What Happened When I Deconstructed the Communication Skill of Validation
August 27th, 2026 - There are several distinct memories I have from 2020, the year everything changed. I had never thought I could do therapy online, but here we were, meeting in people’s bedrooms, bathrooms (yes! bathrooms), cars, and beyond. Because we weren’t meeting behind the closed doors of my office, clients had the opportunity to bring in their partners, kids, pets, and parents. I got an inside look at how things were in their native environments. I met with kids and their parents while they lounged on beds and sat at kitchen tables. It was there where I saw dynamics I had only heard about secondhand.
It was there that I realized, though I had always known it intellectually not experientially, that I was only hearing one side of the story. Not only that, but I was beginning to realize that I had been identifying the incorrect problem when I heard my clients talk about their frustrations with the people they lived and those they worked with. Most of the time it wasn’t a personality conflict or a breakdown in communication, at least not in the way we often think of it. It wasn’t that, it was something else.
“You just don’t get it”
The one occasion spotlighted in my memory was between a teenager and their mother. Then I noticed the pattern with just about every such circumstance—each one a repeat of the other, just different places, different people, different topics of discussion or conflict, and inevitable the same outcome, ending with these four words: You just don’t get it.
The missing piece was the feeling of being heard, of being validated.
So I found scripts for the one who needed to do the validating, usually parents. I watched how again and again the parent would, indeed, “get it,” but the child didn't have the felt experience of the parent “getting it.” I then set about deconstructing this thing we call validation.
How did it work? What is needed for the person who is wanting/needing to be validated to have that experience? What is the experience of being validated? How do we know in our bones that the other person gets it, gets us, without question? How do we move from feeling ineffectual in our efforts to connect—to connection and feeling validated? And what gets in the way of that?
Another distinct memory from 2020 was a conversation I had with a colleague and mentor. She asked me, “What’s the one thing that you wished parents could give their teenagers so that they can actually grow up and be adults?” She indicated that in her work with couples often it felt like having two teenagers in the room. “How do we prevent that? What can parents do so that two people who love one another know how to talk to one another without tearing each other apart?” (Not her exact words, but certainly it was the sentiment.)
The answer literally rose up within me—this was before I had started the work of figuring out what validation was. I was feeling so stuck with some of my teen clients and their relationships with their parents. I was frustrated with the parents that they couldn’t validate their kids. I was frustrated with the kids because they weren’t accepting their parents’ good intentions to validate. I said to my colleague, I’d teach them to validate their kids. I knew at that moment I was speaking a deep truth.
What I found
I found that validation is a simple communication process but it isn’t easy. I guess we could say that it is complex in its simplicity. I found that to be validated is a subjective experience, which seems so obvious in hindsight. We can go through the scripts, the suggested things to say, in our attempts to validate someone. But in many situations, especially where the relationship is new or already fraught with landmines, that these scripts don’t work, and the person is left feeling frustrated and helpless in their efforts to validate and connect.
I found that there is some front end work needed before we even say a word to the other person. In other words, we must enter into the conversation or the conflict with a certain mindset and goal. I found that when we stay with the process, we ourselves are validated, and that often we find that what we thought was validating was not and that what we thought we were attempting to validate was incorrect.
What happened then
I have continued to study and observe interactions where communication breaks down, and inevitably, it almost always comes back to this initial foundational flaw in the interaction—one or both parties feel invalidated. So someone needs to start the validation process.
I call these discoveries the Guiding Principles of Validation. I continue to add to them. These Guiding Principles can be nuanced and helpful when looking for where things get stuck and the process of validation isn’t going anywhere.
The most important thing I found as I deconstructed the process of validation and put together the 9-step map of a validating interaction was it gave me a tremendous sense of confidence that I could navigate any difficult conversation, any great divide between me and another, and that we’d find a way to connect. I trust the process and the map.
I have taught the validation process to hundreds of folks all over the world over these last 6 years. I use it in my personal and professional life 24/7. It saved my relationship with my estranged oldest son. I hear from participants of the workshops how it has changed their lives and their relationships. I’ve had people from all walks of life take the workshops and read the blogs and the ebook. People write to me and let me know how the work healed wounded fractures in important relationships. I’ve been told to take the 9 steps to town halls, city council meetings, and all the way to Congress.
Hopes and dreams
I will be teaching the 9 step practice to a school district’s human service providers this fall, fulfilling a dream that I’ve been working toward to bring this work into the schools. I can see it changing schools and communities. I’ve begun to seriously play around with the idea of validating ecologies and how this work can change the world around us.
I have continued to feel the solidity of this practice, how it keeps the ground beneath my feet through some fairly raucous earthquakes. I continue to be amazed by and validated (no pun intended!) that it is, indeed, the communication skill that changes everything.
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