Michael Sorensen

So if somebody comes to me and says, I'm so frustrated with my boss at work.

He never listens to me.

I work my butt off, so on and so forth.

And I say, well, you should just talk to him.

Really, what I'm saying is, well, you shouldn't be that upset.

This isn't that big of a deal.

I don't know why you're upset about this, right?

And that is dismissing the emotion.

So you're spot on, Mike, that at the end of the day, most of these statements, these invalidating statements that we mean well, but we're just saying, don't cry, tough it out.

Oh, he didn't mean to say that.

But all of that encourages the other person to push their emotion inward.

And it doesn't, you know, good things don't happen when we repress our emotions, right?

We have to let them out.

Absolutely.

I'll share a brief experience that I had.

My brother called me years ago while I was still writing my first book, and he shared something that I could relate to, and I thought I had the perfect solution in mind.

But I was literally right in the middle of writing my book and I thought, okay, let's try just validating him, just validating him first and see what happens.

And so we talked a little bit and I just said, oh my gosh, that sucks.

Like, especially because of this and this and this.

And I just hate that situation.