alt Hacker News> they're actually trying to process those feelings: to understand where the feelings are coming from, to be validated, and to be able to take a broader perspective.
If you’re speaking to a rational person with good intentions and good self-management this can help a lot.
If the other person doesn’t have good emotional regulation and is prone to catastrophizing, exaggeration, or excessive self-victimization then validating and reinforcing their emotions isn’t always helpful. It can be harmful.
I know this goes against the Reddit-style relationship stereotype where the man must always listen and nod but not offer suggestions, but when someone is prone to self-destructive emotional thought loops behind their emotional validator can be actively harmful. Even if validation is what they seek and want.
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Being able to separate these situations out is part of ‘emotional problem solving’. Just like any problem solving, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all cases.
I think the important bit is to recognize that emotions are separate from (although related to) the situation itself. The problem many people have is approaching emotional problems as simply symptoms of the underlying practical problem, and that the way to solve the emotional problem is to simply go directly to solving the underlying practical problem.
Now, sometimes this is the correct approach. However, many times it isn’t. Sometimes the practical problem is not solvable by you or the person you are talking to. Sometimes the practical problem is actually not really a problem and is simply triggering something else. Sometimes you just need someone to share some pain, or some joy, or just need a connection with someone.
A good emotional problem solver can navigate all of these situations.
> then validating and reinforcing their emotions isn’t always helpful
I think you might misintrepet what "validating someone's emotions" is/should do. It's not "You're absolutely right for feeling completely sad and broken down because the cafe wasn't open", but more "That must be such a horrible feeling, to feel so sad and broken down", without saying "yes/no" to if you think it's "justified or not".
The point is that the person is feeling what they're feeling, that's what the validation and acceptance comes in, not about what they're feeling those feelings about.
In the end, you can validate someone's feelings without validating what they're feeling those about, by just saying "that sucks".
It really matters how self-destructive the talking person tends to be.
I think you missed the bit where they suggested being curious and offering perspective - it really does work out differently
It can be a challenging skill to apply, and you need to use your judgement to discern whether the other person is in a place to engage with what you say.
One comment I'd make is the difference between "valid" and "rational". Emotions and feelings are always "valid", in the sense that they are a natural consequence of events and prior conditioning. But feelings are rarely "rational" - they often don't reflect the complete truth of a situation. For example, suppose someone says "Jennifer sent me this short snippy reply today, I swear she's upset with me about something and won't tell me what it is". It is perfectly legitimate to validate that you can see where that fear comes from, but nevertheless offer alternative possibilites: maybe Jennifer is going through a tough time personally, or has a really tight work schedule at the moment. You don't have to fully buy into someone's thoughts and feelings in order to help them process them. In fact this is rarely going to help.