Sometimes interactions are charged with emotion. Often, we react to the escalation only to make it worse. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Kaleb Beyer helps us let the steam out of the charged moment so we can have rational dialogue. The key to doing this is called “validation.”
Validation in interpersonal interactions.
| What it is. | What it does. | What it looks like. | When do you use it? | What it is not. |
| Accepting a person’s experience. | Deescalates charged emotional interactions. | Being curious about another person’s experience. | Heated disagreements. | Not reactive |
| Joining someone in their experience. | Values another’s personhood. | Validating first, correcting second. | When strong negative emotions are present. | Not agreement |
| Understanding a person’s emotional response. | Puts relationship first. | Showing a person that you “see them.” | When you are calm enough to listen. | Not avoiding |
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| Builds connection. | Accept their response. |
| Not argumentative |
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| Legitimatizes other’s response. |
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