Y<\/span>ou feel drained after a phone call with a friend; you accidentally talked past each other the whole time.<\/p>\n You feel helpless after a video call with a distressed family member. You want to support them, but you don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n In 2020 it was challenging to feel connected to friends and family. Fortunately, psychology techniques can help you feel much more connected in situations like these.<\/p>\n The validation framework \u201cThe Six Levels of Validation\u201d blew my mind when I discovered it. Suddenly, I was equipped with an entire tool belt of ways to help my friends feel understood.<\/p>\n When I tried these, my friends\u2019 eyes lit up – they really felt listened to and known! We should all work on improving our interactions with friends like this. Strong and healthy relationships are foundational to a happy and healthy life.<\/p>\n The goal of the six levels of validation is for your friend to feel understood by conveying that their experience makes sense to you\u2014the lower three levels of validation focus on understanding the other person\u2019s experience in the first place.<\/p>\n The higher three levels of validation focus on conveying that their experience makes sense. These six levels of validation come from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, created by Marcia Linehan. We will go through these from the lowest level to the highest level.<\/p>\n Level one is being present, even if you are not saying anything to each other at all. Just being present with someone can help them feel seen.<\/p>\n Level two is accurate reflection, using their words to describe the situation. This is the core of active listening – internalizing what they say so that you can say it back to them. This can help them feel heard.<\/p>\n Level three is careful guessing, using your own words to describe the situation. This is much trickier than simply repeating back things that they said.<\/p>\n To produce good guesses, you must understand what they are experiencing. Be careful, though – if you guess wrong, you could make them feel much worse. Leave plenty of room for correction. If you do guess correctly, that can be so powerful!<\/p>\n You could make your friend feel much understood. You might also inspire them to use some of the wording you come up with to describe their situation more accurately.<\/p>\n Level four is validating based on their past experiences. Imagine a friend who is afraid of petting dogs. This fear may be surprising since so many people like to pet dogs. However, their fear might make complete sense if you knew that, as a child, this friend was bitten by a dog. It makes sense that they would still be afraid of petting dogs today, based on their past.<\/p>\n Level five is validating based on the present circumstances, like saying \u201canyone would feel that way.\u201d For example, lately, so many people are feeling social isolation. It would be completely unsurprising to hear from anyone that they feel lonely.<\/p>\n You may find yourself deciding whether to focus on level four (based on past experiences) and level five (based on present circumstances). When the fifth level is appropriate, it is often more powerful than the fourth level, but try both.<\/p>\n Level six is radical genuineness. This is when you personally have had a very similar experience, and you relate deeply. When level six is appropriate, it can be the most validating of all! But be careful here – making the conversation about yourself is counterproductive to the goal of helping them feel understood.<\/p>\n It is up to the friend to determine if they are interested in hearing how your experience might relate. They get to decide how relevant and\/or comforting they find your experience. When appropriate, sharing your personal experience may be the most validating of all.<\/p>\n Want a mnemonic to help you remember these six levels? Try PAGPAG: Presence, Accurate reflection, Guessing, Past (context), Anyone (context), and Genuineness. All six of the levels are useful; it varies based on the situation. Try using the highest level that is appropriate, but even the lowest levels can be supportive, too.<\/p>\n Try these six techniques sometime this week! Schedule a call with a close friend or family member. Try all six of these levels and see how they feel. You both will feel more connected, energized, and understood when using these active listening skills.<\/p>\n A six level approach to active listening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2021","category-winter-2021-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10747"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11126,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10747\/revisions\/11126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Level One<\/h3>\n
Level Two<\/h3>\n
Level Three<\/h3>\n
Level Four<\/h3>\n
Level Five<\/h3>\n
Level Six<\/h3>\n
Casey Watts, Yale alumnus, neurobiologist-turned-coder, is the author of Debugging Your Brain<\/em><\/a>, a manual on applying computer programming techniques to rewire your mental health. The book covers techniques to help avoid downward spirals, process your own experiences, and validate yourself and others.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"