Validation

Hello lovely people and welcome back ❈ 

Seems to be a bit of a theme in my Blog posts currently and maybe that’s reflective of my own journey at present. My Introduction discussed our choices when something happens, and then I wrote about using Reflection as a tool for growth and coming to understand aspects of your journey. My last Blog introduced Self-care and its importance and the balance it has played within my life in grounding, soothing and acting as self-love. In this Blog, I write about Validation and unpacking the role it can potentially play in our journey.

Validation plays a pivotal role in our emotional happiness or unhappiness for that matter too. Validation can act as a way for us to understand our place in our own lives and where we stand. When you receive positive feedback – verbal, physical, emotional – then you judge how you are perceived within your environment through a positive lens and acceptance. And all is well in your world. The same can’t be said when the verbal, physical, and emotional feedback from your environment is negative. This has the potential to trigger old patterns or coping strategies, that can be conscious or at times unconscious and can elicit specific behaviours. I guess it does come back to perception and how we value ourselves when evaluating environmental feedback. If you have encountered positive validation throughout your life, then chances are you have come to expect positivity in life. But, if you have been raised in an unhealthy family environment i.e., Domestic and Family Violence, alcoholism, or the like, then you may have developed a critical lens through which you view feedback.

In expanding on this a little more, you may receive positive feedback though you have developed a default critical lens in which you filter all your environmental feedback. So even if there is positivity you may not fully accept it at face value and may be waiting for the ‘But’ or the follow-up of being asked for something. Developing a healthy sense of self is one way to overcome that critical feedback lens along with other healthy life patterns and skills.

Understanding yourself is another way to develop a healthy sense of self, when you learn to understand what you need which is often disguised or hidden under moods or behaviours, your emotional world can change. When we are upset or angry, these are just a behaviour, under the behaviour is a need that hasn’t been met. Sometimes we can give our power away, unrealistically expecting that someone else will know how to fill our needs. No one knows you like you know you, so don’t give your power away to them. Learning to fore fill your own needs requires self-exploration, honesty, understanding, trial and error, and practice, but it is all worth it! Internal Validation is a healthy way to live life, looking for it externally has the potential for disappointment as others can often get it wrong, no one knows you like you know yourself.

❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈