What I really needed 60 feet up a rock climb, and how my husband finally learned to give it to me.
I was 60 feet up a rock climb and very scared. My legs were shaking, my hands were sweating, and my arms were too tired to go any farther. My last piece of protection was 5 feet below my feet, and if I fell off the climb, I would have taken about a 20-foot fall onto the rope I was tied into.
I fell.
I screamed and then dangled at the end of the rope shaking and panting from the adrenaline rush. I felt afraid, frustrated, and ashamed, like usual.
This was not a new situation for me. As a rock climber, I have always been more afraid up high than I’d like, and it really affects my athletic performance sometimes. I get frustrated at myself for being afraid, and I often feel ashamed because so many people I climb with seem to be fearless.
My husband is one of those people. As supportive and loving as he is, his response when I get scared is often to tell me that it’s ok, that the fall is safe, and that he’s “got me,” meaning that he is safely belaying me from the ground. That I should just go for it anyway.
And he’s totally right on all accounts. It is safe when you have good equipment, safe terrain below you, and a good partner. But I was scared anyway, and I yelled down to him, “I’m really scared! I don’t like how long that fall is!” And he said something like, “Yeah? Well, are you going to try again? It’s totally safe up there! You’ve got this!”
But that’s not actually what I needed in that moment.
What People Really Need When They’re Having Emotions
In fact, when people are having big emotions they rarely need someone to tell them to just ignore the emotions, which is basically what Seth was doing. In his defense, intense feelings are, well, intense, and very few people really know how to deal with them. “Communicating about feelings” is not a series of classes we’re taught in school like math or science. There’s no AP Emotional Processing, though I would LOVE to teach one. We're just out there dealing with feelings the same way I would deal with, say, a broken muffler on my car: without a single clue.
If you think about it, this kind of dismissive talk is all around us all the time.
Examples of Dismissive Conversations
Your kid tells you they feel really embarrassed that nobody came to their birthday party. What do you say? “Aww don’t feel embarrassed! It’s ok - they’ll come next year!”
Somebody tells you they’re super disappointed they didn’t get a promotion at work, even though they worked super hard for it. What do people say? “Aw it’s ok - you’ll get it soon!”
A wife tells her husband that she feels frustrated because her husband didn’t pick up groceries for dinner like he said he would, and what does he say? “I was busy! It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t even think you told me I had to go to the store!”
One more because this publication is also about money, so I’ll drive this one home.
A boyfriend tells his girlfriend that he’s disappointed that she spent a bunch of money on alcohol and marijuana that month and now she can’t give him all of the rent money she owes him. What does she say? “What I spend my money on is none of your business. I can’t afford rent this month - don’t get so upset about it. You have enough money to cover it.”
You see my point, right? While people sometimes mean well when they’re being dismissive, comments like these nonetheless exist on a spectrum from mildly dismissive to, at the very far end, egregious gaslighting. Basically, “Stop feeling what you’re feeling. I’m uncomfortable.”
Validate Instead
What we actually want in moments of vulnerably admitting our emotions is VALIDATION. And validation probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. When I work with my clients on validation, I often ask them what they think it means. I get anything from, “Validation is a pity party where someone wallows in their feelings,” to, “It means you agree with the person and approve of what they’re saying.”
No and no.
Validation is when you express that it makes sense to you why someone would feel the way they do. That’s it. You don’t even have to agree with what they’re saying, though sometimes you might: you simply have to imagine you’re not you for a moment and see things from their perspective.
What Validation Looks Like
“It makes sense to me why you’d feel embarrassed that nobody came to your birthday party. You really want to feel like you belong and that you have lots of friends, and it feels hurtful when they don’t show up for you.”
“Of course you feel disappointed by not getting a promotion at work! You try really hard - I see it - and you were really looking forward to the acknowledgment and raise, and you didn’t get it.”
“Yeah, I get why you’d be frustrated that I didn’t get groceries. I said I would do it and now we have nothing to eat for dinner.”
“I understand why you’re disappointed that I don’t have enough money to pay for rent. It’s my responsibility to take care of my half every month and now I’m putting that responsibility on you.”
While that is not how we typically talk to people in our lives, I vehemently believe that we should start doing so. This allows the people in our lives to have their hurt acknowledged and held by someone else. This in itself can be extremely healing, even if it only lasts a moment. At first when I would get this kind of response from friends, or even therapists, I would say something like, “Oh, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Because we’re taught to make everyone believe we’re fine when we’re not, and it felt sort of like pity.
But now when someone offers me the very kind gift of validation, I say, “THANK YOU. Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel.” And then I feel it for a moment. And then I can move on. Notice that nobody doing the validating was saying things like, “Yeah, those little brats didn’t even show up to your birthday party - who cares about them anyway!” Or about the work promotion, “Screw your boss and screw that job. You deserve better.” I mean, maybe later that can happen if it’s what the two of you both agree on, but first, we validate.
The Rock Climbing Turnaround for Seth and Me
Going back to me falling off my rock climb and sulking at the end of my rope, here’s what ended up happening. Seth and I have had so many repeat situations just like the one I described. I get scared, I tell him I’m scared, he tells me there’s nothing to be scared of. We probably had 25 conversations over the course of 2 years wherein I tried to explain to him exactly what validation is, why I needed it, and how exactly he could do it. Word for word - I gave him scripts. He refused. I got mad. He was in the pity party camp and didn’t think it would help me in any situation.
But then one day last year we were climbing and the same old thing happened, and he surprised me. I asked him to make the rope taut so I could sit down in my harness on it and rest and then I yelled down to him, “I’m really scared!”
And he said really sweetly, “Yeah, I get it. It’s scary up there!” And then he just gave me a minute to sit in my fear. When he said that, it allowed me to release the shame and disappointment I was feeling for being scared. It gave me the space to just feel the fear and think about it rationally. I looked up and really analyzed the fall I was facing if I kept going. I realized it was actually safe, that he was truly belaying me securely, and that I felt even safer with him in that moment than ever. And very quickly after that I decided that I did want to go for it, and that it was ok.
Me on a climb trying to remember to breathe
We talked about it afterward and he said he knew what he was doing validating me. This happened right after we made a very important shift in our money management, and we were feeling particularly loving toward each other. He decided to just give me what I’d been asking for for so long to just see what happened.
My husband has thankfully continued to validate me in all kinds of situations ever since. I checked in with him about it one day about 6 months ago, asking, “What have you noticed about our relationship since you started validating me?” And he said, “That you have sex with me more often.”
And he was not joking.
Validation is the elixir of love. You should try it. Here’s how.
Steps to Validation
When someone is expressing an emotion, even just by saying “I’m upset” or raising their voice, stop. Do not proceed as usual.
Try to imagine what they might be experiencing. Put yourself in their shoes and take yourself out of it. Remove your advice, your defenses, and all of YOU from the equation for the moment. You will come back to you later.
Say some version of, “I get why you’d feel [emotion]. You [wanted/needed/were hoping for] [X], and [what happened] got in the way.” This is the formula. Please see the four examples above for more context.
Then say something like, “I get it,” again or, “That sounds really hard.”
Pause.
This is not the part where you say, “But these are my reasons for what I did to you,” or “And this is what I think you need to do about it.”
Just give them a moment to feel the validation, and I promise you that if you do this correctly—kindly, objectively—they will move through it. And if you stick with them while they do, you will be their bestest friend forever.
What to Expect if Dismissal Has Been Your Pattern
If you have been an emotional dismisser or an unsolicited solution giver for a really long time in your relationship, this might take some getting used to by your partner. They might have a really cutting response, or even gloat for a minute. “Yeah, exactly! You DID NOT go to the grocery store and I’m so sick of you slacking on chores! I do so much more than you do around here!”
If your partner is right and you do actually slack off a lot, it might be in your best interest to just take it for a hot sec and say something like, “Yeah, you’re right, honestly. I do slack off sometimes, and it’s probably hard for you to juggle so many things. I’m sorry.” But if you don’t agree with them, you could just say something like, “It sounds like you’re really overwhelmed and you believe you’re doing more than your fair share. That’s hard, and I want to understand it better. Can you tell me more?”
This is SO HARD for our egos, but it is extremely healing to a relationship to just hear our partners out and own up to our slip-ups when necessary. We want to always be right and good, but we are human and sometimes we are neither.
What to Do Next
The question you may be asking is what do you do next after you have sufficiently validated your person?
Well, you might apologize if you have actually done something worth apologizing for (more on apologizing in future posts). Just say, “I’m really sorry. I will make X change to make sure I don’t do it again. You are really important to me, and I don’t want to hurt you again.”
If you have not done something worth apologizing for and you are simply supporting a person through something, you can ask them these very simple questions:
“How can I support you? Do you want me to just listen or do you want to brainstorm solutions?”
A little take-home assignment is to do this at least one time this week. Practice on someone who is not upset with you first.
You serve, they return. See what happens and notice how it’s different from your usual conversations. I’d love to know how it goes! Let me know in the comments if you try it.
If you're in Texas and want help practicing conversations like this, I offer $30 online couples therapy and individual therapy.
Talk soon,
Neely
