Why Validation Can Never Give You What You're Actually Looking For

Approval ≠ Understanding #TransparentTuesday

Hi friend,

Lately I’ve been thinking about the subtle differences between feeling validated, and feeling seen… and why we often think we crave one, when we actually need the other. 

In my experience, people tend to conflate the two because they can feel similar from the outside. Both can calm us down when we’re upset. Both can make us feel more connected and less alone. Both can make us feel like we’re being understood, valued, or supported.

But over the years as I’ve heard clients describe the deep ache of not feeling understood (and reflected on my own experiences), it’s become clear to me that these are actually two completely different and distinct needs.

Validation tends to be about confirmation or approval.

Validation is someone saying “that makes sense,” or “you’re not crazy,” or  “I would feel that way too.” Sometimes it sounds like agreement, sometimes like reassurance, and sometimes like praise, but it’s always an expression of acceptability. 

Given how often we bump up against our own feelings of shame, inferiority, or inadequacy, hearing other people confirm to us that we are normal and acceptable can be incredibly powerful—especially for anyone with a history of feeling dismissed, minimized, gaslit, or told their perception of reality is wrong! 

If you grew up having your feelings treated as inconvenient or wrong, then validation can be genuinely healing. 

But I’m not sure validation always reaches the place we’re hoping it will reach. Sometimes it lands beautifully and gives us exactly what we wanted, but other times it seems to slide right off the surface, leaving that deeper hunger still untouched. 

We can have ten people agree with us and still feel strangely lonely. We can be complimented, reassured, defended, praised, and told we’re right and still feel like nobody has actually understood the thing that matters most.

That’s the part I’ve been thinking about lately— how being seen seems to involve something more specific and more personal than being validated. 

Feeling seen goes beyond “someone agrees with me” or “someone approves of me” or “someone confirms that my reaction is reasonable.” It’s more like the feeling that another person has accurately perceived something about your inner world—something that maybe you didn’t even fully perceive yourself yet, or know quite how to explain. 

It’s the difference between someone saying “it makes sense that you would feel upset” and them saying “it sounds like my action made you feel hurt and rejected, because it touched on the part of you that has always worried you’re too much for people.”

Do you see the difference? 

It’s not that I think one is better than the other, exactly. They meet different needs and each has their place. 

Validation can steady us when we’re doubting ourselves, for example. It can interrupt shame. It can help us locate ourselves again after someone has made us feel irrational or unreasonable. 

But being seen does something else. It reaches underneath the surface story and makes contact with the hidden emotional logic of the experience. It heals wounds, soothes stress, and solves problems that we didn’t know we had. It tells our nervous systems that we are truly known and safe. 

I think this is actually a part of why so many of our attempts to comfort each other accidentally miss. 

When someone says they’re feeling insecure about how they look, people who love them tend to rush in with reassurance and validation, in the hopes that it will make them know

they have nothing to be anxious or insecure about: 

• “No, you’re beautiful!” 

• “You actually look amazing.”

• “You have nothing to worry about.” 

• “Nobody will notice.”

Sometimes that is what someone needed to hear, and it helps. But I think more often than not, the deeper question isn’t actually “am I beautiful?” but rather something closer to “will you still be here with me if I don’t?” 

In those moments, reassurance and validation about attractiveness might be nice, but by answering the question on the surface (instead of the one underneath), it can also be a bit of a missed opportunity for genuine trust-and-intimacy building. 

This happens in relationships, too.

You tell your friend about a conflict with your partner, and your friend immediately says “wow that’s awful, you deserve so much better!” 

Validating, right? And maybe even true. But wouldn’t it be so much more healing and meaningful if your friend took the opportunity to reflect how well they know you, instead of just jumping to your defense? If instead of saying “they’re wrong,” they said something like “it makes sense that this would feel so devastating to you, given your history of feeling abandoned while someone was still physically in the room with you.”

Making someone feel seen in this way is, admittedly, harder to do than simple validation. 

It requires curiosity, and paying close attention. It requires caring less about whether the other person’s feelings are valid, and more about what those feelings are made of. And it requires a depth of skillfulness around presence, attention, and attunement that a lot of people simply haven’t practiced.

I actually wonder if this is one reason social media can feel so emotionally confusing.

Social media offers validation at a scale most humans have never had access to before. You can say something vulnerable or angry or funny or insightful, and have hundreds or thousands of people respond with agreement, praise, outrage, applause, heart emojis, and “omg same!” 

That kind of validation can feel good, obviously. I’m not pretending it doesn’t. But it can also create the strange experience of being widely accepted without ever being specifically known. 

I think this is also why people sometimes keep going back for more validation, even after receiving what they thought they needed to feel better, and why validation can sometimes feel like a bottomless pit.

We think the problem is that we didn’t get enough validation, when what we need is to feel deeply and authentically seen and known. No amount of validation will ever give us what we’re looking for in these moments—not because validation is bad or unimportant, but because it’s simply the wrong tool for the job.

I’m saying this carefully because I don’t want to turn “needing validation” into some new thing we’re supposed to be embarrassed about. 

There is already enough fake psychospiritual nonsense out there implying that “emotionally healthy” people never need reassurance, approval, affirmation, or support from anyone else, as if being relationally attuned is a character flaw. 

That’s bullshit though. Humans are social creatures. We regulate through each other, and we learn who we are, at least in part, by having ourselves reflected back to us by other people.

That said, I do think it’s useful to pause when validation isn’t working, and ask what we were hoping it would do, and whether more of it is actually what we need… or if it’s maybe we’re just seeking more as a substitution for feeling truly and deeply seen.

I think there are actually a lot of people who are walking around starving to be known while trying to feed themselves approval, just because it’s so easy to mistake the relief of validation and praise for the deeper relief of recognition and knowing. 

Likes, compliments, agreement, admiration, confirmation, approval, achievement, and applause…none of these are meaningless. 

But if I’m being completely honest, none of them hold a candle to the experience of being met in the authentic truth of who we are, or of having parts of ourselves reflected back to us—especially parts we hadn’t even been aware of yet— by someone who has been paying exquisite attention.

What do you think about all this? Have you ever found yourself seeking out more and more validation, when what you probably really needed was to feel noticed, recognized, and understood? Feel free to hit reply and share your thoughts!

Big hug,

Jessi