveness feels like it trivializes, minimizes, or, worse yet, makes what happened no big deal. I can’t possibly forgive when I still feel so hostile toward the one who hurt me. I’m not ready to forgive. I still feel hurt. They haven’t apologized or even acknowledged that what they did was wrong. Being back in relationship with this person isn’t possible or safe. Furthermore, it’s not even reasonable for me to have a conversation with the person who hurt me. I’m still in the middle of a long, hard situation with no resolution yet. I’m afraid forgiveness will give them false hope that I want to reestablish the relationship, but I don’t. It’s easier to ignore this person altogether than to try and figure out boundaries so they don’t keep hurting me. What they did is unchangeable; therefore, forgiveness won’t help anything. The person who hurt me is no longer here. I can’t forgive someone I can’t talk to. I don’t think any good will come from forgiveness now. When your heart has been shattered and reshaped into something that doesn’t quite feel normal inside your own chest yet, forgiveness feels a bit unrealistic.

But speaking of decisions and choices, I want to turn to a question that baffles so many of us. Why is it that people who are victims of trauma are so often drawn to abusive relationships? Let me broaden the question, because it is so important in understanding not just abuse but all behavior. The key point is that all of us tend to gravitate to the familiar, even when the familiar is unhealthy or destructive. We are drawn to what we were raised with. As I’ve said before, when we are young and our brain is beginning to make sense of our experiences, it creates our ‘working model’ of the world. The brain organizes around the tone and tension of our first experiences. So if, early on, you have safe, nurturing care, you think that people are essentially good….But if a child experienced chaos, threat, or trauma, your brain organizes according to a view that the world is not safe and people cannot be trusted. Think about James. He didn’t feel ‘safe’ when he was close to people. Intimacy made him feel threatened. Here is the confusing part: James felt most comfortable when the world was in line with his worldview. Being rejected or treated poorly validated this view. The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged….Good or bad, we are attracted to things that are familiar.

I also find Mill’s words to be of use when considering relationships. Often we want our friends, partners and people we love to be like us, because that allows us to feel validated and accepted. It is a powerful thing to find people in this world who share our values and instincts. But it is also important to celebrate the differences between our partners and us. Would we really want to be in a relationship where the other person reminds us every day of ourselves? Wouldn’t it just be like having rich chocolate cake every day? Do we even especially like people who are very much like us? Don’t we find ourselves cynical of their motives, believing we can see right through them? Love seems to come without a template. We may think we know what we want in a partner and then one day find ourselves in love for very different reasons. In the same way that differing, developed individuals contribute to Mill’s view of society and make it worth belonging to, so too the differences between people in a relationship can be precisely the substance of what makes it valuable. And then, rather than falling for that old fallacy of entering into a relationship thinking you will ‘change’ the other person to more comfortably reflect your values, you might see the qualities that separate them from you as precisely the features to celebrate. These qualities can complement our own: our laid-back approach to life can be challenged by the more active, dynamic ambition we might see in a partner, or vice versa. When the time comes, it will be useful to have them in mind as a role model. And to echo Mill: as our partners develop their own unique qualities, they can become of more value to themselves and therefore to the relationship as a whole.

There is nothing more frustrating or disruptive to any negotiation than to get the feeling you are talking to someone who isn’t listening. Playing dumb is a valid negotiating technique, and “I don’t understand” is a legitimate response. But ignoring the other party’s position only builds up frustration and makes them less likely to do what you want.

Labeling is a way of validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it. Give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels. It gets you close to someone without asking about external factors you know nothing about (“How’s your family?”). Think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy, a time-saving emotional hack. Labeling

You and your dyke music, Erica remarked once. I hadn’t thought of them as dykes, my beloved Indigo Girls, my Michelle Shocked, Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin, Le Tigre, my Ani DiFranco. I just knew that at those shows I was whole and right. I was a person. I mattered. I was in fact not stupid or fat or ugly or lame; I was smart and valid and right and well. I had a fucking voice. The women at those shows weren’t gussied up like geishas. They talked of art, life, politics. They felt entitled to feelings and opinions and rage and poetry and laughter and tears and bodies. There was dissent. Looking “cute” was low on the list. Practical shoes were high. It mattered only that one articulate oneself properly

You and Beatrix haven’t known each other long enough to consider matrimony. A matter of weeks, to my knowledge. And what about Prudence Mercer? You’re practically betrothed, aren’t you?” “Those are valid points,” Christopher said. “And I will answer them. But you should know right away that I’m against the match.” Leo blinked in bemusement. “You mean you’re against a match with Miss Mercer?” “Well…yes. But I’m also against a match with Beatrix.” Silence fell over the room. “This is a trick of some sort,” Leo said. “Unfortunately, it’s not,” Christopher replied. Another silence. “Captain Phelan,” Cam asked, choosing his words with care. “Have you come to ask for our consent to marry Beatrix?” Christopher shook his head. “If I decide to marry Beatrix, I’ll do it with or without your consent.” Leo looked at Cam. “Good God,” he said in disgust. “This one’s worse than Harry.” Cam wore an expression of beleaguered patience. “Perhaps we should both talk to Captain Phelan in the library. With brandy.” “I want my own bottle,” Leo said feelingly, leading the way.

I am already living, but something is telling me with unchallengeable authority: you are not living properly. The numinous authority of form enjoys the prerogative of being able to tell me 'You must'. It is the authority of a different life in this life. This authority touches on a subtle insufficiency within me that is older and freer than sin; it is my innermost not-yet. In my most conscious moment, I am affected by the absolute objection to my status quo: my change is the one thing that is necessary. If you do indeed subsequently change your life, what you are doing is no different from what you desire with your whole will as soon as you feel how a vertical tension that is valid for you unhinges your life.

am so sick of it. All of it. I’m sick of my dad and his it’s-your-fault-for-wearing-a-skirt-that’s-too-short BS. I’m sick of people acting like I’m crazy. Anytime a woman gets mad or sad or emotional, boom, let’s put a big stamp on that feeling that says it isn’t valid. That it’s maybe even pathological. You know as many as 70 percent of women got diagnosed as hysterical by certain doctors back in the day? But what if none of them were Crazy Bitches? What if they were just tired? Tired of pretending everything was okay when it wasn’t, and living in a world that was designed to be against them, and being told to smile through the knife wounds. Maybe pretending to be okay in the middle of a tornado is the truly crazy thing.

Showing up fully and revealing who you truly are with the intention of connection and love is very different from confusing attention with love and trying to reveal things in hopes of calling for attention. Showing up authentically in hopes of true connection is very different from ploys to get attention in hopes it will lead to a feeling of validation or significance.

You keep your horrible boyfriend around because you feel like shit, and he’s the only one around who agrees with you. He validates the part of you that thinks you deserve bad things instead of good things. When you start believing that you deserve good things, you’ll dump him because he won’t fit anymore. But for now, he treats you like shit because that’s what you want.

If you were spanked as a child, you may feel disgusted by your body. It may be difficult to care for yourself (including pursuing medical care, dental care, regular exercise, and healthy nutrition) because your body has been a battleground. You may find it validating to know that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents avoid spanking children for any reason,

Charlie nodded, like not getting it was valid. "I don't know how to explain it. But one thing's for sure. I'm not making you birthday doughnuts because your dad guilt-tripped me. I'm making you doughnuts because I'm grateful that you're here—for whatever you being here is doing to my life. And I genuinely want you to have a happy birthday." Ugh. One of those unwelcome tears of mine spilled over. And Charlie, like a reflex, reached up and wiped it away. Like you might do for someone you cared about. "Also," Charlie said, "I burned a hundred canned biscuits before I got the hang of this, so these little guys really are miracles." I gave Charlie the wobbly smile that happens when you try to shift emotional gears. Something was making me feel shaky. Maybe that I wasn't just a writer to him. Or that he was glad to have me in his life. Or that I was doing things to him—just like he was doing things to me. "You have to eat one," Charlie said then, putting his arm around my shoulders and turning us both toward the waiting donuts. "So many canned biscuits gave their lives for this moment." And now I really smiled. Despite myself.

Healing This is a reminder for anybody who is hurting right now...One day it won’t hurt so much, I promise. But today it does. So cry, cry until you can’t anymore, cry until you feel better. They may not be worth your tears—but you are. Your feelings are worth validating and your hurt is worth recognizing. Be there for yourself and let yourself feel, because letting yourself feel is how you heal.

67. Acts indifferently to your feelings. No matter how wounded, insulted, offended, shamed, or angry you feel, your partner doesn’t seem to care. Your feelings aren’t justified and valid. In fact, your emotions are irritating to your spouse. You are overreacting, being ridiculous, or just trying to get attention in your abuser’s mind. Your emotions are met with a blank stare or a look of contempt.

Common phrases narcissists use and what they actually mean: 1. I love you. Translation: I love owning you. I love controlling you. I love using you. It feels so good to love-bomb you, to sweet-talk you, to pull you in and to discard you whenever I please. When I flatter you, I can have anything I want. You trust me. You open up so easily, even after you’ve already been mistreated. Once you’re hooked and invested, I’ll pull the rug beneath your feet just to watch you fall. 2. I am sorry you feel that way. Translation: Sorry, not sorry. Let’s get this argument over with already so I can continue my abusive behavior in peace. I am not sorry that I did what I did, I am sorry I got caught. I am sorry you’re calling me out. I am sorry that I am being held accountable. I am sorry you have the emotions that you do. To me, they’re not valid because I am entitled to have everything I want – regardless of how you feel about it. 3. You’re oversensitive/overreacting. Translation: You’re having a perfectly normal reaction to an immense amount of bullshit, but all I see is that you’re catching on. Let me gaslight you some more so you second-guess yourself. Emotionally invalidating you is the key to keeping you compliant. So long as you don’t trust yourself, you’ll work that much harder to rationalize, minimize and deny my abuse. 4. You’re crazy. Translation: I am a master of creating chaos to provoke you. I love it when you react. That way, I can point the finger and say you’re the crazy one. After all, no one would listen to what you say about me if they thought you were just bitter or unstable. 5. No one would believe you. Translation: I’ve isolated you to the point where you feel you have no support. I’ve smeared your name to others ahead of time so people already suspect the lies I’ve told about you. There are still others who might believe you, though, and I can’t risk being caught. Making you feel alienated and alone is the best way for me to protect my image. It’s the best way to convince you to remain silent and never speak the truth about who I really am.

Chateaubriand writes of René, his personification, ‘it wearied him to be loved’ – on le fatigait en l’aimant. I realized with astonishment that this experience was identical to my own, and so I couldn’t deny its validity. The weariness of being loved, of being truly loved! The weariness of being the object of other people’s burdensome emotions! Of seeing yourself – when what you wanted was to remain forever free – transformed into a delivery boy whose duty is to reciprocate, to have the decency not to flee, lest anyone think that you’re cavalier towards emotions and would reject the loftiest sentiment that a human soul can offer. The weariness of your existence becoming absolutely dependent on a relationship with someone else’s feeling! The weariness of having to feel something, of having to love at least a little in return, even if it’s not a true reciprocity!

A couple of things struck me. In the painting of your mother’s car accident, there’s something missing from the picture. You. You didn’t paint yourself in the car, even though you were there.” No reaction. “I wondered if that means you’re only able to think of it as her tragedy? Because she died? But in fact there was also a little girl in that car. A girl whose feelings of loss were I suspect neither validated nor fully experienced.

They don’t understand. Gratitude isn’t about them. It’s about the person giving it. Girls don’t say you look good because you actually look good. They process their feelings by communication. What they are actually saying is that they feel good being around you. What they are actually doing is checking your frame. When a guy dismisses or otherwise argues the compliment he is telling her that those emotions aren’t valid. He’s failed the test.

So much of the pornography addiction for men comes from this. It’s not about sex—it’s about validation. She makes him feel like a man. She offers him her beauty, and it makes him feel strong. This is also the root of most affairs. Some woman comes along and offers to answer his Question. His wife has been giving him an F, and she comes along and says, “You’re an A to me,” and he’s history. If he hasn’t found that deep validation he needs from God, he’s a sitting duck.

They’re accustomed to putting others in the limelight and worry that they’ll get a swelled head if they recognize their own strengths. However, it’s crucial to know what your assets are and be able to articulate them. It provides self-validation and allows you to feel good about what you bring to the world. This self-recognition builds energy and positivity. While modesty and humility can help you keep things in perspective, they shouldn’t prevent you from knowing your best qualities.

In other words, traumatic experiences aren’t always obvious. Our perception of the trauma is just as valid as the trauma itself. This is especially true in childhood, when we are most helpless and dependent. Trauma occurred when we consistently betrayed ourselves for love, were consistently treated in a way that made us feel unworthy or unacceptable resulting in a severed connection to our authentic Self. Trauma creates the fundamental belief that we must betray who we are in order to survive.

The anger response, like the fear response, is a frequent target for repression. Imagine a 6-year-old girl who is angry at her 10-year-old brother for teasing her. In response, she might make an angry face, yell at her brother, and strike out at him with her fists. It’s an instinctual, energizing reaction designed to protect her from danger. Someone is violating her sense of well-being, and she’s afraid that if she doesn’t stop the intruder, she’ll get hurt. “A wise parent would validate the girl’s anger — it’s infuriating to be teased — and help her find a verbal rather than a physical way to express it. ‘You are very mad at your brother for teasing you,’ says this model parent, ‘I would be, too. Tell him in words how angry you feel. He needs to know.’ This way, the girl can protect herself from her brother and purge herself of her anger without having to resort to physical violence. Her self-protective anger remains intact. It has simply been given a ore ‘civilized’ form of expression.

Letting go of guilt and maintaining boundaries will change your life and help you figure out who you are and what matters to you the most. This is how you will rebuild your identity. You will learn that it is okay to stand up for what is right for you and expect kindness, consideration, and respect from others. You do not have to tolerate abusive behavior from your mother. Most of all, setting up your boundaries and learning to maintain them will validate for you that it is okay to say no to anything that does not feel right to you.

In fact, if you get into a relationship with somebody who’s not treating you poorly, you may find yourself feeling increasingly uncomfortable. And then, unconsciously, your mind might seek a “predictable” response. You may try to provoke a bit of response. Maybe I’ll do X and it’ll piss him off. If this elicits the behavior you’re most familiar with—he gets angry and treats you poorly—it can actually be validating. The worldview has been confirmed. Even though the result is chaos and conflict, it’s comforting in the sense that it’s familiar.

Legalism The weight we are describing is called legalism. It is a form of religious perfectionism that focuses on the careful performance and avoidance of certain behaviors. It teaches people to gain a sense of spiritual acceptance based on their performance, instead of accepting it as a gift on the basis of Christ. Why were the leaders of Jesus’ and Paul’s day spreading legalistic teaching? Was it simply a matter of being right? It’s more serious than that. Look at Galatians 6: 12-13: Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may boast in your flesh. You see, living with Jesus as your only source of life and acceptance is a confrontation to those who seek God’s approval on the basis of their own religious behavior. This, then, explains the pressure you feel to perform religious behaviors in spiritually abusive contexts. If you perform as they say you must: (1) it will make them look good; (2) their self-righteousness will escape the scrutiny of the cross of Christ as the only means to God’s favor; (3) it will allow them to examine you instead of themselves; (4) they will be able to “boast in” or gain a sense of validation from your religious performance. Can you see the abusive dynamic described in chapter one? Here we have religious people trying to meet their own spiritual needs through someone else’s religious performance. And it’s all cloaked in the language of being holy and helping others to live holy lives.

People who live with purpose are willing to be sewn back together; they’re willing to admit they’re separated in the first place, and they’re willing to have some safe friends get involved to help put them back together. Come home to yourself. Get reacquainted with your true self, which is the you everyone sees plus the shadow they don’t. Give yourself a pep talk about how it’s okay to be exactly who you are. The people I enjoy the most aren’t looking to me for validation; they have already arrived there for themselves knowing they are not perfect but that God loves them anyway. They recognize that life is trying to put them in a prison cell of head fakes and faulty expectations. It’s refreshing to be around them, and if this is the kind of person you are becoming, lay out the red carpet and invite these people into your life. Decide to ditch insecurity and replace it with God’s brand of acceptance. Try it. Nothing feels quite so good as tossing off toxic expectations and the distractions of unhealthy peers, workmates, family, and the world around you as you settle into the joy of simply being you.

Insecure leaders are dangerous - to themselves, their followers, and the organizations they lead. That's because a leadership position becomes an amplifier of personal flaws. Whatever negative baggage you have in life only gets heavier when you're trying to lead others. Unsure leaders have several common traits: 1. They don't provide security for others - To become an effective leader, you need to make your followers feel good about themselves. 2. They take more from people than they give - Insecure people are on a continual quest for validation, acknowledgment, and love. Because of that, their focus is on finding security, not instilling it in others. 3. They continually limit their best people - Show me an insecure leader, and I'll show you someone who cannot genuinely celebrate victories. The leader might even take credit personally for the best work of the team. 4. They continually limit their organization - When followers are undermined and receive no recognition, they become discouraged and eventually stop performing at their potential. And when that happens, the entire organization suffers.

you have good intuition, but too often you lead with your brain and not your gut. You’ve let your confidence be shaken by people who don’t deserve to shake your confidence. You’ve swallowed this idea that there’s some people whose approval or validation will fill you, but in the process you’ve lost your ability to validate yourself. To feel that that’s enough. You elevate the position of others by allowing them to use your back as a step, but then are blind to people around you who see your worth. You feel lonely because you have blinders on, not because you are unloved.

i think what these psychedelics do is they put you very much in the here and now and it's nothing more than that i mean obviously i'm an egghead and an abstract thinker and i hope to make my reputation in mathematics But feeling is the primary validator of existence and if you dont know that you gotta go back to square one. these things empower feeling they are catalysts for the imagination. You may not like what psychedelics do to you - they may terrify you. But if it terrifies you, then surely it must have catalysed your imagination - otherwise you wouldn't have known that terror!

If the conversation is about one partner’s jealousy or other intense feelings, your first goal should be to listen. Reassure her of your commitment to the relationship. At the moment when a partner is having intense feelings such as hurt, insecurity, jealousy, or betrayal, acknowledge those feelings, validate and respect them, even if you don’t understand them. Don’t try to talk anyone out of how they’re feeling with rational arguments; telling them why they shouldn’t feel a certain way will get you nowhere. A more objective opinion and reassurances about what’s going on from your perspective can come later.

You can have your king-god. You can have your warrior-god. You can have your father-god. Today, I’m opting for the Mother-Hen-God. The God who welcomes all her children under her wings, no matter how they behave, or how they look, or what annoying and inappropriate things they do. The God who opens her heart of healing. The God who feels what I feel, who validates me as a mother, who assures me that when I have made mistakes, when I have wandered from the right path, and when I have been overwhelmed by the foxes, those holy wings are still spread over me, protecting me, sheltering me, keeping me safe, loving me. Leah D. Shade

Pay attention to everything the dying person says. You might want to keep pens and a spiral notebook beside the bed so that anyone can jot down notes about gestures, conversations, or anything out of the ordinary said by the dying person. Talk with one another about these comments and gestures. • Remember that there may be important messages in any communication, however vague or garbled. Not every statement made by a dying person has significance, but heed them all so as not to miss the ones that do. • Watch for key signs: a glassy-eyed look; the appearance of staring through you; distractedness or secretiveness; seemingly inappropriate smiles or gestures, such as pointing, reaching toward someone or something unseen, or waving when no one is there; efforts to pick at the covers or get out of bed for no apparent reason; agitation or distress at your inability to comprehend something the dying person has tried to say. • Respond to anything you don’t understand with gentle inquiries. “Can you tell me what’s happening?” is sometimes a helpful way to initiate this kind of conversation. You might also try saying, “You seem different today. Can you tell me why?” • Pose questions in open-ended, encouraging terms. For example, if a dying person whose mother is long dead says, “My mother’s waiting for me,” turn that comment into a question: “Mother’s waiting for you?” or “I’m so glad she’s close to you. Can you tell me about it?” • Accept and validate what the dying person tells you. If he says, “I see a beautiful place!” say, “That’s wonderful! Can you tell me more about it?” or “I’m so pleased. I can see that it makes you happy,” or “I’m so glad you’re telling me this. I really want to understand what’s happening to you. Can you tell me more?” • Don’t argue or challenge. By saying something like “You couldn’t possibly have seen Mother, she’s been dead for ten years,” you could increase the dying person’s frustration and isolation, and run the risk of putting an end to further attempts at communicating. • Remember that a dying person may employ images from life experiences like work or hobbies. A pilot may talk about getting ready to go for a flight; carry the metaphor forward: “Do you know when it leaves?” or “Is there anyone on the plane you know?” or “Is there anything I can do to help you get ready for takeoff?” • Be honest about having trouble understanding. One way is to say, “I think you’re trying to tell me something important and I’m trying very hard, but I’m just not getting it. I’ll keep on trying. Please don’t give up on me.” • Don’t push. Let the dying control the breadth and depth of the conversation—they may not be able to put their experiences into words; insisting on more talk may frustrate or overwhelm them. • Avoid instilling a sense of failure in the dying person. If the information is garbled or the delivery impossibly vague, show that you appreciate the effort by saying, “I can see that this is hard for you; I appreciate your trying to share it with me,” or “I can see you’re getting tired/angry/frustrated. Would it be easier if we talked about this later?” or “Don’t worry. We’ll keep trying and maybe it will come.” • If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. Sometimes the best response is simply to touch the dying person’s hand, or smile and stroke his or her forehead. Touching gives the very important message “I’m with you.” Or you could say, “That’s interesting, let me think about it.” • Remember that sometimes the one dying picks an unlikely confidant. Dying people often try to communicate important information to someone who makes them feel safe—who won’t get upset or be taken aback by such confidences. If you’re an outsider chosen for this role, share the information as gently and completely as possible with the appropriate family members or friends. They may be more familiar with innuendos in a message because they know the person well.

As with physical pain, our emotional pain is also trying to tell us something. It too is a messenger. Feelings have to be acknowledged, at least to ourselves. They have to be encountered and felt in all their force. There is no other way through to the other side of them. If we ignore them, repress them, suppress them, or sublimate them, they fester and yield no resolution, no peace. And if without any awareness of what we are doing we exaggerate them, dramatize them, and preoccupy ourselves with their turmoil and the stories we generate about them to validate our experience, they too linger and cause us to become stuck in patterns that may go on for an entire lifetime.

As she is about to reverse out of her parking space, her phone pings. And again. And again. Responses to her Instagram post. Daisy cannot resist taking a quick peek. She craves the dopamine hit. Those little hearts of approval, the validation. She needs it. She grabs her phone, does a fast scroll through the comments: OMG how do you look so good? What’s your secret? Spill, girl! Love that jacket! Awesome photo. Love love love Vancouver. A month and a half to go! We’re counting down with you. A contented, connected feeling swells through Daisy’s body. Her followers adore her photo. They approve of her life. Of her. She feels less alone. Less overweight. Less unattractive.

13 Ways to Make Other People Feel Important 1. Ask people questions about themselves, their interests, their families, their passions and their lives. 2. Catch people doing things right, pat them on the back, and acknowledge them for a job well done. 3. Celebrate their successes. 4. Be lavish in your compliments and sincere in your praise. 5. Be appreciative and say thank you. 6. Listen with genuine interest. 7. Respect their opinions. 8. Encourage people with words of affirmation and validation. 9. Brag about people behind (and in front of) their backs. 10. Make the time and space to be fully present and engaged. 11. Spend quality time together. 12. Share your authentic self and be real. 13. Offer comfort and compassion.

I think Yogi Berra said, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and that’s exactly the problem here. We’re not going to look for another type of love if we don’t even know it exists, or how it feels. So it’s easy to get stuck with this false blueprint of love and develop all sorts of maladaptive needs based on that. Suddenly we’re looking outward for love, imagining a savior, or saving others, stuck with vengeful thoughts, seeking external validation and approval, trying to do everything perfectly. In order to find a different kind of love, we need to tame our own ego that has been hugely inflated, criticized, and ultimately betrayed. Underneath all of that is where you’ll find the good stuff: feelings, the heart, the real you.

And then, other times, being Black feels exhilarating—because every good thing that happens feels like a victory, even the small things. Because you’re constantly reminded that you’re an other, so you know whatever good happened in spite of. So there’s celebration, there’s joy.” I paused, just to think. It felt so complicated. I pushed myself to find more, in the deeper parts, hidden in the folds of my spirit—the secrets. “And emptiness is there too—a different kind from what you described, though. A need for . . . validation, maybe to be seen, approved of, to matter as an individual, not just a monolith. And a desire to know that if I do follow all the rules, that I get the promise on the other side, just like anyone else. And by anyone else, I mean anyone else who is white.

People who haven’t found their sacred cause just drift from one thing to another. They may be consumed by a sudden passion and enthusiasm for something, believing they have at last found their sacred cause, but the feeling doesn’t last, and soon they move on to the next thing. Some people of this kind simply never find their sacred cause and end up as the ultimate cynics, skeptics, nihilists and atheists. They are totally embittered and negative, and frequently heavy users of alcohol and drugs to numb their pain. Nothing is more important than finding your sacred cause. You are lost without it. When you have assumed a sacred cause, you at last feel aligned with your soul itself. You feel real, valid, authentic, true and right, no longer fake, phoney, fraudulent, false and wrong.

Finally, when it comes to your own self-opinion, try to have some ironic distance from it. Make yourself aware of its existence and how it operates within you. Come to terms with the fact that you are not as free and autonomous as you like to believe. You do conform to the opinions of the groups you belong to; you do buy products because of subliminal influence; you can be manipulated. Realize as well that you are not as good as the idealized image of your self-opinion. Like everyone else, you can be quite self-absorbed and obsessed with your own agenda. With this awareness, you will not feel the need to be validated by others. Instead you will work at making yourself truly independent and concerned with the welfare of others, as opposed to staying attached to the illusion of your self-opinion.

The things people love about you aren’t necessarily the things you want to be loved for. They decide they like you for reasons completely outside your control, of which you’re often not even conscious: it’s certainly not because of the big act you put on, all the charm and anecdotes you’ve calculated for effect. (And if your act does fool someone, it only makes you feel like a successful fraud, and harbor some secret contempt for them — the contempt of a con artist for his mark — plus now you’re condemned to keep up that act forever, lest she Realize.) As The Velveteen Rabbit teaches, we don’t become fully real except in other people’s eyes, and in their affections. At some point you have to accept that other people’s perceptions of you are as valid as (and probably a lot more objective than) your own.

The degree to which you are able to affirm your distinct values and goals apart from the pressures around you (separateness) while remaining close to people important to you (togetherness) helps determine your level of differentiation. People with a high level of differentiation have their own beliefs, convictions, directions, goals, and values apart from the pressures around them. They can choose, before God, how they want to be without being controlled by the approval or disapproval of others. Intensity of feelings, high stress, or the anxiety of others around them does not overwhelm their capacity to think intelligently. I may not agree with you or you with me. Yet I can remain in relationship with you. I don’t have to detach from you, reject you, avoid you, or criticize you to validate myself. I can be myself apart from you.

One of the things necessary for healing to take place is recognizing the truth of the relationship and that person. You experienced so many covert lies; it is incredibly helpful to be able to see clearly. The truth is you were in love with an illusion, with the person they portrayed themselves to be. At first, this is an excruciating realization. You will doubt and wonder if you are overinflating this, if they really are innocent and you’re just scared to move on. You will have a ton of self-doubt. Eventually, with education and support, you will see that your hunch, your inner knowing, is on target. In time the truth that you were in love with an illusion will feel like a relief because truth does set you free. That full realization will validate years of confusion you felt, years of unexplained exhaustion and health issues, years of sexual confusion, years of feeling less than, and years of unhappiness, along with anxiety. You lived in an unsafe environment, were demeaned and devalued for years (decades for some of you; entire childhoods for many of you). You did not experience unconditional love; you did not live with someone who treated you with respect, who cherished you, treasured you, and felt so lucky to have you in their life. No, the truth is you experienced a counterfeit. If this was a spouse or romantic partner, this awakening to the truth is excruciating because you did love that person with all your heart. You were dedicated. You were in 100%. The truth is that you were the lifeforce in the relationship. When you’re really honest with yourself, when you look back with clear vision, that life, that love you gave and felt, was never fully reciprocated.

If you engage too much in outside validation, you lose the path to yourself. You get off course. Self-love is being proud of yourself by your own lights. What is your best? Move toward that, not the best of your neighbors. Back yourself. Care for yourself. Not by protecting your ego, no, but by remaining present for your being when you feel most afraid, most uncomfortable, or awkward. Be calm in your love for yourself. It will enable you to see others more clearly and with more compassion. Don’t seek to change others; change yourself. Just mind your own mind and let others mind theirs. Show them who you are through your actions, through your conviction. Be clear and transparent, vulnerable. If I cared what others thought of me, I would have stopped going a long time ago. I would have been eaten by the system. I just keep on. This is my mission.

It helps, however, to remember that the goal of Emotion Coaching is to explore and understand emotions, not to suppress them. It may be easier in the short run to dismiss your child’s negativity, ignore it, and hope that it will take care of itself. You can form the deluded philosophy that the mere passage of time will make things better. What you get for this attitude is less trouble in the short run, but more trouble in the long run. Problems are much harder to cope with after they have been neglected and your child has become emotionally distant. In contrast, the rewards of parenting come from being attentive to our children’s feelings. It is impossible to accept and validate a child’s emotion at the same time you wish it would just go away. Acceptance and validation come instead from empathy—that is, feeling what your child is feeling in the moment.

Certainly, an ethical and evolved life entails a whole lot of doing things one doesn’t particularly want to do and not doing things one very much does, regardless of gender. But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth. Leaving a relationship because you want to doesn’t exempt you from your obligation to be a decent human being. You can leave and still be a compassionate friend to your partner. Leaving because you want to doesn’t mean you pack your bags the moment there’s strife or struggle or uncertainty. It means that if you yearn to be free of a particular relationship and you feel that yearning lodged within you more firmly than any of the other competing and contrary yearnings are lodged, your desire to leave is not only valid, but probably the right thing to do. Even if someone you love is hurt by that.

We all have some of what may be termed narcissistic needs, such as the need to be valued, admired, understood, or simply recognized as a unique person. During painful periods, we become much more narcissistic, or self-centered, and our demands for attention, mirroring, validation, etc. increase. However, when we feel better, we generally return to a baseline ability to reciprocate in our relationships. Instead of only taking, we give-and-take by listening, understanding, validating, and supporting others. For NPD individuals, however, they feel endlessly entitled to special consideration and attention. The narcissist somehow never moves past the unique circumstance that requires you to put yourself aside and realize that what's happening for him is more special, more upsetting, or more wonderful. Eventually, you realize that you and your needs are on indefinite hold.

The sincere endeavor to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering, weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who in the fullness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus: —My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand—and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

The Thirty-three Rules • Every negotiation is an agreement between two or more parties with all parties having the right to veto—the right to say “no.” • Your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective. • Results are not valid goals. • Money has nothing to do with a valid mission and purpose. • Never, ever, spill your beans in the lobby—or anywhere else. • Never enter a negotiation—never make a phone call—without a valid agenda. • The only valid goals are those you can control: behavior and activity. • Mission and purpose must be set in the adversary’s world; our world must be secondary. • Spend maximum time on payside activity and minimum time on nonpayside activity. • You do not need it. You only want it. • No saving. You cannot save the adversary. • Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary. • All action—all decision—begins with vision. Without vision, there is no action. • Always show respect to the blocker. • All agreements must be clarified point by point and sealed three times (using 3+). • The clearer the picture of pain, the easier the decision-making process. • The value of the negotiation increases by multiples as time, energy, money, and emotion are spent. • No talking. • Let the adversary save face at all times. • The greatest presentation you will ever give is the one your adversary will never see. • A negotiation is only over when we want it to be over. • “No” is good, “yes” is bad, “maybe” is worse. • Absolutely no closing. • Dance with the tiger. • Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness (Emerson). • Paint the pain. • Mission and purpose drive everything. • Decisions are 100 percent emotional. • Interrogative-led questions drive vision. • Nurture. • No assumptions. No expectations. Only blank slate. • Who are the decision makers? Do you know all of them? • Pay forward.

Say you get drunk in a bar and punch a stranger in the face, spend the night in jail, realize that your life has taken a turn for the worse, get treatment, stop drinking, and dedicate your life to anti-violence work. To the person that you punched that night, you may forever be the person who assaulted them. The person who made them scared to go into bars for a while. The person who made them feel violated. To the people you have helped since, you may always be a hero. The person who made them safer in the world. These are both who you are, they are both valid and do not cancel each other out. If you run into the person you punched years later, they may well still be afraid of you, they may react with anger. They will treat you like someone who punched them, because you are. And even if you respond to that anger and fear like someone who abhors violence, because that is also who you are, you have no right to demand that they see you differently.

Questions for Self-Examination 1. What belief patterns did you inherit from your family? 2.  Which of those belief patterns that still have authority in your thinking can you acknowledge are no longer valid? 3.  What superstitions do you have? Which have more authority over you than your own reasoning ability? 4.  Do you have a personal code of honor? What is it? 5.  Have you ever compromised your sense of honor? If so, have you taken steps to heal it? 6.  Do you have any unfinished business with your family members? If so, list the reasons that prevent you from healing your family relationships. 7.  List all the blessings that you feel came from your family. 8.  If you are now raising a family of your own, list the qualities that you would like your children to learn from you. 9.  What tribal traditions and rituals do you continue for yourself and your family? 10.  Describe the tribal characteristics within yourself that you would like to strengthen and develop.

SYNCHRONICITY 'The earth is alive, and it feels with you. It follows your footsteps, your search, with equal anxiety, because it will be transfigured in your triumph. The end of Kaliyuga and the entry into a new Golden Age depend on the results of your war. The earth by itself cannot finish the work that Nature leaves incomplete. Today the earth has joined forces with man in his destructive passion. The great catastrophe will occur in the first years of the Age of Aquarius. But if you can find the entrance to the Invisible Double of this earth, fulfilling the mystery of 'loveless A-Mor', the volcanoes will become calm, the earthquake will cease and the catastrophe will be avoided. 'There is an essential 'synchronicity' between the soul and the landscape. What you achieve in yourself will have repercussions in even the remotest corner of the universe, like the ringing of a bell which announces a triumph or a defeat, producing irreversible effects in a secret centre where Destiny acts. The Archetype is indivisible and, if you once confront it in an essential manner, the effects are universal and valid for all eternity. The old Chinese saying expresses it well: 'If a man, sitting in his room, thinks the right thoughts, he will be heard thousands of leagues away.' And the alchemical saying, too: 'It doesn't matter how alone you are. If you do true work, unknown friends will come to your aid.' 'What I have called "synchronicity', Nietzsche called 'lucky occurrences filled with meaning'. It becomes a poetic dialogue, a concerto for two violins, between the man-magician and Nature. The world presents you with a 'lucky occurrence filled with meaning', it hands you a subtle, almost secret message, something which happens without apparent reason, a-causal, but which you feel is full of meaning. This being exactly what the world is looking for, that you should extract that meaning from it, which you alone are capable of seeing, because it 'synchronises', it fully coincides with your immediate state of mind, with an event in your life, so that it is able to transform itself, with your assistance, into legend and destiny. A lucky occurrence which transformed itself into Destiny. And once you have achieved this, everything will appear to become the same as before, as if nothing had happened. Nevertheless, everything has changed fundamentally and for all time, although the only ones to know it will be you and the earth — which is now your earth, your world, since it has given itself up to you so that you can make it fruitful. 'The earth has made itself invisible inside you', as Rilke would say, it has become an individualised universe inside you. And although perhaps nothing may have changed, 'it might seem as if it were so, it might seem as if it were so', to use your own words. And you will be a creative God of the world; because you have conceived a Non-Existent Flower. You have given a meaning to your flower.

I'm just thinking. Someone asked me to do something and I'm not sure whether I should." Now Juno frowned. "Is it bad?" "No. Not bad." Purring, the cat climbed up onto Juno's chest. "Is someone going to get hurt?" "I hope not," Jess said. "I don't think so." "Do you feel unsafe?" Jess bit her lips, trying to hold in a charmed laugh, This kid was repeating exactly what she would say if their positions were reversed. "No." Leaning in, she pressed a kiss to her head. "I don;t feel unsafe." Once she sat up again, her daughter pinned her with a stern look. "Will you be lying?" You're an important part of our research study, one-half of a score we need to validate - our invalidate - our binning paradigm prior to launch. She shook her head. "I won't be lying." Juno set her book on the nightstand and scooped up Pigeon before snuggling them both down into her comforter. "Would you learn something?" Jess felt an intense pulse of pride in her kid, and the knee-jerk negative answer evaporated in her mouth. Because... maybe she would.

As a parent, your counter-dependence can set you up to feel, on some level, deeply uncomfortable with the dependence that is naturally built into your relationship with your child. Your own needs were thwarted as a child, and now a small being has lots of needs that you are required to fulfill. You may feel, on some deep or even unconscious level, that this is an unfair bind to be placed in. And now that we’re talking about this openly, I want to assure you that your feeling makes a lot of sense and is valid. You are indeed in an unfair bind. On top of that, society tells you (by seldom airing any negative feelings about parenting) that your feeling of being in an unfair bind is not how a parent is supposed to feel. In addition to the bind, your fear of relying on others may make it difficult for you to ask for help and accept help. All parents get overwhelmed and exhausted at times, and need support and assistance. If relying on other caretakers makes you feel vulnerable or weak or selfish, you will find yourself running on empty.

5. The “No Talk” Rule. This rule prohibits the full expression of any feeling, need or want. In shame-based families, the members want to hide their true feelings, needs or wants. Therefore, no one speaks of his loneliness and sense of self-rupture. 6. The “No Listen” Rule. Everyone is so busy using their energy to defend themselves or play their rigid roles, no one really hears anything from the other’s true self. 7. Don’t Make Mistakes. Mistakes reveal the flawed, vulnerable self. To acknowledge a mistake is to open oneself to scrutiny. Cover up your own mistakes, and if someone else makes a mistake, shame him. 8. Unreliability. Don’t expect reliability in relationships. Don’t trust anyone, and you will never be disappointed. The parents didn’t get their developmental dependency needs met and will not be there for their children to depend on. The distrust cycle goes on. 9. Don’t Trust. Since no one feels validated or listened to, and there is unpredictability and unreliability on the part of the source figures, no one develops basic trust in themselves or others.

I pray that you must have peace within yourself. Have you seen yourself lately. You are always angry & busy fighting. You are fighting everything & fighting everyone. First you had valid good reasons why you should be fighting. Now you have excuses why you are fighting. I pray that you have peace within yourself. Its foreigners your fighting. After winning. It's racism war your fighting. After winning. It tribalism your fighting. After winning. Its culture vs religion war your fighting. After winning. Its gender war ,boys verses girls your fighting. After winning . Its girls against other girls (feminine war) & boys against other boys (muscular war) your fighting. After winning . Its your thoughts against your heart war your fighting. After winning . Its your feelings against spirituality war your fighting. After winning. its something else your fighting................ Money you have. Status you have. Job and friends you have. Pride and ego you have, but I pray you have peace. and I pray that you have inner peace. Some battles you fight them but the real war is within yourself.

THE EGO IS NOT PERSONAL On a collective level, the mind-set “We are right and they are wrong” is particularly deeply entrenched in those parts of the world where conflict between two nations, races, tribes, religions, or ideologies is long-standing, extreme, and endemic. Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own “story,” that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid. Israeli writer Y. Halevi speaks of the possibility of “accommodating a competing narrative,”3 but in many parts of the world, people are not yet able or willing to do that. Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the “other” as evil, and because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy, they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children, without feeling their humanity and suffering. They become trapped in an insane spiral of perpetration and retribution, action and reaction.

To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness. It balances short term with long term. It balances going for the grade and paying the price to get an education. It balances the desire to have a room clean and the building of a relationship in which the child is internally committed to do it—cheerfully, willingly, without external supervision. It’s a principle you can see validated in your own life when you burn the candle at both ends to get more golden eggs and wind up sick or exhausted, unable to produce any at all; or when you get a good night’s sleep and wake up ready to produce throughout the day. You can see it when you press to get your own way with someone and somehow feel an emptiness in the relationship; or when you really take time to invest in a relationship and you find the desire and ability to work together, to communicate, takes a quantum leap. The P/PC Balance is the very essence of effectiveness. It’s validated in every arena of life. We can work with it or against it, but it’s there.

Temptation... What would the warning label in your life say? Something like this.. "You will think this is a way to ease the loneliness you feel. You will think it will make you feel all the things you deserve to feel: beautiful, respected, noticed, appreciated for who you are, and validated as special. You will think that you are the exception in being able to handle a flirty friendship without crossing any lines and that it won't hurt anyone. You will think this is going wonderful, because it stirs up such warm feelings in those places deep inside your heart that have felt cold for so long. You will think all those warm fuzzies are good for you. But it's all a lie. You are being blinded with desire. You are being made deaf to truth. You are reaching for a forbidden fruit that looks so good on the outside but is filled with razors on the inside. You can't even take a bite without getting cut. And, worst of all, even though you are bleeding from that first bite, you'll get so enamored with it's alluring sweetness that you'll keep eating it. You will devour this sin without realizing its devouring you. Trust me, your feelings are lying to you. This won't fix your disappointments. It will only multiply them into devastations.

We are all permeable to the influence of the group. What makes us more permeable is our insecurities. The less we are certain about our self-worth as individuals, the more we are unconsciously drawn toward fitting in and blending ourselves into the group spirit. Gaining the superficial approval of group members by displaying our conformity, we cover up our insecurities to ourselves and to others. But this approval is fleeting; our insecurities gnaw at us, and we must continually get people’s attention to feel validated. Your goal must be to lower your permeability by raising your self-esteem. If you feel strong and confident about what makes you unique—your tastes, your values, your own experience—you can more easily resist the group effect. Furthermore, by relying upon your work and accomplishments to anchor your self-opinion, you won’t be so tied to constantly seeking approval and attention. It is not that you become self-absorbed or cut off from the group—outwardly you do what you can to fit in, but inwardly you subject the ideas and beliefs of the group to constant scrutiny, comparing them with your own, adapting parts or all of those that have merit and rejecting others that go against your experience. You are putting the focus on the ideas themselves, not on where they come from.

Repressing If you are a repressor, your natural inclination is to push away strong feelings and say, ‘Shush,’ when you are confronted with them, or ‘Don’t make a fuss, nothing’s the matter,’ or ‘Be brave.’ If you dismiss a child’s feeling as unimportant, they are less liable to share any subsequent feeling with you, whether or not you might consider these to be unimportant. Overreacting On the other end of the scale, you might be feeling so much for the child that you become as hysterical as they are and cry along with them, as though their pain is yours rather than theirs. This is an easy mistake to make, for example in the first few days that you drop your child off at nursery, before you both get used to it. If you take over a child’s feelings like this, they are also less likely to want to share how they feel with you. They may think that they are too much for you, or that you invade them by merging with their feelings. Containing Containing means that you can acknowledge and validate all your feelings. If you can do this for yourself, you’ll find it natural to do this for your child as well. You can take a feeling seriously without overreacting and remain contained and optimistic. You might say, ‘Oh dear, you are unhappy. Would you like a cuddle? Come to me, then. There we are, I’m going to hold you until you feel better.’ If a child knows they will be seen and soothed but not judged by you, they are more likely to tell you what is going on for them. This is what a child needs: for a parent to be a container for their emotions. This means you are alongside them and know and accept what they feel but you are not being overwhelmed by their feelings. This is one of the things psychotherapists do for their clients.

1.      Establishing artificial time constraints: Allow the person being targeted to feel that there is an end in sight. 2.      Accommodating nonverbals: Ensure that both your body language as well as your voice is non-threatening.           3.      Slower rate of speech: Don’t oversell and talk too fast. You lose credibility quickly and come on too strong and threatening. 4.      Sympathy or assistance theme: Human beings are genetically coded to provide assistance and help. It also appeals to their ego that they may know more than you. 5.      Ego suspension: Most likely the hardest technique but without a doubt the most effective. Don’t build yourself up, build someone else up and you will have strong rapport. 6.      Validate others: Human beings crave being connected and accepted. Validation feeds this need and few give it. Be the great validator and have instant, great rapport. 7.      Ask… How? When? Why? : When you want to dig deep and make a connection, there is no better or safer way than asking these questions. They will tell you what they are willing to talk about. 8.      Connect with quid pro quo: Some people are just more guarded than others. Allow them to feel comfortable by giving a little about you. Don’t overdo it. 9.      Gift giving (reciprocal altruism): Human beings are genetically coded to reciprocate gifts given. Give a gift, either intangible or material, and seek a conversation and rapport in return. 10.  Managing expectations: Avoid both disappointment as well as the look of a bad salesman by ensuring that your methods are focused on benefitting the targeted individual and not you. Ultimately you will win, but your mindset needs to focus on them. You now have the top ten secrets on how to build rapport with anyone in just a few minutes.  There is nothing in these pages that

But if somebody does want a productive conversation and genuinely believes that being called “cracker” is the same as being called “nigger” and feels angry and invalidated by the insistence that both do not meet your definition of racism, they will say so. This is an educational opportunity. This is a great way to let that person know that you do hear them, and that your experiences do not erase theirs because even though their experience is valid, it is a different experience. A response I’ve used is, “What was said to you wasn’t okay, and should be addressed. But we are talking about two different things. Being called “cracker” hurts, may even be humiliating. But after those feelings fade, what measurable impact will it have on your life? On your ability to walk the streets safely? On your ability to get a job? How often has the word “cracker” been used to deny you services? What measurable impact has this word had on the lives of white Americans in general?” In all honesty, from my personal experience, you are still not likely to get very far in that conversation, not right away. But it gives people something to think about. These conversations, even if they seem fruitless at first, can plant a seed to greater understanding. If you want to further understanding of systemic racism even more among the people you interact with, you can try to link to the systemic effects of racism whenever you talk about racism. Instead of posting on Facebook: “This teacher shouted a racial slur at a Hispanic kid and should be fired!” you can say all that, and then add, “This behavior is linked to the increased suspension, expulsion, and detention of Hispanic youth in our schools and sets an example of behavior for the children witnessing this teacher’s racism that will influence the way these children are treated by their peers, and how they are treated as adults.” I do this often when

beyond them. The Six Diseases If we want to look at how we practice all forms of rivalry, there are six diseases my father wrote about, all of which stem from the desire we have to win at all costs. These diseases rely on being in competition, which is typically where we go in a relationship the moment any discord pops up. When we relate to others in these ways, we are disconnecting from them and disconnecting from our true selves in order to access some form of outside validation. In other words, there is no relationship, no collaboration, no cocreation. There is only the victor and the loser. The Six Diseases are: The desire for victory I have to be the winner. If I don’t win, I’m a loser. If I win, everyone else is a loser. The desire to resort to technical cunning I rely on the power of my wits to show you how great I am. Who cares about people or their feelings as long as everyone can see how clever I am? The desire to display all that has been learned Check me out. I know lots of things. I can speak at length about anything. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say (especially if it’s dumb). The desire to awe the enemy I am a force to be reckoned with. Look out! I will wow you to get your approval even if I have to do something shocking and wild to get your attention. The desire to play the passive role I am so easy to get along with. Who wouldn’t like me? I am so unobtrusive and sweet. I will put anything that’s important to me aside to make sure that you see how likeable and wonderful I am. How could you not like me when I sacrifice everything just for you? The desire to rid oneself of whatever disease one is affected by I am not okay as I am. I will perform constant self-work and read as many books as I can and take so many classes to make myself good that you will see that I am always trying to be a good person even if I continue to do lots of shitty things. I know I’m not okay as I am. And I know you know that I know I’m not okay as I am, which makes it okay not to get truly better as long as it looks like I’m trying.

It was during this time that God began to ask many probing questions. Why the anger? Why the anxiety? Why the bitterness? Why the busyness? Why the striving? Why the insecurity? Ashley, what’s at the root of all this? I was desperately afraid that I was not good enough. I was anxious because I didn’t know how to make things better and afraid they were going to get worse. I was bitter because I wanted to be better than I was. I had always considered myself to be strong, and I wanted to be strong again. I stayed busy in the hope that other people would tell me I had value and my life did matter. I lived insecure because no matter what I tried, it failed to give me the validation I needed. I wanted to be good enough, and all I had was proof that I wasn’t. The pain of this realization and the way it made me feel exposed was a threat to every ounce of who I was. It was like having an exposed nerve—all I wanted was to escape this excruciating pain. God asked me these questions and gave me time and space to wrestle through them until I could acknowledge the sources of identity I was relying on that were not Him. It would have been unfaithful and unloving of God to let me continue relying on those idols when what I really needed was Him. What about you? What reactions have you been living with that might be an indicator of the questions God wants to ask you? He doesn’t point them out to shame us but to set us free. We are often so tired and angry with others because we are asking them to give to us what only God can. When these questions trigger emotion or reveal where we may have gotten stuck along the way, we have a choice to make. We can either face the truth of our hurts and let God uproot what needs to be uprooted and replace it with truth, love, and freedom, or we can hold on to our hurts and continue wrestling with Him for control. I wanted to let go. I wanted to let Him validate me, but I didn’t know how. When we have lived in certain patterns of behavior that we believe keep us safe, nothing can be scarier than being exposed over and over to our true need.

Just as women do not have the ritual of dominance-based violence, they also lack the built-in safety. In other words, if you are dealing with a female threat, she will be seeking to do damage, not to show who is boss. In my experience, women gouge for eyes, bite, and try to cut the face with their fingernails far more often than men. Second, if you are a woman dealing with a male threat, he can still Monkey Dance at you and perceive you to be challenging him. A significant percentage of the males who prey on women are seeking to safely establish dominance over somebody. In that case, when a woman fights back the man will react very violently. In his mind, a victim specially chosen to be weak enough to guarantee his validation as a dominator has seen him as weak enough to challenge. A man fighting another man for dominance will try to beat him, but a man who thinks that he is fighting a woman for dominance will be seeking to punish her. Punishment is much worse. Third, there are specific reactions to violence that most women have absorbed at a very young age that profoundly affect their ability to defend themselves. You see this in victims who flirt with or compliment their attacker: “You’re so handsome you don’t need to rape.” And you see it in women who struggle instead of fight. Women are used to handling men in certain ways, with certain subconscious rules—social ways, not physical ones. These systems are very effective within society and not effective at all when civilization is no longer a factor, such as in a violent assault or rape. On a deep level, most women feel at a gut level that if they fight a man he will escalate the situation to a savage beating, punishment for her challenge to his “manhood.” They feel this way because it is true. This is a hard thing to write. Years ago, before I learned to just listen, a friend told me her story. It had been several days and most of the swelling had gone down. She told me about the rape and the beating. I asked her if she had fought. Not my business and decades of experience later I would have just listened, but I was young and believed that there were more right and wrong answers than there are. She shook her head and said, “I was afraid he’d hurt me if I fought.

On the one hand, I recognize the power of the placebo effect: if you believe it’s working, it may well work. If you think an object brings you luck, you are more confident. And yet what the Italian students in the “lucky” seats showed wasn’t confidence; it was overconfidence. They thought they were doing better, but the evidence didn’t actually back them up. And then there’s the flip side of the placebo, the nocebo effect: the belief in evil signs or bad luck. It turns out people can literally scare themselves to death. If you think you’ve been cursed or otherwise made ill, you may end up actually getting sick, failing to improve poor health, or, yes, dying altogether. In one medically documented instance, a man was given three months to live after a diagnosis of metastatic cancer of the esophagus. He died shortly after. When his body was autopsied, doctors realized that he had been misdiagnosed: he did indeed have cancer, but a tiny, non-metastatic tumor on his liver. Clinically speaking, it could not have killed him. But, it seems, being told he was dying of a fatal illness brought about that very outcome. In another case, a man thought he was hexed by a voodoo priest. He came close to death, only to recover miraculously after an enterprising doctor “reversed” the curse through a series of made-up words. In yet a third, a man almost died in the emergency room after overdosing on pills. He’d been in a drug trial for depression and decided to end his life with the antidepressants he’d been prescribed. His vitals were so bad when he was admitted that doctors didn’t think he would make it—until they discovered his blood was completely clear of any drugs. He’d been taking a placebo. Once he found out he had not in fact taken a life-threatening quantity of pills, he recovered quickly. The effect our mind has on our body makes for a scary proposition. Belief is a powerful thing. Our mental state is crucial to our performance. And ultimately, while some superstitions may give you a veneer of false confidence, they also have the power to destroy your mental equilibrium. I like to think of this as the black cat effect. You see one cross the parking lot as you walk to a tournament. You brood about the bad luck. Your game is thrown off. You blame the cat. You bust. You feel validated. Superstitions are false attributions, so they give you a false sense of your own abilities and in the end, impede learning.

The narcissistic mother will manipulate other family members to gang up against you by focusing on everything that’s wrong with you. This conveniently takes the focus away from the real perpetrator, which is of course her. It’s interesting to think about the manipulation that’s actually going on. So if you have been labelled as the black sheep and that has been your permanent role in the family, it actually allows all the other family members to start feeling better about themselves. They actually start to believe that they are healthier and more obedient to the narcissistic mother than you, and again this creates a division within the family. Another important point is that if a child is scapegoated from an early age, he or she may fully internalize all of their narcissistic mother’s criticism and shame. This means that the scapegoats develop this harsh inner critic that will continue that inner dialogue that constantly reminds them of how bad and flawed they are. I guess you could call that “inner scapegoating,” and it is extremely toxic to a young impressionable child whose identity is still being formed. So, the scapegoat may struggle with low self-esteem and often continues to feel deeply inadequate and unlovable. Adult scapegoat children also tend to suppress a huge amount of abandonment anxiety because they were emotionally or even physically abandoned by the narcissistic mother over and over again. Adult scapegoat children therefore become super sensitive to observing any potential signs of approval or disapproval. These are all important aspects of the profound impact that a toxic family dynamic may continue to have on adult relationships. Perhaps you may still have issues with authority. Maybe you’re still used to justifying yourself or somehow proving your worth. This is an unconscious pattern that you may still not be aware of and that you are perpetuating because you don’t realize how powerful these dysfunctional family dynamics still are. And once you wake up and understand you can let go of that label, you can break that pattern by choosing to think and behave completely different. You can learn to choose your battles and do not always have to be defensive. You do not always have to feel victimized. You need to become more self-aware and notice if you are still trying to get your parents’ approval or validation. Maturing into adulthood means that you may need to understand that you may never have a healthy relationship with an intentional perpetrator of abuse. You need to process your feelings of frustration, loneliness, rage, and grief.

Until knowledge becomes part of you, it is not possible to talk about awareness, or true understanding. Everything must come from and into an organism. Theories are only valid when made organic — ”organic” as in "part of the body". The knowledge that has to be learned and followed like a discipline is useless. It doesn't matter which amount of knowledge you absorb or in which variety. Knowledge can’t be remembered all the time in the same proportion that is kept, not all of it, and not all of it at the same time. As a matter of fact, when knowledge is not assimilated above personal interests, that same knowledge is already corrupted. When knowledge is seen as a means to a goal, either it is in obtaining something from the outside world, or passing some test, this knowledge has not become organic but merely used as a tool. That's why so many people avoid being confronted with their ignorance and react angrily when faced with their contradictions, which is quite obvious when we compare what they learn and what they say. You see this everywhere, in teachers, politicians, religious groups, and so on. And then you wonder why are people not honest. But they can’t understand honesty as much as they can’t understand their own ignorance. The stupid are not aware they are stupid, and that’s what really makes them stupid. When someone is too stupid, ignorance is replaced by arrogance. And then this person feels like the world is a bit threat to survival at an individual level. We call this attitude being egotistic. But you can’t stop being an egotistic when suppressing your emotions, or imagining that everyone is a source of negative energy but you. As a matter of fact, you commonly see the egotistic drop into apathy precisely because they confuse the work they must do on themselves with the anger they feel for the world as a whole. Have you ever noticed how easily people turn to anger when you ask them a question? That’s a reaction of someone moving from apathy to fear. On the surface this person is acting like a rude individual, but the emotions behind this behavior are those one feels when watching a horror movie. They are afraid of their own feelings, and project this fear as an aggression. Now comes the interesting part: Who are they attacking? They are attacking precisely the one that can help them, because only such individual will ask the right questions. An individual on apathy and lack of interest, can’t ask anything that is interesting or motivating. So we come to an interesting paradox in society, that those who can uplift others, end up being perceived as a threat to them. And that’s the simplest way to explain insanity.

her that when he had first raised the idea, I hadn’t known he was sick. Almost nobody knew, she said. He had called me right before he was going to be operated on for cancer, and he was still keeping it a secret, she explained. I decided then to write this book. Jobs surprised me by readily acknowledging that he would have no control over it or even the right to see it in advance. “It’s your book,” he said. “I won’t even read it.” But later that fall he seemed to have second thoughts about cooperating and, though I didn’t know it, was hit by another round of cancer complications. He stopped returning my calls, and I put the project aside for a while. Then, unexpectedly, he phoned me late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009. He was at home in Palo Alto with only his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. His wife and their three children had taken a quick trip to go skiing, but he was not healthy enough to join them. He was in a reflective mood, and we talked for more than an hour. He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts. Jobs said that the past twelve years of his life, since his return to Apple, had been his most productive in terms of creating new products. But his more important goal, he said, was to do what Hewlett and his friend David Packard had done, which was create a company that was so imbued with innovative creativity that it would outlive them. “I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” he said. “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It was as if he were suggesting themes for his biography (and in this instance, at least, the theme turned out to be valid). The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century. I asked Jobs why he wanted me to be the one to write his biography. “I think you’re good at getting people to talk,” he replied. That was an unexpected answer. I knew that I would have to interview scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated, and I feared he would not be comfortable with my getting them to talk. And indeed he did turn out to be skittish when word trickled back to him of people that I was interviewing. But after a couple of months,

WHY ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE In its present-day form, the disease model of addiction asserts that addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. This disease is evidenced by changes in the brain, especially alterations in the striatum, brought about by the repeated uptake of dopamine in response to drugs and other substances. But it’s also shown by changes in the prefrontal cortex, where regions responsible for cognitive control become partially disconnected from the striatum and sometimes lose a portion of their synapses as the addiction progresses. These are big changes. They can’t be brushed aside. And the disease model is the only coherent model of addiction that actually pays attention to the brain changes reported by hundreds of labs in thousands of scientific articles. It certainly explains the neurobiology of addiction better than the “choice” model and other contenders. It may also have some real clinical utility. It makes sense of the helplessness addicts feel and encourages them to expiate their guilt and shame, by validating their belief that they are unable to get better by themselves. And it seems to account for the incredible persistence of addiction, its proneness to relapse. It even demonstrates why “choice” cannot be the whole answer, because choice is governed by motivation, which is governed by dopamine, and the dopamine system is presumably diseased. Then why should we reject the disease model? The main reason is this: Every experience that is repeated enough times because of its motivational appeal will change the wiring of the striatum (and related regions) while adjusting the flow and uptake of dopamine. Yet we wouldn’t want to call the excitement we feel when visiting Paris, meeting a lover, or cheering for our favourite team a disease. Each rewarding experience builds its own network of synapses in and around the striatum (and OFC), and those networks continue to draw dopamine from its reservoir in the midbrain. That’s true of Paris, romance, football, and heroin. As we anticipate and live through these experiences, each network of synapses is strengthened and refined, so the uptake of dopamine gets more selective as rewards are identified and habits established. Prefrontal control is not usually studied when it comes to travel arrangements and football, but we know from the laboratory and from real life that attractive goals frequently override self-restraint. We know that ego fatigue and now appeal, both natural processes, reduce coordination between prefrontal control systems and the motivational core of the brain (as I’ve called it). So even though addictive habits can be more deeply entrenched than many other habits, there is no clear dividing line between addiction and the repeated pursuit of other attractive goals, either in experience or in brain function. London just doesn’t do it for you anymore. It’s got to be Paris. Good food, sex, music . . . they no longer turn your crank. But cocaine sure does.

She is still turned inside out. What she feels and thinks on the inside, the world hears and sees on the outside. When she becomes upset, we assume she has her own valid reason. So we say, “I see that you’re upset. Are you ready for a solution yet? Or do you just need to feel this way for a while?” She usually just needs to feel this way for a while, because she is becoming. We don’t rush her anymore. In fact, when we try to rush through life, through pain, through beauty, Tish slows us down and points. She shows us what we need to notice, think, and feel in order to stay human.

The following example is adapted from a conversation a friend of mine had with his wife. She came to him frustrated with her sister and looking for support. Amy: “Ugh. Emily is driving me crazy!” David: “What happened?” Amy: “You know this sisters’ trip we’ve been planning? She keeps changing the plans and doesn’t seem to listen to—or care at all about—what the rest of us want to do.” David: “Well, have you just told her what you want to do?” Amy: “Of course I have. We all have! She always seems to have some reason for doing things her way. Ugh. I’m so sick of this.” David: “You should just tell her that—that you don’t feel like she’s listening.” Amy: “I’ve tried that. She always does this. I feel like I’m crazy because everyone else just backs down and lets her take over. I’m not about to spend all this money and take a week off work only to have to follow her strict schedule all day!” David: “Well, if you don’t want to go, don’t go.” Amy: “Of course I want to go! I just want to go and actually have fun!” David: “Then just talk to your other sisters. I’m sure you guys can figure it out. Or I’ll talk to her!” Amy: “No, I can take care of it. I’m just frustrated.” David: “What if you each planned one day?” Amy: “It’s not that easy. The sites we want to see are too far apart from each other.” David: “What if you just booked a tour group instead?” Amy: “No, we want to do it ourselves.” David (not quite sure what Amy is expecting from him at this point): “Well, you’d better figure it out soon. Isn’t the trip in a few weeks?” Amy (now frustrated and ready to end the conversation): “Yeah. It’s okay. I’ll figure it out.” Why did David’s multiple attempts to help his wife go so poorly? In short, he didn’t recognize that she was looking for validation rather than advice. Amy remained frustrated because David tried to fix the problem right out of the gates instead of first validating her frustration. David also walked away feeling confused and unappreciated because Amy became more upset—and even a little defensive—as he tried to help.

Validation has two main elements. It 1) acknowledges a specific emotion, and 2) offers justification for feeling that emotion. Validation is nonjudgmental. It allows the other person to feel whatever they’re feeling without labeling it as “good” or “bad.” Invalidation (i.e. minimizing or dismissing another person’s feelings) is counter-productive. Research has shown that invalidating responses can make a difficult situation worse, even when offered with the best of intentions. Offering validation—before or instead of offering advice or assurance—is often the best way to help. Doing so helps others let go of difficult emotions much more quickly, often allowing them to find a solution to the problem on their own. Leading with validation also increases the likelihood that others will listen to and accept your advice. CHAPTER 3

Nobody else can make you feel a certain way, they can’t force-feed you an emotion to feel. They can do things and say things to you, but how you feel in response isn’t their fault and isn’t down to their control: your emotions are entirely under your influence due to the thoughts you do and do not validate.

If I had to sum up motherhood in one philosophical statement it would be this: They come out of the womb as narcissists, and you have eighteen years to try to change that. If, by the time they move out of your house, they are able to consider others with some level of empathy, attend to the feelings of others, and see the world outside themselves and the people who inhabit it as valid and important, you've done your job.

Chapter 3 Summary You can validate any emotion—positive or negative. While validating difficult emotions can lead to stronger, healthier, more satisfactory relationships, studies have shown that validating positive emotions and sharing in others’ excitement, pride, happiness, etc. can be equally beneficial. You can validate anyone, even if you disagree with them. When you validate someone, you’re essentially saying, “I get why you feel that way.” That’s different than saying, “You’re right” or “I agree.” The key point here is that if you were in that person’s shoes, having only the information, background, and perception that they do, you would likely feel the same way.

When I realized that Tish was me, I remembered that acting happy was what had almost killed me. I quit trying to make Tish happy or pleasant and decided just to help her be Tish. Tish is fourteen now. She is still turned inside out. What she feels and thinks on the inside, the world hears and sees on the outside. When she becomes upset, we assume she has her own valid reason. So we say, “I see that you’re upset. Are you ready for a solution yet? Or do you just need to feel this way for a while?” She usually just needs to feel this way for a while, because she is becoming. We don’t rush her anymore. In fact, when we try to rush through life, through pain, through beauty, Tish slows us down and points. She shows us what we need to notice, think, and feel in order to stay human. She is the kindest, wisest, most honest person I know. There is no one walking the Earth I respect more. Tish is our family’s conscience and prophet. She is our selah.

But if you are white, and you are feeling this way, I ask you this: is your lived experience real? Are the situations you’ve lived through real? Are your interpretations of those situations valid? Chances are, if you are using them to decide whether or not other situations and opinions are valid, you think they are. So if your lived experience and your interpretation of that lived experience are valid, why wouldn’t the lived experience of people of color be just as valid? If I don’t have the right to deem your life, what you see and hear and feel, a lie, why do you have the right to do it to me? Why do you deserve to be believed and people of color don’t? And if you are a person of color, know this: the world will try to tell you that what you are seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling is wrong. The world will tell you that you do not know how to interpret what is happening to you and to your community. But you are not wrong, and you have just as much right to be heard and believed as anybody else. If you think it’s about race, you are

This change step involves attacking your lifetrap on an intellectual level. In order to do this, you must prove that it is not true, or at least that it can be changed. You must cast doubt on the validity of your lifetrap. As long as you believe that your lifetrap is valid, you will not be able to change it.

Each of our experiences, feelings and views are unique based on countless factors, yet no less valid than those of others. Just because you're not a parent doesn't mean you have no rights to have a view on parenting. Or that you can’t imagine the struggles of parenting within your own mind. Just because you’re born poor doesn’t mean you can’t imagine wealth. If your destiny is such that you’re born into privilege, it doesn’t mean you can’t by free-will have the willingness to help others or imagine their pain. Just because you weren’t in the Marine Corp doesn’t mean you can’t imagine the fear some must face. Just because you are not in a concentration camp doesn’t mean you can’t feel or fight for those who are. Just because you didn’t grow up abused doesn’t mean you can’t feel compassion for those who did. Just because you’re a child doesn’t mean you can’t imagine being a grown-up and just because you’re a grown-up doesn’t mean you can’t imagine being a child. If that were the case, how would any of us ever tap into our compassion? Whatever your circumstances, everyone is 100% entirely entitled to have a view, entitled to help make change happen if it betters the world and no matter what it doesn’t make you less valid or less important just because you can’t control how you were born into this world. That which is out of our hands is out of our hands. While that which lies in our capacity for compassion and imagination, is ours to utilize in the best way we know how to make the world a better place wherever and with whatever cause we choose to take on. We all deserve dignity and respect.

We live in a time when everyone must bear arms on behalf of something on the outside of them that moves on the inside of their hearts. We no longer live in an era where peace was equivalent to detachment. Peace thanks to detachment is just an unwillingness to commit to being alive. That era is over. Peace by means of invalidation is over. Peace through the validation of what is essential to others, is the only way through this now. I validate you, you validate me, we validate each other, we are attached to each other. Peace through the acknowledgement of what is human. This is the way forward. "Invalidation" is an act of tyranny that is carried out daily at the personal level, between friends, family, lovers, co-workers, etc. It is the easiest and most prevalent form of "little tyrannies" that are enacted upon, and are carried out every day. Invalidating another's experience, feeling, thought, action, by making it seem irrelevant or small, is cowardice, and at the root of it is a fear of living life beyond your own borders. We talk about national borders all the time, when in reality, it's the borders that we place between ourselves and the people close to us, that take profound effect in human lives, on the daily. There is even a spiritual movement in the New Age group that focuses so much on putting up borders, that these borders are simply passive aggressive behaviours designed to pamper a person in their own preconceived or misconceived bubbles. The borders are old and that era is over. Peace in this new era is not about sitting on top of a rock in alienation to gain a selfish version of peace. Peace, in our new era now, is about the realisation that peace for all is peace for one! We now bear arms for battles happening beyond our own little worlds because this is what it means to be the new human.

Pay attention to the person’s words, body language, expressions, and tone of voice. This will help you validate the person’s feelings. People with BPD are not always in touch with their own emotions, and by listening closely you may be able to hear beyond the words and detect the feelings that lie beneath the surface. In

Your feelings need to be validated just as much as those of the person with BPD.

The feelings of the person with BPD may not make sense to you, but they do make sense to them. Here are some guidelines for how to address them: Don’t judge the person’s feelings, deny them, trivialize them, or discuss whether or not you think they are “justified.” Restate the person with BPD’s feelings; dig a bit beneath the surface for feelings that may not be as obvious. Ask the other person if your perceptions are correct. Show the person with BPD you are hearing what they are saying. Avoid sounding patronizing or condescending, or the person with BPD may get enraged because you don’t sound like you are taking his or her concerns seriously. If you want the conversation to facilitate change, you must validate your loved one’s emotions.