Validate: acknowledge what makes sense about their perspective

Find the part of their view that is understandable given their experience — and say so.

Why it works

Validation is not agreement. Saying "I understand why you’d feel that way given what you’ve been through" does not mean "you are right." It means "your response makes sense as a response." This distinction is critical: validation removes the need to win the argument about whose perception is correct, which is usually the engine of escalation, without requiring you to abandon your own position. Validated people are more willing to hear your perspective in return.

How to do it

1. Find one thing in their position that genuinely makes sense: a value, a past experience, a reasonable concern.
2. Name it explicitly: "Given what happened before, it makes sense that you’d be cautious about this."
3. Validate before asserting your own position — sequencing matters.

Evidence

Validation is a central component of DBT and has specific evidence in therapeutic settings for reducing patient distress and increasing therapeutic alliance. In interpersonal contexts, felt-validation consistently reduces defensive reactivity. Shenk and Fruzzetti demonstrated experimentally that invalidating responses raise emotional and physiological reactivity while validating ones dampen it, giving the mechanism direct causal support outside the therapy room. (clinical)

DBT validation evidence is primarily from clinical therapy populations; the mechanism (felt-safety reducing defensiveness) is well supported but the specific effect in everyday interpersonal conflict is less directly trialed.

Sources

• Linehan (1997), validation in dialectical behavior therapy, Cognitive and Behavioral Practice
• Linehan, M. M. (1997). Validation and psychotherapy. In A. C. Bohart & L. S. Greenberg (Eds.), Empathy reconsidered: New directions in psychotherapy (pp. 353-392). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Shenk, C. E., & Fruzzetti, A. E. (2011). The impact of validating and invalidating responses on emotional reactivity. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 30(2), 163-183.

Common mistake

Using "I understand but..." as a validation, which signals that the validation was a setup for dismissal — the "but" erases the validation. Validate fully before moving to your own perspective.