I do think there’s a time and a place. But… yeah, not everywhere.

It’s to my mind the same reasoning as that used by those who support normalisation of autistic people.

But yes– I’ve certainly seen instances where ‘validating someone’s feelings’ was considered to be an acceptable substitute for helping them, or when someone was permitted to act abusively towards others under the guise of ‘needing to express their feelings.’ Pop psychology acts as a promoter of these attitudes; ‘relationship gurus’ like the infamous John Gray have made millions of dollars by informing troubled spouses that women don’t actually *want their problems solved*; they just *want their feelings validated.* In other words, it’s better to say “I understand why you’re upset, honey. It’s okay for you to feel that way,” than to help out with a situation which is continuing to make her upset for good reason. (Conversely, it’s also okay for men to lash out at women if the woman intrudes on their masculine territory, by the same kind of thinking, because he’s just expressing the feelings that come naturally to him.)

I think I’ve had both ends of the stick handed to me, at different times in my life. There have been times when I asked someone to tone down their aggressive or abrasive attitude towards me because I found it upsetting, and was told that this would not happen because ’emotions are for the weak’ and that I was weak for being offended. Or someone justified an outright attack as “I’m just telling you the truth, even if you don’t like it.”

And then, on the other hand, I’ve also been told to basically shut up because I was ‘being hurtful’ and ‘attacking others’ when I was doing nothing but pointing out the truth as I saw it. My mother, in particular, was fond of this strategy– to claim I was hurting her feelings by challenging her position on any subject, even just to present evidence against any of her views. (She also claimed I was hurting her by objecting to her barrages of verbal abuse against certain other family members, because by doing so, I wasn’t “letting her have her feelings.” This, apparently, took precedence over everything else, including hurt that might be caused to *me* by having to listen to her throw around lies about them.) In ways, she was an awful lot like the curebie parents complaining about their hurt feelings. She also instructed me repeatedly and explicitly to lie to others when I had any kind of negative feeling about them– not just to take a “smile and nod” approach, but to carry out the pretense of liking someone as a masquerade for years on end.

The message I got from this was that relationships are too fragile to withstand the truth. It’s something that’s haunted me for years, in that it put an extreme damper on my ability to express or acknowledge my real opinions, and I still fight against it a lot. It’s hurt me in more ways than the abstract. It resulted in me allowing myself to be abused because I was afraid I would hurt someone’s feelings or turn them against me if I said “no.”

I also think we’re seeing something of a backlash against the concept of ‘everyone needs to be allowed to expess their feelings’ in the form of the ‘snark culture’ that’s been developing online, where any kind of expression of vulnerability or personal problems is derided as “drama” and “emo.” This kind of scares me too. I co-moderate a community where people seem to be constantly prefacing a request for advice or help with “Sorry for all the emo/drama/whining, but…” (even when it’s perfectly reasonable to be asking for help). That’s… not exactly my idea of a good antidote to the ‘everyone’s feelings must be validated’ therapy culture.

I think this misses out something. Aren’t people’s thoughts and feelings about things ultimately determined by that person’s material experiences? I would certainly argue that they are.

In other words, “What she said!” and “Amen”!

Oh Amanda, this is such an important post in general IMHO. I think the tendency to rely on emotion is probably at the very heart of the “curbie” culture – definitely capable and often purposefully ignoring reality. By the way, I love the look of your new site!