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How to Self Validate

Self-validation: Respecting yourself, letting yourself feel, think, and want with acceptance – no judgments, second-guessing, or devaluing yourself.

With Mindfulness (about):

• Observe, participate, and describe your thoughts and feelings non-judgmentally.
• Let judgments pass. Notice but do not hold onto them, let them go.
• Observe your thinking without participating or believing it’s true.
• Identify and describe your feelings precisely.
• Allow yourself to feel your emotions without avoiding them, escaping from them, acting impulsively, or numbing out from them. Try to manage your emotions skillfully.
• Honor your own values.

Using Radical Acceptance (about):

• Look for legitimacy and understanding within yourself, truthfully and without judgment.
• Try to radically accept your feelings, thoughts, or actions as they are.
• Respect your own experience with willingness.
• Broaden and balance your views on what you are invalidating, putting them in a new context.

Change your response to yourself:

• Act like you take yourself seriously.
• Acknowledge your normative emotions without judging them.
• Identify problematic behavior and try to change it.
• Nurture and support yourself or seek support from others.
• Show the same compassion for yourself as you would for any human.
• Use your wise mind.

Note: Without self-validation, you might criticize yourself, beat yourself up, or feel embarrassment or shame when something happens.You would likely retreat from these emotions and fall into the same self-defeating patterns.

A self-validating pattern after an event might include:

1. Catching self-invalidation early.
2. Noticing your emotions and check the facts. Ask “what happened?” or “what would another non-judgmental person feel?’
3. Watch for more complex emotions like shame, but trust your primary emotions.
4. Don’t call yourself names like “jerk” or “idiot.”
5. Identify what you want and respect it.
6. Identify your vulnerabilities.
7. Ask yourself if what you’re feeling makes sense or if other people would react similarly.
8. Actively tell yourself how your emotions, sensations, and wants make sense.
9. Self-soothe.
10. Re-engage with your life in the moment as a valid, respected person.

Bottom line: Judging yourself usually leads to shame. If you feel shame, check whether you have violated your values. If you have not, try to stay in your primary emotion. Describe your wants and the situation. Try to allow yourself to just be; notice and describe. If you are still struggling to self-validate, ask yourself how you might treat somebody else and give yourself the same respect.