How to make someone feel seen and heard

Need to know

If you’re like most people, you probably have at least one insecurity or past experience that you keep close to the vest, something you wouldn’t want most people to know. It might be a memory of when you acted against your values, or a perceived weakness you don’t want others to discover. Try to think of something that meets these criteria. Now, picture yourself disclosing this ‘secret’ for the first time to someone you hold in high regard, and envision them reacting in a way that makes you feel seen. Imagine if, instead of being judged, you felt understood. What if the rejection you feared was supplanted by the acceptance you long for?

The term psychologists use to describe what you’re envisioning in this situation is validation. Validation communicates that one is mindful of, understands and empathises with another person’s experience, thereby accepting it as valid. Or, as I like to put it, validation shows that ‘you’re there, you get it and you care’. I basically just had you imagine a scenario in which you felt validated by someone you care about. My aim was to illustrate what validation feels like and the effects it might have.

But the focus of this article isn’t on getting people to validate you; it’s on how you can validate them. Because as great as it is to receive validation, it’s all the more transformative when you know how to provide it. The research on validation makes it seem like an actual superpower. Specifically, studies have demonstrated that validating others can empower you to:

• Improve relationships. Validation changes how relationships feel, resulting in increased intimacy, psychological safety and trust. Through its effects on trust and safety, validation helps build new relationships, strengthen healthy ones and repair those that are in trouble.
• Decrease conflict. Research suggests that validation can reduce activation in the sympathetic nervous system. It helps to neutralise conflict in a wide range of contexts, from marriages to parent-child relationships and even in interrogations.
• Increase influence. Validation can increase the probability that people will seek you out and act on what you suggest. Neuroimaging research even suggests that validation activates the so-called reward regions of the brain. When used as positive reinforcement, validation has been shown to contribute to a variety of behavioural changes, even in difficult cases such as curbing opioid abuse.
• Increase self-compassion. Just as a solitary meditation practice improves the ability to be mindful of others, the practice of validating others helps you direct validation inward. Self-validation is a critical component of self-compassion and is necessary for cultivating it.

While the effects of validation are wide-reaching, most of the work that’s gone into developing and teaching validation skills has focused on therapists, who must hone these skills to provide therapies based on them. But therapists aren’t the only ones capable of mastering validation. I’ve spent the past decade exploring how to translate and teach validation skills to non-therapists for the purposes of improving their personal relationships and professional dynamics.

You don’t need to be a sensitive person or an ‘empath’ to develop good validation skills. Ironically, I’ve found that folks who are innately more sensitive and take to these skills naturally are less inclined to practise and, therefore, less likely to master them. Emotional sensitivity is an advantage, that’s for sure, but without practise, that advantage will only take you so far.

What validation is – and what it isn’t

Before drilling down on the validation skills themselves, you’ll need more than a surface understanding of the concept. Because validation is widely misunderstood, it’s helpful to distinguish it from the terms with which it’s often confused:

• Validation is not praise. Praise is a judgment – it says: I like the way you look or perform. Validation demonstrates acceptance – it says: I accept who you are independent of how you look or perform. When people claim that we shouldn’t rely on external validation, they are confusing validation with praise.
• Validation is not problem-solving. Problem-solving focuses on changing someone’s reaction by suggesting solutions to specific problems, eg, ‘I know you didn’t do well on that spelling test; why don’t we try reviewing your words on the way to school next time?’ Validation, on the other hand, focuses on acknowledging the situation and the validity of someone’s response to it: ‘You studied so hard; I can understand why you are upset.’
• Validation is not agreement. I can validate why someone would have concerns about protecting an unborn fetus even if I am pro-choice. If the idea of validating an opinion you disagree with makes you nervous, rest assured that validating another person’s perspective does not necessarily function to reinforce it. On the contrary, people tend to get entrenched in their views when they feel like they have to defend their position, or attack yours. A validating response from you leaves nothing to attack, much less anything to defend against.

Importantly, validation attends only to the valid parts of a person’s experience. One’s experience is composed of thoughts, emotions and behaviour. In the context of validation, clinical psychologists consider thoughts to be valid if they are logical or reasonable based on the facts of a situation. Behaviours are considered valid if they are effective given one’s long-term goals. As for emotions, well, you can presume that emotions are always valid.

Certain parts of a person’s experience might be valid even when other parts are invalid. For example, if someone has been led to believe that there is an imminent threat of an alien invasion, they would understandably feel anxious and fearful. Anxiety and fear are valid reactions to an impending danger. It also makes sense that this individual would vote for a politician who has a plan for dealing with the alien invasion. Their thoughts in this scenario are invalid as they’re based on misinformation, but their emotions and behaviour are reasonable given the misinformation they are operating on. Importantly, focusing on the valid parts of someone’s response will make you much more effective in challenging the invalid aspects of it.

Understanding what validation is will help you recognise when it’s happening or not happening in a conversation. But to harness its power, you must develop your skills for communicating it.

What to do

The framework I developed for teaching validation skills is called the ‘validation ladder’. It includes three sections of skills, arranged in order of strength: mindfulness, understanding, and empathy. Mindfulness here means simply observing without judgment. Understanding suggests that you see a person’s reaction, or some part of it, as logical or justifiable. And empathy means connecting with another person’s emotions.

The mindfulness skills we’ll start with are very straightforward and can be used in virtually any situation, even if you can’t stand the person you’re talking to. The empathy skills that come later are typically the most powerful and usually the most difficult to execute. They communicate mindfulness, understanding and empathy in one fell swoop.

You always want to go for the most powerful skills you can authentically use to validate someone. When you don’t understand or can’t empathise with another person’s experience, the mindfulness skills might be as far as you can go toward validating them. However, if you can understand or empathise, those higher skill sets are likely to serve you best. Fortunately, if you strike out with one of the skills higher up the ladder, you can always regain your footing by returning to an easier skill set.

Together, the skills form the acronym ACCEPTED, which is how people will feel if you’re effective in using them. The best way to develop these skills is to focus on one set of skills at a time. You might spend a week working on just the mindfulness skills and then another on the understanding skills. For each skill set, try to practise the skills yourself when opportunities come up in everyday interactions, and pay attention when others use them: podcast interviews and late-night shows are rife with examples of validation. In my experience, mastering the validation ladder is a lot like learning to type – you must put some effort into learning and mapping these skills, but with repeated use, they quickly become ingrained.

Be mindful of the other person: Attend and Copy

Attending means paying attention and listening without judgment, in a way that shows interest and cultivates understanding. Signalling that you’re listening to someone might not seem particularly validating, but attention is critical to connection. It’s also the easiest way to engage when you don’t agree with, understand, or empathise with another person’s perspective. If politics have driven a wedge in your relationship, for example, Attending might be the only skill you can use to keep the inevitable conversations civil. Importantly, it not only demonstrates interest and nonjudgment but also helps to cultivate these qualities in ways that foster actual dialogue.

One way to go about Attending is through non-verbal behaviours. The big four to focus on are:

• eye contact;
• head nodding;
• gestures (hand to the chin in thoughtfulness, etc); and
• proximity (leaning in or being physically close).

Research suggests that of all the non-verbal behaviours you might use in a conversation, these are among the most effective at signalling attention, connection and safety. You don’t need to worry about making your non-verbals super obvious; just a gentle self-reminder to use them is sufficient. The key to being natural is to be intentional about what you’re doing without focusing too much on how it looks.

Another way to practise Attending is what I call the A Game. This is your (and many psychologists’) key trick when you’re not particularly interested in or disagree with the other person’s perspective, because it forces you to pay closer attention. To play the A Game, try to collect the information you need to answer this two-parter:

1. What’s a better way to make this person’s point?
2. Why does it matter to them?

Note: you can ask questions and make comments, but when you’re using this practise, try to stick to ones that demonstrate interest or an effort to understand their perspective. Questions like ‘What do you make of that?’ demonstrate interest and facilitate understanding.

On the surface, it might seem like playing the A Game could be distracting. And it is, if you’re also trying to formulate a rebuttal or articulate your own perspective. When Attending, however, the aim is to be genuinely mindful of the other person’s experience. Rather than splitting your attention between what someone is saying about an issue and what you want to say, purposefully Attending decreases the cognitive load by forcing you to focus on just one of these processes at a time.

Copying has you reflect or mirror another person’s words or behaviour. It simply needs to convey that you are paying attention and listening without judgment. Again, this one works well when you don’t agree with, understand, or empathise with another person (yet).

One way to go about copying is to copy their words by literally repeating what someone said or summarising their points. When copying another person’s words, I often focus on the adjectives they use to describe a situation or emotion. For instance, if someone told me the movie they watched was ‘beautiful’, I might say: ‘Beautiful, hmm.’

Another approach is to copy their ways by mirroring their body language. If someone raises their eyebrows while talking about their surprise, for example, I might do the same. I don’t focus on making a production out of what I’m doing. While people naturally mimic each other’s behaviours some of the time, you might be less likely to do it when you feel disinterested or judgmental. A gentle self-reminder is all you might need.

Show that you understand: Contextualise, Equalise, and Propose

Contextualising acknowledges that something a person does or feels makes sense in some context, even if it seems ineffective or unjustified. As an understanding skill, it demonstrates not only that you’re paying attention but that you see the logic behind someone’s thoughts, behaviour, or emotions.

This can take many forms, but it always has the essence of ‘given X, Y makes sense’. If I’m speaking with someone who’s embarrassed about the fact that they’re still afraid to drive following a car crash years ago, I might say: ‘I know the accident was a long time ago, but I imagine it doesn’t feel that way to your body when you get in the driver’s seat.’ When a client of mine felt suspicious of her new partner for ‘no apparent reason’, I validated her mistrust by saying, ‘I can see why it would be hard to trust people given your ex’s infidelity.’

If you know the person well or are familiar with their life experiences, contextualising can be intuitive. If not, you can often find the links you need to contextualise some part of another person’s reaction by playing the A Game I described earlier. We are all subject to the laws of conditioning and the associations we’ve made in the past. Acknowledging the context in which a person’s reaction makes sense is a gentle way to recognise where they’re coming from. At its best, contextualising says: I see how the world has shaped you, and I don’t judge you for it.

Equalising communicates that a person’s reaction is reasonable or justified, using a somewhat different approach. I sometimes refer to this as the ‘anyone in your shoes would feel the same’ skill, as that’s often the form it takes – eg, ‘It makes sense that you’d want a second opinion; I’d want one too if I were in your shoes’, or, ‘I can see why you pulled your daughter off the soccer team, I wouldn’t want my child being coached by someone who belittled them like that.’ In other words, the person you’re speaking with is not unusual; another person’s reaction would equal their own.

Equalising isn’t more or less validating than Contextualising. They’re just used in different circumstances. Contextualising works well when you need to trace a longer or less obvious chain of cause and effect to understand someone’s reaction, whereas Equalising acknowledges when someone’s response is understandable given the immediate situation. It is particularly important when a person tends to doubt their own reactions to what they experience.

Proposing means to state what you think another person might be thinking, feeling, or wanting to do in a situation. A very simple example would be saying ‘You must be starving’ to someone who forgot their lunch. In therapy, I’ve said things like: ‘You must be thinking about divorce’, when someone came to me after learning that their partner was unfaithful. When my grandmother passed away, I told my dear aunt, who had become her primary caregiver: ‘I wonder if you don’t feel some peace or even relief now that she’s passed.’

You may imagine yourself in the other person’s position to intuit what they might be thinking or feeling. Or it could emerge from the Attending and Copying practices, after you’ve listened closely to what they’ve shared so far. In my work with clients, I often focus on Proposing something that the client may be thinking or feeling but is hesitant to surface. For instance, I might say: ‘I imagine you’re feeling demoralised right now.’

When what you Propose in these situations resonates, there’s often a sense of coming together. Being able to communicate something the other person hasn’t articulated (or perhaps hasn’t even realised) means you’re deeply attuned, not only to the conversation, but to the individual. If you get it wrong, however, the attempt might create distance. Fortunately, you can recover from mistakes by returning to other skills. When a validation attempt falls flat, it could be because you weren’t paying sufficient attention or your understanding was incomplete. Returning to the skills of Attending and Copying is the surest way to address the disconnect. Taking in feedback from the other person and adjusting your approach is validating in and of itself. Most people will appreciate the opportunity to talk to someone who is genuinely trying to listen.

Demonstrate empathy: Take Action, Emote, and Disclose

Taking Action has you directly intervene on another person’s behalf. For example, imagine that your spouse usually cooks dinner for the family, but they just got fitted for a cast after breaking an ankle, so they are struggling to get around the kitchen. You could try to validate their frustration by saying: ‘That makes sense, nobody would want to make dinner while balancing on one foot.’ But in this situation, unless you actually step in to help with dinner, they’re unlikely to feel validated.

As an empathy skill, Taking Action has you go above and beyond acknowledging (as with mindfulness skills) and thinking logically about someone’s experience (understanding skills). It requires you to invest yourself in the situation. It’s the ‘put your money where your mouth is’ skill, and sometimes, it’s the only way to show that you’re there, you get it and you care.

Taking Action involves some risk, as intervening can sometimes constitute a form of enabling behaviour that prevents the other person from doing what they ought to do themselves. To avoid enabling, you can always ask yourself the ‘to act or not to act’ questions. They might not all apply, but you can feel more confident about Taking Action if you can answer ‘yes’ to the questions that seem relevant:

• Does the other person lack the resources to intervene themselves?
• Do they lack the skills to do what is required, and if so, are they incapable of developing them?
• Is Taking Action in this scenario consistent with my values?

Aside from filling in or assisting someone, there are plenty of other meaningful, albeit less flashy, ways to Take Action in your relationships. Clicking the link and actually reading the article your sister emailed to you, leaving a heartfelt Yelp review for your favourite yoga instructor, and replying promptly to an email when you know someone is anxiously awaiting your response all count as Taking Action. The actions taken are almost always welcomed in these sorts of scenarios, and their impact often far exceeds the effort that goes into them. This isn’t about just being helpful; these actions show that you value, care about, and are emotionally attuned to the other person.

Emoting means openly expressing your feelings, specifically, your feelings in response to another person’s experience. Emoting is distinct from Copying – Copying mimics another person’s reaction; Emoting reveals your own.

You’ve got three ways to go about Emoting:

1. non-verbal behaviour, such as a dropped jaw that shows your surprise at what the other person has experienced;
2. labelling your emotions, eg, ‘I’m so angry he said that to you’; and
3. implying what you feel by describing what you think, eg, ‘I can’t believe he said that to you.’

When you allow yourself to express what you’re feeling in these ways, you enter into the other person’s experience, not as a spectator but as an active participant. The more emotionally invested you are in someone’s experience, the more likely you are to be perceived as deeply caring about it.

Disclosure has you share personal details about yourself that relate to another person’s experience. This doesn’t have to be reserved for highly classified personal information. For example, if you and someone else are talking and they mention feeling anxious about an exam they have coming up, you might mention that you once had to prepare for the same exam (presuming you did) and that you remember how stressful it felt. This would be a low-level disclosure.

Disclosing is most impactful when the shared experience is one that commonly elicits shame or causes people to feel different from others. For instance, if someone who is depressed shares that they are feeling hopeless, and I disclose that I felt so hopeless when I was struggling with depression that I ultimately underwent electro-convulsive therapy, that could function to validate their emotion and demonstrate a high degree of cognitive and emotional understanding on my part. Of course, there is a risk that they will feel like I’m trying to trump their experience with my own, or that they will share my secret with others. To avoid overshadowing the other person’s experience, show deference. Highlight what’s more exciting, disappointing, or otherwise distinctive about the other person’s experience compared with yours, if you can do so authentically. When you’re confident in your ability to mitigate or tolerate any potential fallout from Disclosing, it is among the most powerful validation skills you can use.

When I first learned about this and other validation skills as a therapist, I wasn’t blown away by the novelty of them. But the transformative power they hold becomes apparent once you’ve memorised them, honed them and internalised when to use them. So, reviewing the specific approaches I’ve covered as needed, test them out in your own interactions with others, remember to fall back on easier skills when necessary, and continue to practise.

Links & books

If you enjoyed this article and would like more tips, tricks and exercises to help you develop the skills I’ve described, read my book Validation: How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life (2025).

If you’re interested in learning more about how these skills were developed and how they are used in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), I recommend the book Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir (2020) by Marsha Linehan.

To learn more about psychological safety in occupational settings, check out Amy C Edmondson’s book The Fearless Organization (2018).

In an episode of the WorkLife podcast, hosted by Adam Grant, I discuss validation in detail and provide examples of how communicating acceptance fosters change.

For more examples of validation in TV shows and interviews, check out the media links on my website.