A new tool in my cognitive-emotional toolkit is conceptualizing the difference between emotional validity and correctness. Far too often are the two concepts are left undifferentiated. Disentangling them leaves room for the empathy of understanding how people's emotional states evolve from their perspective, while also accounting for how their perception differs from reality. Why is this useful? By not immediately dismissing emotional states, we can analyze them, dissect them, and ultimately change them without unhelpful knee-jerk reactions which engage defense mechanisms. Don't fall for the trick of people asking for their perfectly valid emotional states to also be seen as correct.

True. If you (or lots of other people) validate someone's emotional states that are not rooted in correctness (or reality), then they may believe them to be correct.

This may be harmful to that individual in the long run, so we should be careful about how often and how much we validate such feelings.

In a nutshell, some people want to be seen, and some people want to be right.

All too often do we conflate validation with the latter.

In this framework, does "validity" signify anything? Is there such a thing as an invalid emotional state?

I think "validating emotion" is currently a counter to jerks who state "You shouldn't feel that (your current emotion). There's no reason to feel that. You should instead feel X emotion."

This reaction is generally unhelpful for the listener, as it basically asserts that (a) the listeners feelings don't exist / are not important or (b) that the listener is feeling the wrong emotions.

Validating emotion is "Yes, I understand why you feel that, having <thing> happen to <you/me> would certainly make someone feel <emotion> " e.g. "Yeah, when your friend criticized your cooking I bet that made you feel bad."

After validating the emotion (to create empathy, to create a safe space for conversation, and emphasize that you care about the person), you can then (optionally) suggest a different (more positive) thought e.g. "Perhaps your friend only meant to say that they love using melted butter on their own pasta, and was not trying to say that the pasta was dry." or supply context e.g. "Alice has been having a rough time at work the last few weeks, that might have been why she was short with you."

So validation of emotion is used to create acceptance ("we accept that emotion currently exists and is a reasonable feeling to have in that context") and to create a safe space for talking about emotions in general and the situation in which they arose. (It is especially useful when teaching children about emotions and teaching them to look at a situation objectively.)

Invalid emotions could exist, but usually an over-the-top emotion (and the actions that you take because of that) normally seem to occur because either (a) some sort of miscommunication occurred ("I thought we were talking about X") or that some sort of important context was missing ("You know, Bob lost his job last week, there's a reason he didn't come to the party, and it wasn't to slight you.")

My concern is that are two distinct concepts at play. One is "validation", a verb, which seems to be simply the basic application of empathy. The other is "valid", an adjective, which is applied to feelings and emotional states but (as far as I can tell) serves no descriptive purpose beyond "worthy of empathy". But aren't all feelings worthy of empathy? What is gained by such a label?

I suppose there could be. Is it possible to reach an emotional state without perceptual input? Maybe?

While I can see where analogy of "make invalid states unrepresentable" is coming from, but I feel that how we talk about them can get in the way of changing them. "Emotional invalidation" is a good search term to find phrases that shut down opportunities for change.

"correct" meaning "your emotion reflect an accurate understanding of the situation"

or "correct" meaning "you are behaving as society expects you to behave in this situation" ?

I was considering the former, but I don't want to discount the latter. We identify incorrect emotions through incorrect behavior.

I think `validation` here is carrying a lot of weight. Like anything, it can be acknowledged, or recognised, or seen...and then you act accordingly from there. Don't decide the priority for someone, just notice that they're dealing with something and say that you see it, and let them continue. Don't get pulled into the involvement or start colluding though, just keep it to what you see from the outside.

I feel like you can swap 'validation' with 'confirmation' and these responses will make more sense. "I see you're struggling with something," vs. "I agree, this is the problem."

edit: In fact, aaron-santos in a sibling post has a more succinct explanation, in terms of correctness.

    it's not the large things that
    send a man to a
    madhouse...
    no, it's the continuing series of _small_ tragedies
    that send a man to the madhouse...
    not the death of his love
    but a shoelace that snaps
    with no time left...
    the dread of life
    is that huge swarm of trivial shit
    that can kill quicker than cancer
    and which is always there--
    [list of trivial shit]
    
    with each broken shoelace
    one of one hundred broken shoelaces,
    one man, one woman, one
    thing
    enters a
    madhouse. 

- Charles Bukowski, "the shoelace"