Mental Health Awareness Month Day 9.
Being validated and heard is crucial to getting unstuck.
The darkest times in my life have been when I don’t feel heard. When what I’m feeling hasn’t been validated. When I feel alone. When I feel crazy. When I feel lost. When I feel scared. When I feel hopeless. When I feel like I am the only one in the world feeling this way.
The reality is that we are never alone. We may experience different things, but we feel the same emotions. There is always someone somewhere feeling similar things that you are feeling. Even if we know this and remember it, we don’t always feel it in our moment of despair. So how do we get out of that dark abyss? How do we climb out of the hole?
Voicing our thoughts and feelings is a start. In accord with that, being heard and validated goes a long way. But that is not generally a person’s initial response to us when we feel stuck or not okay. They usually just want to fix us and/or the situation, even though most of the time they can’t do either. Cheryl Richardson, a self-care expert said, “People start to heal the moment they feel heard.”
What does it mean to be heard? The answer may seem obvious, but I don’t think it’s as obvious as we think. When we speak to someone, are they actually listening? Or are they thinking about the next thing they’re going to say? Or tuning out because what we’re saying is hard to hear? Or are they busying themselves with something on their phone? Etc. (More on this is a later post.) Are they really hearing us?
What does it mean to be validated? I think this is where we may get confused. Validating someone’s thoughts and feelings doesn’t have to mean we accept it as truth and/or fact. It means we acknowledge that those thoughts and feelings are REAL to THAT person and we UNDERSTAND that.
Being validating and heard is important in all relationships. This is key to our well-being. Just like it can make or break a relationship, it can help or hurt someone struggling with mental illness.
Just last night I had a difficult conversation with someone I have known for years. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. It could have gone really poorly just by nature of what we were talking about. But it went as well as it could have gone given the circumstances because we were understanding and accepting of each other.
Validating and hearing others is one of the best things we can do for those we love and care about, especially when they are in crisis.
This afternoon I kept feeling a pull to my guitar, which I haven’t played in months and months, possibly years. I usually would push that voice down and justify avoiding my guitar because I haven’t played in ages, I’m not that good, I don’t have calluses, etc. (I could come up with excuses all day.) But I listened. And I validated and heard myself today by playing my guitar.
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