Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Validation - Summary of Caroline Flecks Validation

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is Making Sense of Validation, a book summary of validation by Carolyn Fleck and Making Sense of Validation by yours truly, Dr. J.C. Dornick. Makes sense. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This podcast covers topics that expand human consciousness and performance. On the Make Sense podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determine. how well what you do works, and that perception is a subjective and acquired taste. When you change the way that you look at things, the things that you look at begin to change. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored and primarily funded by the Make Sense Academy.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Our private community, where open and curious seekers of growth and expansion, apply the Make Sense principles and systems to move from simply going through life to growing through life. So check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, for less than you'll spend today on shit that you don't need. Welcome, my friends, to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. Validation is a groundbreaking yet often misunderstood communication tool that we either have running on autopilot or not. However, once armed with it in your awareness, it redefines how we interact with ourselves and others by highlighting one of human

Starting point is 00:01:38 connections most overlooked yet vital elements, the need to feel seen, heard, and understood. Author and PhD, Carolyn Fleck, a psychologist and expert in emotional intelligence, walks the reader through the science, psychology, and practical application of validation. Not as a tool for agreement, but as a strategy for connection and emotional regulation. At its core, validation teaches us that people don't need to be right. They need to be real. And for that, they need a space safe enough to let their truth breathe out. So just a quick about the author, Carolyn Fleck, she's a PhD and she's a licensed psychologist

Starting point is 00:02:20 and executive coach with a clinical psychology and organizational behavior background. She specializes in helping people improve their emotional intelligence and interpersonal effectiveness. particularly in high-stakes professional environments. She brings scientific research into everyday conversations through her work, making complex psychological concepts accessible and actionable. Her ability to blend empathy with evidence-based strategies makes her a powerful force and voice in the self-help and leadership realm. Here's a quick summary of what I got from this book.

Starting point is 00:02:56 At its essence, validation dismantles the myth that validation means agreement. Instead, Fleck emphasizes that validation is the act of recognizing and affirming someone's internal experience without needing to fix, correct, or challenge it. The book explores topics like what validation is and what it is not. Why validation matters for emotional regulation, connection, and psychological safety. The neuroscience behind how people respond when they feel invalidated. How invalidation contributes to conflict, disconnection, and internalized shame. Practical frameworks are given as well for validating others and ourselves, especially when

Starting point is 00:03:41 disagreeing. Isn't that interesting how you can validate someone even when you're disagreeing? How to use validation as a leadership, parenting, or relational tool. So here are my top takeaways and insights that I got from this book. Validation is not an agreement. It's an acknowledgement. I drew a correlation between validation and the challenging practice of forgiveness, one that hits home for most of you. Like forgiveness, people struggle to validate someone that they don't align with or agree with.

Starting point is 00:04:12 Fleck reminds us that we can validate someone's feelings without agreeing with the logic of their actions. Validation is about emotional recognition, not intellectual endorsement. I love this as it aligns with the idea of a lot of a lot of. allowing yourself to observe and understand without feeling the need to participate or align with something. That's what I call a power move. Another reason I like the sound of, hmm, which I teach as the signal to pause your conditioned mind. Hmm stands for haven't made up my mind. And it's a tool to elicit the pause of the automatic condition mind. It subtly lets the person know as well that you heard them and you're honoring.

Starting point is 00:04:58 them by thinking about it. Think about that for a second. If you say something and I go, huh, I'm not finished yet and I haven't practiced full on active listening, but I've also let you know that I heard you and I'm thinking about it. Just to a small extent, there's validation in saying, huh, rather than saying nothing. Invalidation triggers survival brain. When someone feels dismissed or misunderstood, and we know this about the science of the stress response system, the amygdala, which is the brain's alarm system, activates and you move into survival mode where fight or flight seems to be your only option. However, on the other end, validation calms the nervous system and allows for the uncrossing

Starting point is 00:05:44 of the arms and for collaboration and things like trust. This unveils the exponential inherent value as a blessing and a gift that validation carries to make someone feel validated. It's actually good for them. But let's say that you don't like the person. This is always a challenge. Why would you want to validate someone? Well, first of all, if you're in a conversation with somebody that you don't like, chances are you're doing it because you want something out of it. So you have to practice this anyway. Let's be real. If you make somebody feel validated, it's just going to make the conversation go that much better. If you want to get out of a conversation, The worst thing you could do is get out of that conversation on a bad note.

Starting point is 00:06:28 So here's another one. Self-validation is the foundation for resilience. We talk a lot about resilience. So it's the foundation for resilience. There's much debate surrounding the effectiveness of positive self-talk and what we call affirmations. This is due to the acknowledgement or perception that there's an artificial nature of practicing positive self-talk or affirming others when you don't actually mean. it. This is why we struggle with this a little bit. This shows up in people's fear of coming off as

Starting point is 00:06:58 artificial and sleazy as a salesman because we don't want to feel like the person that is being perceived that way, so we keep quiet. How we speak to ourselves, however, sets the tone for handling stress, failure, and feedback. Practicing internal validation builds emotional strength. Here's what's cool about this. This is not just about you interfacing and interacting with others, looking to be validated or validating them. This is about you interfacing and interacting with yourself, your own thoughts and feelings, and not just pushing them aside and ignoring them.

Starting point is 00:07:33 Even the weird ones. Validating them is just allowing your thoughts, just like clouds, to appear and either pass on by or get absorbed as something that's relevant and important to you. Here's another one. Validation is the bridge between conflict and compassion. In arguments, people don't need solutions. They need to know that you get it. Validation is what allows people to soften. Uncross those arms again. Listen and open up, which makes for a great conversation

Starting point is 00:08:04 where you're going to find out what you need to find out about them anyway. This is a massive part of my passion for communication and a significant reason that I created my communication breakdown course, which is available soon. It highlights that the true secret to mass. Mastering communication is founded in your intention to seek to understand rather than be understood. Oddly enough, when we look to validate others, the outcome comes back full circle to you. And whatever you have to offer for personal gain or your own self-validation, it becomes more interesting to them because you validated them. So the key here is your intention and authenticity.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Are you seeking to understand or be understood? It's not easy in application, so I recommend that you practice. In her book validation, Fleck identifies three levels of validation, and it's a practical model for you to use. Level one is simply the presence and active listening. This is so key. It's one thing to be a good listener. It's another to be a good active listener.

Starting point is 00:09:13 One who asks reflective questions about what the person said, and what you heard? Why? To validate that you understand. In fact, this is another hidden gem that comes organically when you make sense of something and someone says, it makes sense. Or you say, you know what, it makes sense. If they know or you know that they or you get it, it validates what they said. Make sense? Okay, good. I feel validated. Level two, naming the emotional experience. The key here is communicating with other people, why it makes sense that they are experiencing their emotions or acting the way that they are. You could say something like this. You know, that really makes sense. Let me explain why and maybe reference your own personal experience or story. There's something

Starting point is 00:10:02 real powerful there when you name the emotional experience and you empathetically show them that you understand. So level three, normalizing and affirming the logic of that emotion. When someone says something, your brain might think it's extraordinary and stupid and irrelevant, but you want to learn how to normalize the logic of their emotion. Again, there's no need to agree with it, but just recognize it. This is a massive part of having a healthy communication and relationship with your spouse. Don't try to fix things or rationalize with them or cover it up, even if it's well intended. If my wife is having a rough time and she's kind of flown off the handle, we both can. Why would I try to fix it? She didn't ask me to fix it. She's just wanting me to show that I hear her. So I can actually say, well, you know what? It makes total sense this is happening. I mean, look at everything that you do. Anybody in your situation would be experiencing what you're experiencing. Don't try to fix it or rationalize. Just let them feel heard and understood. So let's have some fun and run this through the interface response system. As a reminder, this is a four-step process that I

Starting point is 00:11:15 created. It'll come out in my book and we teach this in the Make Sense Academy. It's perceive, pause, process, and proceed. And it's a four-step process of acknowledging the importance of putting a pause on your conditioned, reflexive, stress response system, mind and program because it's faulty and it's what gets us in trouble. And stepping into this space where you can process things from a logical and rational standpoint, but more importantly, look at things from a different vantage point, gain new perspective. and things like that and create a better response, one of them being no response because you determine that it doesn't matter. So if we run this through the interface response system, we acknowledge that according to research in interpersonal psychology, one of the top predictors of emotional

Starting point is 00:12:01 safety and relational longevity is the presence of felt validation. When somebody feels truly understood, not judged, or fixed, it creates an opening for trust, collaboration, and intimacy. So the interface response system, as I said before, begins with the conscious awareness of how we typically interface with external stimuli and internal reactions with our conditioned, programmed mind. Validation is the hinge point determining whether our interface response is connected or conflicting. So in phase one, we become aware of this force of validation. Armed with that awareness, it validates the idea of pausing when interacting with somebody to, process what's going on in that space, we can dispute whether or not we're being authentic,

Starting point is 00:12:50 validating them, or just trying to influence them. Those are great questions to ask in the space. This reinforces what I learned on my personal journey, where I caught myself at one point in my life, trying to always be right all the time. I learned that it was an often unconscious attempt to validate myself, however, at the expense of not validating others. Interesting insight. If you're a know-it-all and you're trying to be right, I understand why you're doing that because I did it myself is you're looking to validate yourself. It's an identity thing. But at the expense of not validating others, and that's why it doesn't work. While trying to be heard, I actually made others feel unheard, nearly invisible. The interface response system has been my secret weapon, and it can be yours too. So just my final dragon thoughts. We walk through life with stories that we do. didn't right. Programs passed down, conditioned responses, and inherited wounds. And what most of us are starving for is not advice, correction, or proof that we're right, but a moment of real human contact, a sense that someone is with us in our experience. Validation is not about who's right.

Starting point is 00:14:07 It's about who's being real. And when we learn to validate, not just others, but with ourselves as well, reclaim our power to respond consciously rather than unconsciously react. Make sense? There you have it, folks. If you learn something today, please consider giving it away. That's the only way that it's going to stay. Go put it into play. Okay, have a nice day. Make sense.

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Validation - Summary of Caroline Flecks Validation

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