The Invaluable Value of Validation: The Telling
Updated: Apr 9, 2021
It's a big deal to tell your story. It's big for the listener and it's big for the teller. It's hard to tell another person the painful and intimate details of unspeakable trauma and hurtfulness experienced from the hands and words of another. Add to this the components of love, trust, and family and you have a story that is so complicated, complex, and confusing that your own words seem unbelievable even to yourself. The fears, self-doubt, and the embarrassment of having anyone hear unbelievable truths keep the horrors of these stories hidden, guarded, and protected. Yet, there is help and healing for the teller when stories are shared, heard, valued, and validated; believed, as unbelievable as they are. So, yes, it's a very big deal -- the telling.
Validation
Think of a time when you felt unsafe -- vulnerable -- maybe even fearful. When you had a safe place to confide and share your fears and anxiety, did it help? Did you feel supported and less fearful? The knowledge that you have that you are not alone and that someone understands what you are going through enough to listen with compassion provides the difference between fear and relief. Validation provides safety and relief!
When actress, Mariska Hargitay started playing Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims’ Unit, the content of the scripts, as well as the work she did to prepare for the role, opened her eyes to the staggering statistics about sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse in the United States. She received hundreds, then thousands of letters and emails from survivors disclosing their stories of abuse, many for the first time. She wanted to answer—really answer—those letters, to address the suffering they described, and honor acts of courage they represented. She started a non-profit foundation to help victims become survivors. The Joyful Heart Foundation is a national non-profit that provides help and support through an integrated program portfolio of education and advocacy for domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual assault. In their monthly newsletter published October of 2017, they offer six supportive messages that listeners can offer as ways to show survivors of abuse that you support them by validating their experience. This article can be found on their website:
I'd like to share the six messages:
1) I'm so sorry this happened to you.
2) I believe you.
3) This is not your fault.
4. You're not alone.
5. No one ever has the right to hurt you.
6. You didn't ask for this.
The Telling
Feeling safe to tell someone and get help is the first step in a victim's self-safety move toward being a survivor. The telling is a critical component of the equally critical component of listening. Listening -- really hearing and understanding -- is a valuable part of the victim-to-survivor success as it relates to their stories. Victims hold the secrets of their own abuse while also protecting the secret deeds of their abuser. For them, silence is sometimes easier, if you can imagine that. it is easier to hold the secrets of abuse than it is to tell someone about them. It's the telling. An essential key to this is a good, validating listener. The more safe and validated victims feel in the eyes of their trusted listener, the more safe they will feel to tell, and the more safe they feel to tell, the more they will talk. The more they talk, the more they will hear themselves. They will not only hear themselves, but they will be able to understand and make sense of the craziness that living with secrets has created for them. The more validated they feel, the more empowered they are, and the more clarity they will garner for themselves and their difficult situation. Telling is powerful as stories and outcomes are owned and hurt and harm is validated.
All of this said, quite frankly, you can't put a value on validation. It is plain and simply invaluable.
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