Читать книгу DBT For Dummies - Gillian Galen - Страница 91

One of the most critical and sometimes hardest things to do is to validate your emotions. For many people who come to DBT, this is one of the hardest skills because for many years, they, and often their loved ones, have been invalidating their emotions. The key to validation is to remind yourself (and others if you’re validating them) what makes sense about how you feel. The NO in your SUN WAVE NO NOT (covered earlier in this chapter) helps you avoid the self-invalidation that may have become automatic.

Validation, by definition, helps decrease the intensity of your emotion by reminding you that your emotions make sense. Invalidation, or telling yourself you shouldn’t feel a certain way, that you’re stupid or weak for feeling something, or even that you should just get over it, are some of the most effective ways to enhance the very feelings that are already painful and leading to suffering. Invalidation is a main ingredient of generating a sticky secondary emotion. (We discuss primary and secondary emotions earlier in this chapter.)