From Dr. Henry Cloud/Boundaries: “What is the number one thing that destroys connection and trust? Trust emerges when we can enter someone’s reality, validate their experiences, and have ours validated by them as well.
Connection and trust happen when one heart meets another. What destroys connection and trust like nothing else? Invalidation. Invalidation occurs when a person’s experience is all that exists to him or her. And he or she then moves to negate the other person’s experience, treating it as somehow not real or non-existent.
Have you ever had this happen? It feels terrible. Especially when it comes from someone you care about or someone you need. […]
That is why people who try to help others by talking them out of what they feel are usually no help at all. It is also the reason why research has for decades proven that you can help desperate people immensely by giving them no answers at all, and only giving them empathy.
From childhood to corporate boardrooms, connection is key, and invalidation is a cancer.”
