The Levels of Validation in DBT | Front Range Treatment Center

What is validation in DBT?

Validation is a key concept in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

Validation is communicating that someone’s feelings, thoughts or actions make sense, given their history, what their body is going through, or what’s happening right now. It isn’t agreeing, approving or giving in. Validation is important for every relationship, including friendships, romantic relationships, and with family members.

Parental validation of children is especially important. This is a crucial mechanism by which children learn to trust, and eventually control, their emotions. It is thought that too much parental invalidation can be damaging to children, making it difficult for them to learn to control their emotions and behavior. Parental invalidation (interacting with a biological vulnerability) is thought to contribute to the development of borderline personality disorder.

That is why validation is an important skill we teach in our comprehensive DBT program.

Why is validation important in DBT?

It is important to validate for many reasons:

It demonstrates we are listening and understand
Shows acceptance, care, and compassion
Validation helps improve our relationships
It takes away the pressure to prove who is right
It decreases anger and defensiveness
Validation makes problem solving and support possible, while also making others more open to what we have to say
Invalidation HURTS!
And most importantly: validating your loved ones is one of the best ways to help your relationship

But how do you validate in DBT?

Validation is finding the kernel of truth in another person’s perspective. It doesn’t mean that you have to agree, approve, or like what the other person is doing. You are simply understanding where the other person is coming from.

In DBT, you validate what’s valid, not everything. Validating is not pretending to agree or believe something when you don’t. This is where many people get confused, so it’s worth slowing down:

A first, direct emotional reaction to what happened, like hurt after a betrayal, always makes sense.

Other parts may not: an interpretation that doesn’t fit the facts, or an action that makes things worse. You can validate the hurt and not the yelling. And even when you don’t agree with WHY someone feels the way they do, you can still recognize that they ARE feeling it. If someone is sad, or mad, and you tell them they aren’t really feeling that way, or shouldn’t, you are not likely to get very far.

Beyond emotion, we can also validate the facts of a situation, a person’s experiences, beliefs, feelings, opinions, thoughts, and their suffering. If you can, you should. But you don’t need to. Sometimes, all you might be able to say is “Oh no, you’re so sad!” But that will be much more effective than “You’re fine,” or “That shouldn’t make you sad.” It’s also more effective than jumping to problem solving without any validating.

In DBT, we teach six levels of validation as well as self-validation.

Level One DBT Validation: Stay Awake and Pay Attention

The first level is to pay attention, and treat the individual and what they are saying as meaningful and important. Don’t multitask, but rather give the person your full attention. Often, we might move in closer. Give them nonverbal cues that you are listening, like nodding.

It is also important to be mindful of negative nonverbal expressions (i.e., rolling your eyes, making a judgmental face, crossing your arms, or looking at your phone).

Validating: Looking at the person who is talking to you. Stopping your other tasks, and giving them your full attention.
Invalidating: Sitting on the couch, with one eye on the TV, only half paying attention.

Level Two DBT Validation: Reflect Back

Level two validation is accurately reflecting back what the person is saying, without judgment. Summarize what they are telling you, so they know you were listening, and understand what they are telling you. You also might check-in, to make sure you understand. Be open to correction!

Validating: “It sounds like you are saying you’re feeling frustrated because you think your coworker is out to get you, is that right?”
Invalidating: “That probably isn’t true, maybe you’re just sensitive.”

Level Three DBT Validation: Read Minds

Level three validation is to “read minds.” This is where we repeat and summarize what the other person has said, but we add to it and go beyond it, based upon non-verbal cues, context cues, and other information we have.

In order to read minds, we pay attention to voice tone, body language, and behavior while then expressing what you think the person may be feeling or thinking. We have to be open to correction with this level of validation too because we aren’t actually mind readers. Using tentative language like “I’m guessing that,” or “I’m wondering if” can be really helpful.

Validating: “I’m so sorry you didn’t get that job that you wanted. I’m guessing you must be really disappointed.”
Invalidating: “You knew getting that job was a long shot, so being disappointed doesn’t really make sense.”

Level Four DBT Validation: Show Understanding

Level four validation is where you communicate an understanding of the causes behind why someone feels the way they do. You are looking for how the person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors make sense given their past, or what their body is going through right now (exhaustion, illness, hunger, pain), even if you don’t approve of the thoughts, feelings or behaviors themselves.

Validating: “You’ve barely slept this week. No wonder this feels huge.”
Validating: “It’s disappointing when any relationship doesn’t work out. It also makes sense that you are so sad about the end of this relationship, given how hard your last breakup was for you.”
Invalidating: “You only went on a couple of dates, so I’m not sure why you’re so upset.”

Level Five DBT Validation: Acknowledge the Valid

Level five validation is acknowledging what’s valid about the reaction right now. You communicate that it fits the present facts of the situation, or that most people would feel the same way. This isn’t the same as agreeing with everything the person thinks or wants. Where you can, act on it: if someone is cold, the validating response might be handing them a sweater.

When the present explains the reaction, use level five before level four. Pointing to someone’s past when today’s facts explain how they feel can itself be invalidating.

Validating: “Of course you feel devastated, you just lost your job.”
Validating: “That was such a rude thing for her to do. I’d be angry too.”
Invalidating: “Meh, you didn’t really like that job anyway. Now you have a chance to find something you really enjoy.”

Level Six DBT Validation: Show Equality (Radical Genuineness)

Level six validation is being your real self with the other person and treating them as a capable equal, not as someone fragile who needs to be handled. Marsha Linehan calls it radical genuineness; DBT’s skills handouts call it showing equality. It’s less a sentence you say than a stance you take: you speak plainly, give honest feedback instead of tiptoeing, and trust the person to handle it.

Linehan describes levels five and six as essential to DBT: they belong in every interaction, while levels one to four are used as needed.

Validating: “I handled that badly earlier. What do you think we should do?”
Invalidating: Talking to an adult in a careful, soothing voice, as if they might break, or avoiding a hard conversation because you assume they can’t take it.

Self-Validation: Turning the Skill Inward

Validation isn’t just something you offer to others — it’s something you need to practice with yourself. Many people who struggle with emotional intensity are also deeply self-invalidating. They tell themselves their feelings are stupid, that they’re overreacting, or that they shouldn’t feel the way they do. This internal invalidation mirrors the external invalidation that may have shaped their emotional development in the first place.

Self-validation means treating your own feelings, thoughts and actions the way you’d validate someone else’s: noticing them, naming them without judgment, and seeing what makes sense about them. It doesn’t mean you approve of every action you take when you’re emotional. It means you recognize what makes sense given your history, your body, or what just happened, and check the facts on the parts that might not fit. See self-validation and recovering from invalidation. Practicing self-validation reduces shame, which in turn makes it easier to use other skills effectively.

Will Validating Intense Emotions Make Things Worse?

Validation can be difficult to do at first if you never learned it. You may worry that, by validating when someone is upset you are actually reinforcing their strong emotions. But, this is not the case. By reflecting and mirroring someone’s emotions, we actually help them to calm down and self-regulate. This is a skill people can get better with over time.

When your loved one is upset, you should express care and empathy through validation, but you should do it in a controlled and regulated way. You can demonstrate that you understand how much they are struggling, but do it in a way that doesn’t lead to you becoming overwhelmed and out of control.

This is one of the fastest ways to calm someone down: expressing controlled empathy.

Get Support in Colorado

If you are struggling to validate, hold limits or boundaries, or cope with your loved one’s emotions, check out our DBT program or schedule an appointment today.

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