1198: Caroline Fleck | Harnessing Validation to Deepen Human Connection

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I never thought anyone would try to break down the science of validation, but it turns out this isn't just some therapist trick.

It's a skill that can make you more influential, improve your relationships, lower conflict, even change people's behavior for the better.

Today, Dr.

Carolyn Fleck joins us to explain how validation actually works from a tactical level.

From building rapport in our personal lives or in the office, to getting through to teenagers diffusing conflict, even how interrogators use this set of skills when questioning terrorists.

We'll explore why invalidating someone can shut down their recall and problem-solving abilities.

We'll uncover how to develop your own validation skills and use them in practice and the mistakes most of us make when we try.

And yes, we'll clear up the difference between empathy and sympathy and why validation has nothing to do with chasing likes on Instagram and social media.

So if you've ever wanted to connect more deeply, resolve conflicts faster, and be the person that others open up to, stick around.

This conversation is going to change the way that you listen and react.

This is a highly practical episode full of techniques you'll be able to use right out of the box.

And I know y'all always love those.

Here we go with Dr.

Carolyn Fleck.

I never thought anybody would attempt to deconstruct the science of validation, if we can call it that.

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

It seems like a powerful skill set, not just for therapists, but for everybody in their day-to-day life.

So I'm pretty excited for this conversation.

And I found it interesting in the early pages of the book, you mentioned that you were good at connecting with people since you were young and your friend's mom had shared something with you.

And this is kind of an interesting way to kick things off because I too was the kid where I'd be in class talking with Courtney and she'd be like, my parents are getting a divorce.

And I was just like, oh.

What is that?

You know, and then she's like, oh, it means they're separating, but it's not my fault.

And I'm like, yeah, okay.

You know, that was just me my whole life.

And I didn't realize until I was maybe in high school, people were telling me their dark secrets for some reason.

So I'm curious what you make of that because it seems like you've put some thought into this.

Whereas for me, it was just a thing that's always been the case.

Yeah.

So you were also then the person other people went to when stuff was going on.

I don't really know why.

Even, and I didn't just memorize it, but you asked her a question just in that moment when you were just kind of replaying the situation.

You said like, oh, what's that about?

Right.

Yeah, probably.

I mean, I'm sure she didn't just turn to me randomly and say, my parents are getting a divorce i probably said something like you're so good at gluing the pictures onto the cop you know whatever because it's first grade so it's like you know hey courtney you know what oh you have a new doll i mean who knows i don't think she just randomly said it but i remember specifically her and a lot of other people throughout my early grades just telling me all kinds of stuff And, you know, I talked it up later in life to little kids talk, but they don't really always talk to everyone.

No, they don't.

Yeah.

My hypothesis is that you probably had responded to them historically in the past in a way that was just curious and non-judgmental.

Those are the qualities we seek when we're looking to confide in somebody.

We don't want to feel judged.

We want to feel safe, but we also want to feel like we can talk.

And there's very few people who can bring that out in a way that doesn't feel awkward or shut you down.

One of my least favorite things that people tend to say in these situations is, do you want to talk about it?

Which just immediately concurs me.

You're currently talking about it.

I am talking about.

Like, are you saying now I need to go into it more?

Right.

Like you've just added this weird condition that doesn't work.

No one has ever said, yes, I would like to talk about it.

No one's ever responded that way, right?

It's just kind of like thanks.

You just have to say thank you.

And then you're like, maybe I should stop talking now, actually.

That's typically the response is, no, I'm okay.

That's the response people tend to give to, do you want to talk about it?

Because now you've just made it a whole thing.

And nobody wants a whole thing going into it.

This is probably a crap analogy and I'm doing it on the fly.

But it's kind of like how some people who have podcasts, they have their personality before the show and then their personality dramatically changes as soon as they hit the record button.

Yes.

And people often on this show will go, wait, we should record this.

And I'm like, yeah, we have been recording the majority of this.

I just, I don't change into radio guy when I do this.

But like when you're doing the, do you want to talk about it?

It's like, oh, oh, yeah, sure.

Now I have to change my personality into I'm being therapized by the guy I met at the bodega or somebody on a train or a plane.

And you're like, I'm not going to do that.

That's weird.

It's artificial.

What you were able to probably do and what I think I was able to do in these situations was to like match the energy level of the other person, drop your whatever, and not amplify it, not make a production of it, and then just be kind of like curious and non-judgmental.

I think some people can respond that way more naturally.

Many do not.

But those are the qualities I think that distinguish who people go to and why they don't go to others.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's strange how it works because you just, if you're that person, you don't really put it together.

And you mentioned that you didn't necessarily know what was going on.

I think your friend's mother shared something with you, which 2020 hindsight was probably an inappropriate thing to share with a kid.

Tell me about that.

So I was, I think I was like seven years old.

It was literally, and this is not an exaggeration.

I say this in the book.

I was waiting for her daughter to come home from dance practice.

I had come over before her daughter was home and mom kind of let me in and gave me some snacks.

And we were going to go down in the basement and play the floor is lava.

That's the level of maturity we were at.

Right.

And this, uh, this friend's mom is kind of putting things away.

She'd come back from the grocery store.

She's putting stuff away and she's just kind of slamming things down.

You know, you can just sense like, uh-oh, this is a tense situation.

And she spills this, you know, two liter of pop, or pop is what we call it.

Yeah, it's funny.

I'm from Michigan.

That's what we say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she just starts crying.

And I, you know, immediately just kind of go to her.

I help pick it up.

I'm seven.

I don't know if it's about the pop spilling, like if that's the problem, but I go over and she just starts talking about the fact that she's, you know, separating from her husband.

And we talked for like 45 minutes.

It felt to me like a very adult conversation.

Definitely.

As I reflect back on it and as I've told this to other people, they're like, that was so inappropriate.

And X, Y, and Z.

And like, okay, yes, in retrospect, it was.

And at the same time, it did not feel that way.

It didn't feel heavy to me at the time.

It didn't feel even confusing.

Yeah.

It just felt like I was being respected as a confidant.

But they were separating because of an affair.

An affair.

Right.

Was it her affair or his affair?

His affair.

His affair.

Yeah.

So that's just not something you tell a kid, though, is it?

Yeah, yeah.

But she must have been desperate.

And that's just how it felt.

Like, it was like she was crying hysterically.

I mean, from where I'm sitting now as a psychologist, I can see that she was just in a state of like sympathetic arousal.

She's not really thinking clearly and she's just kind of word vomiting the situation.

And I was just trying to, again, be curious and like understand what she was feeling and trying to resonate with that.

But yeah, low-key talking to a seven-year-old about your husband's affair, probably not super appropriate.

And yet, I was in other situations.

similar to that with adults as I was young.

Them talking to me about situations I couldn't understand, probably wouldn't understand, and yet found myself very much in the role of like confidant.

So how did that affect you psychologically?

Because I feel like being in that role all the time is maybe not good for you, especially when you're that young.

That's a really interesting point.

How did it affect me?

So where it got sticky was more like in high school when it was like close friends, right?

Who are like, I'm suicidal or I'm this or I'm that.

And then the sense of responsibility is much higher because I'm like, this is my friend.

I'm the only one who knows.

I've got to do something.

When it was more like adults, it honestly just felt like they respected me.

I didn't carry their burdens with me.

I didn't struggle with it going to bed or anything like that.

It really was more of like a signal that people respected me because then it would also change the relationship.

The next time I went to my friends, you know, like their mom's like, hey, how's it going?

You know, like I really connected.

And that was for the large part positive.

How's it going?

You didn't tell your mom about that thing we talked about last week, right?

Interesting.

It seems like carrying the burden like that could cause a little bit of depression, but I want to move on to the validation ideas because this is the powerful practical skill set that I think I want to try to deliver as much as we can during the course of the show here.

Tell me what validation is and what it does, why it's important.

So validation is simply communicating.

that you are mindful, you understand, and you empathize with some part of what someone's telling you, thereby accepting it as valid.

Like Like you see the validity in what they're saying.

It is a signal of acceptance that culminates in the other person feeling seen.

Okay.

In retrospect, when I look back over those years, I know now that what I was successful was validating them.

And I think that my batting average was better than average when it came to validation as a young person.

I then went to graduate school, became a psychologist, and I learned these skills that they train psychologists in so that they can quickly build rapport, facilitate change and collaboration, and work with folks who are very hard to work with.

So I learned these validation skills to help me basically bring that every time.

And that took my batting average up like exponentially.

So then it felt like I was almost like in the major leagues.

Yeah.

But I just didn't realize it.

It seems like a skill that every therapist needs, but I've had bad therapists, and I've noticed that this is one of the areas where they're typically really weak in.

And good therapists, this is an area where they typically tend to shine, I think.

Just looking back at the book and the things that you've discussed there, the skills you can tell the ones that are practiced and the ones that have been doing it for 30 years are really good at it.

And the ones that have been doing it for five years, you're like, oh, it was clunky and mechanical or didn't happen at all.

There's another side to that, though, that I've seen with psychologists is sometimes they only use validation.

And so what we find in these situations is folks love their therapists, but they don't really make any progress.

Okay.

So a really good therapist, in my opinion, is someone who's great at validating, great at communicating acceptance, while at the same time

helping you change, helping you make whatever changes you need to make to improve your life.

And that is the balance, acceptance and change.

Can you do both?

Do you have the skills to do both in session?

So isn't validation bad somehow?

I've been told not to chase it.

I've been told not to seek it.

I've been told to not go for it on Instagram and social media.

What's going on here?

distinguish this type of validation here?

Jordan, I'm so glad you're bringing up this point because it drives me absolutely crazy, especially as I'm out there, you know, really promoting validation.

And a lot of the feedback I get from people is, oh, no, validation has to come from within and you can't constantly be seeking.

All right, let's distinguish validation from praise.

Praise is a judgment.

It is a positive judgment, but it is a judgment.

It says, I like the way you look or I like the way you perform.

Great job getting the winning goal at the soccer game, whatever.

Heart emoji on Instagram when you post a bikini pick, okay?

Right, okay.

That is praise.

Validation communicates acceptance.

It says, I accept you independent of how you look or perform.

Okay.

That is a very different signal.

If you spend your life chasing praise, inevitably, you start to kind of distort yourself.

You start to filter yourself, right?

You filter out the unattractive, unappealing parts because you're trying to exceed expectations in order to get praise.

And yeah, it's a house of cards.

Like the more you do that, the less love you actually feel because all the heart emojis you're getting aren't for you.

Therefore, the filtered version of you that you created.

I see.

So the more we rely on the mask, it actually blows up in our face because the likes matter less and less and less because it's a less authentic version of ourselves.

So we don't don't really internalize that validation.

Yeah, that's actually, I really like that imagery of the mask, right?

Because it does feel like our friends, the people around us, they're kind of in love with the mask.

Right.

And the mask is really high performing, really attractive, really all of these things.

And beneath that, though, is the real person.

And so there's this disconnect oftentimes between like, Am I actually accepted?

If they knew the real me, would they still love me?

Because up till then, it's all been, they've been feeding off of praise and praise feels good.

It feels like it's almost hating that, like, oh, they do like me.

But deep down, we know it's the mask.

It's like you're scratching next to the itch, but you can't quite reach the itch.

Yes.

Jordan, like, where were you when I was writing this?

I'm like, seriously, I'm loving these.

That's exactly it.

That's exactly it.

Okay, I will.

Thank you.

I have no use for it.

My analogies are useful for seconds at a time, and then everyone forgets about them.

So tell me about this pain study that has to do with validation because I thought it was quite interesting.

This isn't just like, oh, I kind of temporarily feel better.

This actually had a physical effect in the body from the sound of it.

Yeah, this was really interesting.

They designed this study where they had folks basically, I think it was they had their hands extended or something to the other fact, and they were holding really heavy buckets of water that would quickly become painful.

And they had two conditions.

In one condition, the folks holding the heavy pails of water were invalidated.

So there's a Confederate, some researcher who works for the study, who is subtly kind of invalidating them, saying things like, oh, that's heavy, really?

Huh.

No one else has mentioned that so far.

Do you not exercise?

Just kind of saying things that invalidate, make them feel judged.

In the other condition, they had a Confederate give validating statements.

right?

This must be really difficult.

I can see that you're really trying.

X, Y, or Z.

And then at the end, they did two things.

One, they assessed how people felt.

Surprise, folks in the invalidating condition felt miserable.

Interestingly, they then gave the participants an opportunity to do another round of this pain trial, right?

I think they did five separate rounds and they were timing them.

And they said, oh no, you know what?

We could really benefit from a sixth round.

Could we get more data?

Would you be willing to do it just one more time?

Folks in the invalidating condition said no,

almost and exclusively.

And those in the validated condition were exponentially more likely to say yes.

So they were willing to endure more pain, literally more physiological pain, if they had been validated.

How does that apply to reality?

Just that we can deal with the pain of life more when we're being validated by others around us?

So I think there's two extremes there.

As I, you and I were talking earlier about the fact that I had had cancer.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer right after I'd finished my manuscript.

I also have multiple sclerosis.

So I've got just a lot of fun stuff going up in here.

And as a result, I have been deeply entrenched in the medical system.

And the difference between a validating doctor, somebody who gets it, someone who, you know, again, is mindful, understands, and empathizes in a way that makes me feel accepted.

I can feel it in my body, the ability to kind of fight and show up for the next appointment and do the MRI that's needed or do X, Y, or Z, right?

Like, I feel it in my body.

I'm more willing to fight.

That's on the physical spectrum of things.

On the emotional,

a lot of our relationships involve pain and suffering and conflict at some point or another.

And if we feel at our core like this person understands me, they get me, we are more willing to withstand and to fight and to show up.

And I see that.

In fact, I know that as a therapist because I confront that every day.

I am intentionally validating folks and I am also, you know, encouraging them to make changes that they do not want to make.

And they're more likely to make those changes and endure that struggle if they have been validated along the way.

Wow.

Interesting.

So this is super powerful in the medical context, in the relationship context.

I know in the book you mentioned that it even works during interrogations with terrorists and things like that.

And I feel really interesting.

I know we have listeners that are in those fields, but just in brief, how does that work?

Because it seems kind of strange.

You'd have some guy from ISIS in there and you're like, oh, you enjoy human slavery.

Like, how do you even handle that when they're on such an extreme?

This body of research was explored, kind of how can we develop non-torture?

means of getting information out of folks because there were some researchers out there who hypothesized that the torture method isn't the best way to get credible information.

They actually worked with psychologists to train their interrogators in basically validation.

And when you're trained in validation, it's not that you're saying, yeah, you like slavery, that's awesome, so do I, right?

It's not inauthentic.

On the contrary, the skills that we learn are designed to help us both signal that we're paying attention, whatever, and develop more understanding and empathy as we use them.

So it has this bi-directional effect.

That was some of my favorite research to pour through as I was writing this book was the stuff on just interrogators talking about their relationship that they were honestly able to develop as a function of kind of, you know, using certain validation skills and how that transformed the communication and truly their relationship with the person they were talking to.

It's funny how the validation seems to affect problem-solving skills, memory and recall.

I don't really understand why that works.

I'm not sure how relevant it is to even what we're talking about, but it's funny how important this particular,

what would you say?

It's a skill, but also it's a, what is it, a condition being validated?

This condition is to our mental well-being.

Yeah, it's a skill if I'm using it.

Right.

If you're experiencing it, I think it's more of, it's almost a feeling, validation, feeling validated, right?

It is, and I just need to say this, very

important to consider in the context of conflict.

I work with couples, and so I see people going at it all the freaking time.

And here is what happens when emotions are high and you swoop in and validate.

Validation decreases sympathetic arousal, all right?

The science on that is very clear.

And so if someone is flooded with emotion, they are like, what's the popular term people use?

Crashing out.

Yeah, yeah, right.

They've lost it.

You cannot reason with somebody in that condition.

And it's so interesting to watch couples fight this out because you just see, it's the exact same thing.

Person, couple after couple after couple after couple.

They get so upset.

Neither person's hearing each other.

They just keep repeating the same points.

Everybody's mad and they leave mad.

Okay.

If one person can pivot there and validate, I always say it's like putting a, like an adorable cat filter on your face like during an argument.

Like the other person will just, they soften.

If done well, that is the effect it has.

It cools the sympathetic nervous system so that higher cognitive functioning, which is required to reason and remember and concentrate, all of that comes back online.

And so, that's how I think about it.

It's like, okay, you guys are really hot.

One of you needs to put on the adorable cat filter right now.

Okay.

Who's going to do it?

Interesting.

It seems like that would help when talking with teenagers because they're kind of emotionally dysregulated, I guess you could say.

The tricky thing about teenagers is that what validated them as children quickly feels invalidating once they're 15.

So with a seven-year-old, you can be like, I see you worked so hard on this.

And wow, this must have taken a lot of effort.

If you do that with a 15-year-old, they will kill you.

That does not feel good.

That's not validating to them in that moment.

And again, that's why this is a skill.

Yeah.

You have to understand how to adapt to different circumstances, different people.

Why doesn't that work with teenagers?

I mean, I feel like that would work on me.

I mean, maybe not with that tone of voice, but it would,

yes, I did work very hard on this.

Thank you for noticing.

Why doesn't it work with teenagers?

Teenagers don't really want, I mean, and this is, you know, generalization, sure.

They don't much want to be seen.

Okay.

They're not looking for a ton of attention.

And they are really wanting to be seen and respected more as like adults.

And so some of that can feel like you're talking down to them.

You're still in a position of authority as mom or dad, right?

You're up here, they're down there.

Sure.

And that doesn't feel good.

That feels invalidating.

It feels like you don't really see me.

I suppose also doing it with a little kid, you can kind of fake it.

They don't necessarily know if you're being genuine.

It's sort of a teenager, they can see through that crap, right?

It's like when you're on the Amazon customer service chat and you're like, hey, this thing broke.

I want a refund.

And they're like, oh, I see that this item broke and you would like a refund.

That must be very frustrating.

And I'm like, look, man, I appreciate that they scripted this out nicely for you, but can you just push the refund button so I can go on with my life?

I don't want to talk about it.

You don't have to validate me.

Here's something else I'm going to say.

You cannot fake validation or else it's not validation.

It has to be authentic, even with the child.

So if a child hasn't put a lot of work into something, I'm not going to say, wow, it looks like you put a lot of work into that.

I think that's where this like whole positive parenting thing went wrong.

There was this idea that like you had to get a prize for everything and everyone has to feel seen.

Like, well, if they didn't actually work hard on it, if they don't care about it, if they were, you know, intentionally breaking the rules and coloring on the walls.

No, I don't authentically feel any sense of connection, or I'm not able to validate their emotions there because they don't have the emotions of perseverance and struggle and all that.

That's not there.

So it's inauthentic and it's ineffective.

So I know people are like, okay, tell us how to do it.

And we'll get to that in a moment, but how is this different from just problem solving?

Because it almost seems like we have to, one, it's definitely different, but two, it seems like we have to choose what we are doing at any given time.

Cause sometimes my son is like, my cardboard box toy that I made broke.

And it's like, oh, let's fix it.

And he's like, great.

And other times he's like, I don't want to fix it.

And I'm like, okay, so you don't want to solve the problem.

You want me to validate that you worked hard and that it's a bummer that it broke and that maybe you can build another one next week.

But I have to figure out what he wants.

Otherwise, it's, well, he's six.

Okay, yeah.

So he's going to flip out if I get it wrong, basically.

Yeah.

You know what?

The same thing will happen with a 40-year-old, frankly.

They'll flip out a little differently, but it's the same thing.

You'll get the bunch of pushback on why what you're suggesting won't work.

Okay.

So one of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got in training to become a psychologist, and I think about this, I don't know if it's hourly, but multiple times a day.

Should I respond with validation or problem solving?

All right.

When someone comes to me with something, when there's an issue, I can only respond with one or the other.

That doesn't mean I have to stay with just one or the other.

I can, you know, if I validate, I can eventually problem solve, but I have to pick one.

And if the one I pick, I get pushback on, then I switch to the other.

So let me give you maybe an example that would make this a little bit more concrete.

I use this example a lot because it really stood out to me at the time.

My daughter had performed poorly on a spelling quiz.

And between you and I, I thought she could have studied a little bit more.

Sure.

I had encouraged her to review words the night before or whatever.

She didn't want to do it.

All right.

So she comes home after her quiz and she is bawling.

Like she is very upset.

She did not do well.

And my dad goes, I told you to study, goddamn it.

That makes it a million times worse.

Yes.

So that's the punishment angle.

You could do that.

Got it.

Or you could do what nine out of 10 parents would do, which is to see an opening to problem solve.

I see.

And say, ah, yeah, this, you know what?

This is why we need to review our words the night before.

This is why we should do this in the morning, right?

Problem solving is trying to change something.

It's trying to change how the child behaves, you you know, so that they get a different result in the future.

If you jump in there and say something like, it's not a big deal, you know, it's just elementary school.

These grades don't really matter for anything.

That's problem solving their thoughts.

You're trying to change how they think about the situation.

So in that situation, you're trying to change how they think about it.

You're trying to shift their perspective, ultimately to change how they feel.

And if you say again, it's okay, it's no big deal.

Once again, you're trying to change how the child feels.

All of that is problem-solving and change-based.

If instead you said, oh my gosh, you must be devastated.

You must be so upset.

That's validation.

I remember when I was your age and I did really bad.

It was on a math quiz, I think.

I started crying in class.

My mom had to come and pick me up from school.

I was so upset.

Oh, man.

Right?

Like, that is the worst feeling in the world.

All of that is validation.

I'm not trying to change anything.

I'm just being with what is.

I'm putting words to it.

I'm giving it shape almost.

So you're like, what do you mean by shape?

Yeah, what do you mean by shape?

That was my follow-up question there.

So much of the time when we suffer, it's internal and nobody sees it.

And it has like no form.

It's as if it's not real because it's invisible.

And so the more you kind of flesh it out and identify it, it becomes real out here, not just.

confusing and messy in here.

And that is incredibly powerful.

How is this different from like empathy and sympathy?

And I always forget the difference between those two things as well.

They all rhyme.

Yeah, they rhyme.

That doesn't help.

Validation has this quality of understanding as well.

So it's this rational piece.

It is both emotional understanding.

I know how that feels.

And rational.

It makes sense that you feel that way.

I see the logic in this.

I should add that you can validate a person's emotions.

but you can also validate their thoughts or behavior, which is slightly different than what you would see with, say, like like empathy.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So I can see the validity in someone's argument, even if I don't agree with it.

So I could validate a perspective I don't agree with if it's logical.

Is there a danger that you're taking in the other person's emotions all the time and it adds up in a way that's not good for you?

I think you certainly have to know your own limits.

We call them limits.

I think popularly people would say boundaries.

Anything that is starting to affect you negatively to the point that like you are not sleeping, you feel deprived at the end of the day.

If you don't have the resources to restore yourself, then no, it's not healthy.

And you might need to have some limits on that.

Your recall and problem solving plummet when you're invalidated, which is why you should remember to support the show while you're still sharp.

We'll be right back.

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Now, back to Carolyn Fleck.

Do we validate everything?

Because I feel like there's some things that people say where you're like, I don't want to encourage this at all.

Suppose someone's super depressed and they're like, I want to, I'm thinking about, you know, ending my life.

You don't want to be like, you don't want to like validate that or encourage that, I suppose.

You want to redirect that.

It's different.

Failing a spelling test is way different than something that's like life or death, I suppose.

Here's the fascinating thing.

Validation as a skill set was developed in a treatment called dialectical behavior therapy, which is a treatment for folks, it now treats other things, but initially it was for folks who were often very suicidal, had lots of self-injury.

And so these were the exact situations where as therapists, we needed to figure out how do we validate someone when, like you're saying, what they're saying is really problematic or it's going to create, you know, issues for them if they.

move on it.

So this again was one of those really critical takeaway moments for me in my training was this idea that like you can validate a person's thoughts, you can validate their emotions, or you can validate their behavior.

You don't have to validate all of it.

So wanting to kill yourself, I'm going to frame that as a like that behavior is really ineffective.

And I will go through and discuss with the client all of the ramifications of that, including how it would affect me.

Now, what is valid?

The desire to be out of pain.

That makes a ton of sense.

If I was suffering with this day in and day out, I would desperately want relief from it.

So let's work together to find a source of relief for you that moves you in the direction of the values and goals that you may have and doesn't threaten them at every turn.

So on some level, I need to really validate, you see, that person's experience in order to get buy-in, in order to work on things.

Otherwise, I don't get it and I'm just throwing stuff at them.

Yeah, it's not the same as praise.

It's not the same thing as approval.

And we're validating maybe their behavior, their emotions, or what was the other thing?

Or their thoughts.

Or their thoughts?

Okay.

Well, what's the rule?

What's the rule here?

You only validate the valid.

You never, ever say something is valid if you don't actually believe it to be.

This has been a real exercise in what we call finding the kernel of truth.

Okay.

Something to validate.

because of the political landscape.

Well, how do you know it's valid?

Well, there we go.

So I'll have a lot of folks, you You know, I don't get to choose who comes into my office.

I have to work with who comes to me.

And they may have wildly different beliefs, some of which may offend me.

And I can listen to someone who's saying, yes, I think that aliens from outer space are coming to attack us.

And I'm going to vote for the president that will protect us from the aliens.

I don't agree with that thought process.

I don't think that is based in facts.

That's not logical.

However, if I genuinely thought that aliens from outer space were coming to invade us, I would understandably be afraid.

I would understandably feel threatened.

I would understandably want to vote for somebody who could protect me from that.

And so I can validate all of that without validating the person's thought process.

I'm not a therapist, but this would be nearly impossible for me.

Like, knucklehead, do you think aliens are coming?

Tell me what medication stack you're on.

This is why I don't do what you do, but I do what I do instead.

But it's like, you know, how much weed have you smoked in the past 48 hours where you think the aliens are coming to take over the earth?

Come on, man.

So I'm going to push back on that in a big way and put it on you to say, I mean, Jordan, how ignorant are you to think that an effect doesn't have a cause?

There's a reason they believe whatever it is they believe.

Sure.

Perhaps they're listening to some, you know, bizarre news source.

Listening to too many podcasts is what's going on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what's happening.

Or, you know, perhaps there is some chemical whatever off.

Whatever.

There's a valid reason they're thinking that.

I don't necessarily have to to chase it down.

Okay.

But I'm not going to judge them for believing the lies people tell them.

Right.

That's good.

I mean, I could, but like, I choose not to because that's not super effective.

It matters if you do that.

If I do that, it's just, I get a couple of chuckles from people listening in their AirPods at the gym.

The stakes are lower for me, I think, is where I'm going with this.

But I would say that, like, for most of us, I think we've gotten into the space of thinking the stakes are low.

If I'm just judging my wacko neighbor or my wacko this person, like whatever, who cares?

But no, that is very much bleeding into all of how we communicate.

And that, I think, is really at the core of a lot of the discord.

I like that.

Being empathetic is, has never, well, I shouldn't say never.

I was probably way better at it when I was younger than I am now that I'm older.

And part of it was moving to New York and working on Wall Street where your empathy is not welcome and nobody wants to hear it.

Pardon my Latin.

And like New York City will surgically remove a lot of your empathy over the course of a few years.

But my producer on Fridays, Gabriel, he's like the most empathetic person and we'll get an email that's from someone who's aggressive and clearly has like mental stuff going on.

And I'll send it to him and I go, you got to handle this.

And he writes this really nice response.

And they'll write back and be like, I'm so sorry.

You guys are so great.

And I'm just like, wow, I would have, that was not what I had planned on writing,

you know,

at all.

And he's just, he's like very skilled with this kind of stuff as an adult.

But you flagged something there really interesting, which is that actually that type of response is often what facilitates change on the other person's end.

So you want them to change how they're thinking about a situation?

You want them to listen to you and your data and your X, Y, or Z.

You sure as hell better find a way to help them feel seen and safe in your presence.

Otherwise, you stand no chance of affecting change.

And that I know for a fact.

I mean, that is my full-time job.

Smart.

Yeah.

So tell me about the validation ladder.

I mean, let's get down to some of the practical because people are like, okay, I get it.

It's important.

Are you going to teach me something or just tell me how important it is?

And then I have to buy your book, which you should.

You should go buy the book.

Links are in the show notes.

It does help support the show.

And the book is good.

And honestly, I will say, in the spirit of book shilling, there's so much more in there than we're going to be able to cover on this episode because it's highly practical, which I really appreciated about your book.

And you go over each element of this ladder and there's examples and how to do it.

And here's how you should practice this for the week.

So there's a game plan of learning it, which I thought was a unique way to deliver the information because I read a lot of books, as you might imagine.

And most of them will deliver something like this.

And it's like, you go, what did I just read?

There's so much in here.

And it's like, oh, yeah, if you ask the author, go back and do a chapter occasionally.

And there's no plan.

And you just go, eh, I'm going to remember one or two things from this.

And that's fine.

I'm moving on with my life.

Whereas yours is like, use this one for a week.

Use the other one for a week.

I don't know how many there are.

Let's say there's 10.

It's eight.

Okay.

So if that's like an eight-week program program to getting decent at these skills.

I got to be honest.

I took that from the training that I received.

That is how I learned to master these skills in this very piecemeal space.

Well, that's good.

That means this is a training, a learnable, it's a workbook and not just like a, here, read about this skill that I've been using.

Thanks by hire me for a speaking gig.

And Jordan, this is something I really want to like.

emphasize and put out there.

People aren't born therapists.

They are trained to be therapists.

And I realize you don't want to necessarily be a therapist.

You don't need to know how to treat anxiety, but you do need to know how to communicate effectively.

You do want that.

I would like my kids to still talk to me when they're adults, for example.

Yes.

Or, you know, keep my friends around until we're all old and croak of natural causes instead of just pissing everyone off.

So, and this helps, right?

Because I feel as I get older, I feel like I don't have time for people that I don't connect well with.

I don't, you know, it's not like, oh, the guy who lives on your floor or works in your office where you don't really click, but he's there.

It's like, no, I'm 45.

Like if you haven't figured it out by now, you're out of the, you're cut out of the circle of trust.

And you don't want to be that person, right?

It'll be, you'll wake up one day alone.

Let me validate that a little bit, your experience there, because I feel that too.

You know, a lot of the work that I'm doing is with my patients and clients, and I've got a threshold.

And so like, I choose where to put my energy and where to really exercise my skills.

And I don't do it necessarily with everybody all the time, right?

Like I pick and choose.

However, if I wanted to and if I needed to, I could.

And that is a very powerful feeling.

And I want that for people to have that level of confidence that like, okay, if I, if I needed to get through to this person, I could.

The other benefit is the more you validate others, the more you may end up being validated in return.

So it's, it's kind of like you, you get what you receive or you get what you put out there.

How does that work?

Because I can imagine I put a lot out there and people don't reciprocate that.

Or is it just some people will naturally do it?

Like the example you gave, actually, of the person, the fictional person who writes in is super negative about the show.

Sure.

And you respond with some degree of validation.

And then they respond with, oh, no, you know, actually, I feel like I have learned a lot from Jordan.

Right.

It's kind of that cat filter effect where people soften.

But, Jordan, way more important, in my opinion, in terms of how it will affect you, the more you validate others, the easier it becomes to validate yourself.

And self-validation is not something many, if any of us were taught.

We were taught to dismiss, minimize, correct, fix our negative emotions, not validate them.

What's the first rung of the ladder here?

And if we can go through these like somewhat quickly, that would help because I don't know if we're going to get through all these here, but let's try.

Yeah.

So this ladder that you're referring to, it's a, has a bunch of skills in it, eight to be exact.

We've got two.

Remember, I said validation validation consists of that mindfulness, understanding, and empathy to help someone feel accepted.

So we've got two skills to help you just signal mindfulness, just that you're non-judgmentally paying attention.

Then we've got three skills to help you convey understanding, that you logically understand some part of the person's experience.

And then three more to send a signal of empathy.

And those ones at the top, those empathy skills, also convey understanding.

They also convey mindfulness and they are very powerful.

Okay.

So that's kind of the framework for this.

Got it.

I should also add that a lot of the things in this ladder, like even just the first skill I'll talk about, there's strategies people have heard before.

All right.

The magic here comes in being able to move between these skills and knowing when to use what.

So like, for instance, with that adolescent, right, versus the kid, which skill here do I use to be effective?

Okay.

So at the very, very bottom, first thing we do is attending.

You can attend through nonverbals, nodding, leaning in, gesturing.

These are all nonverbals that have proven through rigorous research to increase the extent to which the other person feels a sense of connection or like you are engaged.

All right.

It's funny because a lot of people are going, doesn't everybody do that?

Doesn't everybody nod or lean in?

And my uncles like don't do this for some reason.

And my dad will literally be on the phone and go, hello, because they don't say anything.

There's no acknowledgement of anything.

And you'll, in real life, when you talk to them, you'll talk to them and you're just thinking, is this thing on?

I know you're looking at me, but you're not reacting at all.

Yes.

It's like a frozen Zoom call where you're like, okay, my video works.

And they're like, no, I'm here.

And you're like, what do you, I'm talking to you right now.

You're not doing anything.

You got to nod or something.

Throw me a freaking bone here.

Actually, the video part is a really interesting note because when COVID hit and everything went virtual, a lot of those signals were decreased.

So you can't even really make eye contact directly.

And the result is a sense of disconnection.

Like we don't feel as close in part, I would argue, because we're not able to receive those nonverbal signals in the same way.

Okay.

So that's part of attending.

The other part is a little riddle game that you got to play in your head.

And what you do is you ask yourself, as the person's talking, you think, what's this person's point?

Like, why does it matter to them?

And how would I do a better job of making that point for them?

And it's not because you're superior.

It's not that.

This becomes just a way of keeping yourself engaged.

It's as if you've been like put on a debate stage and they're like, okay, you have to argue why smoking cigarettes is good.

Like you don't have to agree with what the other person is saying.

You're just trying to make that argument as succinctly as you can.

You don't necessarily say anything.

You just do this in your head.

And that affects how you listen.

And that is observed, received by the other person.

Okay.

So you don't make their point better than them to their face.

You just rephrase it in your head.

Yeah.

And you're allowed to like ask some clarifying questions.

Like, okay.

So if you watch great late night interviewers, podcasters, Larry King, Oprah, you watch these folks.

You can tell based on the questions that they ask, they want to help their guest.

make their point succinctly, but they don't want to make it for them.

They're not going to necessarily jump in and speak for them, but they are going to ask questions and try and bring it out and tighten it up.

And that's what attending does.

Great.

Okay.

What's next on the list?

So the other mindfulness skill, again, all you're showing here is that you're paying attention and that is copying.

It is as basic as it sounds.

It's repeating the words someone said and or their body language.

But not like mirroring them clunkily, correct?

Right.

You sit up straight, I sit up straight.

And then I read that.

And, you know, I have these guys do this, these hypnotists, and they're like, I'm hypnotizing you.

And I'm like, no, I'm in an uncomfortable chair.

You're not hypnotizing me.

You're mirroring me, but it's weird because I do this to scratch something on my neck and then you do it.

Like, I know that you're doing that on purpose.

I don't get why.

It's not making me like you more.

Exactly.

So here's the thing.

We are biologically designed to mimic other people, to copy them.

So babies do this.

As adults, we are more likely to copy the nonverbals of somebody that is in a position of power or somebody that we're attracted to or want to impress.

We just naturally spontaneously copy them more.

It was like nature's way of like building in this super effective way of connecting because that's the effect it has.

But you're right.

You don't dial it into like the itch on the face or whatever.

I'm looking at things like, are your arms crossed or not?

Are you leaning forward or not?

These are just simple nonverbals that help me attune to you.

And when I do this, all I say to myself is I'm like, okay, I need a copy.

I just give myself like this high level like bing, cop, just do that.

I don't dial it in or get super focused on it or else it will look contrived.

What about negative things that they're doing?

Like, what if they're all worked up?

I don't want to copy that, right?

No, that's where you need to be careful.

So anger is something you never want to copy because it can obviously heighten the situation.

Right.

You're escalating things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I will say though, that some negative emotions, for instance, sadness, if another person is, you know, sad, their eyebrows are drawn together.

If you're not copying that in some degree, if you're not reflecting that, then there's this disconnect.

You're fine.

And the other person's like falling apart.

It doesn't feel like you're synchronized.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

And then the other one is the simple copying of words.

So this, and I need to tell everyone, please stop saying, I hear you saying.

Oh, yeah.

Like in the most condescending way.

Like, no, when I copy, I pick out the adjective somebody uses.

Okay.

I pick out their way of framing something and I just reflect it back.

In my book, I do this.

Actually, you can hear it on my website where I recorded, secretly recorded my husband and I talking about Seth Rogen's book.

And I made a point of copying him as we were talking to give you a sense of like what it sounds like.

I see.

And it absolutely has the effect of like drawing him in, getting him excited.

And it's just really kind of subliminal almost.

So explain that, and this might be a totally different thing, but I used to do this with people's accents and my friends would think that I'm making fun of them.

There's two caveats to this, I suppose.

One, the person never notices.

And two, they seem to like it because my rapport with them is so good.

So the example that really used to scare people is New York taxi drivers.

This is pre-Uber, right?

I live in New York and I get in a taxi and my friends and I are like, you know, we've had like six drinks or something.

And I'm talking with them and my friends are like, what are you doing?

And I'm like, what do you mean?

And then they're like, we get out and they're like, I don't get what happened or why that guy didn't get mad.

And I'm like, oh, I don't know.

They'll explain to me that I was talking like that guy.

And there are, I have, I've told this on the show before, but there are examples of me talking with like a Somalian or a Jamaican or Dominican cab driver.

And then like three days later, I'm walking down the road and a taxi comes cutting across four lanes of traffic and slams on the brakes and goes, Jordan, how are you?

And I'm like, oh, hey.

And then my friend's like, what?

The taxi driver from four days ago remembers you?

And apparently in the car, I was all like, Jamon, I remember you from Jamaica.

Like I was just ridiculous.

And he didn't notice and loved it and didn't think, oh, this guy's making fun of me.

But my friends are like, he's going to get punched in the face and we're going to get kicked out on the West Side Highway.

But it worked.

Like it was like something I did subconsciously.

And not to probably to the exaggerated degree I just did here.

But it was just like something I didn't even notice it was happening.

And it worked worked really, really well.

And your friends know you enough to know that it was like a big shift.

Like the taxi driver probably doesn't know, no, but I'm pretty sure he knew that I wasn't a native of Jamaica.

Totally, totally.

I talk about this too, and you flag something there that's hilarious, which is the if you drink and you're prone to this, it will really come out.

Yes, I honestly have to be careful with alcohol because I do the exact same thing, and I will end up talking like I'm from their country of origin.

Yes, and it's like too much, but it does speak to the fact that this is an innate tendency that we have, right?

To, in an effort to connect, we mimic, we copy.

Yeah.

I'm saying, however, do this when you're in conflict and not in the like you're copying aggressive behavior, but maybe repeat the words that they said.

Because when we feel threatened, when we feel angry, hostile, that is when we start to shut down.

We don't copy.

We become flat.

That does not serve us if it comes to forming a collaboration, dialogue.

Like those are the moments when we actually need it.

That makes sense.

Now, you said something super insightful in the book.

And I think this is one of the main things that I'm going to take away from the whole book, which was you said, in order to understand problematic behavior, we need to find the context in which the behavior makes sense.

Tell me about that, because I think that's, again, one of the most insightful things that I read in the whole book.

Because, you know, it's easy for us to go like, look at the way this person handled that.

That's totally ridiculous.

How does this person get by?

They must screw things up in their life all the time.

And it's like, well, this behavior evolved or came from an environment where this behavior made sense.

And a sort of weird example of this is when I worked in Detroit, I worked with all these like, first of all, I was the only white dude.

All the guys were kind of like from low, broken home level income.

It was a security job.

You know, guys would be like, I'm going to kill you.

And I'd be like, sure, whatever, pal.

But then if that same gangster said that to another guy that I worked with, that guy would lose his mind and they would get violent immediately.

And I was like, why are you doing that?

This guy's just pushing your buttons.

And my boss had to explain where these guys grew up, if someone says, I'm going to kill you, you have to do something about it immediately.

Because if you don't, you're in more danger of actually being killed or injured.

And I'm like, geez, because I grew up in a place where if somebody says that, they're acting like a tough guy and literally nothing will ever come of that, ever.

And it's totally different where they live.

So their reaction is totally different.

And I'm thinking like, why react like that?

You're just making it worse.

But in their particular context, they were actually solving the problem by reacting violently.

That's how you protect yourself.

Yeah.

And that's contextualizing, which is like the next rung up.

This is a way of showing that you understand now.

So you've got some mindfulness to understand, to show someone that you really understand where they're coming from.

You've got to understand even ineffective behavior.

And to do that, you need to track that cause and effect chain to figure out where this is coming from.

Okay.

Which is what you did.

So, no, their behavior may not make sense here in this context, but growing up in a different situation, it was critical to their survival, or it was adaptive.

So, I'll often have couples where, like, one partner came from a home where everybody fought and it was like really animated.

And that's just how they like, they fought it out quickly and resolved quickly.

And that was just how they dealt with things.

And it led to deeper connection, the conflict did.

And then I'll inevitably have their partner be the one who came from an experience where violence was unpredictable.

It was always damaging or traumatic.

And so when their partner starts to escalate, they shut down.

All right.

They try and kind of pull back, hide, not draw attention to themselves.

Now, who's right?

Who's wrong there?

It's just different context.

But we need to be able to understand that and validate each person.

to have them work on changing how they dialogue and communicate together.

This, again, is a super insightful skill.

And sometimes you mentioned sometimes the context is built on mis or based on misinformation.

Tell me about that, because that also would obviously result in miscommunications or a negative outcome.

Yeah, I mean, so the most obvious example I give is like you have a dentist's appointment, you put it down in your phone for Wednesday at 2 o'clock, you come at Wednesday at 2, and they're like, no, the appointment was Thursday.

And you're like, oh, shoot, I had it in my phone as Wednesday.

Oh, okay.

Sure.

It makes sense that you came at Wednesday, given that you were operating off of false information.

It's the same sort of thing, I would argue again, with the politics and everything else that's going on today.

If you look at what people are thinking, often their behavior and their emotions make a lot of sense.

It's just that they're operating off of misinformation, which unfortunately is a term that's become very sensationalized and popularized.

We'll get back to learning how to be the person everyone opens up to right after you open your mind and ideally your wallet to the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back.

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Now, for the rest of my conversation with Carolyn Fleck.

This reminds me, I had a girlfriend a long time ago, and her parents got divorced, and her dad married someone else when she was like 12.

And it was not handled well by the parents.

And so, anytime we got in even minor disagreement, she would react really strongly.

And I was like, what is wrong with you?

And it sort of came out one day that she's like, you could leave at any time with no warning, anytime that anything goes wrong in our relationship.

So everything is scary to me.

And then like, oh,

it's like that experience on your end, like, oh, I get that.

Right.

Like now it makes sense that little things cause a massive reaction.

That's like based on you thinking that I'm going to leave or never talk to you again and the whole thing's going to be shattered.

And so that context makes sense, but it's also based on misinformation because I'm not going to never talk to you again and leave because you forgot to get olives on the pizza.

Exactly.

And now here's a really important thing because I think people feel nervous at this point hearing this, like, okay, great.

Then people have a get out of jail card for everything, right?

Like they can just say, well, I'm allowed to like throw toasters at you because when I grew up, throwing toasters kept me alive, right?

Like, sure.

And this is where I emphasize that, like, we first need that validation in order to facilitate change.

All right.

It's not either or, it's both and.

So I can say, okay, that makes total sense that that like you're concerned about rejection or me leaving you.

And yet I'm saying now I'm not going to.

In the future, like, is there something I can say?

Because we need to be able to have conflict without you shutting down or X, Y, or Z.

Right.

And so it leads to problem solving in that way.

But you don't just leave it at like, okay.

continue to, you know, throw toasters or, or what have you.

It's just, you've got to see it as a step in the direction of problem solving.

All right.

Next rung, I think it's called equalize, unless I missed one.

Yeah.

Equalizing is like as straightforward as it comes.

It's just anyone in your shoes would feel the same.

You don't need some larger context to explain why someone is thinking or doing what they're doing.

Like their kid got hit in the head with a softball and they were taken to the hospital and you call your friend freaking out and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so scared.

I don't know what to do.

I'm headed to the hospital now.

And if they were to put that in the context of like, well, of course you are.

You have an anxiety disorder.

Right.

Yeah.

You'd be like, screw.

Yeah.

But if they're like, oh my God, I would too.

Of course.

Like makes perfect sense.

That's equalizing.

And it's not that one of these is like contextualizing or equalizing is better than the other.

They're just used in different situations.

Again, at this point, to communicate understanding.

So it's not just that you're paying attention.

It's that you're paying attention and you understand on some level.

My favorite is when like a specialist or a doctor says, like, I'd get a second opinion too if I were you.

Or you were right to bring them in.

I would have done the same.

Ah, yes.

Okay.

I'm normal.

I'm not freaking out.

I'm not X, Y, or Z.

That's the power of equalizing.

So in this situation, we imagine their experience.

Is that what we do?

Or do we just say anyone else in your shoes would do the same and it's that simple and mechanical?

It can't.

And it doesn't even have to be that language.

It can just be like, oh my gosh, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Oh, of course.

Oh, my gosh.

Yes.

I'd be so pissed if I were you.

You're just kind of validating that their reaction is normal.

Okay.

It's great when folks are concerned or worried that what they're doing or thinking is abnormal.

Should I have brought my kid in for a second opinion?

Like I already had the best doctor in town tell me X.

Am I being overparenting, underparenting, X, Y, or Z for this?

Yeah.

You don't trust your doctor?

Is that why you came in here?

Exactly.

Yeah, that would be the opposite of equalizing.

That's right.

Tell me about propose.

This one is more complex and more powerful at the same time.

This is a massive Jedi mind trick if you pull it off.

Okay.

So proposing.

has you basically say what you think another person might be thinking or feeling based on what they've already told you.

I mentioned Oprah earlier.

She has built her entire career, if you ask me, on this one skill, proposing.

She is so good at it.

So basically, remember I told you when you were using that attending initially, you're trying to think of what's a better way to make this person's point or whatever.

You'll start to get some insights.

If you wanted to communicate understanding, you could float those.

And if you get it right, That's going to feel really validating.

So I'll give you an example of Oprah was interviewing Prince Harry and Megan Markle,

and Megan's talking about all of these things that were going on behind the scenes in the palace and how horribly she was being treated.

And you can see she's got kind of like a lot of shame and guilt about like, you know, I just kind of kept this to myself.

And I know it sounds weird that I'm coming out with it now, but Oprah says very pointedly, like, why didn't you say anything?

Like, this sounds awful.

Why didn't you give your side of the story?

And Megan again looks just like, I don't know why.

I just stayed silent.

And you can just kind of feel the heaviness in that.

And Oprah swoops in with, were you silent or were you silenced?

And like, boom, that's that effect of like, I have cut through.

I am saying something, identifying something you didn't articulate, which was that this was a very oppressive situation in which you didn't feel like you could speak your mind or speak openly to the press, right?

And she nails it in that moment by just kind of reading between the lines and saying something that somebody in that situation would understandably be feeling or thinking.

That's the power of proposing when you really identify something that the other person hadn't really put together or said yet.

I see.

So we read their mind slash read between the lines as best we can.

It seems like this requires a lot of practice and a high EQ.

You can't just sort of start doing this.

Or can you?

You've got to work that.

And this is where I was talking about like really the skill of validation is being able to use these strategies off each other, play off each other.

And you've got to do a lot of attending, like really get in the habit of playing that game of trying to figure out what's this person's point.

How do I make it better?

That is how you get good at proposing.

I see.

Like you just do that over and over again.

How do we know if it lands or if we've totally blown it?

Oh, you will know.

You will know.

Got it.

Particularly because if it lands, it is like the turning point oftentimes in a relationship.

Okay.

If someone feels like you got it, it's like, whoa.

If you don't get it, they'll be like, yeah, I guess sort of.

So anyways, back to me in the palace where I was, you know, like they'll just kind of scoot and boot around it.

So you'll know.

Right.

Okay.

So they kind of bail if it doesn't land or they pivot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if they want to continue the conversation and they go deeper, then you've nailed it.

Okay.

Is there a less risky way to do this?

Like, can I frame it in a certain way that doesn't maybe hit as hard if I bonk against the wall?

If you state it as a question, that is a much gentler way to approach this.

So like, oh, you know, maybe you're feeling nervous about the interview with Jordan this morning, right?

If I had come upstairs and, you know, talking to my husband and I'm ordering him around, he's like, hey, are you feeling nervous about the interview?

Understandable.

That would be a gentle way to propose, as opposed to if he came in and said, you're nervous about the interview.

I'd be like, screw you.

Yeah.

Right.

Exactly.

That's a gentler way to do it is to frame it as a question.

Sure.

Okay.

And then take action.

You give a really good example.

of Zelensky handling this or doing this.

Can you, first of all, tell us what take action is and then tell me how Zelensky put this into practice.

All right.

So this is one, like we're at the top now of this slide, or we're at this empathy scale.

So if you can do this, this can convey a high degree of validation.

The person would feel very validated if you do this effectively.

The example I gave of Zelensky was an interview that he gave, I want to say with Dateline, where he's mostly speaking through a translator, but at the end, he speaks in English, looks directly at the camera, and basically makes his plea to the United States President Biden to say, if you really believe in freedom, if you support us, if you care about us, you will help us with resources.

We need resources.

We cannot do this alone.

We will not win.

So basically, what he's saying is, I need you to intervene.

Biden could use all the other validation still.

He could propose you guys must be terrified for your lives, right?

He could copy whatever it is Velinsky said.

But anything short of intervention isn't going to cut it.

Sometimes actions speak louder than words.

Now, this is a really risky skill because if you overdo it, one, your person could become codependent, but two, it could look like problem solving, right?

If my kid says that she's upset with something that happened at school and I run off to talk to the teacher and confront her, that might not be wanted.

The more effective it is, the riskier it tends to be if it goes badly.

I see.

So maybe we can take stock, you know, ask ourselves, what are some ways we're currently taking action in our relationships or how we might do that?

And I think that might be a helpful place to start because it's hard to be prescriptive about this because everybody's context, the situation is totally different.

I love the ideas in the book about practicing nonverbal communication.

So emoting kind of, and give us a little bit of practical exercises that have to do with this.

I think this is useful.

Yeah.

So emoting, again, so this is now the second of the empathy skills there.

Emoting, it is actually showing how you feel, showing emotion, breaking character, all right, when someone shares something with you.

People often get nervous with this because they may or may not be very emotive.

All right.

Some folks are just like, they're more contained.

They don't express a lot.

And so if that's the case, your options are to just state how you feel or even just allude to it.

I feel sad for you.

Or is that not, that's so clunky and weird.

No, it could be like, oh my God, I'm devastated to hear that.

All right.

That would be directly naming your emotion.

But if that's uncomfortable, you could just imply it, right?

You could say, like, what the hell?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

That expresses some degree of emotion.

You are alluding to the fact that you are angry.

You are frustrated.

My dad is,

he went to West Point, military guy.

He doesn't do a lot of like.

emoting and you must be feeling so sad right yeah if something goes wrong my dad's response is you gotta be kidding me That's his like reaction to anything.

I'm pregnant.

You got to be kidding me.

I've got breast cancer.

You got to be kidding me.

And so when he was diagnosed with throat cancer, he's absolutely fine.

It was like stage one, stage zero.

It was fine, fine, fine.

Okay, good.

But when he told me about it, I didn't say, oh my gosh, dad, you must be so sad and scared, right?

Because that's not his language.

That's not how he emotes.

Right.

He would be like, uh,

nah, I'm good.

That's fine.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It would make him uncomfortable, right?

Instead, I said, you've got to be kidding me.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's his language.

That is how he expresses emotion.

And so that is how I framed it.

I love how practical, again, how practical this all is.

Is there a PDF or anything that you have that we could give to the audience that has this stuff in a cheat sheet?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I know people are like, I got to listen to this 10 times and take notes and I'm driving and I can't do that.

And there's all these mistakes that go with emoting.

I don't think we have time to go over those, but I definitely would love to check those out in the book as well.

And back to the latter, I forgot a couple of these things.

Disclose.

This is actually something that I accidentally used a lot, especially when I was starting, when I was dating and teaching the dating stuff to other guys, which is my old business back in my 20s and 30s, teaching a lot of these sort of skills.

Guys are bad at this generally.

They don't want to disclose things that maybe make them look vulnerable or

real in any way because it's a vulnerable place to be, right?

Because you can get rejected.

And it's not like the fake you that's getting rejected.

It's like, I'm afraid that I'm not, you know, my career might not be the thing that I was born to do.

And it's like, if you get rejected, then it feels way worse than some girl who's like, don't talk to me.

You're not tall enough.

You're like, whatever, you know, exactly.

Yeah.

I had a big reaction to that because I love, were you doing like Neil Strauss's stuff?

Not quite, not quite.

I like Neil, but that stuff was a little bit like.

We were decidedly white hat.

It was like, don't lie about anything.

Don't tell the woman you were, you know, oh, my Ferrari's in the shop and they're overcharging me.

It's like, we're not doing that.

We're doing, we basically were trying to teach guys to deserve what they wanted, which is like, you work on yourself and you learn how to communicate well.

You will be fine.

Don't put on a persona that makes you look really cool.

And then eventually someone gets to know you and it all falls apart and you just like pray that they stick around.

That was a lot of what those pickup guys were doing back in the day.

It was.

And they were doing a lot of weird social psychology also.

I mean, they were like out there collecting data, right?

If I peacock, do I get more phone numbers than if I don't, which was actually kind of fascinating, the approach that they they took.

I mean, we definitely had an office with a giant spreadsheet on a whiteboard and guys, all of our guys would come in and be like, I tried this and this worked.

Did this work for you?

Yes, we all went out and did the same thing and it worked eight times out of 10.

This is a good technique.

Hey, we all went out the next night.

We tried this other thing.

It worked for one guy, but he's always the guy where it works for because he's six foot five and has a six-pack abs.

It's probably not the technique.

Let's do it again.

Okay, no, this is a stinker.

Let's get rid of it.

We did that.

This is like how we develop therapy skills.

We do like the exact, right, through in the context of clinical trials, right?

But you're like, well, they're the PI.

They developed the thing.

So they're probably going to be really good at it.

We need to have this beginner who's training.

Let's have them go out and just have a bunch of beginners.

Let's see if it sticks.

That's really funny.

So we were teaching guys the techniques that we would ourselves screen.

And if it worked for them, we were like, okay, this is going into the curriculum.

And if it was something they had a hard time with, it was like, you can experiment with this, but it's not easy enough for us to teach you in the first three or five days of the workshop.

Yeah, we did this a lot.

And disclosure was one of the things where we were just like, hey, you know, when you're talking with somebody, disclose real things that you are interested in connecting on.

Don't hide the ball, right?

Lower the shield a little bit.

And so these guys are having really deep conversations with people.

So they would meet some, they'd be like, I can't believe this.

This really attractive woman is a professional cheerleader.

And I was telling her how I lost my dog.

And then we were talking about our pets and like, we have a date tomorrow.

And they're just like, take my money, you know, take all of my money.

It was great because we weren't teaching it as like a technique to be like manipulative.

We're like, you're actually creating a real connection with this this person by doing this, if you do it right.

And that's what these skills do.

And I mean, like, on your front, you got evidence to suggest that that was on our front, we have all sorts of evidence, but disclosure is one that people get really nervous about.

And part, and I hadn't quite had it in my head the way that you framed it, but I do think there's that vulnerability part that gets really makes us nervous, right?

Yeah.

Because what disclosure does and why it's such a powerful validation skill is it says, I see myself in you.

And when done well, it allows the other person to see themselves in you.

And it's just this like mirror, like we are one in the same.

And that bonds us.

I think one of the most powerful things AA and NA figured out in terms of techniques was having folks just stand up and say, my name is X, Y, or Z, and I'm an alcoholic.

And there's just this group disclosure that feels safe.

And when you go out on the street and you're talking to someone and then they say, you know, oh, well, I'm in AA.

You go, oh, hey, so am I.

Boom.

Connection.

There's this shared experience.

I don't judge you.

I see you.

That's powerful.

I'm curious what the mistakes people make doing this are because one of the things we found was, let's say you say something like, oh, do you have a pet?

Yeah, I have, well, I had a dog, but I just, I had to give him away when I moved to Los Angeles.

And then the guy starts talking for 20 minutes about his dog.

And it's like, oh, you just, you're overshadowing her share.

And she's just like, is this guy going to stop talking about his dog at all at any point?

There's a lot of that kind of stuff that happens.

Yeah.

That's one of the biggest mistakes is that you make it about you.

And so as therapists, we're trained to flip it back.

You insert a little bit, but you always bring it back to the other person.

You do not let it become about you.

And here's the thing, folks who are really emotionally intelligent, if you do a bit of disclosure, they will really

allow the tables to turn into focus on you.

They'll start asking you questions.

They're taking it as a cue that you want to talk about yourself.

And so with those folks, you have to really, really just keep bringing it back to them, keep bringing it back to them do we have time to talk about shaping real briefly before we close i know we're basically over time at this point but take us through this because this is another really powerful skill that again we used a lot when i was teaching the dating and relationship stuff and it can cross over into the manipulative zone if you're not careful with how you use it wait how did you use it in dating Well, for example, if somebody, it was all about the rewards and reinforcement of behavior, right?

So if somebody is not respecting your time or sets something up and then doesn't answer you or doesn't show up, a lot of guys, they're like, well, she's really pretty.

So I'm going to text her 48 more times and see.

And, you know, or like, oh, she said this or she did this thing that was, you would never tolerate from somebody who was an attractive woman.

Like if your buddy did it, you'd be like, what the hell is your problem, man?

Right.

So we're like, okay, we don't have to punish people because we're not their parents, but we reinforce good behavior.

And we might say to somebody who's acting in a bad way, what are you doing?

Why are you being that way?

And so they're not used to that.

And this is, I'm generalizing here, but a lot of young attractive women are not used to a guy saying, it's kind of disrespectful that you showed up 45 minutes late and you didn't even text me.

You're not going to keep doing that, are you?

Because that's not really going to work for me.

And they're like, oh my God, usually when I misbehave, people put up with it because they're men and I have what they want.

And it's like, you're signaling.

That's not really how I do things.

Like you, I have what you want also.

This is blowing my mind because the other setting in which you see a similar dynamic is therapy, where folks have often been in the the system and had many, many therapists, and they're used to being able to kind of behave as poorly as they want to because they're sick.

And so, like, well, I have X, Y, or Z.

Well, I am bipolar.

Well, I am this, right?

And so I can't help it.

And I've also usually done a fair bit of validating up front to help set the stage for an alliance and collaboration.

Remember, I said it's a matter of balancing acceptance and change.

So validation is the acceptance stuff, shaping positive reinforcement.

that is all changing behavior.

So yes, you are used to being able to show up late.

Makes total sense that you're not on time.

The last therapist you had for five years, you could come in 30 minutes late and they would still see you.

I totally get why you're doing that.

Unfortunately, for me,

that is a line in the sand.

I have way too many people on a wait list who want to be seen if there's a cancellation.

And so if you do not show, I will go to the next person.

Now, there's this subtle, like, I'm not judging you here.

I see where you're coming from and I need you to change.

And I am firm on that.

This is something that I maybe discovered in part, one, through research, but two, just almost by accident.

There was a relationship I was in when I was probably 20.

It was not, obviously not the healthiest relationship.

This guy who I worked with at the U.S.

Embassy in Panama, he met a girl.

She had a friend.

The friend had a major attitude problem and she was really rude.

And my friend was like, let's go out on a double date and I said hold on I'm not interested because Perla is not nice and she was like excuse me and I was like you clearly don't want to be here you're acting really bored you're having a tantrum I barely know you you're not being friendly at all I really don't want to go out with you ever because I don't want to put up with that And she was like, fine.

She got super mad.

And her friend was like, dang it, because she liked my buddy.

My buddy was like, please do it.

And I was like, absolutely not.

And then the next week, we went back to the same bar and my friend ran into that girl and she had brought her friend and that girl was so nice to me and so charming and so apologetic and her friend was apologetic.

And I was like, what is going on here?

And I actually couldn't get her to leave me alone because no one had ever actually set a boundary with this woman in her entire life, probably except for her dad, maybe.

She was gorgeous.

No man had ever said, you can't just treat me however you want to because you can get away with it.

And so she needed that.

And it made her feel safe because somebody was finally like, here here is what you are allowed to do when you are around me as far as my feelings and how you treat me.

And that was like a boundary that she required to feel like she wasn't unmoored.

I also find that people genuinely feel better about themselves and just life when they treat other people well.

Of course.

And so if, you know, if the conditions are such that you're bringing out the best in them, the exchange, the interaction will be better.

And so what you were basically saying is, I'm not going to reinforce, positively reinforce your bad behavior by staying here, right?

I'm not going to do that by staying here.

I will leave.

He was really nice.

It was like, okay, I don't have to constantly bring up that you were a really terrible person the first time I met you.

That's right.

I'm just going to be normal.

And so when we had a ton of fun, she was like, wow, you're such a nice guy.

Like, this is such a great guy.

Yeah.

And she would occasionally test me, right?

She would get like really snarky or really rude or be like, you have to buy me this thing.

And I was like, that's not what I want out of this relationship.

I'm not your sugar daddy or whatever.

And she would be like, oh, okay.

And then she would just drop it.

But she would try to like kind of like poke the boundary a little bit, right?

Like, is this balloon going to to pop if I keep poking it?

And since it didn't, she liked me more and more and more until it got to be a little bit too much.

But that's another story for another day, I suppose.

Well, you know, a different kind of direction on that, though, when we're, we're asking people to change in some way, shape, or form.

Often they do not have the skills they need.

So for instance, the client who is not coming on time, they're not punctual, right?

And they've gotten away with it for a while.

So it's been reinforced.

Me saying, hey, guess what?

All of a sudden you haven't been punctual for anything in the last 40 years and now I need you to come on time for this, they may may not be able to do that.

So I need to shape the behavior, meaning I need to find some small improvement they could make from where they're at.

What might just be, call me.

If you're going to be late, call me.

And once we get that down and they're consistently calling me, then I up the ante, I make it a little harder, okay?

Now I need you to call me with, you know, earlier.

I need to tell me an hour before if you're going to be late.

And we just keep shaping the behavior.

You start reinforcing approximations of the behavior you want.

So I just want it to be clear because sometimes it's not as easy as like, here's the line, and then people get in line.

Oftentimes there's a line there that they just, despite their best intentions, can't bring themselves to meet the requirements.

How do we validate ourselves?

Is there a brief version of this?

Yeah.

It's such an issue that's near and dear to my heart.

I didn't realize how bad I was at validating myself until I really mastered validating other people.

And the process, it's using those same skills on yourself.

And I'm usually focusing on emotions, although sometimes I do it for thoughts or behaviors, but I'm looking for like, what am I feeling?

Just what is it that I'm feeling?

What's the validity in that emotion?

Where is it coming from?

And I don't let myself get trapped in some narrative or like some sad story.

It's just like very objective.

X led to Y.

And then it combines some degree of self-soothing or taking action on your own suffering in the same way you would for someone else.

You wouldn't kick them when they were down.

You'd probably get them coffee.

Right.

Yeah.

Would I judge a friend or colleague for feeling this emotion?

Probably not.

No.

And what would I do for them?

And that is what I will do for myself.

I've got a whole chapter on it, and it's actually pretty straightforward.

I have yet to meet anybody in my corporate work with executives and companies or my clinical work with patients.

Yet to meet anybody who was impressively good at self-validation.

Very few people actually do any version of it.

It's a missing skill set.

And to be fair, it wasn't modeled for us growing up.

You know, it's not like our parents were saying, oh, it makes sense that you feel that way.

And why don't you self-soothe with whatever?

You know, they're like, act your age.

Yes, exactly.

Grow up.

Yes, that's right.

That's right.

That's right.

Why do we need to do this?

Why do we need to practice self-validation?

Yeah.

Again, it comes back to that experience of: can you love yourself?

Do you see the validity in your experiences?

Do you judge yourself?

Folks who are better able to validate themselves and practice self-compassion are actually much more likely to take responsibility for their behavior when they do poorly.

They are much more likely to be effective as a result, as a consequence of whatever mistakes they make.

On the contrary, folks who lash themselves with self-criticism and X, Y, and Z, much less likely.

So it is not about going easy on yourself, Okay.

It is about responding humanely to yourself so that you feel worthy of such interactions with other people.

Dr.

Caroline Fleck, thank you so much.

There's so much more in the book.

Hopefully we can get kind of a cheat sheet together if you're able to do that.

Yeah, let's do it.

And it's highly practical and the cheat sheet will get some stuff going so people can practice this stuff.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and allowing me to not finish on time.

This was really, actually really fun.

At some point, I want to share notes on the dating stuff.

I'm like, I I never really thought about it this, but as we're talking validation with this, I'm like seeing all these parallels.

So yeah, super fun.

Definitely.

Yeah.

A lot of the stuff on the ladder is shaping disclosure, the more powerful stuff, even conversational techniques like equalize and propose.

It's like, man, when you're talking with somebody and they're sharing something and you equalize it, you can see the relief in their face.

And then.

Maybe you propose and they're like, oh my God, this guy totally gets me because he said the thing that I said, but in even better words than I said it.

He's totally listening to me, right, attending.

And most people don't get this, especially young women don't get it from younger guys.

I mean, most of my clients are 20s and 30s.

So it's like a Jedi mind trick because the guys they're talking to are like Beavis and butthead level.

You're so pretty.

You want to go on a date?

They're cavemen compared to the guys that we were training.

And again, it makes the man better.

It makes them deserve what they want, right?

So it was really, really useful because it wasn't manipulative.

It was just like...

It speaks to this weird thing I observed when I was coming into like Google and stuff to teach these skills to help teams collaborate better.

It's like a bunch of engineers and like scientists.

I'm like, they're going to just laugh me out the door, right, with my soft science.

And they love it, right?

They loved it.

They love like the equation.

I do this, then that happened, right?

Like they really like the method.

They took to it.

They were able to develop the skills and like they really gravitated toward it.

A lot of my clients were in tech because,

I mean, look, you might imagine the guy who's a singer-songwriter, he's got a different vibe than an engineer.

And an engineer is like, I don't understand.

I have a good job, a good career.

I put in the inputs and the outputs aren't coming out when it comes to dating.

And you're like, oh, okay, try these things.

And they're like, ah, different inputs.

Yes.

Right.

That just really floored me when I had that experience.

I was mostly in like mental health and like, you know, doing some.

But once I made that flip, I was like, oh, there's a real method here that doesn't require a high EQ.

In fact, the lower the EQ sometimes, the better the reaction.

They're more willing to try and experiment than someone who thinks they know it.

It's so true.

Training really smart guys was good, but training guys who are not that smart was actually great too, because they would just go, all right, I'm just going to do exactly what you told me to do.

Yes.

And like a smart guy would be like, I did this thing and then I modified it and then I did it this way.

And it's like, okay, and did it work?

No.

Okay.

Well, maybe you should have just tried the thing I told you.

Whereas, yeah, the guy with like.

I won't say the dumb because he's not dumb.

Yeah.

The guy who was like, I have no idea what to do.

I just have this thing written on my hand.

I'm going to do one, two, three, four.

They're like, it worked.

You know, yeah, it worked.

You know, and then now you have to do it in a more authentic way that's sort of native to you, but one step at a time.

Yeah, because you see these like highly sensitive folks, these like, I'm an empath.

Like, I'm really, I have a high EQ.

So like, I don't need to practice this.

Like, it comes naturally to me.

And it's people who say that, people tell me they're an empath of a high EQ.

I'm like, well, we'll see about that.

Thank you so much for doing the show.

Really appreciate it.

What drives a Canadian teenager to embrace radical extremism and what makes him turn against it to become an undercover agent who foils a terrorist plot?

A radicalization is the normal human psychological process whereby people become increasingly extreme in their views.

And if you act on that, then you're a violent extremist.

My radicalization period really ran from 95 to, let's say, 2001.

So I ended up joining a fundamentalist group.

We're actually reading Arabic, but we're only being taught how to recite.

We're not being taught what it means.

I realized militancy is the way forward because it's strength.

Now I belong to something much greater.

Now I am more powerful.

And I mean 9-11 happened.

I was like, oh my god, I understand fighting the cause and you know in combat.

How do you justify flying planes into buildings?

These are not combatants.

These are not military targets.

And so that's when I realized that I didn't know Arabic.

I needed to study it properly and formally.

And then I would decide to undertake a trip to Syria to do just that.

You know, I de-radicalized while I was there.

I realized that my interpretations were wrong and I had this newfound appreciation for the rights that we have in the West.

This is what you want to do.

Basically commit catastrophic terrorist attacks in a city that I am born and raised in in the name of my religion, right?

I'm not gonna allow that to happen.

I don't care what people think.

Those things alone that you want to blow shit up in my home and use my religion as a cover, not acceptable.

To hear Mubin Shake's incredible journey from a true believer to the man who helped save his country from one of its most dangerous threats, tune into episode 261 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Thanks to Dr.

Carolyn Fleck, as I mentioned during the show, the book has a ton of practical exercises that are laid out in ways that are super simple to learn, practice, and eventually master.

By the way, I know during the show I said we were going to have a worksheet, a little cheat sheet with some of the validation tactics.

You can find that linked in the show notes on the website for this episode over at jordanharbinger.com.

Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/slash deals.

Please consider supporting those who support the show.

Also, our newsletter, We BitWiser, very popular with all of you.

The idea is to give you something specific and practical, much like this show, that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions and psychology, your relationships.

It's a two-minute read or less.

And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out.

It's a great companion to the show.

JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it.

Don't forget about our course at sixminute networking.com, no shenanigans, it's actually just free.

I run it at a loss.

Eventually, I'll do something else there, but that's what it is for now.

Sixminutenetworking.com.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well.

The show was created in association with Podcast One.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Tata Sedlauskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Remember, we rise by lifting others.

The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting.

The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

If you know somebody who's interested in learning how to validate others, get through to others, communicate well with others, definitely share this episode with them.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.

This episode is sponsored in part by Mint Mobile.

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