Validation

At some point in my life, I realized an important truth.  The worst thing that ever happened to you is the worst thing that ever happened to you.

The reasons this is an important truth are many.  First, the more adversity you face in life, the more opportunity you have to build resilience and perspective.  When you have survived the death of a loved one, a flat tire on your way to a job interview is just an inconvenience.

The second reason this is an important truth has to do with compassion and validation.   All emotion is legitimate.  No one's feelings should ever be trivialized.   It is not helpful to say things like, "Oh, come on, it is not as bad as you are making it out to be", or "For heaven's sake, grow up and get over yourself".

When something bad happens to someone, emotion follows.  The depth and reach of that emotion is not yours to judge.   It is appropriate to intervene when someone is trying to work through strong emotion in a way that is damaging to themselves or others, but the right way to do that does not include ridiculing or diminishing the person's right to feel.

If you have someone in your life who is sad, be supportive.  There is no need to get out a measuring stick on why their sadness doesn't measure up to someone else's.  I remember years ago I had a pet die.  I was very sad.  Someone I worked with was very vocal about how ridiculous it was to be that upset over an animal dying.  All their scorn did was hurt me more.  No point at all to that.  Later in life, another pet died.  A dear friend told me "You have my permission to be sad as long as you need to".  That was a great gift.  My sadness was validated.  I was still sad.  I still cried for my Burt dog.  But no hurt was layered on.

If you have someone in your life who is angry, be supportive.  Statements like, "I can tell you are really upset", and "You can vent in my direction all you need to" are helpful.   Even if you think the anger the person is expressing is out of proportion with the event, pointing that out will only make the person feel isolated and angry.

It is not always possible to feel empathy for another's emotions, but you can work on always feeling and expressing compassion.

Often the emotion that manifests is not directly proportionate to the event.  We all have emotional storerooms in ourselves that contain old happiness, old hurts, old sadness, old anger, old despair.  Many of us actively work on cleaning out those storerooms, but for most of us, they are always there.  We can't predict what events or happenings will open the doors of those storerooms so that old emotion spills over onto current events.  Since this is a truth of our shared humanity, let's work on recognizing this is a truth for all of us.

The worst thing that ever happened to you is the worst thing that ever happened to you.   When you find yourself tempted to minimize or trivialize the emotional response you are observing in someone else, take the time to remember an early disappointment.  Maybe you didn't get invited to a birthday party in first grade, or didn't get picked until last for a team at school or the playground.  Force yourself to remember how much that hurt.  The reason it looks smaller now is that there have been larger disappointments and hurts that have created perspective.

When you practice appreciating everyone's emotions as valid, you start becoming a more compassionate person.  Compassion breeds caring.  Caring feeds relationships.  Relationships build communities.  Communities that are compassionate and caring make the world a better place.

The worst thing that ever happened to you is the worst thing that ever happened to you.  An important truth that remembered and acted upon will continue to make the world a better place.