Emotion Focused Family Therapy

Validation: How To Support Your Children And Spouse When You Really Don’t Want To

January 25, 2018 by Juanita Lepage 2 Comments

Your child rolls his eyes at you.

Your partner complains about her work for the 400^th time and doesn’t take any of your advice.

What is your feeling in each of these situations? Anger, irritation, or annoyance is quite likely.

The First Reaction: Defensiveness

It can be easy to get defensive in these situations – you probably feel disrespected and angry that your child rolled his eyes when you asked him to set the table because you work so hard to provide for that child, you do so much work around the house, and your child doesn’t seem to appreciate your hard work.

You may feel a simmering rage that your partner isn’t taking any of your advice after talking about her frustrations over and over and over. You may want to shout, “Just make a decision!” Or “Stop Complaining!”

The Shift To Validation

Validation is about looking at these situations with a different lens. The lens I’ve described so far is the one where we look at the situation personally and make it about ourselves. “My child is disrespecting ME” or “My partner doesn’t value MY opinion”.

Validation is a choice to shift the lens from ourselves to the other person. Acknowledge your reaction and then take a breath and ask yourself, “What is this person feeling underneath the eye roll or complaining?”

Your son could be feeling angry and annoyed to have to shift from doing something fun to something so incredibly boring such as setting the table. That’s normal behavior for a kid. You are the adult and get to make many decisions for your children. They are the child and must do things you ask them to even if they don’t want to do it. That can be annoying.

Your partner could be really frustrated with work and may just want someone to say, “That sounds really tough, I can imagine how frustrated you are that you are being asked to work more hours/being treated so poorly/working hard and getting zero credit/fill-in-the-blank”.

The goal of validation is to help a person deepen into their emotions about a situation and feel heard. Once these things happen, there can be space for problem solving IF needed.

Believe me, I love to give advice to my family – I don’t want to see them in pain or struggling! I can see possible solutions that maybe they can’t. Yet, if I stop and validate instead, I often don’t have to give any unwanted advice – they can see it for themselves. We often think people are asking for advice, but really, they just want to be heard.

Often, we are uncomfortable with someone else’s emotions and attempt to change their emotion, so that we can feel better.

Connection

Validation is about connection with the heart instead of the mind. I see you. I hear you. We slow down and be more present with that person instead of seeing that the act of dealing with their emotions is another “to do” on our never-ending list. If we stop and take 2 minutes to really be there it can make a world of difference.

When Do I Get To Give My Advice?

After the other person appears to deepen into their emotion or relaxes after feeling heard, then we can ask them if they want our advice or want help solving the problem.

With the child who rolls his eyes, there may be zero advice-giving – sometimes just acknowledging that it’s frustrating can be enough. If there’s more going on in the situation (e.g. swearing at you every time you ask) you can set a boundary AFTER validating them. “You have the right to be annoyed for being asked to do something you don’t like, but it’s not okay to swear me at me”.

With the partner who’s complaining about work all the time, after validating the person you can ask if they want your advice. If you’re too tired to hear about your partner’s work woes, try saying, “I really want to give you my full attention right now, but I just can’t because I’m so exhausted. I’m a crappy listener when I’m exhausted. Can you tell me more when the kids are watching tv after dinner?” And then remember to ask them about their day when the kids are watching tv.

Want to see it in action?

Validation, Movie Style!

This is an enjoyable video to watch. Even if you just watch the first 3 minutes of this video, you will get a feel for what validation can be. The actor TJ Thyne conveys deep connection as he validates others. His words are not as deep (he doesn’t really know the people he’s validating), yet his connection is strong. The rest of the video is more of a short story – interesting but more Hollywood than reality. You don’t need to have this depth of connection to do validation, it’s more important to be authentically you in your connection with your child.

Advanced Skills in Validation

If you have a list in your head of situations or words that are challenging to validate, then consider watching the video by a fellow Social Worker, Natasha Files from Mental Health Foundations. She takes 90 minutes to break it down in the one of the best explanations I have seen. She teaches viewers how to validate phrases like, ‘I’m fat”, or “I give up”, or “It’s too hard”. If you feel stuck and confused about validating, this is a great investment of your time that will help you deepen your connection with family members and save hours of time in frustration with them.

Validation Cheat Sheet (adapted from Emotion-Focused Family Therapy)

Take a breath, acknowledge & notice your urge to be defensive – now shift your lens to them instead of you
Attend to the emotion – be present with the person and notice what could be going on
Label the emotion the other person is feeling (take a guess! It’s okay to be wrong)
- You’re mad at me or
- You’re frustrated with everything going on at work
Validate the emotion
- I can understand why you would feel angry, because you’re being asked to do something you don’t want to do, and that it can be annoying that adults tell you what to do at home and at school all the time
- I can see why you would be frustrated at work because you’re being undervalued, your boss keeps treating you with disrespect, and you’re giving your 100%.
Meet the emotional need
- Give your son space to feel what he needs to feel – let him be annoyed while he sets the table. You can tell him that he still needs to set table (if he isn’t doing it) and you could let him know that you appreciate the help
- Let your spouse know that you’re there for them
Fix/Problem-Solve – ask if they want help solving their problem

Like talking about issues of morality with others, emotions are very similar. We cannot use reason to shift someone’s moral views just as we cannot use reason to shift someone’s emotions. (See my blog post Controversial Conversations With Family & Friends to learn more). Connection is the most powerful tool and validation is great way to connect.

Want to learn more about supporting a child or adult with anxiety? Stay tuned for a post in February.

Anger, What Is It Good For?

October 25, 2017 by Juanita Lepage 2 Comments

My kids and I have been reading a lot of Calvin and Hobbes comic books these days. My kids laugh away at all of Calvin’s silly antics and vivid imagination. They think that his club, Getting Rid of Sliming girlS (GROSS), is hilarious. As a parent I notice that Calvin is angry a lot. My kids notice that there isn’t one adult who really gets Calvin. When Calvin shows anger, no one listens to him and he often gets punished.

Do you remember what you were taught about anger as a child?

Who was allowed to be angry in your home?

Who wasn’t allowed to be angry in your home?

What were the repercussions for showing your anger?

Now fast-forward to your current relationship with your partner and/or children and answer the same questions.

Who is allowed to be angry in your home?

Who isn’t allowed to be angry in your home?

What are the repercussions in your home for showing anger?

The unwritten rules about anger

Many of the rules about anger expression are unwritten in our families and in our cultures. We don’t have to be told what the rules are, but we all know them even if they have not been said.

Some common unsaid rules are:

You’re not supposed to be angry because anger means you are not grateful
Only parents (or one parent) are allowed to be angry
Only my children are allowed to be angry, but not me. As an adult I should know better.
Anger is only for people who had have something “really bad” happen to them.
If you show your anger, you are bad in some way.
If your child shows anger, they are bad in some way.
Anger needs to be controlled and managed.
Showing anger means you’re out of control

What are the unsaid rules about anger in your home?

Anger’s makeover

My inbox has received a variety of advertising for courses and webinars about anger. The trend right now is a shift from anger management to acknowledging anger, feeling anger in your body, validating anger, and transforming anger.

Emotion-focused family therapy is a great tool for exploring a family’s expression of anger and its impact on child and youth mental health. A child who never expresses anger may demonstrate depression. A child who always expresses anger but never feels heard may show more behavioural problems. A child who is angry about going to school may have anxiety. A powerful way to help children with mental health issues is to explore ways to support our children’s anger and our own anger too.

We don’t need to be comfortable with anger or resolve all of our own issues with anger to support our children with their anger. Small changes can make big impacts.

Anger needs to be met with curiosity. Often there are many other emotions underneath anger, but anger is the emotion being expressed. Anger in ourselves and others needs to be met with a lot of compassion and validation in combination with boundary setting.

The next time you get angry at someone, first acknowledge you have a right to be angry, and then ask yourself what expectation has not been met? What is it about the situation that makes you angry? What other emotions are you feeling? Working with a counsellor or therapist can be a great way to explore this in more depth. If you notice that you have been feeling a lot of anger towards a partner, your kids, or others, then counselling can help you transform anger, shift your outlook, or make changes if needed.

If you are a person who is interested in exploring your own journey with anger as a parent, there is a new movement in conscious parenting. Anger is being understood to be a feeling that emerges when an expectation has not been met. It is an emotion that can be fuel in making changes in our society and within ourselves.

If you are a fan of Dr. Shefali (author of both The Awakened Parent and Conscious Parenting), she has an excellent course for parents about the anatomy of anger and how to transform it in a conscious way. It is called Anger Transformed.

Anger has had a very bad reputation. The good news is that its’ reputation is on the edge of being transformed.

The Myth of Perfect Parenting

October 18, 2017 by Juanita Lepage Leave a Comment

How many books and articles are there about parenting in this world? Fifty-two million, three hundred and twenty-two thousand, one hundred and forty-five. Okay, so I don’t know the exact number, but there are too many to count. What is it that we are all seeking as parents?

How to get our children to sleep better,
How to get them respect us and others,
How to deal with their anger and emotions,
How to parent a child with different mental health issues,
Raising a creative child,
Raising a sensitive child,
Better communication
How to help kids when there is divorce and separation
and on and on…

There are many books and articles that will indeed help us as parents with sleep, communication, creativity, mental health and so much more. I remember watching a YouTube video in the middle of the night about swaddling when my oldest was a few days old – it was very helpful. I also keep reminders around my place to remind me to validate my children. My favourite sequence is from Emotion-Focused Family Therapy:

Observe the Emotion
Label the Emotion
Validate the Emotion
Meet the Emotional Need
(Fix/Problem Solve) – (which is written in italics because it’s optional.)

Learning ways to guide and support our children is always helpful.

But then, in the search for good parenting, there is a mythology that somewhere amid all the parenting tricks and tips that somewhere there is a perfect balance of boundary setting and validation with our children. Somewhere there is a perfect balance of compassion and firmness. If we find it, what will we have… Peace? Freedom? Validation? Happiness? Harmony? What do you hope to have?

I want peace and relaxation and fun. Wouldn’t it be something if I announced that we’re having chicken for dinner and my kids shouted, “Hooray!” Or if we took them for a hike and they were so grateful for being outdoors. Wouldn’t it be great if they just went to sleep and slept until 8am? How about enthusiasm and gratefulness for having food, clothing, and shelter? How about if I made a rule about less screen time and they agreed with me because they could see how it made sense for their greater well-being.

I must admit that if my kids started acting like all my ideas were great, that I would wonder if I had entered a portal into a different dimension.

The truth of it all is that our children would continue to do many things we don’t like even if we became perfect parents.

So where does that leave us? Is there no point in changing our parenting style? Do we have no control about the outcome of the future? Does that mean we don’t need to change anything as parents? No! Our children benefit so much from our interest in shifting and changing things that aren’t working in our families. In fact, we should be giving ourselves a high-five and some kind words. The purpose of this article isn’t to tell you that all those articles and books are crap or tell you all that work you did was a waste of time. In fact, the opposite is true.

But, if we’re reading a parenting book with the hope of controlling the future outcomes of our children or our relationships with our children, then we are likely to be disappointed.

A lot of parenting books and articles will help us to a certain level with our children. At the same time, if you want to have longer lasting change within the relationship with your child, or you’re in a space where the guidance in books and articles aren’t working, then it may be a time to look within yourself.

If we explore our own wounds and defenses as we parent our children, it can be amazing to see the dynamics shift with our children. We teach our children that we are not perfect and that is okay. We teach them that it is okay to ask for help. We teach them that we are not God and they don’t need to respect us because we are their parents but because we show behavior that is respectable. We can hold boundaries with our children with respect and love. We can react more often with kindness and openness and less out of defensiveness. Ultimately it can help us have a deeper connection with our children.

The types of things we search for about help with parenting say a lot about our hopes and wishes about parenting. We often start by looking at the problems we are having with our children, and then we can use that problem to shift the lens onto ourselves.

A few questions to reflect on might be:

What are you seeking for yourself when you look at a parenting book or article?
What are you trying to control that don’t have control over right now?
What do you seek more from your child – respect or acceptance? What happens if you don’t get it? How do you feel if you don’t get it?
What are you more sensitive to with your children, disrespect or rejection?
What are your expectations in your relationship with your children?
What are your expectations about parenting?

Think of the best parent you know – do you think that their children always do what they want? Do you think that parent never gets defensive? What is it that you admire about that parent? This will also give us clues about what we are seeking as we raise our children. If you’re feeling bold, ask that parent you admire what it’s like in their household. If they say, “Everything’s fine all the time”, they’re lying.

As a therapist who is a parent, I can tell you that I still yell sometimes and I lose my temper. I will try and tell my children to do things because I said so. My kids didn’t sleep through the night after 1 year. I have said things that I regret to my children. My kids have been angry at me. I get into parenting situations where I really don’t know what to do or say. But THAT is parenting. Amid all the joys and pleasures of parenting there are also the struggles no matter the parenting style. Self-reflection helps me have compassion for myself in those times when I feel more inclined to feel ashamed or judgmental of myself.

We have lived in a culture where there is a myth that there is a possibility of finding perfect parenting. There is a myth that we can prepare ourselves for any situation with our child. There is a myth that parenting is about control. These expectations are false. Parenting can be messy and chaotic. We will all make mistakes – that is a guarantee. We will all do things we will regret later. That’s life as a human. The goal of parenting is not perfection. One style of parenting does not fit all.

If you want to see longer lasting change with the problems you are experiencing with your children, consider the courageous act of self-reflection and change. As you make changes within yourself you are likely to feel more freedom, peace, and satisfaction as a parent.

If you enjoy the show Modern Family, consider watching Season 3 episode 23 (on Netflix if you have it). The dynamic between Cameron and his sister-in-law Claire as they try to behave as adults while they parent completely differently is especially comedic. If you follow the show over the years you will see that neither of their parenting styles are better than the other. As a viewer we can find strengths and faults in both styles. Both parents want the best for their children using very different approaches.