What does 'valid' mean?
Per the OED, the extant meanings are:
Good or adequate in law; possessing legal authority or force; legally binding or efficacious.
Of arguments, proofs, assertions, etc.: Well founded and fully applicable to the particular matter or circumstances; sound and to the point; against which no objection can fairly be brought.
In general use: Effective, effectual; sound.
It is very clear that emotions cannot be adequately described as any of these. Emotions are not stipulations. They're not arguments. They're not tools, instruments.
Emotions are mental states of being combined with physiological correlates: fear, sadness, anger, and other emotions can be identified physically in the body, if one tries.
Emotions are no more capable of validity or invalidity than the redness of a tomato or the tomato itself.
As with a lot of language that is smuggled into AA from other domains, what the word appears to mean from general usage is not what it really means. What does 'emotional validation' mean? Well, different sources give different definitions. Here are some:
Validating is giving another person a direct and clear message that their experience is understandable, real, and logical, given what has happened.
To validate someone’s feelings is first to be open and curious about someone’s feelings. Next, it is to understand them, and finally it is to nurture them. Validation doesn’t mean that you have to agree with or that the other person’s experience has to make sense to you. On the other hand, it is to leave your own interpretations and opinions and be open to how other people can have different ones.
Validating feelings involves recognizing someone's feelings and acknowledging them as important.
(Various sources)
These are obviously contradictory and contain red flags (e.g. telling someone that their experience, for which read 'reasoning', is 'logical': not all reasoning is logical. To compound someone's error does not help them.) If I'm upset, do I need my negative emotion 'nurtured' (grown, protected, preserved)?
Now, the treatises on emotional validation do actually contain some good advice. Let people speak without interruption. Ask questions. Show compassion for them as a person. Do not attempt to change what they believe, think, or do unless they are actively open to that. These are well and good.
There are problems, however.
Firstly, when someone is apparently talking about their (negative) feelings, they are usually not talking about their feelings. They're talking about their observations, perceptions, interpretations, narratives, reasoning, etc. There are emotional charges associated with all of these, but this is not the topic of the discourse. Try to talk about a feeling without going into any of those: you're done in seconds.
Now, it's sound to accept and refrain from interfering in someone's emotional condition directly. That would be both nonsensical, intrusive, and ineffectual. If someone is feeling physical pain, they're feeling it. The feeling, if faithfully reported, is not up for acceptance or denial by the other person. They're simply not in a position to accept or deny. The communication of it can be acknowledged, like the receipt of a letter, but it is absolutely not capable of 'validation' on any level. The interlocutor has neither the data nor the skills to do so. One must proceed on the basis of what is reported.
It is the same with emotional pain. If you're feeling upset, angry, frightened, etc., that's what you're feeling. I have no access to your emotional state directly other than observation or what you're reporting. I cannot corroborate it.
What is really meant by 'emotional validation' is the validation of reasoning: the sequence that proceeds from observation to conclusion via the application of principles and reason. When people are talking about their feelings, they're really talking about their analysis of a situation. Emotional validation is therefore not the validation of emotions but the validation of reasoning. That this is the case is evident from the choice of the word 'validation'. Emotions are not capable of validation or invalidation but reasoning is.
And this is where the nonsense comes in. To validate someone's reasoning when it is unreasonable is irrational, dishonest, and injurious both to the person and to the relationship. To attempt to validate it without signing up to it is contradictory. To invalidate the reasoning of someone not open to adjusting it is a fool's errand.
The demand for emotional validation is therefore really a demand to be agreed with, either as a witness or as an interlocutor whose role is then to accept the blame and adjust their behaviour in line with the speaker's wishes. Yet no one is entitled to be agreed with. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. There is no value in being told I'm right when I'm wrong, but that is exactly what the project of emotional validation (not universally but regularly) advocates. I'm wrong but my wrongness is 'important'? 'Logical'? 'Understandable'? What possible benefit can this yield?
I'll tell you: the avoidance of a further pain in admitting I am wrong.
All upset is generated by the ego. The ego, when setting up a grievance, also sets up a defence: if you attack the grievance, you are attacking me: any attempt to undermine the reasoning constitutes a further attack, and, in cutting the head off the hydra, two have grown back. The grievance has been doubled.
Being disabused of error is painful (the ego, like a parasite, injects pain-generating poison into its host who tries to remove it), and this explains why most people react violently to any attempt to remove the grounds for upset. Most people would rather be right than happy. They would rather be right and unhappy than go through the process of having the unhappiness removed.
The project of emotional validation fails to recognise this and plays into it. The person who is aggrieved, by virtue of their grievance, necessarily has a point. The taking of offence means that something offensive has happened. The unhappiest person in the room is the tail that wags the dog.
Every single person who tried to help me before recovery validated my feelings, in the sense described above, from clergy, to therapists, to helplines, to friends, to family. I got worse and worse. Few people (and certainly no professional) had the temerity (for I was holding the threat of suicide at my own neck) to tell me I was wrong, and these were promptly dismissed. Anyone that challenged me was expelled from my life.
Until, in AA, I met a Wimbledon housewife, an entertainment executive, a doctor, a barrister, and others who regularly laughed at what I was saying (when it was ridiculous) and regularly told me I was wrong (which I almost invariably was).
It was then that I started to get better.
If you're feeling really bad, I understand that, and I recognise that that's tough.
Do you want to feel better? Good!
Do you want to have every single belief challenged? All of your reasoning? All of your conclusions?
Are you willing to admit you're wrong, to yourself, to another AA member, to God, and finally to everyone in the world you've clashed swords with?
Good!
Now we're in business.
What's the name of the game? The dismantling of the systems producing the negative emotion.
What shall we call this? Emotional invalidation.